The Virgin’s Lover
‘When I was in my pomp and she in hers,’ Robert smiled ruefully. ‘It must have been the last Christmas at court. When King Edward was failing, and Father was king in everything but name alone. She was the Protestant princess and the favourite sister. We were twins in the smugness of our triumph and Mary was nowhere to be seen. D’you remember?’
Henry frowned. ‘Dimly. You know I was never very good at the shifts in favour.’
‘You would have learned,’ Robert said drily. ‘In a family such as ours was then, you would have had to.’
‘I remember she was imprisoned for treason in the Tower, while we were still in there,’ Henry recalled.
‘I was glad when I learned she was free,’ Robert said. ‘Elizabeth always had the luck of the devil.’
The big black horse whinnied at the sight of Robert and Robert went forward and stroked his soft nose. ‘Come on then, my lovely,’ he said softly. ‘Come on, First Step.’
‘What d’you call him?’ Henry inquired.
‘First Step,’ Robert said. ‘When we were released from the Tower and I came home to Amy and found myself a pauper in her stepmother’s house, the woman told me that I could neither buy nor borrow a horse to ride on.’
Henry gave a low whistle. ‘I thought they kept a good house at Stanfield?’
‘Not for a son-in-law who had just come home an undischarged traitor,’ Robert said ruefully. ‘I had no choice but to walk in my riding boots to a horse fair, and I won him in a bet. I called him First Step. He is my first step back to my rightful place.’
‘And this expedition will be our next step,’ Henry said gleefully.
Robert nodded. ‘If we can rise in King Philip’s favour we can be returned to court,’ he said. ‘Anything will be forgiven the man who holds the Netherlands for Spain.’
‘Dudley! A Dudley!’ Henry shouted the family battle cry, and opened the door to the loosebox.
The two of them led the nervous horse down the cobbled street to the quayside, and waited behind the other men leading their horses on board. The little waves lapped at the jetty and First Step flared his nostrils and shifted uneasily. When it was his turn to go up the gangplank he put his forefeet on the bridge and then froze in fear.
One of the lumpers came behind with a whip raised to strike.
‘Stay your hand!’ Robert rapped out, loud above the noise.
‘I tell you, he won’t go on without,’ the man swore.
Robert turned his back on the horse, dropped the reins and went ahead of him, into the darkness of the hold. The horse fretted, shifting from one foot to another, his ears flickering forward and back, his head up, looking for Robert. From the belly of the ship came Robert’s whistle and the horse turned his ears forward and went trustingly in.
Robert came out, having petted and tethered his horse, and saw Amy with his bags on the quayside. ‘All loaded and shipshape,’ he said cheerfully to her. He took her cold little hand and pressed it to his lips. ‘Forgive me,’ he said quietly. ‘I was disturbed by my dream last night, and it made me short-tempered. Let us have no more wrangling, but part as friends.’
The tears welled up in her brown eyes. ‘Oh, Robert, please don’t go,’ she breathed.
‘Now, Amy,’ he said firmly. ‘You know that I have to go. And when I am gone I shall send you all my pay and I expect you to invest it wisely, and look about for a farm for us to buy. We must rise, my wife, and I am counting on you to mind our fortune and help us rise.’
She tried to smile. ‘You know I’ll never fail you. But it’s just …’
‘The royal barge!’ Henry exclaimed as every man along the quayside pulled off his hat and bowed his head.
‘Excuse us,’ Robert said swiftly to Amy, and he and Henry went up to the deck of the King of Spain’s ship so that he could look down on the royal barge as it came by. The queen was seated in the stern of the barge, under the canopy of state, but the twenty-two year-old Princess Elizabeth, radiant in the Tudor colours of green and white, was standing in the prow like a bold figurehead where everyone could see her, smiling and waving her hand at the people.
The oarsmen held the barge steady, the ships were side by side, the two brothers looked down from the waist of the warship to the barge that rode lower in the water beside them.
Elizabeth looked up. ‘A Dudley!’ Her voice rang out clearly and her smile gleamed up at Robert.
He bowed his head. ‘Princess!’ He looked towards the queen, who did not acknowledge him. ‘Your Majesty.’
Coldly, she raised her hand. She was draped in ropes of pearls, she had diamonds in her ears and a hood encrusted with emeralds, but her eyes were dull with grief, and the lines around her mouth made her look as if she had forgotten how to smile.
Elizabeth stepped forward to the side rail of the royal barge. ‘Are you off to war, Robert?’ she called up to the ship. ‘Are you to be a hero?’
‘I hope so!’ he shouted back clearly. ‘I hope to serve the queen in her husband’s dominions and win her gracious favour again.’
Elizabeth’s eyes danced. ‘I am sure she has no more loyal soldier than you!’ She was nearly laughing aloud.
‘And no sweeter subject than you!’ he returned.
She gritted her teeth so that she did not burst out. He could see her struggling to control herself.
‘And are you well, Princess?’ he called more softly. She knew what he meant: — Are you in good health? — For he knew that when she was frightened she contracted a dropsy that swelled her fingers and ankles and forced her to her bed. — And are you safe? — For there she was, beside the queen in the royal barge, when proximity to the throne always meant proximity to the block, and her only ally on the Privy Council, King Philip, was sailing away to war. And most of all: — Are you waiting, as I am waiting, for better times, and praying they come soon? —
‘I am well,’ she shouted back. ‘As ever. Constant. And you?’
He grinned down at her. ‘Constant too.’
They needed to say no more. ‘God bless you and keep you, Robert Dudley,’ she said.
‘And you, Princess.’ — And God speed you to your own again that I may come to mine — was his unspoken reply. By the cheeky gleam in her eyes he knew that she knew what he was thinking. They had always known exactly what the other was thinking.
Winter 1558
Only six months later, Amy, accompanied by her friend, Lizzie Oddingsell, stood on the quay at Gravesend, watching the ships limp into harbour, wounded men laid out with the dead on their decks, deckrails scorched, mainsails holed, all the survivors with their heads bowed, shamefaced in defeat.
Robert’s ship was the very last to come in. Amy had been waiting for three hours, increasingly certain that she would never see him again. But slowly, the little vessel approached, was taken into tow, and drawn up at the quayside as if it were unwilling to come back to England in disgrace.
Amy shaded her eyes and looked up at the rail. At this moment, which she had feared so intensely, at this moment, which she had been so sure would come, she did not whimper or cry out, she looked steadily and carefully at the crowded deck for Robert, knowing that if she could not see him he had either been taken prisoner, or was dead.
Then she saw him. He was standing beside the mast, as if he were in no hurry to be at the rail for the first sight of England, in no rush to get to the gangplank to disembark, in no great hurry to see her. There were a couple of civilians beside him, and a woman with a dark-haired baby on her hip; but his brother Henry was not there.
They rattled up the gangplank to the deck and she started to go towards it, to run up it and fold him in her arms, but Lizzie Oddingsell held her back. ‘Wait,’ she advised the younger woman. ‘See how he is first.’
Amy pushed the woman’s restraining hand aside; but she waited as he came down the gangplank so slowly that she thought he was wounded.
‘Robert?’
‘Amy.’
‘Thank God you are safe!’ she burst out. ‘We heard there was a terrible siege, and that Calais is lost. We knew it couldn’t be true, but …’
‘It is true.’
‘Calais is lost?’
It was unimaginable. Calais was the jewel of England overseas. They spoke English in the streets, they paid English taxes and traded the valuable wool and finished cloth to and from England. Calais was the reason that English kings styled themselves ‘King of England and France’, Calais was the outward show that England was a world power, on French soil, it was as much an English port as Bristol. It was impossible to imagine it had fallen to the French.
‘It is lost.’
‘And where is your brother?’ Amy asked fearfully. ‘Robert? Where is Henry?’
‘Dead,’ he said shortly. ‘He took a shot to the leg in St Quentin, and died later, in my arms.’ He gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘I was noticed by Philip of Spain at St Quentin,’ he said. ‘I had an honourable mention in despatches to the queen. It was my first step, as I hoped it would be; but it cost me my brother: the one thing in life I could least afford to lose. And now I am at the head of a defeated army and I doubt that the queen will remember that I did rather well at St Quentin, given that I did rather badly at Calais.’
‘Oh, what does it matter?’ she exclaimed. ‘As long as you are safe, and we can be together again? Come home with me, Robert, and who cares about the queen or even about Calais? You don’t need Calais, we can buy Syderstone back now. Come home with me and see how happy we will be!’
He shook his head. ‘I have to take despatches to the queen,’ he said stubbornly.
‘You’re a fool!’ she flared at him. ‘Let someone else tell her the bad news.’
His dark eyes went very bright at the public insult from his wife. ‘I am sorry you think me a fool,’ he said levelly. ‘But King Philip ordered me by name and I must do my duty. You can go and stay with the Philipses at Chichester till I come for you. You will oblige me by taking this woman and her baby to stay with them too. She has lost her home in Calais and she needs a refuge in England for a while.’
‘I will not,’ Amy said, instantly resentful. ‘What is she to me? What is she to you?’
‘She was once the Queen’s Fool,’ he said. ‘Hannah Green. And she was a loyal and obedient servant to me, and a friend when I had few friends. Be kind, Amy. Take her with you to Chichester. In the meantime I shall have to commandeer a horse and go to court.’
‘Oh, have you lost your horse as well as your plan?’ Amy taunted him bitterly. ‘You have come home without your brother, without your horse, you have come home no richer, you have come home poorer in every way, as my stepmother Lady Robsart warned me that you would?’
‘Yes,’ he said steadily. ‘My beautiful horse was shot out from under me by a cannon ball. I fell under him as he went down, and his body shielded me and saved my life. He died in my service. I promised him that I’d be a kind master to him, and yet I took him to his death. I called him First Step, but I have stumbled and fallen on my first step. I have lost my horse, and lost my campaign money, and lost my brother, and lost all hope. You will be pleased to hear that this is the end of the Dudleys. I cannot see that we will ever rise again.’
Robert and Amy went their separate ways – him to court, where he was sourly greeted as the bringer of bad news, and her to their friends at Chichester for a long visit; but then they returned unwillingly to her stepmother’s house of Stanfield Hall. There was nowhere else for them to go.
‘We’re short-handed on the farm,’ Lady Robsart declared bluntly on his first evening.
Robert raised his head from the contemplation of his empty bowl and said: ‘What?’
‘We’re ploughing up the meadow,’ she said. ‘For what little hay it gives us, it’s no use. And we are short-handed. You can help out in the field tomorrow.’
He looked at her as if she were speaking Greek. ‘You want me to work in the fields?’
‘I am sure that Stepmother means that you should supervise the men,’ Amy interposed. ‘Don’t you?’
‘How can he supervise ploughing? I doubt he knows how it is done. I thought he could drive the cart, he’s good with horses, at least.’
Amy turned to her husband. ‘That wouldn’t be so bad.’
Robert could not speak, he was so appalled. ‘You want me to labour in the field? Like some peasant?’
‘What else can you do for your keep?’ Lady Robsart asked. ‘You are a lily of the field, man. You neither sow nor reap.’
The colour was draining from his face till he was as pale as the lily she called him. ‘I cannot work in the field like a common man,’ he said quietly.
‘Why should I keep you like a lord?’ she demanded crudely. ‘Your title, your fortune, and your luck have all gone.’
He stammered slightly. ‘Because even if I never rise again, I cannot sink to the dunghill, I cannot demean myself.’
‘You are as low as a man can get,’ she declared. ‘King Philip will never come home, the queen, God save her, has turned against you. Your name is blackened, your credit has gone, and all you have in your favour is Amy’s love and my patronage.’
‘Your patronage!’ he exclaimed.
‘I keep you. For nothing. And it has come to my mind that you might as well work your passage here. Everyone else works. Amy has her hens and her sewing, and her work in the house. I run the place, my sons care for the livestock and the crops.’
‘They order the shepherd and the ploughman,’ he burst out.
‘Because they know what orders to give. You know nothing so you will have to take orders.’
Slowly, he rose from the table. ‘Lady Robsart,’ he said quietly, ‘I warn you not to push me too far. I am defeated now but you should not seek to humiliate me further.’
‘Oh, why not?’ She was enjoying herself. ‘I hardly fear the mightiness of your revenge.’
‘Because it is petty of you,’ he said with dignity. ‘I am very low, as you say. I am a defeated man and I am grieving for the loss of my brother, of three beloved brothers lost in the last two years by my fault. Think of what that means to a man! You could show a little charity even if you have no kindness. When I was Lord Robert, neither you nor Amy’s father wanted for anything.’
She did not answer, and he rose to his feet. ‘Come, Amy.’
Amy did not obey. ‘I will come in a minute.’
Lady Robsart turned her head to hide her smile.
‘Come,’ Robert said irritably, and held out his hand.
‘I have to clear the plates, and sweep the board.’ Amy excused herself.
He would not ask her again. He turned on his heel at once and went to the door.
‘You will be in the stable yard at dawn, ready for work,’ Lady Robsart called after him.
He closed the door on her triumphant voice.
Amy waited till they heard him walk away and then she rounded on her stepmother. ‘How could you?’
‘Why should I not?’
‘Because you will drive him away from here.’
‘I don’t want him here.’
‘Well, I do! If you drive him away then I will go too.’
‘Ah, Amy,’ her stepmother counselled. ‘See sense. He is a defeated man, he is good for nothing. Let him go. He will go back to Philip of Spain or on some other adventure and in some battle or another he will be killed and you will be free. Your marriage was a mistake from the start to finish, and now you can let it finish.’
‘Never!’ Amy spat at her. ‘You are mad to even dream it. If he goes out with the plough then I will go out with the plough. If you make him your enemy then you make me your enemy too. I love him, I am his, and he is mine, and nothing will come between us.’
Lady Robsart was taken aback. ‘Amy, this is not like you.’
‘No. This is me. I cannot be quiet and obedient when you abuse him. You try to divide us because you think I love my home so much that I will never leave here. Well, hear this: I will go! There is nothing in the world more important to me than Lord Robert. Not even my love for my home, not even my love for you. And even if you will not respect him for himself, you should respect him for me.’
‘Toll loll,’ Lady Robsart said with reluctant admiration. ‘Here’s a thunderstorm for nothing.’
‘It is not nothing,’ Amy said stubbornly.
‘It can be nothing.’ Her stepmother offered a truce. ‘You have saved him from the fields, but you will have to find him some occupation. He has to do something, Amy.’
‘We’ll get him a horse,’ she decided. ‘A cheap young horse, and he can break it and train it and we will sell it on and he can buy another. He is a master of horses, he can almost speak to them.’
‘And what will you use to buy his horse?’ Lady Robsart demanded. ‘You’ll have nothing from me.’
‘I will sell my father’s locket,’ Amy said staunchly.
‘You’d never sell that!’
‘For Robert, I would.’
The older woman hesitated. ‘I’ll lend you the money,’ she said. ‘Don’t sell the locket.’
Amy smiled at her victory. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
She left Robert alone for an hour to cool his temper and then she went upstairs to the cramped back bedroom, expecting to find him in their little rope bed, eager to tell him that she had won their battle, that he would not go to the fields, and that he should have a horse to train, perhaps the first of many. But the plain linen sheets were turned down, the headboards undisturbed, the room was empty. Robert was gone.
Summer 1558
Robert Dudley came to court with a grim determination. He had faced the abuse of his wife’s family, and thought he could not fall much lower. But now, in Richmond, the new-built beautiful palace that he loved as his own home, he discovered what it was to be humbled every day. Now he joined the crowd of petitioners that he had once walked past, wondering idly that they could find nothing better to do than beg for favours. Now he joined the ranks of the men who had to wait for the attention of their betters, in the hopes of being introduced to someone higher up the stair of ambition. Everything at the Tudor court came from the throne as the fountainhead of money, position, and place. Power flowed into the lesser tributaries of the great positions of the court and from there was divided and subdivided. Torrents of wealth cascaded from the badly managed treasury; but you had to be in favour with a man who was already in favour to tap a little of the flow for yourself.
Robert, who had once been the greatest man at court, second only to his father who ruled the king, knew only too well how the system worked from the top. Now he had to learn how it worked at the very bottom.
He spent days at court, staying in the household of a friend of his brother-in-law, Henry Sidney, seeking preferment: anything, a place or a pension, or even service in the household of a minor lord. But no-one would employ him. Some men would not even be seen speaking with him. He was over-educated for any lowly place; how could you ask a man who could speak three languages to write a list of goods that needed to be fetched from another house? He was despised by the ruling class of Catholic lords, who had seen him and his father drive through the Protestant Reformation in King Edward’s years. He was far too glamorous and bold and colourful for anyone to seat below the salt at their table, or use as a junior equerry. No petty lord gained an advantage with the eye-catching Robert Dudley standing behind his chair. No-one would take the risk of being outshone by their own servant. No lady of any reputation could take a man who exuded such powerful sexual charm into her household, no man would employ him near his wife or daughters. No-one wanted Robert Dudley, with his dazzling dark looks and his sharp wit, in any personal office, and no-one would trust him out of their sight.
He hung around court like a handsome leper and learned to the last chilly note the voice of rejection. Many men who had been glad to be his friend and his follower when he had been Lord Robert now denied that they had ever known him. He found that memories were extraordinarily short. He was outcast in his own country.
Philip of Spain’s favour now counted for nothing. He seemed to have abandoned England and her queen. He was living in his glamorous court in the Netherlands and was said to have taken a beautiful mistress. Everyone said he would never come to England again. His deserted wife, Queen Mary, confessed that she had been mistaken for a second time – she had failed to conceive his child, she would never now give England an heir. She shrank inside her clothes, and hid inside her private rooms, more like a widow than a ruling queen.
Robert, unable to trade in his own dishonoured name, sign a legal bond, or join a company of merchants, knew that he would never progress until the slur of treason was lifted from his name, and only Queen Mary could restore him. He borrowed a new hat and a new cape from his brother-in-law Henry Sidney and stood in the queen’s presence chamber one damp, misty morning, waiting for her to come out of her rooms on the way to her chapel. Half a dozen other petitioners waited nearby, and they stirred as the door opened and the queen, head down and dressed in black, came out, accompanied only by a couple of women.
Robert feared she would go past him without looking up but she glanced at him, recognised him, and paused. ‘Robert Dudley?’
He bowed. ‘Your Grace.’
‘You wanted something of me?’ she asked wearily.
He thought he would have to be as blunt as her. ‘I wanted to ask you to lift the attainder for treason against my name,’ he said frankly. ‘I served your husband at St Quentin and Calais and it cost me what was left of my fortune, and also my young brother’s life, Your Grace. With this mark against my name I cannot enter into business nor hold my head up. My wife has lost her inheritance, a little farm in Norfolk, and you know I have lost all my father’s gifts to me. I would not have my wife demeaned and in poverty for marrying me.’
‘Women always share in their husband’s fortune,’ she said flatly. ‘Good and bad. And a bad husband is a wife’s despair.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But she has never admired my fortunes. She only wanted to live quietly in the country and I would have done better for her if I had done as she wished. We cannot even live together now, I cannot endure her family, and I cannot buy her a roof to put over her head. I have failed her, Your Grace, and it is wrong of me.’
‘You were at the fall of Calais,’ she remembered.
Robert met her eyes with a look that was as bleak as her own. ‘I never forget it,’ he said. ‘It was an ill-managed business. The canals should have been flooded to serve as a moat, but they did not open the sea-gates. The forts were not maintained and manned as we were promised. I did the best I could with my troop, but the French outnumbered and outmastered us. I did not fail you for lack of trying, Your Grace. Your husband himself commended my fighting at St Quentin.’
‘You always were silver-tongued,’ she said with a little ghost of a smile. ‘Your whole family could charm their way to Paradise.’
‘I hope so,’ he said. ‘For too many of them are there already. Those of us who are left are brought very low in these days. I had seven brothers and five sisters in the nursery with me, twelve bonny children; and now there are only four of us left.’
‘I too am very low,’ she confessed. ‘When I came to the throne, Robert, when I defeated you and your father, I thought that all my troubles would be over. But they were just beginning.’