“I can see why Melville will try—for the great prize of seeing his queen as heir to the throne of England. But will Dudley do it? Will you?”
Elizabeth turns her head. “I can trust no one but Robert with her,” she says in an undertone. “And I trust her with no one but him. If she were to marry Don Carlos of Spain or the French duke, then we have an enemy at our back door, and papist priests pouring across the Tweed. But Robert will save me, as he has done before. He will marry her and master her.”
“But you will have to let him go,” Kat says gently. “You will have to send him into the arms of another woman.”
“Perhaps it won’t be for a while,” Elizabeth says vaguely. “It will take a long time to arrange, surely? And we might all stay together sometimes. We could have a northern court at York, or Newcastle, or Carlisle, every summer, for all the summer. We could have the Council of the North and Robert could command it. Certainly, once she is with child, he could come home to England.”
“With child,” Kat repeats, her eyes on the queen’s face. “She is young and fertile. They say that she is crying in her bed at night for a husband. What if she falls in love with Sir Robert and they make a child of love? Have you thought how you will feel when you hear that she is carrying his baby? How do you think he will feel when his wife is carrying the Dudley heir to the throne of Scotland and England? Don’t you fear that he will love her, then? Wouldn’t any man love his wife then?”
I can see Elizabeth grow paler under the paint on her face. I guess that her stomach is churning with jealousy. “He should father a prince,” she defends her own idea. “He is a man entirely fit to own a kingdom. And perhaps it will take so long that she will be past her childbearing years before they are married.”
“She’s twenty-one,” Kat says flatly. “How long do you think you can stretch it out?”
Elizabeth pulls a fur over her shoulders and turns a furious face towards me. I flinch from her dark glare. “Anything is better than her sister,” she says abruptly, nodding her red head towards me. “I won’t have a rival in my sight. I won’t have my heir setting up house with a Seymour, quartering royal arms on her heraldry, while everyone flocks to her side. I won’t have a young woman like Katherine Grey in my court, and everyone making comparisons.”
WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON,
AUTUMN 1564
Nobody believes that the queen intends to part with Robert Dudley. But she persuades James Melville that she means it, and William Cecil makes preparations for a meeting of Scots and English commissioners at Berwick to sign a marriage agreement and an alliance. Thomasina the dwarf looks at me with a hidden smile, as if we two, who see Elizabeth when she is not showing off her dancing, or her music, or her scholarship to the Scots ambassador, know more than these men who are obliged to admire her. To make her favorite a worthy suitor, she decides that he has to be Earl of Leicester and Baron Denbigh, and all the court attends the great hall to watch Robert Dudley, the son of a traitor and the grandson of a traitor, kneel before the queen and arise an earl. Queen Mary must be assured that Elizabeth loves Robert Dudley like a brother, and respects him as a temporal lord. But Elizabeth cannot even complete this charade without spoiling the scene. As he kneels in homage she caresses the back of his neck. The Scots ambassador sees it; we all see it. She might as well announce to the world that she loves him and he is completely under her thumb. It is impossible: Mary Queen of Scots will never take Elizabeth’s leavings when they are not even pushed to the side of her plate. It is as if Elizabeth’s spittle is still on him.
WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON,
WINTER 1564
I am hurrying into court one evening in November with a cold mist coming off the river and a haze of drizzle around the torches in the courtyard when Thomas looms out of the shadow of the doorway to the main gate as if he has been waiting for me.
“Thomas!” I exclaim. “What are you doing here? I can’t stop. I have to go to the great hall.”
His big face is scowling, his bonnet is crushed in his great hand. “I had to see you.”
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s trouble for you,” he says miserably. “Oh, Mary, God knows that I wish I could spare you.”
I swallow down my fear. “What is it? Not Katherine? Not one of her boys?”
He drops to one knee so his head is level with mine. “No, thank God, she is safe as a little bird in a cage. It is your uncle. He has died.”
“She has beheaded him?” I whisper my greatest fear.
“No, no. It’s not that bad. They say it was grief.”
I feel myself go still and quiet. He was never a loving kinsman—but he suffered imprisonment for supporting Katherine, and he was a good guardian to her. Now that he is dead she has lost her guardian. And another of our family has died through the disfavor of a Tudor. Truly, they are hard masters to serve, impossible to love.
“God save his soul,” I say without thinking.
“Amen,” says Thomas devoutly.
“But what about Katherine? Oh, Thomas. Do you think the queen will free her now? She can’t stay at Pirgo without him.”
He takes my hand and holds it between his broad palms. “No, pretty one. That’s the bad news on top of bad news. They’re sending her to William Petre. I myself saw the guard ride out to fetch her, as if she were a prisoner likely to break out. They’re not freeing her, they’re moving her, and will keep her even closer.”
I frown. “Sir William Petre? Is he still alive? I thought he was sick. He must be a hundred and two, at least.”
He shakes his head. “He’s not yet sixty, but they’re putting a heavy burden on him. Perhaps he was the only one who lacked the skills to wriggle out of it.” He looks at me, his big face creased with concern. “It might be all right. He has a pretty house; she may like it there. Her little boy may be allowed to play out in the gardens.”
“Where? Where does he live?”
“Ingatestone Hall in Essex. You’ve been there, do you remember it? It’s halfway to New Hall.”
“I have to see her,” I say with sudden determination. “I have to go and see her. I can’t stand this any longer.”
I wait until Elizabeth has finished the dinner and danced with the new earl, Robert Dudley. He exerts himself to charm Elizabeth and make her laugh, and everyone continues to congratulate them on his rise to greatness, and her good judgment in recognizing the extraordinary value of this man. But has she done enough to persuade Queen Mary to have him? Baron or not, earl or not, Mary Queen of Scots will not have Elizabeth’s castoffs without a firm promise that she will be given my sister’s rights, and the conference at Berwick between the Scots and English advisors is struggling to make an agreement. Elizabeth is determined that Mary shall marry Robert Dudley and be named as her heir. Mary insists that the inheritance comes before the marriage. Nobody asks how two queens who trust each other so little can make a lasting agreement.
But at least Elizabeth is in a happy mood tonight. I hold out her satin nightgown, warmed before the fire, as someone else serves sweetmeats and a third lady-in-waiting brings sweet wine for her, while the grooms of the bedchamber stab the bed and look underneath it for enemies, as if we truly believe that she is going to spend more than ten minutes in there once the door is shut. I wait till she is settled in her chair by the fire and she has everything that she might want, and I go towards her and kneel.
“Don’t go any lower, Lady Mary, or you will fall under the log basket,” she says, and everyone laughs. I feel Thomasina’s steady gaze on my face as I am insulted before them all. I rise to my full height. Even now I am only level with Elizabeth’s unfriendly eyes.
“Your Majesty, I ask you for a very great favor,” I say quietly.
“Have you thought carefully?” she asks. “Before asking me for a great favor?”
“I have.”