The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn Read online

  “I am speechless, Elizabeth.” He whispered these words in the fragile shell of her ear, for such public familiarity with the Queen was forbidden. “I envy the French ambassadors who will monopolize your time tonight.”

  “Do not suppose I’ll have no time for you, Robin,” she said, admiring his form in the peacock blue brocaded doublet. “I expect you to partner me in the first galliard of the evening.”

  “Your wish is my greatest pleasure,” he replied and, placing her hand on his arm, escorted her toward the chamber where the French were gathered.

  Whitehall had quickly become Elizabeth’s favorite London palace, its huge sprawling wings spreading over more than twenty riverside acres. Built over several centuries, it was arbitrary in design, and many portions were antiquated, even falling into disrepair. But Elizabeth loved the stately halls hung with their splendid decorations, and delighted to see the great house teeming with her courtiers and ladies in their finest fancy for the evening’s entertainment, all bowing and curtsying low as she passed on her handsome escort’s arm. It was excellent to be the queen of England. Right and well deserved. I have at this moment, she thought to herself, not a care in the wide world.

  “It makes them cringe when they bow to you that they seem to be bowing to me as well,” said Dudley, suppressing a smile.

  “You’re right, Robin. I’d wager you’re the most despised man at the English court.”

  He chuckled. “No doubt they’ll find even more to complain about after this week.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because I’ve outdone myself in grandiosity with the preparations. Lavish and magnificent revelries in every respect. Food, decoration, music, masquing. Seeing it, you’ll find it hard to remember you’re nearly bankrupt,” he said with a sly grin.

  “Robin!”

  “You agree the show for the French is most important,” he said quickly to divert the Queen’s sudden anger. “And it cost much less than it actually appears. For example, all the flowers were brought from your castle at Richmond, and the game birds —”

  “All right, enough!” They’d stopped at the great carved doors of the Privy Chamber attended by what seemed like a small regiment of French and English soldiers. “I need a moment to compose myself.”

  “You will dazzle them, Elizabeth. You’re like a sun that breaks through a gloomy English afternoon.”

  Elizabeth inhaled deeply as though to fill herself with what courage she yet lacked.

  “Em ready,” she said finally, and Dudley motioned for the sentries to open the tall Privy Chamber doors. He watched as she swept majestically into the presence of the French ambassadors and their exquisite ladies, grand in their brilliant silks and broad-beamed farthingale hoop skirts, and accepted one dignitary on either arm —• Monsieur de Mont Morenci and Monsieur de Vielleville. There under Holbein’s masterpiece, a wall painting of the entire Tudor family, did Elizabeth begin to weave her spell around them all. She had cleverly positioned herself, Dudley noticed, under the huge and unnervingly lifelike portrait of the father she so perfectly resembled, as though to remind them all of her unquestionable royal lineage. Elizabeth was a magnificent woman and queen, thought Robert Dudley as he strode away to attend to the evening’s entertainment. He would do everything in his power to secure for himself not only her love but the elusive Crown Matrimonial.

  “I was a prisoner in the Tower of London for two months whilst I was princess, along with several noblemen who were charged with plotting my sister’s overthrow on my behalf,” said Elizabeth to de Mont Morenci and de Vielleville as they strolled the torchlit Privy Garden just after dusk. “I would surely have been put to death by her had it not been for the loyalty of my subjects.”

  They approached a large stone sundial set within an intricate fountain surrounded by thirty-four columns topped with gilded beasts carrying the Tudor coat of arms. Surely the garden’s grandeur paled in comparison to many of the French palace gardens, but Elizabeth was determined to impress them into believing she was, even in her youth and femininity, as mighty a monarch as her great swaggering father had been.

  “It tells time in thirty different ways,” she bragged of the sundial.

  “Almost as many ways as there are opinions concerning the path to peace between our countries,” added de Vielleville with a cynical expression.

  “Ah,” sighed Elizabeth thoughtfully. “Quo homines, tot senten-tiae.”

  “Indeed, Your Majesty,” said Mont Morenci. “There are as many opinions as there are men … and women, so it seems,” he said with a respectful nod.

  The sound of a dozen trumpets signaled that supper was served.

  “Shall we, gentlemen?”

  “Tout a vous,” spoke the ambassadors in unplanned unison. They all laughed merrily at the good humor they shared in that perfect moment, and as if on cue a rainbow of colored water leapt from the many fountain spouts high over their heads.

  Elizabeth led the Frenchmen toward a door made entirely of red-and-white Tudor roses and their leaves. Pushing it open they found themselves in the piazza under the vast windows of Whitehall’s Long Gallery. Elizabeth gasped with delight.

  The place had been transformed into an enchanted summer glade. Illuminated by torchlight and awash with the gentlest music of lute and virginal, its bower walls were draped with the thickest of silver and gold brocade. But the tapestry for all its richness was rendered nearly invisible by the riot of fresh flowers that covered the walls, ceiling, and ground of the pavilion. Wreaths and garlands of violets, wallflowers, primroses, kingcups, pinks, cowslips, and daffodils hung in vast variety and profusion, twisted and looped, dangled in tendrils and sprouted from supporting beams and arches. Behind the dais was a great mural portraying the Queen on a white stallion, conceived all in tiny tea roses. As Elizabeth entered the bower her slippers sank into a carpet of southernwood leaves, lavender, hyssop, and wild meadowsweet. The mingled fragrances were unimaginably delicious and the Queen, who normally abhorred strong odors, could not breathe deeply enough.

  She paused, the French ambassadors on either arm, and together they watched as a sweet and impromptu farce unfolded before them. Each of the French ladies seated at the table took up the space of three people, so far to the sides did their farthingales extend. So the displaced English ladies in a mood of good fun had seated themselves upon cushions among the rushes on the ground where, comfortably ensconced, they were waited upon by the English gentlemen with much laughter and amusement.

  There at the far end of the pavilion Elizabeth spotted Robin Dudley, the master showman surveying his fantastical creation. He was her man, she thought, body and soul. Her soldier. Her loyal servant. Her master. This last sent a shiver and a strawberry flush to the Queen’s pale cheeks. Suddenly he turned and saw her. Their eyes across the busding pavilion joined and locked together as a great red hawk and its airborne prey will do in the moment before the death strike. For the love that flew so swiftly from Elizabeth to Robin Dudley and back to her again was as hot and fast and strong as death on the wing.

  All at once the Queen was converged upon by a dozen courtiers and ladies come to accompany her to the place of honor under a bower of hanging lilacs almost the color of Elizabeth’s gown, and the marvelous sight of her beloved was obscured. No matter, thought Elizabeth, taking her seat flanked by the French ambassadors, this night is young and I shall yet have my way with it.

  The wooden door swung open to reveal the warm firelit recesses of Dudley’s private rooms. Elizabeth, in a hooded velvet cloak, stood across the threshold from Robin, his peacock blue doublet limp with dampness from the night of wild dancing, a warm and familiar smile on his handsome face. All the misapprehensions she’d felt about the brazen act of coming to his apartments melted clean away.

  “Come in quickly,” he whispered, and guided her inside. Gendy he pulled her hood away and saw that Elizabeth was gazing around his rooms with a look akin to wonder.

  “Is it the modesty of
my apartments that gives you so much surprise, or the very fact that you’ve come to them?”

  “That I’ve come to them,” she said and smiled wickedly.

  “I think we caused a great scandal already this evening, you and I,” he said as he removed her cloak. “It was a state occasion. You should have danced with someone besides myself.”

  “I did! I danced with the ambassadors. One time apiece. And I danced with Lord Cecil.”

  “Elizabeth!”

  “Well, I don’t care. You’re the best dancer and I am the Queen. I dance with who pleases me. And besides, it’s only the English who took any notice,” said Elizabeth, moving into the room. “The French are not so easily scandalized. Did you not see the way Madame de Vielleville flirted with young Lord North?”

  Dudley laughed, remembering. “He was tripping over himself, he was so besotted.”

  “She is very beautiful.”

  “She is nothing next to you.” His eyes softened then and his look upon her lost its sharpness. She saw him raise his hand to her, palm outward, and all at once felt her heart thump back in her chest. To another the palm placed just so was merely a peaceful salute. But to Elizabeth it was an echo from the past, a five-fingered token of childish love, half of a broken circle only she could mend.

  Gazing across time she found herself in the greenwood behind Hatfield Hall. There were she and Robin then no more than nine years old, attired for the outdoors, tousled and flushed with exertion. Two brown geldings beneath a canopy of oak nibbled contentedly at the grass and damp moss under their hooves. Dudley was the smaller of the two children, for Elizabeth had always been a tall girl. But the boy’s body was solid and strong and moved with uncommon grace. When they rode out from Hatfield as they often did when their lessons were done, racing and jumping rock walls and hedges, Robin spurred his mount with a fierce physical insistence that impelled the beast to great feats of strength and speed. Elizabeth somehow gained the same loyal performance from her steed through sheer force of love and will.

  The children, smiling impishly, faced each other with their palms — his left, her right — pressed together. Robin spoke first. “Together we are a steeple.”

  “Together we are a clam” said Elizabeth and giggled. Her favorite quality in her favorite playmate was that Robin Dudley made her laugh and inspired her to bouts of silliness, perhaps the only levity the young princess was permitted in an otherwise tightly laced royal life. All at once Elizabeth noticed that her friend’s gaze had changed. Where it had been playful it was now earnest. Where his eyes had darted here and there they were now fixed, seeming to study her in the way that together they would sometimes study the inside of a flower. And when he spoke, his voice too had changed.

  “Together,” said Robin quietly, “we are a prayer.”

  The sensation that passed through Elizabeth’s soul was as subde as the touch of a butterfly lighting on the back of her hand. And yet her child’s heart was touched and lifted beyond measure. Without words to express her tenderness she simply pressed harder with her hand on his. He pressed back and the moment was magic. Elizabeth was suddenly aware of tiny flecks of dust gendy suspended and dancing in the warm air, lit by the dappled sun glinting through the oak branches. She was aware of birdsong so clear and lovely she thought she might cry from the sound of it. And of Robin Dudley whose moist warmth through the blue doublet radiated out to enfold her like two arms. He, too, was transfixed by the strange and wonderful moment.

  Then, since they were neither of them able to break from it, nature prevailed and did it for them. A push of wind in the branches above sent a rain of dead, prickly-tipped oak leaves down upon their heads. Surprised, the children laughed and their hands separated. The spell was broken.

  “What shall we play at?” demanded Elizabeth.

  “Eve brought dice.”

  “I don’t feel like dice.”

  “Shall we catch a frog and examine it?” he offered, half expecting Elizabeth’s dramatic sigh of refusal. “All right then, we shall play Queen and Courtier.” ‘

  “Robin!” Elizabeth squealed.

  “What? You like the game. Indeed you play it very well.”

  “I do like it,” admitted Elizabeth. “But we should not play at it.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because … it’s treasonous.”

  “Only because it’s you playing it,” he responded mildly.

  “Well then …”

  Robin grabbed a curl that had escaped from beneath Elizabeth’s cap and dandled it teasingly. “You don’t like the game because you wish to be queen and fear you never will be.”

  Elizabeth felt her pale face flush hot and red. “I don’t want to be queen! My brother is the heir and I love Edward!”

  “I’m sony, I meant no harm, Elizabeth. And it’s no harm to pretend, really it isn’t.” With that Robin, one foot slighdy in front of the other, doubled over in the most extreme bow he could achieve, arms swept out from his sides like the wings of a hawk. As he rose he brought them together, fluttering and weaving his hands in a hilariously exaggerated gesture of obeisance which wrenched an unexpected laugh from Elizabeth’s throat.

  “Your Maaaaaaajesty,” he intoned in the most lugubrious voice the nine-year-old could muster.

  Elizabeth took up the game. “Sir Dinglebelly,” she replied with excessive seriousness.

  Robin lifted one eyebrow. “Have you knighted me, then?”

  “Oh yes, don’t you remember the feast I held in your honor? Your whole family were there, all seated above the salt. Your father was very proud, and your brothers were very jealous.”

  “Of course, how could I forget such a magnificent celebration? And didn’t you grant me six great houses, twenty thousand head of sheep, and a cupboard full of gold plate?”

  “Have you forgot the horses?”

  “No, Your Majesty! A stable full of them. You have been most generous with me.”

  “Indeed I have. And what, pray, have you brought me, Sir Robert?” Elizabeth, fully engaged now, turned and swept imperiously away from her friend. “Your queen, aside from flattery, demands gifts, you know. Rich treasures. Fortunes. Rare books. Jewels. Exotic animals.”

  “Like the green talking parrot I gifted you last week.”

  “He sings my praises very cleverly,” said Elizabeth, spinning the story into an intricate tapestry, pacing under the arch of branches as though it were a stately presence chamber. “God bless Queen Bess,” squawked the girl in the imaginary parrot’s voice. “You are more fair than the loveliest Tudor rose and smell more sweet, more sweet, more sweet, aarrgh, aarrrgh!” Then she was in her own voice again. “But that was last week. Where is this week’s offering?” she demanded petulandy.

  The little boy grabbed Elizabeth’s hand and uncurled her fingers. In her palm he laid an object. It was a stone, not unusual in its smooth blackness, but a small miracle of shape. Though obviously natural and clearly uncarved, it was as perfect a heart as nature could have designed. All pretense of the game fell away as Elizabeth contemplated the perfection of the object and the significance of the gift. For the second time that afternoon she was struck dumb.

  Robin Dudley, too, had abandoned the game of Queen and Courtier. “Do you like it?” he demanded excitedly. “Yes, of course I do. Where did you get it?” “That’s my secret.”

  “Come, tell me! It’s amazing. I must know, Robin.” “I won’t tell you.” His chin hardened in determination. “You must. Your queen commands it,” announced Elizabeth haughtily.

  Robin thought for a moment before jumping back into the fantasy. “I am at your service, Majesty. Your wish is my command. But first, may I not receive a kiss in return for my gift?”

  “No you may not!” shouted Elizabeth in mock outrage.

  Suddenly in a grandly theatrical gesture Robin threw himself prostrate on the ground and began kissing the velvet hem of Elizabeth’s gown. “Oh Majesty, Majesty, let me kiss your hem, your feet, your pettic
oat, your ankles!”

  Elizabeth giggled, and as Robin pulled himself up her skirt to his knees spouting courtly gibberish and various parts of her anatomy and clothing that he might kiss, Elizabeth roared with uncontrollable laughter till tears streamed down her face and they were bent over clutching their bellies and gasping for air.

  “Come, let’s ride,” said Robin when he could finally catch his breath.

  “Where shall we ride?” Elizabeth asked, praying for an answer that would crown this timeless moment as it deserved to be done.

  The boy looked far back into her liquid amber eyes and saw the challenge that this pale golden girl laid before him. And because he knew her so well and loved her even then, he replied in the voice of an adventurer, a pirate, a king.

  “To the future,” he cried. “Let us ride to the future!”

  Indeed they had, Elizabeth thought, smiling as her mind, like some great invisible bird, soared forward again across time, depositing her in Robin’s firelit rooms. Here before her was the same handsome boy, a blue doublet, his hand up, palm facing her.

  “Together we are a prayer,” he whispered, matching her smile with his own. Slowly she joined her hand to his, pressing palm to palm, fingertips to fingertips. Yes, thought Elizabeth, he was the same boy, the one who could endlessly amuse her, reduce her to helpless laughter. The same loyal and trustworthy lad who, before there’d been any hope of her taking the throne, had sold off parcels of his own land to pay her debts. The brave man who had dared to rebel against her sister Mary, and stood as a rock during their dark days as prisoners in the Tower. And, mused Elizabeth, he was the only one who had ever learned his way through the twisted maze to her heart.

  Now her eyes fell on a group of miniatures displayed on a table and she moved closer to see them.