The Queen's Bastard Page 2

  Taking her hand, he headed into the darkness, and not ten feet beyond found another door.

  “Open it,” Elizabeth commanded.

  Robin Dudley stood staring in at his new rooms. Not overlarge, they were nonetheless sumptuously appointed with a great canopied bed fit for a king, a fine silk-threaded tapestry of mythical beasts on one wall, and on another his family’s coat of arms — the red and blue field upon which rose the bear and ragged staff. A fire blazed welcomingly in the hearth.

  He was overcome and, for once, speechless. This gesture from the Queen — adjoining apartments — was certain to infuriate her councilors and his enemies, further scandalize gossipmongers … and solidify his position as Elizabeth’s favorite. Was she not but a moment ago venting her fury at him and bemoaning her tainted reputation in the European courts? What could she be thinking of? But of course, thought Dudley, changeability was Elizabeth’s chiefest foible … or virtue, depending upon one’s perspective. It drove her advisors wild and kept her friends and playmates breathlessly entertained.

  “Elizabeth, this is impossible!” he cried with obvious delight. He turned to find Elizabeth smiling mischievously at him.

  “I am the Queen, and I do as I please,” she said resolutely, then thought to herself, I may choose never to marry, but I shall not be without pleasure in my life.

  At the same instant each took a step toward the other, and then in a moment they were in each other’s arms. In quiet ecstasy Dudley breathed in Elizabeth’s natural perfume, delicate and powdery like the rarest of white birds, and she his familiar masculine scent tinged with a horsey musk. Then in Robin Dudley’s kingly bed, he made long-awaited and passionate love to the Queen of England.

  Three

  On this eve of the New Year of 1561, thought Lady Mary Sidney as she put the finishing touches to the Queen’s toilette, Her Majesty could only be compared to a precious gem — a fine cut diamond, brilliant and lustrous, reflecting off her many facets all the light round about her, but burning with a fire from within as well.

  Lady Mary, herself a beautiful woman with features as fair and delicate as porcelain, adored her mistress. Mary’s special fondness, she had to admit, stemmed in good measure from the love Elizabeth bore her elder brother, Robin Dudley. She and the Queen shared a common bond in Robert and enjoyed lavishing upon him all manner of affection.

  Mary thought, too, that she liked the Queen well in her own right. ’Twas a joy to intimately attend such a magnificent woman, so lovely to look at, the fine white skin, pleasing aquiline features, and that unruly sunburst of hair. Elizabeth, despite her tempers and exasperatingly capricious moods, was bursting with vitality, exhilarating to be around, and very kind to her friends.

  “All right, Mary, let me have a look at myself,” said Elizabeth finally. Mary Sidney stepped aside and the Queen swept past into her mirrored bathing chamber. She enjoyed this ritual — clothing herself in the most opulent silks and velvets, brocades and furs, with glittering jewels, painted fans, and elegant slippers, then standing in the center of the floor-to-ceiling mirrors to admire the exquisite sight from every direction.

  Tonight, thought Mary as she watched Elizabeth examining herself, the Queen must realize that she had quite outdone herself in brilliance.

  “I’m very vain, am I not, Mary?” said Elizabeth, coyly freeing a fraction more of her small, pale breasts from the top of her satin bodice.

  “You are indeed, Your Majesty. But you deserve to be vain, for you are very, very beautiful.”

  Elizabeth smiled broadly, her small teeth gleaming in the candlelight like pearls. She did so love to be admired. “Will our Robin think so?”

  “He will be overcome,” said Mary with grave sincerity.

  Elizabeth turned and grasped her lady’s hands. “Isn’t it wonderful having him home, Mary? The Court felt dead to me, empty without him. I haven’t been myself. I feel that I can somehow breathe easier knowing he is here.”

  “I too, Madame,” said Mary, warmed by the Queen’s words. “I too.”

  “Well, let me look at you,” said Elizabeth, turning her gaze on Mary. “You’re looking lovely tonight. Your husband should find you very fetching. But I think” — Elizabeth strode back into her bedchamber, where several other ladies were putting away the gowns and jewelry she had chosen not to wear — “you are missing something. Come here, Mary.”

  Mary Sidney followed Elizabeth to a small chest filled with glittering ear bobs and watched as the Queen picked out a pair of sapphire teardrops mounted in gold filigree. Elizabeth held them up against Mary’s blue velvet bodice.

  “A good match. Here, put them on.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” murmured Lady Mary, deeply touched. She was aware of all the other ladies’ eyes upon her, the waves of petty jealousy usually reserved for her brother now directed at herself. Mary straightened her back, and as she fastened on the sapphire ear bobs she suddenly understood how Robin was able to bear the hatred directed against him: Elizabeth’s love, like a great cleansing wave, swept away all that was foul and malicious, leaving nothing but the undivided devotion of those who truly cared about her. Mary Sidney turned and smiled graciously at the gaggle of scowling ladies, then followed Elizabeth out her bedchamber door.

  A festive group was now assembled in the Presence Chamber — the Queen’s inner circle. When Elizabeth swept in, a stunned silence fell over the guests. She looked this night, as Mary Sidney had observed, radiant, indeed almost otherworldly. The men bowed, the women curtsied, and Elizabeth, releasing them from the initial moment of formality, began moving amongst them. The Queen was overflowing with good humor, genuinely happy to see these loyal friends and relatives. She moved first to her devoted secretary, William Cecil, who knelt and kissed her hand.

  “I’m glad to see you’ve left your sober faces at home tonight, Sir William. We are here for a celebration, are we not?”

  “Indeed, Madame. We have much to celebrate in this New Year. A hard won peace with France, a reformed currency, religious settlement. No mean feats for any monarch.”

  “And especially a woman, he did not add,” teased Elizabeth, dandling Cecil’s collar playfully.

  She next turned to Mary’s husband, Sir Henry Sidney, a man of soft voice and soft-edged features that belied a sharp mind and a firm, upstanding character. He doted on his beautiful wife, and she on him. Elizabeth was very fond of the pair and now accepted Henry’s obeisance with a compliment to Mary for her especial tenderness in caring for the Queen’s person.

  With a gentle word to Kat and John Ashley, her guardians since early childhood, Elizabeth moved on to a group whom she recognized as her Boleyn relations, all newly raised to positions of honor in the Court since her reading of her mother’s secret diary. The sudden and unexpected elevations of Lord Howard of Effingham, Francis Knollys, and young Lord Hunsdon had proven a pleasant shock to them. Until her accession, Elizabeth had not spoken her mother’s name for more than twenty years. She had always accepted Queen Anne’s appalling official reputation as traitor and adulteress, and had distanced herself from the shame of her ignominious death. The Queen’s maternal relatives, who for the safety of their families had buried their connection and laid a cloak of silence over Anne’s memory, were now lifted by Elizabeth’s loving hand to high office. This evening their greetings to her were effusive and most sincere.

  Finally Elizabeth approached her lover, who stood with his only living brother, Ambrose, a slighter version of Robert Dudley but every bit as handsome and graceful, and sharing in his comely reserve. In unison the brothers executed their lowest and most theatrical courtiers’ bows, which wrenched a laugh from the Queen’s throat.

  “My lords Fric and Frac. Have you a little jig to go with your performance?”

  “For Your Gracious Majesty we will invent one,” replied Ambrose Dudley.

  Elizabeth caught and held Robin’s eye.

  “What is your secret, Majesty?” he asked. “Each time I think you
could never appear more beautiful, you outdo yourself once again.”

  “If I told you, Robin, it would no longer be my secret. Therefore,” she said, caressing his tanned cheek with her long white fingers, “I shall remain an enigma.”

  With a gallant gesture Robin Dudley offered his arm to the Queen, and together they led her nearest and dearest into the eve of the New Year.

  The congregation in the Great Hall was gay and glittering, buzzing in anticipation of the Queen’s coming. Her entourage this night would include the infamous Dudley, a man more hated than loved, more feared than respected. The Tudor court was always a place of divers gossip and scandal, but this evening all the talk boiled round Robin and Elizabeth … and Amy Dudley’s death.

  Near the specially erected stage where a play would soon be performed stood a group of ladies and gentlemen, their heads tilted together, keeping their voices discreet.

  “They say Lady Dudley drove every servant from the house to go to the fair, leaving her all alone,” said Lady Norbert. “A strange thing for a woman so ill to do.”

  “I’m told she had a strange mind,” added Lord Mayhew. “’Tis very suspicious to me. I say it was suicide.”

  “Aye, her closest servant, Pinto she is called, claimed the lady prayed daily on her knees to God to deliver her from desperation,” offered Mrs. Fortescue, fanning herself furiously as though the gossip were making her perspire.

  “There was much to be desperate about,” said Lady Norbert, as cool as Mrs. Fortescue was overheated. “The cancer in her breast. Her husband waiting for her to die.”

  “I think he did not wait for her to die,” announced Doctor Fortescue, a portly, ruddy-faced gentleman. “Dudley is a man too single-mindedly bent upon marrying the Queen to have left it to chance.”

  “You give him too little credit, Fortescue,” insisted Mayhew. “Dudley is a clever man. Why would he risk such an accusation if his wife was bound to die sooner rather than later?”

  Lady Winter, whispering to make her opinion seem more important, interjected, “I’ve heard tell of a woman with that same malady whose neck had turned so brittle it snapped when she walked down a step. And Amy Dudley was found at the bottom of a long stair.”

  Across the Great Hall a rather more grave argument was in progress. These men of the Privy Council had all eyes fastened upon a tall, blond Swedish prince glittering in a gem-studded doublet of cloth of gold. He was surrounded by his own delegation as well as English courtiers currying favor.

  “Now that Dudley is back,” observed Lord Clinton, “Prince John will have no more luck gaining Elizabeth’s hand than his brother Eric had.”

  “Less,” said Lord Arundel morosely. “For now the Gypsy is free to marry, and ’tis said the Queen’s affection for him is intact.”

  “Well, she must marry and she must marry soon,” insisted Lord North. “She will certainly choose one of the Spanish archdukes.”

  With mention of the Spaniards, all eyes naturally sought Bishop de Quadra, the short, squat man robed in black and red, ambassador from the court of Philip II of Spain. He was listening with tightly knit brows to a conversation between two ambassadors from Brussels. The bishop was a good listener — some thought too good. It was well known that de Quadra was Philip’s spy, and wrote copious dispatches to the king daily, filled with official intelligence as well as backstairs gossip regarding the wholly unsavory heretic queen and her court.

  “She is stubborn,” pronounced Lord Clinton, resuming the Privy Councilors’ conversation. “The past two years have proven as much.”

  “Even she must realize the urgency of producing an heir,” reasoned North. “She claims to love England, but without a successor the threat of civil war, or worse, Spain and France fighting on English soil, hangs over all of our heads!”

  “She will try to marry Dudley,” growled Arundel, “and we know that Dudley will die trying to marry her.”

  Norfolk, ablaze with the highness of his lineage and title — England’s only living duke — spoke very quietly, and everyone leaned close to listen. “There is not a man in England who can suffer the idea of Robert Dudley as our king. I tell you, if he does not abandon his present pretensions, he may not die in his bed.”

  At that there was a flurry of murmuring and whispers, even some laughter.

  Lord Suffolk, himself a man of unquestionable lineage and no little importance, spoke with authority. “You all know I have no love for Robert Dudley. But I say we must let the Queen choose after her own affection. We know that children are more readily conceived within the midst of passion than without. And if what England so desperately needs is a child of the Queen’s body, does it not seem wise to let her take a man whose sight arouses her desire? That, I tell you, is the surest way to deliver us a blessed prince.”

  A fanfare of trumpets cut short the gossiping as the Queen and her intimates arrived in the Great Hall. Even those amongst them who had reason to grumble were overwhelmed by the radiant splendor of Elizabeth this night. Guests of a certain age could not help but compare the Queen’s presence and physicality to her father’s. Only the oldest of her Boleyn relatives did perceive any resemblance to her mother. Each and every one, nevertheless, found himself drawn into her gossamer web, spun of wit and grace and magnetic charm. The year 1561 had not yet been born, but its promise was as resplendent as the Queen of England herself.

  Four

  Robin Dudley, still clad in a fine lawn nightshirt, sat motionless as Tamworth snipped his master’s red-brown beard. The manservant had laid out in readiness across the bed Lord Dudley’s work garments — buff hose, leather vest and doublet rubbed soft with use, and thigh-high riding boots.

  ’Twas a perfect day, thought Dudley as he stared out the mullioned window at the crisp winter dawn, perfect to put his intrigue into play. Though remnants of ugly rumor about his involvement in Amy’s death persisted, the affair was well and truly over. Robin Dudley was a free man now, and higher in the Queen’s favor than any courtier had been before. His determination to marry her had never been so fierce nor so sharply refined. He was, self-admittedly, ambitious to a fault and would have been lying had he claimed he did not wish to be king of England. But, he asked himself, who better for the task? He was an Englishman of noble blood, had proven himself a brave and resourceful soldier during Queen Mary’s reign, and, even his detractors had to concede, was a brilliant administrator.

  More important, thought Robin as he stood and allowed Tamworth to pull the nightshirt off over his head, he loved the Queen truly, lusted for her even. The words of endearment that he whispered in moments of private passion — as well as his public protestations of devotion — were utterly sincere. Elizabeth moved him as no other woman had, her mighty intellect stirring him as greatly as her physical attraction. She was not a beauty in the traditional sense. She was too tall, too thin, too angular. But the fire in her spirit had become the fuel to his own flame, and he fully believed that Elizabeth Tudor was his great and fortunate destiny. All obstacles that had come before, all that would be thrown up before him, were meaningless, for he and his childhood friend were decidedly meant to be husband and wife.

  A sharp knock at his bedchamber door sent Tamworth scurrying to open it. Dudley’s brother-in-law Henry Sidney, attired for riding, brushed past the manservant with a minimal greeting. Sidney was all business this morning. Too overwrought to sit, he paced as he talked.

  “How do you think he will like it?” began Sidney nervously.

  “Bishop de Quadra? I think he will be intrigued. I stand well with the Spaniards. King Philip regards me with high esteem for my military service to him in the Neapolitan wars.”

  “But for Philip to throw the whole weight of his support behind your marriage to the Queen … ?”

  “His reward would be far greater than his expenditure of favor,” said Dudley, lifting one leg and then the other for Tamworth to pull the boots over each well-muscled calf. “After all, what Philip desires above all else is
an England under his control once more, a Catholic country as it was when he was married to Elizabeth’s sister.”

  Tamworth strapped on Dudley’s sword and dagger, making final adjustments to the Horsemaster’s attire. Outfitted thus, he was as virile and handsome as any man at Court … and he knew it.

  “See to my purple velvet costume for this evening, Tamworth. I’ll need fresh linen and new hose.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Come, Henry, I have business at the stables before de Quadra arrives for your ride.”

  As they strode down the palace corridors, they kept their voices discreetly low, their eyes ever alert for spies upon their conversation. There were men who would pay handsomely to be privy to the business of the Queen’s favorite.

  “Are you quite sure you have the Queen’s consent for this plan, Robin? I myself see no harm in Catholicism being restored, and papal authority renewed, but Elizabeth has struggled so fiercely to establish the New Religion in England. Would she now let Philip dictate policy on English soil, as your plan supposes, or put down Protestant heresy? It means her begging and groveling to Spain, all for the honor of marrying you.”

  “I know it sounds mad,” whispered Dudley. “But do you think the Queen has installed me in the apartments adjoining hers for no reason? She loves me truly, Henry.”

  “I do not doubt it.”

  “And she has told me countless times that she is the Queen and will do as she pleases. When she lies in my arms she swears over and over again that she will have no other man.”

  “And as we all know she must marry …” added Sidney.

  “She will marry me!” said Dudley with quiet conviction.

  They had arrived at a long low brick building that housed the royal stables. Equerries and stable boys snapped to attention at the Horsemaster’s approach, and as he passed, Dudley acknowledged each with a smile or a slight nod of the head.

  “But at the price of Spanish domination of England?” persisted Sidney. “I cannot help but think …”