William Cecil has gone to Edinburgh to make peace between the Scots lords and their French-born regent. Elizabeth’s reluctant army has done enough to win us peace, and Elizabeth is reckless without Cecil’s supervision, as if she thinks that if he is not watching, no one can see her. She and Robert Dudley live openly as lovers. He comes to her room as if he were her husband, he laughs at her, he takes her in his arms, he is obeyed as if he were king consort.
Every day we ride out, the hounds running before us. Robert Dudley brings his mistress a string of horses, each one more spirited and beautiful than the last, and the two of them ride neck and neck as if they were invulnerable. Every day they outrun the court and then disappear into the woods, only emerging when it is time to dine in the beautiful tents that the servants have put up in the clearing, and the tables are laid and the wine and water poured. Openly, they ride off together; shamelessly they return, their faces bright with unspoken joy. Everyone else rides behind the hounds for a little while and then takes their horses to the river and lets them drink, or dismounts to idle in the shadows, or goes away to somewhere quiet and hidden to kiss and whisper.
The sun is hot but the clearing is shaded by the fresh green leaves of the oak and beech trees, and the birds sing incessantly, as if they are a choir in harmony with the musicians who are hidden in the branches. The smell of woodsmoke and roasted meat mingles with the lush scent of crushed grass and herbs where the servants have spread carpets and rugs and cushions, so that we can sprawl at our leisure, and drink wine and tell stories and poems. Sometimes we sing together, old country songs, and sometimes Ned reads his poetry, but never “She stood in black,” which is for me, and is mine alone.
We are a court of young, beautiful people. The older wiser ones have no patience with all-day picnics when we do not get home until dusk, riding side by side, whispering promises. They are full of warnings about the careful work that William Cecil is doing in Edinburgh, and how it will all come to nothing if Elizabeth does not give England an heir to inherit the peace. But Elizabeth’s relief at the end of war with Scotland makes her giddy with joy. She is triumphant; she thinks winning the war makes her invulnerable. She is indiscreet; she thinks that the world is well lost for love. Even when the Privy Council warns that they have to slit the tongues of men and women up and down the country to stop them saying that she is Robert Dudley’s whore, she still leans from her bedroom window in the morning, half naked, and calls to Robert Dudley to come to her at once.
Everyone at court knows that they have adjoining bedrooms with only a door between them. They may go to their own rooms at night, but everyone believes that Robert Dudley’s valet stands outside his door all the night, because the Queen of England has crept through the hidden door and is inside. Even the country people, who should know nothing of the court, say that Elizabeth is besotted with her handsome master of horse, and many people think that they are married in secret already and that his poor wife, whatever her name is, will be put aside by order of the queen, just as her father, King Henry, put his wives aside to marry another.
Then the news comes that the Regent of Scotland, Mary of Guise, is dead and the power of the French in Scotland collapses without her to uphold it. Cecil is coming home to London. He has made a triumphant peace treaty; but now Robert Dudley swears that he has gained nothing for all his hard riding: Newcastle to Edinburgh and back again. Elizabeth now wants more than Cecil’s treaty: she demands thousands of pounds of compensation, the return of Calais, and Mary, the Queen of France, to be banned from using the royal crest on her dinner plates—everything from the most grave to the most trivial. She and Robert, like a queen and her husband, stand side by side before the whole court and greet William Cecil with a tirade of complaints.
The defeat of French rule in Scotland should have been hailed as a victory, but William Cecil, whose skill brought it about, is crushed by Elizabeth’s ingratitude to him, unable to hide his fury that she is taking advice from Robert Dudley. The court divides in rivalry between those who see Dudley as the unstoppable star—husband and king consort-to-be—and those that say William Cecil must be respected along with the old lords, and that Dudley is an upstart from treasonous stock.
Elizabeth, having lovingly declared me as dear to her as a daughter, promising me that she will be a mother to me, that she will legally adopt me, that she will name me as heir, forgets all about me in this new crisis: as the man who has been a father to her and the man who has been a husband to her will not speak to each other for fury. All the court is certain that Cecil will abandon her, that Dudley will ruin her. There are whispers of plots to assassinate him; she has opposition on every side. She dare not agree that a country may choose its own heir. If the Scots are allowed to reject their Queen Mary, why do the English have to accept Elizabeth? In her anxiety for her lover, for her future, for the very nature of queenship, she has no time for me, no time for any woman.
“But I like being forgotten,” Mary, my sister, remarks. “I suppose I am used to it, being so often below the eyeline. But it does mean that you can do what you want.”
“And what do you want to do, you funny little thing?” I ask indulgently, bending down so I can see her exquisite face. “Are you getting up to mischief like half the court? Are you in love, Mary?”
Janey laughs unkindly, as if no one would ever love Mary. “You can have my suitor,” she says. Janey is being pursued by our old uncle, Henry FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel. He is a great survivor of wives—his first was my aunt Katherine Grey. Now he is free again and wealthy and desperate to put some royal blood into his golden cradle, into his rich nursery, into his family line.
“I don’t need your castoffs,” Mary dismisses the wealthy nobleman with a wave of her tiny hand. “I have an admirer.”
I am not surprised. Mary has the Tudor charm, and a kind nature that many a man would be glad to find in a wife. She would make a better wife than Janey Seymour, with her fragile health and her feverish energy. Mary is a little joy in miniature: when she stands before a knight in armor she can see her pretty face and her perfectly formed neck and shoulders reflected in his breastplate. If she were seated on a cushion behind a high table, and a man saw only our heads and shoulders, he would be hard-pressed to choose the greater beauty. It is only when she stands up that it is suddenly revealed that she is tiny, half-size. High in the saddle, on horseback, I believe she is prettier even than I am. She stands straight enough, she has her monthly courses—perhaps she could have a suitor, perhaps she could even be married.
“Every other lady in court is flirting. I am no different,” Mary says. “Why should I be different?”
“Oh, who is flirting with you?” scoffs Janey.
“Never you mind,” says my redoubtable sister. “For I have my business just as Katherine has hers. And I wouldn’t let you meddle with me as you do with her.”
“I don’t meddle, I advise her,” Janey says, stung. “I am her great friend.”
“Well, don’t advise me!” Mary says. “I have a great friend of my own, greater than both of you together.”
WINDSOR CASTLE,
AUTUMN 1560