He nodded.
She hesitated. “Brother, you must tell me. What did she say to you yesterday? She looked as if her heart was breaking, and now she looks halfway to death.”
“She has given me up,” he said shortly.
Mary Sidney gasped and put her hand to her mouth. “Never!”
“Indeed, yes. She has asked me to stand her friend but she knows she has to marry. Cecil warned her off me, and she has taken his advice.”
“But why now?”
“Firstly the rumors, and then the threats against me.”
She nodded. “The rumors are everywhere. My own waiting woman came to me with a story of Amy and poison and a whole string of slanderous lies that made my hair stand on end.”
“Beat her.”
“If she had made up the stories I would do so. But she was only repeating what is being said at every street corner. It is shameful what people are saying about you, and about the queen. Your pageboy was set on at the stables the other day, did you know?”
He shook his head.
“Not for the first time. The lads are saying they won’t wear our livery if they go into the City. They are ashamed of our coat of arms, Robert.”
He frowned. “I didn’t know it was that bad.”
“My maid told me that there are men who swear they will see you dead before you marry the queen.”
Robert nodded. “Ah, Mary, it could never happen. How could it? I am a married man.”
Her head came up in surprise. “I thought you… and she …had some plan? I thought perhaps…”
“You are as bad as these people who dream of divorce and death and dethroning!” he said, smiling. “It is all nonsense. The queen and I had a summertime love affair which has been all dancing and jousting and flowery meadows and now the summer is ended and the winter is coming I have to visit John Hayes with Amy. The country has to go to war with Scotland—Cecil predicted it; and Cecil is right. The queen has to be a queen indeed; she has been Queen of Camelot, now she has to be queen in deadly reality. She has had her summer at leisure, now she has to marry to secure the safety of the kingdom. Her choice has fallen on Arran if he can win her Scotland, or else Archduke Charles, as the best choice for the safety of the country. Whatever she may have felt for me in July, she knows she has to marry either one of them by Christmas.”
“She does?” Mary was amazed.
He nodded.
“Oh, Robert, no wonder she sits and stares and says nothing. Her heart must be breaking.”
“Aye,” he said tenderly. “Her heart may break. But she knows it has to be done. She won’t fail her country now. She has never lacked courage. She would sacrifice anything for her country. She will certainly sacrifice me and her love for me.”
“And can you bear this?”
Her brother’s face was so dark that she thought she had never seen him so grim since he came out of the Tower to face ruin. “I have to face it like a man. I have to find the courage that she has to find. In a way, we are still together. Her heart and mine will break together. We will have that scant comfort.”
“You will go back to Amy?”
He shrugged. “I have never left her. We had a few cross words when we last met, and she may have been distressed by the gossip. In my temper, and in my pride, I swore I should leave her, but she did not believe me for a moment. She stood her ground and said to my face that we were married and could never be divorced. And I knew she was right. In my heart I knew that I could never divorce Amy. What has she ever done to offend? And I knew that I was not going to poison the poor woman or push her down the well! So what else could happen but that the queen and I would have a summer of flirtation and kissing …yes! I admit to the kissing… and more. Very delicious, very sweet, but always, always, going nowhere. She is Queen of England, I am her Master of Horse. I am a married man and she must marry to save the kingdom.”
He glanced over. There were tears in his sister’s eyes. “Robert, I am so afraid that you will never love anyone but Elizabeth. You will have to live the rest of your life loving her.”
He gave her a wry smile. “That’s true. I have loved her from childhood and in these last months I have fallen in love, more deeply and more truly than I every thought possible. I thought myself hard of heart, and yet I find she is everything to me. Indeed, I love her so much that I am going to let her go. I am going to help her to marry Arran or the archduke. Her only safety lies that way.”
“You will give her up for her own safety?”
“Whatever it costs me.”
“My God, Robert, I never thought you could be so…”
“So what?”
“So selfless!”
He laughed. “I thank you!”
“I mean it. To help the woman you love to marry another is a truly selfless thing to do.” She was silent for a moment. “And how will you bear it?” she asked tenderly.
“I shall treasure a memory of loving a beautiful young queen in the very first year of her reign,” he said. “In the golden summer when she came to her throne in her youth and her beauty and she thought she could do anything—even marry a man like me. And I shall go home to my wife and make a nursery full of heirs and I shall name all the girls Elizabeth.”
She put her sleeve to her eyes. “Oh, my dearest brother.”
He covered her hand with his own. “Will you help me do this, Mary?”
“Of course,” she whispered. “Of course, anything.”
“Go to the Spanish ambassador, de Quadra, and tell him that the queen needs his help in concluding the match with the archduke.”
“I? But I hardly know him.”
“It doesn’t matter. He knows us Dudleys well enough. Go to him as if you were coming directly from the queen, not at my request. Tell him that she felt she could not approach him directly, not after this summer when she has blown hot and cold on the plan. But if he will come to her with a renewed proposal, she will say ‘yes’ at once.”
“This is the queen’s own wish?” Mary asked.
He nodded. “She wants to signal to everyone that I have not been rejected, that she stands my friend, that she loves me and you too. She wants the Dudley family to broker this marriage.”
“It’s a great honor to take such a message,” she said solemnly. “And a great responsibility too.”
“The queen thought we should keep it in the family.” He smiled. “Mine is the sacrifice, you are the messenger, and together, the deed is done.”
“And what of you, when she is married?”
“She will not forget me,” he said. “We have loved each other too well and too long for her to turn from me. And you and I will be rewarded both by her and by the Spanish for faithful dealing now. This is the right thing to do, Mary; I have no doubts. It ensures her safety and it takes me out of the reach of lying tongues… and worse. I don’t doubt that there are men who would see me dead. This is my safety as well as hers.”
“I will go tomorrow,” she promised him.
“And tell him you come from her, at her bidding.”
“I will,” she said.
Cecil, sitting at his fireside in the silence of the palace at midnight, rose from his chair to answer a discreet tap at the door. The man who entered the room put back his black hood and went to the fire to warm his hands.
“Do you have a glass of wine?” he asked in a light Spanish accent. “This mist on the river will give me an ague. If it is this damp in September, what will it be like in midwinter?”
Cecil poured the wine and gestured the man to a chair by the fire. He threw on another log. “Better?”
“Yes, I thank you.”
“It must be interesting news to bring you out on such a cold night as this,” Cecil remarked to no one in particular.
“Only the queen herself, proposing marriage to Archduke Charles!”
Cecil’s response was wholly satisfying. His head came up; he looked astounded. “The queen has proposed marriage?”
/> “Through an intermediary. Did you not know of this?”
Cecil shook his head, refusing to answer. Information was currency to Cecil and, unlike Gresham, he believed that there was neither good nor bad coinage in the currency of information. It was all valuable.
“Do you know the intermediary?” he asked.
“Lady Mary Sidney,” the man said. “One of the queen’s own ladies.”
Cecil nodded; perhaps this was the ripple from the stone he had thrown. “And Lady Mary had a proposal?”
“That the archduke should come at once to pay the queen a visit, as if in politeness. That she will accept a proposal of marriage at that visit. The terms will be drawn up at once, and that the wedding will take place by Christmas.”
Cecil’s face was a frozen mask. “And what did His Excellency think of this proposal?”
“He thought it could be done now or never,” the man said bluntly. “He thinks she hopes to save her reputation before any worse is said of her. He thinks she has seen reason at last.”
“He said this aloud?”
“He dictated it to me to translate into code to send to King Philip.”
“You do not bring me a copy of the letter?”
“I dare not,” the man said briefly. “He is no fool. I risk my life even telling you this much.”
Cecil waved the danger aside. “Lady Mary would no doubt have told me in the morning, had I not known of it already from the queen herself.”
The man looked a little dashed. “But would she tell you that my master has written to the archduke this very night to recommend that he comes at once on this visit? That Caspar von Breuner has sent for Austrian lawyers to draw up the marriage contract? That this time we believe the queen is in earnest and we are going ahead? And the archduke should be here by November?”
“No, that is good news,” Cecil said. “Anything else?”
The man looked thoughtful. “That is all. Shall I come again when I have more?”
Cecil reached into the drawer of his desk and drew out a small leather purse. “Yes. This is for now. And as for your papers, they will be drawn up for you…” He paused.
“When?” the man asked eagerly.
“When the marriage is solemnized,” Cecil said. “We can all rest safe in our beds when that takes place. Did you say Christmas?”
“The queen herself named Christmas as her wedding day.”
“Then I shall give you your papers to allow you to stay in England when your master, the archduke, is named Elizabeth’s consort.”
The man bowed in assent and then hesitated before leaving. “You always have a purse for me in that drawer,” he said curiously. “Do you expect me to come, or do so many men report to you that you have their fee ready?”
Cecil, whose informants now numbered more than a thousand, smiled. “Only you,” he said sweetly.
Robert arrived at Hayes Court in September, in quiet and somber mood, his face grim.
Amy, watching him from an upper window, thought that she had not seen that desolate look on his face since he had come home from the siege of Calais when England had lost its last foothold in France. Slowly, she went downstairs, wondering what he had lost now.
He was dismounting from his horse; he greeted her with a cursory kiss on the cheek.
“My lord,” Amy said in greeting. “Are you unwell?”
“No,” he said shortly. Amy wanted to cling to him, to treasure his touch but gently he put her aside. “Let me go, Amy, I am dirty.”
“I don’t mind!”
“But I do.” He turned; his friend John Hayes was coming down the front steps of the house.
“Sir Robert! I thought I heard horses!”
Robert clapped John on the back. “No need to ask how you are,” he said cheerfully. “You’re putting on weight, John. Obviously not hunting enough.”
“But you look dreadful.” His friend was concerned. “Are you sick, sir?”
Robert shrugged. “I’ll tell you later.”
“Court life?” John said, guessing quickly.
“It would be easier to dance the volta in hell than survive in London,” Robert said precisely. “Between Her Grace, and Sir William Cecil, and the women of the queen’s chamber, and the Privy Council, my head is spinning from dawn when I get up to check the stables, till midnight when I can finally leave the court and go to bed.”
“Come and have a glass of ale,” John offered. “Tell me all about it.”
“I stink of horse,” Robert said.
“Oh, who cares for that?”
The two men turned and went toward the house. Amy was about to follow them and then she dropped back and let them go on. She thought that perhaps her husband would be relieved if he could talk alone with his friend, and would perhaps be easier, not constrained by her presence. But she crept after them and sat on the wooden chair in the hall, outside the closed door, so that she should be there for him when he came out.
The ale helped Robert’s bad temper, and then a wash in hot, scented water and a change of clothes. A good dinner completed the change; Mrs. Minchin was a famously lavish housekeeper. By six in the evening when the four of them, Sir Robert, Amy, Lizzie Oddingsell, and John Hayes, sat down to a game of cards, his lordship was restored to his usual sweet temper and his face was less drawn. By nightfall he was tipsy and Amy realized that she would get no sense from him that evening. They went to bed together, and she hoped that they would make love, but he merely turned away, heaved the covers high over his shoulders, and fell into a deep sleep. Amy, lying awake in the darkness, did not think that she should wake him since he was tired, and in any case, she never initiated their lovemaking. She wanted him; but she did not know where to begin—his smooth unyielding back did not respond to her tentative touch. She turned away herself, and watched the moonlight coming through the slats of the shutters, listened to his heavy breathing, and remembered her duty before God to love her husband whatever the circumstances. She resolved to be a better wife to him in the morning.
“Would you like to ride with me, Amy?” Robert asked politely at breakfast. “I have to keep my hunter fit, but I shan’t go too far or too fast today.”
“I should like to come,” she said at once. “But don’t you think it will rain?”
He was not listening; he had turned his head and ordered his manservant to get the horses ready.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I only said I was afraid it will rain,” she repeated.
“Then we will come home again.”
Amy flushed, thinking that she had sounded like a fool.
On the ride it was not much better. She could think of nothing to say but the most obvious banalities about the weather and the fields on either side of them, while he rode, his face dark, his eyes abstracted, his gaze fixed on the track ahead of them but seeing nothing.
“Are you well, my lord?” Amy asked quietly when they turned for home. “You do not seem yourself at all.”
He looked at her as if he had forgotten that she was there. “Oh, Amy. Yes, I am well enough. A little troubled by events at court.”
“What events?”
He smiled as if he were being interrogated by a child. “Nothing for you to worry about.”
“You can tell me,” she assured him. “I am your wife. I want to know if something troubles you. Is it the queen?”
“She is in great danger,” he said. “Every day there is news of another plot against her. There never was a queen who was more loved by half the people and yet more hated by the others.”
“So many people think she has no right to the throne,” Amy remarked. “They say that since she was a bastard, it should have gone to Mary, Queen of Scots, and then the kingdoms would be united now, without a war, without the change to the church, without the trouble that Elizabeth brings.”
Robert choked on his surprise. “Amy, whatever are you thinking? This is treason that you are speaking to me. Pray God you never say such a thi
ng to anyone else. And you should never repeat it, even to me.”
“It’s only the truth,” Amy observed calmly.
“She is the anointed Queen of England.”
“Her own father declared her to be a bastard, and that was never revoked,” Amy said reasonably enough. “She has not even revoked it herself.”
“There is no doubt that she is his legitimate daughter,” Robert said flatly.
“Excuse me, husband, but there is every doubt,” Amy said politely. “I don’t blame you for not wanting to see it, but facts are facts.”
Robert was astounded by her confidence. “Good God, Amy, what has come over you? Who have you been talking to? Who has filled your head with this nonsense?”
“No one, of course. Who do I ever see but your friends?” she asked.
For a moment, he thought she was being sarcastic and he looked sharply at her, but her face was serene, her smile as sweet as ever.
“Amy, I am serious. There are men all round England with their tongues slit for less than you have said.”
She nodded. “How cruel of her to torture innocent men for speaking nothing but the truth.”
They rode for a moment in silence, Robert utterly baffled by the sudden uprising in his own household.
“Have you always thought like this?” he asked quietly. “Even though you have always known that I supported her? That I was proud to be her friend?”
Amy nodded. “Always. I never thought her claim was the best.”
“You have never said anything to me.”
She shot him a little smile. “You never asked me.”
“I would have been glad to know that I had a traitor in my household.”
She gave a little laugh. “There was a time when you were the traitor and I was right-thinking. It is the times that have changed, not us.”
“Yes, but a man likes to know if his wife is plotting treason.”