Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2 Read online

  Robert Dudley smiled at her, she could hardly see him through the haze of pain behind her eyes. Simply, she shook her head at him and turned away. She beckoned the Austrian ambassador to take a chair beside her throne and to talk to her of Archduke Ferdinand, who would come with all the power of Spain at his back and who was the only man who might bring with him a big enough army to keep England safe for her.

  ‘You know, I have no liking for the single state,’ Elizabeth said softly to the ambassador, ignoring Sir William’s goggle-eyed glare at her. ‘I have only waited, as any sensible maid would do, for the right man.’

  Robert was planning a great tournament for when they returned to Greenwich, the last celebration before the court went on its summer progress. On his long refectory table in his pretty house at Kew, he had a scroll of paper unrolled, and his clerk was pairing the knights who would joust against each other. It was to be a tournament of roses, Robert had decided. There would be a bower of roses for the queen to sit in, with the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York and the Galicia rose which combined both colours and resolved the ancient enmity between England’s greatest counties, as the Tudors themselves had done. There would be rose petals, scattered by children dressed in rose pink before the queen when she walked from the palace door at Greenwich down to the tilt yard. The yard itself was to be blazoned with roses and all the contenders had been told that they were to incorporate roses into their poetry, or into their arms, or armour.

  There would be a tableau greeting Elizabeth as the Queen of the Roses and she would be crowned with a chaplet of rosebuds. They would eat sugared rose comfits and there would be a water fight with rose water, the very air would be scented with the amorous perfume, the tilt yard would be carpeted with petals.

  The joust was to be the central event of the day. Dudley was painfully aware that Sir William Pickering was a powerful rival for the queen’s affections, a blond, well-made, rich bachelor, widely read, well-travelled, and well-educated. He had intense charm; a smile from his dark blue eyes sent most women into a flutter, and the queen was always vulnerable to a commanding man. He had all the confidence of a man wealthy from boyhood, who came from wealthy and powerful parents. He had never been as low as Robert, he did not even know that a man could sink so low, and his whole bearing, his easy charm, his sunny disposition all showed a man to whom life had been kind and who believed that the future would be as blessed as the past.

  Worst of all, from Dudley’s point of view, there was nothing to stop the queen marrying him tomorrow. She could drink a glass of wine too many, she could be teased a little too hard, she could be aroused and engaged and provoked – and Pickering was a master of subtle seduction – then he could offer her a priceless diamond ring, and his fortune, and the job would be done. The gambling men were putting odds on Sir William marrying the queen by autumn and her constant ripple of laughter in his presence, and her amused tolerance of his rising pride, gave everyone reason to believe that his big blond style was more to her taste than Dudley’s dark good looks.

  Robert had suffered many rivals for her attention since she had come to the throne. Elizabeth was a flirt and anyone with a valuable gift or a handsome smile could have her evanescent attention. But Sir William was a greater risk than these passing fancies. He was phenomenally rich and Elizabeth, with a purse full of lightweight coins and an empty treasury, found his wealth very attractive. He had been a friend of hers from the earliest days and she treasured fidelity, especially in men who had plotted to put her on the throne, however incompetent they had been. But more than anything else, he was handsome and new-come to court, and an English Protestant bachelor, so when she danced with him and they were the centre of gossip and speculation, it was good-natured. The court smiled on the two of them. There was no-one reminding her that he was a married man or a convicted traitor, or muttering that she must be mad to favour him. And although Dudley’s rapid return to court had disturbed Sir William’s smooth rise to favour and power, it had not prevented it. The queen was shamelessly delighted to have the two most desirable men in England competing for her attention.

  Dudley was hoping to use the joust to unseat Sir William with one hard blow, preferably to his handsome face or thick head, and was drawing up the jousting list to ensure that Pickering and he would meet in the final round. He was absorbed in the work when suddenly his door banged open without a knock. Robert leapt up, his hand reaching for his dagger, heart thudding, knowing that at last the worst thing had happened: an uprising, an assassin.

  It was the queen, quite alone, without a single attendant, white as a rose herself, who flung herself into the room towards him and said three words: ‘Robert! Save me!’

  At once he snatched her to him and held her close. He could feel her gasping for breath, she had run all the way from the palace to the Dairy House, and run up the steps to his front door.

  ‘What is it, my love?’ he asked urgently. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A man,’ she gasped. ‘Following me.’

  With his arm still around her waist he took his sword from where it hung on the hook, and threw open the door. Two of his men were outside, aghast at the queen’s dashing past them.

  ‘Seen anyone?’ Robert asked tersely.

  ‘No-one, sir.’

  ‘Go and search.’ He turned to the fainting woman. ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Well-dressed, brown suit, like a London merchant, but he dogged my feet while I was walking in my garden down to the river and when I went faster he came on, and when I ran he ran behind me, and I thought that he was a Papist, come to kill me …’ She lost her breath for fear.

  Robert turned to his stunned clerk. ‘Go with them, call out the guard and the Queen’s Pensioners. Tell them to look for a man in a brown suit. Check the river first. If he is away in a boat, take a boat and follow him. I want him alive. I want him now.’ Robert sent the men off, and then drew Elizabeth back into the house, into his drawing room, and slammed the door and bolted it.

  Gently, he put her into a chair and closed the shutters and bolted them. He unsheathed his sword and laid it to hand, on the table.

  ‘Robert, I thought he had come for me. I thought he would murder me, where I walked in my own garden.’

  ‘You’re safe now, my love,’ he said gently. He knelt beside her chair and took her hand. She was icy cold. ‘You are safe with me.’

  ‘I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know where to run. I could only think of you.’

  ‘Quite right. You did quite right, and you were very brave to run.’

  ‘I wasn’t!’ she wailed suddenly, like a child.

  Robert lifted her from the chair and drew her on to his knees. She buried her face in his neck and he felt her sweaty face and the wetness of her tears. ‘Robert, I wasn’t brave at all. I wasn’t like a queen at all, I was like a nothing. I was as full of fear as a market girl. I couldn’t call for my guards, I couldn’t scream. I didn’t even think to turn and challenge him. I just went faster, and when he went faster, I went faster.

  ‘I could hear his footsteps coming behind me faster and faster and all I could do …’ She burst into another wail. ‘I feel such a child! I feel like I am such a fool! Anyone would think that I was the daughter of a lute player …’

  The enormity of that shocked her into silence, and she raised her tear-stained face from his shoulder. ‘Oh, God,’ she said brokenly.

  Steadily, lovingly, he met her eyes, smiled at her. ‘No-one will think anything of you, for no-one will know,’ he said softly. ‘This is between us two and no-one else will ever know.’

  She caught her breath on a sob and nodded.

  ‘And no-one, even if they knew, could blame you for being afraid, if a man comes after you. You know the danger that you are in, every day. Any woman would be afraid, and you are a woman, and a beautiful woman as well as a queen.’

  Instinctively, she twisted a tendril of hair and tucked it back behind her ear. ‘I should have