The Virgin's Lover Read online

  You are indeed, Cecil said to himself, returning the bow and making his way down the steps to where his short-backed horse was waiting for him, and his entourage was assembling. But why should you be so delighted that she is head of the church? What is it to you, you sly, unreliable, handsome coxcomb?

  She is to be the English Pope, Robert whispered to himself, strolling like a prince at leisure in the opposite direction. The soldiers at the end of the gallery threw open the double doors for him and Robert passed through. The intense charm of his smile made them duck their heads and shuffle their feet, but his smile was not for them. He was smiling at the exquisite irony of Cecil serving Robert, all unknowing. Cecil, the great fox, had fetched home a game bird, and laid it at Robert’s feet, as obedient as a Dudley spaniel.

  He has made her Pope in everything but name. She can grant a dispensation for a marriage, she can grant an annulment of a marriage, she can rule in favor of a divorce, Robert whispered to himself. He has no idea what he has done for me. By persuading those dull squires to make her supreme governor of the Church of England he has given her the power to grant a divorce. And who do we know who might benefit from that?

  Elizabeth was not thinking of her handsome Master of Horse. Elizabeth was in her presence chamber, admiring a portrait of Archduke Ferdinand, her ladies around her. From the ripple of approval as they noted the Hapsburg darkness of his eyes and the high fashion of his clothes Robert, entering the room at a leisurely stroll, understood that Elizabeth was continuing her public courtship of this latest suitor.

  “A handsome man,” he said, earning a smile from her. “And a good stance.”

  She took a step toward him, Robert, alert as a choreographer to every move of a dance, stood stock still and let her come to him.

  “You admire the archduke, Sir Robert?”

  “Certainly, I admire the portrait.”

  “It is a very good likeness,” the ambassador Count von Helfenstein said defensively. “The archduke has no vanity, he would not want a portrait to flatter or deceive.”

  Robert shrugged, smiling. “Of course not,” he said. He turned to Elizabeth. “But how could one choose a man from canvas and paint? You would never choose a horse like that.”

  “Yes; but an archduke is not a horse.”

  “Well, I would want to know how my horse would move, before I gave myself up to desire for him,” he said. “I would want to put him through his paces. I would want to know how he felt when I gentled him under my hand, smoothed his neck, touched him everywhere, behind the ears, on the lips, behind the legs. I would want to know how responsive he was when I was on him, when I had him between my legs. You know, I would even want to know the smell of him, the very scent of his sweat.”

  She gave a little gasp at the picture he was drawing for her, so much more vivid, so much more intimate, than the dull oil on canvas before them.

  “If I were you, I would choose a husband I knew,” he said quietly to her. “A man I had tested with my own eyes, with my own fingers, whose scent I liked. I would only marry a man I knew I could desire. A man I already desired.”

  “I am a maid,” she said, her voice a breath. “I desire no man.”

  “Oh, Elizabeth, you lie,” he whispered with a smile.

  Her eyes widened at his impertinence, but she did not check him. He took silence for encouragement, as he always would. “You lie: you do desire a man.”

  “Not one who is free to marry,” she shot back.

  He hesitated. “Would you want me to be free?”

  At once she half turned her head away from him and he saw that he had lost her to her habitual coquetry. “Oh, were we speaking of you?”

  Immediately, he let her go. “No. We are speaking of the archduke. And he is a handsome young man indeed.”

  “And agreeable,” the ambassador interposed, hearing only the tail of their low-voiced conversation. “A fine scholar. His English is all but perfect.”

  “I am sure,” Sir Robert replied. “Mine is remarkably good too.”

  Amy was blooming in the April weather. Every day she rode out with Lizzie Oddingsell or with Alice or William Hyde to look at land that might be bought, woods that might be felled to clear a space for a house, or farmhouses that might be rebuilt.

  “Will he not want something much grander than this?” William Hyde asked her one day as they were riding around an estate of two hundred acres with a pretty red-tiled farmhouse in the center.

  “We would rebuild the house, of course,” Amy said. “But we don’t need a great palace. He was very taken with my cousin’s house at Camberwell.”

  “Oh, a merchant’s house in the town, yes,” Mr. Hyde agreed. “But will he not want somewhere that he can entertain the queen when the court is on progress? A house where he can entertain the whole court? A big house, more like Hampton Court, or Richmond?”

  She looked quite shocked for a moment. “Oh, no,” she said. “He wants something that we would have as our home, that would feel like a proper home. Not a great big palace of a place. And surely the queen would stay at Oxford if she came to this part of the country?”

  “If she wanted to hunt?” Alice suggested. “He is her Master of Horse. Would he not want enough land for a great deer park?”

  Amy’s confident laugh rang out. “Ah, you would have me buy the New Forest!” she exclaimed. “No. What we want is a place like my home in Norfolk, but just a little bigger. Somewhere like Flitcham Hall that we nearly bought, just a little grander and bigger than that. Somewhere that we can add a wing and a gateway, so that it is a handsome house, he would not want anything mean, and with pleasure gardens and an orchard and fish ponds of course, and some pretty woods and some good rides, and the rest would be farmland and he will breed horses for the court. He spends all his time in palaces; he will want to come home to a house which feels like a home and not a great cathedral filled by a band of mummers, which is what the royal palaces are like.”

  “If you are sure it is what he wants, then we can ask them the price for this place,” William Hyde said cautiously, still unconvinced. “But perhaps we should write to him to make sure he does not want something more imposing, with more chambers, and more land.”

  “There is no need,” Amy said confidently. “I know what my husband wants. We have been waiting to make a home like this for years.”

  Robert Dudley was deep in planning the greatest court feast since the high point of the queen’s coronation. Ostensibly it was to honor St. George’s Day, the great day of English celebration that the Tudors had introduced to the court calendar. It would be the day that he and three other great noblemen accepted the Order of the Garter, the highest award of chivalry, from the queen’s hand. The order was given only to men who had excelled themselves in defense of the crown. The queen was awarding it to Robert Dudley; to her young kinsman Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk; to Sir William Parr, her late stepmother’s brother; and to the Earl of Rutland.

  There were those who suggested that Robert Dudley was an odd addition to this array of family, or senior councillors, and perhaps, since he had been part of the expedition that had lost Calais for England, he had not made a particularly dazzling defense of the realm.

  Also, said the gossips, planning a few processions could hardly qualify a man for the highest order of English chivalry, especially since his grandfather and father had been condemned traitors. How could a man like Robert Dudley have earned such exceptional honor? But no one said it very loud. And no one said it anywhere near the queen.

  There would be jousting all the afternoon, the knights would come into the jousting ring in costume and in disguises, they would recite witty and beautiful verses to explain their role. The theme of the feast was to be Arthurian.

  “Is it Camelot?” Sir Francis Knollys asked Robert with gentle irony, in the tilt yard, where he was supervising the flying of the flags with medieval crests. “Are we enchanted?”

  “I hope you will be enchanted,” Robert sa