The Queen's Secret (12 page)

‘
Pip
!’

With a nervous laugh, he bowed again, kissing her hand in apology. ‘Please forgive me. As you must know, I’m not one for these games of bedposts and secret kisses. My lord Leicester, though …’ Philip Sidney’s clever glance met hers, then slipped away as though confronted by an uncomfortable truth. ‘But my uncle is kept busy with the Queen these days, is he not?’

They fell into step together, fitting discreetly back into the throng of lesser courtiers leaving the church. The sun was still hot, the grass dusty, and Lettice was thirsty and tired after the long service.

Several gentlemen tried to catch her eye as they walked, but Lettice kept her head lowered, hands clasped demurely below her chest, employing the stiff white folds of her French hood to conceal her face. She could not grant all the favours she had promised them, least of all an audience with the Queen. But that was not something easily understood by the outer circle of the court, she had found. They seemed to expect a promised audience to mean ‘today’, rather than ‘if I can’. At least she had nothing to fear from Pip, a charming young man and a scholar too, already one of Elizabeth’s favourites among the younger generation at court. His boyish good looks had endeared him to many girls his own age too, of course, but at least he had wit enough to keep his flirtations hidden from the Queen.

‘You said before,
they say
… Are people discussing me and Leicester in the same breath these days?’ she asked quietly, careful not to engage his gaze. ‘Do they gossip about us in the court?’

‘I’m afraid some do, yes,’ he agreed, his voice equally low.

‘And the Queen?’

‘The Queen?’

Raising his eyebrows, Philip glanced at her sideways. At times,
she
found it hard to remember he was no longer that merry little boy fighting her husband with a wooden sword on the lawns at Chartley, but a grown man of twenty who had served his queen abroad and understood the politics of court life as well as she did.

He fingered his slight beard before answering, as though teasing out the meaning behind her question. ‘I would have thought you were better placed to know such a thing, my lady Essex.’

‘There are circles within circles at court. Not all overlap with those I frequent. But if you were to hear aught—’

‘You would have it straight.’

‘I thank you, Pip.’

He smiled, taking her arm in support as the grassy track began to wind back towards the castle, the climb suddenly very steep. Nearer the walls, they passed a row of low cottages. Dirty-faced children came tumbling noisily over the walls to watch the courtiers pass, peasant labourers kneeling in the doorways to their homes with heads bowed and uncovered for their queen, their silence respectful.

‘You have always been kind to me, my lady,’ Philip pointed out mildly. ‘I may be a young man and far beneath your star, but the least I can do is repay your kindness with a little of my own.’

Gently, she pinched his hand. ‘Beneath my star? What nonsense!’

‘It’s the courtly style. You don’t like it?’

Smiling up at Philip indulgently, she tried to imagine him married to her Penelope. He would make an excellent son-in-law, that was for certain, if a rather tempting one. How fine their children would look, all bright-eyed and dark-haired, dashing about her house. Though she was not quite ready to be a grandmother, she told herself ruefully. There was still plenty of life left in her. Time enough for her to grow staid and placid as a cow in a few more years, perhaps, when Penelope was no longer in the care of her tutor. Then there would be nothing better to do than rock a cradle at home while her daughter danced at court and turned men’s heads as she had done at that age.

‘No, it’s rather that I like it too much. But how stupidly steep this hill is. Why must castles always be built on a hill?’ She paused for breath on the grassy verge, leaning on his arm. ‘Now, young
Sidney,
don’t dare laugh at me. My shoes pinch horribly and this sun is too bright.’

By the time they reached the castle walls, Elizabeth had dismounted from her horse at the castle gatehouse beside a filthy, hunchbacked old woman to whom she appeared to be talking. Puffed and preened like an exotic bird, the Queen was dressed in silver and white, a thousand tiny pearls stitched painstakingly into the sleeves and rich bodice of her gown, a white-feathered cap set aslant on the riot of her curly red wig. Her careless laughter rang out above the heads of the villagers who had gathered to watch her returning from Mass.

If her older sister Queen Mary had ever visited Kenilworth and gone to hear Mass in the village church, certainly
she
would not have returned laughing so immoderately, dazzling bright in pearls and cloth of silver.

Robert stood apart from Elizabeth, and was holding the reins of her horse while she walked among the commoners. His face revealed nothing but good humour, patient as a rock as he waited for his queen.

Lettice looked at the old woman in her rags. Her lips twitched. Where in God’s name did Robert find these people?

She excused herself from Pip’s company with a quick curtsey and moved gently up behind Robert, her tread silent on the grass. The Moorish singer who appeared to have attached herself like a shadow to him was still there, a thick gold chain about her neck that Lettice could have sworn belonged to Robert. The singer caught Lettice’s warning glance and slipped hurriedly away into the massed crowd of courtiers. As soon as she was out of earshot, Lettice laid a careful hand on Robert’s sleeve.

‘My lord?’

Robert did not speak nor turn his head, merely indicating with a nod that he had heard. His gaze remained on Elizabeth, steady and watchful.

‘I expected to see you last night,’ she commented. ‘I waited till after three before I slept.’

‘I was with the Queen, as you knew I would be.’

‘You are not alone in having spies about the Queen, my lord.’
Lettice
lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘I know you were not with her all night.’

Robert glanced at her then, clearly irritated, and she felt a stab of hurt. ‘Yesterday was a long day. We were all tired.’

Lettice drew a quick breath, as she remembered the hours they had spent together in the past, everything sweet and right in each other’s arms, the whole world shut out and good riddance. Had Robert lost all memory of that joy now? Was he still blinded by his restless ambition for the throne, the same crazy ambition that had led to the execution of both his father and his older brother?

What fools these Dudleys were! It was through nothing but the simplest fluke of birth that Elizabeth Tudor sat on the throne of England and not Lettice herself. For she was not only cousin to the Queen, but her niece as well.

Everyone knew that her mother Catherine Carey had been Elizabeth’s half-sister, fathered by randy old King Henry and passed off at court as Sir William Carey’s child. A cuckoo in the nest, they’d called her fiery mother, and Lettice herself was the image of her red-haired cousin. It might be treason to think such things but Lettice had as much right to the English throne as Elizabeth. For King Henry had declared Elizabeth a bastard after her mother’s execution, which surely made her no more his rightful heir than Lettice’s illegitimate mother.

Of course, such dangerous possibilities could not be voiced, not even to a potential ally like Robert, for this would be the swiftest path to the block.

‘Will you visit me tonight, then?’ she asked instead, forcing herself to adopt a softer tone, to swallow her impatience and her growing desire for him.

Elizabeth had turned away from the old woman. Now she was bending to bless a sweet-looking child who had fallen to her knees on the grass verge and was holding up a ragged bouquet of pink gillyflowers.

‘I cannot. You know how it is.’

‘But I must see you privately. Yesterday, you said—’

‘I said it was not possible, and that is still the case.’ There was a sharp anger to his voice, a clipped tone she did not recognize. ‘You must not ask me this again. Not at Kenilworth. We are
watched
on all sides here. It’s too dangerous. The wisest course for us would be to wait until the end of the summer, when we will be safely back in London and can meet without fear of being seen.’

For a moment, Lettice found herself unable to respond. Her hands crushed the fine taffeta of her gown in despair. Was she some lowly servant, like the Moorish girl creeping at his heels all morning, to take this coldness from him, this brusque dismissal? Was she – whose family was as good as his, Boleyns and Dudleys, their fortunes entwined for generations about the throne of England – to be ordered back to kennel like one of his hunting dogs?

Fury burned away her fears. ‘I tell you this, Robert,’ she whispered. ‘If you do not visit me soon, you will never come to my bed again. This I swear by Christ’s holy blood.’

His dark eyes sought hers, and she experienced a wave of triumph as she read surprise and uncertainty in that look. Robert Dudley had thought her weak and easily handled – a woman like his dead wife, Amy Robsart, a submissive fool who had never been bidden to court despite her husband’s prominence and who, by all accounts, had made little enough trouble wherever he chose to lay his head at night.

Well, he would soon discover his mistake if he could not find more respect in his heart for a prominent member of the Boleyn family.

Elizabeth was nearly upon them, her narrow-chinned face intent, the posy of gillyflowers clutched to her breast.

‘Watch for my note,’ he whispered at last.

Then he turned and bowed low to Elizabeth, his smile suddenly warm and engaging. ‘Will you ride back into the castle, Your Majesty, or walk the rest of the way? It’s only a few steps to the inner courtyard. There’ll be food and drink served to the whole court there, and a rustic play laid on for your entertainment. Then perhaps a song or two from young Lucy Morgan, and a troupe of Florentine acrobats who can walk on their hands, bent over backwards like crabs.’

Elizabeth looked from his face to Lettice’s, as though she knew perfectly well what had passed between them, then gave a smile like a sliver of ice. ‘Let my horse be led back to the stables. I shall
walk,
as God intended even a queen to do, and enjoy these entertainments you’ve described. But is all this to be held in the open air? Will there be shade for myself and my ladies? You know I cannot bear my skin to be freckled.’

Robert bowed, handing the horse’s reins to a squire. ‘My men have put up a canopy for you and your ladies, and there’ll be a goodly amount of shade for those courtiers who sit beneath the walls.’

‘Then let us walk in together.’ Elizabeth hesitated, and her gaze returned to Lettice’s face. The malice in her eyes was unmistakable. ‘My lady Essex, return to the state apartments and fetch my silver slippers, would you? You will know better than anyone else where to find them, for you are always such a help to me when I am dressing. And how else am I to be comfortable during these entertainments except in slippers?’

Lettice curtseyed deep as the Queen swept past and through the broad archway of the gatehouse. Her head was lowered dutifully but her heart burned with an indignation nigh impossible to conceal.

She, wife to the much-honoured Earl of Essex, sent scurrying off like a trained lapdog to fetch slippers?

But Robert had capitulated. For all his cold looks and ambitious plans for the throne, he was afraid to lose her. When she thought of the love they had shared in secret, the blood rose to her temples and she felt the old, familiar ache of loneliness and desolation. If her husband were less cruel, perhaps she would not have to seek comfort in another man’s arms.

Watch for my note
.

She knew what those words signified. As he had often done before, he would arrange a private room where they could meet. Perhaps today. Perhaps this very afternoon, while the Queen watched the rustic players on the lawns and listened to her Moorish singer.

Passing unchallenged between the card-playing guards at the entrance, Lettice smiled secretly to herself as she picked up her heavy skirts to ascend the stairs to the royal apartments. Oh, Elizabeth might keep Robert Dudley hard at her heel like the obedient hound he was, but Lettice Knollys held his heart.

Thirteen

IT WAS STIFLINGLY
hot, even in the shade of the broad, gold-fringed canopy. The Queen’s ladies, slumped about their mistress on the grass, snored gently throughout the rustic play. Queen Elizabeth herself, having been presented with dish after dish of sweetmeats, nuts and honeyed quince, and having consumed several beakers of the local wine, began to doze on her ornate wooden seat. The rustic players, glancing at one another in surprise and disbelief, continued to act out their play, but in soft, barely audible voices, as though afraid to disturb anyone. Beyond them, the courtiers talked among themselves, the noblemen red-faced and bored, some playing dice on the grass, others sleeping, their ladies fanning themselves frantically in the overwhelming heat, only a few joining in with sporadic applause at each change of scene.