A Court Affair (27 page)

I ran after him, calling out to him, begging him to wait, and making quite a pitiful spectacle of myself before the servants’ startled eyes. The pease-porridge kersey gown I had hastily thrown on gaped open in back and drooped from my shoulders so that I had to constantly pull it back up, and I had thrust my bare feet into the first shoes I could find—a pair of fancy raspberry satin slippers with diamond-encrusted berries on the toes—and my hair was a wild, sleep-rumpled mess flying every which way like a storm-swept haystack.

But Robert ignored me, hell-bent on reaching Elizabeth at Hatfield, to remind her who her
real
friends were, and he was deaf to my cries. My importance had been diminishing for quite some time, and now, with a plunging sensation in my stomach, I felt it hit rock bottom. Henceforth, Elizabeth would always be first, and I would always be last.

Out in the courtyard, even as I slipped on the ice and fell, skinning my hands and knees, Robert leapt nimbly into the saddle of a black stallion, to which the proud white beauty was tethered by a lead.

As he galloped off along the road, I ran after him, shouting his name, waving my arms, blood trickling from my scraped palms, but he never once looked back.

Defeated, I stood there in the road and cried and cried, with the tears turning to ice upon my cheeks, and my gown slipping from my shoulders until it was hanging loose and limp about my waist and the slush making a sodden mess of my expensive slippers. I stood and watched until he was completely out of sight. Then Pirto was there, red-faced and panting from running, like a dragon belching frosty clouds of air instead of fire, to decently pull up my gown and drape a fur-lined cloak about my shoulders and gently lead me back inside.

“He didn’t even kiss me goodbye,” I whispered before I fell weeping into her arms, sobbing as the shattered shards of my heart drove deeper into my breast.

That was the day I truly lost my husband. Though his body came back to me from time to time, the Robert I loved left me forever that day, he never came back to me, and the tears I shed that day fell on the grave of Hope.

As the beautiful snow white horse raced Robert’s ebony steed along the road, I noticed that she wore a saddle of silver set with diamonds and edged with ermine. That saddle was empty, but I knew it would not be for long …

Hatfield House in Hertfordshire
November 17, 1558

A
s I stood beneath the frost-spangled branches of the majestic old oak in the park at Hatfield, my white skirt being tugged by the chill fingers of November, the Earls of Arundel and Throckmorton knelt at my feet and, with hands over their hearts, watched as I solemnly slid the weighty gold and onyx coronation ring onto my finger, as though it were a wedding ring. At that moment, I felt touched by the hand of God. “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes!” I declared, my heart filling each word. I felt such a sense of awe and wonderment. I came face to face with Destiny that day and saw it bow to me. All my life I had walked side by side, often even hand-in-hand, with Danger, and yet God, and the wits He gave me, had always stepped between, often at the last instant, to divert the fatal blow and preserve my life. Now I
knew
why. Before, it had always been a hope and a dream, a feeling rich with conviction, but now it was
real
! I was England’s Queen!

I hoped in Heaven my mother, Anne Boleyn, was having the last laugh as she smiled down on me. She had promised my father a prince, a future king for England, and had died because she had failed. And the prince his next wife, Jane Seymour, had given him had also failed. Edward had died a young and pale, watered-down imitation of our father and left little mark on England. And my sister, Mary, when her time came, had turned the people’s love to bitter black ashes when she burned the Protestants she deemed heretics. As I gazed up at the grey sky through the dark lattice of frost-laden branches glittering in the weak November sun, I promised my mother, and my father, that in me they would see a monarch, a sovereign, such as England had never known before. And though some might see my sex as a weakness, a detriment, before I left this world I would prove them all mistaken. My weak and slender woman’s body was the witch’s cauldron in which were combined the bold audacity of Anne Boleyn and the might and majesty of Henry VIII, and that was a magical and potent brew. In me, England would find a pillar of strength, not sugar or salt; I would not buckle in the heat, melt in the rain, or crack in the cold. I would not fail! I had already learned to never show weakness, except when it served me to bait a trap with feminine frailty. And never to show fear, nothing that could be used against me, to make me seem like a sheep onto which any hungry wolf might pounce, to never let my heart control my mind, and that confidence, real or feigned, is vital, the key ingredient, if one would hold and keep the reins of power firmly in hand and call the tunes everyone dances to. In order to be obeyed, one must act as if they expect and will accept nothing less.

Then Robert, my dashing, black-haired, dark-eyed Gypsy, my best friend from childhood, was there, bowing to me from astride a great black stallion, leading a dazzling white horse, a graceful and elegant beauty, at once strong and delicately formed, fluid and white as milk, already saddled in silver and ermine in readiness for me. He made both horses dip their heads and forelegs and bow to me, and I smiled and laughed and clapped my hands in pure delight. I went to pet the horse, the slush of sodden and brown fallen leaves squelching beneath the thin soles of my white satin slippers. Robin held out his hand to me, and I took it. Then I was in the saddle, and we were riding like the wind across the park. I felt the wind’s icy fingers in my hair and tugging at my billowing white skirts, pulling as though it were trying to restrain me, to slow me down or hold me back, but I laughed defiantly and urged the white beauty beneath me to gallop faster. I was
free
! Free, fearless, and five-and-twenty, and no one could hold or gainsay me! For the first time I fully understood what the words
drunk with power
truly meant, and I knew it was up to me to water down the wine and not let it addle my brain and corrupt me. Drunkards
always
come to a bad end, and I would not be one of them; I could not, now that England was mine. I had a sacred duty, one I had been born to fulfil, and failure was not an option I would ever consider. I had defiantly swept that card from the table, and none would ever dare pick it up and lay it back before me.

As we rode back to the house, the dear, familiar, turreted, redbrick manor where I had spent most of my childhood, I saw the austere, black-clad figure of my good and loyal friend Sir William Cecil waiting for me in the winter-barren knot garden, and I waved to him. Though he had served my brother and sister, Cecil had always discreetly given me his shrewd and sage advice. He had long since proved both his loyalty and his worth, and I meant to honour him now by appointing him my Secretary of State, a position akin to being the monarch’s right hand, the man who knows all and has his finger in every pie.

Laughing, I reined my horse in, my hair a wild and windblown mess billowing about my shoulders like a spreading flame. I was trying to smooth and tame it when Robert came to lift me down.

He held me close—some might have even said
too
close—for a long moment and, blowing my hair back from my ear, grazed it with his lips, making me feel at once hot and cold as he whispered, “I will come to you tonight …”

I laughed and nimbly spun away from him, light-headed and lightheartedly dancing away from him in a swirl of wind-tugged white skirts.

“Yes, Rob, do, and we shall celebrate—the fulfilment of my destiny and your appointment as my Master of the Horse, for I cannot think of anyone I would rather have beside me when I ride out. And I know I could not have a better man overseeing my stables; you understand horses as if you were one yourself. I must have fine horses, Rob, the very best—spirited, prancing beauties and hunters whose energy will not flag before mine does—and I am trusting you to find them for me.”

And as he fell to his knees, with his hastily doffed velvet cap over his heart, the white plume billowing up to tickle his chin, I laughed, giddy as a moonstruck maid, and ran to meet Cecil.

He paused on the gravelled path and reverently knelt before me.

“Nay, old friend, do not kneel! Rise, my good Master Secretary!” I cried, reaching out to help him.

Cecil started in surprise, but I had seen that he struggled with his stiff and painful knees, a sad harbinger of the rheumatism that would in time become the bane of his existence and eventually, as he aged, cripple him. Though only eight years past thirty, Cecil was one of those men who seemed to have been born old: his back was stooped from the many years he had spent hunched over a desk, first as a young scholar labouring at his studies and then in the service of the Tudors; his brow was deeply lined, and there were wrinkles about his eyes; and grey strands already far outnumbered the brown in his still thick hair and beard.

“Majesty, you do me
great
honour,” he said.

“And you do me great service, Cecil, and, I trust, will continue to take such pains for me and England. I have this judgment of you—that you will not be corrupted by any manner of flattery and gifts, that you will be faithful to me and to England, and that you will, without respect to my private inclinations and will, give me whatever counsel you think best, even if it will displease or anger me, and that if you know of anything that should be said to me in secret, that you shall do so without fail. And, henceforth,” I added with a smile to break the solemnity, “I pardon your poor knees from kneeling. Sit or stand as you will; I know you respect and honour me, and my eyes need no demonstration of it.”

He took my hand and bowed over it. “
Always,
Majesty, I will serve you faithfully until the day I die.”

“As I—as we—shall serve England, my friend,” I replied. “Come, walk with me.” I took his arm. “We must discuss the appointments for my Council …”

“And this vexing question of religion, Majesty—I fear it is
most
pressing,” Cecil interjected, as though he had read the words printed on the parchment of my mind.

“I’ve no desire to make windows of men’s souls, Cecil, but we
must
strive for outward conformity. Officially, we are a Protestant nation. All services shall henceforth be read in English, so that
all
my people may understand them, and,
officially
”—I emphasised the word—“the Mass and Elevation of the Host must, in due course, be banned, but those who desire it, myself included, shall have candles and adornments, music and vestments to honour God and beautify their worship. Let those who wish it have their Masses and Latin litanies in private, but if they do not outwardly conform and regularly attend Protestant services, they must pay a fine. How my people worship Our Heavenly Father is their own business, as long as they are loyal to me as their earthly sovereign. I shall decree three days of mourning for my sister, and she shall be buried in the full Catholic rite, as I know she would have wished, but let it be given out at once that there is to be no retaliation against or molestation of priests, Catholics, or sacred places to avenge the atrocities of her reign. We go forward, Cecil, not back.”

“A wise course, Your Majesty,” Cecil nodded, “but I fear that if the Pope excommunicates you, both your person and throne will be in extreme peril from the Catholic sovereigns of France and Spain. England cannot afford a war, the Treasury is empty, our army and navy are threadbare, our fortifications crumbling, and—”

I held up my hand to silence him. “I am five-and-twenty and fairly comely, am I not, Cecil?”

“Aye, Majesty, and if you would marry
sooner
rather than later, not only would you secure the succession—you are, Madame, the last true Tudor—your husband would not only be able to share the cares, labours, and fatigues of ruling but also enrich our coffers and strengthen our defences.”

“While it is true that I cannot impregnate myself and thus give England an heir, Cecil, all the rest I
can
do just as well as any man, mayhap even better. At the moment, I am more concerned with nurturing my kingdom and making it strong than I am with motherhood of the more traditional sort. And I will not make my own shroud by naming as my successor one who already lives and can pose a threat to me. I remember all too well how even as my sister lived, people plotted and conspired to have me, or one of the other claimants, take her throne. Already there are murmurs that my cousins the Scottish Catholic queen, Mary Stuart, or Katherine Grey here in England have a better claim to my throne than I do. But I will
not
stand by and watch those murmurs grow from a whisper to a scream; if I were to uphold one’s claim over the other’s, there would not even be time for me to finish stitching that shroud before I had to wear it.” Cecil opened his mouth to protest, but I continued as though he hadn’t. “As for the French and the Spanish … well, as I was saying, Cecil, I am five-and-twenty and fairly comely, if I do say so myself, and I daresay we shall soon be entertaining suitors from both nations, though I must not forget that my sister lost the affection of her people when she took a foreigner for her husband. And there are things I could tell you about my former brother-in-law that might make you blush, dear Cecil, but I shall spare you, as they are the sort of things that should remain a woman’s secret.”

“I have heard it said that, despite being married to Your Majesty’s sister, he was quite smitten with you,” Cecil ventured delicately.

“That’s a discreet way of wording it, Cecil”—I nodded—“and I warrant we shall see the proof of it very soon. And no doubt the French have a duke or two who will soon come a-wooing. As the Austrians say, why make war when you can obtain what you desire by marrying? It’s strictly a matter of economy—it is far cheaper both in cost of money and in lives. Meanwhile, maintain our ambassador in Rome; we must remain on cordial terms with His Holiness for the time being, and”—I heaved a dramatic sigh and pressed a hand to my heart—“grief over my late sister and awe at finding myself so newly risen to such an exalted position has
quite
overwhelmed me and prevents me from making any
drastic
alterations to our government for the time being.” Then, quick as a wink, I laughed and flashed Cecil a smile. “Being a woman has its advantages, Cecil, and I intend to make the most of every one of them.”