The Virgin's Lover Read online

  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