Authors: Susan Kay
Tags: #Nonfiction, #History
have ten thousand devils in her body.”
Certainly she appeared to have more lives than the proverbial cat—
Robin found that he too had begun to wonder.
t t t
Elizabeth’s illness galvanised Parliament to life with all the maddened
ferocity of a half-broken stallion that has felt the cruel sting of a spur.
They had been patient long enough and now in the certain knowledge
that miracles, like lightning, are notoriously disinclined to strike twice
in the same place, the Lords and Commons joined their voices in an
irritation parrot cry for marriage and a settlement of the succession.
She could do neither of these things—both, for many reasons, were
equally impossible politically and personally—but she could not tell them
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so, and it took all her charm and cunning to wriggle through their grip
and emerge at the end of the session with her financial grant and their
affection still intact. Parliament was dissolved before the members truly
appreciated that the royal fish had slipped their line again, but she was
angered by the intolerable pressure to which she had been subjected. And
when she was angry with those it would never do to punish, it was Robin
who suffered for it.
Their relationship had become a permanent source of curiosity to the
court. At the height of her fever, she had begged the Council to make
Robin Lord Protector of England in the event of her death, swearing, with
God as her witness, that though she loved him well, nothing improper
had ever passed between them. Robin had been first amazed, then deeply
moved by the news; but later, when she had recovered consciousness and
he dared to question her about it, she had merely blushed furiously, then
laughed and said she must have been delirious at the time. It was the first
time he had ever seen her at a loss for words, and, however light she tried
to make of the incident, it marked a change in his anomalous position.
She raised him almost immediately to the Privy Council, giving him for
the first time an active say in the government of the realm. Cecil main-
tained an ominous silence on the subject, but he was past panicking now.
And when she raised the Duke of Norfolk to the Council, he was duly
reassured that a balance would be maintained. There was bitter rancour
between Dudley and the premier peer of the realm; whatever ambition
Robin still entertained would be amply restrained by Norfolk’s influence
at the council table.
Robin’s seat on the Privy Council turned out to be no more than one
further step in an unheard of series of ups and downs in the royal favour
which left him in a permanent state of uncertainty.
“He is like my little dog,” Elizabeth was heard to remark in public.
“Whenever people see him they know I am near by.”
And a dog’s life was precisely what she gave him. She showered him
with favours; she slapped his face. She drew up the letters patent to create
him Earl of Leicester; she publicly slashed it to pieces with a penknife in
front of his eyes, saying that Dudleys had been traitors for three genera-
tions and she did not choose to raise another above his station to threaten
her. In March 1563 she stunned the court by offering him to the Scottish
envoy as a suitable husband for Mary Stuart.
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When Robin appeared in the doorway of the Privy Chamber unan-
nounced, Elizabeth could see he was in the grips of a murderous rage. She
had anticipated a scene and dismissed her women hastily.
When the door had closed behind them, Robin snatched the silks out
of her hand and threw the tapestry frame across the room. His expression
suggested that for two pins she would follow it and she was suddenly
breathless with excitement.
“Am I a toy, to be given away when I no longer please?” he shouted.
“Or is this some low trick of Cecil’s to be rid of me for good?”
“I see you’ve heard,” she said calmly.
“It seems everyone’s damn well heard from here to Scotland—
everyone, that is, except me! Don’t you even owe me the courtesy of an
explanation?”
She laid her silks back in their basket and smiled faintly.
“I don’t owe you anything, Robin—you’d better remember that
before you start shouting at me. Now—sit down and hear me out or
you’ll cool your temper in the Tower tonight.”
As he sank down beside her in the window-seat, she was conscious of
an irrational sense of disappointment.
“Then you
are
tired of me,” he said wretchedly.
“Oh, don’t be a fool!” She touched his cheek gently. “If I really wanted
to be rid of you I could take a considerably cheaper course than this.”
“Cheaper?”
“It will cost me your earldom at least.”
His face was suddenly stony and he released her hand abruptly.
“Like the last time? Are you about to make a public fool of me again
for your perverted amusement?”
“No,” she countered evenly. “I told you then that the Bear and
Ragged Staff was not so easily overthrown. And this time I shall sign it. A
place in the nobility to complement your place on the Council—it’s what
you wanted, isn’t it? Well, now you can have it, under such circumstances
that not even Cecil can complain. I shall offer the Earl of Leicester to the
Scottish Queen with my personal recommendation of his prowess.”
“In bed?”
“It will be convenient to let her think so. I have already suggested that
the three of us should form one household—at my expense.”
Robin laughed shortly.
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“What do you expect in return—an open declaration of war?”
“The only war she will declare is on her own judgement—this will
blow her self-restraint to pieces. You need not worry, Robin—you’re
not going to Scotland. You’re merely the bait in my trap, a stalking
horse—a red herring if you like.”
“Worms make the best bait, don’t they?” he remarked bitterly. “Yet
even worms can turn. Perhaps you’d care to explain a little further. I’m
afraid it’s all too deep for my humble powers of perception.”
“It has to be deep,” said Elizabeth slowly. “She’s cunning and she’s
been well trained in France. Given time she could control all the divi-
sion I’ve fostered in Scotland—already she’s too strong and confident for
safety. She’s waited patiently for two years for me to drop dead of my
own accord, but, being mighty unneighbourly, I haven’t obliged her. I
think she’s beginning to suspect that I may not be so frail as she hoped
and all the signs are that she’s not going to wait much longer. One strong
foreign marriage will put an end to all this pretty pretence of friend-
ship between us and the first thing she’ll do is to march against me. I
can’t allow her to make a good match—I dare not! The man she marries
must bring her trouble. And by the time she’s finished chewing over her
resentment at your suit, she might just be ready to choose the one I really
have in mind for her.”
“Oh, you have a man in mind, do you? And who might that be?”
“Lennox’s eldest son—Henry Darnley.”
They were silent for a moment and he gaped at her. The light from
the window danced on the crown of diamond spikes that held her blazing
hair in place, and suspended a transparent cobweb veil beyond her bare
shoulders. There was a little glow of malicious pleasure in her face, almost
a touch of the sinister, and as he looked at her he felt, not for the first
time, a small prickle of fear.
“But surely you don’t intend to let her marry a man who has a claim
to your throne! Won’t marriage with your cousin’s son simply strengthen
her position? What’s to stop them invading anyway?”
Elizabeth toyed thoughtfully with her fan.
“If she marries Darnley, she’ll find she’s got her hands too full to even
think of my crown. She’ll be too busy hauling her husband out of every
beer barrel and whore’s bed in Edinburgh. There’s a little more to dear
cousin Henry than that angelic face suggests. Haven’t you ever wondered
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where he gets to whenever he’s excused attendance? Well, I happen
to have made it my business to find out, and believe me, Robin—if
Mama knew what her precious blue-eyed boy does behind the doors of a
whore-house she’d beat him black and blue for it.”
Robin frowned. “I’ve never noticed anything amiss in his conduct.”
“Oh, he wouldn’t dare to bring his nasty little habits to court, not with
Mama watching. He lives in terror of the bitch, like his father and the rest
of her household. But once he’s off the leash in Scotland he’ll run mad
as a rabid dog. We’ll hear no more of Mary’s pretensions once she puts a
crown on Darnley’s head!”
“But what makes you so certain she will want him?”
“His pretty, pouting face—his Tudor blood—his claim to my
throne—oh, he’s certainly got his assets! Superficially he’s a great match
and I shall appear to move heaven and earth to prevent it. I shall scream
and stamp and probably threaten war—that should really convince her
that he’s worth the having! When she takes him—as she will—it will be
with a crow of triumph at having out-manoeuvred me at last. And the
minute that marriage takes place, the Countess of Lennox will go to the
Tower for plotting it against my spoken wishes.”
Robin gave her a speculative glance and touched her clenched fist on
her lap.
“God knows I’m no lover of the Countess, but I’ve often wondered
why you hate her so much.”
Elizabeth stared into space with narrowed eyes.
“Oh—it’s an old grudge and I suppose I should have let it go by
now, only every time the old harridan flounces into my presence, I
remember how she made me suffer and I want to wring her scrawny
neck all over again.”
She told him about the kitchen and saw his eyes widen in surprise
and anger.
“Traitors suffer less on the rack,” he muttered. “You might have gone
out of your mind.”
Elizabeth laughed shortly.
“I wouldn’t have given her the satisfaction, I knew it was what she
wanted. But even so I still bear the scars of her malice.” She held out
her hands at arms’ length, palms down, and for the first time he noticed
their continual tremor. “Ever since then I’ve slept badly, disturbed by
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the smallest sound, I snap and slap for no apparent reason, so that behind
my back my women curse me for a bad-tempered bitch—oh yes, they
do, and it’s true!” She frowned. “A lot of other people had a hand in
wrecking my nerves, Robin, but Lennox was the only one who did it
out of spite. And Lennox alone will pay for it—as I swore at the time.”
“By seeing her son made a king? Won’t that be worth at least ten years
in the Tower to her?”
Elizabeth smiled slowly at him, and something about that smile made
him shiver involuntarily.
“The Scots have sharp daggers and a long-standing tradition of killing
their kings. I imagine they’d make short work of any mincing he-bawd
who tried to lord it over them—and Darnley’s just fool enough to try it.
One sniff of power and he’ll think he’s God Almighty.”
For a moment Robin was silent, staring at the floor.
“You intend to send him out to his death, don’t you?” he said at last.
“That’s your true motive—your ultimate revenge on Lennox!”
She looked at him coolly.
“My only true motive is to restrain Mary’s ambitions and protect my
crown. That’s all that really matters. Anything else that accrues from this
is purely incidental, but I think it will work very nicely—don’t you?”
“No, I don’t,” he said. “I don’t see how you can possibly expect to
play chess with the emotions of half of Europe.”
She smiled and ran her fingers through his hair playfully.
“In that case you’ll be prepared to put a thousand gold crowns on
the outcome.”
And that truly staggered him, for where money was concerned she
had all the instincts of a miser. She would never bet such an amount
on anything she did not consider to be an absolute certainty, but the
possibility of winning such a wager from her was irresistible. It would
upset her for days if she lost!
So at last he agreed to play the part she had assigned him, took on
her wager and watched incredulously as events unfolded steadily, almost
entirely as the Queen had predicted.
t t t
In order to make him a suitable candidate for Mary Stuart’s hand,
Elizabeth raised Robin to be Earl of Leicester and Baron of Denbigh. It
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was a royal title which had never before been bestowed on one without
a drop of royal blood, but as she had surmised, under the circumstances
even Cecil could not breathe a word against it. Sussex and Norfolk held
their tongues with remarkable restraint, so that the only person at the
English court who looked as though he might choke on the issue was
the Scots envoy, Melville, who was forced to watch the ceremony of