His Dark Lady (50 page)

He stared, seeing the flush in her cheeks. ‘So you admit it? You have slept with this boy? This apprentice?’

Shifting on the trunk to look at him, Anne said nothing, but gripped the sides of the fallen tree with her own gloved hands as though afraid she might fall. She was breathing rapidly, her eyes fixed on his face, her mouth working silently.

Such small, delicate hands, he thought, noticing the uneven stitching on the white kidskin gloves. It was not his father’s tidy work, he realized, nor his mother’s either, who often helped with the sewing in the evenings.

‘Did he make those for you?’

She flushed then, and he knew it for a sign of her shame and guilt. ‘They were a parting gift from Edward, yes.’

‘Why?’ he asked simply. ‘Why betray me?’

‘I have already told you,’ she said, and he wondered at the sudden vehemence in her voice, as though Anne blamed him for her
infidelity
. ‘I needed to feel alive again, not shut up in that house day after day like an old widow. Edward was always there … smiling at me,
listening
to me. I knew what he wanted, of course, and I never meant to let him have it, I swear on my life. It was just flattering to know that a man could still want me like that. And you were so far away, sometimes I felt like I’d dreamt you.’

‘Did you dream our children, too?’

She looked at him, raising her chin. ‘What will you do to me now that you know? You can’t throw me out. It would kill your father if my shame was made public. That’s why he sent Edward away, to stop the gossips talking about us in the marketplace.’

‘I imagine they’ll talk anyway,’ he commented, knowing what Stratford was like when a salacious story went round about one of its residents.

She hesitated, then laid her hand on his. ‘Not if we show them we are still together.’

Will looked down at her gloved hand, the soft white kidskin against his own coarser cowhide.

‘I can understand why Edward Bowden fell in love with you and why my father sent him away,’ he remarked. ‘I was only a little older than him when we were first courting, do you remember? I was so insanely in love back then. You were everything to me, Anne. When I started touring with the companies, I would think of you every night and couldn’t wait to come home to see you again, to lie against you at night. You were my rock that first year in London. I was so hotheaded too, I would have given my life to defend your honour if any man had dared to cast a slur on it.’ He laughed. ‘Me, quiet bookish Will!’

Anne bent her head. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you.’

‘Didn’t you?’

She looked up then, and bit her lip. ‘Maybe a little,’ she admitted. ‘But I didn’t mean to destroy our marriage. It was done before I knew it. One minute I was telling him of how lonely I felt without you, and the next he was kissing me.’

Will pulled his hand free from hers. ‘I don’t want to hear about it,’ he said, as evenly as he could.

The stab of jealousy had returned, thrusting deep into his gut with every word she spoke, and Will feared where that anger might lead.
Yet
his heart felt empty, his senses too bewildered to act. Perhaps this was how it always felt to fall out of love with one’s wife.

‘It’s enough to know that it happened,’ he continued, ‘and will never happen again. You understand me? Never again, Anne, or I swear I’ll kill both of you.’

Anne wiped away the last of her tears, then sat up, rigid now and straightbacked. She stared at the swollen river, where a family of swans were drifting past in their severe white plumage. The swans looked beautiful and ethereal, like ghosts on the water, though Will knew from experience that they were violent, unpredictable birds if approached too closely.

‘I cannot promise you that, Will,’ she told him. ‘Edward has left Stratford though, and sworn to your father that he will never come back, so you’re safe enough.’ Her smile was cold. ‘I know my place. Your parents’ house is my prison, and your children my jailors. If you will not leave London and come back home to Stratford, then I must do my duty and live out my days as a player’s widow.’

He stood and waited while she composed herself, then they began to walk back along the river.

‘The twins,’ he asked, ‘are they mine or his?’

Anne seemed shocked by the directness of his question. ‘Yours, of course,’ she managed, but he sensed a moment’s hesitancy beneath her answer and was sickened by it.

Where the channel narrowed at the next bend in the river, the family of swans came alongside them. Their long white necks craned in and out of the weed-infested river, their webbed feet paddling swiftly but with apparent effortlessness. One of the larger swans surfaced with a trail of slimy weed caught in his beak, and Will guessed he had been fishing. The younger ones skirted close to the bank, smaller-chested and grey-feathered, curious to see who these visitors were, staring up at Will and Anne before swimming back to their parents again.

‘There are hundreds of white swans on the Thames, most of them clustered around the arches of London Bridge all summer,’ Will remarked, stopping to watch as the swans lost interest and swam slowly back downstream. ‘No one dares hunt them, for they belong to the Queen. Each year dozens are caught and plucked to fill all the Queen’s feather mattresses and pillows.’

‘What a thing it must be,’ Anne murmured at his side, ‘to wake up every morning in a soft feather bed, and know you are a queen.’

Three

The Earl of Southhampton’s residence, London, October 1586

THE RIVERSIDE WALK
of the old palace was lit by flaming torches, their thickly smoking lights reflected on the dark swell of the Thames just beyond the wall.

Elizabeth walked to the far end, gazing across to the busy south bank of the Thames, where ferry boats and small craft illuminated by single torches bobbed at anchor on the incoming tide, waiting for fares back to the city after the pleasure houses closed for the night. The gates into the city from London Bridge were locked at dusk, so a boat would be the only way for roving gentlemen to return to their wives. Elizabeth grimaced. She did not know precisely what happened in such places, but had been told that many of her own courtiers frequented the newly established ‘houses of Venus’ across the river. There seemed little anyone could do to discourage this practice, for the city fathers had no jurisdiction over the south bank, and the private landowners there appeared to be on friendly terms with certain members of the Privy Council.

Staring out over the water, Elizabeth raised a pomander which hung about her neck to her nose, attempting to dispel the greasy stench of the river. She ought to go back inside, she thought, knowing that the nobles would be wondering why she had fled the room. But the breeze here was refreshing after the stuffy interior of the old
palace,
and it was a relief to be alone with her thoughts after the usual tiresome conversations about how the conflict in the Low Countries was going. It seemed to be the court’s only topic of conversation these days, with two questions paramount in everyone’s mind: how the struggle against the Spanish was going – badly, though no one had yet dared venture such a perilous opinion to her face – and when it would end. Never, at this rate.

‘Are you cold, Your Majesty?’ Cecil, Lord Burghley came to her side, interrupting her thoughts. ‘Perhaps you would like me to escort you back to the banqueting hall?’

Elizabeth glanced at her treasurer impatiently, then realized she was indeed shivering in the chill October air. Besides, Lord Burghley was right to be concerned. Now more than ever, she should be making an effort to seem like a strong queen, able to command respect from her troops and her people. She abhorred weakness of any kind, and this desire to escape her duties was a weakness she would not tolerate.

‘Yes, very well,’ Elizabeth agreed, and allowed him to lead her back inside. ‘You must write and thank young Henry on my behalf for his hospitality tonight. Your ward is still at Cambridge?’

‘St John’s College,’ Lord Burghley agreed.

‘Let us hope he is not tempted to fall into Roman ways like his late father. Rarely have I known a more stubborn and unruly earl.’ She brooded a moment on past disloyalties. ‘Henry must be presented at court after he has finished his studies, Cecil, and nurtured in the Protestant faith. Too many of our noblemen have been lost to that old cause.’

‘I will see to it, Your Majesty.’

The old palace had belonged to one of her father’s bishops before she was born, but was now the property of the wealthy young Earl of Southhampton. Poor boy! His father, the second Earl of Southhampton, had been accused and imprisoned for various acts of treachery over the years, and once even suspected of harbouring that tiresome priest Edmund Campion. A careful man though, he had been hard to convict, and she did not want his son Henry to follow the same path into ruin. At least under Lord Burghley’s guardianship that now seemed unlikely.

While the boy was at Cambridge, she was often invited to dine at
his
charming residency on the Thames, its renovations currently being overseen by Cecil. New white stucco covered the cracked red brick outside, making the vast, warren-like building feel less dark and oppressive as winter approached. Yet it seemed nothing could be done about the ancient fireplace in the Great Hall, which had smoked relentlessly throughout tonight’s banquet. Indeed, the hall had become so thick with smoke, Elizabeth had been forced to rise from her seat soon after the seventh course had been served, sweeping out on to the paved riverside walk to escape it.

Now she seated herself at the head of the table and waved the nobles to sit again, for they had stood and bowed as she re-entered the room. The air was clearer, and the minstrels were playing in the gallery above the banqueting table. She looked down at the creamy, frothing liquid in the cup that had been placed before her by the food taster, his solemn bow indicating that it was safe for her to eat.

‘What is this?’

‘Your Majesty,’ Helena murmured, seated just down from her on the left, ‘it is a lemon syllabub. A little tart on the tongue, but very refreshing.’

‘Well, we must enjoy the lemons while we have them,’ Elizabeth told her, lifting the cup and sniffing avidly. The sharp scent of citrus filled her senses, reminding her at once of sunshine and the pleasure of warm summer evenings spent in her palace gardens. ‘Winter is on its way. There is a distinct chill to the air tonight.’

There was a noise at the door. One of the nobles at the far end rose from the table and dealt with it. He came back after a moment, and bent to whisper in Lord Burghley’s ear. Elizabeth felt herself shivering again, despite the warmth of the vast log fire that illuminated the banqueting table and cast shadows in every corner.

Lord Burghley came to her side. ‘Your Majesty,’ he said gravely, ‘there is a messenger at the door. He went to Whitehall first, then came here in search of you. He bears a letter from Lord Leicester. An urgent letter, Your Majesty.’

‘A letter that could not wait until the morning?’ she demanded, then saw the stricken grief in his face. ‘What is it, Cecil? For heaven’s sake, do not keep it from me. What is the news?’

‘It might be better, Your Majesty, if we were to go aside with this
messenger,’
Lord Burghley murmured, and stood to pull back her chair so she could rise. ‘And perhaps take one or two of your ladies with you?’

Her heart contracted with fear. Clearly some terrible news had been received, so appalling that Lord Burghley dared not speak of it before the other nobles. Her mind ran feverishly ahead as she left the hall, clicking her fingers at Helena to take up her train and follow her outside. Elizabeth could see the messenger now, waiting in the corridor. Even in the darkness, his face seemed hollow with grief and pain.

Was Robert wounded? So badly perhaps that he had written to take his final leave of her … ?

Lord Burghley found a small candlelit library where she could receive the messenger without fear of being overheard. He ushered them all inside, closed the door, and urged the exhausted messenger to hand over the letter.

‘Your Majesty,’ the man breathed, sinking to his knees before her and dragging a rolled-up parchment from his dispatch bag. There was dried blood on his face, and his clothes were spattered with mud. ‘This missive was written by Lord Leicester himself. He bade me hand it to no one but the Queen.’

‘You have come straight from the battlefield?’ she asked, taking the letter with unsteady hands.

‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

‘How goes it?’

Warily, the messenger looked from her to Lord Burghley, then back again. He licked his lips. ‘Not well when I left, Your Majesty.’

‘Take some wine before you go,’ she instructed him, glad to hear how calm her voice sounded. ‘And tell the steward to serve you a good supper at the Queen’s command. Whatever costs you have incurred, they will be reimbursed.’

‘Thank you, Your Majesty.’

She handed the parchment silently to Lord Burghley, not trusting herself to read Robert’s letter without breaking down. He must have already ascertained the general gist of its contents before it was delivered to her, for Lord Burghley showed no surprise as he unrolled it and read through it by candlelight.