The Virgin's Lover Read online

  “I must have it back,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “And he must never see it in your hands,” she said. “He would know at once that it had come from me.”

  Cecil nodded again.

  “When will you do it?” she asked.

  “At once,” he replied.

  “Not on my birthday,” she specified like a child. “Let me be happy with him on my birthday. He has planned a lovely day for me; don’t spoil it.”

  “The day after then,” Cecil said.

  “Sunday?”

  He nodded. “But you must not risk conceiving a child.”

  “I will make an excuse.”

  “I will need you to play a part,” Cecil warned her.

  “He knows me too well; he sees through me in a moment.”

  “Not play a part to him. You will have to make some remarks to others. You have to set a hare running. I will tell you what to say.”

  She wrung her hands. “It will not hurt him?”

  “He has to learn,” Cecil said. “You want this done?”

  “It must be done.”

  Would to God I could just have him murdered and be done with it, Cecil thought as he bowed and left the room. Kat Ashley was waiting outside the queen’s chamber as Cecil came out and they exchanged one brief, appalled glance at the mess in which this new queen was entrapped in only the second year of her reign.

  But though not dead I shall bring him down so low that he knows he can never be king, Cecil thought. Another Dudley generation and an other disgrace. Will they ever learn? He stalked along the gallery past the queen’s forebears, her handsome father, the gaunt portrait of her grandfather. A woman cannot rule, Cecil thought, looking at the kings. A woman, even a very clever woman like this one, has no temperament for rule. She seeks a master and God help us, she chose a Dudley. Well, once he is cut down like a weed and the path is clear she can seek a proper master for England.

  The page, reporting that the doctor would not attend Lady Dudley, was summoned before Mrs. Forster.

  “Did you tell him she was ill? Did you say Lady Dudley needed his help?”

  The lad, wide-eyed with anxiety, nodded his head. “He knew,” he said. “It was because she is who she is that he wouldn’t come.”

  Mrs. Forster shook her head and went to find Mrs. Oddingsell.

  “Our own physician will not attend her, for fear of being unable to cure her,” she said, putting the best appearance on the matter as she could.

  Mrs. Oddingsell paused at this fresh bad news. “Did he know who his patient would be?”

  “Yes.”

  “He refused to come in order to avoid her?”

  Mrs. Forster hesitated. “Yes.”

  “So now she has nowhere to go, and no physician will heal her?” she demanded incredulously. “What is she to do? What am I to do with her?”

  “She will have to come to terms with her husband,” Mrs. Forster said. “She should never have quarreled with him. He is too great a man to offend.”

  “Mrs. Forster, you know as well as I, she has no quarrel with him but his adultery and his desire for a divorce. How is a good wife to meet such a request?”

  “When the man is Robert Dudley, his wife had better agree,” Mrs. Forster said bluntly. “For look at the strait she finds herself in now.”

  Amy, a little better after a rest of two days, walked down the narrow circular stair from her room to the buttery below, and then through the great hall into the courtyard, her hat swinging in her hand. She walked across the cobbled courtyard, putting her hat on her head and tying the ribbons under her chin. Although it was September the sun was still very hot. Amy went through the great archway and turned left to walk on the thickly planted terrace before the house. The monks had walked here in their times of quiet prayer and reading, and she could still trace the paving stones of their circular walk in the rough-cut grass.

  She thought that they must have struggled with greater difficulties than hers, that they must have wrestled with their souls and not worried about mere mortal things like whether a husband would ever come home again, and how to survive if he did not. But they were very holy men, she said to herself. And learned. And I am neither holy nor learned, and in fact I think I am a very foolish sinner. For God must have forgotten me as much as Robert has done if they could both leave me here alone, and in such despair.

  She gave a little gulp of a sob and then rubbed the tears from her cheek with her gloved hand. No point in crying, she whispered miserably to herself.

  She took the steps down from the terrace to walk through the orchard toward the garden wall, the gate, and the church beyond.

  The gate was stuck when she pulled at it, and then a man stepped forward from the other side of the wall, and pushed it free for her.

  “Thank you,” she said, startled.

  “Lady Amy Dudley?” he asked.

  “Yes?”

  “I have a message for you from your husband.”

  She gave a little gasp and her cheeks suddenly blushed red. “Is he here?”

  “No. A letter for you.”

  He handed it over and waited while she examined the seal. Then she did an odd thing. “Have you a knife?”

  “What for, my lady?”

  “To lift off the seal. I don’t break them.”

  He took a little dagger, sharp as a razor, from its sheath in his boot. “Take care.”

  She inserted the blade between the dried shiny wax and the thick paper and lifted the seal from the fold. She tucked it into the pocket of her gown, returned the knife to him, and then unfolded the letter.

  He saw that her hands were shaking as she held the letter to read it, and that she read very slowly, her lips spelling out the words. She looked at him. “Are you in his confidence?”

  “I am his servant and his liegeman.”

  Amy held out the letter to him. “Please,” she said. “I don’t read very well. Does that say that he is coming to see me tomorrow at midday, and that he wants to see me alone in the house? That I must clear the house of everyone and wait for him alone?”

  Awkwardly, he took the letter and read it quickly. “Yes,” he said. “At midday tomorrow, and it says to dismiss your servants for the day and sit alone in your chamber.”

  “Do I know you?” she said suddenly. “Are you new in his service?”

  “I am his confidential servant,” he said. “I had business in Oxford and so he asked me to take this letter. He said there would be no need of any reply.”

  “Did he send me a token?” she asked. “Since I don’t know you?”

  The man gave her a thin smile. “I am Johann Worth, your ladyship. And he gave me this for you.” He reached into his pocket and gave her the ring, the Dudley signet ring with the ragged staff and the bear.

  Solemnly she took it from him and at once slipped it on her fourth finger, snugly it fitted above her wedding ring, and she smiled as she put her fingertip on the engraving of the Dudley crest.

  “Of course I shall do exactly as he asks,” she said.

  The Spanish ambassador, de Quadra, staying at Windsor for the weekend of Elizabeth’s birthday, found himself opposite Cecil to watch an archery tournament on the upper green before the palace gardens on Friday evening. He noticed at once that the Lord Secretary was looking as grave as he had done since his return from Scotland, and was wearing his customary black unrelieved by any slashing, color, or jewelry, as if it were an ordinary day and not the eve of the queen’s birthday.

  Carefully he worked his way round so that he was near the Lord Secretary as the party dispersed.

  “And so all is prepared for the queen’s birthday tomorrow,” the Spanish ambassador observed. “Sir Robert swears he will give her a merry day.”

  “Merry for her, but little joy in it for me,” Cecil said incautiously, his tongue loosened by wine.

  “Oh?”

  “I tell you, I cannot tolerate much more of it,” Cecil continued in a to