Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2 Read online

  — Pretty enough — William Cecil said to himself, glancing at the sun which was now almost overhead. — Half the day wasted and a mountain of letters for me to read when I get back to court. Bad news from Scotland, no doubt, and still no money forthcoming from the queen to support our co-religionists, though they beg us for our help and demand, with reason, what we think we are doing: abandoning them when they are on the very brink of victory? —

  He looked a little closer. Robert Dudley’s hand was not where it should be, on the queen’s back as he guided her forward in the steps of the dance, but around her waist. And she, far from standing upright as she always did, was most definitely leaning towards him. — One might almost say yearning — he thought.

  Cecil’s first thought was for her reputation, and the marriage plans. He glanced around. Praise God, they were among friends: the Knollys, the Sidneys, the Percys. The queen’s irritable young uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, would not like to see his kinswoman in the arms of a man as if she were some serving wench at a roadside inn, but he would hardly report her to the Hapsburg ambassador. There might be spying servants in the party, but their words would carry little weight. Everyone knew that Elizabeth and Dudley were intimate friends. There was no harm done by the evident affection between the young couple.

  — And yet — Cecil said quietly to himself. — And yet, we should get her married. If she lets him caress her, we’re safe enough, he is married and can do no more but light a fire which will have to burn out. But what if a single man took her fancy? If Dudley arouses her desires, what if some clever young buck presents himself, and happens to be both handsome and free? What if she thought to marry for love and undo England’s policy for a girl’s whim? Better get her married and soon. —

  Amy was waiting for Robert’s arrival.

  The whole household was waiting for Robert’s arrival.

  ‘Are you sure that he said he was coming at once?’ William Hyde asked his sister, Elizabeth Oddingsell, the second week in May.

  ‘You saw the letter as well as I,’ she said. ‘First his clerk wrote he was busy but that he would come as soon as he could, then in the second sentence he corrects the first and says that he will come at once.’

  ‘My cousin in London, who is kin to the Seymour family, says that he is all day every day with the queen,’ Alice Hyde observed. ‘She went to the St George’s Day joust and she heard someone say that he carried the queen’s glove in his breastplate.’

  Lizzie shrugged. ‘He is her Master of Horse, of course she favours him.’

  ‘Mr Hyde’s cousin says that in the evening he sailed with her in the royal barge.’

  ‘As he should be, honoured among others,’ Lizzie maintained stoutly.

  ‘She visited him for a May Day breakfast at his new house at Kew and stayed all the day.’

  ‘Of course,’ Lizzie said patiently. ‘A court breakfast might well last for most of the day.’

  ‘Well, my cousin says that the word is that she never lets him out of her sight. He is at her side all day and they dance together every night. She says that the queen’s own kinsman the Duke of Norfolk has sworn that if he dishonours her, he is a dead man, and he would not make such a threat lightly or for no reason.’

  Lizzie’s look at her sister-in-law was neither sisterly nor warm. ‘Your cousin is obviously well-informed,’ she said irritably. ‘But you can remind her that Sir Robert is a married man about to buy land and build his first house with his wife and that this will happen at any day now. Remind her that he married his wife for love, and that they are planning their life together. And you can tell her that there is a world of difference between courtly love which is all show and fol-de-rol and poetry and singing, done by every man at court to please the queen, and real life. And your cousin should bite her tongue before she gossips about her betters.’

  The Spanish ambassador, Count Feria, deeply weary of the dance of Elizabeth’s courtship which he had gone through once on account of his master, Philip of Spain, did not think he could bear to watch it played out all over again with a fellow ambassador and another suitor: the Hapsburg archduke. At last, King Philip responded to his pleas and agreed to replace him with another ambassador: the astute Bishop de Quadra. Count Feria, barely able to hide his relief, asked Cecil for permission to take his leave of Elizabeth.

  The experienced ambassador and the young queen were old adversaries. He had been the most loyal advisor to Queen Mary Tudor and had recommended consistently and publicly that she execute her troublesome heir and half-sister, Elizabeth. They were his spies who over and over again brought evidence of Elizabeth plotting with English rebels, plotting with French spies, plotting with the magician Dr Dee, plotting with anyone who would offer to overthrow her sister by treason, by foreign armies or by magic.

  He had been Mary’s truest and steadiest friend and he had fallen in love and married her most constant lady in waiting, Jane Dormer. Queen Mary would have released her beloved friend to no-one but the Spanish ambassador, and she gave them her blessing on her deathbed.

  Obeying tradition, the count brought his wife to court to say her farewell to her queen, and Jane Dormer, holding her head very high, walked into Whitehall Palace once more, having walked out of it in disgust the day that Elizabeth became queen. Now a Spanish countess, her belly curved with pregnancy, Jane Dormer returned, pleased to be saying goodbye. As luck would have it, the first person she met was a face from the old court: the royal fool, Will Somers.

  ‘How now, Jane Dormer,’ he said warmly. ‘Or do I call you my lady countess?’

  ‘You can call me Jane,’ she said. ‘As ever. How are you, Will?’

  ‘Amusing,’ he said. ‘This is a court ready to be amused, but I fear for my post.’

  ‘Oh?’ she asked.

  The lady in waiting who was escorting Jane to the queen paused for the jest.

  ‘In a court in which every man is played for a fool, why should anyone pay me?’ he asked.

  Jane laughed out loud. The lady in waiting giggled. ‘Give you good day, Will,’ Jane said fondly.

  ‘Aye, you will miss me when you are in Spain,’ he said. ‘But not miss much else, I would guess?’

  Jane shook her head. ‘The best of England left it in November.’

  ‘God rest her soul,’ Will said. ‘She was a most unlucky queen.’

  ‘And this one?’ Jane asked him.

  Will cracked a laugh. ‘She has all the luck of her sire,’ he said with wonderful ambiguity, since Jane’s conviction would always be that Elizabeth was the child of Mark Smeaton, the lute player, and his luck was stretched to breaking point on the rack before he danced on air from the gallows.

  Jane gleamed at the private, treasonous joke, and then followed the lady in waiting towards the queen’s presence chamber.

  ‘You’re to wait here, Countess,’ the lady said abruptly, and showed Jane into an ante-room. Jane rested one hand in the small of her back and leaned against the windowsill.

  There was no chair in the room, no stool, no window seat, not even a table that she might lean on.

  Minutes passed. A wasp, stumbling out of its winter sleep, struggled against the leaded window pane and fell silent on the sill. Jane shifted her weight from one foot to another, feeling the ache in her back.

  It was stuffy in the room, the ache in the small of her back travelled down to the calves of her legs. Jane flexed her feet, going up and down on her toes, trying to relieve the pain. In her belly, the child shifted and kicked. She put her hand on her stomacher and stepped to the window embrasure. She looked out of the window to the inner garden. Whitehall Palace was a warren of buildings and inner courts, this one had a small walnut tree growing in the centre with a circular bench around it. As Jane watched, a pageboy and a serving maid loitered for five precious minutes whispering secrets and then scampered off in opposite directions.

  Jane smiled. This palace had been her home as the favourite lady in waiting of the queen, and she thought