The Virgin's Lover

You think so, do you? Cecil demanded silently. And I am to save this kingdom for your bastards to inherit, am I?

“What matters now,” Dudley ruled, “is that we call up the men and arm them. The survival of the kingdom and the queen herself depends on swift action. We are looking to you, Cecil.”

That night Cecil worked furiously, sending out the hundreds of instructions that were needed to recruit, arm, and supply the army that must march north at once. He wrote to Lord Clinton, the High Admiral, to say that the navy must intercept the French fleet in the North Sea, they must prevent at all costs the French reinforcements landing in Scotland, but they must destroy his letter and seemingly attack on their own initiative. He wrote to his spies with the Scots, and to his men positioned at Berwick and to his most secret correspondents at the court of the queen regent, Mary of Guise, to say that at last the Queen of England had found a warlike resolution, and that England was to defend the Lords Protestant of Scotland, and her own borders, and that he needed the fullest information and at once.

Cecil worked so speedily and so efficiently that when the Privy Council met, a few days later, in the last days of February, and the queen announced that, on reflection, she had changed her mind, and that since the risk was too great, there would be no venture in Scotland, he apologized but said it was too late.

“You will recall the fleet,” she commanded, white to her ruff.

Cecil spread his hands. “They have sailed,” he said. “With orders to attack.”

“Bring back my army!”

He shook his head. “They are marching north, recruiting as they go. We are on a war footing; we cannot reverse the decision.”

“We cannot go to war with the French!” she almost screamed at him.

The Privy Councillors bowed their heads to the table. Cecil alone faced her. “The die is already cast,” he said. “Your Grace, we are at war. England is at war with France. God help us.”

Spring 1560

ROBERT DUDLEY came to Stanfield Hall in March, a bad month for traveling on ill-maintained roads, and arrived chilled and bad-tempered.

No one was waiting for him; he had sent no warning that he would be coming, and Amy, a reluctant listener to the constant rumors that said that he and the queen were once more inseparable, hardly expected ever to see him again.

As soon as the horses clattered into the yard Lady Robsart came to find her.

“He’s here!” she said coldly.

Amy leapt to her feet. “He” could only ever mean one man at Stanfield Hall. “My lord Robert?”

“His men are unsaddling in the yard.”

Amy trembled as she stood. If he had come back to her, after their last parting when she had insisted that she would always be his wife, it could mean only one thing: that he had finished with Elizabeth and wanted to reconcile with his wife. “He is here?” she said again, as if she could not believe it.

Lady Robsart smiled wryly at her stepdaughter in the shared triumph of women over men. “It looks as if you have won,” she said. “He is here and looking very cold and sorry for himself.”

“Then he must come in!” Amy exclaimed and dashed toward the stairs. “Tell Cook he’s here, and send word to the village that he will need a couple of hens and someone must slaughter a cow.”

“A fatted calf, why not?” Lady Robsart said under her breath; but she went to do her stepdaughter’s bidding.

Amy dashed down the stairs and flung open the front door. Robert, travel-stained and weary, walked up the short flight of steps, and Amy stepped into his arms.

From old habit he held her close to him, and Amy, feeling his arms come around her, and that familiar touch of his hand on her waist and the other on her shoulder blade, leaned her head against his warm, sweat-smelling neck and knew that he had come home to her at last, and that despite it all, all of it, she would forgive him as easily as accepting his kiss.

“Come in, you must be half frozen,” she said, drawing him into the hall. She threw logs on the fire and pressed him into her father’s heavy carved chair. Lady Robsart came in with hot ale and cakes from the kitchen and dipped a curtsy.

“Good day to you,” she said neutrally. “I have sent your men to find beds in the village. We cannot accommodate such a large company here.”

To Amy she remarked, “Hughes says he has some well-hung venison that he can let us have.”

“I don’t wish to put you out,” Robert said politely, as if he had not once cursed her to her face.

“How could you put us out?” Amy demanded. “This is my home; you are always welcome here. There is always a place for you here.”

Robert said nothing at the thought of Lady Robsart’s cold house being their home, and her ladyship took herself out of the room to see about beds, and a pudding.

“My lord, it is so good to see you.” Amy put another log on the fire. “I shall get my maid Mrs. Pirto to lay out your linen; the shirt you left here last time is all mended, you can’t see the darn, I did it so carefully.”

“Thank you,” he said awkwardly. “Surely Mrs. Pirto does the mending for you?”

“I like to do your linen myself,” Amy said. “Shall you want to wash?”

“Later,” he said.

“Only I will have to warn Cook, to heat the water.”

“Yes, I know. I lived here long enough.”

“You were hardly here at all! And anyway, things are much better now.”

“Well, in any case I remember that you cannot have a jug of hot water without mentioning it first thing in the morning on the third Sunday in the month.”

“It’s just that we have a small fireplace and…”

“I know,” he said wearily. “I remember all about the small fireplace.”

Amy fell silent. She did not dare ask him the one thing that she wanted to know: how long he would stay with her. When he broodingly watched the fire in silence she put on another log and they both watched the sparks fly up the dark chimney.

“How was your journey?”

“All right.”

“Which horse did you bring?”

“Blithe, my hunter,” he said, surprised.

“Did you not bring a spare horse?”

“No,” he said, hardly hearing the question.

“Shall I unpack your bags?” She rose to her feet. “Did you bring many bags?”

“Just the one.”

Robert did not see her face fall. She understood at once that one horse and one bag meant a short visit.

“And Tamworth will have done it already.”

“You are not planning on a long stay, then?”

He looked up at her. “No, no, I am sorry, I should have said. Matters are very grave; I have to get back to court. I just wanted to see you, Amy, about something important.”

“Yes?”

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” he decided. “But I need your help, Amy. I’ll tell you all about it later.”

She blushed at the thought of him coming to her for help. “You know that anything I can do for you, I will do.”

“I know it,” he said. “I am glad of it.” He rose to his feet and put his hands to the blaze.

“I like it when you ask things of me,” she said shyly. “It always used to be like that.”

“Yes,” he said.

“You are cold; shall I light a fire in our bedchamber?”

“No, no,” he said. “I’ll change my shirt and come down at once.”

Her smile lit up her face like a girl’s. “And we shall have such a good dinner; the family here has been living on mutton and I am heartily sick of it!”

It was a good dinner, with venison steaks, a mutton pasty, a chicken broth, and some puddings. There were hardly any vegetables in season, but Amy’s father had been an enthusiast for wines and his cellar was still good. Robert, thinking he would need some help in getting through dinner with the two women, and Lady Robsart’s daughter and son-in-law John Appleyard, fetched up four bottles and prevailed upon them all to help him drink them.

When they went to bed at a little after nine o’clock the women were tipsy and giggling, and Robert stayed downstairs to finish his glass in good-humored solitude. He left plenty of time for Amy to get into bed and did not go up until he thought she would be asleep.

He shed his clothes as quietly as he could, and put them on the chest at the foot of the bed. She had left a candle burning for him and in the flickering golden light he thought she looked like a sleeping child. He felt filled with tenderness for her as he blew out her candle and slipped into bed beside her, careful not to touch her.

Half asleep, she turned toward him and slid her naked leg between his thighs. At once he was aroused, but he shifted a little away from her, firmly taking her waist in his hands and holding her from him, but she gave a little sleepy sigh and put her hand on his chest, and then slid it inexorably down his belly to caress him.

“Amy,” he whispered.

He could not see her in the darkness, but the even pace of her breathing told him that although she was still asleep, she was moving toward him in sleep, she was stroking him, sliding toward him, and finally rolling on her back so that he could take her in a state of aroused sleepiness that he, knowing that he was a fool, could not resist. Even as he took his pleasure, even as he heard her cry, her familiar, breathy little cry of delight as she woke to find him inside her, Robert knew that he was doing the wrong thing, the worst thing that he could do: for himself, for Amy, and for Elizabeth.

In the morning Amy was glowing, confident, a woman restored to love, a wife restored to her place in the world. He did not have to wake to her timid smile; she was up and in the kitchen as he was getting dressed, stirring the cook to bake breakfast bread just as he liked it. She had fetched the honey from their own hive; she brought fresh butter from the dairy with the Stanfield Hall seal on the pat. From the meat larder she had brought a good cut of ham borrowed from someone in the village, and there were some cold venison cutlets left over from last night.

Amy, presiding over a good table, poured small ale for her husband and tucked back a curl behind her ear.

“Shall you ride today?” she asked. “I can send Jeb to the stable to tell them to saddle your horse. We can ride together if you wish.”

He could not believe that she had forgotten their last ride together, but her pleasure in the night had restored her to the Amy that he had once loved, the confident little mistress of her kingdom, Sir John Robsart’s favorite child.

“Yes,” he said, delaying the moment when he would have to speak honestly with her. “I should have brought my hawk; I shall soon eat you out of house and home.”

“Oh no,” she said. “For the Carters have already sent over a newly weaned calf as a compliment to you, and now that everyone knows you are here we shall be half buried in gifts. I thought we might ask them to come over for the day; you always find them good company.”

“Tomorrow, perhaps,” he said cravenly. “Not today.”

“All right,” she said agreeably. “But you will be hard put to eat the calf on your own.”

“Tell them I will ride in an hour,” he said, abruptly rising from the table. “And I should be glad of your company.”

“Could we ride toward Flitcham Hall?” she asked. “Just to remind you what a fine house it is? I know you said it is too far from London, but they still have not found a buyer.”

He winced. “Wherever you wish,” he said, avoiding the issue of the house. “In an hour.”

And so I avoid speaking to her until dinner, Robert berated himself, taking the stairs two at a time. Because I shall never again try and talk sense to a woman while riding with her. But tonight, after dinner, I have to talk to her. I cannot lie with her again. I make a cheat of myself, and a fool of her. He kicked open the door to Sir John’s private room, and threw himself into the old man’s chair. Damn you, he addressed his dead father-in-law. Damn you for saying I would break her heart and damn you for being right.

Robert waited until after dinner when Lady Robsart left them alone, and Amy was seated opposite him on the other side of the small fireplace.

“I am sorry we have no company,” Amy remarked. “It must be so dull for you, after court. We could have had the Rushleys to visit, you remember them? They would come tomorrow, if you would like to invite them.”

“Amy,” he said hesitantly. “I have something to ask you.”

Her head came up at once, her smile sweet. She thought he was going to ask for her forgiveness.

“We spoke once of a divorce,” he said quietly.

A shadow crossed her face. “Yes,” she said. “I have not had a happy moment since that day. Not until last night.”

Robert grimaced. “I am sorry for that,” he said.

She interrupted him. “I know,” she said. “I knew you would be. And I thought that I would never be able to forgive you; but I can, Robert, and I do. It is forgiven and forgotten between us and we need never speak of it again.”

This is something like ten thousand times harder because I was a lustful fool, Robert swore to himself. Aloud he said, “Amy, you will think me wicked, but my mind has not changed.”

Her honest, open eyes met his. “What do you mean?” she asked simply.

“I have to ask you something,” he said. “When we last spoke, you saw Elizabeth as your rival, and I understand your feelings. But she is the Queen of England, and she has done me the honor of loving me.”

Amy frowned; she could not think what he wanted to ask her. “Yes, but you said you had given her up. And then you came to me…” She broke off. “It is like a miracle to me that you came to me, as if we were boy and girl again.”

“We are at war with Scotland,” Robert plowed on. “We could not be in more peril. I want to help her, I want to save my country. Amy, the French are very likely to invade.”

Amy nodded. “Of course. But…”

“Invade,” he repeated. “Destroy us all.”

She nodded, but she could not care for the French when her own happiness was unfolding before her.

“And so I want to ask you to release me from my marriage with you, so that I can offer myself to the queen as a free man. The archduke will not propose to her; she needs a husband. I want to marry her.”

Amy’s eyes widened as if she could not believe what she had just heard. He saw her hand go to her pocket and he saw her fingers clench on something there.

“What?” she asked disbelievingly.

“I want you to release me from my marriage with you. I have to marry her.”

“Are you saying that you want me to divorce you?”

He nodded. “I do.”

“But last night…”

“Last night was a mistake,” he said brutally and saw the color flush to her cheeks and the tears fill her eyes as rapidly as if he had slapped her till her head rang.

“A mistake?” she repeated.

“I could not resist you,” he said, trying to soften the blow. “I should have done so. I love you, Amy, I always will. But my destiny has come for me. John Dee once said—”

She shook her head. “A mistake? To lie with your own wife? Did you not whisper: “I love you”? Was that a mistake too?”

“I didn’t say that,” he said quickly.

“I heard you say that.”

“You may think you heard me, but I didn’t say it.”

She got up from her little chair and turned away from him to the table that she had prepared for dinner with such joy. It was all spoiled now; the broken meats gone to the servants, the waste gone to the pigs.

“You told me of Sir Thomas Gresham once,” she said irrelevantly. “That he thought the worst thing about bad coinage is that it brings everything, even good coins, down to its own worthless value.”

“Yes,” he said, not understanding.

“That is what she has done,” she said simply. “I am not surprised that a pound is not worth a pound, that we are at war with France, that the archduke will not marry her. She has made everything bad; she is the false coin of the kingdom and she has brought everything, even honorable love, even a good marriage begun in love, down to the value of a counterfeit coin.”

“Amy…”

“So that in the night you say ‘I love you’ and everything you do tells me that you love me, and then in the day, the very next day, you ask me to release you.”

“Amy, please!”

She stopped at once. “Yes, my lord?”

“Whatever you think of her, she is the anointed Queen of England; the realm is in danger. The Queen of England needs me and I am asking you to release me.”

“You can command her armies,” she observed.

Robert nodded. “Yes, but there are other, more skilled soldiers.”

“You can advise her as to what she should do; she could appoint you to her Privy Council.”

“I advise her already.”

“Then what more can you do? And what more can you honorably ask for?” she burst out.

He gritted his teeth. “I want to be at her side, day and night. I want to be her husband and be with her all the time. I want to be her companion on the throne of England.”

He braced himself for tears and rage, but to his surprise she looked at him dry-eyed, and spoke very quietly. “Robert, do you know, if it was in my gift, I would give it to you. I have loved you so much and for so long that I would even give you this. But it is not in my gift. Our marriage is an act of God; we stood together in a church and swore we would not be parted. We cannot be parted now, just because the queen wants you, and you want her.”

“Other people in the world divorce!” he exclaimed.

“I don’t know how they will answer for it.”

“The Pope himself allows it, he says that they will not answer for it, there is no sin.”

“Oh, shall you go to the Pope?” she inquired with a sudden rush of malice. “Is the Pope to rule that our marriage, our Protestant marriage, is invalid? Is Elizabeth the Protestant princess going to bow her knee to the Pope again?”

He leapt up from his chair and faced her. “Of course not!”

“Then who?” she persisted. “The Archbishop of Canterbury? Her creature? Appointed despite his own misgivings, the single turncoat in the church while all her other bishops are thrown into prison or exile because they know she is a false claimant to be head of the church?”

“I don’t know the details,” he said sulkily. “But with goodwill it could be done.”

“It would have to be her, wouldn’t it?” Amy challenged him. “A woman of twenty-six years old, blinded by her own lust, wanting another woman’s husband and ruling that her desire is God’s will. That she knows that God wants him to be free.” She drew a breath and let out a wild, ringing laugh. “It is a nonsense, husband. You will make yourselves a laughingstock. It is a sin against God, it is a sin against man, and it is an insult to me.”

“It is no insult. If your father were alive…”

It was the worst thing he could have said. Amy’s family pride sprang up. “You dare say his name to me! My father would have horsewhipped you for even thinking of such a thing. He would have killed you for saying such a thing to me.”

“He would never have laid a finger on me!” Robert swore. “He would not have dared.”

“He said you were a braggart and I was worth ten of you,” she spat at him. “And he was right. You are a braggart and I am worth ten of you. And you did say you loved me last night; you are a liar.”

He could hardly see her for the mist that rose before his eyes with his blinding anger. His tight voice came out short, as if it were wrested from him. “Amy, no man in the world would abuse me as you have done and live.”

“Husband, I can promise you that thousands will call you worse. They will call you her boy, her plaything, a common little colt that she rides for lust.”

“They will call me King of England,” he shouted.

She whirled around and caught him by the collar of the linen shirt that she had darned so carefully for him, and shook him in her rage. “Never! You will have to murder me before she can have you.”

He snatched her hands from his neck and thrust her away from him, down into the chair. “Amy, I will never forgive you for this; you will turn me from your husband and lover to your enemy.”

She looked up at him and she collected spittle in her mouth and spat at him. At once, blind with rage, he rushed toward her and, quick as thought, she put her little feet up and kicked out, driving him back.

“I know that,” she shouted at him. “Fool that you are! But what difference does your hatred make, when you lie like a swine with her and then lie with me and say ‘I love you’ to us both?”

“I never said it!” he yelled, quite beyond himself.

Behind him, Lady Robsart opened the door wide and stood in silence, looking at the two of them.

“Go away!” Amy shouted.

“No, come in,” Robert said quickly, turning from Amy and dabbing at the spittle on his shirt and pulling at his collar that she had wrenched. “For God’s sake, come in. Amy is distressed, Lady Robsart, help her to her room. I shall sleep in the guest room and leave tomorrow at first light.”

“No!” Amy screamed. “You will come to me, Robert. You know you will. Your lust, your filthy lust, will wake you and you will want me again, and you will say, ‘I love you. I love you.’ You liar. You wicked, wicked liar.”

“Take her away, for God’s sake, before I murder her,” he said to Lady Robsart, and brushed past her out of the room, avoiding Amy’s clutching hands.

“You will come to me or I will kill you,” she screamed.

Robert broke into a run up the narrow wooden stairs, and got away from his wife before she could shame them both anymore.

In the morning Amy was too sick to see him. Lady Robsart, her voice like ice, spoke of a night of hysterical weeping and told him that Amy had risen in the early hours of the morning and fallen to her knees and prayed for God to release her from this agony that was her life.

Robert’s escort was waiting outside. “You’ll know what it’s all about, I suppose,” he said shortly.

“Yes,” Lady Robsart replied. “I suppose so.”

“I rely on your discretion,” he said. “The queen would be much offended by any gossip.”

Her eyes flew to his face. “Then she should not give the gossips such rich pickings,” she said bluntly.

“Amy has to see reason,” he said. “She has to agree to a divorce. I don’t want to force her. I don’t want to send her out of the country to a convent against her will. I want a fair agreement and a good settlement for her. But she has to agree.”

He saw the shock in her face at his frankness. “It would be worth your while,” he said silkily. “I would stand your friend if you would advise her of her best interests. I have spoken to her brother-in-law, John Appleyard, and he agrees with me.”

“John agrees? My son-in-law thinks that she should give you a divorce?”

“And your son Arthur.”

Lady Robsart was silenced at this evidence of the unanimity of men. “I can’t say what her best interests would be in such a case,” she said with weak defiance.

“Just as I have said,” Robert said bluntly. “Just as we say: us men. She either consents to a divorce with a good settlement, or she is divorced anyway and sent out of the country to a convent with no fortune. She has no other choice.”

“I don’t know what her father would have made of this. She is crying and wishing for death.”

“I am sorry for it; but they will not be the first tears shed nor, I suppose, the last,” he said grimly, and went out of the door without another word.

Robert Dudley arrived at the queen’s apartments at Westminster during an impromptu recital of a new composition of some man’s song, and had to stand by, smiling politely, until the madrigal—with much fa-la-la-ing—was over. Sir William Cecil, observing him quietly from a corner, was amused by the scowl on the younger man’s face, and then surprised that even when he bowed to the queen his expression did not become any more pleasing.

Now what are they doing, that he should look so sour and she so concerned for him? Cecil felt his heart plunge with apprehension. What are they planning now?

As soon as the song was ended Elizabeth nodded Robert to a window bay and the two of them stepped to one side, out of earshot of the attentive courtiers.

“What did she say?” Elizabeth demanded, without a word of greeting. “Did she agree?”

“She went quite mad,” he said simply. “She said she would die rather than agree to a divorce. I left her after a night of weeping herself sick, praying for death.”

Her hand flew out to his cheek, she stopped herself before she embraced him before the whole court.

“Oh, my poor Robin.”

“She spat in my face,” he said, darkening at the memory. “She kicked out at me. We were all but brawling.”

“No!” Despite the seriousness of their situation Elizabeth could not help but be diverted at the thought of Lady Dudley fighting like a fishwife. “Has she run mad?”

“Worse than that,” he said shortly. He glanced around to make sure that no one could hear them. “She is full of treasonous thoughts and heretical opinions. Her jealousy of you has driven her to the most extreme ideas. God knows what she will say or do.”

“So we will have to send her away,” Elizabeth said simply.

Robert bowed his head. “My love, it will make such a scandal, I doubt we can do it at once. You can’t risk it. She will fight me, she will raise a storm against me, and I have many enemies who would support her.”

She looked at him directly, all the passion of a new love affair apparent in her flushed face.

“Robert, I cannot live without you. I cannot rule England without you at my side. Even now Lord Grey is marching my army into Scotland, and the English fleet, God help them, are trying to prevent three times their number of French ships getting to Leith Castle where that wicked woman has raised a siege again. I am on a knife edge, Robert. Amy is a traitor to make things worse for me. We should just arrest her for treason, put her in the Tower, and forget about her.”

“Forget her now,” he said swiftly, his first desire to soothe the anxious young woman he loved. “Forget her. I’ll stay at court with you, I’ll be at your side night and day. We will be husband and wife in everything but name, and when we have won in Scotland and the country is safe and at peace, we will deal with Amy and we will be married.”

She nodded. “You won’t see her again?.”

He had a sudden unbidden memory of Amy’s hand caressing him, and her sleepy unfolding of herself beneath him, of the way her hand had stroked his back and of his own whispered words in the darkness which might have been “Oh, I love you,” speaking from desire, not calculation.

“I won’t see her,” he assured her. “I am yours, Elizabeth, heart and soul.”

Elizabeth smiled, and Dudley tried to smile reassuringly back at her, but for a moment it was Amy’s dreamy, desirous face that he saw.

“She is a fool,” Elizabeth said harshly. “She should have seen my stepmother Anne of Cleves when my father asked for a divorce. Her first thought was to oblige him and her second to obtain a reasonable settlement for herself. Amy is a fool, and a wicked fool to try to stand in our way. And she is doubly a fool not to ask you for a good settlement.”

“Yes,” he assented, thinking that Anne of Cleves had not married for love, and longed for her husband every night for eleven years, nor had she been in his arms making passionate love the very night before he asked her to release him.

The court waited for news of the queen’s uncle, Thomas Howard, who had been sent away to suit the convenience of the lovers, but was now a key player on the sensitive border. He was to negotiate and to sign an alliance with the Scots lords in his headquarters in Newcastle, but they waited and waited and heard nothing from him.

“What is keeping him so long?” Elizabeth demanded of Cecil. “Surely he would not play me false? Not because of Sir Robert?”

“Never,” Cecil averred steadily. “These things take time.”

“We have no time,” she snapped. “Thanks to you we have rushed into war and we are not prepared.”

The English army, led by Lord Grey, was supposed to have assembled in Newcastle by January, and to have advanced on Scotland by the end of the month. But January had come and gone and the army had not stirred from their barracks.

“Why does it take so long?” Elizabeth demanded of Cecil. “Did you not tell him he was to march on Edinburgh at once?”

“Yes,” Cecil said. “He knows what he is to do.”

“Then why does he not do it?” she cried out in her frustration. “Why does no one press forward; or if they cannot, why do they not retreat? Why do we have to wait and wait and all I hear is excuses?”

She was rubbing at her fingernails, pushing the cuticles back from the nails in a nervous parody of her daily manicure. Cecil stopped himself from taking her hands.

“News will come,” he maintained. “We have to be patient. And they were ordered not to retreat.”

“We must proclaim our friendship with the French,” she decided.

Cecil glanced at Dudley. “We are at war with the French,” he reminded her.

“We should write a declaration that if their soldiers go home, we have no quarrel with France,” Elizabeth said, her fingers working furiously. “Then they know that we are ready for peace, even at this late stage.”

Dudley stepped forward. “Now that is an excellent idea,” he said soothingly. “You write it. Nobody can marshal an argument like you.”

An argument that is pure self-contradiction, Cecil thought to himself, and saw from the flash of Robert’s smile toward him that Dudley knew it too.

“When do I have time to write?” Elizabeth demanded. “I can’t even think; I am so anxious.”

“In the afternoon,” Dudley said soothingly to her. “And nobody can write like you can.”

He gentles her like one of his Barbary mares, Cecil thought wonderingly. He manages her in a way that no one else can do.

“You shall compose it and I shall take your dictation,” Robert said. “I shall be your clerk. And we shall publish it, so that everyone knows that you are not the war maker. If it comes to war they will know that your intentions were always peaceful. You will show that it is all the fault of the French.”

“Yes,” she said, encouraged. “And perhaps it will avert war.”

“Perhaps,” the men reassured her.

The only piece of good news that came in March was that the French preparations for war had been thrown into disarray by an uprising of French Protestants against the French royal family.

“This doesn’t help us at all,” Elizabeth miserably predicted. “Now Philip of Spain will turn against all Protestants; he will be in terror of it spreading, and refuse to be my friend.”

But Philip was too clever to do anything that would help the French in Europe. Instead he offered to mediate between the French and the English, and the Seigneur de Glajon arrived with great pomp to meet with Elizabeth in April.

“Tell him I am ill,” she whispered to Cecil, eyeing the powerful Spanish diplomat through a crack in the door from her private apartments to the audience chamber. “Keep him off me for a while. I can’t stand to see him, I really can’t, and my hands are bleeding.”

Cecil stalled the Spanish don for several days until the news came from Scotland that Lord Grey had finally crossed the border with the English army. The soldiers of England were marching on Scottish soil. There was no denying it any longer: the two nations were finally at war.

Elizabeth’s fingernails were immaculately buffed, but her lips bitten into sore strips when she finally met the Spanish ambassador.

“They will force us into peace,” she whispered to Cecil after the meeting. “He all but threatened me. He warned me that if we cannot make peace with the French then Philip of Spain will send his own armies and force a peace on us.”

Cecil looked aghast. “How should he do such a thing? This is not a quarrel of his.”

“He has the power,” she said angrily. “And it is your fault for inviting his support. Now he thinks it is his business, he thinks he has a right to come into Scotland. And if both France and Spain have armies in Scotland, what will become of us? Whoever wins will occupy Scotland forever, and will soon look to the border and want to come south. We are now at the mercy of both France and Spain; how could you do this?”

“Well, it was not my intention,” he said wryly. “Does Philip think he can impose peace on France as well as us?”

“If he can force them to agree then it might be our way out,” Elizabeth said, a little more hopefully. “If we make a truce with him, he has promised me that we will get Calais back.”

“He lies,” Cecil said simply. “If you want Calais, you will have to fight for it. If you want to keep the French out of Scotland, you will have to fight them. We have to prevent the Spanish from coming in. We have to face the two greatest countries in Christendom and defend our sovereignty. You have to be brave, Elizabeth.”

He always called her by her title. It was a mark of her distress that she did not reprove him. “Spirit, I am not brave. I am so very afraid,” she said in a whisper of a voice.

“Everyone is afraid,” he assured her. “You, me, probably even the Sieur de Glajon. Don’t you think Mary of Guise, ill in Edinburgh Castle, is afraid too? Don’t you think that the French are afraid, with the Protestants rising up against them in the heart of France itself? Don’t you think that Mary, Queen of Scots, is afraid with them hanging hundreds of French rebels before her very eyes?”

“No one is alone as I am!” Elizabeth rounded on him. “No one faces two enemies on the doorstep but me! No one has to face Philip and face the French with no husband and no father and no help, but me!”

“Yes,” he agreed sympathetically. “Indeed you have a lonely and a difficult part to play. But you must play it. You have to pretend to confidence even when you are afraid, even when you feel most alone.”

“You would turn me into one of Sir Robert’s new troop of players,” she said.

“I would see you as one of England’s players,” he returned. “I would see you play the part of a great queen.” And I would rather die than trust Dudley with the script, he added to himself.

Spring came to Stanfield Hall, and Lizzie Oddingsell arrived to be Amy’s traveling companion, but no word came from Sir Robert as to where his wife was to go this season.

“Shall I write to him?” Lizzie Oddingsell asked Amy.

Amy was lying on a day bed, her skin like paper, her eyes dull, as thin as a wasted child. She shook her head, as if it were too much effort to speak. “It does not matter to him where I am anymore.”

“It’s just that this time last year we went to Bury St. Edmunds, and then Camberwell,” Lizzie remarked.

Amy shrugged her thin shoulders. “Not this year, it seems.”

“You cannot stay here all the year round.”

“Why not? I lived here all the years of my girlhood.”

“It’s not fitting,” Lizzie said. “You are his wife, and this is a little house with no gay company, and no good food or music or dancing or society. You cannot live like a farmer’s wife when you are the wife of one of the greatest men in the country. People will talk.”

Amy raised herself up on her elbow. “Good God, you know as well as I that people say far worse things than that I do not keep a good table.”

“They speak of nothing but the war against the French in Scotland,” Lizzie lied.

Amy shook her head and leaned back and closed her eyes. “I am not deaf,” she observed. “They say that my husband and the queen will be married within a year.”

“And what will you do?” Lizzie prompted gently. “If he insists? If he puts you aside? I am sorry, Amy, but you should consider what you would need. You are a young woman, and—”

“He cannot put me aside,” Amy said quietly. “I am his wife. I will be his wife till the day of my death. I cannot help it. God bound us together; only God can part us. He can send me away, he can even marry her, but then he is a bigamist and she is a whore in the eyes of everyone. I cannot do anything but be his wife until my death.”

“Amy,” Lizzie breathed. “Surely…”

“Please God my death comes soon and releases us all from this agony,” Amy said in her thin thread of a voice. “Because this is worse than death for me. To know that he has loved me and turned from me, to know that he wants me far away, never to see him again. To know, every morning that I wake, every night that I sleep, that he is with her, that he chooses to be with her rather than to be with me. It eats into me like a canker, Lizzie. I could think myself dying of it. This is grief like death. I would rather have death.”

“You have to reconcile yourself,” Lizzie Oddingsell said, without much faith in the panacea.

“I have reconciled myself to heartbreak,” Amy said. “I have reconciled myself to a life of desolation. No one can ask more of me.”

Lizzie stood up and turned a log on the fire. The chimney smoked and the room was always filled with a light haze that stung the eyes. Lizzie sighed at the discomfort of the farmhouse and of the late Sir John’s determination that what he had established was good enough for anyone else.

“I shall write to my brother-in-law,” she said firmly. “They are always glad to see you. At least we can go to Denchworth.”

Westminster Palace

March 14th 1560

William Cecil to the Commander of the Queen’s Pensioners.

Sir, 1. It has come to my attention that the French have hatched a conspiracy against the life of the queen and of the noble gen tleman Sir Robert Dudley. I am informed that they are determined that one or the other shall be killed, believing that this will give them an advantage in the war in Scotland.2. I hereby advise you of this new threat and commend you to redouble your guard on the queen and to command them to remain alert at all times.

Be alert also for anyone approaching or following the noble gentleman, and for anyone hanging round his apartments or the stables.

God Save the Queen.

Sir Francis Knollys with Sir Nicholas Bacon sought out William Cecil.

“For God’s sake, is there no end to these threats?”

“Apparently not,” Cecil said quietly.

Sir Robert Dudley joined them. “What’s this?”

“More death threats against the queen,” Sir Francis told him. “And against you.”

“Me?”

“From the French, now.”

“Why would the French want to kill me?” Dudley asked, shocked.

“They think the queen would be distressed by your death,” Nicholas Bacon said tactfully, when no one else answered.

Sir Robert took a swift, irritated turn on his heel. “Are we to do nothing while Her Majesty is threatened on all sides? When Frenchmen threaten her, when the Pope himself threatens her? When Englishmen plot against her? Can’t we confront this terror and destroy it?”

“The nature of terror is that you don’t know quite what it is or what it can do,” Cecil observed. “We can protect her, but only up to a point. Short of locking her up in a gated room we cannot preserve her from danger. I have a man tasting everything she eats. I have sentries at every door, under every window. No one comes into court without being vouched for and yet still, every other day, I hear of a new plot, a new murder plan against her.”

“How would the French like it if we murdered the young Queen Mary?” Sir Robert demanded.

William Cecil exchanged a glance with the other more experienced man, Sir Francis. “We can’t reach her,” he admitted. “I had Throckmorton look at the French court when he was in Paris. It can’t be done without them knowing it was us.”

“And is that your only objection?” Robert bristled.

“Yes,” Cecil said silkily. “I have no objection in theory to assassination as an act of state. It could be a great saver of life and a guarantee of safety for others.”

“I am utterly and completely opposed to it,” Dudley said indignantly. “It is forbidden by God, and it is against the justice of man.”

“Yes, but it’s you they want to kill, so you would think that,” Sir Nicholas said with scant sympathy. “The bullock seldom shares the beliefs of the butcher, and you, you are dead meat, my friend.”

Amy and Lizzie Oddingsell, escorted by Thomas Blount, with men in the Dudley livery riding before and behind them, came in silence to the Hyde house. The children, watching for them as usual, came running down the drive toward them and then hesitated when their aunt had nothing more for them than a wistful smile, and their favorite guest, the pretty Lady Dudley, did not seem to see them at all.

Alice Hyde, hurrying out to greet her sister-in-law and her noble friend, felt for a moment as if a shadow had fallen on their house and gave a little involuntary shiver as if the April sunshine had suddenly turned icy. “Sister! Lady Dudley, you are most welcome.”

Both women turned to her faces that were pale with strain. “Oh, Lizzie!” Alice said, in shock at the weariness on her face, and then went to help her sister-in-law down from the saddle as her husband came out and helped Lady Dudley to dismount.

“May I go to my room?” Amy whispered to William Hyde.

“Of course,” he said kindly. “I will take you myself, and have a fire lit for you. Will you take a glass of brandy to keep out the cold and put some roses in those pretty cheeks again?”

He thought she looked at him as if he addressed her in a foreign language.

“I am not ill,” she said flatly. “Whoever told you that I was ill, is lying.”

“No? I’m glad to hear of it. You look a little wearied by your journey, that’s all,” he said soothingly, leading her into the hall and then up the stairs to the best guest bedroom. “And are we to expect Sir Robert here, this spring?”

Amy paused at the door of her room. “No,” she said very quietly. “I do not expect to see my husband this season. I have no expectations of him at all.”

“Oh,” William Hyde said, quite at sea.

Then she turned and put both her hands out to him. “But he is my husband,” she said, almost pleading. “That will never change.”

At a loss, he chafed her cold hands. “Of course he is,” he soothed her, thinking that she was talking at random, like a madwoman. “And a very good husband too, I am sure.”

Somehow, he had said the right thing. The sweet smile of Amy the beloved girl suddenly illuminated the bleak face of Amy the deserted wife.

“Yes, he is,” she said. “I am so glad that you see that too, dear William. He is a good husband to me and so he must come home to me soon.”

“Good God, what have they done to her?” William Hyde demanded of his sister, Lizzie Oddingsell, when the three of them were seated around the dinner table, the covers cleared and the door safely closed against prying servants. “She looks near to death.”

“It is as you predicted,” Lizzie said shortly. “Just as you said when you were so merry about what would happen if your master were to marry the queen. He has done what you thought he might do. He has thrown her off and is going to marry the queen. He told her to her face.”

A long, low whistle from William Hyde greeted this news. Alice was quite dumbstruck.

“And the queen has proposed this? She thinks she can get such a thing past the Lords and Commons of England?”

Lizzie shrugged. “He speaks as if all that stands in their way is Amy’s consent. He speaks as if he and the queen are quite agreed and are picking out names for their firstborn.”

“He will be consort. She might even call him king,” William Hyde speculated. “And he will not forget the services we have done him and the kindness we have shown him.”

“And what of her?” Lizzie asked fiercely, nodding her head to the chamber above them. “When he is crowned and we are in Westminster Abbey shouting hurrah? Where do you think she is then?”

William Hyde shook his head. “Living quietly in the country? At her father’s old house? At the house she fancied here—old Simpson’s place?”

“It will kill her,” Alice predicted. “She will never survive the loss of him.”

“I think so,” Lizzie said. “And the worst of it is, that I think in his heart, he knows that. And I am sure that the she-devil queen knows that too.”

“Hush!” William said urgently. “Even behind closed doors, Lizzie!”

“All her life Amy has been on a rack of his ambition,” Lizzie hissed. “All her life she has loved and waited for him and prayed long, sleepless nights for his safety. And now, at the moment of his prosperity, he tells her that he will cast her aside, that he loves another woman, and that this other woman has such power that she can throw a true-wedded wife to the dogs.

“What do you think this will do to her? You saw her. Doesn’t she look like a woman walking toward her grave?”

“Is she sick?” asked William Hyde, a practical man. “Does she have this canker in her breast that they all say is killing her?”

“She is sick to death from heartache,” Lizzie said. “That is all the pain in her breast. And he may not understand this, but I warrant the queen does. She knows that if she plays cat and mouse with Amy Dudley for long enough then her health will simply break down and she will take to her bed and die. If she does not kill herself first.”

“Never! A mortal sin!” Alice exclaimed.

“It has become a sinful country,” Lizzie said bleakly. “What is worse? A woman throwing herself headfirst downstairs or a queen taking a married man to her bed and the two of them hounding the true wife to her death?”

Thomas,

Cecil wrote in code to his old friend Thomas Gresham at Antwerp.

1. I have your note about the Spanish troopships, presumably, they are arming to invade Scotland. The great numbers that you have seen must indicate that they plan to invade England as well.

2. They have a plan to invade Scotland on the pretext of imposing peace. I assume that they are now putting this into practice.

3. On receipt of this, please inform your clients, customers, and friends that the Spanish are on the brink of invading Scotland, that this will take them into war with the French, with the Scots and with ourselves, and warn them most emphatically that all the English trade will leave Antwerp for France. The cloth market will leave the Spanish Netherlands forever, and the loss will be incalculable.

4. If you can create utter panic in the commercial and trading quarters with this news I would be much obliged. If the poor people were to take it into their heads that they will starve for lack of English trade, and riot against their Spanish masters, it would be even better. If the Spanish could be brought to think they are facing a national revolt it would be very helpful.

Cecil did not sign the letter nor seal it with his crest. He rarely put his name to anything.

Ten days later Cecil stalked into the queen’s privy chamber like a long-legged, triumphant raven and laid a letter before her on her desk. There were no other papers, her anxiety about Scotland was so great that she did no other work. Only Robert Dudley could distract her from her terrified interrogation of the progress of the war; only he could comfort her.

“What is this?” she asked.

“A report from a friend of mine in Antwerp that there has been a panic in the city,” Cecil said with quiet pleasure. “The respectable merchants and tradesmen are leaving in their hundreds; the poor people are barricading the streets and firing the slums. The Spanish authorities have been forced to issue a proclamation to the citizens and traders that there will be no expedition to Scotland or against England. There was a run on the currency, there were people leaving the town. There was absolute panic. They feared a rebellion would start that would flare into a civil war. They had to give their word that the ships in port are not headed for our shores. The Spanish have been forced to reassure the traders of the Spanish Netherlands that they will not intervene in Scotland against us, that they will stay our friend and ally, whatever takes place in Scotland. The risk to their commercial interest was too great. They have publicly declared their alliance to us, and that they will not invade.”

The color flooded into her cheeks. “Oh, Spirit! We are safe!”

“We still have to face the French,” he cautioned her. “But we need not fear the Spanish coming against us at the same time.”

“And I need not marry the archduke!” Elizabeth laughed merrily.

Cecil checked.

“Although I still expect to do so,” she corrected herself hastily. “I have given my word, Cecil.”

He nodded, knowing she was lying. “And so shall I write to Lord Grey to take Leith Castle at once?”

He caught her for once in a confident mood. “Yes!” she cried. “At last something is going well for us. Tell him to set the siege and win it at once!”

Elizabeth’s bright, confident mood did not last long. The attack on Leith Castle in May failed miserably. The scaling ladders were too short and more than two thousand men died scrabbling against the castle walls, unable to get up or down, or fell wounded into the blood and mire below.

The horror of the injury, illness, and death of her troops haunted Elizabeth as much as the humiliation of failing before the very windows of Mary of Guise. Some said that the stone-hearted Frenchwoman had looked out and laughed to see Englishmen spitted on lances at the top of their scaling ladders and falling down like shot doves.

“They must come home!” Elizabeth swore. “They are dying as they drown in the mud before her door. She is a witch; she has called down rain on them.”

“They cannot come home,” Cecil told her.

Her nails shone with the frantic polishing of her fingers, her cuticles were pushed back till they were red and raw. “They must come home; we are fated to lose Scotland,” she said. “How could the ladders be too short? Grey should be court-martialed. Norfolk should be recalled. My own uncle and a treacherous fool! A thousand men dead on the walls of Leith! They will call me a murderess, to send good men to their deaths for such folly.”

“War always means death,” Cecil said flatly. “We knew that before we started.”

He checked himself. This passionate, fearful girl had never seen a battlefield, had never walked past wounded men groaning for water. A woman could not know what men endured; she could not rule as a king would rule. A woman could never learn the determination of a man made in the image of God.

“You have to adopt the courage of a king,” he said to her firmly. “Now more than ever. I know you fear that we are failing, but the side that wins in a war is often the one which has the most confidence. When you are at your most fearful, that is when you have to appear your bravest. Say whatever comes into your head, put up your chin and swear that you have the stomach of a man. Your sister could do it. I saw her turn the City of London around in a moment. You can do it too.”

Elizabeth flared up. “Don’t name her to me! She had a husband to rule for her.”

“Not then,” he contradicted her. “Not when she faced the Wyatt rebels as they came right up to the City and camped at Lambeth. She was a woman alone then; she called herself the Virgin Queen and the London militia swore they would lay down their lives for her.”

“Well, I cannot do it.” She was wringing her hands. “I cannot find the courage. I cannot say such things and make men believe me.”

Cecil took her hands and held them tight. “You have to,” he said. “We have to go forward now because we cannot go back.”

She looked pitifully at him. “What must we do? What can we do now? Surely it is over?”

“Muster more troops, reinstate the siege,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“I would put my own life on it.”

Reluctantly, she nodded.

“I have your permission to send out the orders?” he pressed. “For more men, to put the siege back on Leith?”

“Very well.” She breathed the words like a coerced girl.

Only Robert Dudley could comfort Elizabeth. They rode out less and less, she was too exhausted by sleepless nights of worry. Day flowed into night in the queen’s private rooms when she paced the floor till four in the morning and then fell into an exhausted dream-filled doze in the early afternoon. They closed the door of her privy chamber, defiant of the gossips, and he sat with her beside the fire in the cold gray afternoons. She took off her heavy jewel-encrusted hood and let down her hair and laid her head in his lap, and he stroked her long bronze locks until the strained, anxious look melted from her face and she sometimes closed her eyes and slept.

Kat Ashley sat in the window seat for form’s sake but she kept her eyes fixed on her needlework or read a book; she never so much as glanced at the lovers as Robert nursed Elizabeth as tenderly as a mother. Kat knew that soon Elizabeth would collapse under the strain. She had watched Elizabeth through a dozen nervous illnesses. She was accustomed to examining Elizabeth’s slim fingers and wrists for any telltale signs of swelling which would show that her recurring disease of dropsy was about to exile her to bed. And Kat knew, as only Elizabeth’s closest friends knew, that nothing brought on her illness faster than fear.

Outside the door, seated in the presence chamber trying to look as if nothing was wrong, Catherine Knollys, sewing a shirt for her husband, was acutely aware of the empty throne and the waiting court, of the whispers that the queen and Sir Robert had been locked up for half the day and would not come out till dinner time. Catherine kept her head up and her face blank, refusing to reply to people asking what her cousin the queen was doing alone with Sir Robert, refusing to hear the muttered comments.

Mary Sidney, aghast at where her brother’s ambition was taking him, but unswerving in her family loyalty, dined with Catherine Knollys and walked with Kat Ashley, avoiding anyone who might question her as to what Robert Dudley thought he was doing.

The Privy Council, the Lords, any man who was not on Dudley’s payroll, swore that someone would soon run the man through for dishonoring the queen and bringing her name into the gossip of every alehouse in the land. Some said that Thomas Howard, desperately fortifying castles along the northern border and trying to persuade men to enlist, had still found time to send an assassin south to court to kill Dudley and have done with him once and for all. No one could deny that the world would be a better place if Dudley were to be gone. He endangered the realm more than the French. Locked up with the queen in her own rooms, whoever was in with them, whoever was on the door, was to bring the queen into fatal disrepute.

But no one could stop Dudley. When reproached by someone he trusted, like Sir Francis Knollys, he pointed out that the queen’s health would break under her anxiety if he did not comfort her. He reminded any loyal friends that the queen was a young woman all alone in the world. She had no father, no mother, no guardian. She had no one to love her and care for her but himself, her old and trusted friend.

To everyone else he merely gave his impertinent, dark-eyed smile and thanked them sarcastically for their concern for his well-being.

Laetitia Knollys strolled into Cecil’s apartments and took a seat at his desk with all the dignity of a betrothed woman.

“Yes?” Cecil asked.

“She wants him to negotiate a peace with the French,” Laetitia remarked.

Cecil hid his shock. “Are you sure?”

“I am sure that she asked him.” The young woman shrugged her slim shoulders. “I am sure that he said he would see what he could do. Whether she is of the same mind now, I couldn’t say. That was this morning and now it is past noon. When does she ever stay in the same mind for more than two hours?”

“On what terms?” Cecil asked, ignoring Laetitia’s impertinence.

“That they can have Scotland if they will return Calais, and take her coat of arms from the Queen of Scots.”

Cecil compressed his lips on any comment.

“I thought you wouldn’t like it.” Laetitia smiled. “A whole country in exchange for a city. Sometimes she acts as if she is going quite mad. She was crying and clinging to him and asking him to save England for her.”

Oh God, and in front of a girl like you who would tell anyone. “And he said?”

“What he always says: that she is not to fear, that he will care for her, that he will arrange everything.”

“He promised nothing specific? Nothing at once?”

She smiled again. “He’s too clever for that. He knows she’ll change her mind in a moment.”

“You were right to come and tell me,” Cecil said. He reached into the drawer of the desk and, judging by touch, drew out one of the heavier purses. “For a gown.”

“I thank you. It’s extraordinarily expensive, being the best-dressed woman at court.”

“Does the queen not give you her old gowns?” he asked, momentarily curious.

Laetitia gleamed at him. “D’you think she’d risk a comparison?” she asked mischieviously. “When she can’t live without Robert Dudley? When she can’t bear him even to glance at another woman? I wouldn’t put me in one of her old gowns if I was her. I wouldn’t beg the comparison.”

Cecil, at the head of his spy ring, gathering gossip about the queen, hearing rumors that half the country thought her married to Dudley already and the other half thought her dishonored, gathered threatening whispers against the pair as a spider collects the threads of its web and lays its long legs along them, alert for any tremor. He knew that there were tens of men who threatened to drag Dudley to his death, and swore to knife him, hundreds who said they would help, and thousands who would see it happen and not lift a finger to defend him.

Please God someone does it, and soon, and brings an end to this, Cecil whispered to himself, watching Elizabeth and Dudley dining in her rooms before half the court, but whispering together as if they were quite alone, his hand on her leg underneath the table, her eyes fixed on his.

But even Cecil knew that Elizabeth could not rule without Dudley at her side. At this stage in her life—so young and surrounded by so many dangers—she had to have a friend. And although Cecil was willing to be at her side night and day, Elizabeth wanted a confidant: heart and soul. Only a man besottedly in love with her could satisfy Elizabeth’s hunger for reassurance; only a man publicly betraying his wife every moment of every day could satisfy Elizabeth’s ravenous vanity.

“Sir Robert.” Cecil bowed to Dudley as the younger man stepped down from the dais at the end of dinner.

“I am just going to command the musicians, the queen wants to hear a tune I have composed for her,” Sir Robert said negligently, unwilling to pause.

“Then I won’t detain you,” Cecil said. “Has the queen spoken to you about a peace with France at all?”

Dudley smiled. “Not to any effect,” he said. “We both know, sir, that it cannot be. I let her talk, it eases her fears, and then later I explain it to her.”

“I am relieved,” Cecil said politely. You explain, do you? When you and yours know nothing but double-dealing and treason! “Now, Sir Robert, I was drawing up a list of ambassadors to the courts of Europe. I thought we should have some fresh faces, once this war is won. I wondered if you would like to visit France? We could do with a trustworthy man in Paris and Sir Nicholas would like to come home.” He paused. “We would need a man to reconcile them to defeat. And if any man could turn the head of the Queen of France, and seduce her from her duty, it would be you.”

Robert ignored the ambiguous compliment. “Have you spoken to the queen?”

No, Cecil thought, For I know what the answer would be. She cannot let you out of her sight. But if I can persuade you, then you would persuade her. And I could do with a handsome rogue like you to flirt with Mary, Queen of Scots, and spy for us. Aloud, he said: “Not yet. I thought I would ask if it pleased you first.”

Sir Robert gave his most seductive smile. “I think it may not,” he said. “Between the two of us, Sir William, I think that by this time next year I will have another task in the kingdom.”

“Oh?” Cecil said. What does he mean? he thought rapidly. He cannot mean my post? Does she mean to give him Ireland? Or, dear God, she would never put this puppy in charge of the north?

Sir Robert laughed delightedly at Cecil’s puzzled face. “I think you will find me in a very great position,” he said quietly. “Perhaps the greatest in the land, Master Secretary; do you understand me? And if you stand my friend now, I will be your friend then. Do you understand me now?”

And Cecil felt that he lost his balance, as if the floor had opened like a chasm beneath his feet. Finally, he did understand Sir Robert. “You think she will marry you?” he whispered.

Robert smiled, a young man in the confidence of his love. “For certain. If someone doesn’t kill me first.”

Cecil delayed him with a touch to his sleeve. “You mean this? You have asked her and she has agreed?” Stay calm, she never agrees to marriage and means it. She never gives her word and keeps it.

“She asked me herself. It is agreed between us. She cannot bear the burden of the kingdom alone, and I love her and she loves me.” For a moment the blaze of the Dudley ambition was softened in Robert’s face. “I do love her, you know, Cecil. More than you can imagine. I will make her happy. I will devote my life to making her happy.”

Aye, but it is not a matter of love, Cecil thought miserably. She is not a milkmaid; you are not a shepherd boy. You are neither of you free to marry for love. She is Queen of England and you are a married man. If she goes on this way she will be queen in exile and you will be beheaded. Aloud he said: “Is it firmly agreed between you?”

“Only death can stop us.” Dudley smiled.

“Will you come for a ride?” Lizzie Oddingsell invited Amy. “The daffodils are out by the river and they are a beautiful sight. I thought we could ride down and pick some.”

“I’m tired,” Amy said faintly.

“You’ve not been out for days,” Lizzie said.

Amy found a thin smile. “I know, I am a very dull guest.”

“It’s not that! My brother is concerned for your health. Would you like to see our family physician?”

Amy put out her hand to her friend. “You know what is wrong with me. You know that there is no cure. Have you heard anything from the court?”

The guilty evasive slide of Lizzie Oddingsell’s gaze told Amy everything.

“She is not going to marry the archduke? They are together?”

“Amy, people are speaking of their marriage as a certainty. Alice’s cousin, who goes to court, is sure of it. Perhaps you should consider what you will do when he forces a divorce on you.”

Amy was silent. Mrs. Oddingsell did not dare to say anything more.

“I will talk to Father Wilson,” Amy decided.

“Do so!” Mrs. Oddingsell said, relieved of some of the burden of caring for Amy. “Shall I send for him?”

“I’ll walk down to the church,” Amy decided. “I’ll walk down and see him tomorrow morning.”

The garden of the Hyde’s house backed on to the churchyard; it was a pleasant walk down the winding path through the daffodils to the lych-gate, set into the garden wall. Amy opened the gate and went up the path to the church.

Father Wilson was kneeling before the altar, but at the sound of the opening door, he rose to his feet and came down the aisle. When he saw Amy, he checked.

“Lady Dudley.”

“Father, I need to confess my sins and ask your advice.”

“I am not supposed to hear you,” he said. “You are ordered to pray directly to God.”

Blindly, she looked around the church. The beautiful stained-glass windows that had cost the parish so dear were gone, the rood screen pulled down. “What has happened?” she whispered.

“They have taken the stained glass from the window, and the candles, and the cup, and the rood screen.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “They called them Popish entrapments for the soul.”

“Can we talk here then?” Amy gestured to the pew.

“God will hear us here, as anywhere else,” the priest assured her. “Let us kneel down and ask him for his help.”

He rested his head in his hands and prayed for a moment very earnestly that he might find something to say which would comfort this young woman. Having heard some of the gossip from court he knew that the task was beyond his doing; she had been deserted. But God was merciful, perhaps something would come.

Amy knelt with her face buried in her hands and then spoke quietly through the shield of her fingers. “My husband, Sir Robert, proposes to marry the queen,” she said softly. “He tells me that it is her wish. He tells me that she can force a divorce upon me, that she is Pope in England today.”

The priest nodded. “And what did you say, my child?”

Amy sighed. “I am guilty of the sin of anger, and jealousy,” she said. “I was vile and vicious, and I am ashamed of what I said and did.”

“May God forgive you,” the priest said gently. “I am sure you were in great pain.”

She opened her eyes and shot him one dark look. “I am in such pain that I think I will die of it,” she said simply. “I pray to God that he will release me from this pain and take me into his mercy.”

“In his own time,” the priest supplemented.

“No; now,” she said. “Every day, Father, every day is such a misery for me. I keep my eyes shut in the morning in the hope that I have died in the night, but every morning I see daylight and know that it is another day I have to get through.”

“You must put aside thoughts of your own death,” he said firmly.

Surprisingly, Amy gave him the sweetest smile. “Father, it is my only comfort.”

He felt, as he had felt before, that he could not advise a woman confronted with such a dilemma. “God must be your comfort and your refuge,” he said, falling back on the familiar words.

She nodded, as if she were not much convinced. “Should I give my consent to a divorce?” she asked him. “Then he will be free to marry the queen, the scandal will die down in time, the country will be at peace, and I can be forgotten.”

“No,” the priest said decisively. He could not help himself; it was such a deep blasphemy against the church he still served in secret. “God joined you together, no man can put you asunder, even if he is your husband, even if she is the queen. She cannot pretend to be Pope.”

“Then I have to live forever in torment, keeping him as my husband but without his love?”

He paused for a moment. “Yes.”

“Even if it earns me his hatred and her enmity?”

“Yes.”

“Father, she is Queen of England; what might she do to me?”

“God will protect and keep you,” he said with a confidence he could not truly feel.

The queen had summoned Cecil to her privy chamber at Whitehall; Kat Ashley was in one window bay, Robert Dudley behind her desk, a few ladies-in-waiting seated at the fireside. Cecil bowed politely to them before approaching the queen.

“Your Majesty?” he said warily.

“Cecil, I have decided. I want you to sue for peace,” she said rapidly.

His glance flickered to Sir Robert, who smiled wearily but offered no comment.

“The French ambassador tells me that they are sending a special commissioner for peace,” she said. “I want you to meet with Monsieur Randan and find some way, some form of words that we can agree.”

“Your Majesty…”

“We cannot fight a long war in Scotland, the Scots lords will never maintain a long campaign, and Leith Castle is practically impregnable.”

“Your Majesty…”

“Our only hope would be for Mary of Guise to die, and though they say her health is poor, she is nowhere near death. And anyway, they say the same of me! They say that I am ground down by this war, and God knows, it is true!

Cecil heard the familiar tone of hysteria in Elizabeth’s voice and took a step back from her desk.

“Spirit, we must have peace. We cannot afford war, and we surely cannot afford defeat,” she pleaded.

“Certainly I can meet with Monsieur Randan, and see if we can agree,” he said smoothly. “I will draw up some terms and show them to you and then take them to him as he arrives.”

Elizabeth was breathless with her anxiety. “Yes, and arrange a cease-fire as soon as possible.”

“We have to have some sort of victory or they will think we are afraid,” Cecil said. “If they think we are afraid they will advance. I can negotiate with them while we maintain the siege, but we have to continue the siege while we talk, the navy must maintain the blockade.”

“No! Bring the men home!”

“Then we will have achieved nothing,” he pointed out. “And they will not need to make an agreement with us, since they will be able to do as they wish.”

She was out of her seat and striding round the room, restless with anxiety, rubbing at her fingernails. Robert Dudley went behind her and put his arm around her waist, drew her back to her chair, glanced at Cecil.

“The queen is much distressed at the risk to English life,” he said smoothly.

“We are all deeply concerned, but we have to maintain the siege,” Cecil said flatly.

“I am sure the queen would agree to maintain the siege if you were meeting with the French to discuss terms,” Robert said. “I am sure she would see that you need to negotiate from a position of strength. The French need to see that we are in earnest.”

Yes, Cecil thought. But where are you in all of this? Soothing her, I see that, and thank God that someone can do it though I would give a fortune for it not to be you. But what game do you seek to play? There will be a Dudley interest in here, if only I could see it.

“As long as the negotiations go speedily,” the queen said. “This cannot drag on. The sickness alone is killing my troops as they wait before Leith Castle.”

“If you were to go to Newcastle yourself,” Dudley suggested to Cecil. “Take the French emissary with you and negotiate from there, at Norfolk’s headquarters, so that we have them completely under our control.”

“And far away from the Spanish representative, who still seeks to meddle,” Cecil concurred.

“And close enough to Scotland so that they can take instruction from the queen regent, but be distanced from France,” Dudley remarked.

And I shall be far from the queen so she cannot countermand me all the time, Cecil supplemented. Then the thought hit him: Good God! He is sending me to Newcastle too! First her uncle, that he made commander of the Scottish border, and put in the front line of fighting, and now me. What does he think to do while I am gone? Supplant me? Appoint himself to the Privy Council and vote through his divorce? Murder me?

Aloud he said: “I would do it, but I would need an undertaking from Your Majesty.”

Elizabeth looked up at him; he thought he had never seen her so drawn and tired, not even in her girlhood when she had faced death. “What do you want, Spirit?”

“That you promise me that you will be faithful to our long friendship while I am so far from you,” he said steadily. “And that you will undertake no great decision, no alliance, no treaty”—he did not dare even to glance toward Dudley—“no partnership until I come home again.”

She, at least, was innocent of any plot against him. She answered him quickly and honestly. “Of course. And you will try to bring us to peace, won’t you Spirit?”

Cecil bowed. “I will do my very best for you and for England,” he said.

She stretched out her hand for him to kiss. The fingernails were all ragged where she had been picking at them, when he kissed her fingers he felt the torn cuticles prickle his lips. “God bring Your Grace to peace of mind,” he said gently. “I will serve you in Newcastle as I would serve you here. Do you keep faith with me too.”

Cecil’s horses and great train of soldiers, servants, and guards were drawn up before the doors of the palace, the queen herself and the court arrayed to see him off. It was as if she were signaling to him, and to everyone else who would take careful note, that he was not being bundled north to get him out of the way, but being sent off in state and would be badly missed.

He knelt before her on the stone step. “I wanted to speak to you before I left,” he said, his voice very low. “When I came to your presence chamber last night they said you had retired and I could not see you.”

“I was tired,” she said evasively.

“It is about the coinage. And it is important.”

She nodded and he rose to his feet, gave her his arm, and they walked down the palace steps together, out of earshot of his waiting train. “We need to revalue the coin of the realm,” Cecil said quietly. “But it has to be done in utter secret or every beldame in the land will be trading coins away, knowing that they will be no good at the new value.”

“I thought we could never afford it,” Elizabeth said.

“We can’t afford not to do it,” Cecil said. “It has to be done. And I have found a way to borrow gold. We will mint new coins and in one move, overnight, call in the old, weigh them, and replace them with new.”

She did not understand at first. “But people with stocks of coins will not have the fortune they thought they had.”

“Yes,” Cecil said. “It will hurt the people with treasuries, but not the common people. The people with treasuries will squeak but the common people will love us. And the people with treasuries are also merchants and sheep farmers and venturers, they will get good value for the new coins when they trade abroad. They won’t squeak too loud.”

“What about the royal treasury?” she asked, alert at once to her own diminished fortune.

“Your councillor Armagil Waad is dealing with it,” he said. “You have been converting to gold since you came to the throne. We will make the coinage of this country solid once more, and they will call this a golden age.”

Elizabeth smiled at that, as he knew she would.

“But it has to be an utter secret,” he said. “If you tell one person,” and we both know which person it would be “then he would speculate in coins and it would alert everyone who watches him. All his friends would speculate too, they would copy him, even if he did not warn them, and his rivals would want to know why and speculate also. This has to be an utter secret or we cannot do it.”

She nodded.

“If you tell him you will be ruined.”

She did not glance back up the steps at Dudley; she kept her eyes fixed on Cecil.

“Can you keep such a secret?” he asked.

Her dark Boleyn eyes gleamed up at him with all the bright cynicism of her merchant forebears. “Oh, Spirit, you of all people know that I can.”

He bowed, kissed her hand, and turned to mount his horse. “When shall we do it?” she asked him.

“September,” he said. “This year. Pray God we have peace then as well.”

Summer 1560

IT TOOK CECIL and his entourage a week to reach Newcastle from London, riding most of the way on the Great North Road though fine early summer weather. He spent one night at Burghley, his new, beautiful half-built palace. His wife, Mildred, greeted him with her usual steady good humor, and his two children were well.

“Do we have much coin?” he asked her over dinner.

“No,” she said. “When the queen came to the throne you told me that we should not save coin and since then it’s easy to see that matters have got even worse. I keep as little as possible. I take rent in kind or in goods wherever I can, the coin is so bad.”

“That’s good,” he said. He knew that he need say no more. Mildred might live in a remote area but there was not much happening in the country and in the city that she did not know of. Her kin were the greatest Protestants in the land; she came from the formidably intelligent Protestant Cheke family, and constant letters of news, opinion, and theology passed from one great house to another.

“Is everything well here?” he asked. “I would give a king’s ransom to stay and see the builders.”

“Would it cost a royal ransom for you to be late in Scotland?” she asked shrewdly.

“Yes,” he said. “I am on grave business, wife.”

“Will we win?” she asked bluntly.

Cecil paused before replying. “I wish I could be sure,” he said. “But there are too many players and I cannot know the cards they hold. We have good men on the border now; Lord Grey is reliable and Thomas Howard is as fiery as ever. But the Protestant lords are a mixed bunch and John Knox is a liability.”

“A man of God,” she said sharply.

“Certainly he acts as if divinely inspired,” he said mischieviously, and saw her smile.

“You have to stop the French?”

“Or we are lost,” he concurred. “I’d take any ally.”

Mildred poured him a glass of wine and said no more. “It’s good to have you here,” she remarked. “When all this is over perhaps you can come home?”

“Perhaps,” he said. “Hers is not a light service.”

The next morning, Cecil had broken his fast and was ready to leave at dawn. His wife was up to see him off.

“You take care in Scotland,” she said as she kissed him farewell. “I know that there are Protestant rogues as well as Papist ones.”

They made good time to Newcastle, arriving in the first week in June, and Cecil found Thomas Howard in good spirits, confident of the strength of the border castles, and determined that there should be no peace negotiations to cede what a battle might win.

“We are here with an army,” he complained to Cecil. “Why would we bring an army if we are just going to make peace?”

“She thinks that Leith will never fall,” Cecil said shrewdly. “She thinks this is a battle that the French will win.”

“We can defeat them!” Norfolk exclaimed. “We can defeat them and then open negotiations for peace. They can ask us for terms when they are beaten.”

Cecil settled down to the long process of negotiating with the French commissioner for peace, Monsieur Randan. At once Thomas Howard drew Cecil to one side to object to the French entourage.

“Cecil, half the so-called courtiers in his train are engineers,” he said. “I don’t want them looking over our dispositions and checking out the walls of the castle here and at Edinburgh. If you give them free rein they will see everything I have done here. The other half are spies. As they travel to Edinburgh and Leith, they will meet with their agents and their news will go straight back to France. Randan has to negotiate on his own word; he can’t go galloping up to the queen regent at Leith and back every other day, seeing God knows what and talking to God knows who.”

But Monsieur Randan was obdurate. He had to take instructions from Mary of Guise herself, and he could offer no peace proposals, nor answer the English proposals, without speaking with her. He had to go to Edinburgh, and he had to have safe conduct through the siege lines into Leith Castle.

“Might as well draw him a map,” Thomas Howard said irritably. “Invite him to call in at every damned Papist house on the way.”

“He has to see his master,” Cecil remarked reasonably. “He has to put our proposals to her.”

“Aye, and she is the one who is our greatest danger,” Thomas Howard declared. “He is nothing more than her mouthpiece. She is a great politician. She will stay holed up in that castle forever if she can and prevent us from talking with the French. She will get between us and them. If we let Randan speak with her she will order him to ask for one thing and then another; she will agree and then withdraw, she will hold us here until the autumn, and then the weather will destroy us.”

“Do you think so?” Cecil asked anxiously.

“I am sure of it. Already the Scots are slipping away, and every day we lose men to disease. When the hot weather comes we can expect the plague and when the cold weather comes we will be destroyed by the ague. We have to move now, Cecil, we cannot let them delay us with false offers of peace.”

“Move how?”

“Move the siege. We have to break in. No matter what it costs. We have to shock them to the treaty.”

Cecil nodded. Yes, but I have seen your plans for the siege, he said to himself. It calls for phenomenal luck, extraordinary courage, and meticulous generalship, and the English army has none of these. You are right only in your fear: if Mary of Guise sits tight within Leith Castle we will be destroyed by time, and the French can occupy Scotland and the north of England at their leisure. You are right that the French have to be frightened into peace.

Elizabeth was too weary to dress properly. Robert was admitted to her privy chamber as she sat with her women wearing a robe over her nightgown, with her hair in a careless plait down her back.

Kat Ashley, normally an anxious guardian of Elizabeth’s reputation, admitted Robert without a word of complaint. Elizabeth’s longstanding friend and advisor Thomas Parry was in the room already. Elizabeth settled herself in the window seat and gestured to Robert to sit beside her.

“Are you ill, my love?” he asked tenderly.

Her eyes were shadowed so darkly that she looked like a defeated bare-knuckle fighter. “Just tired,” she said. Even her lips were pale.

“Here, drink this,” Kat Ashley offered, pressing a cup of hot mead into her hand.

“Any news from Cecil?”

“None, yet. I am afraid they will attempt the castle again; my uncle is so hasty, and Lord Grey so determined. I wanted Cecil to promise me a cease-fire while the French commissioner was in the north, but he said that we must keep up the threat…” She broke off, her throat tight with anxiety.

“He is right,” Thomas Parry said quietly.

Robert pressed her hand. “Drink it while it is hot,” he said. “Go on, Elizabeth.”

“It’s worse than that,” she said, obediently taking a sip. “We have no money. I can’t pay the troops if they stay in the field another week. And then what will happen? If they mutiny we will be destroyed; if they try to make their own way home with no money in their pockets they will pillage from the border to London. And then the French will march freely behind them.”

She broke off again. “Oh, Robert, it has all gone so terribly wrong. I have ruined everything that was left to me. Not even my half-sister Mary failed this country as I have done.”

“Hush,” he said, taking her hand and pressing it to his heart. “None of this is true. If you need money I will raise it for you; there are lenders we can go to, I promise it. We will pay the troops, and Howard and Grey will not attack without a chance of winning. If you want, I’ll go north, and look for you, see what is happening.”

At once she clutched his hand. “Don’t leave me,” she said. “I can’t bear to wait without you at my side. Don’t leave me, Robert; I can’t live without you.”

“My love,” he said softly. “I am yours to command. I will go or stay as you wish. And I always love you.”

She raised her head a little from the gold cup and gave him a fugitive smile.

“There,” he said. “That’s better. And in a moment you must go and put on a pretty gown and I will take you riding.”

She shook her head. “I can’t ride; my hands are too sore.”

She held out her hands to show him. The cuticles all around the nails were red and bleeding, and the knuckles were fat and swollen. Robert took the hurt hands into his own and looked around at Kat Ashley.

“She has to rest,” she said. “And not worry so. She is tearing herself apart.”

“Well, you wash your hands and cream them, my love,” Robert said, hiding his shock. “And then put on a pretty gown and come and sit with me by the fire, and we shall have some music and you can rest and I will talk to you about my horses.”

She smiled, like a child being promised a treat. “Yes,” she said. “And if there is a message from Scotland…”

Robert raised his hand. “Not one word about Scotland. If there is news, they will bring it to us as quickly as they can. We have to learn the art of patiently waiting. Come on, Elizabeth, you know all about waiting. I have seen you wait like a master. You must wait for news as you waited for the crown. Of all the women in the world you are the most elegant waiter.”

She giggled at that, her whole face lighting up.

“Now that’s true,” Thomas Parry agreed. “Ever since she was a girl she could keep quiet and judge her moment.”

“Good,” Dudley said. “Now you go and get dressed, and be quick.”

Elizabeth obeyed him, as if he were her husband to command, and she had never been Queen of England. Her ladies went past him with their eyes down, all except for Laetitia Knollys, who swept him a curtsy as she went past, a deep curtsy, one appropriate from a young lady-in-waiting to a king in waiting. There was not much that Laetitia ever missed about Lord Robert.

Newcastle,

June 7th 1560

1. Assassination is a disagreeable tool of statecraft but there are occasions when it should be considered.

2. For instance when the death of one person is to the benefit of many lives.

3. The death of one enemy can be to the benefit of many friends.

4. In the case of a king or queen, a death which appears accidental is better than a defeat of that king or queen which might encourage others to think of rebellion in future.

5. She is, in any case, elderly and in poor health. Death will be a release for her.

6. I would advise you to discuss this with no one. There is no need to reply to this.

Cecil sent the letter unsigned and unsealed by special messenger to be delivered to the queen’s hand. There was no need to wait for any reply; he knew that Elizabeth would take any crime on her flexible conscience to get her army home.

The whole court, the whole world, waited for the news from Scotland, and still it only came in unrevealing snippets. Cecil’s letters, arriving always at least three days old, told Elizabeth that he and the French envoy were planning to travel together to Edinburgh, as soon as the details of the French train could be agreed. He wrote that he was hopeful of agreement once Monsieur Randan, the French emissary for peace, could get instructions from Mary of Guise. He wrote that he knew Elizabeth would be anxious about the soldiers, and about the stores, about their arrears of pay, and about their conditions, but that he would report on all of that when he had met with Lord Grey in Edinburgh. She would have to wait for news.

They would all have to wait.

“Robert, I cannot bear this alone,” Elizabeth whispered to him. “I am breaking down. I can feel myself breaking down.”

He was walking with her in the long gallery, past the portraits of her father and her grandfather, and the other great monarchs of Europe. Mary of Guise’s portrait glared down at them. Elizabeth had kept it in a place of honor in the hopes of confusing the French about her feelings toward the queen regent who had brought so much trouble to the kingdom and so much danger to Elizabeth.

“You need not bear it alone. You have me.”

She paused in her stride and snatched at his hand. “You swear it? You will never leave me?”

“You know how much I love you.”

She gave an abrupt laugh. “Love! I saw my father love my cousin to desperation and then he ordered her execution. Thomas Seymour swore he loved me and I let him go to his death and never lifted a finger to save him. They came and asked me what I thought of him, and I said nothing in his favor. Not one word. I was an absolute traitor to my love for him. I need more than a promise of love, Robert. I have no reason to trust sweet promises.”

He paused for a moment. “If I was free, I would marry you today.”

“But you are not!” she cried out. “Again and again we come to this. You say that you love me and that you would marry but you cannot, and so I am alone and have to stay alone, and I cannot bear being alone anymore.”

“Wait,” he said, thinking furiously. “There is a way. There is. I could prove my love to you. We could be betrothed. We could make a betrothal de futuro.”

“A binding promise to wed in public when you are free,” she breathed.

“An oath as binding as the marriage vow,” he reminded her. “One that swears us to each other as surely as marriage. So when I am free, all we do is declare publicly what we have done in private.”

“And you will be my husband, and be always at my side, and never leave me,” she whispered hungrily, stretching out her hand to his. Without hesitation he took it and clasped it in his own.

“Let’s do it now,” Robert whispered. “Right now. In your chapel. With witnesses.”

For a moment he thought he had gone too far and she would withdraw in fear. But she glanced around at the court that was languidly chattering, only half an eye on her strolling with her constant companion.

“Kat, I am going to pray for our troops in Scotland,” she called to Mrs. Ashley. “None of you need come with me but Catherine and Sir Francis. I want to be alone.”

The ladies curtsyed; the gentlemen bowed. Catherine and Francis Knollys followed Elizabeth and Robert as, arm in arm, they went quickly along the gallery together and down the broad flight of stone stairs to the Royal Chapel.

The place was in shadowy silence, empty but for an altar boy polishing the chancel rail.

“You. Out,” Elizabeth said briefly.

“Elizabeth?” Catherine queried.

Elizabeth turned to her cousin, her face alight with joy. “Will you witness our betrothal?” she asked her.

“Betrothal?” Sir Francis repeated, looking at Sir Robert.

“A de futuro betrothal, a pledge to publish our marriage later,” Sir Robert said. “It is the queen’s dearest wish and mine.”

“And what of your wife?” Sir Francis said in a half whisper to Sir Robert.

“She will have a generous settlement,” he replied. “But we want to do this now. Will you be our witnesses or not?”

Catherine and her husband looked at each other. “This is a binding vow,” Catherine said uncertainly. She looked at her husband for guidance.

“We will be your witnesses,” he said; and then he and Catherine silently stood on either side of the queen and her lover as the two of them turned to the altar.

Elizabeth’s Papist candlesticks and crucifix twinkled in the lights of a dozen candle flames. Elizabeth sank to her knees, her eyes on the crucifix, and Robert knelt down beside her.

She turned to face him. “With this ring, I thee wed,” she said. She took her signet ring, her Tudor rose signet ring, off her fourth finger, and held it out to him.

He took it and tried it on his little finger. To their delight it slid on as if it had been made for him. He took off his own ring, the one he used to seal his letters, his father’s ring with the ragged staff and the bear of the Dudley family.

“With this ring I thee wed,” he said. “From today and this day forth I am your betrothed husband.”

Elizabeth took his ring and slid it on her wedding finger. It fitted perfectly. “From today and this day forth I am your betrothed wife,” she whispered. “And I will be bonny and blithe at bed and board.”

“And I will love no one but you till death us do part,” he swore.

“Till death us do part,” she repeated.

Her dark eyes were luminous with tears; when she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips they brimmed over. His memory of that afternoon would always be of the warmth of her lips and the saltiness of her tears.

They feasted that night, and called for music, danced and were merry for the first time in many days. No one knew why Elizabeth and Robert should suddenly be so filled with joy, no one but Catherine and Francis Knollys; and they had withdrawn to their private rooms. Despite the good cheer Elizabeth said she wanted to go early to bed, and she giggled as she said it.

Obediently, the court withdrew, the ladies escorted the queen to her privy chamber and the little traditions of the queen’s bedding began: the ritual thrusting of the sword into her bed, the warming of her nightgown, the mulling of her ale.

There was a quiet tap at the door. Elizabeth nodded that Laetitia should open it.

Cecil’s servant stood there. Mutely he showed a letter. When Laetitia reached for it he twitched it away from her hand. She raised her eyebrows in a fair mimicry of Elizabeth’s impatience and stepped back.

Elizabeth came forward to take it. He bowed.

“How long did it take you to get here?” Elizabeth asked. “How old is this news?”

“Three days, Your Grace,” the man said with another bow. “We have horses waiting down the Great North Road, and my lord has us riding in relays for speed. We’ve got it down to three days. You won’t find anyone gets any news faster than you.”

“Thank you,” Elizabeth said and waved him away. Laetitia shut the door on him and went to stand at Elizabeth’s shoulder.

“You, step back,” Elizabeth said.

Laetitia retreated as Elizabeth broke the seal and spread the letter on her writing table. She had the code locked in a drawer. She started to decode Cecil’s analysis of the use of assassination, then she sat back and smiled as she understood that he was telling her, in his oblique way, that the French were about to lose their outstanding political leader in Scotland.

“Good news?” Laetitia Knollys asked.

“Yes,” Elizabeth said shortly. “I think so.” Bad news for the young Queen of Scots who will lose her mother, she thought. But some of us have had to live without a mother for all our lives. Let her know what it is like to be alone. Let her know that she has to fight for her kingdom as I have had to fight for mine. There will be no pity for the Queen of Scots from me.

As soon as the women had withdrawn, and Elizabeth’s companion was asleep, she rose up from the bed, combed out her hair, and unlocked the secret door between the adjoining rooms. Robert was waiting for her, the table laid for supper, the fire lit. He was struck at once that the color was back in her cheeks, the smile on her lips, and took all the credit for himself.

“You look better,” he said, taking her in his arms and kissing her. “Marriage suits you.”

“I feel better.” She smiled. “I feel as if I am not alone anymore.”

“You are not alone,” he promised her. “You have a husband to take the burden for you. You will never be alone again.”

She gave a little sigh of relief and let him draw her to a seat before the fire, and accepted a glass of wine that he poured for her. I will not be alone, she thought. And Mary, Queen of Scots, will be an orphan.

Cecil and Monsieur Randan could apparently agree on nothing, not even on the arrangements for their journey to Edinburgh from Newcastle. Thomas Howard demanded that Monsieur Randan’s train be reduced before he travel through the borders, but the French emissary bore himself like a man who knew he was negotiating a victory for his country, and would compromise on nothing.

Although Mary of Guise was under siege in a largely hostile country, it was taking the might of the entire English army to hold her in Leith Castle, and the entire English navy was at anchor in the Firth of Forth supplying the troops. The French, however, had massive reserves and a massive treasury that could be deployed against England. The possibility of an attack on the southern ports while all the English manpower was tied up in Scotland woke Cecil most nights and sent him prowling around the battlements of Newcastle, certain that the siege must be ended, and ended soon.

For all his urbane calm in front of the French emissary, Cecil knew that he was playing for the very survival of England against near-impossible odds.

As soon as they were ready to leave for Edinburgh Monsieur Randan sent to Leith Castle to announce that they would call upon the regent for instructions within the week. The messenger reported back that Mary of Guise was ill with dropsy, but she would see the French commissioner, and she would give him his instructions as to the settlement.

“I think you will find that you have a hard negotiator to deal with,” Monsieur Randan said, smiling at Cecil. “She is a Guise herself, you know, born and bred. She will not be disposed to hand over her daughter’s kingdom to invaders.”

“All we require is an agreement that French troops will not occupy Scotland,” Cecil said levelly. “We are not the invaders here. On the contrary. We are defending the Scots against invasion.”

Monsieur Randan shrugged his shoulders. “Ah, bah! What can I say? The Queen of Scotland is the Queen of France. I suppose she can send her servants wherever she wishes in her two kingdoms. France and Scotland are one and the same to our queen. Your queen commands her servants to do as she wishes, does she not?” He broke off with an affected laugh. “Oh! Except her Master of Horse, we hear, who seems to command her.”

Cecil’s pleasant smile did not falter at the insult. “We have to secure an agreement that the French troops will leave Scotland,” he repeated quietly. “Or nothing can prevent the continuation of a war which will be damaging to both England and France.”

“Whatever Her Majesty desires of me,” Monsieur Randan declared. “I am commanded to see her tomorrow when we reach Edinburgh and she will tell me what is to be done, and I think you will find that you have to do it.”

Cecil bowed his agreement as a man forced into a position that he could not defend, by an enemy with the upper hand.

But Monsieur Randan never met the regent, never received his instructions, never came back to Cecil with a refusal. For that night, Mary of Guise died.

In the middle of June came the news from Scotland that Elizabeth had been expecting for a sennight. Every day she had dressed in an ornate gown, seated herself under the cloth of estate, and waited for someone to tell her that a travel-stained messenger from Cecil had just now ridden into court. Finally, it happened. Robert Dudley escorted the man into her presence through a buzz of courtiers.

Elizabeth opened the letter and read it; casually, Dudley stood behind her, like a second monarch, and read it over her shoulder as of right.

“Good God,” he said, when he reached the part where Cecil told the queen that Mary of Guise had suddenly died. “Good God, Elizabeth. You have the luck of the devil.”

The color flooded into her face. She raised her head and smiled at her court. “See how we are blessed,” she announced. “Mary of Guise has died of dropsy; the French are in disarray. Cecil writes to me that he has started work on a treaty to bring peace between our two nations.”

There was a little scream from one of the ladies whose brother was serving with Lord Grey, and a ripple of applause that spread through the court. Elizabeth rose to her feet. “We have defeated the French,” she announced. “God himself has struck down our enemy Mary of Guise. Let others be warned. God is on our side.”

Aye, said Robert to himself, drawing close to the victorious queen and taking her hand so the two of them faced the court at this moment of triumph. But who would have thought that God’s chosen instrument would be a little weasel like William Cecil?

Elizabeth turned to him, her eyes shining. “Is it not a miracle?” she whispered.

“I see the hand of man, I see the hand of an assassin, more than the hand of God,” he said, narrowly watching her.

She did not flicker, and in that moment he understood that she had known everything. She had been waiting for the news of the regent’s death, waiting with foreknowledge, probably since their wedding day when she had begun to look at peace again. And she could only have been prepared by Cecil.

“No, Robert,” she said steadily. “Cecil writes to me that she died of her illness. It is a miracle indeed that her death should be so timely. God save her soul.”

“Oh, amen,” he said.

The warmer weather in July agreed with Amy and she made the effort to walk in the garden at Denchworth, every day. Still she did not hear from Robert as to where she should go next, still the puzzle as to what she should do continued to haunt her.

One of Alice Hyde’s children had come back from the wet nurse and the toddler took a liking to her. He held up his little chubby arms to her to be lifted up, and shouted “Me-me!” whenever he saw her.

“Amy,” she said with a little smile. “Can you say Amy?”

“Me-me,” he repeated seriously.

Amy, childless and lonely, responded to the warmth of the boy, carried him on her hip, sang into his warm little ear, told him stories, and let him sleep on her bed during the day.

“She has taken to him,” Alice said approvingly to her husband. “She would have been such a good mother if she had been blessed with children; it does seem a shame that she will never have a child of her own.”

“Aye,” he said dourly.

“And little Thomas likes her,” she said. “He asks for her all the time. He prefers her to any other.”

He nodded. “Then that child is the only person in England who does so.”

“Now,” Robert said with pleasure, walking with Elizabeth in the cool of the July morning beside the river. “I have some news for you. Better news from Scotland than you have heard for a long time.”

“What news?” At once she was on the alert. Cecil’s man said that no one could get news quicker than me. What news can Robert have that I do not know?

“I keep a couple of servants in Newcastle and Edinburgh,” he said casually. “One of them came to my house this afternoon and told me that Cecil is confident of bringing the French to an agreement. His servant told my servant that Cecil wrote to his wife to expect him home in the middle of this month. Given that Cecil would never leave his work unfinished, we can be sure that he is confident of completing the treaty very soon.”

“Why has he not written to me?” she demanded, instantly jealous.

Robert shrugged. “Perhaps he wants to be sure before he speaks to you? But, Elizabeth…”

“He wrote to his wife, before he wrote to me?”

Her lover smiled. “Elizabeth, not all men are as devoted as me. But this is such good news, I thought you would be delighted.”

“You think he has made a settlement?”

“I am sure he has one in sight. My servant suggested that he will have it signed and sealed by the sixth.”

“In three days’ time?” she gasped. “So soon?”

“Why not? Once the queen was dead he had only servants to deal with.”

“What d’you think he has achieved? He will not have settled for less than a French withdrawal.”

“He must have a French withdrawal, and he should have gained the return of Calais.”

She shook her head. “They will promise to talk about Calais; they would never return it just for the asking.”

“I thought it was one of your demands?”

“Oh, I demanded it,” she said. “But I didn’t expect to win it.”

“We should have it back,” Robert said stubbornly. “I lost a brother at St. Quentin; I nearly lost my own life before the walls of Calais. The blood of good Englishmen went into that canal, the canal that we dug and fortified. It is as much an English town as Leicester. We should have it back.”

“Oh, Robert…”

“We should,” he insisted. “If he has settled for anything less, then he has done us a great disservice. And I shall tell him so. And, what is more, if we do not have Calais, then he has not secured a lasting peace, since we will have to go to war for it as soon as the men are home from Scotland.”

“He knows that Calais matters to us,” she said weakly. “But we would not go to war for it…”

“Matters!” Robert slammed his fist on the river wall. “Calais matters as much as Leith Castle, perhaps more. And your coat of arms, Elizabeth! The Queen of France has to give up quartering our arms on her shield. And they should pay us.”

“Pay?” she asked, suddenly attending.

“Of course,” he said. “They have been the aggressor. They should pay us for forcing us to defend Scotland. We have emptied the treasury of England to defend against them. They should compensate us for that.”

“They never would. Would they?”

“Why not?” he demanded. “They know that they are in the wrong. Cecil is bringing them to a settlement. He has them on the run. This is the time to hit them hard, while we have them at a disadvantage. He must gain us Scotland, Calais, our arms, and a fine.”

Elizabeth caught his mood of certainty. “We could do this!”

“We must do this,” he confirmed. “Why go to war if not to win? Why make peace if not to gain the spoils of war? Nobody goes to war just to defend, they go to make things better. Your father knew that, he never came away from a peace without a profit. You must do the same.”

“I shall write to him tomorrow,” she decided.

“Write now,” Robert said. “He has to get the letter at once, before he signs away your rights.”

For a moment she hesitated.

“Write now,” he repeated. “It will take three days to get there at the fastest. You must get it to him before he completes the treaty. Write while it is fresh in our minds, and then the business of state is finished and we can be ourselves again.”

“Ourselves?” she asked with a little smile.

“We are newly wed,” he reminded her softly. “Write your proclamation, my queen, and then come to your husband.”

She glowed with pleasure at his words and together they turned back to Whitehall Palace. He led her through the court to her rooms and stood behind her as she sat at her writing table, and raised her pen. “What should I write?”

She waits to write to my dictation, Robert rejoiced silently to himself. The Queen of England writes my words, just as her brother took my father’s dictation. Thank God this day has come, and come through love.

“Write in your own words, as you would usually write to him,” he recommended. The last thing I want is for him to hear my voice in her letter. “Just tell him that you demand that the French leave Scotland, you demand the return of Calais, the surrender of your coat of arms, and a fine.”

She bowed her bronze head and wrote. “How much of a fine?”

“Five hundred thousand crowns,” he said, picking the number at random.

Elizabeth’s head jolted up. “They would never pay that!”

“Of course they won’t. They will pay the first installment perhaps and then cheat on the rest. But it tells them the price we set on their interference with our kingdoms. It tells them that we value ourselves highly.”

She nodded. “But what if they refuse?”

“Then tell him he is to break the negotiations off and go to war,” Robert declared. “But they won’t refuse. Cecil will win them to this agreement if he knows you are determined. This is a signal to him to come home with a great prize, and a signal to the French that they dare not meddle with our affairs again.”

She nodded and signed it with a flourish. “I will send it this afternoon,” she said.

“Send it now,” he ordered. “Time is of the essence. He has to have this before he concedes any of our demands.”

For a moment she hesitated. “As you wish.”

She turned to Laetitia. “Send one of the maids for one of the Lord Secretary’s messengers,” she said. She turned back to Robert. “As soon as I have sent this, I should like to go riding.”

“Is it not too hot for you?”

“Not if we go straightaway. I feel as if I have been cooped up here in Whitehall for a lifetime.”

“Shall I have them saddle the new mare?”

“Oh, yes!” she said, pleased. “I shall meet you at the stables, as soon as I have sent this.”

He watched her sign and seal it and only then did he bow, kiss her hand, and saunter to the door. The courtiers parted before him, doffing their caps, many bowed. Robert walked like a king from the room and Elizabeth watched him leave.

The girl came down the gallery with the messenger following her, and brought him to Elizabeth, where she stood watching Robert stroll away. As he drew near, Elizabeth turned into a window bay, the sealed letter in her hand, and spoke to him so quietly that no one else could hear.

“I want you to take this letter to your master in Edinburgh,” she said quietly. “But you are not to start today.”

“No? Your Grace?”

“Nor tomorrow. But take it the day after. I want the letter delayed by at least three days. Do you understand?”

He bowed. “As you wish, Your Grace.”

“You will tell everyone, very loudly and clearly, that you are setting off at once with a message for Sir William Cecil, and that he should have it the day after tomorrow since you can now get letters to Edinburgh within three days.”

He nodded; he had been in Cecil’s service too long to be surprised at any double dealing. “Shall I leave London as if I were going at once, and hide on the road?”

“That’s right.”

“What day do you want him to have it?”

The queen thought for a moment. “What is today? The third? Put it into his hands on July the ninth.”

The servant tucked the letter in his doublet and bowed. “Shall I tell my master that it was delayed?”

“You can do. It won’t matter by then. I don’t want him distracted from his work by this letter. His work will be completed by then, I hope.”

Edinburgh

July 4th 1560 To the queen The queen regent is dead but the siege is still holding, though the spirit has gone out of them.

I have found a form of words which they can agree: it is that the French king and queen will grant freedom to the Scots as a gift, as a result of your intercession as a sister monarch, and remove their troops. So we have won everything we wanted at the very last moment and by the merciful intercession of God.

This will be the greatest victory of your reign and the foundation of the peace and strength of the united kingdoms of this island. It has broken the Auld Alliance between France and Scotland forever. It has identified you as the protector of Protestantism. I am more relieved and happy than I have ever been in my life.

God bless you and your seed, for neither peace nor war without this will profit us long, William Cecil, dated this day, the fourth of July, in Edinburgh Castle, 1560.

Cecil, having averted war, broken the alliance of the French with the Scots, and identified Elizabeth as Europe’s newest and most daring power player, was walking in the cool of the evening in the little garden of Edinburgh castle and admiring the planting of the small bay trees and the intricate patterns of the colored stones.

His servant hesitated at the top of the steps, trying to see his master in the dusk. Cecil raised his hand and the man came toward him.

“A letter from Her Majesty.”

Cecil nodded and took it, but did not open it at once. She knew he was near to settlement, this would be a letter thanking him for his services, promising him her love and his reward. She knew, as no one else knew, that England had been on a knife edge of disaster with this war in Scotland. She knew, as no one else knew, that no one could have won them a peace but Cecil.

Cecil sat on the garden bench and looked up at the great gray walls of the castle, at the swooping bats, at the early stars coming out, and knew himself to be content. Then he opened his letter from the queen.

For a moment he sat quite still, reading the letter, and then rereading it over and over again. She has run mad, was his first thought. She has run mad with the worry and distress of this war and now she has gone as war-hungry as she was fearful before. Good God, how can a man make any sense of his life when he is working for a woman who can blow hot and cold in a second, never mind in a day.

Good God, how can a man make a lasting peace, an honorable peace, when the monarch can suddenly call for extra settlement after the treaty has been signed? The return of Calais? The coat of arms? And now a fine? Why not ask for the stars in the sky? Why not ask for the moon?

And what is this, at the end of the letter? To break off negotiations if these objects cannot be achieved? And, in God’s name: do what? Make war with a bankrupt army, with the heat of summer coming? Let the French recall their troops to battle stations, who are even now packing to leave?

Cecil scrunched the queen’s letter into a ball, dropped it to the ground, and kicked it as hard as he could, over the tiny ornamental hedge into the center of the knot garden.

Madwoman! he swore at it, though still he did not say a word out loud. Feckless, vain, extravagant, willful woman. God help me that I ever thought you the savior of your country. God help me that I ever put my skills at your crazed service when I would have been better off planting my own garden at Burghley and never dancing attendance at your mad, vain court.

He raged for a few moments more, walking backward and forward before the balled-up letter, discarded in the knot garden, then, because documents were both a treasure and a danger, he stepped over the little hedge and retrieved it, smoothed it out, and reread it.

Then he saw two things that he had missed at the first reading. Firstly the date. She had dated it the third of July but it had arrived five days after the treaty had been signed and peace proclaimed. It had taken far too long to arrive. It had taken double the journey time. It had come too late to influence events. Cecil turned for his messenger.

“Ho! Lud!”

“Yes, Sir William?”

“Why did this take six days to reach me? It is dated the third. It should have been here three days ago.”

“It was the queen’s own wish, sir. She said she did not want you troubled with the letter until your business had been done. She told me to leave London and go into hiding for three days, to give the impression to the court that I had set out at once. It was her order, sir. I hope I did right.”

“Of course you did right in obeying the queen,” Cecil growled.

“She said she did not want you distracted by this letter,” the man volunteered. “She said she wanted it to arrive when your work was completed.”

Thoughtfully, Cecil nodded the man away.

What? he demanded of the night sky. What, in the devil’s name, what?

The night sky made no reply, a small cloud drifted by like a gray veil.

Think, Cecil commanded himself. In the afternoon, say; in the evening, say; in a temper, she makes a great demand of me. She has done that before, God knows. She wants everything: Calais, her arms restored to her sole use, peace, and five hundred thousand crowns. Badly advised (by that idiot Dudley for example) she could think all that possible, all that her due. But she is no fool, she has a second thought, she knows she is in the wrong. But she has sworn before witnesses that she will ask for all these things. So she writes the letter she promises them, signs and seals it before them but secretly she delays it on the road, she makes sure that I do the business, that peace is achieved, before she lays an impossible demand upon me.

So she has made an unreasonable demand, and I have done a great piece of work and we have both done what we should do. Queen and servant, madam and man. And then, to make sure that her interfering gesture is nothing more than an interfering gesture, without issue: she says that if her letter arrives too late (and she has ensured that it will arrive too late) I may disregard her instructions.

He sighed. Well and good. And I have done my duty, and she has done her pleasure, and no harm is done to the peace except my joy in it, and my anticipation that she would be most glad, most grateful to me, is quite gone.

Cecil tucked her letter into the pocket inside his jacket. Not a generous mistress, he said quietly to himself. Or at any rate not to me, though clearly she will write a letter and delay it and lie about it to please another. There is not a king in Christendom or in the infidel lands who has a better servant than I have been to her, and she rewards me with this… This trap.

Not really like her, he grumbled quietly to himself, walking toward the steps to the castle doorway. An ungenerous spirit, to distress me so at the moment of my triumph, and she is not usually ungenerous. He paused. But perhaps badly advised.

He paused again. Robert Dudley, he remarked confidentially to the steps as he set his well-shined shoe on the first paving stone. Robert Dudley, I would wager my life on it. Begrudging my success, and wishing to diminish it in her eyes. Wanting more, always more than can reasonably be granted. Ordering her to write a letter filled with impossible demand and then she writing it to please him but delaying it so as to save the peace. He paused once more. A foolish woman to take such a risk to please a man, he concluded.

Then he paused in his progress again as the worst thought came to him. But why would she let him go so far as to dictate her letters to me, on the greatest matter of policy we have ever faced? When he is not even a member of the Privy Council? When he is nothing but her Master of Horse? While I have been so far away, what advantages has he taken? What progress has he made? Dear God, what power does he have over her now?

Cecil’s letter proclaiming the peace of Scotland was greeted by Elizabeth’s court, led by Robert, with sour thanksgiving. It was good, but it was not good enough, Robert implied; and the court, with one eye on the queen and the other on her favorite, concurred.

The leading members of the Privy Council grumbled among themselves that Cecil had done a remarkable job and looked to have small thanks for it. “A month ago and she would have fallen on his neck if he could have got peace after only three months’ war,” Throckmorton said sourly. “She would have made him an earl for getting peace within six weeks. Now he has done it within a day of getting to Edinburgh and she has no thanks for him. That’s women for you.”

“It’s not the woman who is ungrateful, it is her lover,” Sir Nicholas Bacon said roundly. “But who will tell her? And who will challenge him?”

There was a complete silence.

“Not I, at any rate,” Sir Nicholas said comfortably. “Cecil will have to find a solution to this when he comes home. For surely to God, matters cannot go on like this for very much longer. It is a scandal, which is bad enough, but it leaves her as something and nothing. Neither wife nor maid. How is she to get a son when the only man she sees is Robert Dudley?”

“Perhaps she’ll get Dudley’s son,” someone said quietly at the back.

Someone swore at the suggestion; another man rose up abruptly and quitted the room.

“She will lose her throne,” another man said firmly. “The country won’t have him, the Lords won’t have him, the Commons won’t have him, and d’you know, my lords, I damned well won’t have him.”

There was a swift mutter of agreement, then someone said warningly, “This is near to treason.”

“No, it isn’t,” Francis Bacon insisted. “All anyone has ever said is that they wouldn’t accept Dudley as king. Well and good. There’s no treason in that since he will never be king, there is no possibility of it in our minds. And Cecil will have to come home to see how to make sure there is no possibility of it in his mind too.”

The man who knew himself to be King of England in all but name was in the stable yard inspecting the queen’s hunter. She had ridden so little that the horse had been exercised by a groom and Dudley wanted to be sure that the lad was as gentle on the horse’s valuable mouth as he would have been himself. While he softly pulled the horse’s ears and felt the velvet of her mouth Thomas Blount came up behind him and quietly greeted him. “Good morning, sir.”

“Good morning, Blount,” Robert said quietly.

“Something odd I thought you should know.”

“Yes?” Robert did not turn his head. No one looking at the two men would have thought they were concerned with anything but horse care.

“I came across a shipment of gold last night, smuggled in from the Spanish, shipped by Sir Thomas Gresham of Antwerp.”

“Gresham?” Dudley asked, surprised.

“His servant on board, bristling with knives, sick with worry,” Blount described.

“Gold for who?”

“For the treasury,” Blount said. “Small coins, bullion, all shapes and sizes. My man, who helped unload, said there was word that it was for minting into new coin, to pay the troops. I thought you might like to know. It was about three thousand pounds’ worth, and there has been more before and will be more next week.”

“I do like to know,” Robert confirmed. “Knowledge is coin.”

“Then I hope the coin is Gresham’s gold,” Blount quipped. “And not the dross I have in my pocket.”

Half a dozen thoughts snapped into Robert’s head at once. He spoke none of them. “Thank you,” he said. “And let me know when Cecil starts his journey home.”

He left the horse with the groom and went to find Elizabeth. She was not yet dressed; she was seated at the window in her privy chamber with a wrap around her shoulders. When Robert came in Blanche Parry looked up at him with relief. “Her Grace won’t dress though the Spanish envoy wants to see her,” she said. “Says she is too tired.”

“Leave us,” Robert said shortly and waited while the women and the maids left the room.

Elizabeth turned and smiled at him and took his hand and held it to her cheek. “My Robert.”

“Tell me, my pretty love,” Robert said quietly. “Why are you bringing in boatloads of Spanish gold from Antwerp, and how are you paying for it all?”

She gave a little gasp and the color went from her face, the smile from her eyes. “Oh,” she said. “That.”

“Yes,” he replied evenly. “That. Don’t you think you had better tell me what is going on?”

“How did you find out? It is supposed to be a great secret.”

“Never mind,” he said. “But I am sorry to learn that you still keep secrets from me, after your promises, even though we are husband and wife.”

“I was going to tell you,” she said at once. “It is just that Scotland has driven everything from my mind.”

“I am sure,” he said coldly. “For if you had continued with your forgetfulness till the day that you called in the old coin and issued new, I would have been left with a small treasure room filled with dross, would I not? And left at a substantial loss, would I not? Was it your intention that I should suffer?”

Elizabeth flushed. “I didn’t know you were storing small coin.”

“I have lands; my tenants do not pay their rents in bullion, alas. I have trading debts which are paid in small coin. I have chests and chests of pennies and farthings. Do tell me what I may get for them?”

“A little more than their weight,” she said in a very small voice.

“Not their face value?”

She shook her head in silence. “We are calling in the coins and issuing new,” she said. “It is Gresham’s plan—you know of it yourself. We have to make the coins anew.”

Robert let go of her hand and walked to the center of the room while she sat and watched him, wondering what he would do. She realized that the sinking feeling in her belly was apprehension. For the first time in her life she was afraid what a man was thinking of her— not for policy, but for love.

“Robert, don’t be angry with me. I didn’t mean to disadvantage you,” she said and heard the weakness in her own voice. “You must know that I would not put you at a disadvantage, you of all people! I have poured places and positions and lands upon you.”

“I know,” he said shortly. “It is partly that which amazes me. That you should give with one hand and cheat me with the other. A whore’s trick, in fact. Did you not think that this would cost me money?”

She gasped. “I only thought it had to be a secret, a tremendous secret, or everyone will trade among themselves and the coins will be worse and worse regarded,” she said quickly. “It is an awful thing, Robert, to know that people think that your very coins are next to worthless. We have to put it right, and everyone blames me for it being wrong.”

“A secret you kept from me,” he said. “Your husband.”

“We were not betrothed when the plan started,” she said humbly. “I see now that I should have told you. It is just that Scotland drove everything out—”

“Scotland is at peace now,” he said firmly. “And try and keep in your mind that we are married and that you should have no secrets from me. Go and get dressed, Elizabeth, and when you come out you will tell me every single thing that you and Cecil have agreed and planned together. I will not be made a fool of. You will not have secrets with another man behind my back. This is to cuckold me, and I will not wear horns for you.”

For a moment he thought he had gone too far, but she rose to her feet and went toward her bedchamber. “I will send your maids to you,” he said, taking advantage of her obedience. “And then we will have a long talk.”

She paused in the doorway and looked back toward him. “Please don’t be angry with me. I didn’t mean to offend you. I would never offend you on purpose. You know how this summer has been. I will tell you everything.”

It was the moment to reward her for her apology. He crossed the room and kissed her fingers and then her lips. “You are my love,” he said. “You and I are true gold and there will be nothing mixed with that to spoil it. Between us there will always be an absolute honesty and openness. Then I can advise you and help you and you need turn to no other.”

He felt her mouth turn up under his kiss as she smiled. “Oh, Robert, I do,” she said.

Cecil allowed himself the indulgence of one night at home with his wife at Burghley before pressing on with his journey to London. Mildred greeted him with her usual calm affection but her gray eyes took in his lined face and the stoop of his shoulders. “You look tired,” was all the she remarked.

“It was hot and dusty,” he said, saying nothing about the several journeys he had been forced to make between Edinburgh and Newcastle to forge the peace and make it stick.

She nodded and gestured that he should go to his bedchamber, where in the palatial room there was hot water and a change of clothes waiting, a jug of cold ale and a warm fresh-baked loaf of bread. She had his favorite dinner ready for him when he came downstairs again, looking refreshed and wearing a clean dark suit.

“Thank you,” he said warmly, and kissed her on the forehead. “Thank you for all this.”

She smiled and led him to the head of the table where their family and servants waited for the master to say grace. Mildred was a staunch Protestant and her home was run on most godly lines.

Cecil said a few words of prayer and then sat down and applied himself to his dinner. His four-year-old daughter Anna was brought down from the nursery with her baby brother William, received an absentminded blessing, and then the covers were cleared and Mildred and Cecil went to their privy chamber, where a fire was lit and a jug of ale was waiting.

“So it is peace,” she confirmed, knowing that he would never have left Scotland with the task unfinished.

“Yes,” he said shortly.

“You don’t seem very joyous; are you not a blessed peacemaker?”

The look he shot at her was one she had never seen before. He looked hurt, as if he had taken a blow, not to his pride, nor to his ambition; but as if he had been betrayed by a friend.

“I am not,” he said. “It is the greatest peace that we could have hoped for. The French army is to leave, England’s interest in Scotland is acknowledged, and all barely without a shot being fired. This should be the very greatest event of my life, my triumph. To defeat the French would be a glorious victory at any time; to defeat them with a divided country, a bankrupt treasury, an unpaid army led by a woman is almost a miracle.”

“And yet?” she asked, uncomprehending.

“Someone has set the queen against me,” he said simply. “I have had a letter which would make me weep if I did not know that I had done the very best for her that could be done.”

“A letter from her?”

“A letter asking me for the stars and the moon as well as peace in Scotland,” he said. “And my guess is that she will not be pleased when I tell her that all I can give her is peace in Scotland.”

“She is not a fool,” Mildred pointed out. “If you tell her the truth she will hear it. She will know that you have done the best you can, and more than anyone else could have done.”

“She is in love,” he said shortly. “I doubt she can hear anything but the beating of her heart.”

“Dudley?”

“Who else?”

“It goes on then,” she said. “Even here, we hear such scandal that you would not believe.”

“I do believe it,” he said. “Most of it is true.”

“They say that the two are married and that she has his child in hiding.”

“Now that is a lie,” Cecil said. “But I don’t doubt that she would marry him if he were free.”

“And is it him who has poisoned her mind against you?”

He nodded. “I should think so. There can be only one favorite at court. I thought she could enjoy his company and take my advice; but when I have to go away then she has both his company and his advice; and he is a very reckless counselor.”

Mildred rose from her chair and came to stand beside him and put her hand on his shoulder. “What will you do, William?”

“I shall go to court,” he said. “I shall make my report. I am hundreds of pounds out of pocket and I expect no recompense or gratitude now. If she will not take my advice then I will have to leave her, as I once threatened to do before. She could not manage without me then; we shall see if she can manage without me now.”

She was aghast. “William, you cannot leave her to that handsome young traitor. You cannot leave England to be ruled by the two of them. It is to throw our country into the hands of vain children. You cannot leave our church in their hands. They are not to be trusted with it. They are a pair of adulterers. You have to be in her counsel. You have to save her from herself.”

Cecil, the queen’s most senior and respected advisor, was always advised by his wife. “Mildred, to fight a man like Dudley I would have to use ways and means which are most underhand. I would have to treat him as an enemy of the country. I would have to deal with him as a loyal man turned traitor. I would have to deal with him as I would with…” He broke off to think of an example. “Mary of Guise.”

“The queen who died so suddenly?” she asked him, her voice carefully neutral.

“The queen who died so suddenly.”

She understood him at once but she met his gaze without flinching. “William, you have to do your duty for our country, our church, and our queen. It is God’s work that you do, whatever means you have to use.”

He looked back into her level gray eyes. “Even if I had to commit a crime, a great sin?”

“Even so.”

Cecil returned in the last days of July to find the court on a short progress along the southern shores of the Thames, staying at the best private houses that could be found and enjoying the hunting and the summer weather. He was warned not to expect a hero’s welcome, and he did not receive one.

“How could you?” Elizabeth greeted him. “How could you throw away our victory? Were you bribed by the French? Have you gone over to their side? Were you sick? Were you too tired to do your task properly? Too old? How could you just forget your duty to me, and your duty to the country? We have spent a fortune in trying to make Scotland safe, and you just let the French go home without binding them to our will?”

“Your Grace,” he began. He felt himself flush with anger and he looked around to see who was in earshot. Half the court was craning forward to see the confrontation, all of them openly listening. Elizabeth had chosen to meet him in the great hall of her host’s house and there were people standing on the stairs to listen; there were courtiers leaning over the gallery. His scolding was as public as if she had done it at Smithfield market.

“To have the French at our mercy and to let them go without securing Calais!” she exclaimed. “This is worse than the loss of Calais in the first place. That was an act of war; we fought as hard as we could. This is an act of folly; you have thrown Calais away without making the slightest effort to regain it.”

“Your Majesty—”

“And my coat of arms! Has she sworn never to use them again? No? How dare you come back to me with that woman still using my arms?”

There was nothing Cecil could do under this onslaught. He fell silent and let her rage at him.

“Elizabeth.” The quiet voice was so filled with confidence that Cecil looked quickly up the grand staircase, to see who dared to address the queen by name. It was Dudley.

He shot a quick, sympathetic glance at Cecil. “My Lord Secretary has worked hard in your service and brought home the best peace that he could. We may be disappointed in what he has achieved, but I am sure there is no question of his loyalty to our cause and his devotion to our service.”

Cecil saw how his words, his very tone quietened her temper. He says “our” service? he remarked to himself. Am I serving him now?

“Let us withdraw with the Lord Secretary,” Dudley suggested. “And he can explain his decisions, and tell us how matters are in Scotland. He has had a long journey and an arduous task.”

She bridled; Cecil braced himself for more abuse.

“Come,” Dudley said simply, stretching out his hand to her. “Come, Elizabeth.”

He commands her by name before the whole court? Cecil demanded of himself in stunned silence.

But Elizabeth went to him, like a well-trained hound running in to heel, put her hand in his, and let him lead her from the hall. Dudley glanced back to Cecil and allowed himself the smallest smile. Yes, the smile said. Now you see how things are.

William Hyde summoned his sister to his office, the room where he transacted the business of his estate, a signal to her that the matter was a serious one and not to be confused by emotions or the claims of family ties.

He was seated behind the great rent table, which was circular and sectioned with drawers, each bearing a letter of the alphabet. The table could turn on its axis toward the landlord and each drawer had the contracts and rent books of the tenant farmers, filed under the initial letter of their name.

Lizzie Oddingsell remarked idly that the drawer marked “Z” had never been used, and wondered that no one thought to make a table which was missing the “X” and the “Z,” since these must be uncommon initial letters in English. Zebidee, she thought to herself. Xerxes.

“Sister, it is about Lady Dudley,” William Hyde started without preamble.

She noticed at once his use of titles for her and for her friend. So they were to conduct this conversation on the most formal footing.

“Yes, brother?” she replied politely.

“This is a difficult matter,” he said. “But to be blunt, I think it is time that you took her away.”

“Away?” she repeated.

“Yes.”

“Away to where?”

“To some other friends.”

“His lordship has made no arrangements,” she demurred.

“Have you heard from him at all?”

“Not since…” She broke off. “Not since he visited her in Norfolk.”

He raised his eyebrows, and waited.

“In March,” she added reluctantly.

“When she refused him a divorce and they parted in anger?”

“Yes,” she admitted.

“And since then you have had no letter? And neither has she?”

“Not that I know of…”She met his accusing look. “No, she has not.”

“Is her allowance being paid?”

Lizzie gave a little gasp of shock. “Yes, of course.”

“And your wages?”

“I am not waged,” she said with dignity. “I am a companion, not a servant.”

“Yes; but he is paying your allowance.”

“His steward sends it.”

“He has not quite cut her off then,” he said thoughtfully.

“He quite often fails to write,” she said stoutly. “He quite often does not visit. In the past it has sometimes been months…”

“He never fails to send his men to escort her from one friend to another,” he rejoined. “He never fails to arrange for her to stay at once place or another. And you say he has sent no one, and you have heard nothing since March.”

She nodded.

“Sister, you must take her and move on,” he said firmly.

“Why?”

“Because she is becoming an embarrassment to this house.”

Lizzie was quite bewildered. “Why? What has she done?”

“Leaving aside her excessive piety, which makes one wonder as to her conscience—”

“For God’s sake, brother, she is clinging to God as to life itself. She has no guilty conscience, she is just trying to find the will to live!”

He raised his hand. “Elizabeth, please. Let us stay calm.”

“I don’t know how to stay calm when you call this unhappy woman an embarrassment to you!”

He rose to his feet. “I will not have this conversation unless you promise me that you will stay calm.”

She took a deep breath. “I know what you are doing.”

“What?”

“You are trying not to be touched by her. But she is in the most unhappy position, and you would make it worse.”

He moved toward the door as if to hold it open for her. Lizzie recognized the signs of her brother’s determination. “All right,” she said hastily. “All right, William. There is no need to be fierce with me. It is as bad for me as it is for you. Worse, actually.”

He returned to his seat. “Leaving aside her piety, as I said, it is the position she puts us in with her husband that concerns me.”

She waited.

“She has to go,” he said simply. “While I thought we were doing him a favor by having her here, protecting her from slander and scorn, awaiting his instructions, she was an asset to us. I thought he would be glad that she had found safe haven. I thought he would be grateful to me. But now I think different.”

She raised her head to look at him. He was her younger brother and she was accustomed to seeing him in two contradictory lights: one as her junior, who knew less of the world than she did; and the other as her superior: the head of the family, a man of property, a step above her on the chain that led to God.

“And what do you think now, brother?”

“I think he has cast her off,” he said simply. “I think she has refused his wish, and angered him, and she will not see him again. And, what is more important, whoever she stays with, will not see him again. We are not helping him with a knotty problem, we are aiding and abetting her rebellion against him. And I cannot be seen to do such a thing.”

“She is his wife,” Lizzie said flatly. “And she has done nothing wrong. She is not rebelling, she is just refusing to be cast aside.”

“I can’t help that,” David said. “He is now living as husband in all but name to the Queen of England. Lady Dudley is an obstacle to their happiness. I will not be head of a household where the obstacle to the happiness of the Queen of England finds refuge.”

There was nothing she could say to fault his logic and he had forbidden her to appeal to his heart. “But what is she to do?”

“She has to go to another house.”

“And then what?”

“To another, and to another, and to another, until she can agree with Sir Robert and make some settlement, and find a permanent home.”

“You mean until she is forced into a divorce and goes to some foreign convent, or until she dies of heartbreak.”

He sighed. “Sister, there is no need to play a tragedy out of this.”

She faced him. “I am not playing a tragedy. This is tragic.”

“This is not my fault!” he exclaimed in sudden impatience. “There is no need to blame me for this. I am stuck with the difficulty but it is none of my making!”

“Whose fault is it then?” she demanded.

He said the cruelest thing: “Hers. And so she has to leave.”

Cecil had three meetings with Elizabeth before she could be brought even to listen to him without interrupting and raging at him. The first two were with Dudley and a couple of other men in attendance, and Cecil had to bow his head while she tore into him, complained of his inattention to her business, of his neglect of his country, of his disregard for their pride, their rights, their finances. After the first meeting he did not try to defend himself, but wondered whose voice it was that came so shrill, from the queen’s reproachful mouth.

He knew it was Robert Dudley’s. Robert Dudley, of course; who stood back by the window, leaning against the shutter, looking down into the midsummer garden, and sniffed a pomander held to his nose with one slim white hand. Now and again he would shift his position, or breathe in lightly, or clear his throat, and at once the queen would break off and turn, as if to give way to him. If Robert Dudley had so much as a passing thought she assumed they would all be eager to hear it.

She adores him, Cecil thought, hardly hearing the detail of the queen’s complaints. She is in her first flush of love, and he is the first love of her womanhood. She thinks the sun shines from his eyes, his opinions are the only wisdom she can hear, his voice the only speech, his smile her only pleasure. It is pointless to complain, it is pointless to be angry with her folly. She is a young woman in the madness of first love and it is hopeless expecting her to exercise any kind of sensible judgment.

The third meeting, Cecil found the queen alone but for Sir Nicholas Bacon and two ladies in attendance. “Sir Robert has been delayed,” she said.

“Let us start without him,” Sir Nicholas smoothly suggested. “Lord Secretary, you were going through the terms of the treaty, and the detail of the French withdrawal.”

Cecil nodded and put his papers before them. For the first time the queen did not spring to her feet and stride away from the table, railing against him. She kept her seat and she looked carefully at the proposal for the French withdrawal.

Emboldened, Cecil ran through the terms of the treaty again, and then sat back in his chair.

“And do you really think it is a binding peace?” Elizabeth asked.

For a moment, it was as it had always been between the two of them. The young woman looked to the older man for his advice, trusting that he would serve her with absolute fidelity. The older man looked down into the little face of his pupil and saw her wisdom and her ability. Cecil had a sense of the world returning to its proper axis, of the stars recoiling to their courses, of the faint harmony of the spheres, of homecoming.

“I do,” he said. “They were much alarmed by the Protestant uprising in Paris, they will not want to risk any other ventures for now. They fear the rise of the Huguenots, they fear your influence. They believe that you will defend Protestants wherever they are, as you did in Scotland, and they think that Protestants will look to you. They will want to keep the peace, I am sure. And Mary, Queen of Scots, will not take up her inheritance in Scotland while she can live in Paris. She will put in another regent and command him to deal fairly with the Scots lords, according to the terms of the peace contract. They will keep Scotland in name only.”

“And Calais?” the queen demanded jealously.

“Calais is, and always has been, a separate issue,” he said steadily. “As we have all always known. But I think we should demand it back under the terms of the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, when their lease falls due, as agreed. And they are more likely to honor the agreement now than before. They have learned to fear us. We have surprised them, Your Grace; they did not think we had the resolve. They will not laugh at us again. They certainly will not lightly make war on you again.”

She nodded, and pushed the treaty toward him. “Good,” she said shortly. “You swear it was the very best you could do?”

“I was pleased to get so much.”

She nodded. “Thank God we are free from the threat of them. I wouldn’t like to go through this past year again.”

“Nor I,” said Sir Nicholas fervently. “It was a great gamble when you took us into war, Your Majesty. A brilliant decision.”

Elizabeth had the grace to smile at Cecil. “I was very brave and very determined,” she said, twinkling at him. “Don’t you think so, Spirit?”

“I am sure that if England ever again faces such an enemy, you will remember this time,” he said. “You will have learned what to do for the next time. You have learned how to play the king.”

“Mary never did so much,” she reminded him. “She never had to face an invasion from a foreign power.”

“No, indeed,” he agreed. “Her mettle was not tested as yours has been. And you were tested and not found wanting. You were your father’s daughter and you have earned the peace.”

She rose from the table. “I can’t think what is keeping Sir Robert,” she complained. “He promised me he would be here an hour ago. He has a new delivery of Barbary horses and he had to be there to see them arrive in case they had to be sent back. But he promised me he would come at once.”

“Shall we walk down to the stables to meet him?” Cecil suggested.

“Yes,” she said eagerly. She took his arm and they walked side by side, as they had walked so often before.

“Let’s take a turn in the garden first,” he suggested. “The roses have been wonderful this year. D’you know, Scotland is a full month behind in the garden?”

“Is it very cold and barbaric?” she asked. “I wish I could see it.”

“You could go on progress to Newcastle one summer,” he said. “They would be glad to see you there, and it would be good policy to visit the border castles.”

“I should like to,” Elizabeth said. “You must have ridden your horses into the ground. You went backward and forward from Edinburgh to Newcastle, didn’t you?”

Cecil nodded. “I wanted to confer with your uncle, and I needed to keep an eye on Monsieur Randan. It was a hard ride and a poorly kept road, especially in Scotland.”

She nodded.

“And what of you?” Cecil lowered his voice. The ladies walking behind them were out of earshot; Sir Nicholas was walking with Catherine Knollys. “How have things been with you these last two months, Princess?”

For a moment he thought she would turn the question aside with a laugh, but she checked herself. “I was very afraid,” she said honestly. “Kat thought that my health would break under the strain.”

“That was my fear,” he said. “You bore up wonderfully.”

“I couldn’t have done it without Sir Robert,” she said. “He can always calm me, Spirit. He has such a wonderful voice, and his hands …I think he has magic in his hands …it’s why he can do anything with his horses. As soon as he lays his hand on my forehead I feel at peace.”

“You are in love with him,” he said gently.

Elizabeth looked quickly up at him to see if he was accusing her; but he met her eyes with steady sympathy.

“Yes,” she said frankly, and it was a relief to her to be able to tell her counselor the truth at last. “Yes, I am.”

“And he with you?”

She smiled. “Yes, oh yes. Think of the misery if he was not!”

He paused, then he asked her: “Princess, what will come of this? He is a married man.”

“His wife is ill, and could die,” Elizabeth said. “And anyway, they have been unhappy for years. He says that his marriage is no more. She will release him. I can grant them a divorce. Then he will marry me.”

How to deal with this? She will not want wise counsel; she will want to be confirmed in this folly. But if I do not speak, who will? Cecil drew a breath. “My queen, Amy Dudley, Amy Robsart that was, is a young woman; there is no reason to think that she will die. You cannot delay your marriage waiting for a young woman to die. And you cannot possibly grant him a divorce; there are no grounds for a divorce. You danced at his wedding feast yourself, when they married for love with the blessing of their parents. And you cannot marry a commoner, a man whose family has been under the shadow of treason, a man with a living wife.”

Elizabeth turned to him. “Cecil, I can, and I will. I have promised him.”

Good God! What does she mean by that? What does she mean by that? What does she mean by that?

None of Cecil’s horror showed in his face. “A private promise? Love talk? Whispered between the two of you?”

“A binding promise of marriage. “A de futuro betrothal before witnesses.”

“Who witnessed?” he gasped out. “What witnesses?” Perhaps they could be bribed into silence, or murdered. Perhaps they could be discredited, or exiled.

“Catherine and Francis Knollys.”

He was shocked into silence.

They walked, not saying a word. He found that his legs were weak beneath him at the horror of what she had told him. He had failed to guard her. She was entrapped, and the country with her.

“You are angry with me,” she said in a small voice. “You think I have made a terrible mistake when you were not here to prevent me.”

“I am horrified.”

“Spirit, I could not help myself. You were not here, I thought that at any moment the French would invade. I thought I had lost my throne already. I had nothing left to lose. I wanted to know that at least I had him.”

“Princess, this is a disaster worse than a French invasion,” he said. “If the French had invaded, every man in the country would have laid down his life for you. But if they knew you were betrothed to marry Sir Robert, they would put Katherine Grey on the throne in your place.”

They were approaching the stables. “Walk on,” she said quickly. “I dare not meet him now. He will see I have told you.”

“He told you not to confide in me?”

“He didn’t have to! We all know you would advise me against him.”

Cecil led her by another path into the garden. He could feel her trembling.

“The people of England would never turn against me just for falling in love.”

“Princess, they will not accept him as your husband and your consort. I am sorry; but the best you can do now is to choose your successor. You will have to abdicate; you will have to give up your throne.”

He felt her stagger as her knees gave way.

“Do you want to sit down?”

“No, let’s walk, let’s walk,” Elizabeth said feverishly. “You don’t mean it, Spirit, do you? You’re just trying to frighten me.”

He shook his head. “I tell you nothing but the truth.”

“He is not so hated in the country? There are just a few who wish him ill at court—my uncle, of course, and the Duke of Arundel, those who are jealous of him and envy him his looks, those who want the favor that I show him, those who want his wealth, his position…”

“It’s not that,” Cecil said wearily. “Listen to me, Elizabeth, I am telling you the truth. It is not a little jealousy at court, it is an opinion which runs very deep in the country. It’s his family and his position and his past. His father was executed for treason against your sister; his grandfather was executed for treason against your father. He has bad blood. Princess, his family has always been a traitor to yours. Everyone remembers that if the Dudleys rise high they abuse their power. No one would ever trust a Dudley with great position. And everyone knows that he is a married man, and no one has heard anything against his wife. He cannot just cast her aside; it would be an unbearable scandal. Already the courts of Europe laugh at you, and say that you are shamed by your adulterous love for your horse master.”

He saw her flush at the thought of it.

“You should marry a king, Princess. Or an archduke at the very least, someone of good blood whose alliance will help the country. You cannot marry a common man with nothing more to recommend him than his good looks and his handling of his horse. The country will never accept him as your consort. I know it.”

“You hate him too,” she said fiercely. “You are as unkind to him as the rest of them.”

Inveterately, he acknowledged to himself. But he smiled his gentle smile at her. “It would not matter how I felt about him, if he was the right man for you,” he said gently. “I hope I would have the sense to advise you as to your best course, whatever my preferences. And, as it happens, I do not hate him; I rather like him. But I have long feared your particular favor to him. I have been afraid that it would come to a point. I never dreamed he would take it to this.”

Elizabeth turned her head away; he saw her picking at her nails.

“It went further than I meant it to,” she said, very low. “I was not thinking straight and I went further…”

“If you can escape from your promise of betrothal now, your reputation will have been stained, but you will recover, if you give him up and go on to marry someone else. But if you go through with it the people will throw you from your throne rather than bow the knee to him.”

“Mary had Philip even though they hated him!” she burst out.

“He was an anointed king!” Cecil exclaimed. “They might hate him but they could not object to his breeding. And Philip had an army to support him; he was heir to the empire of Spain. What does Dudley have? Half a dozen retainers and the huntsmen! How will they serve him in the first riot that breaks out?”

“I have given my word,” she whispered. “Before God and honorable witnesses.”

“You will have to withdraw it,” he said flatly. “Or this peace will be as nothing, for you will have won peace for England and Queen Katherine Grey.”

“Queen Katherine?” she repeated, aghast. “Never!”

“Princess, there are at least two plots to put her on the throne instead of you. She is a Protestant like her sister Jane, she is well liked, she is of Tudor stock.”

“She knows of this? She is plotting against me?”

He shook his head. “I would have had her arrested already if I thought there was the least question of her loyalty. I only mention her now so that you know there are people who would push you from your throne now—when they hear of this promise they will recruit many others.”

“I will keep it secret,” she said.

“It will have to be more than secret; it will have to be broken and hidden. You will have to withdraw it. You can never marry him and he knows it. You have to tell him that you have come to your senses and now you know it too. He has to release you.”

“Shall I write to Mr. Forster?” Lizzie Oddingsell suggested to Amy, trying to keep her tone light and impersonal. “We could go and stay at Cumnor Place for a few weeks.”

“Cumnor Place?” Amy looked surprised. She was seated in the window seat for the last of the light, sewing a little shirt for Tom Hyde.

“Yes,” Lizzie said steadily. “We went to them this time last year, toward the end of the summer, before we went on to Chislehurst.”

Amy’s head came up very slowly. “You have not heard from my lord?” she asked, quite certain that the reply would be negative. “Mr. Hyde has not had a letter from my lord about me?”

“No,” Lizzie said awkwardly. “I am sorry, Amy.”

Amy bent her head back to her work. “Has your brother spoken to you? Does he want us to leave?”

“No, no,” Lizzie said hastily. “I just thought that your other friends will be jealous if they do not see you. And then perhaps we could go on to the Scotts at Camberwell? You will want to shop in London, I suppose?”

“I thought he had been a little cool toward me,” Amy said. “I was afraid that he wanted me to leave.”

“Not at all!” Lizzie cried out, hearing her voice as overemphatic. “This is all my idea. I thought you might be tired of here and want to move on. That’s all.”

“Oh, no,” Amy said with vacant little smile. “I’m not tired of being here, and I like it here, Lizzie. Let’s stay for a while longer.”

“What have you been doing all afternoon?” Sir Robert asked Elizabeth intimately as they dined in the privacy of her chamber. “I came to the council room as soon as I had seen the horses but you had not waited for me. They said you were walking with Cecil in the garden. But when I got to the garden you were nowhere to be found, and when I came back to your rooms they said you were not to be disturbed.”

“I was tired,” she said shortly. “I rested.”

He scrutinized her pale face, taking in the shadows under her eyes, the pink eyelids. “He said something to upset you?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Were you angry with him about his failure in Scotland?”

“No. That’s finished with. We can get nothing more than he has got.”

“A great advantage thrown away,” he prompted her.

“Yes,” she said shortly. “Perhaps.”

His smile was quite inscrutable. He has persuaded her back under his influence, he thought. She really is quite hopelessly malleable. Aloud he said, “I can tell that something is wrong, Elizabeth. What is it?”

She turned her dark eyes on him. “I can’t talk now. She did not have to gesture to the small circle of courtiers who were dining with them and, as ever, constantly alert to everything they said and did. “I’ll talk to you later, when we are alone.”

“Of course,” he said, smiling kindly at her. “Then let us set ourselves to amuse you. Shall we play cards? Or play a game? Or shall we dance?”

“Cards,” she said. At least a game of cards would prevent a conversation, she thought.

Robert waited in his room for Elizabeth, Tamworth his valet on guard outside, the wine poured, the fire freshly heaped with sweet-scented apple wood. The door from her room opened and she came in, not with her usual eager stride, not with desire illuminating her face. Tonight she was a little hesitant, almost as if she wished herself elsewhere.

So, she has reconciled with Cecil, he thought. And he has warned her off me. As I knew he would, once they were on good terms again. But we are as good as married. She is mine. Aloud he said: “My dearest. This day has gone on forever,” and took her into his arms.

Robert felt the slightest check before she moved close to him, and he stroked her back and murmured kisses into her hair. “My love,” he said. “My one and only love.”

He released her before she withdrew, and handed her into a chair at the fireside. “And here we are,” he said. “Alone at last. Will you have a glass of wine, dearest?”

“Yes,” she said.

He poured her the wine and touched her fingers as she took the wineglass from him. He saw how she looked at the fire, and not at him.

“I am sure that there is something the matter,” he said. “Is it something between us? Something that I have done to offend you?”

Elizabeth looked up at once. “No! Never! You are always…”

“Then what is it, my love? Tell me, and let us face whatever difficulty there is together.”

She shook her head. “There is nothing. It is just that I love you so much; I have been thinking of how I could not bear to lose you.”

Robert put down his glass and knelt at her feet. “You won’t lose me,” he said simply. “I am yours, heart and soul. I am promised to you.”

“If we could not marry for a long time, you would still love me,” she said. “You would wait for me?”

“Why should we not publish our betrothal at once?” he asked, going to the heart of it.

“Oh.” She fluttered her hand. “You know, a thousand reasons. Perhaps none of them matter. But if we could not, would you wait for me? Would you be true to me? Would we always be like this?”

“I would wait for you. I would be true to you,” he promised her. “But we could not always be like this. Someone would find out; someone would talk. And I couldn’t go on always loving you and being at your side and yet never being able to help you when you are afraid or alone. I have to be able to take your hand before all the court and say that you are mine and I am yours, that your enemies are my enemies and that I will defeat them.”

“But if we had to wait, we could,” she pressed him.

“Why would we have to wait? Have we not earned our happiness? Both of us in the Tower, both of us thinking that we might face the block the next day? Have we not earned a little joy now?”

“Yes,” she agreed hastily. “But Cecil says that there are many who speak against you, and plot against me, even now. We have to get the country to accept you. It may take a little time, that is all.”

“Oh, what does Cecil know?” Robert demanded carelessly. “He’s only just come back from Edinburgh. My intelligencers tell me that the people love you, and they will come to accept me in time.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “In time. We will have to wait a little while.”

He thought it was too dangerous to argue. “Forever, if you wish,” he said, smiling. “For centuries if it is what you wish. You will tell me when you want to declare our betrothal, and it shall be our secret until then.”

“I don’t want to withdraw from it,” she said hastily. “I don’t want to break it.”

“You cannot break it,” he said simply. “And neither can I. It is indissoluble. It is a legally binding, sacred promise before God and witnesses. In the eyes of God we are man and wife and no one can part us.”

A letter came for Amy from Robert’s friend and client, Mr. Forster at Cumnor Place, inviting her to stay with him for the month of September. Lizzie Oddingsell read it aloud to Amy, who would not make the effort to puzzle it out herself.

“You had better reply and tell them that I shall be very pleased to stay with them,” Amy said coldly. “Shall you come with me? Or stay here?”

“Why would I not come with you?” Lizzie demanded, shocked.

“If you wanted to leave my service,” Amy said, looking away from her friend. “If you think, as your brother clearly does, that I am under a cloud, and that you would be better not associated with me.”

“My brother has said no such thing,” Lizzie lied firmly. “And I would never leave you.”

“I am not what I was,” Amy said, and the coldness went out of her voice in a rush and left only a thin thread of sound. “I do not enjoy my husband’s favor anymore. Your brother is not improved by my visit, Cumnor Place will not be honored by having me. I see I shall have to find people who will have me, despite my lord’s disfavor. I am no longer an asset.”

Lizzie said nothing. This letter from Anthony Forster was a begrudging reply to her request that Amy might stay with them for the whole of the autumn. The Scotts of Camberwell, Amy’s own cousins, had replied that they would unfortunately be away for all of November. It was clear that Amy’s hosts, even Amy’s own family, no longer wanted her in their houses.

“Anthony Forster has always admired you,” Lizzie said. “And my brother and Alice were saying only the other day what a pleasure it was to see you playing with Tom. You are like one of the family here.”

Amy wanted to believe her friend too much for skepticism. “Did they really?”

“Yes,” Lizzie said. “They said that he had taken to you like no one else.”

“Then can’t I stay here?” she asked simply. “I would rather stay here than go on. I would rather stay here than go home to Stanfield at Christmas. I could pay for our keep, you know, if your brother would let us stay here.”

Lizzie was silenced. “Surely, now that Mr. Forster has been so kind as to invite us we should go there,” she said feebly. “You would not want to offend him.”

“Oh, let’s just go for a week or so then,” Amy said. “And then come back here.”

“Surely not,” Lizzie hedged. “You would not want to seem ungracious. Let’s go for the full month to Cumnor Place.”

She thought for a moment that she had got away with the lie, but Amy paused, as if the whole conversation had been held in a foreign language, and she had suddenly understood it. “Oh. Your brother wants me to leave, doesn’t he?” she said slowly. “They won’t want me back here in October. They won’t want me back here for a while, indeed, perhaps never. It is as I thought at first, and all this has been a lie. Your brother does not want me to stay. Nobody will want me to stay.”

“Well, at any rate, Mr. Forster wants you,” Lizzie said stoutly.

“Did you write to him and ask if we could go?”

Lizzie’s gaze dropped to the ground. “Yes,” she admitted. “I think it is either there, or Stanfield.”

“We’ll go there then,” Amy said quietly. “Do you know, only a year ago he was honored by my company, and pressed me to stay longer than those few days. And now he will tolerate me for only a month.”

Elizabeth, who had once snatched at every opportunity to see Robert alone, was now avoiding him, and finding ways to be with William Cecil. She cried off from a day’s hunting at the last moment, saying that her head ached too much to ride, and watched the court, led by Robert, ride out. Laetitia Knollys was at his side but Elizabeth let him go. Back in her rooms, Cecil was waiting for her.

“He says he will wait,” she said, standing at the window of Windsor Castle to catch a last glimpse of him as the hunt wound down the steep hill to the town and the marshes beside the river. “He says it will make no difference if we do not announce our betrothal. We can wait until the time is right.”

“You have to withdraw,” Cecil said.

She turned toward him. “Spirit, I cannot. I dare not lose him. It would be worse than death to me, to lose him.”

“Would you leave your throne for him?”

“No!” she exclaimed passionately. “Not for any man. Not for anything. Never.”

“Then you have to give him up,” he said.

“I cannot break my word to him. I cannot have him think of me as faithless.”

“Then he will have to release you,” Cecil said. “He must know that he should never have entered into such a promise. He was not free to enter into it. He was already married. He is a bigamist.”

“He’ll never let me go,” she said.

“Not if he thought there was any chance of winning you,” Cecil agreed. “But what if he thought it was hopeless? And if he thought he might lose his place at court? If it was a choice between never seeing you again and living disgraced in exile; or giving you up and being as he was before the promise?”

“Then he might,” Elizabeth conceded reluctantly. “But I can’t threaten him with that, Spirit. I don’t even have the courage to ask him to release me. I can’t bear to hurt him. Don’t you know what love is? I cannot reject him. I would rather cut off my own right hand than hurt him.”

“Yes,” he said, unimpressed. “I see that it has to be done by him, as if by his free choice.”

“He feels the same about me!” she exclaimed. “He would never leave me.”

“He would not cut off his right hand for you,” Cecil said knowingly.

She paused. “Do you have a plan? Are you planning a way that I can be free?”

“Of course,” he said simply. “You will lose your throne if any word of this mad betrothal gets out. I have to think of a way to save you, and then we have to do it, Elizabeth. Whatever it costs.”

“I will not betray my love for him,” she said. “He must not hear it from me. Anything but that. I would rather die than he thought me faithless.”

“I know,” Cecil said, worried. “I know. Somehow, it has to be his decision and his choice.”

Amy and Lizzie Oddingsell rode across the broad, open Oxfordshire countryside from Denchworth to Cumnor. The high ground was wild and open, pretty on a summer’s day with flocks of sheep shepherded by absentminded children who shouted at the travelers and came leaping like goats themselves to see the ladies ride by.

Amy did not smile and wave at them, nor scatter groats from her purse. She did not seem to see them. For the first time in her life she rode without an escort of liveried menservants around her, for the first time in many years she rode without the Dudley standard of the bear and ragged staff carried before her. She rode on a slack rein, looking around her, but seeing nothing. And her horse drooped its head and went along dully, as if Amy’s light weight was a heavy burden.

“At least the fields look in good heart,” Lizzie said cheerfully.

Amy looked blankly around her. “Oh, yes,” she said.

“Should be a good harvest?”

“Yes.”

Lizzie had written to Sir Robert to tell him that his wife was moving from Abingdon to Cumnor and received no reply. His steward sent no money for the settlement of their debts, nor for tipping the Abingdon staff, and did not tell Lizzie that an escort would be provided for her. In the end, they were attended by Lizzie’s brother’s men, and a small cart came behind them with their goods. When Amy had come out on the doorstep into the bright morning sunlight, pulling on her riding gloves, she saw the little cavalcade and realized that from now on she would travel as a private citizen. The Dudley standard would not proclaim her as a wife of a great lord, the Dudley livery would not warn people to clear the road, to doff their caps, to bend their knees. Amy had become no more than Miss Amy Robsart—less than Miss Amy Robsart, for she was not even a single woman who might marry anyone, a woman with prospects; now she was that lowest form of female life, a woman who had married the wrong man.

Little Tom clung to her skirt and asked to be lifted up.

“Me-me!” he reminded her.

Amy looked down at him. “I have to say good-bye to you,” she said. “I don’t think they will let me see you again.”

He did not understand the words but he felt her sadness like a shadow.

“Me-me!”

She bent down swiftly and kissed his warm, silky head, smelled the sweet little boy scent of him, and then she rose to her feet and went quickly out to her horse before he could cry.

It was a beautiful summer day and a wonderful ride through the heart of England, but Amy did not see it. A lark went up from the cornfield on her right, higher and higher, its wings beating with each rippling note, and she did not hear. Slowly up the green slope of the sides of hills they labored, and then slipped down to the wooded valleys and the fertile fields on the valley floor and still Amy saw nothing, and remarked on nothing.

“Are you in pain?” Lizzie asked, catching a glimpse of Amy’s white face as she lifted the veil from her riding hat for a sip of water when they stopped by a stream.

“Yes,” Amy said shortly.

“Are you ill? Can you ride?” Lizzie asked, alarmed.

“No, it is just the same as always.” Amy said. “I shall have to grow accustomed to it.”

Slowly, the little procession wound past the fields on the outskirts of Cumnor and then entered the village, scattering hens and setting the dogs barking. They went past the church with the handsome square stone tower standing tall on its own little hill, skirted by fat trees of dark yew. Amy rode by, without a glance at Elizabeth’s flag which fluttered from the pole at the head of the tower, through the muddy village streets which wound around the low-browed thatched cottages.

Cumnor Place was set alongside the churchyard but the little cavalcade went around the high wall of pale limestone blocks to approach the house through the archway. The drive led them through an avenue of yew trees, and Amy shivered as their gloom fell over the sunlit path.

“Nearly there,” Lizzie Oddingsell said cheerfully, thinking that Amy might be tired.

“I know.”

Another soaring archway set into the thick stone walls took them into the courtyard and the very heart of the house. Mrs. Forster, hearing the horses, came out from the great hall on the right-hand side to greet them.

“Here you are!” she cried out. “And in what good time! You must have had a very easy ride.”

“It was easy,” Lizzie said, when Amy did not reply, but merely sat on her horse. “But I am afraid Lady Dudley is very tired.”

“Are you, your ladyship?” Mrs. Forster inquired with concern.

Amy lifted the veil from her hat.

“Oh! You do look pale. Come down and you shall rest,” Mrs. Forster said.

A groom came forward and Amy slid down the horse’s side in a clumsy jump. Mrs. Forster took her hand and led her into the great hall where a fire was burning in the large stone hearth.

“Will you take a cup of ale?” she asked solicitously.

“Thank you,” Amy said.

Mrs. Forster pressed her into a great wooden chair by the fireside and sent a page running for ale and cups. Lizzie Oddingsell came into the room and took a seat beside Amy.

“Well, here we are!” Mrs. Forster remarked. She was conscious of the difficulty of her position. She could hardly ask for news of court, when the only news was that the queen’s behavior with this white-faced young woman’s husband was becoming more blatant every day. The whole country knew now that Robert Dudley was carrying himself like a king-to-be, and Elizabeth could hardly see anyone else for the glamour that was her dark-headed Master of Horse.

“The weather seems set very fair,” Mrs. Forster said, for lack of anything else.

“Indeed, yes. It’s hot,” Lizzie agreed. “But the wheat looks very well in the fields.”

“Oh, I know nothing about it,” Mrs. Forster said quickly, emphasizing her position as the wealthy tenant of a beautiful house. “You know, I know nothing about farming.”

“It should be a very good crop,” Amy observed. “And I imagine we shall all be glad of the bread to eat.”

“Indeed, yes.”

The arrival of the page broke the embarrassed silence. “Mrs. Owen is also staying with us,” Mrs. Forster told them. “She is the mother of our landlord, Mr. William Owen. I think your husband…” She broke off in confusion. “I think Mr. William Owen is well known at court,” she said clumsily. “Perhaps you know him, Lady Dudley?”

“My husband knows him well,” Amy said without embarrassment. “And thinks highly of him, I know.”

“Well, his mother is honoring us with a long visit,” Mrs. Forster continued, recovering. “You will meet her at dinner, and Mr. Forster will be home for dinner. He rode out today to see some neighbors of ours. And he told me to take particular good care of you both.”

“How kind,” Amy said vaguely. “I think I should like to rest now.”

“Certainly.” Mrs. Forster rose to her feet. “Your room is just above the hall, overlooking the drive.”

Amy hesitated, she had been going toward the best bedroom on the other end of the building.

“Let me show you,” Mrs. Forster said, and led the way out of the great hall, through the double archway, through the stone-flagged buttery to the circular stone stairs.

“Here you are, and Mrs. Oddingsell is nearby,” she said, gesturing to the two wooden doors.

“It seems so odd that this should have been a monastery only fifty years ago,” Amy said, pausing by one of the wooden corbels which showed a little cherub, polished from dark wood to blond by constant touching. “This little angel may have helped someone to pray.”

“Thank God that we have been freed from Popish superstition,” Mrs. Forster said fervently.

“Amen,” Lizzie said smartly.

Amy said nothing at all; but touched the cheek of the little angel, and opened the heavy wooden door to her chamber and went in.

They waited until the door had closed behind her.

“She is so pale, is she ill?” Mrs. Forster demanded.

They turned and went to Lizzie Oddingsell’s chamber. “She is very tired,” Lizzie said. “And she hardly eats. She complains of a pain in her breast but she says it is heartache. She is taking it all very badly.”

“I heard she had a canker of the breast?”

“She is always in pain but there is no growth. That is another London rumor, like all the others.”

Mrs. Forster pursed her lips and shook her head at London rumors, which were wilder and more detailed every day. “Well, God protect her,” Mrs. Forster said. “I had the devil’s own job to persuade my husband to have her here at all. Of all the men in the world I would have thought him the most likely to pity her, but he said to my face that it was more than his life was worth to offend Sir Robert now, and more important than anything in the world to him to be in his lordship’s good books if he is going to rise as everyone says.”

“And what do they say?” Lizzie prompted. “How much higher can he go?”

“They say he will be king-consort,” Mrs. Forster said simply. They say he is married to the queen already in secret, and will be crowned at Christmas. And she, poor lady, will be forgotten.”

“Yes, but forgotten where?” Lizzie demanded. “My brother will not have her back, and she cannot live at Stanfield Hall all the year round; it is little more than a farm. Besides, I do not know that their doors are open to her. If her family refuse her, where is she to go? What is she to do?”

“She looks as if she will not survive it,” Mrs. Forster said flatly. “And there will be the solution to his lordship’s difficulty. Should we get a doctor for her?”

“Yes,” Lizzie said. “There’s no doubt in my mind that she is sick of grief, but perhaps a doctor could give her something so that at least she could eat and sleep and stop this continual weeping.”

“She cries?”

Lizzie’s own voice trembled. “She swallows it down during the day, but if you ever listen to her chamber door at night you will hear her. She cries in her sleep. All night long the tears run down her cheeks and she cries for him. She whispers his name in her sleep. Over and over she asks him: ‘My lord?’”

Cecil and Elizabeth were in the rose garden at Windsor with the ladies of the court when Robert Dudley came to join them, the Spanish ambassador with him.

Elizabeth smiled and gave de Quadra her hand to kiss. “And is this visit one of pleasure or one of business?” she asked.

“Now I am dedicated to pleasure,” he said in his strong accent. “I have conducted my business with Sir Robert and I can spend the rest of my time taking pleasure in your company.”

Elizabeth raised her penciled eyebrows. “Business?” she asked Robert.

He nodded. “All done. I was telling the Spanish ambassador that we are to have a tennis tournament this evening, and he would be most interested to watch.”

“It is only a little game,” Elizabeth said. She did not dare glance toward Cecil. “Some of the young men of the court have formed themselves into teams, the Queen’s Men and the Gypsy Boys.” There was a ripple of laughter from the ladies at the two names.

The Spanish ambassador smiled, looking from one to another. “And who are the Gypsy Boys?” he asked.

“It is an impertinence to Sir Robert,” the queen said. “It is a nickname they call him.”

“Never to my face,” Sir Robert said.

“An insult?” the more formal Spaniard asked.

“A jest,” Robert said. “Not everyone admires my coloring. I am thought too dark for an Englishman.”

Elizabeth took a little breath of desire; it was unmistakable. Everyone heard it and Dudley turned to her with a most intimate smile. “Fortunately, not everyone despises me for my dark skin and black eyes,” he said.

“They are practicing now.” Elizabeth was unable to take her eyes from the curve of his mouth.

“Shall we go and see?” Cecil intervened. He led the ambassador away and the rest of the court followed. Slowly, Dudley offered Elizabeth his arm and she slid her hand on his sleeve.

“You look entranced,” he said quietly to her.

“I am,” she said. “You know.”

“I know.”

They walked for a few paces in silence. “What did the ambassador want?” she asked.

“He was complaining about Spanish gold being shipped out of the Netherlands by our merchants,” Dudley said. “It is illegal to take their bullion out of the country.”

“I know that,” she said. “I don’t know who would do such a thing.”

Blandly, he ignored the quickness of her lie. “Some eager inspector searched one of our ships and found that the cargo manifest was forged. They have confiscated the gold and let the ship go, and the Spanish ambassador was to make a formal complaint.”

“Is he to come before the Privy Council?” she asked, alarmed. “If they discover we are shipping gold they will know it is to mint new coins. There will be a run against the old coins. I will have to speak to Cecil; we have to keep this secret.” She started forward but Robert retained her hand and kept her back.

“No, of course he can’t see the Privy Council,” Robert said decisively. “It has to be kept private.”

“Have you given him a time to see me and Cecil?”

“I have dealt with it,” Robert said simply.

Elizabeth paused on the path, the sun very hot on the back of her neck. “You’ve done what?”

“I dealt with it,” he repeated. “Told him that there must have been a mistake, I condemned smuggling as a general rule, I agreed that smuggling bullion from one country to another is most dangerous for trade. I promised him it would not happen again and said that I would look into it personally. He believed half of it, at the most, but will send his despatch to the Spanish emperor, and we are all satisfied.”

She hesitated, suddenly cold despite the heat of the day. “Robert, on what basis did he speak to you?”

He pretended not to understand her. “As I have said.”

“Why did he speak to you? Why not take this complaint to Cecil? Or come direct to me? Or ask to meet with the Privy Council?”

Robert slid his arm around her waist, though anyone of the court glancing back could have seen him holding her. “Because I want to take trouble from your shoulders, my love. Because I know as much about kingship as you, or Cecil, and to tell the truth, probably more. Because I was born to do this, just as much as you, or Cecil; probably more. Because his complaint was about your agent Thomas Gresham, who now reports directly to me. This is my business as much as yours. Your business is my business. Your currency is my currency. We do everything together.”

Elizabeth could not make herself move from his touch, but she did not melt into him, as she usually did. “De Quadra should have come to me,” she insisted.

“Oh, why?” Robert demanded. “Don’t you think he knows that I shall be your declared husband within the year? Don’t you think everyone knows that we are betrothed and will soon announce it? Don’t you think he already deals with me as if I were your husband?”

“He should speak with me or Cecil,” she persisted. She rubbed at the cuticles of her fingernails, to push them back from the polished nails.

Dudley took her hand. “Of course,” he said. “When it is something that I cannot deal with for you.”

“And when would that be?” she demanded sharply.

He chuckled in his self-confidence. “D’you know, I cannot think of a single thing that you or Cecil could do better than me,” he admitted.

Cecil was seated next to Elizabeth at the tennis tournament but neither of them followed the play.

“He only met with de Quadra to spare me trouble,” she whispered to him in a rapid monotone.

“He has no authority, unless you give it to him,” Cecil said steadily.

“Cecil, he says that everyone knows that we are betrothed, that de Quadra thinks of him as my husband and so my representative.”

“This has to stop,” Cecil said. “You have to stop this …usurpation.”

“He is not disloyal,” she said fiercely. “Everything he does is for love of me.”

Yes, he is the most loyal traitor who ever threw down a queen for love of her, Cecil thought bitterly. Aloud he said: “Your Grace, it may be for your good, but don’t you know that his power over you will be reported to the Spanish emperor and be seen as weakness? Don’t you think the English Catholics will know that you plan to marry a divorced man? You, of all women: the daughter of a divorced queen, a queen executed for adultery?”

Nobody ever spoke to the queen of her mother, except in tones of the most unctuous deference. Elizabeth went white with shock. “I beg your pardon,” she said icily.

Cecil was not frightened into silence. “Your reputation has to be of the purest,” he said adamantly. “Because your mother, God rest her soul, died with her reputation most foully slandered. Your father divorced a good woman to marry her and then blamed his decision on witchcraft and lust. No one must revive that libel and apply it to you.”

“Be very careful, Cecil,” she said coldly. “You are repeating treasonous slander.”

“You be careful,” he said roundly, and rose from his seat. “Tell de Quadra to meet with us both tomorrow morning to make his formal complaint. Sir Robert does not transact business for the Crown.”

Elizabeth looked up at him and then, very slightly, she shook her head. “I cannot,” she said.

“What?”

“I cannot undermine Sir Robert. The business is done, and he has said only what we would have said. We’ll leave it.”

“He is indeed king-consort then, in everything but name? You are content to give him your power?”

When she said nothing, Cecil bowed. “I will leave you,” he said quietly. “I have no humor to watch the match. I think the Gypsy’s Men are certain to win.”

Anthony Forster, returning home with a new scroll of madrigals under his arm, was in merry mood and not best pleased to be greeted by his wife with a domestic crisis before he had even entered the great hall.

“Lady Dudley is here and is very ill,” she said urgently. “They arrived this morning, and she has been sick since then. She cannot keep down food, the poor thing cannot even keep down drink, and she complains of a pain in her breast which she says is heartbreak, but I think may be a canker. She won’t let anyone see it.”