A Court Affair (10 page)

If not one of them, there is always Robert’s minion, his poor country cousin, sweet young Tommy Blount, with his freckled face, mass of ginger curls, and shy but ready, endearing smile, always so eager to please and bursting with a young man’s zest for life and tireless, unflagging vigour. He seems to spend all his time on the road as Robert’s courier, galloping hither and yon, back and forth between the court and wherever Robert sends him on one errand or another. He reminds me so much of the boy my husband used to be, only without Robert’s cocksure confidence, elegance, and bold sophistication. But I dare not trust even Tommy, a young man who looks at me with desire obvious in his eyes and words poised on his lips that he dare not say. Time has taught me that a sweet nature can be false or fade, especially when a man bows down to the golden goddess of Ambition. And Tommy, honoured to be favoured by such a great lord, is my husband’s loyal and trusted servant and kinsman, so I dare not trust him; succumbing to that temptation could very well be fatal for me.

How will my husband set the deed down in his accounts ledger, I wonder. What innocuous expense will disguise my death? Will my blood be covered up with fluffy white wool, or will my corpse be hidden in a barrel of apples?

The candlelight catches my betrothal ring, causing the golden oak leaf to glitter, and the amber acorn glows like a dollop of honey flecked with shifting glints of rich red, fiery orange, and shimmering gold, just like the memory of a beautiful sunset we once shared standing under the mighty old oak overlooking Syderstone, imprisoned inside this amber acorn. Sometimes nowadays it feels too heavy for my hand, like my end of the shackles and chains of the wedlock that hold Robert and me together. Sometimes I want to just undo the lock and let the chains fall and set us both free. I’m so tired of it all, the pain and misery and living in fear.
Pride goeth before a fall,
the Scriptures say; now I want to let that obstinate pride in being Lady Amy Dudley, Lord Robert’s wife, fall from me before I myself fall, pulled down by a weight I can no longer bear. I just want to let go of it all, even though I’m afraid of falling, but I’m also tired of holding on, and tired of being afraid.

“O My Father,” I pray, “if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou will.”

What a strange toy my mind has become! Even as I desire death, I long for life! It is as if these two contrary desires are locked in perpetual battle within me. One moment the desire for death gains and holds a sword to the throat of life; then the next the longing for life pushes back, parries the sword, and seems poised to be the victor; but within an instant it all changes, again and again and again, so that I, who used to be
so
certain, now never know what I
really
want any more. I am losing my mind; it is becoming a stranger to me! I am so afraid I am going mad!

I rise and leave the phantom friar to his prayers. But first I reach out my hand—though I don’t quite dare to touch him—and feel the icy prickle on my trembling fingertips as they hover just above his diaphanous grey sleeve. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I was wrong to be afraid of you. I have far more cause to fear the living than I do the dead.” Then I cross myself—there is no one here to see, and the old Catholic ways bring me comfort, and I’m not sure which is the
right
religion any more, may God forgive me. As I rise, I utter a silent prayer that God will grant the ghostly friar absolution for whatever denies him his eternal rest and keeps his soul trapped and earthbound within the clammy walls of Cumnor.

Across the room my husband’s proud and insolent face stares out at me with piercing dark eyes that smoulder with impatience and freeze my soul from within a gilded picture frame ornately carved with acorns and oak leaves and the Dudley coat-of-arms with the bear and ragged staff at each corner, as though once was not enough and it must be pounded into the beholder’s brain that he is looking at an illustrious scion from the House of Dudley.

This is how I know my husband now—from his portraits.

Handsome and haughty, as proud as Lucifer, he strikes a princely pose, like a king-in-waiting. Arrogant and condescending, in his gold-and-pearl-embellished amber brocade doublet, with an oval, diamond-framed enamelled miniature of the Queen hanging from a jewelled chain about his neck, showing the world where his heart lies. But to my eyes that chain is a very short, jewelled leash that tethers him to Her Majesty just like what he has become—her pampered and petted, much favoured lapdog, one who just might turn and bite the hand that feeds him someday or else strangle himself with his own leash.

Remembering what he was like when I first knew and loved him, I cannot help but hate what he has become, and my heart mourns and weeps without cease for that lost love and the soul he has gambled, lost, and damned with his vainglorious ambition. He stands there so proud and lofty with his hands upon his hips, one of them lightly caressing the jewelled hilt of his sword in a subtle warning that he would not hesitate to fight anyone who dared provoke or challenge him. The wild, rumpled black curls have been cropped and tamed beneath a plumed black velvet cap. Gone is the wild, untamable Gypsy; he has donned the vestments of respectability and left a staid and proper gentleman behind in his stead. And gone also is the easy grace I remember; he looks so stiff, so uncomfortable and rigid, as he stands there so erect, head high, shoulders back, his neck encased, like a broken limb, in a high collar that holds it like a splint, his cheeks cushioned by a small white ruff. His eyes and mouth are so hard now, I no longer recognise them. Even his hands, which used to be so gentle and tender with me, seem more likely to strike a blow or strangle than caress me now.

This is a portrait of a vain and cruel, self-consumed man with no regard for anyone else, a far cry from the kind, eager, passionate boy I fell in love with ten years ago. Had the man in this portrait come courting me, I would have shrunk from him; he would have roused only fear and uneasiness in me, not captured my heart and lit a fire inside me that made me feel as if I were melting every time his dark eyes turned my way. If this man had come to Stanfield Hall instead of the charming, winsome boy he used to be, I am sure I would have kept to my room until this insolent and disdainful creature—with the cold, hard, dark eyes that seem to freeze and burn me at the same time, and the forked, Devil-dark beard hanging from his chin—had gone away again, and I would have breathed a deep sigh of relief to see the back and, hopefully, the last of him.

I miss the Robert I fell in love with. Sometimes I dream I rise from my bed and slit the portrait down the middle, and he, the clean-shaven boy with the dark, tousled curls and ready, winning smile comes bounding out to take me in his arms, cover my face with kisses, and sweep me up and carry me out to make love in a bed of buttercups again. But I know if I were to slit the canvas, my dagger would find only the hard stone wall beneath. The Robert I loved so much, and who I thought loved me, is gone forever; instead, within his skin resides a stranger, a cold, imperious, commanding man who shuns and disdains the sweet simplicity of a country buttercup for the regal red and white Tudor rose instead.

I wanted so much for him to love me and be proud of me, but, I know now, I was doomed to failure from the start.

I know I should, but somehow I can’t let go of the dream—I just can’t! My dream came true, I lived a love all girls dream about but rarely find, and then I lost it. I’m not even sure how or when it died; it just slipped away from me. I tried so hard to bring it back, as if I were digging in my heels and pulling with all my might upon its coat tails, but the Robert I loved and the life we led together simply slipped the sleeves and left me holding an empty coat, to spend the rest of my lonely life trying to deny and run away from the truth that they were gone forever, and desperately seeking a way to woo and win them back.

Gazing upon Robert’s portrait only saddens me, so I turn away from it and go and gently ease myself down onto my bed, taking another sip from the medicine bottle before placing it carefully on the table beside me. At times I am of a mind to have Robert’s portrait taken down and moved elsewhere. Sometimes I even yearn for the fleeting, momentary satisfaction of seeing it burned or chopped into kindling. Only the knowledge that the servants would surely gossip, and, when word reached London, as it inevitably would, an angry letter from Robert would soon follow—only that stays my tongue from giving the necessary orders.

I
hate
the way his eyes seem to follow me, so impatient, hard, and hateful, as if he were wishing that I would hurry up and die. The man in that portrait I do not think would hesitate a moment to send an assassin to hasten me to my grave. That is a man who would freely spend his gold to buy poisons to send to me or persuade a physician to undertake my cure but bring about my death instead. This is a portrait of a man who loves only himself; even the woman whose likeness hangs about his neck is only a means to an end.

Sometimes I wonder if Robert has fooled her too. Does he make her feel like a weak-kneed woman of wax melting under the hot sun of gaze, burning lips, and the ardent, skilful hands that know
exactly
how and where to touch, the deft fingers that seek out and stroke the most intimate and sensitive places? I was Love’s blind fool; I trusted and believed and gave him my heart, body, and soul, and all the best of me; I married him. Will Elizabeth Tudor do the same? Or does my own bitterness cast a shadow and unjust suspicion on both of them? Is it
true
love betwixt Robert and the Queen? Am I, after all, just a youthful error, a foolish mistake that with my death will be remedied, undone and erased, to give true love the chance it lost through rash, young, and lusty folly?

Robert has become very much his father’s son. John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, Duke of Northumberland, would be proud to see his son standing so near the throne, and the woman who sits upon it head over bum in love with him. It was always his ambition to play kingmaker and become the founder of a great royal dynasty. But with Robert, I thought that, as a fifth son, the hardness had been buffed smooth, the sharp edges rounded and softened, and the ambition that coursed through his veins diluted. I thought happiness was enough for Robert, that he had turned his back on fame and glory and wanted only a simple life with me, breeding horses and filling our nursery with as many children as we could have, and presiding over our flocks, fields, and apple orchards. I thought Robert was different.

I remember the day Robert’s father, the Earl of Warwick as he was then, sought me out …

Stanfield Hall, near Wymondham, in Norfolk
April 1550

I
was in the dairy, with my hair bunched up carelessly beneath a white ruffled cap, wearing a faded old blue cloth gown with an apron tied over it, my sleeves rolled up to my elbows, and my hems pinned up to my knees. The stone floor was deliciously cool and smooth, like silk gone solid, beneath my bare feet, and I was laughing and gossiping with the milkmaids as I took my turn at a churn, just as if I were one of them and not Sir John Robsart’s daughter.

The Earl eyed me up and down, then shook his head and sighed,
“Poor Robert!”

Of course, I did not know then that I was fated to perpetually arouse pity for my husband.

My father-in-law-to-be bade me come out and walk with him. The silence hung heavily between us like a velvet curtain on the hottest summer day, and I felt as if I were walking alongside the Devil, there was such an aura of cruelty and power about him. But he was my beloved’s father, so I
must
try to win his good regard.

“I am sorry you catch me, Sir, at a time when I am so unkempt and ill-prepared to receive visitors,” I said, blushing and flustered, my tongue tripping clumsily over the words and no doubt making me seem more crude, ignorant, and rustic.

As we walked along, I rolled down my sleeves and tucked a stray lock of hair back inside my cap while debating whether I should stop and unpin my hems to let my skirts fall down to cover my bare shins and feet. I had a pair of comfortable old leather and wood clogs, but in my haste I had left them lying outside the dairy.

“I have always taken a more active role in running my father’s estates than perhaps a grand man like you would consider fitting,” I half-apologetically explained, though in truth I was not the least bit sorry. I
loved
being a part of it all and having a hand in it, not standing idly by like a court lady with her nose in the air or a pomander ball smelling of oranges and cloves pressed to it. I
never
failed to feel a sense of wonder as I watched things come into being, from the birthing of a new calf to making a loaf of bread or churning butter; each time was like witnessing a little miracle to me.

“For all your timidity, you are direct, lass,” the Earl of Warwick said with a grudging admiration. He stopped and turned to face me. “Shall I in turn be direct with you?”

“Please do, sir.” I nodded. “I would account it a very great favour if you would. If you’ve something to say, just say it, I always say—don’t hide it under a bushel of pretty words so I have to dig and search for it.”

“You might not think it so great a favour after you have heard what I have to say,” he cautioned. “Shall I continue?” And at my nod he did. “Though he is my fifth son, Robert has always been my favourite, so I am of a mind to indulge him and let him have his way, even though I think it is the
wrong
way. And he wants you; he thinks and talks of nothing but you. I think he is making a grave mistake and will rue my generosity one day, when he finds that your fresh-faced rustic charm, plain speech, and earthy common sense are no match for the sophistication and wit of the highbred ladies of the court, as he inevitably will. Even so, I am inclined to let him have you. I had other plans—great plans—for Robert, but I have other sons, and if Robert would wed and bed a country squire’s daughter and sink instead of rise in the world”—he shrugged and gave me a glance that was at once pitying and scornful—“so be it. But, I warn you, Mistress Amy, it will be
you
who will bear the blame and pay for it when Robert realises and repents his mistake. Are you
sure
you want to do this? You’d fare far better as Robert’s mistress than you ever will as his wife, my girl—I would bet the Crown jewels upon it. And if you’re willing to trade the role of mistress for that of wife, you’ll not find the Dudleys ungenerous—you and any bastards you bear will be well provided for, and I’m sure there’ll be a husband for you someday, someone who will suit you far better than Robert.”