Philippa Gregory's Tudor Court 6-Book Boxed Set (338 page)

“In your chamber,” he said tautly.

Her eyes widened at the sharpness of his tone but she took his arm and the two of them went through the doors into her privy chamber.

“Well!” one of her ladies-in-waiting remarked softly. “He is more like a husband every day. Soon he will be ordering us as he orders her.”

“Something’s happened,” guessed Laetitia.

“Nonsense,” said Mary Sidney. “It will be a new horse or something. He rode to Oxfordshire to look at a horse only yesterday.”

*  *  *

As soon as the door was shut behind them, Robert thrust his hand into his doublet and pulled out a letter. “I’ve just had this,” he said shortly. “It is from Cumnor Place where Amy has been staying with my friends. Amy, my wife, is dead.”

“Dead?” Elizabeth said, too loud. She clapped her hand over her mouth and looked at Robert. “How dead?”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t say,” he said. “It is from Mrs. Forster and the damn fool of a woman just says that she is sorry to inform me that Amy died today. The letter is dated Sunday. My servant is on his way to find out what has happened.”

“Dead?” she repeated.

“Yes,” he said. “And so I am free.”

She gave a little gasp and staggered. “Free. Of course you are.”

“God knows I would not have had her die,” he said hastily. “But her death sets us free, Elizabeth. We can declare our betrothal. I shall be king.”

“I’m speechless,” she said. She could hardly take her breath.

“I too,” he said. “Such a sudden change, and so unexpected.”

She shook her head. “It’s unbelievable. I knew she was in poor health . . .”

“I thought she was well enough,” he said. “She never complained of anything more than a little pain. I don’t know what it can be. Perhaps she fell from her horse?”

“We had better go out,” Elizabeth said. “Someone will bring the news to court. We had better not hear it together. Everyone will look at us and wonder what we are thinking.”

“Yes,” he said. “But I had to tell you at once.”

“Of course, I understand. But we had better go out now.”

Suddenly he snatched her to him and took a deep, hungry kiss. “Soon they will all know that you are my wife,” he promised her. “We will rule England together. I am free; our life together starts right now!”

“Yes,” she said, pulling away from him. “But we had better go out.”

Again he checked her at the door. “It is as if it were God’s will,” he said wonderingly. “That she should die and set me free at this very moment, when we are ready to marry, when we have the country at peace, when we have so much to do. ‘This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.’ ”

Elizabeth recognized the words she had said at her own accession to the throne. “You think that this death will make you king,” she said, testing him. “As Mary’s death made me queen.”

Robert nodded, his face bright and glad. “We shall be King and Queen of England together,” he said. “And we will make an England as glorious as Camelot.”

“Yes,” she said, her lips cold. “But we should go out now.”

*  *  *

In the presence chamber Elizabeth looked around for Cecil and when he came in, she beckoned him to her. Sir Robert was in a window embrasure talking casually to Sir Francis Knollys about trade with the Spanish Netherlands.

“Sir Robert has just told me that his wife is dead,” she said, half covering her mouth with her hand.

“Indeed,” Cecil said steadily, his face a mask to the watching courtiers.

“He says he does not know the cause.”

Cecil nodded.

“Cecil, what the devil is happening? I told the Spanish ambassador that she was ill, as you told me to do. But this is so sudden. Has he murdered her? He will claim me as his own and I shall not be able to say no.”

“I should wait and see if I were you,” Cecil said.

“But what shall I do?” she demanded urgently. “He says that he will be King of England.”

“Do nothing for the time being,” Cecil said. “Wait and see.”

Abruptly she turned into the bay of the window and dragged him in beside her. “You shall tell me more,” she demanded fiercely.

Cecil put his mouth to her ear and whispered quietly. Elizabeth kept her face turned away from the court to look out of the window. “Very well,” she said to Cecil, and turned back to the court.

“Now,” she announced. “I see Sir Nielson there. Good day, Sir Nielson. And how is business in Somerset?”

*  *  *

Laetitia Knollys stood before Sir William Cecil’s desk while the rest of the court was waiting to be called to dinner.

“Yes?”

“They are saying that Robert Dudley is going to murder his wife and that the queen knows all about it.”

“Are they? And why are they saying such a slanderous lie?”

“Is it because you started it?”

Sir William smiled at her and thought again what a thorough Boleyn girl she was: the quickness of the Boleyn wit and the enchanting Howard indiscretion.

“I?”

“Someone overheard you telling the Spanish ambassador that the queen would be ruined if she marries Dudley and you can’t stop her, she’s determined.” Laetitia ticked off the first point on her slim fingers.

“And?”

“Then the queen tells the Spanish ambassador, in my own hearing, that Amy Dudley is dead.”

“Does she?” Cecil looked surprised.

“She said ‘dead or nearly so,’ ” Laetitia quoted. “So everyone thinks that we are being prepared for the news of her death by some mystery illness, that when it comes they will announce their marriage and the widower Robert Dudley will be the next king.”

“And what does everyone think will happen then?” Cecil asked politely.

“Now that, no one dare say very loud, but some men would give you a wager that her uncle will come marching down from Newcastle at the head of the English army and kill him.”

“Really?”

“And others think there will be an uprising which the French would pay for to put Mary, Queen of Scots, on the throne.”

“Indeed.”

“And others think there would be an uprising which the Spanish would pay for, to put Katherine Grey on the throne, and keep Mary out.”

“These are very wild predictions,” Cecil complained. “But they seem to cover all possibilities. And what do you think, my lady?”

“I think that you will have a plan up your sleeve which allows for these dangers to the realm,” she said and gave him a roguish little smile.

“We should hope I do,” he said. “For these are very grave dangers.”

“D’you think he’s worth it?” Laetitia asked him suddenly. “She is risking her throne to be with him, and she is the most cold-hearted woman I know. Don’t you think he must be the most extraordinary lover for her to risk so much?”

“I don’t know,” Cecil said dampeningly. “Neither I nor any man in England seems to find him very irresistible. On the contrary.”

“Just us silly girls then.” She smiled.

*  *  *

Elizabeth feigned illness in the afternoon; she could not tolerate being in private with Robert, whose exultation was hard to conceal, and she was waiting all the time for a message from Cumnor Place which would bring the news of Amy’s death to court. She gave out that she would dine alone in her room and go early to bed. “You can sleep in my room, Kat,” she said. “I want your company.”

Kat Ashley looked at her mistress’s pallor and at the redness of the skin where she was picking at her nails. “What’s happened now?” she demanded.

“Nothing,” Elizabeth said abruptly. “Nothing. I just want to rest.”

But she could not rest. She was awake by dawn, seated at her desk with her Latin grammar before her, translating an essay on the vanity of fame. “What are you doing that for?” Kat asked sleepily, rising from her bed.

“To stop myself thinking of anything else,” Elizabeth said grimly.

“What is the matter?” asked Kat. “What has happened?”

“I can’t say,” Elizabeth replied. “It’s so bad that I can’t tell even you.”

She went to chapel in the morning and then back to her rooms. Robert walked beside her as they came back from her chapel. “My servant has written me a long letter to tell me what happened,” he said quietly. “It seems that Amy fell down a flight of stairs and broke her neck.”

Elizabeth went white for a moment, then she recovered. “At least it was quick,” she said.

A man bowed before her and Elizabeth paused and gave him her hand; Robert stepped back and she went on alone.

In her dressing room, Elizabeth changed into her riding clothes, wondering if they would indeed all be going hunting. The ladies of her court were waiting with her when, at last, Kat came into the room and said, “Sir Robert Dudley is outside in the presence chamber. He says he has something to tell you.”

Elizabeth rose to her feet. “We will go out to him.” The court was mostly dressed to go hunting; there was a murmur of surprise as people noticed that Robert Dudley was not in riding clothes but in the most somber black. As the queen came in with her ladies he bowed to her, raised himself up, and said, perfectly composed, “Your Grace, I have to report the death of my wife. She died on Sunday at Cumnor Place, God rest her soul.”

“Good God!” the Spanish ambassador exclaimed.

Elizabeth glanced toward him with eyes that were as blank as polished jet. She raised her hand. At once, the room quietened as everyone crowded closer to hear what she would say.

“I am very sorry to announce the death of Lady Amy Dudley, on Sunday, at Cumnor Place in Oxfordshire,” Elizabeth said steadily, as if the matter were not much to do with her.

She waited. The court was stunned into silence, everyone waiting to see if she would say more. “We will go into mourning for Lady Dudley,” Elizabeth said abruptly, and turned to one side to speak to Kat Ashley.

Irresistibly, the Spanish ambassador, de Quadra, found himself moving toward her. “What tragic news,” he said, bowing over her hand. “And so sudden.”

“An accident,” Elizabeth said, trying to remain serene. “Tragic. Most regrettable. She must have fallen down the stairs. She had a broken neck.”

“Indeed,” he said. “What a strange mischance.”

*  *  *

It was afternoon before Robert came to Elizabeth again. He found her in the garden, walking with her ladies before dinner.

“I shall have to withdraw from court for mourning,” he said, his face grave. “I thought I should go to the Dairy House at Kew. You can come and see me easily there, and I can come to see you.”

She slid her hand on his arm. “Very well. Why do you look so odd, Robert? You are not sad, are you? You don’t mind, do you?”

He looked down at her pretty face as if she were suddenly a stranger to him. “Elizabeth, she was my wife of eleven years. Of course I grieve for her.”

She made a little pout. “But you were desperate to put her aside. You would have divorced her for me.”

“Yes, indeed, I would have done, and this is better for us than the scandal of a divorce. But I would never have wished her dead.”

“The country has thought her half dead any time in the last two years,” she said. “Everyone said she was terribly ill.”

He shrugged. “People talk. I don’t know why they all thought she was ill. She traveled; she rode out. She was not ill, but in the last two years she was very unhappy; and that was all my fault.”

She was irritated and let him see it. “Saints’ sake, Robert! You will never choose to fall in love with her now that she is dead!” she teased him. “You will never now find great virtues in her that you didn’t appreciate before?”

“I loved her when she was a young woman and I was a boy,” he said passionately. “She was my first love. And she stood by me through all the years of my troubles and she never once complained of the danger and difficulty I led her into. And when you came to the throne and I came into my own again she never said one word of complaint about you.”

“Why would she complain of me?” Elizabeth exclaimed. “How would she dare complain?”

“She was jealous,” he said fairly. “And she knew she had cause. And she did not receive very fair or generous treatment from me. I wanted her to grant me a divorce and I was unkind to her.”

“And now she is dead you are sorry, though you would have gone on being unkind to her in life,” she taunted him.

“Yes,” he said honestly. “I suppose all poor husbands would say the same: that they know they should be better than they are. But I feel wretched for her, today. I am glad to be a single man, of course. But I would not have wanted her dead. Poor innocent! No one would have wanted her dead.”

“You do not recommend yourself very well,” Elizabeth said archly, turning his attention to their courtship once more. “You do not sound like a good husband at all!”

For once Robert did not respond to her. He looked away, upriver to Cumnor, and his gaze was somber. “No,” he said. “I was not a good husband to her, and God knows, she was the sweetest and best wife a man could have had.”

There was a little stir among the waiting court, a messenger in the Dudley livery had entered the garden and paused at the fringe of the court. Dudley turned and saw the man and went toward him, his hand out for the proffered letter.

The watching courtiers saw Dudley take the letter, break the seal, open it, and saw him pale as he read the words.

Elizabeth went swiftly toward him and they parted to let her through. “What is it?” she demanded urgently. “Have a care! Everyone is watching you!”

“There is to be an inquest,” he said, his lips hardly moving, his voice no more than a breath. “Everyone is saying that it was no accident. They all think that Amy was murdered.”

*  *  *

Thomas Blount, Robert Dudley’s man, arrived at Cumnor Place the very day after Amy’s death, and examined all the servants one by one. Meticulously, he reported back to Robert Dudley that Amy had been known as a woman of erratic temper, sending everyone off to the fair on Sunday morning, though her companion Mrs. Oddingsell and Mrs. Forster had been unwilling to go.

“No need to mention that again,” Robert Dudley wrote back to him, thinking that he did not want his wife’s sanity questioned, when he knew he had driven her to despair.

Obediently, Thomas Blount never mentioned the matter of Amy’s odd behavior again. But he did say that Amy’s maid Mrs. Pirto had remarked that Amy had been in very great despair, praying for her own death on some occasions.