Elizabeth (8 page)

She did not open the conversation. He had shown temper with Beth Owen, and she knew he was still irritated. While she sat there, Dudley watched her for a moment. She was always so nervous, he thought contemptuously. She moistened her lips and kept looking quickly at him and then away, and twisting her chain of pearls round and round her fingers. It would have been so much easier if she showed a little spirit. He actually deluded himself for a minute that he might have still cared for her had she been of tougher temper, shown anger or defiance, taken a lover—done anything but wait for him like a sick dog, which would rather be kicked than ignored. He had already decided to ask for the divorce quite simply and gently and avoid a scene if he could, and therefore his first words were a surprise to her.

“You don't look well, Amy.”

“No—Oh, I've been ill for some time, Robert, but I'm quite cured now. I won't tell you about it, and I didn't write because I know how sickness distresses you. But it's left me a little pale, I think.”

“You should have a change,” he said. “You could arrange to go to the North; the air there is very good.”

“I'm quite happy here. If I went to the North, I should never see you.”

He leant forward suddenly, both hands on his knees.

“Amy, I must talk to you: I must talk to you from the heart. We can't go on in this fashion any longer. You can't sit here wasting your days waiting for a husband who has too many calls on him to
be
a husband. We married in great haste, when we were both too young to know what marriage meant. Let us dissolve it now, while we are friends and wish each other well. I want my freedom, Amy, and I want you to have yours. Another man will make up to you for all that I've lacked.”

He was surprised because he had been so certain that of all the women in the world, Amy would cry at such a moment. But her eyes were dry, and there was a curious look in them when she answered.

“I don't want any other man. I'm happy enough with you.”

He shook his head, determined not to show impatience.

“You haven't been happy for many years, neither have I. Let us be honest with each other; our paths have separated and they will never run in the same direction now. I cannot live the life of a squire buried in the country. You aren't suited to the life at Court.”

“I have never had the opportunity to find out,” Amy said quietly. “You did not want me with you, Robert, and I have been content to stay away. I am not complaining. I told you, I am happy enough as things are.”

“Well I am not.”

If she was going to argue, he thought angrily, then there was no use employing gentle language.

“I want a divorce, and I demand that you agree. I won't be held in bondage to you; I want my freedom!”

Amy Dudley looked at him. “So this was the important business you wrote about,” she said. “And I suppose you thought it would be settled by tomorrow so that you could ride back to the Queen and tell her it was done.”

“What the devil are you saying!” He sprang out of his chair and stood over her glaring down into that white, oddly determined face.

“You said we should be honest. People have been gossiping about you and the Queen for months. Why don't you tell the truth and say that you want to cast me off so that you can marry
her
!”

He had no idea how the truth had come into her stupid head, and he no longer cared. At that moment it seemed as if the sickly woman sitting in front of him, showing signs of independence for the first time in her life, were the sole obstacle to his marriage with Elizabeth.

“You can tell her,” Amy's voice was trembling at last, “that she has taken you from me in spirit, and in body. You are always with her and never with me. She is the Queen and I cannot fight her. She wants you now, and therefore I must stand aside and give you to her as if I had no rights at all. But I won't, Robert. You may tell her so. I will not divorce you.”

For a moment he thought he must have imagined it; Amy could not be serious—she had never refused him anything, never defied him in the ten years of their marriage.…

“I thought you loved me,” he burst out. “In God's name, what are you trying to do, ruin me out of spite?”

“I do love you, Robert. I love you more than life itself—I've always loved you. That's why I cannot give you to another woman; as long as I'm your wife you may grow tired of her and she of you, and then you may come back to me.”

She crossed to his chair and knelt beside it, her hand gripping his arm, the tears running down her face as she looked up at him.

“I only live in that hope, Robert—that one day we will be as we were. If I let you go as you ask, I should lose you for ever. I cannot do that. I will not do it. And she will not blame you; you won't be ruined.”

“I will,” he said. “You don't know the Queen; if she is thwarted.…”

“No,” Amy said. “No, Robert, it's no use. I'd go to the Tower rather than do what you want.”

“Oh would you!” He wrenched his arm away from her and stood up. “You may well go there, Madam, if you persist in this.”

“I know that. I know what she can do to me; God help me, I even know that you'd encourage her. But you're my husband; that's all I have left. Until the day you return to me; and I know you will, whatever you feel now. You'll come to love me again as you did before.”

“Love you!” Dudley almost spat the words at her. “I never loved you! You think a stripling boy's daydreams of bed were love? You bored me to death within a few months—in bed and out of it. You stupid, vapid little babbler—why God's death you never even bore a child! Look at yourself—you have no beauty, no wit, no graces. Love you! I cannot bear the sight of you.”

“Don't, Robert—I beg of you, don't wound me like this—don't be so cruel.…”

She was sobbing, clinging to the empty chair. She dragged herself upright and seized his arm again.

“I love you … believe me, that's why I am refusing you … I love you whatever you do or say.”

“Then don't stand in the way,” he answered fiercely. “Don't keep me from what I want most in life. I can marry the Queen, Amy, I can be the most powerful man in England, if you will be sensible and agree to a divorce. I can give you money, lands, anything you want—why I'll feel more fondness for you than I ever did, if you will dissolve this farce of a marriage. Show that you love me! Do what I ask of you and let me go!”

Slowly Amy Dudley shook her head.

“No, Robert. Go back to the Queen's bed which is so much warmer than mine. But you will only lie in it as her lover. You'll never be another woman's husband as long as I live.”

There was no sound in the room for a moment. When Dudley spoke his voice was dangerously quiet.

“That is your last word?”

“Yes.” It was a whisper. One word, spoken so low that he could hardly hear it, and it sounded the final defeat of all his hopes. He felt the grip of her fingers, holding his arm so tightly that the pressure pinched his skin. He suddenly wrenched it free, and in the same movement his hand swung back and he struck her across the face with all his strength.

He heard her cry out, and the sound of a fall as he turned away. Then the door crashed behind him. When he reached his own room he sent his body servant away and flung himself down on the bed, his head in his hands.

He sat for so long that he lost count of time, until the chiming of a clock in the next room roused him. He had been thinking, slowly and deliberately, his rage purged out of him by that violent blow. He loosened his doublet, kicked off his shoes and lay flat on the bed in his clothes. Within a few minutes he had fallen asleep. He had made up his mind what he had to do.

The next morning Mrs. Odingsell reported that my Lady was staying in bed; she had fallen in her room and badly bruised herself. Mrs. Owen was with her. Anthony Forster sent his wife up to commiserate, and formed his own conclusions when she told him that Lady Dudley had been crying and trying to cover a black eye and a swollen cheek. He was a foxy man, with sandy hair and beard, and pale green eyes which never softened. When he went to Robert Dudley that morning, he noticed the evident signs of bad temper; Dudley was sallow and heavy-eyed as if he had slept badly. He was dressed in cloak and boots, ready to leave as soon as Forster had made his report. He was able to give a very satisfactory account of Dudley's finances, but his master was still scowling and walking up and down; Forster was sure that he had not been listening to a word.

He had only been in his service for two years but he knew Dudley very well. He was not deceived by his genial manners when all was going as it should, or by his generosity or his wit. He had always suspected that Lord Robert would be a savage if he were thwarted, as savage as his father and as unfeeling as his domineering mother. And Lady Dudley had thwarted him, and been given a beating for it. Forster saw no harm in such chastisement; it was not uncommon for the highest born to ill-use their wives if they felt like it, and he had nothing but contempt for Amy Dudley and admiration for Robert.

“Do you know why I told you to report to me?” Dudley turned to him abruptly.

“To give an account of your affairs, my Lord.”

“To give an account of them and to draw up a financial settlement for my wife after our divorce!”

Forster said nothing, but his quick mind came to the truth in a few seconds. He had always believed the rumours of Dudley's liaison with the new Queen; but this meant that the latest and wildest rumour of their impending marriage was also true. And that was why my Lady Dudley was upstairs nursing a black eye.… She had objected to being put out of the way.

“I am sorry to hear of it, my Lord, for your sake and her Ladyship's,” he said. “What arrangements shall I make?”

“None!” Dudley snapped at him. “My wife refuses to free me. You see the unhappiest man in England before you, Forster!”

He sat down, watching his treasurer. Forster owed him everything. He could throw him out into the gutter if he failed to take the hint which he had decided to drop him, and he knew that Forster knew it.

“I have no love for my wife,” he said slowly. “Nor has she for me. But out of spite she is determined to keep me from someone who is too exalted to name. This great lady has honoured me with her affection, Forster, and if I reject it, I must bring ruin upon myself and those dependent upon me. I shan't be able to keep you in my service much longer. I shall not have wealth or preference or power to employ you, after I return to Court.”

“One moment, my Lord.”

Forster went to the door and opened it quickly. The hall outside was empty. He looked through the window and saw no one in the gardens under them. He came back and his thin mouth curved in a slight smile.

“In a house full of women, one must make sure of privacy. We are alone and cannot be overheard. What do you want me to do?”

CHAPTER FOUR

William Cecil was so distracted with worry that he could hardly work. His usually precise, calm disposition was in such a ferment that he twice wrote an error in his instructions to the English ambassador at Brussels and had to destroy the paper and begin again. The hot weather disagreed with him; he slept badly at the best of times during the summer, and the Queen's conduct had become so impossible that he was ungallantly reminded of the Gadarene Swine and their rush to self-destruction.

Elizabeth ignored the commonest conventions governing the conduct of a respectable unmarried woman and spent hours shut up alone with Robert Dudley. It was incredible but true that, according to the information of Cecil's snoopers, watching through cracks in the door and holes in the tapestries, the gross liberties Lord Dudley took with her person were always curtailed at the last moment. The Queen still preserved her virginity, if not her modesty, but her reputation was being ruined by the association.

She had told Cecil to mind his own business when he reproached her; he had picked his words with the utmost care, stressing the harm done to her good name by what he described as her innocent lack of convention, and hinted that her numerous foreign suitors might be offended by the scandals linking her name with a subject. And a subject of somewhat ignoble birth, who already had a wife.

Elizabeth had replied by laughing in his face. Her conscience was clear in her own sight; she assured him that the subject in question was more dear to her than the opinion of Princes she had never seen, and that if she could ignore the clacking of evil tongues, so could he. Dudley was not her lover. Cecil had been about to say that he might just as well be, but she changed the subject.

Her conduct was bad enough; it shocked Cecil, whose neat mind regarded it as illogical and depraved, but he lived in terror that her nocturnal indiscretions would lead her either to submission to the scoundrel or else to the marriage he was obviously plotting.

The climax came when Dudley left for Cumnor, making no secret that his purpose was to secure a divorce from Lady Dudley. When he returned he hedged about the outcome, saying that his wife was ill and unable to discuss the matter yet. Cecil, and everyone else who knew the circumstances, supposed that he had been refused, and the most terrible rumour of all began to circulate. The Queen and Dudley intended Amy Dudley's death. Death by poison. Death by assassination. The foreign ambassadors' reports were full of it; the atmosphere surrounding the Court sizzled like a lighted fuse, inexorably burning towards the explosion of scandal which would blast Elizabeth off her throne. Inwardly Cecil raged at his idol for so soon showing feet of more than mortal clay. He had imagined her to be above the weaknesses of women, proof against their fleshy temptations and their emotional instability. He saw her in the Council Chamber, clever, dispassionate, far seeing, and could not believe that she was about to murder a simple country gentlewoman in order to take a self-seeking pimp into her bed and make him King of England.