“Will they…?” I could not bear to ask him if it was his own death that he was facing with this indomitable smile.
“Oh, I should think so,” he said cheerfully. “Very soon. I would, if I were the queen. Now tell me the news. We don’t have much time.”
I pulled my stool a little closer, marshaling my thoughts. I did not want to tell him the news, which was all bad, I wanted to look into his drawn face, and touch his hand. I wanted to tell him that I had longed to see him, and that I had written him letter after letter in the code which I knew he would have lost, and sent them all into the flames of the fire.
“Come on,” he said eagerly. “Tell me everything.”
“The queen is considering if she should marry, you’ll know that, I suppose,” I said, low-voiced. “And she has been ill. They have proposed one man after another. The best choice is Philip of Spain. The Spanish ambassador tells her that it will be a good marriage but she is afraid. She knows she cannot rule alone but she is afraid of a man ruling over her.”
“But she will go ahead?”
“She might withdraw. I can’t tell. She is half sick with fear at the thought of it. She is afraid of having a man in her bed, and afraid for her throne without one.”
“And Lady Elizabeth?”
I glanced at the thick wooden door and dropped my low voice to an even quieter murmur. “She and the queen cannot agree these days,” I said. “They started very warmly, Lady Mary wanted Elizabeth at her side all the time, acknowledged her as her heir; but they cannot live happily together now. Lady Elizabeth is no longer the little girl of the queen’s teaching, and in debate she is her master. She is as quick-witted as an alchemist. The queen hates argument about sacred things and Lady Elizabeth has ready arguments for everything and accepts nothing. She looks at everything with hard eyes…” I broke off.
“Hard eyes?” he queried. “She has beautiful eyes.”
“I mean she looks hard at things,” I explained. “She has no faith, she never closes her eyes in awe. She is not like my lady, you never see her amazed at the raising of the Host. She wants to know everything as a fact, she trusts nothing.”
Lord Robert nodded at the accuracy of the description. “Aye. She was always one to take nothing on trust.”
“The queen forced her to Mass and Lady Elizabeth went with her hand on her belly, sighing for pain. Then, when the queen pressed her again, she said that she had converted. The queen wanted the truth from her. She asked her to tell the secrets of her heart: if she believed in the Holy Sacrament or no.”
“The secrets of Elizabeth’s heart!” he exclaimed, laughing. “What can the queen be thinking of? Elizabeth allows no one near the secrets of her heart. Even when she was a child in the nursery she would barely whisper them to herself.”
“Well, she said she would give out in public that she is convinced of the merits of the old religion,” I said. “But she doesn’t do so. And she goes to Mass only when she has to. And everyone says…”
“What do they say, my little spy?”
“That she is sending out letters to true Protestants, that she has a network of supporters. That the French will pay for an uprising against the queen. And that, at the very least, she only has to wait until the queen dies and then the throne is all hers anyway, and she can throw off all disguise and be a Protestant queen as she is now a Protestant princess.”
“Oho.” He paused, taking all this in. “And the queen believes all this slander?”
I looked up at him, hoping that he would understand. “She thought that Elizabeth would be a sister to her,” I said. “She went with her into London at the very moment of her greatest triumph. She took Elizabeth at her side then, and again at the day of her coronation. What more could she do to show that she loved her and trusted her and saw her as the next heir? And since then, every day, she hears that Elizabeth has done this, or said that, and she sees Elizabeth avoiding Mass, and pretending that she will go, and sliding in her conscience forward and back as she wishes. And Elizabeth…” I broke off.
“Elizabeth what?”
“She was there at the coronation, she was placed second only to the queen at the queen’s own request. She rode in a chariot behind the queen’s,” I said in a fierce whisper. “She carried her train at the coronation, she was first to kneel before the new queen and put her hands in hers and swear to be a true and faithful subject. She swore fidelity before God. How can she now plot against her?”
He sat back in his chair and observed my heat with interest. “Is the queen angry with Elizabeth?”
I shook my head. “No. It’s worse than anger. She is disappointed in her. She is lonely, Lord Robert. She wanted her little sister at her side. She singled her out for love and respect. She can hardly believe now that Elizabeth does not love her; to find that Elizabeth would plot against her is very painful. And she is assured that she is plotting. Someone comes with a new story every day.”
“Do they bring any evidence?”
“Enough to have her arrested a dozen times over, I think. There are too many rumors for her to be as innocent as she looks.”
“And still the queen does nothing against her?”
“She wants to bring peace,” I said. “She won’t act against Elizabeth unless she has to. She says that she won’t execute Lady Jane, or your brother…” I did not say “or you” but we were both thinking of the sentence of death hanging over him. “She wants to bring peace to this country.”
“Well, amen to that,” Lord Robert said. “And will Elizabeth stay at court for Christmas?”
“She has asked to leave. She says she is ill again and needs the peace of the country.”
“And is she ill?”
I shrugged. “Who can say? She was very bloated and ill-looking when I saw her the other day. But nobody ever really sees her. She keeps to her rooms. She comes out only when she has to. No one speaks to her, the women are unkind to her. Everyone says there is nothing wrong with her but envy.”
He shook his head at the petty spite of women. “All this and the poor girl has to carry a rosary and a missal and go to Mass!”
“She’s not a poor girl,” I said, stung. “She is poorly treated by the ladies of the queen’s court, but she can blame herself for that. It is only when there are people to see that she speaks very softly and walks with her head drooping. And as for Mass, everyone has to go, all the time. They sing a Mass in the queen’s chapel seven times a day. Everyone goes at least twice a day.”
He half smiled at the rapid turn of the court to piety. “And Lady Jane? Is she truly not to die for her treason?”
“The queen will never kill her own cousin, a young woman,” I assured him. “She’s to live here for a while as a prisoner in the Tower, and then be released, when the country is quiet.”
He made a little grimace. “A great risk for the queen. If I were her advisor I would tell her to make an end of it, to make an end of all of us.”
“She knows it was not Lady Jane’s choice. It would be cruel of the queen to punish Lady Jane; and she is never cruel.”
“And the girl was only sixteen,” he said, half to himself. He rose to his feet, hardly aware of me. “I should have stopped it,” he said. “I should have kept Jane safely out of it, whatever plots my father made…”
He looked out of the window at the dark courtyard below where his own father had been executed, begging for mercy, offering evidence against Jane, against his sons, anyone, if he could be spared. When he had knelt before the block, the blindfold over his eyes had slipped down and he had pulled it up and then groped about on his hands and knees, pleading with the headsman to wait until he was ready. It was a miserable end; but not as miserable as the death he had given to the young king in his charge, who had been innocent of everything.
“I was a fool,” Robert said bitterly. “Blinded by my own ambition. I am surprised you did not foresee it, child, I would have thought the heavens would have been rocking with laughter over th
e Dudley hubris. I wish to God you had warned me in time.”
I stood, my back to the fire. “I wish I had done,” I said sadly. “I would have done anything to save you from being here.”
“And shall I stay here till I rot?” he asked quietly. “Can you foresee that for me? Some nights I hear the rats skitter on the floor and I think, this is all I will ever hear, this square of blue sky through the window will be all I ever see. She will not behead me, but she will cut off my youth.”
In silence, I shook my head. “I listen and listen, and once I asked her directly. She said that she wanted no blood spilt that could be spared. She won’t execute you and she must let you go free when Lady Jane goes free.”
“I wouldn’t if I were her,” he said quietly. “If I were her, I would rid myself of Elizabeth, of Jane, of my brother and of me; and name Mary Stuart as the next heir, French or not. One clean cut. That’s the only way to get this country back into the Papist church and keep it there, and soon she will realize it. She has to wipe us out, this generation of Protestant plotters. If she does not she will have to cut off one head after another and watch others rise.”
I crossed the room and stood behind him. Timidly I put my hand on his shoulder. He turned and looked at me as if he had forgotten my presence. “And you?” he asked gently. “Safe in royal service now?”
“I am never safe,” I said in a low voice. “You know why. I never can be safe. I never can feel safe. I love the queen and no one questions who I am or where I have come from. I am known as her fool, as if I had been with her all my life. I should feel safe, but I always feel as if I am creeping across thin ice.”
He nodded. “I’ll take your secret with me to the scaffold if I go that way,” he promised. “You have nothing to fear from me, child. And I have told no one who you were or where you came from.”
I nodded. When I looked up he was watching me, his dark eyes warm. “You’ve grown, Mistress Boy,” he remarked. “Soon be a woman. I shall be sorry not to see it.”
I had nothing to say. I stood dumbly before him. He smiled as if he knew only too well the churn of my emotions. “Ah, little fool. I should have left you in your father’s shop that day, and not drawn you into this.”
“My father told me to bid you farewell.”
“Aye, he is right. You can leave me now. I will release you from your promise to love me. You are no longer my vassal. I let you go.”
It was little more than a joke to him. He knew as well as I did that you cannot release a girl from her promise to love a man. She either gets herself free or she is bound for life.
“I’m not free,” I whispered. “My father told me to come to see you and to say good-bye. But I am not free. I never will be.”
“Would you serve me still?”
I nodded.
Lord Robert smiled and leaned forward, his mouth so close to my ear that I could feel the warmth of his breath. “Then do this one last thing for me. Go to Lady Elizabeth. Bid her be of good cheer. Tell her to study with my old tutor, John Dee. Tell her to seek him out, and study with him, without fail. Then find John Dee and tell him two things. One: I think he should make contact with his old master, Sir William Pickering. Got that?”
“Yes,” I said. “Sir William. I know of him.”
“And two: tell him to meet also with James Crofts and Tom Wyatt. I think they are engaged in an alchemical experiment that is near to John Dee’s heart. Edward Courtenay can make a chemical wedding. Can you remember all of that?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I don’t know what it means.”
“All the better. They are to make gold from the basest of metal, and cast down silver to ash. Tell him that. He’ll know what I mean. And tell him that I will play my part in the alchemy, if he will get me there.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Just remember the message,” he said. “Tell it back to me.”
I repeated it, word for word, and he nodded. “And finally, come back to me just once, for one last time, and tell me what you can see in John Dee’s mirror. I need to know. Whatever becomes of me, I need to know what will happen to England.”
I nodded, but he did not let me go at once. He put his lips to my neck, just below my ear, a little brush of a kiss, a little breath of a kiss. “You’re a good girl,” he said. “And I thank you.”
He let me go then, and I stepped back, backward and backward from him as if I could not bear to turn away. I tapped on the door behind me, and the guard swung it open. “God bless you and keep you safe, my lord,” I said. Lord Robert turned his head and gave me a smile which was so sweet that it broke my heart even as the door closed and hid him from me.
“God speed, lad,” he replied evenly, to the closing door, and then it was shut and I was in the darkness and the cold and without him once more.
In the street outside I took to my heels and started to run home. A shadow suddenly stepped out of a doorway and blocked my way. I gasped in alarm.
“Hush, it’s me, Daniel.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“I went to your father’s shop and he told me you were taking books into the Tower for Lord Robert.”
“Oh.”
He fell into step beside me. “Surely you don’t need to serve him now.”
“No,” I said. “He has released me.” I very much wished that Daniel would go away so that I could think of the kiss on my neck and the warmth of Lord Robert’s breath against my ear.
“So you won’t serve him again,” he said pedantically.
“I just said,” I snapped. “I am not serving him now. I am delivering books for my father. It just happened to be to Lord Robert. I did not even see him. I just took them in and gave them to a guard.”
“Then when did he release you from his service?”
“Months ago,” I lied, trying to recover.
“When he was arrested?”
I rounded on him. “What does it matter to you? I am released from his service, I serve Queen Mary now. What more d’you need to know?”
His temper rose with mine. “I have a right to know everything that you do. You are to be my wife, your name will be mine. And while you insist on running from court to Tower, you put yourself into danger, and the rest of us into danger too.”
“You’re in no danger,” I retorted. “What would you know of it? You’ve never done anything or been anywhere. The world has turned upside down and back again while you have stayed safe at home. Why should you be in danger?”
“I’ve not played off one master against another, and shown a false face and spied and given false witness, if that’s what you mean,” he said sharply. “I did not ever think those were great and admirable acts. I have kept my faith and buried my father according to my faith. I have supported my mother and my sisters, and I have saved money against the day of my marriage. Our marriage. While you run around the dark streets, dressed as a pageboy, serve in a Papist court, visit a condemned traitor, and reproach me for having done nothing.”
I pulled my hand away from him. “Don’t you see he’s going to die?” I shouted, and then I was aware that the tears were streaming down my face. Angrily, I rubbed them away with my sleeve. “Don’t you know that they’re going to execute him and no one can save him? Or at best they’ll leave him in there to wait and wait and wait and die of waiting? He can’t even save himself? Don’t you see that everyone I love seems to be taken from me, for no crime? With no way of saving them? Don’t you think I miss my mother every day of my life? Don’t you think I smell smoke every night in my dreams and now this man… this man…” I broke off in tears.
Daniel caught me by the shoulders, not in an embrace, but with a firm grip to hold me at arm’s length so that he could read my face with a long, impartial, measuring glance. “This man is nothing to do with the death of your mother,” he said flatly. “Nothing to do with someone dying for their faith. So don’t dress up your lust as sorrow. You have been serving two masters, sworn enemies.
One of them was bound to end up in there. If it was not Lord Robert then it would have been Queen Mary. One of them was bound to triumph, one of them was bound to die.”
I wrenched myself from his grip, pulling away from his hard unsympathetic eyes, and started to trudge for home. After a few moments I heard him come after me.
“Would you be weeping like this if it had been Queen Mary in there, with her head on the block?” he asked.
“Ssshhh,” I said, always cautious. “Yes.”
He said nothing, but his silence showed his great skepticism.
“I have done nothing dishonorable,” I said flatly.
“I doubt you,” he said, as coldly as me. “If you have been honorable it has only been for lack of opportunity.”
“Whoreson,” I said under my breath so he could not hear, and he marched me home in silence and we parted at my doorway with a handshake which was neither cousinly nor loving. I let him go, I would have been glad to throw a large volume at his retreating upright head. Then I went in to my father and wondered how long it would be before Daniel came to see him to say that he wanted to be released from our betrothal, and what would happen to me then.
As fool to the queen I was expected to be in her chambers every day, at her side. But as soon as I could be absent for an hour without attracting notice, I took a chance, and went to the old Dudley rooms to look for John Dee. I tapped on the door and a man in strange livery opened it and looked suspiciously at me.
“I thought the Dudley household lived here,” I said timidly.
“Not any more,” he said smartly.
“Where will I find them?”
He shrugged. “The duchess has rooms near the queen. Her sons are in the Tower. Her husband is in hell.”
“The tutor?”
He shrugged. “Gone away. Back to his father’s house, I should think.”
I nodded and took myself back to the queen’s rooms, and sat by her feet on a small cushion. Her little dog, a greyhound, had a cushion that matched mine; and dog and I sat, noses parallel, watching with the same brown-eyed incomprehension, while the courtiers came and made their bows and applied for land and places and favors of grants of money, and sometimes the queen patted the dog and sometimes she patted me; and dog and I stayed mum, and never said what we thought of these pious Catholics who had kept the flame of their faith so wonderfully hidden for so long. Well-hidden while they proclaimed the Protestant religion, hidden while they saw Catholics burned, waiting till this moment, like daffodils at Easter, to burst forth and flower. To think that there were so many believers in the country, and nobody knew them till now!