I throw my head back and laugh as merrily as Elizabeth when she is pretending to be carefree. “Heavens, no!” I assure him. “I am in need of no man, least of all the earl!”
We are boating on the river in barges, Elizabeth on her throne in the royal barge, musicians alongside, people watching from the banks. Robert Dudley is at her side as always, all her ladies, me included, are placed about the deck looking beautiful and privileged. Nobody notices the absence of Janey, nobody misses her but me. My sister Mary is like a dainty little doll, set on a high seat. She gives me a wink; nothing ever seems to trouble Mary. I think I might tell her that I am so afraid that I am with child and abandoned by my husband, but then I remember that she is my little sister, and that our older sister always tried to shield us from unhappiness and went to the scaffold, never speaking of doubts or fears, having written me a letter of good advice, the best advice she could give, under the circumstances. I will not be a lesser sister than Jane. I will not burden Mary with my worries.
Ambassadors, earls, lords sit around the great barge, drinking the best of wine and gossiping. I see Robert Dudley lower his dark head to Elizabeth and whisper in her ear and I see her turn her head and smile. They are so powerfully, so vividly in love that I suddenly forget that she is my most difficult cousin and I feel for her as another young woman in love. I can see that she yearns for him, from the way her head turns, to the way that she clings to the carved arms of her chair to stop herself from reaching for him. I think—I know this. I understand this. I have felt this too. And I look away before she can see the dangerous knowledge in my face.
“Indeed, it is a disgraceful spectacle,” someone says quietly in my ear, and I turn to Lord Pembroke, my onetime father-in-law, who stands beside me, observing me as I watch Elizabeth.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say, falling back on my reputation for innocence and ignorance, as if they were one and the same thing.
“Well, God bless you for that,” says the man who hustled me out of his house without a blessing, without a farewell.
From her perch on the chair, Mary gives me a smile and a nod, as if to advise me to do what I can with this unpromising material.
“We have missed you, in the House of Herbert,” he says pompously. “I know my son regrets that he was parted from his pretty little wife.”
I have nothing to say to this sudden barrage of lies. I widen my eyes and keep mumchance, in order to see where he is headed.
“And I know that you liked him,” he insinuates. “Childhood sweethearts, very pretty. Perhaps you could look on him with your favor once again. You are a great lady now, with perhaps a great future, but you will remember your youthful affections.”
There is so much here to deny that I put my hand over my stomacher where my belly presses hard, and I feel a little flutter, like a gurgle. I bow my head.
“So, here is my son Henry, as much in love as ever,” his father concludes and steps to one side to reveal, just as a masquer shows his dancing partner, Henry Herbert, healthier by far than the white-faced boy at our wedding day, handsome, smiling, and apparently deeply in love with me.
“I didn’t expect this,” I say to him, as his father beetles away to kneel before Elizabeth.
“Forgive me,” Henry says abruptly. “You know that I never wanted to leave you. You remember how quickly things happened, and that it was impossible to know what was right, and I was sick and I had to obey my father.”
Briefly, I close my eyes. I remember the terror and the chaos, and knowing that Jane was lost and that nothing could save her. “I remember,” I say tightly. I remember well enough that they dropped me as fast as if I had burnt their fingers. But I remember that none of us knew what to do, certainly not the tentative youth that was my husband.
“I never thought that they would part us,” he says earnestly. “I thought that our promises were real. I thought that we were married and that we would be husband and wife. I had no idea that we could be parted.”
I remember desiring him as a girl desires the idea of a husband. I remember the wonderful glamour and beauty of the marriage, my elaborate gown and the two-day feast. I remember him, sick as a dog, but trying to walk with me behind Jane and Guildford Dudley to the altar. I remember Jane, drawn as tight as a lute string, not knowing what she should do, what was God’s ineffable will, her terror of the crown, her courage when she faced it.
I smile, thinking of my indomitable sister. “Yes, I remember it all.”
He sees the smile and takes it for himself. “You are the queen’s heir now . . .” he begins.
“She has not named me to parliament,” I caution him, one eye on the throne where Dudley has almost inserted himself beside her, so they are all but entwined like snakes, she almost sitting on his lap.
“You are the only Protestant heir,” he amends. “And the most liked by all the country. She called you her heir before all the court.”
I incline my head.
“If we were to marry,” he says very quietly to me. “If we were to marry again, as we did before, and to have a boy, then that boy would be King of England.”
I have a strange feeling as he says this, as if my stomach had turned over with a sudden grip of nausea or bubble of wind. I think—can this be the quickening of the child as he is named to his great place? Like Elizabeth in the Bible? Saints and sinners save me, I think! If that was my baby moving, then I have to be married, at once! And it might as well be Herbert as anyone. In fact, better Herbert than anyone, since he has come to me, since his father wants us to be married again, and Elizabeth can hardly forbid it since we were married before. It was an excellent match then; it is still good now. He wants it, his father wants it, the queen cannot forbid it . . . and I have to marry someone. Christ knows when Ned is coming home. Only His mother the Virgin knows why he does not answer my letters. She, like me, looked for a man to be the father of her child. She, like me, knew that she couldn’t be too choosy. I have to marry someone if I have a baby quickening inside me.
The lurch in my belly is so powerful that I cannot believe that he does not see it. I reach out to him, he does not know that I am gripping his hand for support. “Indeed, we have happy memories,” I say at random. I am sweating: he will see beads of sweat on my white face.
He takes my hand. “I have never thought that we were not married,” he says. “I have always thought of you as my wife.”
“I too, I too,” I say randomly. I wonder with sudden terror if this is the baby actually about to be born, if it is coming right now, before everyone. I must get to the back of the barge and find somewhere that I can sit down and grit my teeth and try to hold on, praying that this voyage of pleasure is over soon, and I can get to my room. I can’t let it come here. I can’t just void myself before the court! On the barge! On the royal barge! In my best dress!
He dips his head and shows me something in the palm of his hand. It is my old wedding ring, from our long-ago wedding day. “Will you take this back, for our betrothal?” he whispers.
“Yes! Yes!” I say. I almost snatch it I am so desperate for him to go.
“And I will send you my portrait.”
“Yes, yes.”
“And you will send me yours?”
“Yes, of course. But please excuse me now . . .”
“We are betrothed again.”
“We are.”