The Virgin's Lover Read online

  “Of course,” Robert said urbanely. “He can have his pick from a dozen.”

  The queen scanned the room. “Ah, my lord,” she said pleasantly to one of the waiting men. “How glad I am to see you at court.”

  It was his cue for her attention and at once he stepped forward. “I have brought Your Grace a gift to celebrate your coming to the throne,” he said.

  Elizabeth brightened; she loved gifts of any sort, she was as acquisitive as a magpie. Robert, knowing that what would follow would be some request for the right to cut wood or enclose common land, to avoid a tax or persecute a neighbor, stepped down from the dais, bowed, walked backward from the throne, bowed again at the door, and went out to the stables.

  Despite the French ambassador, a couple of lords, some small-fry gentry, a couple of ladies-in-waiting, and half a dozen guards that Cecil had collected to accompany the queen, Dudley managed to ride by her side and they were left alone for most of the ride. At least two men muttered that Dudley was shown more favor than he deserved, but Robert ignored them, and the queen did not hear.

  They rode westerly, slowly at first through the streets and then lengthening the pace of the horses as they entered the yellowing winter grassland of St. James’s Park. Beyond the park, the houses gave way to market gardens to feed the insatiable city, and then to open fields, and then to wilder country. The queen was absorbed in managing the new horse, who fretted at too tight a rein but would take advantage and toss his head if she let him ride too loose.

  “He needs schooling,” she said critically to Robert.

  “I thought you should try him as he is,” he said easily. “And then we can decide what is to be done with him. He could be a hunter for you, he is strong enough and he jumps like a bird, or he could be a horse you use in processions, he is so handsome and his color is so good. If you want him for that, I have a mind to have him specially trained, taught to stand and to tolerate crowds. I thought your gray fretted a little when people pushed very close.”

  “You can’t blame him for that!” she retorted. “They were waving flags in his face and throwing rose petals at him!”

  He smiled at her. “I know. But this will happen again and again. England loves her princess. You will need a horse that can stand and watch a tableau, and let you bend down and take a posy from a child without shifting for a moment, and then trot with his head up looking proud.”

  She was struck by his advice. “You’re right,” she said. “And it is hard to pay attention to the crowd and to manage a horse.”

  “I don’t want you to be led by a groom either,” he said decidedly. “Or to ride in a carriage. I want them to see you mastering your own horse. I don’t want anything taken away from you. Every procession should add to you; they should see you higher, stronger, grander even than life.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “I have to be seen as strong; my sister was always saying she was a weak woman, and she was always ill, all the time.”

  “And he is your color,” he said impertinently. “You are a bright chestnut yourself.”

  She was not offended; she threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, d’you think he is a Tudor?” she asked.

  “For sure, he has the temper of one,” Robert said. He and his brothers and sisters had been playmates in the royal nursery at Hatfield, and all the Dudley children had felt the ringing slap of the Tudor temper. “Doesn’t like the bridle, doesn’t like to be commanded, but can be gentled into almost anything.”

  She gleamed at him. “If you are so wise with a dumb beast, let’s hope you don’t try to train me,” she said provocatively.

  “Who could train a queen?” he replied. “All I could do would be to implore you to be kind to me.”

  “Have I not been very kind already?” she said, thinking of the best post which she had given him, Master of Horse, with a massive annual income and the right to set up his own table at court and to take the best rooms in whichever palace the court might visit.

  He shrugged as if it were next to nothing. “Ah, Elizabeth,” he said intimately. “That is not what I mean when I desire you to be kind to me.”

  “You may not call me Elizabeth anymore,” she reminded him quietly, but he thought she was not displeased.

  “I forgot,” he said, his voice very low. “I take such pleasure in your company that sometimes I think we are still just friends as we used to be. I forgot for a moment that you have risen to such greatness.”

  “I was always a princess,” she said defensively. “I have risen to nothing but my birthright.”

  “And I always loved you for nothing but yourself,” he replied cleverly.

  He could see her hands loosen slightly on the reins and knew that he had struck the right note with her. He played her as every favorite plays every ruler; he had to know what charmed and what cooled her.

  “Edward was always very fond of you,” she said softly, remembering her brother.

  He nodded, looking grave. “God bless him. I miss him every day, as much as my own brothers.”

  “But he was not so warm to your father,” she said rather pointedly.

  Robert smiled down at Elizabeth as if nothing of their past lives could be counted against them: his family’s terrible treason against her family, her own betrayal of her half-sister. “Bad times,” he said generally. “And long ago. You and I have both been misjudged, and God knows, we have been punished enough. We have both served our time in the Tower, accused of treason. I used to think of you then; when I was allowed out to walk on the leads, I used to go to the very threshold of the gated door of your tower, and know that you were just on the other side. I’d have given much to be able to see you. I used to have news of you from Hannah the Fool. I can’t tell you what a comfort it was to know you were there. They were dark days for us both; but I am glad now that we shared them together. You on one side of that gate and me the other.”

  “Nobody else can ever understand,” she said with suppressed energy. “Nobody can ever know unless you have been there: what it’s like to be in there! To know that below you, out of sight, is the green where the scaffold will be built, and not to know whether they are building it, sending to ask, and not trusting the answer, wondering if it will be today or tomorrow.”

  “D’you dream of it?” he asked, his voice low. “Some nights I still wake up in terror.”

  A glance from her dark eyes told him that she too was haunted. “I have a dream that I hear hammering,” she said quietly. “It was the sound I dreaded most in the world. To hear hammering and sawing and to know that they are building my own scaffold right underneath my window.”

  “Thank God those days are done and we can bring justice to England, Elizabeth,” he said warmly.

  This time she did not correct him for using her name.

  “We should turn for home, sir,” one of the grooms rode up to remind him.

  “It is your wish?” he asked the queen.

  She gave him a little inviting sideways smile. “D’you know, I should like to ride out all day. I am sick of Whitehall and the people who come, and every one of them wanting something. And Cecil with all the business that needs doing.”

  “Why don’t we ride early tomorrow?” he suggested. “Ride out by the river, we can cross over to the south bank and gallop out through Lambeth marshes and not come home till dinner time?”

  “Why, what ever will they say?” she asked, instantly attracted.

  “They will say that the queen is doing as she wishes, as she should do,” he said. “And I shall say that I am hers to command. And tomorrow evening I shall plan a great feast for you with dancing and players and a special masque.”

  Her face lit up. “For what reason?”

  “Because you are young, and beautiful, and you should not go from schoolroom to lawmaking without taking some pleasure. You are queen now, Elizabeth, you can do as you wish. And no one can refuse you.”

  She laughed at the thought of it. “Shall I be a tyrant?”

&