A Court Affair (69 page)

Despite whatever personal triumph she may have felt at stealing her royal cousin’s paramour, Lettice Knollys gained little from her marriage. Branded “that She-Wolf” by the irate Elizabeth, Lettice was permanently banished from court. Elizabeth made sure that Robert was kept so busy that he seldom had time to visit his wife. Theirs was a marriage based on candlelight and shadows, the same perfume and similar gowns as those worn by Elizabeth, and creeping away before the honest morning light reminded Robert that the head on the pillow next to his was not a queen’s, only her whorish young cousin’s, whose similarity to the object of his desire was not, he had discovered, really enough. The couple’s only child, Robert’s namesake and only legitimate heir, Robert Dudley, Baron Denbigh, “that noble imp”, as Robert fondly called the boy, died of a sudden fever in 1584 when he was three years old. Rumours immediately erupted that the child had died of poison, given in the guise of medicine by Lettice, who wanted to ensure that her husband’s earldom would be inherited by her eldest son from her first marriage, the handsome and hotheaded Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex.

Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, died on September 4, 1588, at the age of fifty-six, surviving just long enough to witness England’s triumph over the Spanish Armada. The cause of his death was variously ascribed to a malarial fever, poison administered by his own wife, the now middle-aged temptress Lettice, to free her to marry her handsome young lover, Christopher Blount, the couple’s Master of the Horse, and as a final act of spite against her cousin Elizabeth—marriage hadn’t entirely broken the bond between her and Robert, but death would—or cancer of the stomach; either way, many thought, remembering Amy, her cancer, and the rumours of murder and poison, that his death was justice in its most poetic form, and few truly mourned his passing.

After Amy’s death, Robert Dudley gave lands in fifteen counties to Sir Anthony Forster, which allowed him to purchase and renovate Cumnor Place, to make it a fit home for a country gentleman and his family. Many believed that this was Forster’s reward for having been a willing accomplice in Amy’s murder. After Forster’s death in 1572, Robert Dudley bought Cumnor from his heirs, though he never, as far as is known, set foot there. But time was not kind to Cumnor, and it gradually crumbled into ruin. Rumours abounded that “a beautiful woman, superbly attired” haunted the staircase, and in the nineteenth century an exorcism was performed, with nine priests participating, to confine her spirit to the pond in the park, where afterwards, curiously, the water never again froze. The desolate, roach- and rat-infested grey stone ruins were demolished in 1811, though after the publication of Sir Walter Scott’s novel
Kenilworth
in 1821, which shifted the tragedy’s setting to Kenilworth Castle to include the lavish entertainments Robert Dudley hosted there for Elizabeth, Victorians flocked to view the site where it had once stood.

Thomas Blount withdrew from court to lead a quiet life in the country. He died in 1568 after a fall from his horse; he struck his head upon a rock and never regained consciousness. Every year until his death he laid a single white rose and a shiny red apple on the plainly inscribed white marble slab of Amy’s tomb. He always lingered long enough to tell her a story.

In the same year, Richard Verney died raving mad, grasping frantically in blind terror at the robes of the priest attending at his bedside, begging him to save him, claiming to already feel the flames of Hell burning him and the claws of the demons trying to tear him to pieces and drag him down to Hell. Repeatedly he pointed at the foot of his bed, exclaiming: “There she is! I can see her now, her hair shimmering like gold in the dim torchlight, running for her life, glancing back over her shoulder; I’ll never forget the fear in her eyes. And the scream, surprised and terrified, as she missed the step, there where it veers suddenly, and fell, head over heels. I saw the flash of the gold embroidered on her gown and heard the sickening snap of her neck, the thud of her body, then silence. He was a great man, who deserved to be even greater, the only one to ever see greatness in me, and I wanted to help him achieve his destiny, but she was holding him back. I wanted to please him. I went there to kill her, God forgive me, but I didn’t; I never laid a hand on her, so why does she
still,
after all these years, continue to haunt me?”

The honest physician Dr Walter Bayly, who refused to meddle where he could do no good and risk being hanged to cover another’s sin, prospered in the years following Amy’s death. In 1561 he was appointed Queen’s Professor of Medicine at Oxford University, where during her visits Elizabeth always attended his lectures with great interest. He eventually became a fellow of the College of Physicians and one of Elizabeth’s Physicians in Ordinary who attended her personally. Over the years he authored many books, including a well-received treatise on diseases of the eyes, and treated many illustrious patients. He ministered to both Elizabeth’s toothaches and Robert Dudley’s rheumatism as they gained in years and such ailments became the bane of their existence. One can only guess that the tragic spectre of Amy hovered tensely between the much-maligned widower and the good doctor who had refused to become enmeshed in his schemes when Dr Bayly accompanied the Earl of Leicester to take the waters at Buxton each summer. When the infamous book known as
Leicester’s Commonwealth
was published and made public Dr Bayly’s refusal to dose Amy with the medicines her husband sent, Dr Bayly retained a proud and honourable silence, never challenging or refuting the story. He died at the age of sixty-three in 1592, wealthy, respected, and esteemed, both as a doctor and a man, by family, friends, colleagues, and patients alike.

Lettice Knollys outlived them all, including her own son—the power-crazed Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, who played May to Elizabeth’s December in the last great romance of her life but lost his head when he tried to incite the people of London to rise against her and help him take her throne. He was beheaded in 1601, as was his fellow conspirator, his best friend and stepfather, Christopher Blount. Having long outlived her extraordinary beauty, Lettice died alone in her bed during the wee hours of the morning on Christmas Day 1634 at the age of ninety-three.

For those interested in the history of breast cancer, I highly recommend
Bathsheba’s Breast:
Women, Cancer, and History
by James S. Olson.

Chris Skidmore’s
Death and the Virgin
provides the most detailed and thorough examination of the circumstances, mystery, and scandal surrounding the death of Amy Robsart Dudley and contains much information not found in earlier, previously published accounts.

The suggested questions are included to enhance your group’s reading of Emily Purdy’s
A Court Affair.

1. Discuss the marriage of Robert Dudley and Amy Robsart. They married very young; both were only seventeen. Was their marriage doomed from the start? What, if anything, could they have done to save their marriage? Though our modern-day concept of domestic abuse did not exist in Tudor times, do you think Robert Dudley, as depicted in this novel, was an abusive husband? If you were a marriage counsellor and this couple was seated on your couch, what would you tell them?

2. Today Amy Robsart Dudley is mainly remembered because of the way she died, not how she lived. Very little is actually known about her, and the woman herself often emerges as a nonentity in both novels and nonfiction books; sometimes she is little more than just a name upon a page. How does the woman depicted in this novel compare with your previously formed ideas about the real Amy? Do you like or dislike her? Discuss her personality. What are her good qualities and flaws? How does marriage to Robert Dudley change her? How does her illness change her? How is the Amy of seventeen different from the Amy of twenty-eight?

3. Discuss Elizabeth’s feelings about romance, sex, and marriage. How were these ideas formed? Her desire for passion without the commitment and compromise, the give-and-take, of marriage sounds very modern, and it even leads her to consider an affair with a married man as a safe way to find what she is seeking. What do you think about this? Every time Elizabeth lets Robert kiss and caress her, she stops him before he goes too far, leaving him frustrated. Do you think she is emotionally incapable of a sexual relationship because of her past?

4. Discuss Robert’s relationship with Elizabeth. If she had not been queen, would he have still loved her? How great a role does his ambition play in their romance? Why is it so hard for Elizabeth, even when she knows what Robert is really like, to give him up?

5. Discuss the tale of Patient Griselda and its theme of wifely obedience. Robert orders tapestries illustrating the story, reads it aloud to Amy, orders her to repeatedly copy it out, and even stages a play based on it for Elizabeth. Why is he such a fan of this story? What does it mean to him? And what do you, as a modern woman or man compared to a Tudor-era one, think of it?

6. Do you think Amy would have had a happier life if she had given Robert a divorce when he asked her to? How would her life have been different? What do you think of the manner in which he asked her, the reasons he gave, and his suggestion that Amy might still be his mistress? How would you have reacted if you had been in Amy’s shoes?

7. Why does Amy dye her hair red and dress in imitation of Elizabeth? Discuss Robert’s violent reaction to this. Why does Amy try so hard in so many ways—the dyed hair, the mermaid gown, etc.—to win Robert back? Is he
really
worth it?

8. Discuss Amy’s illness and the medical treatments of the time. Medical science and our understanding and treatment of breast cancer have come a long way since Amy’s lifetime. If this story were set in modern times, how do you think it would be different? Would Amy have still become the central figure in one of British history’s greatest unsolved mysteries? Would she have had a more positive outlook and perhaps have become one of this disease’s survivors?

9. Having breast cancer causes Amy to fear that no man will ever desire her sexually again, that their desire will turn to disgust when they see her undressed. Do you think this is a valid, realistic fear? Is this something modern-day sufferers still struggle with? What do you think would have happened if Amy had taken a lover? Should she have done so, or was she right to honour her marriage vows to Robert even after he betrayed her?

10. While staying at Compton Verney, Amy believes that she is being poisoned, though Robert insists it is just her imagination. Both also see the master of the house, Sir Richard Verney, in remarkably different ways—in Amy’s eyes he is a dark, sinister figure, but Robert paints him as a sentimental and cowardly man. Whom do you believe—Robert or Amy?

11. Certain characters appear in the book who may or may not be real, such as Red Jack the highwayman and the phantom grey friar who haunts Cumnor Place. Robert insists that the man Amy identifies as Red Jack is really a spice merchant, and the grey friar is supposedly a ghost that only the dying can see or just a story the servants tell to frighten the new housemaids. Do you believe these characters are real or only figments of Amy’s imagination? What does each one represent?

12. Robert insists that Amy take the hemlock pills he gives her even if they make her sick to the point of death. Why does he do this? Is he trying to heal her or to kill her? Is this a real remedy or murder masquerading as medicine?

13. Discuss Elizabeth’s dream about hunting in which both of her parents, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, as well as Robert and Amy, appear. What does this dream mean? Why does Amy take the arrow that is intended for Elizabeth? How would Elizabeth’s life have been different if Anne Boleyn had lived and been there to give her a mother’s guidance?

14. At the end of the book, why does Elizabeth stage the ennoblement ceremony only to tear up the patent? What message is she sending to her courtiers and to Robert?

15. For 450 years speculation has run rampant about the cause of Amy Robsart Dudley’s death—was it an accident, suicide, murder, or an underlying medical condition such as cancer? What do you think?

THE TUDOR WIFE

MARY AND ELIZABETH

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollins
Publishers

77–85 Fulham Palace Road,

London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollins
Publishers
2012

Copyright © Brandy Purdy 2012

First published in the U.S.A. by Kensington Publishing Corp. as
The Queen's Pleasure

Emily Purdy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Source ISBN: 9781847563446

Ebook Edition © August 2012 ISBN: 9780007459001

Version 1

FIRST EDITION

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