The Virgin's Lover Read online

  “I have always thought that she was not the true heir; but I thought she was the best choice for the country, until now.”

  “Why, what has happened now?” he demanded.

  “She is turning against the true religion, and supporting the Protestant rebels in Scotland,” she said levelly. “She has imprisoned all the bishops, except those that have been forced into exile. There is no church anymore, just frightened priests not knowing what they should do. It is an open attack on the religion of our country. What does she hope for? To make England and Scotland and Wales and Ireland all Protestant? To rival the Holy Father himself? To make a Holy Empire of her own? Does she want to be a Pope in petticoats? No wonder she does not marry. Who could bear such a wife as she would be?”

  “True religion?” Robert exclaimed. “Amy, you have been a Protestant all your life. We were married by King Edward’s service in his presence. Who have you been talking with to get such ideas in your head?”

  She looked at him with her usual mildness. “I have been talking with no one, Robert. And our household was Papist for all of Queen Mary’s years. I do think, you know. In the long hours that I spend alone, I have nothing to do but to think. And I travel around the country, and I see what Elizabeth and her servants are doing. I see the destruction of the monasteries and the poverty of the church lands. She is throwing hundreds into beggary; she is leaving the poor and sick without hospitals. Her coins are worth next to nothing, and her churches cannot even celebrate Mass. No one who looked at England under Elizabeth could think of her as a good queen. All she has brought is trouble.”

  She paused, seeing his appalled expression. “I don’t talk like this to anyone else,” she reassured him. “I thought it would be all right to share my thoughts with you. And I have wanted to speak to you about the Bishop of Oxford.”

  “The Bishop of Oxford can rot in hell!” he burst out. “You cannot talk to me of these matters. It’s not fitting. You are a Protestant, Amy, like me. Born and bred. Like me.”

  “I was born a Catholic; then I was a Protestant when King Edward was on the throne,” she said calmly. “And then I was Roman Catholic when Queen Mary was on the throne. Changed and changed about. Just as you have been. And your father recanted his Protestantism and called it a great error, didn’t he? He blamed all the sorrows of the country on his heresy, those were his very words. We were all Catholics then. And now you want to be Protestant, and you want me to be Protestant, just because she is. Well, I am not.”

  At last he heard a note that gave him the key to her. “Ah, you are jealous of her.”

  Amy’s hand went to her pocket to touch the cool beads of her rosary. “No,” she said steadily. “I have sworn I will not feel jealousy, not of any woman in the world, least of all her.”

  “You have always been a jealous woman,” he said frankly. “It is your curse, Amy—and mine.”

  She shook her head. “I have broken my curse then. I will never be jealous again.”

  “It is your jealousy that leads you into these dangerous speculations. And all this theology is just a mask for your jealous hatred of her.”

  “Not so, my lord. I have sworn I will renounce jealousy.”

  “Oh, admit it,” he said, smiling. “It is nothing but a woman’s spite.”

  She reined in her horse and looked at him so steadily that he had to meet her eyes. “Why, what cause have I for jealousy?” she demanded.

  For a moment Robert blustered, shifting in the saddle, his horse nervous under a tightened rein.

  “What cause have I?” she demanded again.

  “You will have heard talk about her and me?”

  “Of course. I assume that all the country has heard it.”

  “That would make you jealous. It would make any woman jealous.”

  “Not if you can assure me that there is no foundation to it.”

  “You cannot think that she and I are lovers!” He made it into a joke.

  Amy did not laugh; she did not even smile. “I will not think it, if you can assure me it is not true.” In her pocket she was gripping tight on her rosary. It felt like a rope that might save her from drowning in the deeps of this dangerous conversation.

  “Amy, you cannot think that I am her lover and plotting to divorce you, or to murder you as the gossipmongers say!”

  Still she did not smile. “If you assure me that the rumors are false then I will not attend to them,” she said steadily. “Of course I have heard them, and very vivid and unpleasant they are.”

  “They are most scurrilous and untrue,” he said boldly. “And I would take it very badly in you, Amy, if you were to listen to them.”

  “I don’t listen to them, I listen to you. I am listening very carefully now. Can you swear on your honor that you are not in love with the queen and that you have never thought of a divorce?”

  “Why do you even ask me?”

  “Because I want to know. Do you want a divorce, Robert?”

  “Surely, you would never consent to a divorce if such a thing were ever proposed?” he asked curiously.

  Amy’s eyes flew to his face and he saw her blench as if she were sickened. For a moment she was frozen on her horse before him, her mouth a little open as she gasped, and then, very slowly, she touched her horse with her little heel and preceded him down the track toward home.

  Robert followed her. “Amy…”

  She did not stop, nor turn her head. He realized that he had never before called her name without her immediate response. Amy always came when he called her; generally she was at his side long before he called her. It felt very strange and unnatural that little Amy Robsart should ride away from him with her face as white as death.

  “Amy…”

  Steadily she rode on, looking neither to right nor left, certainly not looking back to see if he was following. In silence, she rode all the way home, and when she got to the stable yard she handed her reins to the groom and went into the house in silence.

  Robert hesitated, and then followed her up the stairs to their bedroom. He did not know how to manage this strange new Amy. She went into their room and closed the door; he waited in case he could hear the sound of her turning the key in the lock. If she barred the door against him he could be angry, if she locked him out he was within his legal rights to break down the door, he had a legal right to beat her—but she did not. She closed the door; she did not lock it. He went forward and opened the door, as was his right, and went in.

  She was seated at the window in her usual seat, looking out, as she so often looked out for him.

  “Amy,” he said gently.

  She turned her head. “Robert, enough of this. I need to know the truth. I am sickened to my heart by lies and rumor. Do you want a divorce or not?”

  She was so calm that he felt, incredulously, a glimmer of hope. “Amy, what is in your mind?”

  “I want to know if you want to be released from our marriage,” she said steadily. “I am perhaps not the wife you need, now that you are become such a great man. That has become clear to me over recent months.

  “And God has not blessed us with children yet,” she added. “These alone might be reasons enough. But if half the gossip is true then it is possible that the queen would take you as her husband if you were free. No Dudley could resist such a temptation. Your father would have boiled his wife in oil for such a chance, and he adored her. So I ask you, please tell me honestly, my lord: do you want a divorce?”

  Slowly Robert realized what she was saying; slowly it dawned on him that she had been preparing herself for this, but instead of a sense of opportunity he felt rage and distress growing in him like a storm.

  “It’s too late now!” he exploded. “My God! That you should say this to me now! It’s no good you coming to your senses now, after all these years, it’s too late. It’s too late for me!”

  Startled, Amy looked up at him, her face shocked at the suppressed violence in his voice. “What d’you mean?”