Elizabeth (5 page)

She stiffened and the colour slowly left her fact.

“What do you mean, leave me forever?—What are you saying?” Elizabeth repeated. “You cannot leave me unless I permit it!”

“How can I stay?”

“Will you for Jesu's sake stop talking riddles and come out with what you mean!” The flash of temper warned him but it exhilarated him too. He knew the signs of a quarrel between lovers; he had seen that expression on other women's faces when he spoke of leaving.…

“I cannot stay here,” Dudley said quietly, “… because I love you.”

Suddenly she turned away from him; only her hands betrayed her. They were clenched till her rings cut into the flesh.

“All loyal subjects love the Queen.” Her voice was strained. “You are talking nonsense.”

“I love the woman,” Dudley answered. “Say that you forgive me and will let me go.”

Slowly Elizabeth faced him.

“I love the woman.”

He would not let her escape; he had destroyed her attempt at subterfuge, the opening she had offered him which would have allowed them to remain as they were.

“You have a wife, my Lord, have you forgotten her?”

“Completely. From the moment I saw you at Hatfield she ceased to exist.”

It was as if they crossed swords, fencing with words and emotions as skilfully as two enemies in mortal combat. He was making a desperate bid for the unattainable, risking his future, his fortunes, possibly his life, and she knew that he understood not only the value of the prize but the penalty for failure if he had misjudged.

“Then if you have forgotten her, what point is there in going back to her?”

Her heart was beating so quickly that one hand touched her breast as if to calm it; but her mind, swift as the hawks she loved, dared him to parry that thrust, if he could.…

“There is no point in going anywhere or doing anything, unless I can have my heart's desire,” Dudley answered without hesitating. “And since that is forbidden me, then I can only bring dishonour by staying at Court. I can't hide my feelings, Madam. Don't ask me to try, it's beyond Nature. And don't ask me to stay here, watching you day and night, touching your hand, as I did a few moments ago, and knowing that I would give my life to take you in my arms.”

“Not only your life, but mine too. I am no King—only a woman, and a Queen cannot take a lover.”

His back was between her and the Gallery; he caught one of her hands and found it deadly cold. Suddenly he pressed her palm against his mouth.

“Take me,” he whispered. “Nothing will befall you.… I know what you fear. Take me, just for one hour.…”

“So another man said.” Elizabeth wrenched her hand away, fighting a serpentine quiver of response that frightened her so much she could have hit him. “He lost his head and I came near to joining him. Get off your knees, you fool.”

She stood up then, and immediately the laughter and talk in the Gallery ceased as everyone sprang to their feet.

“You are dismissed, my Lord.”

She walked past him into the centre of the room and beckoned to Lady Warwick to join her. Then she turned and looked at him over her shoulder.

“Until this evening. I lost to you at backgammon last night, and I want my revenge.”

Lady Warwick held out the silk embroidered slipper, and eased it over the Queen's foot. Covertly she watched her mistress. She had been watching her for several weeks now, performing her duties in the Royal bedchamber with such diligence that Elizabeth suddenly demanded whether she expected to find someone under the bed. Lady Warwick blushed; she was quite sure that if Dudley were anywhere to be found, it would be inside the curtains, not underneath them. And everyone said he was, though nobody knew when or how it was arranged. But she had not watched Elizabeth for that; she was spying in order to test the truth of a far more serious rumour and one which could not be hidden even by someone as adept as the Queen. If she was pregnant, Lady Warwick would find
that
out. Elizabeth was certainly nervous enough, and so irritable that she had slapped poor Dacre for dropping a scent bottle. But she was thinner than usual, and not sick, nor given to whims about food. No, there was no child, Lady Warwick could swear to that. A sudden angry kick sent the slipper flying into a corner.

“Not that one,” Elizabeth snapped. “They pinch; find me another pair, and stop daydreaming, woman. There's a deputation waiting for me.”

“Is it about your marriage again, Madam?” Lady Dacre, rather unnerved by the violence and speed with which the Queen delivered a blow, asked her question from a safe distance. She was locking up the Queen's jewel box. Elizabeth had chosen a massive chain of emeralds and pearls with a matching brooch as big as a child's fist. The stones winked and blazed against her black and gold dress. A collar of stiffened lace framed her head.

“It is. They come to urge me to marry the Archduke Charles. How will you like another Spaniard for a Consort? Better than I should, I daresay!”

“It's a shame to worry your Grace, so,” Lady Dacre twittered on, unaware of the angry gaze directed at her back. “Why should you be pestered to take a husband till you wish for one? The Lord knows, I wish I were a maiden!”

Elizabeth suddenly burst out laughing. Poor Dacre! Her sympathy was quite genuine. She saw marriage in the light of her own unhappy union with a middle-aged boor who bullied her unmercifully when she was not at Court under the Queen's protection.

“You'd be wise to keep that wish from your Lord husband,” she said. “Come here.”

Lady Dacre approached her uneasily and knelt. To her own surprise Elizabeth pinched her cheek.

“You are a wise old matron of nineteen and I'm but an old maid of twenty-six,” she said. “If you advise against marriage, I shall take your word. You've given me a weapon to use against my persecutors.—Come, ladies, give me my fan and my gloves. I must go forth and defend my virgin state.” And she gave the inquisitive and suspicious Lady Warwick a look that took her breath as effectively as any blow.

The Archduke Charles was Spain's candidate; a second candidate, if one considered Philip's tepid offer to marry Elizabeth himself. Though she had expected it, the proposal had filled her with repulsion and rage. The idea that she would welcome the man who had married Mary and hurried her to her grave with a broken heart, had first made Elizabeth laugh and then spit with anger at the impertinence. She must not expect him to spend much time with her, the ungallant proposer added, even if he should leave her pregnant. She had shown the letter to Robert, and he had read with his arm around her, one hand absently caressing her waist in the gesture she loved. She was gratified to see how angry it made him; it gave her the opportunity to soothe his temper and assure him that he had nothing to fear from Philip, or from anyone else.… Not for as long as she could withstand her Council and her Parliament. Now Spain was proposing the Archduke, and so alarmed were her advisers, both by her unmarried state and by her apparent liaison with Robert Dudley, that even Cecil was prepared to stomach a Consort who was a Roman Catholic.

They had resurrected every bogy, real and imaginary, which they thought could frighten her into making a decision. The only effective one was her cousin Mary Stuart, whose husband, the French King, had died after a reign lasting only a few months. Mary had now no longer anything to keep her in France, she was waiting to return to her native Scotland, where her presence as Queen and her claim to the English throne would deprive Elizabeth and her advisers of many hours' sleep at night. Fortunately the Protestant nobility of Scotland had chosen that moment to revolt, and large sums of English money were spirited across the Border to assist them and prevent the arrival of the Queen of Scots. Elizabeth denied all knowledge of the money, and promised severe punishment for any of her subjects who assisted the rebels. But the money and the encouragement continued. Elizabeth had at first rejected Cecil's proposal to enter the conflict openly by sending troops when the Scottish rebels appeared to be losing, but the Secretary threatened to resign unless she agreed. The threat had its effect: an English army marched into Scotland, and by July of that year they entered Edinburgh. A treaty was signed between Queen Mary's nobles and the rebel Lords, but the terms were dictated by England, who could at least frame a political and religious settlement in that unruly country which would hamper and dispirit the eighteen-year-old Queen of Scots when she finally arrived there.

Spain's anger at her intervention had been so intense at the time that Elizabeth had hurriedly encouraged the Archduke's suit. But now that she had won her war and got her way in Scotland, there was no need to continue the pretence. The deputation, made up of the Spanish ambassador—an amiable but foolish Bishop who had replaced Feria—and members of her own Council, could safely be dismissed.

When she told them she preferred maidenhood, she watched the anger and the disappointment on some faces, the disbelief and cynicism on others. She had made a fool of the ambassador and his candidate, and deceived her own advisers. Most of them supposed the reason to be political, and these were right; others imagined the cause was Robert Dudley, with whom she was said to be in love.

They were lovers in all senses but the true one. She had allowed him growing intimacies on the understanding that he did not attempt the last of all.

The danger of pregnancy was too obvious to need stressing; Elizabeth refused to contemplate such a risk, but with Dudley at least she was too honest to pretend that her nominal chastity was due to moral scruples. If she could take a lover, she would take him. Those words, wrung from her in a moment of passionate abandonment, fed Dudley's innermost ambition and made the rules governing their strange relationship not only bearable but proper.

Elizabeth refused to become his mistress, and he no longer urged her, because he had conceived the fantastic ambition of making her his wife. He had watched the progress of the Archduke Charles's courtship, terrified that Policy and the promptings of her Council would encourage her to place herself beyond his reach. But the longer the negotiations dragged on, the more ambassadors and politicians did the Archduke's wooing for him, the more confident Dudley felt that no man would win Elizabeth in cold blood.

He showed that he was jealous in order to be reassured; jeering at the paper courtship, as he called it. And he waited patiently for the obvious solution to their problem to present itself to her. If and when she saw the point of marrying as her subjects demanded, and choosing a husband to her own taste, he would need every friend at Court he could enlist. It was all planned in his quick, unscrupulous mind. He would divorce Amy, whom he hardly ever saw, since he forbade her to come to London, and Amy would agree as she agreed to everything he said. And he, Robert Dudley, would be Consort, perhaps even King of England. Even his father, who had been uncrowned King in Edward's reign, had never conceived an ambition as daring as this one.

If Dudley's intentions were kept secret from Elizabeth, they were obvious enough to her advisers. Cecil's worst fears were being realized, and all the antipathy of the old nobility towards the elevation of an upstart concentrated in a clique against Dudley, headed by the Earl of Sussex. He was a middle-aged man of great courage and discernment; he had befriended Elizabeth when she was Mary's prisoner, and she was known to respect his opinion. She was also so averse to criticism that the other members of the Council, Cecil included, gladly elected Sussex as their spokesman.

She was in her Privy Chamber, playing virginals with her ladies, when the Earl asked permission to see her privately.

She was in a good temper, soothed by the melody and her own musical skill, and by the memory of the exasperation on the face of the Spanish ambassador when she told him she could not consider the Archduke as a husband because of his religion and her own reluctance to get married.

“My Lord Sussex, Madam.”

She continued playing, well aware that the Earl liked music and that she presented a lovely, graceful picture, seated at the instrument in the light of the setting sun. After a moment she looked up and smiled and beckoned to him.

“Welcome, my Lord. You find me idling, I fear. Music is my greatest relaxation. Have you come to divert me for a change or to harry me with business?”

“Neither, Madam. I come to you, as I always will, as a loving servant and councillor. May I see you alone?” At a sign from the Queen, her ladies rose, curtsied, and left the room. Elizabeth left the virginal board and took her favourite position in the window. As a special sign of her favour, she patted the ledge beside her.

“Sit down, my Lord. What do you want from me?”

Sussex faced her without flinching. He had known her for many years; he admired her courage, her natural dignity and intelligence, but his view of her was still coloured by his experience of the nineteen-year-old Princess he had once escorted to the Tower, who wept and seemed so pitifully frail and feminine in her distress. Even the sharp contest of wills in the Council Chamber where Elizabeth overrode some of the toughest men in England had not taught him that she was not the wilting girl he had befriended long ago.

“I've been charged by the other Councillors to give you a warning, Madam.”

He was too gruff and forthright to notice the narrowed eyes, suddenly fixed on him like points of steel.

“If they chose you to be spokesman, they must have known I should dislike it, whatever it is. Don't be too ready to be other men's tongues, my Lord. What is this warning that they dare not give themselves?”

“It concerns Lord Robert Dudley.”

“Yes? What of Lord Dudley?”

Her voice usually rose when she was angry; she asked the question lightly and again Sussex was misled.

“He's bringing scandal on your good name. He is a married man and we have reason to believe that he intends to put away his wife and attempt something which would involve your Majesty in ruin.”