Elizabeth could not make herself move from his touch, but she did not melt into him, as she usually did. “De Quadra should have come to me,” she insisted.
“Oh, why?” Robert demanded. “Don’t you think he knows that I shall be your declared husband within the year? Don’t you think everyone knows that we are betrothed and will soon announce it? Don’t you think he already deals with me as if I were your husband?”
“He should speak with me or Cecil,” she persisted. She rubbed at the cuticles of her fingernails, to push them back from the polished nails.
Dudley took her hand. “Of course,” he said. “When it is something that I cannot deal with for you.”
“And when would that be?” she demanded sharply.
He chuckled in his self-confidence. “D’you know, I cannot think of a single thing that you or Cecil could do better than me,” he admitted.
Cecil was seated next to Elizabeth at the tennis tournament but neither of them followed the play.
“He only met with de Quadra to spare me trouble,” she whispered to him in a rapid monotone.
“He has no authority, unless you give it to him,” Cecil said steadily.
“Cecil, he says that everyone knows that we are betrothed, that de Quadra thinks of him as my husband and so my representative.”
“This has to stop,” Cecil said. “You have to stop this …usurpation.”
“He is not disloyal,” she said fiercely. “Everything he does is for love of me.”
Yes, he is the most loyal traitor who ever threw down a queen for love of her, Cecil thought bitterly. Aloud he said: “Your Grace, it may be for your good, but don’t you know that his power over you will be reported to the Spanish emperor and be seen as weakness? Don’t you think the English Catholics will know that you plan to marry a divorced man? You, of all women: the daughter of a divorced queen, a queen executed for adultery?”
Nobody ever spoke to the queen of her mother, except in tones of the most unctuous deference. Elizabeth went white with shock. “I beg your pardon,” she said icily.
Cecil was not frightened into silence. “Your reputation has to be of the purest,” he said adamantly. “Because your mother, God rest her soul, died with her reputation most foully slandered. Your father divorced a good woman to marry her and then blamed his decision on witchcraft and lust. No one must revive that libel and apply it to you.”
“Be very careful, Cecil,” she said coldly. “You are repeating treasonous slander.”
“You be careful,” he said roundly, and rose from his seat. “Tell de Quadra to meet with us both tomorrow morning to make his formal complaint. Sir Robert does not transact business for the Crown.”
Elizabeth looked up at him and then, very slightly, she shook her head. “I cannot,” she said.
“What?”
“I cannot undermine Sir Robert. The business is done, and he has said only what we would have said. We’ll leave it.”
“He is indeed king-consort then, in everything but name? You are content to give him your power?”
When she said nothing, Cecil bowed. “I will leave you,” he said quietly. “I have no humor to watch the match. I think the Gypsy’s Men are certain to win.”
Anthony Forster, returning home with a new scroll of madrigals under his arm, was in merry mood and not best pleased to be greeted by his wife with a domestic crisis before he had even entered the great hall.
“Lady Dudley is here and is very ill,” she said urgently. “They arrived this morning, and she has been sick since then. She cannot keep down food, the poor thing cannot even keep down drink, and she complains of a pain in her breast which she says is heartbreak, but I think may be a canker. She won’t let anyone see it.”
“Let me in, wife,” he said, and walked past her into his hall. “I’ll take a glass of ale,” he said sternly. “It was hot work riding home in this heat.”
“I am sorry,” she said briefly. She poured him the ale and bit her tongue while he settled himself in his own chair and took a long draught.
“That’s better,” he said. “Is dinner ready?”
“Of course,” she said respectfully. “We were just awaiting your return.”
She made herself stand in silence until he took another swig of ale and then turned and looked at her.
“Now then,” he said. “What’s all this?”
“It’s Lady Dudley,” she said. “Very ill. Sick, and with a pain in her breast.”
“Better send for a physician,” he said. “Dr. Bayly.”
Mrs. Forster nodded. “I’ll send someone for him at once.”
He rose from his seat. “I’ll wash my hands before dinner.” He paused. “Is she fit to see me? Will she come down for dinner?”
“No,” she said. “I think not.”
He nodded. “This is very inconvenient, wife,” he said. “To have her in our house at all is to share in her disgrace. She cannot enjoy a long illness here.”
“I don’t think she’s enjoying anything,” she said acidly.
“I daresay not,” he said with brief sympathy. “But she cannot stay here for longer than the appointed time, sick or not.”
“Has his lordship forbidden you to offer hospitality to her?”
Mr. Forster shook his head. “He doesn’t have to,” he said. “You don’t have to get wet to learn it’s raining. I know which way the wind is blowing, and it’s not me that will catch cold.”
“I’ll send for the doctor,” his wife said. “Perhaps he will say it was just riding in the heat that made her sick.”
The Cumnor stable lad made good time and reached Oxford as Dr. Bayly, the queen’s Professor of Physic at Oxford, was sitting down to his dinner. “I can come at once,” he said, rising to his feet and reaching for his hat and his cape. “Who is ill at Cumnor Place? Not Mr. Forster, I trust?”
“No,” the lad said, proffering his letter. “A visitor, just arrived from Abingdon. Lady Dudley.”
The doctor froze, hat halfway to his head, his cape, arrested in midswing, flapping to fall at one shoulder like a broken wing. “Lady Dudley,” he repeated. “Wife of Sir Robert Dudley?”
“The same,” said the lad.
“Sir Robert that is the queen’s Master of Horse?”
“The queen’s Master of Horse is what they call him,” repeated the lad with a broad wink, since he had heard the rumors as well as everyone else.
Dr. Bayly slowly put his hat back down on the wooden settle. “I think I cannot come,” he said. He swung his cape from his shoulder and draped it on the high back of the bench. “I think I dare not come, indeed.”
“It’s not said to be the plague, nor the sweat, sir,” the boy said. “She’s the only one sick in the house, and there’s no plague in Abingdon that I’ve heard of.”
“No, lad, no,” the doctor said thoughtfully. “There are things more dangerous than the plague. I don’t think I should be engaged.”
“She’s said to be in pain,” the lad went on. “One of the housemaids said she was crying, heard her through the door. Said she heard her ask God to release her.”
“I dare not,” the doctor told him frankly. “I dare not see her. I could not prescribe physic for her, even if I knew what was wrong with her.”
“Why not? If the lady is ill?”
“Because if she dies they will think she has been poisoned and they will accuse me of doing it,” the physician said flatly. “And if, in her despair, she has taken a poison already and it is working its way through her body, then they will blame the physic that I give her. If she dies I will get the blame and perhaps have to face trial for her murder. And if someone has poisoned her already, or someone is glad to know that she is sick, then they will not thank me for saving her.”
The lad gaped. “I was sent to fetch you to help her. What am I to tell Mrs. Forster?”
The doctor dropped his hand on the lad’s shoulder. “Tell them that it was more than my license is worth to meddle in such a ca
se,” he said. “It may be that she is taking physic already and that it has been prescribed to her by a greater man than I.”
The lad scowled, trying to comprehend the physician’s meaning. “I don’t understand,” he said.
“I mean that if her husband is trying to poison her then I don’t dare to meddle,” the doctor said bluntly. “And if she is sick unto death then I doubt that he would thank me for saving her.”
Elizabeth was in Robert’s arms; he was covering her face, her shoulders with kisses, licking her neck, overwhelming her as she laughed and pushed him away and pulled him back all at the same time.
“Hush, hush, someone will hear,” she said.
“It is you making all the noise with your screaming.”
“I’m as quiet as a mouse. I’m not screaming,” she protested.
“Not yet, but you will be,” he promised, making her laugh again and clap a hand over her mouth.
“You are mad!”
“I am mad with love,” he agreed. “And I like winning. D’you know how much I took off de Quadra?”
“You were betting with the Spanish ambassador?”
“Only on a certainty.”
“How much?”
“Five hundred crowns,” he exulted. “And d’you know what I said?”
“What?”
“I said he could pay me in Spanish gold.”
She tried to laugh but he saw at once the snap of anxiety in her eyes. “Ah, Elizabeth, don’t spoil this; the Spanish ambassador is easy enough to manage. I understand him, he understands me. It was a jest only. He laughed and so did I. I can manage affairs of state; God knows, I was born and bred to them.”
“I was born to be queen,” she flashed at him.
“No one denies it,” he said. “Least of all me. Because I was born to be your lover and your husband and your king.”
She hesitated. “Robert, even if we declare our betrothal you would not take the title of king.”
“Even if?”
She flushed. “I mean: when.”
“When we declare our betrothal I shall be your husband and King of England,” he said simply. “What else would you call me?”
Elizabeth was stunned into silence, but at once she tried to manage him. “Now Robert,” she said mildly. “You’ll hardly want to be king. Philip of Spain was only ever known as king-consort. Not king.”
“Philip of Spain had other titles,” he said. “He was emperor in his lands. It didn’t matter to him what he was in England; he was hardly ever here. Would you have me seated at a lower place, and eating off silver when you eat off gold, as Philip did with Mary? Would you want to so humble me before others? Every day of my life?”
“No,” she said hastily. “Never.”
“D’you think me not worthy of the crown? Good enough for your bed but not good enough for the throne?”
“No,” she said. “No, of course not. Robert, my love, don’t twist and turn my words. You know I love you; you know I love no one but you, and I need you.”
“Then we have to complete what we have started,” he said. “Grant me a divorce from Amy, and publish our betrothal. Then I can be your partner and helpmeet in everything. And I will be called king.”
She was about to object but he drew her toward him again and started to kiss her neck. Helplessly, Elizabeth melted into his embrace. “Robert…”
“My love,” he said. “You taste so good that I could eat you.”
“Robert,” she sighed, “My love, my only love.”
Gently he scooped her up into his arms and took her to the bed. She lay on her back as he slipped off his gown and came naked toward her. She smiled, waiting for him to put on the sheath that he always used in their lovemaking. When he did not have the ribboned skin in his hand, nor reach to the table by the bed, she was surprised.
“Robert? Have you not a guardian?”
His smile was very dark and seductive. He crawled up the bed toward her, pressing his naked body against every inch of her, overwhelming her with the faint musky smell of him, the warmth of his skin, the soft, prickly mat of hair at his chest, and the rising column of his flesh.
“We have no need of it,” he said. “The sooner we make a son for England’s cradle the better.”
“No!” she said, shocked, and started to pull away. “Not until we are known to be married.”
“Yes,” he whispered in her ear. “Feel it, Elizabeth, you have never felt it properly. You have never felt it like my wife has felt it. Amy loves me naked and you don’t even know what it is like. You’ve never had half of the pleasure I have given her.”
She gave a little moan of jealousy and at once reached down, took hold of him, and guided him into her wetness. As their bodies came together and she felt his naked flesh with her own, her eyes fluttered shut with pleasure. Robert Dudley smiled.
In the morning the queen declared that she was ill and could see no one. When Cecil came to her door she sent out word that she could see him very briefly, and only if it was a matter of urgency.
“I am afraid so,” he said solemnly, gesturing at the document in his hand. The sentries stood to one side and let him into her bedchamber.
“I told them I needed you to sign for the return of French prisoners,” Cecil said, coming in and bowing. “Your note said to come at once with an excuse to see you.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Because of Sir Robert?”
“Yes.”
“This is ridiculous,” he said baldly.
“I know it.”
Something in the flatness of her voice alerted him. “What has he done?”
“He has made …a demand of me.”
Cecil waited.
Elizabeth glanced at the faithful Mrs. Ashley. “Kat, go and stand outside the door and see that there is no one listening.”
The woman left the room.
“What demand?”
“One I cannot meet.”
He waited.
“He wants us to declare our betrothal, for me to grant him and that woman a divorce, and for him to be called king.”
“King?”
Her head bowed down, she nodded, not meeting his eyes.
“King-consort was good enough for the Emperor of Spain.”
“I know. I said. But it is what he wants.”
“You have to refuse.”
“Spirit, I cannot refuse him. I cannot let him think me false to him. I have no words of refusal for him.”
“Elizabeth, this madness will cost you the throne of England, and all the danger and all the waiting, and the peace of Edinburgh, will be for nothing. They will push you from the throne and put in your cousin as queen. Or worse. I cannot save you from this; you are finished if you put him on the throne.”
“Have you thought of nothing?” she demanded. “You always know what to do. Spirit, you must help me. I have to break with him and before God, I cannot.”
Cecil looked at her suspiciously. “Is that all? That he wants a divorce and to be called king? He has not hurt you, or threatened you? You remember that would be treason, even if done in love? Even if done by a betrothed lover?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “No, he is always…” She broke off, thinking what intense pleasure he gave her. “He is always …But what if I have a child?”
His look of horror was as dark as her own. “Are you with child?”
She shook her head. “No. Well, I don’t know…”
“I assumed that he took care…”
“Until last night.”
“You should have refused.”
“I cannot!” she suddenly shouted. “Do you not hear me, Cecil, though I tell you over and over again? I cannot refuse him. I cannot help but love him. I cannot say no to him. You have to find a way for me to marry him, or you have to find a way for me to escape his demands, because I cannot say no to him. You have to protect me from my desire for him, from his demands; it is your duty. I cannot protect myself. You have to sa
ve me from him.”
“Banish him!”
“No. You have to save me from him without him ever knowing that I have said one word against him.”
Cecil was silent for a long moment, then he remembered that they had only a short time together: the queen and her own Secretary of State were forced to meet in secret, in snatched moments, because of her folly. “There is a way,” he said slowly. “But it is a very dark path.”
“Would it teach him his place?” she demanded. “That his place is not mine?”
“It would put him in fear of his life and humble him to dust.”
Elizabeth flared up at that. “He never fears,” she blazed. “And his spirit did not break even when his whole family was brought low.”
“I am sure he is indefatigable,” Cecil said acidly. “But this would shake him so low that he would give up all thought of the throne.”
“And he would never know that I had ordered it,” she whispered.
“No.”
She paused. “And it would not fail.”
“I don’t think so.” He hesitated. “It requires the death of an innocent person.”
“Just one?”
He nodded. “Just one.”
“No one that I love?”
“No.”
She did not pause for a moment. “Do it then.”
Cecil allowed himself a smile. So often when he thought Elizabeth the weakest of women he saw that she was the most powerful of queens.
“I will need a token of his,” he said. “Do you have anything with his seal?”
Almost she said “no.” He saw the thought of the lie go through her mind.
“You do?”
Slowly, from the neck of her gown she drew out a gold chain bearing Dudley’s signet ring that he had given her when they had plighted their troth. “His own ring,” she whispered. “He put it on my finger when we were betrothed.”
Cecil hesitated. “Will you give it to me for his undoing? His token of love to you? His own signet ring?”
“Yes,” she said simply. “Since it is him, or me.” Slowly, she unclipped the chain and held it up so that the ring fell down into her palm. She kissed it, as if it were a sacred relic, and then reluctantly handed it to him.