The Virgin's Lover Read online

  My father would have done it. My father would have forgiven her for doing it. Actually, he would have admired her decisiveness.

  He sighed. “She did it for love of me,” he said aloud. “No other reason but to set me free so that she could love me openly. No other reason but that she could marry me, and I could be king. And she knows that we both want that more than anything in the world. I could accept this terrible sorrow and this terrible crime as a gift of love. I can forgive her. I can love her. I can draw some happiness out of this misery.”

  The sky grew paler and then slowly the sun rose, pale primrose, over the silver of the river. “God forgive me and God forgive Elizabeth,” Robert prayed quietly. “And God bring Amy the peace in heaven which I denied her on earth. And God grant that I am a better husband this time.”

  There was a tap at his chamber door. “It’s dawn, my lord!” the servant called out. “Do you want your hot water?”

  “Yes!” Robert shouted back. He went to the door, trailing the sheet, and shot back the bolt from the inside. “Put it down there, lad. And tell them in the kitchen that I am hungry, and warn the stable that I will be there within the hour; I am leading out the hunt today.”

  He was in the stable an hour before the court was ready to ride, making sure that everything was perfect: horses, hounds, tack, and hunt servants. The whole court was riding out today in merry mood. Robert stood on a vantage point of the steps above the stable and watched the courtiers mounting up, the ladies being helped into their saddles. His sister was not there. She had gone back to Penshurst.

  Elizabeth was riding, in fine spirits. Robert went to help her into the saddle but then delayed, and let another man go. Over the courtier’s head she shot him a little tentative smile and he smiled back at her. She could be assured that things would be all right between them. She could be forgiven. The Spanish ambassador saw them off; the Hapsburg ambassador rode beside her.

  They had a good morning’s hunting. The scent was strong and the hounds went well. Cecil rode out to meet them at dinner time when they were served with a picnic of hot soup and mulled ale and hot pasties under the trees which were a blaze of turning color: gold and red and yellow.

  Robert stood away from the intimate circle around Elizabeth, even when she turned and gave him a shy little smile to invite him to her side. He bowed, but did not go closer. He wanted to wait until he could see her alone, when he could tell her that he knew what she had done, he knew that it had been for love of him, and that he could forgive her.

  After they had dined and went to remount their horses, Sir Francis Knollys found his horse had been tied beside Robert’s mare.

  “I must offer you my condolences on the death of your wife,” Sir Francis said stiffly.

  “I thank you,” Robert replied, as coldly as the queen’s best friend had spoken to him.

  Sir Francis turned his horse away.

  “Do you remember an afternoon in the queen’s chapel?” Robert suddenly said. “The queen was there, me, you, and Lady Catherine. It was a binding service, remember? It was a promise that cannot be broken.”

  The older man looked at him, almost with pity. “I don’t remember any such thing,” he said simply. “Either I did not witness it, or it did not happen. But I do not remember it.”

  Robert felt himself flush with the heat of temper. “I remember it well enough; it happened,” he insisted.

  “I think you will find you are the only one,” Sir Francis replied quietly and spurred on his horse.

  Robert checked the horses over, and glanced at the hounds. One horse was limping slightly and he snapped his fingers for a groom to lead it back to the castle. He supervised the mounting of the court; but he hardly saw them. His head was pounding with the duplicity of Sir Francis, who would deny that Robert and the queen had sworn to marry, who was suggesting that the queen would deny it too. As if she would betray me, Robert swore to himself. After what she has done to be with me! What man could have more proof that a woman loves him than she would do such a thing to set me free? She loves me, as I love her, more than life itself! We were born for each other, born to be together. As if we could ever be apart! As if she did not do this terrible, this unbearable crime for love of me! To set me free!

  “Are you glad to be back at court?” Cecil asked in a friendly tone, bringing his horse alongside Robert’s.

  Robert, recalled to the present, looked at him. “I cannot say I am merry,” he said quietly. “I cannot say that my welcome has been warm.”

  The secretary’s eyes were kind. “People will forget, you know,” he said gently. “It will never be the same again for you, but people forget.”

  “And I am free to marry,” Dudley said. “When people have forgotten my wife, and her death, I will be free to marry again.”

  Cecil nodded. “Indeed, yes. But not the queen.”

  Dudley looked at him. “What?”

  “It is the scandal,” Cecil confided in him in his friendly tone. “As I told you when you left court. She could not have her name linked with yours. Your sons could never take the throne of England. You are infamed by the death of your wife. You are ruined as a royal suitor. She will never be able to marry you now.”

  “What are you saying? That she will never marry me now?”

  “Exactly,” Cecil replied, almost regretfully. “You are right. She can never marry you now.”

  “Then why did she do it?” Dudley demanded, his whisper as soft as falling snow. “Why kill Amy, my wife, if not to set me free? Amy, the only innocent among us, Amy who had done nothing wrong but hold faith. What was the benefit if not to release me for marriage with the queen? You will have been in her counsel; you will have made this plan together. It will have been your villains who did it. Why murder little Amy if not to set me free to marry the queen?”

  Cecil did not pretend to misunderstand him. “You are not released for marriage with the queen,” he said. “You are prevented forever. Any other way and you would always have been eligible. You would always have been her first choice. Now she cannot choose you. You are forever disbarred.”

  “You have destroyed me, Cecil,” Dudley’s voice broke. “You killed Amy and fixed the blame on me, and destroyed me.”

  “I am her servant,” Cecil said, as gentle as a father to a grieving son. “As you know.”

  “She ordered the death of my wife? Amy died by Elizabeth’s order so that I should be shamed to the ground and never, never rise again?”

  “No, no, it was an accidental death,” Cecil reminded the younger man. “The inquest ruled it so, the twelve good men of Abingdon, even when you wrote to them and pressed them to investigate most closely. They had their verdict; they brought it in. It was accidental death. Better for all of us if we leave it so, perhaps.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The mystery of how Amy Robsart died is still unsolved four centuries after her death. Several culprits have been suggested: malignant cancer of the breast which would account for reports of breast pain, and could result in the thinning of the bones of her neck; Robert Dudley’s agents; Elizabeth’s agents; Cecil’s agents; or, suicide.

  Also fascinating are the incriminating and indiscreet remarks from Cecil and Elizabeth to the Spanish ambassador in the days before Amy’s death, which he recorded for his master, just as I present them in this fictional account.

  It seems to me that Cecil and Elizabeth knew that Amy would die on Sunday, September 8, and were deliberately planting evidence with the ambassador to incriminate Robert Dudley. Elizabeth incriminates herself as an accessory by predicting Amy’s death before the event, and by saying that she died of a broken neck, before the detailed news reaches the court.

  Why Elizabeth and Cecil should do such a thing we cannot know. I don’t believe that either of them blurted out the truth by accident, to the man most likely to circulate such scandal. I suggest that it was Elizabeth and Cecil’s plan to smear Dudley with the crime of wife-murder.

  Certainly t