I make myself lie like a bolster but I can hear my hurt heart thudding in my ears. I hear the clock strike the hour, every hour from midnight till five in the morning, and only then, as it starts to get light and the servants start to clatter about and put fresh wood on the dying fires, do I fall asleep.
Elizabeth at chapel looks as if she has slept as badly as I have. I don’t know what is wrong with her. There can be nothing wrong for her. She has everything to hope for. Her rival is dying or dead; her birthday is celebrated throughout the kingdom as if she were a beloved queen; Robert Dudley is at her side, as smiling and relaxed as a confident bridegroom. But Elizabeth shrinks from him. She asks for Cecil to be sent for. She walks with him, her head bent towards him in low-voiced consultation. He is urging her to stand fast, as she trembles and leans on him. Something serious is happening, but I am so absorbed in looking for Ned that I cannot be troubled with Elizabeth and her sudden changes of mood.
The court walks behind Cecil and Elizabeth, who are clearly not to be disturbed, until Cecil bows and steps back and someone else leaps forward to be presented to the queen and ask her for some favor. William Cecil finds himself alongside the Spanish ambassador; Mary and I walk behind them, their slow pace suiting Mary’s short stride. I take her hand.
“I can manage,” she says, shrugging me off.
“I know you can. I just wanted some comfort. I am very unhappy.”
“Hush!” she says, unfeelingly. She is openly eavesdropping on the conversation going on ahead of us. I can hear snatches of Cecil’s talk, over the lapping noise of the water on the riverbank. He is complaining of Elizabeth—a thing that he never, never does—telling the Spanish ambassador that he is going to leave court, that he cannot tolerate another day of it. I pinch Mary’s arm. “Hark at Cecil!” I say, shocked. “What is he saying? He can’t be leaving court again?”
Mary drops my hand and walks a little closer to the two men, while I hang back. Nobody ever notices Mary: she should be one of Cecil’s many spies. She can weave her way around men as if she were a beggar child, and they never see her. She follows on their heels for a little while, quite unnoticed, and then she slows up and waits for me to catch up, her eyes shocked and wide, as if she has stared at horrors.
“He said that the queen and Sir Robert are planning to murder Amy Dudley, and Robert will marry the queen,” she whispers urgently, almost choking on her words. “Cecil said it himself! I heard him. He says that they are giving out that she has a canker and the queen will marry Robert, but that the country will never stand for it.”
“He never said that to de la Quadra?” I see my own disbelief in my sister’s face. “The Spanish ambassador? When every word he hears goes straight back to Spain! Why would Cecil tell him such a thing?”
“He did. I could not mistake it.”
I shake my head. “It makes no sense.”
“I heard it!”
“My God, are they really going to kill Amy Dudley? Shouldn’t we stop them?”
I see my shock on Mary’s face. “Who could we tell? How could we stop them? If Cecil himself knows and is not stopping them.”
“But the queen can’t just murder someone, not even a rival. It can’t happen.”
“Cecil says it will be her undoing. He says the country will rise against her rather than have a murderer on the throne. He says he is going to his home.”
I can’t understand any of this. Would Cecil really desert Elizabeth? The queen he has made? Would he leave her to commit a terrible crime that would cost her her soul and her kingdom? And if he did—I think, if he does—then will he come to me and offer to make me queen in her place?
“He said he couldn’t bear to advise her with Robert Dudley whispering in her other ear; he said that the country would never tolerate a Dudley as king consort.”
“Well, that’s true enough,” I say begrudgingly, thinking of my sister Jane refusing to crown this man’s brother, her husband, Guildford, because of the treachery of his grandfather. “No one would accept a Dudley near the throne ever again.”
“But to say it to the Spanish ambassador?” Mary is aghast. “He told the ambassador that she has no credit, that the country is bankrupted. I swear he said that she and Robert are going to murder Lady Dudley. He said it. He said it, Katherine!” She shakes her head in an odd gesture, as if she is tapping water from her ears. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Cecil, denouncing the queen—to the Spanish?”
“It makes no sense,” I say. But then my misery for Ned overwhelms me. “Nothing makes any sense,” I say bitterly, “and this court is a world of lies.”
Mary must have heard rightly, for there is no mistaking Elizabeth’s anxiety. She is avoiding Robert Dudley, and she spends as much time in her rooms as possible with the door closed to everyone but the ladies of her bedchamber. He used to stroll in and out without invitation, now the guards are before the door and nobody is allowed in. Publicly, she announces that she is unwell, but she prowls around her rooms like a woman more troubled in her mind than in her body. All of Sunday she is like a restless cat, stalking one way and then another. She goes to bed early, complaining of a headache, but I think it is her conscience that is paining her. If even half that William Cecil said is half true, then she has commissioned the murder of an innocent woman. This, I think, must be impossible; but then I remember her mother was Anne Boleyn, and they said that she used poison against her rivals. Can it be that Elizabeth is poisoning a rival? Can Elizabeth bring herself to kill a rival?
The next day is my day of duty so I have to wait on her again. She looks pale and sleepless and so do I. I cannot go looking for Ned as I am not allowed to leave the queen’s rooms without her permission. Frances Mewtas is not in attendance today, and for all I know, she and Ned are enjoying their leisure together. Together and unwatched. The thought of this is such a pain to me that I can hardly bear to stand against the wall, my hands clasped together, my eyes down, as Elizabeth paces up and down her privy chamber, twenty paces to one window, twenty paces to another. Robert Dudley comes in, and she tells him that she does not want to ride; she does not want to ride out this morning nor this afternoon, the horses can be unsaddled and turned out in the field, the court is not going out today.
He does not ask her why. That he does not challenge her tells me that he knows what is wrong with Elizabeth, that he shares her guilt. He merely bows and sends a message to the stables. As he turns his head to tell his groom, I see his glance go past the groom and past me to a man who stands waiting in the doorway. It is one of Robert Dudley’s servants, and he comes forward, his face very grave, and kneels before Dudley.
I am trembling as I stand behind the queen, as if I too am expecting bad news. The queen and Sir Robert face the man together. Their hands are close, and I think she would like to cling to him. The man hands over a letter and tells Robert Dudley, so quietly that no one but Dudley and the queen and I can hear, that he is sorry to bring bad news: Lady Dudley is dead.
The queen goes so pale that she is almost yellow. I think she is going to faint. She stands as stiff as the giant sergeant porter at the palace gates. She is speechless. I find myself reeling too—I did not think that she could do such a thing. I would never have thought it of Robert Dudley.
She staggers as if her knees have gone from under her. I step forward and take her arm. “Your Majesty?” I whisper. “Shall I get you a glass of small ale?”