The Virgin's Lover ttc-4 Read online

  Robert nodded. “It has brought me very low,” he said softly. “So low that I cannot think how to rise again. I think of her, and I remember her when I first met her, and first loved her, and I know I am the sort of fool who picks a flower to put in his buttonhole and then drops it and leaves it to die from mere wanton carelessness. I took her up like a primrose, as my mother called her, and then I tired of her, and I dropped her as if I was a selfish child; and now she is dead and I can never ask her forgiveness.”

  There was a silence.

  “And the worst thing,” Dudley said heavily, “is that I cannot ever tell her that I am sorry that I hurt her so badly. I was always thinking of myself; I was always thinking of the queen; I was chasing my own damned ambition and I did not think what I was doing to her. God forgive me, I put the thought of her away from me, and now she has taken me at my word, and gone away from me, and I will never see her again, and never touch her, and never see her smile. I told her I did not want her anymore, and now I do not have her.”

  “I will leave you,” Cecil said quietly. “I did not come to intrude on your grief; but just to tell you that in all the world, at least you have one friend.”

  Dudley raised his head and reached out his hand for Cecil.

  The older man gripped it hard. “Courage,” he said.

  “I cannot tell you how thankful I am that you came,” Robert said. “Will you remember me to the queen? Urge her to let me come back to court as soon as the verdict is known. I won’t be dancing for a while, God knows, but I am very lonely here, Cecil. It is exile as well as mourning.”

  “I’ll speak to her for you,” Cecil assured him. “And I will pray for you, and for Amy’s soul. You know, I remember her on her wedding day. She just shone with happiness; she loved you so much. She thought you the finest man in the world.”

  Dudley nodded. “God forgive me for teaching her differently.”

  Windsor Castle

  Memorandum to the queen

  Saturday 14th September 1560

  1. The jury has delivered a verdict of accidental death on Amy Dudley and so Sir Robert may return to court to his usual duties, if you wish.

  2. The scandal of his wife’s death will always cling to his name; he knows this, and so do we all. You must never, by word or deed, indicate to him that this shame could ever be overcome.

  3. And so you will be safe from any further proposals of marriage from him. If you must continue your love affair it must be with the utmost discretion. He will now understand this.

  4. The matter of your marriage must be urgently addressed: without a son and heir we are all working for nothing.

  5. I shall bring to you tomorrow a new proposal from the archduke that I think will be much to our advantage. Sir Robert cannot oppose such a marriage now.

  Thomas Blount, Dudley’s man, stood at the back of the church of St. Mary the Virgin at Oxford and watched the Dudley standard of the ragged staff and bear ride past him at slow march, followed by the elaborate black-draped coffin that was all that was left of little Amy Robsart.

  It was all done just as it should be. The queen was represented, and Sir Robert was not there, as was the custom. Amy’s half-brothers and the Forsters were there to show Lady Dudley every respect in death that she had lacked in the last days of her life. Lizzie Oddingsell did not attend; she had gone back to her brother’s house, filled with such anger and grief that she would speak to no one of her friend except to say once, “She was no match for him,” which Alice Hyde gleefully fell on as proof of murder, and which William saw as a fair description of a marriage that had been ill-starred from start to finish.

  Thomas Blount waited to see the body interred and the earth shoveled in the ground. He was a thorough man, and he worked for a meticulous master. Then he went back to Cumnor Place.

  Amy’s maid, Mrs. Pirto, had everything ready for him, as he had ordered. Amy’s box of jewels, locked with their key, Amy’s best gowns, folded neatly and wrapped with bags of lavender heads, the linen from her bed, the furniture that traveled with her wherever she went, her box of personal goods: her sewing, her rosary, her purse, her gloves, her little collection of wax seals cut from the letters that Robert had sent her over the eleven years of their marriage, and all his letters, tied with a ribbon and arranged by date, worn by constant handling.

  “I’ll take the jewel box and the personal things,” Blount decided. “You shall take the rest back to Stanfield and leave them there. Then you can go.”

  Mrs. Pirto bowed her head and whispered something about wages. “From the bailiff at Stanfield when you deliver the goods,” Thomas Blount said. He ignored the woman’s red eyes. All women wept easily, he knew. It meant nothing, and as a man, he had important business to transact.

  Mrs. Pirto murmured something about a keepsake.

  “Nothing worth remembering,” Thomas Blount said roundly, thinking of the trouble that Amy had caused his master in life and in death. “Now you get on, as I must.”

  He tucked the two boxes under his arm and went out to his waiting horse. The jewel box slid easily into his saddlebag, the box of personal effects he handed to his groom to strap on his back. Then he heaved himself up into the saddle and turned his horse’s head for Windsor.

  Robert, returning to court wearing dark mourning clothes, held his head high and looked scornfully around him as if daring anyone to speak. The Earl of Arundel hid a smile behind his hand, Sir Francis Knollys bowed from a distance, Sir Nicholas Bacon all but ignored him. Robert felt as if a chill circle of suspicion and dislike was wrapped around him like a wide black cape.

  “What the devil is amiss?” he asked his sister. She came toward him and presented her cold cheek to be kissed.

  “I assume that they think you murdered Amy,” she said flatly.

  “The inquest cleared me. The verdict was accidental death.”

  “They think you bribed the jury.”

  “And what do you think?” He raised his voice and then abruptly spoke more quietly as he saw the court glance round at the two of them.

  “I think you have taken this family to the very brink of ruin again,” she said. “I am sick of disgrace; I am sick of being pointed at. I have been known as the daughter of a traitor, as the sister of a traitor, and now I am known as the sister of a wife murderer.”

  “Good God, you have not much sympathy to spare for me!” Robert recoiled from the blank hostility of her face.

  “I have none at all,” she said. “You nearly brought down the queen herself with this scandal. Think of it! You nearly ended the Tudor line. You nearly destroyed the reformed church! Certainly, you have ruined yourself and everyone who bears your name. I am withdrawing from court. I can’t stand another day of it.”

  “Mary, don’t go,” he said urgently. “You have always stood by me before. You have always been my sister and friend. Don’t let everyone see that we are divided. Don’t you abandon me, as everyone else has.”

  He reached out to her, but she stepped away and whipped her hands behind her back so that he could not touch her. At that childish gesture which recalled her in the schoolroom so vividly to him, he nearly cried out. “Mary, you would never abandon me when I am so low, and I have been so wrongly accused!”

  “But I think you are rightly accused,” she said quietly, and her voice was like ice in his ears. “I think you killed her because you thought in your pride that the queen would stand by you, and everyone else would wink at it. That they would all agree it was an accident and you would go into mourning a widower and come out the queen’s betrothed.”

  “That could still happen,” he whispered. “I did not kill her, I swear it. I could still marry the queen.”

  “Never,” she said. “You are finished. The best you can hope for is that she keeps you on as Master of Horse and as her little disgraced favorite.”

  She turned from him. Robert, conscious of the eyes of everyone upon him, could not call her back. For a moment, he made a move to catch