A Court Affair (50 page)

“God, help me!” I prayed as I sat there, huddled on the window seat wrapped in the highwayman’s red cloak. “
Please!
Deliver me from my desperation; I am
so
afraid!”

I thought I would be seeing a doctor soon, one of London’s best and most learned physicians, that he would come to the inn to examine me and mayhap prescribe some remedy superior to those I had tried, but when Robert returned, he was alone. He sat down on the side of my bed, took my hand in his, and said that he had discussed my condition in great detail with the Queen’s own physician and that the doctor had concluded that there was no need to insult my modesty with a personal examination. Instead, he had given Robert a vial of hemlock pills for me, though he advised that I wait until I was settled at Cumnor to start taking them, due to the deleterious side effects I was certain to suffer. Robert promised that he would arrange for a doctor to come from Oxford to visit me often and keep me well supplied with all the necessary pills and potions I would need, including the hemlock. And, he stipulated, I
must
obey him
completely
and do
everything
the doctor said, and take
every
remedy he prescribed
exactly
as instructed.

“But they will make you
very,
very
sick,” Robert cautioned as he placed the vial of green pills in my hand, “for that is how they work. They will poison the disease until it is dead and make you feel as if you are on the very brink of the grave, but you
must
take them just the same. Don’t stop until you are
fully
recovered. Promise me to take them faithfully
. Promise me,
Amy.”

Hemlock I knew was a deadly poison. My hand began to shake, causing the pills to rattle against the glass vial, as my eyes searched Robert’s face. Were the pills he had just given me murder in the guise of medicine? I could not tell by his face. By his firm, unwavering gaze, Robert might as well have been playing cards.

“
Promise
me, Amy,” he said again, “that you will take the pills, even though it feels like you are swallowing death itself; promise me that you will keep taking them until you are well, that you won’t stop until the doctor pronounces you cured.”

“I promise, Robert,” I lied, just to put an end to it. I had no intention of taking even one of those vile, evil little green pills.

“That’s my girl!” Robert smiled and bent to kiss my brow again. “My Buttercup Bride shall soon be well, and we will put the past and all our problems behind us and make a new start!”

I smiled and said I hoped so with all my heart, but I didn’t believe a word of it.

After that he didn’t linger; he said he would come to Compton Verney next month to fetch me and from there escort me to Cumnor. I nodded and smiled to please Robert and speed him on his way, whilst inside my heart pulsed and pounded with fear. I could only pray that Cumnor Place would be better than Compton Verney.

Richmond Palace, London
September 1559

F
or the second time in my life I saw a woman’s heart break upon her face. I saw the horror, the dawning realisation, the awakening, like a brutal slap or a pail of ice water thrown in her face, as she discovered that all her suspicions, everything she didn’t want to believe, were true; her life and the love she held so dear were all a lie that, even as the shattered fragments fell about her, she wanted desperately to piece back together. As I watched Amy’s heart shatter and tears drown her blue green eyes, in my mind I was catapulted back to the day my stepmother, Katherine Parr, discovered me on the staircase at Chelsea in her husband’s arms. Tom Seymour was, just like Robert, another charming, handsome rascal who did not deserve his wife’s love, but both Katherine, and now Amy, were too blind and wounded to see that.

As Amy fled, crashing blindly through the crowded corridors, Robert turned to me; he actually opened his arms to me, as if he thought I would run into them, but I stormed past him into my bedchamber and slammed the door. I ordered my ladies, who sat gossiping over their needlework, to get out, and Kat to sit outside my door and keep everyone away. I wanted to be alone.

For the third time in my life I had come between a man and his wife. In my giddy, green girlhood I had succumbed to the seductive, virile charm of Tom Seymour, and, to save my life, during the reign of my brainsick sister, I had flirted and dallied with her beloved consort, Philip, and now, as Queen in my own right, craving passion and excitement, to be a woman without being a wife, I had discovered that my trusted childhood friend was also a liar, that what I did, thinking I was hurting no one, had actually broken a heart.

I poured myself a goblet of wine and sat and stared into the fire and wondered just how much of what he had told me about his marriage was true.

Amy’s eyes told me that Robert had lied. They were the eyes of a wronged and wounded woman. And that was not the face of a woman who no longer loved her husband and was content to bide apart from him. I saw the desperation and longing; I felt it, as if her angry, furious pain had reached out and slapped me. Amy’s love was still alive, palpable, kicking and fighting, though Robert’s had clearly died. Amy was fighting with all her might to hold on, to win back what she had lost, while Robert wanted only to put the past behind him and go forward, following the blinding-bright star of his ambition. No doubt when he squinted his eyes and tilted his head just right, that star looked just like a crown. And the pretty country girl who had worn a crown of buttercups on her golden curls on her wedding day must be put aside, cruelly, callously, and cold-heartedly, while Robert ploughed on, indifferent to her pain. Poor Amy! She was the sacrificial lamb to Robert’s ambition.

She was much altered since I had seen her last. I wondered if she had been ill. She had lost weight; though by no means slender as a reed, she was no longer the round and rosy young girl of seventeen I remembered striding across the meadow with a bouquet of buttercups on that joyous June day nine years ago. Had the worry and fear I had seen eaten her flesh away? She was very pale, and it was not the work of fashionable cosmetics, and her eyes were deep-sunken and dark-shadowed. I myself was no stranger to fear, I had seen its mark on her, and I knew I had been looking at a
very
frightened woman. But what was she so afraid of? There was more to this than met the eye, and I would have the truth laid bare before me.

I shouted for Kat to send Robert in, but she told me he had gone, in pursuit of his wife no doubt. I left orders for him to come to me the moment he returned and commenced pacing back and forth before the fireplace, the crimson petticoat he had given me rustling and swaying with every step, as I awaited him. I would have answers, even if I had to pry them from Robert like a tooth-drawer with his forceps, even if I had to wrestle them out and draw blood; when I was done, the truth would lie naked before me, exposed and vulnerable, without a shadow to hide it.

I was seated at my dressing table, tapping my nails upon the gilded wood, when Lettice boldly knocked.

“Come!” I called, thinking it would be Robert, my spine stiffening as I steeled myself for the coming confrontation. But it was only my cousin, Lettice Knollys, that brazen minx, and my spine eased, and I settled back against the cushions of my chair again and continued drumming my nails.

“I have brought Your Majesty’s hairpins. I retrieved them from the garden,” Lettice said with feigned solicitude; she was as transparent as the finest Venetian glass, and I knew she couldn’t have possibly cared less about my hairpins. If curiosity hadn’t driven her to come, she would have left them where they lay, to be ground into the dirt or ruined by the rain if their sparkle didn’t prompt a thief to pocket them before the weather changed. I could see the greedy, hungry curiosity in her eyes begging to be fed and sated, just as I could tell she was bursting to talk, and I could easily guess what about.

I held my hand out for them before she could bend over to deposit the glittering handful inside the enamelled box that sat upon my dressing table for this purpose.

“Don’t bother. I’m not a man, and I’ve no desire to see your paps, girl,” I said in a voice tart and weary.

A moue of anger puckered Lettice’s boldly painted mouth, and she bobbed a swift, straight-backed curtsy and let the pins fall into my cupped palm.

“Shall I brush Your Majesty’s hair?” she asked, lingering behind my chair.

I stared straight ahead, into my looking glass, and fixed her with a firm gaze. “I’m not blind, Lettice, and you’ll never win a fortune at cards; I can see the laughter squirming inside you like a piglet in a sack. Spare us both the pretence, and let it out.”

“Lady Dudley!” she blurted out in a bubble of snickering laughter. “Wasn’t she a sight? What a spectacle! Did you ever see such a pathetic creature in your life? She looked about to burst into tears the whole time; her lips and her chin trembled, and her voice shook. She is as gauche as a peasant in a satin petticoat; she doesn’t know how to act like a great man’s wife! Why, she talked to me as if I were a queen and she a servant, so soft and nervous, as if she were afraid of giving offence! No wonder Lord Robert keeps her hidden away in the country! He has every reason to be ashamed of her! Looking at her, I couldn’t begin to guess why he married her! We all used to marvel that no one knew her—apparently she hasn’t a friend in the world, and now I know why!”

“She has one,” I said softly, thoughtfully, speaking more to myself than to Lettice. “She just doesn’t know it.”

Caught up in the throes of her laughter, Lettice didn’t hear me and had to ask me to repeat myself, but I thought better of it and instead retorted, “And what impressions, I wonder, did
you
give Lady Dudley about the ladies of my court? That they are all ill-mannered gossips who paint their faces and dress themselves like strumpets and, to bolster their own sense of superiority and pride, though it already be bursting at the seams of their too tightly laced gowns, converge like a gaggle of pecking geese upon anyone who is different, timid, or nervous, and mock, ridicule, disdain, and insult that person? That is certainly what
I
would have thought if I were Lady Dudley! I am ashamed and appalled that she was given such a rude welcome, though I hesitate to call it that, as it was anything but welcoming, and sent her running away like a frightened rabbit pursued by a pack of snarling, barking hounds!”

Anger flared high in Lettice’s eyes, and she rounded boldly on me, like a she-cat with her claws unsheathed.

“It was not
I
who sent her running! It was the shock of coming upon her husband and you—”

I picked up my heavy, ornate, gold-backed hairbrush and banged it hard upon the table. “Do not presume that the familiar blood we share gives you leave to dismiss with deference and respect in my presence and say and do whatever you please, Cousin Lettice. Your youth and beauty will
not
excuse or save you; remember our other cousin, Katherine Howard! Now,
get out
!”

“Very well, Your Majesty,” Lettice said with frigidly feigned politeness, spreading her skirts wide and bending low in a much exaggerated curtsy, the better to flaunt the bosom that threatened to burst from her vulgar pink bodice, before, with a briefly flashed gloating and superior smile, she left me with her head held as high as if she were herself a queen.

I flung my hairbrush after her and rose to pace again, agitated and swift, back and forth across the floor, while I waited for Robert.

An hour passed, then two, before he came striding, with a broad smile and open arms, across my threshold.

I rose from my chair and went to the middle of my chamber, standing my ground instead of going to meet him, silent and grave instead of smiling and laughing as I usually was when he came to me. When he reached me, I slapped the smile right off his face.

“You have been lying to me all along,” I said.

Robert stared back at me with wide-eyed amazement as he massaged the smarting red handprint I had left on his face.

“You hellcat—you have drawn blood!” he exclaimed as he lowered his hand and regarded the red smears on his fingers. And I saw that indeed my rings had cut him in two places, tiny slits in the sun-bronzed skin from which blood slowly welled and trickled. But I was not about to apologise.

“You have been lying to me all along,” I repeated. “I saw the hurt in her eyes; I saw her heart break …”

Breathing like an irate bull, Robert rolled his eyes and snorted, “Amy never could curtail her emotions, damn her! She is a disgrace to herself and to me!”

“There is nothing new under the sun or the moon,” I sighed, turning and walking away from him, resuming my pacing. “Philip used to say the same thing of my sister.”

“And he was right, and so am I!” Robert insisted, as he plucked a white silk kerchief from his sleeve and pressed it to his bleeding cheek.

“A queen cannot let her heart control her mind, Robert. It is a
constant,
enduring, lifelong struggle to not let one’s personal feelings run wild and unchecked, for the destruction and havoc they can unleash, the dire repercussions that can rebound upon oneself and one’s subjects. My sister was, God rest her, living proof of what happens when a queen forgets or ignores this. But Amy is
not
a queen, Robert—she’s a
real
woman, free to be herself, and unseemly as some might find such a show of emotion, it is also the truth unmasked and unvarnished, uncloaked by courtly manners and diplomacy.” I sighed and turned from him and began pacing again. “Thrust, parry, deflect—it’s like a duel, isn’t it, Robert? This is not about Amy’s conduct. In truth, she is not at fault. She has
every
right to be upset and, in the throes of pain, to forget herself and throw the teachings of the etiquette books out the window. You are simply trying to deflect and disown the blame, to assign it to another, to distract from the fact that you lied. You told me the love between you had died, that you had grown apart and gone your separate ways, Amy contentedly to the country, and you to court, and never the twain shall meet. But you are the only one who would have it so; you left her—with what lies and promises, I do not know—but she did not gladly let you go, this I know. I daresay she has done all in her power to bring you back to her. How many letters has she written imploring your return, beseeching you to come visit her? But it is an easy lie for you to sell, and you must no doubt account the circumstances fortuitous—an obedient wife of a timid and docile nature who is kept cloistered in the country, as a guest in the homes of men who are loyal to you, owe you favours, or want your patronage, without friends or family to speak up for her, to spread the word that she is being wronged. You have most effectively silenced her and made her invisible, imprisoned her in oblivion. You have fooled and deceived everyone, until today, when I saw the love still alive in Amy’s eyes. Only
you
have consigned your love to the charnel house.”