The Virgin's Lover Read online

  “Just let me be at your side until then,” he said simply. “Neither of us can bear our lives when we are apart.”

  That night at dinner the queen laughed at her fool for the first time in many weeks, and Sir Robert sat at her side once more and poured her wine.

  “This wet weather has got into the very timbers of the roof,” he remarked as the servants took the meats and the puddings off the table and brought the sweetmeats and the sugared fruits. “My room is so damp, you can see the steam coming off my linen when Tamworth holds it before the fire in the morning.”

  “Tell them to change your rooms,” she said lightly. “Tell the groom of the household to put you back in your old rooms beside mine.”

  He waited. He knew the way forward with Elizabeth was not to press her. He decided that he would do nothing more than wait for her.

  At midnight, the door between the two rooms slid open and she came quietly in. She was wearing a dark blue robe over her white shift, her red hair was brushed and shining over her shoulders.

  “My Robert?”

  The table before the fire was laid with supper for two, the fire was lit, the bed was turned down, the door was locked, and Tamworth, Sir Robert’s valet, was on guard outside.

  “My love,” he said and took her in his arms.

  She nestled close. “I cannot live without you,” she said. “We have to keep this secret, a most deep secret. But I cannot be queen without you, Robert.”

  “I know,” he said. “I cannot live without you.”

  She looked up at him. “What will we do?”

  He shrugged his shoulders, his smile was almost rueful. “I think we have gone beyond choice. We will have to marry, Elizabeth.”

  She glanced toward the window where one of the shutters stood open. “Close the shutters,” the queen said in sudden superstitious fear. “I don’t want even the moon to see us.”

  In her old bedroom at Stanfield Hall Amy woke with a start and found that the covers had slid from her bed and that she was freezing cold. She reached down to her feet and grabbed the linen sheets, the woolen rugs, and pulled them up to her shivering shoulders. She had left one of the shutters open, and the moon, a big, bold, creamy moon, was laying a path of light on her pillow. She lay down and looked out of the window to the moon.

  “The same moon that is shining on me is shining on my lord,” she whispered. “Perhaps it will wake him too, and make him think of me. Perhaps God will waken his love for me in his heart once more. Even now, perhaps he is thinking of me.”

  “You played me as a fool!” Mary Sidney raged at her brother, striding up to him in the Whitehall Palace stable yard. He and half a dozen other men were practicing for a joust, his horse was already armed, his squire standing by with his beautifully polished breastplate, his helmet, his lance.

  Robert was distracted. He snapped his fingers for his pageboy with his gauntlets. “What is it, Mary? What have I done?”

  “You sent me on a fool’s errand to tell the ambassador that the queen would marry the archduke. You sent me knowing that since I believed you, since I was deeply, deeply grieved for you, that I would tell a convincing tale. I was the best person in court to send to him. D’you know I wept as I told him that you had given her up? And so of course, he believed me, and yet all along it was just a plot to throw dust in the eyes of the court.”

  “What dust?” Robert was all innocence.

  “You and the queen are lovers,” she spat at him. “You probably have been from the first day. You probably were lovers when I thought you were grieving for the loss of her. And you made me play pander to you.”

  “The queen and I agreed to part for her safety,” he said steadily. “That was true. As I told you. But she needs friends, Mary, you know that. I have come back to her side to be her friend. And we are friends, as I said we would be.”

  She pulled away from his outstretched hand. “Oh, no, not another pack of lies, Robert; I won’t hear them. You are faithless to Amy, and you are dishonest with me. I told the ambassador that I knew for a fact that the queen and you were true friends and that she was a virgin, free to marry and a chaste princess. I swore on my immortal soul that there was nothing between you but friendship and a few kisses.”

  “And there is not!”

  “Don’t speak to me!” she cried passionately. “Don’t lie to me. I won’t hear another word.”

  “Come with me to the tilt yard….”

  “I shan’t watch you, I shan’t talk with you. I don’t even want to see you, Robert. There is nothing to you but ambition. God help your wife, and God help the queen.”

  “Amen,” he said, smiling. “Amen to both, for they are both good women and innocent of any wrongdoing, and indeed God bless me and all Dudleys as we rise in the world.”

  “And what has Amy done that she should be shamed before the world?” she demanded of him. “What sin has she ever done, for everyone in England to know that you have no liking for her? That you prefer another woman instead of her, your own true wife?”

  “She has done nothing,” he said. “And I have done nothing. Really, Mary, you shouldn’t throw such accusations around.”

  “Don’t you dare speak to me!” she swore again, quite beyond herself with rage. “I have nothing to say to you, and I will never have another word to say to you on this. You have played me as a fool and played the Spanish as fools and played your poor wife as a fool, and all along you have been lovers with the queen and you stay as lovers with the queen.”

  In one swift stride Robert was at her side with her wrist in a hard grip. “Now that is enough,” he said. “You have said quite enough, and I have heard more than enough. The queen’s reputation is beyond comment. She is going to marry the right suitor as soon as he comes along. We all know that. Amy is my wife and I will hear nothing against her. I visited her in October, and I shall visit her again shortly. Cecil himself gets home no more frequently than that.”

  “Cecil loves his wife and no one doubts his honor!” she flared up.

  “And no one questions mine,” he said sharply. “You can keep your poisonous little tongue off my affairs or you will spoil more than you understand. Be warned, Mary.”

  She was unafraid. “Are you mad, Robert?” she demanded. “Do you think you can fool the best spies in Europe as you fool your sister and your wife? In Madrid, in Paris, in Vienna, they know that you and the queen have adjoining rooms once more. What do you think they make of it? The Hapsburg archduke won’t come to England while you and the queen sleep behind locked doors, one panel of wood between you. Everyone but your poor wife believes that you are lovers; the whole country knows it. You have ruined the queen’s prospects with your lusts; you have ruined Amy’s love for you. Pray God you do not ruin the kingdom too.”

  Mary’s warning came too late, and could not prevent the scandalous intimacy between the queen and her Master of Horse. With Robert at her side once more, Elizabeth’s color came back into her cheeks, her fingernails were buffed and shining and the cuticles smooth. She glowed in his company, her constant nervousness was quieted when he was near. It did not matter what anyone might say, they were clearly born for each other, and they could not conceal it. They rode together every day, they danced together every night, and Elizabeth had the courage to open her letters and listen to petitions once more.

  In the absence of Cecil, Robert was her only trusted advisor. No one was seen by the queen except by Dudley’s introduction; she never spoke to anyone without him standing, discreetly, in the background. He was her only friend and her ally. She took no decision without him; they were inseparable. Duke John of Sweden danced around the court but hardly pressed his suit, William Pickering retired quietly to the country to try to economize on his massive debts, Caspar von Breuner came only rarely to court and everyone had forgotten the Earl of Arran.

  Cecil, staying firmly on the outskirts of the young couple and their courtiers, remarked to Throckmorton that this was no way to rule a countr