A Court Affair (40 page)

“
Please,
Robert,
please
!” I begged and cried. “I love you
so much,
I was willing to change myself, to become someone else, to win you back to me!”

“Don’t be absurd, Amy! When you talk so, you show yourself for the fool you are, and me for the fool I was for marrying you,” Robert said without breaking his stride or easing his bruising hold on me. “You cannot be other than you are!”

Those who saw us—the Hydes and their servants—ignored my cries and pleading eyes that beseeched them to come to my aid. Rather than have Robert’s fury turned upon them, they merely lowered their eyes, turned their backs, or looked the other way, pretending they had not seen our clumsy and brutal exit. After all, it was a husband’s right to chastise and discipline his wife, so what right had they to interfere?

We continued thus across the pleasure garden, heedless of the flowers we trampled and tore up by their roots as Robert dragged me whenever my feet lagged behind, all the way to Mr Hyde’s well-stocked fishpond. There Robert tore off my hat, not caring that with it he ripped several strands of hair from my scalp, then yanked out the remaining pins and roughly ruffled my hair, staining his hand bright red with henna. He snatched away the detested ruff, so he could get a better grip on my neck, and pushed me down, and plunged my head into the fishpond.

“Hold your breath or drown—I don’t care which you do!” were the last words I heard before my head slammed below the surface.

Even as I struggled, he held me down. Then, by the back of my gown, he yanked me up, spluttering and gasping for air, before he shoved me down again. My lungs felt as if they were on fire as I tried to hold my breath.

The silver fish came to see what was disturbing the peace of their pond, and one of them became entangled in my floating, billowing hair, pulling it and frantically slapping its tail against my scalp and face as it struggled to free itself. It was then that I lost my own struggle to hold my breath, and water rushed in, burning my nose and lungs. I fought even harder then, pushing and flailing and kicking, and, just when I thought my life was about to swim out of my body, Robert jerked me up. He left me lying there, with my long hair trailing in the water, like drifting yellow orange seaweed, as I coughed and spluttered, my chest heaving, aching, and burning, within the tight confines of my stays, feeling as if my heart was about to explode, as I vomited the green pond water out of my lungs.

I don’t know how much time passed before Pirto came running out to me. She told me later that when she saw Robert with his hands and shirt all stained red, she thought for certain he had murdered me, until she realised, to her immense relief, that it was not blood, only henna, the same diluted red orangey mess that now trickled down the sides of my face and the back of my neck and still streaked my waterlogged golden hair. Pirto knelt beside me and, with her apron, did her best to wipe it away lest it stain my skin, then used it to wrap my hair up in a makeshift turban before she helped me up and back inside the house.

“He’s gone now, love, ridden back to London as though the hounds of Hell were nippin’ at his heels,” she assured me, as I leaned heavily against her. “It’s all right, love, you’re safe now; you’ve nothing to fear.”

I stood in silence, the tears pouring down my face, washing the remnants of the paint away, as Pirto undressed me. The red gown was ruined, but I didn’t care; it had accomplished nothing except arousing the kind of rage its colour was named for, and I never wanted to see it again. As I stood shivering in my wet, henna-streaked shift while Pirto banked up the fire, my eyes fell on the ropes of pearls and jewelled clasps. Furiously, I snatched up the gown, the red dye bleeding onto my hands, as it had onto my shift, and ripped the clasps away, letting the fabric tear and the pins pop and bend; then, scooping up the ropes of pearls, I ran from the room before Pirto could stop me. I plunged downstairs and burst out the front door and onto the road, running hard. I didn’t stop even though Pirto ran after me, with a cloak fluttering from her arms, begging me to stop. I never slowed or looked back; I kept running until I reached the village church, where, panting and clasping my chest, even as coloured sparks danced before my eyes, I thrust the pearls and clasps into the poor box, then wrenched the rings from my fingers and threw them in too. “Let them do someone some good!” I cried, slouching in agony against the church’s sturdy stone wall and praying God to bear me up and give me some comfort. “Let some good come of this!” I cried as, panting and flush-faced, Pirto caught up with me just as I slid to the ground.

“Look, Pirto,” I said, half laughing, half sobbing, as she bundled me into the cloak, “I am barefoot and in my shift, just like Patient Griselda!”

“Oh, sweetheart!” Pirto cried, near tears herself as she sank down beside me and gathered me in her arms, holding me close and rocking me as if I were a child again.

We sat there for a long time, me torn between tears and laughter, while Pirto rocked me and stroked my sodden hair, which still dripped orange-tinted droplets like blood-tinged tears.

At last, when my laughter had ceased and my sobs had subsided, she helped me to my feet and gently led me back to the Hydes’ house. I was too ashamed to meet anyone’s eyes. When I caught a glimpse of Mrs Hyde peeping out of her bedchamber door, I hastily looked away even as she quickly closed it.

Back in my bedchamber as Pirto bustled about, laying out a fresh shift for me and preparing a hot bath, I stood staring, without seeing, out the window. I kept my back turned to the room, trying to hold back my tears and not give the wary-eyed servants who carried in pails of steaming water something more to talk about; I knew they thought I had gone mad.

When we were alone and Pirto came and gently put her hands upon my shoulders to turn me towards the steaming tub, my eye caught the tapestry depicting Griselda being turned out of her husband’s kingdom in her shift. As Pirto lifted my ruined, red-stained shift over my head, I truly understood for the first time in my life why rage is sometimes called red. With a fiendish cry, like a demon escaped from Hell, I flew at that tapestry. My sewing basket was sitting in the fireside chair, waiting for me, as if it knew that my whole world had come apart at the seams and wanted to help, to offer me the means to sew it back together. I snatched up my silver scissors and lunged at the tapestry, stabbing into it and pulling the scissors down, tearing and ripping it, again and again and again, until it hung in tatters and gilt and coloured silk threads littered the floor and clung to my damp hair and skin. “
She
should be the one turning
him
out!” I screamed. “
He
is not worthy of
her
!” I didn’t notice when Lavinia came in, but it took both her and Pirto to pull me away from the tapestry and wrest the scissors from my hand and prevent me from doing the same to the rest of the series.

I don’t know how, but somehow they managed to quiet and calm me. They got me into the tub and let the warm water do its work and soothe and cleanse me. I remember the soothing smell of lemons and chamomile as I leaned back and closed my bleary, tear-swollen eyes and let them wash away the last lingering traces of the henna, restoring my hair to its natural golden glory.

Afterwards, clad in my night shift and wrapped in a rose-coloured velvet robe trimmed with tawny fur, with a goblet of hot spiced wine warming my hands, I sat propped up in bed with Lavinia beside me, like the sister I never had. Anna and Frances, my aloof, older stepsisters, always made me feel an outcast, an intruder upon whom the door of their special society of sisterhood was always locked and barred, and never did such things with me.

We talked far into the night; though she was loath to tell me and tried to change the subject whenever I asked about what went on at court, I saw the truth in her eyes. Though her lips wanted to lie to me, to be kind, to spare me the unavoidable pain, she could not deceive me. All my fears were well founded; my jealous, suspicious fancies and nightmares held more of truth than imagination. Robert and the Queen were in love—many said and believed that they were lovers in the flesh—and it was common knowledge that, had he been free, Robert was the man Elizabeth would have married. If not for me, he would have been the king he believed he was born to be. Only my life stood between him and his destiny, the power, and the passion.

And there was something else. Shyly, hesitantly, for I had never dared such a familiarity, I asked if I might show her something and have her opinion upon it. And when Lavinia readily gave her consent, I eased the robe from my shoulders and lowered my shift to reveal my left breast. There was a sort of dimple upon it that I had only lately noticed. For the life of me, I don’t know when it first appeared, but I knew it had not always been there, else I would
surely
have seen it before. It was just a little spot, a tad tinier than the tip of my littlest finger, where the flesh dipped in when it used to, I was certain, plump outward, just a little dip that, though it was itself empty, filled my mind with worry.

With a warm smile, my friend embraced me, then, as she helped me right my clothing, spoke so reassuringly that I felt my fears floating away from me.

“You have not been worrying over that little thing?” she asked. “It is
nothing
!
Nothing
! Our bodies change as we grow older. I know a woman—in fact I know her very well, for she is me—who, after she passed a certain age, developed such dimples on her buttocks. Mother Nature and Father Time, they have their way of marking us, in ways we would not wish, but such is the natural way of things.” She shrugged. “As we grow older, we sag and wrinkle and turn grey, and sometimes a dimple appears where there was never a dimple before.”

She took the cup of wine from my hand and set it on the table beside the bed and urged me to lie down. “Sleep now,” she said, bending to kiss my brow as she drew the covers up to my chin, as if she were my mother. “The day has been hard and most unkind to you, my friend, but tomorrow will be better.” And her reassuring smile was the last thing I saw before she blew out the candle and I closed my eyes to sleep.

The Queen’s Summer Progress
May–August 1559

T
he glorious summer of 1559 will always live in my memory as the Summer of Suitors, when all at once they seemed to converge upon me like a great swarm of buzzing black flies on one tender morsel of white bread dipped in honey. The court’s meandering course from one country house to another didn’t deter them at all; the ambassadors and envoys simply packed their belongings and came along with us. What were a few more when there were already several hundred of us, thousands if all the servants were counted? It took 2,500 packhorses and 500 carts to transport all our luggage and provisions, and that not counting the more handsome mounts that carried my ladies and courtiers or the litters favoured by those aged, infirm, with child, or, for whatever reason, disinclined to ride. “The more the merrier!” I cried, extending a welcome to all.

It was
so
exciting! To play the royal marriage game while I was still young and pretty enough to do it, to have every eligible bachelor of royal and high birth vying for my hand, to enflame the carnal appetites and ambitions of so many men. And there was even more to celebrate as, just before our departure, we had made peace with France. They would not return Calais, but they agreed to pay us 500,000 crowns in recompense, and there were fireworks, banquets, and masques both indoors and out, tournaments, and hunting parties to celebrate it.

Before we took to the roads, in a long, winding procession of horses and carts, Robert staged a mock battle where 1,500 armed soldiers in coats of chain mail displayed their prowess on the lawn at Greenwich whilst silk banners flapped in the air and musicians played drums, trumpets, and fifes. And afterwards, those feigning death were resurrected and stood in neat ranks alongside the survivors as I walked amongst them, thanking them most heartily and telling them I could sleep easily in my bed at night knowing that I had such loyal and brave men to hold England safe for me. And I invited them all to sit, informally, on the grass and partake of a picnic with me, and afterwards the musicians played lively country tunes, and I danced with many a soldier until the stars came out in a blazing glory to rival the fireworks bursting above the Thames.

We also paused at Woolwich so I could christen and see launched a fine new ship named in honour of me,
The Great Elizabeth,
and enjoy a banquet and dancing with the sailors upon its deck that night as fireworks lit up the sky above us and coloured sparks showered down into the sea.

But best of all was the endless wooing.

From his deathbed, Gustave Vasa, the King of Sweden, sent a delegation of tall, handsome, smiling, blond Swedes, all of them eager and sweet; they seemed never to stop smiling, and I thought their jaws must ache abominably by the time they laid their heads on their pillows at night. They were a dear, bumbling lot,
most
endearing in their earnest awkwardness and the travesty they made of the English language. They wore crimson hearts pierced by “the arrow of love” upon their breasts and sleeves and trailed after me like puppies, promising me “mountains of silver, diamonds, sables, and ermine” if only I would promise to wed the wonderful Prince Eric, reminding me that as his wife I would also become the Queen of Sweden. And they distributed vast quantities of diamonds and silver coins amongst my ladies in the hope that it would encourage them to sing the praises of “the eternally loving Eric, who burns with the flame-haired fever called Elizabetha”. In the privacy of my chamber late at night I would spread the Swedish prince’s sables upon the floor and dance upon them in my bare feet, laughing all the while. Later, his younger brother, Duke John of Finland, would join us, to take the lead in this wooing by proxy. One night as we rowed upon the moonlit waters, sipping goblets of wine and lolling back against cushions of sapphire velvet whilst the moon played tantalising tricks with my silver gown, he took my hand and dared proclaim that he had fallen in love with me, and henceforth, though duty required him to woo me in his brother’s stead, his heart would no longer be in it. “My heart is here,” he said, boldly pressing a kiss onto the palm of my hand, then folding my fingers into a tight fist as though they were a cage meant to contain that captive kiss. The rivalry between this pair of handsome, fair-haired brothers would end a few years later when Eric, crestfallen over my refusal to wed him, married a common soldier’s daughter instead and poisoned his brother John’s pea soup as punishment for the treachery he displayed in declaring his love to me.