The Virgin’s Lover

Autumn 1558

All the bells in Hertfordshire, all the bells in England were ringing for Elizabeth, pounding the peal into her head, first the treble bell screaming out like a mad woman, and then the whole agonising, jangling sob till the great bell boomed a warning that the whole discordant carillon was about to shriek out again. Elizabeth threw open the shutters of Hatfield Palace, flung open the window, wanting to be drowned in the noise, deafened by her own triumph; and yet still it went on, until the rooks abandoned their nests and went streaming into the dawn skies, tossing and turning in the wind like a banner of ill omen, and the bats left the belfry like a plume of black smoke as if to say that the world was upside down now, and day should be forever night.

Elizabeth laughed out loud at the racket which hammered out the news to the unresponsive grey skies: poor sick Queen Mary was dead at last, and Princess Elizabeth was the uncontested heir.

‘Thank God,’ she shouted up at the whirling clouds. ‘For now I can be the queen that my mother intended me to be, the queen that Mary could not be, the queen I was born to be.’

‘And what are you thinking?’ Elizabeth asked archly.

Amy’s husband smiled down at the provocative young face at his shoulder as they walked in the cold garden of Hatfield Palace.

‘I was thinking that you should never marry.’

The princess blinked in surprise. ‘Indeed? Everyone else seems to think I should marry at once.’

‘You should only marry a very, very old man, then,’ he amended.

A delighted giggle escaped her. ‘Why ever?’

‘So that he would die at once. Because you look so enchanting in black velvet. You should really never wear anything else.’

It was the rounding off of the jest, it was the turning of a pretty compliment. It was what Robert Dudley did best in the world, along with horse-riding, politics, and merciless ambition.

Elizabeth was wrapped from her pink nose to her leather boots in mourning black, blowing on the tips of her leather-gloved fingers for warmth, a black velvet hat at a rakish angle on her mass of red-gold hair. A train of chilled petitioners trailed away behind the two. Only William Cecil, her longtime advisor, was sure enough of his welcome to interrupt the intimate talk between the two childhood friends.

‘Ah, Spirit,’ she said fondly to the older man who came towards them, dressed in clerkly black. ‘What news d’you have for me?’

‘Good news, Your Grace,’ he said to the queen, with a nod to Robert Dudley. ‘I have heard from Sir Francis Knollys. I knew you would want to be told at once. He and his wife and family have left Germany and should be with us by the New Year.’

‘She won’t be here in time for my coronation?’ Elizabeth asked. She was missing her cousin Catherine, in self-imposed exile for her fierce Protestant faith.

‘I am sorry,’ Cecil said. ‘They cannot possibly get here in time. And we cannot possibly wait.’

‘But she has agreed to be my lady in waiting? And her daughter – what’s her name? – Laetitia, a maid of honour?’

‘She will be delighted,’ Cecil said. ‘Sir Francis wrote me a note to accept, and Lady Knollys’s letter to you is following. Sir Francis told me that she had so many things that she wanted to say, that she could not finish her letter before my messenger had to leave.’

Elizabeth’s radiant smile warmed her face. ‘We’ll have so much to talk about when I see her!’

‘We will have to clear the court so that you two can chatter,’ Dudley said. ‘I remember Catherine when we had “Be Silent” tournaments. D’you remember? She always lost.’

‘And she always blinked first when we had a staring joust.’

‘Except for that time when Ambrose put his mouse in her sewing bag. Then she screamed the house down.’

‘I miss her,’ Elizabeth said simply. ‘She is almost all the family I have.’

Neither of the men reminded her of her flint-hearted Howard relations who had all but disowned her when she was disgraced, and now were swarming around her emerging court claiming her as their own once more.

‘You have me,’ Robert said gently. ‘And my sister could not love you more if she were your own.’

‘But Catherine will scold me for my crucifix and the candles in the Royal Chapel,’ Elizabeth said sulkily, returning in her roundabout way to the uppermost difficulty.

‘How you choose to worship in the Royal Chapel is not her choice,’ Cecil reminded her. ‘It is yours.’

‘No, but she chose to leave England rather than live under the Pope, and now that she and all the other Protestants are coming home, they will be expecting a reformed country.’

‘As do we all, I am sure.’

Robert Dudley threw a quizzical look at him as if to suggest that not everyone shared Cecil’s clarity of vision. Blandly, the older man ignored him. Cecil had been a faithful Protestant since the earliest days and had suffered years of neglect from the Catholic court because of his loyalty to his faith and his service of the Protestant princess. Before that, he had served the great Protestant lords, the Dudleys themselves, and advised Robert’s father on the advance of the Reformation. Robert and Cecil were old allies, if never friends.

‘There is nothing Papist about a crucifix on the altar,’ Elizabeth specified. ‘They cannot object to that.’

Cecil smiled indulgently. Elizabeth loved jewels and gold in church, the priests in their vestments, embroidered altar cloths, bright colours on the walls, candles and all the panoply of the Catholic faith. But he was confident that he could keep her in the reformed church that was her first and earliest practice.

‘I will not tolerate the raising of the Host and worshipping it as if it were God Himself,’ she said firmly. ‘That is Popish idolatry indeed. I won’t have it, Cecil. I won’t have it done before me and I won’t have it held up to confuse and mislead my people. It is a sin, I know it. It is a graven idol, it is bearing false witness, I cannot tolerate it.’

He nodded. Half the country would agree with her. Unfortunately the other half would as passionately disagree. To them the communion wafer was the living God and should be worshipped as a true presence; to do anything less was a foul heresy that only last week would have been punishable by death by burning.

‘So, who have you found to preach at Queen Mary’s funeral?’ she asked suddenly.

‘The Bishop of Winchester, John White,’ he said. ‘He wanted to do it, he loved her dearly, and he is well regarded.’ He hesitated. ‘Any one of them would have done it. The whole church was devoted to her.’

‘They had to be,’ Robert rejoined. ‘They were appointed by her for their Catholic sympathies, she gave them a licence to persecute. They won’t welcome a Protestant princess. But they’ll have to learn.’

Cecil only bowed, diplomatically saying nothing, but painfully aware that the church was determined to hold its faith against any reforms proposed by the Protestant princess, and half the country would support it. The battle of the Supreme Church against the young queen was one that he hoped to avoid.

‘Let Winchester do the funeral sermon then,’ she said. ‘But make sure he is reminded that he must be temperate. I want nothing said to stir people up. Let’s keep the peace before we reform it, Cecil.’

‘He’s a convinced Roman Catholic,’ Robert reminded her. ‘His views are known well enough, whether he speaks them out loud or not.’

She rounded on him. ‘Then if you know so much, get me someone else!’

Dudley shrugged and was silent.

‘That’s the very heart of it,’ Cecil said gently to her. ‘There is no-one else. They’re all convinced Roman Catholics. They’re all ordained Roman Catholic bishops, they’ve been burning Protestants for heresy for the last five years. Half of them would find your beliefs heretical. They can’t change overnight.’

She kept her temper with difficulty but Dudley knew she was fighting the desire to stamp her foot and stride away.

‘No-one wants anyone to change anything overnight,’ she said finally. ‘All I want is for them to do the job to which God has called them, as the old queen did hers by her lights, and as I will do mine.’

‘I will warn the bishop to be discreet,’ Cecil said pessimistically. ‘But I cannot order him what to say from his own pulpit.’

‘Then you had better learn to do so,’ she said ungraciously. ‘I won’t have my own church making trouble for me.’

‘“I praised the dead more than the living,”’ the Bishop of Winchester started, his voice booming out with unambiguous defiance. ‘That is my text for today, for this tragic day, the funeral day of our great Queen Mary. “I praised the dead more than the living.” Now, what are we to learn from this: God’s own word? Surely, a living dog is better than a dead lion? Or is the lion, even in death, still more noble, still a higher being than the most spritely, the most engaging young mongrel puppy?’

Leaning forward in his closed pew, mercifully concealed from the rest of the astounded congregation, William Cecil groaned softly, dropped his head into his hands, and listened with his eyes closed as the Bishop of Winchester preached himself into house arrest.

Winter 1558–59

The court always held Christmas at Whitehall Palace, and Cecil and Elizabeth were anxious that the traditions of Tudor rule should be seen as continuous. The people should see that Elizabeth was a monarch just as Mary had been, just as Edward had been, just as their father had been: the glorious Henry VIII.

‘I know there should be a Lord of Misrule,’ Cecil said uncertainly. ‘And a Christmas masque, and there should be the king’s choristers, and a series of banquets.’ He broke off. He had been a senior administrator to the Dudley family and thus served their masters the Tudors; but he had never been part of the inner circle of the Tudor court. He had been present at business meetings, reporting to the Dudley household, not at entertainments, and he had never taken part in any of the organisation or planning of a great court.

‘I last came to Edward’s court when he was sick,’ Elizabeth said, worried. ‘There was no feasting or masquing then. And Mary’s court went to Mass three times a day, even in the Christmas season, and was terribly gloomy. They had one good Christmas, I think, when Philip first came over and she thought she was with child, but I was under house arrest then, I didn’t see what was done.’

‘We shall have to make new traditions,’ Cecil said, trying to cheer her.

‘I don’t want new traditions,’ she replied. ‘There has been too much change. People must see that things have been restored, that my court is as good as my father’s.’

Half a dozen household servants went past carrying a cartload of tapestries. One group turned in one direction, the others turned in the other and the tapestries dropped between the six of them. They did not know where things were to go, the rooms had not been properly allocated. No-one knew the rules of precedence in this new court, it was not yet established where the great lords would be housed. The traditional Catholic lords who had been in power under Queen Mary were staying away from the upstart princess; the Protestant arrivistes had not yet returned in their rush from foreign exile; the court officers, essential servants to run the great travelling business which was the royal court, were not yet commanded by an experienced Lord Chamberlain. It was all confused and new.

Robert Dudley stepped around the tumbled tapestries, strolled up and gave Elizabeth a smiling bow, doffing his scarlet cap with his usual flair. ‘Your Grace.’

‘Sir Robert. You’re Master of Horse. Doesn’t that mean that you will take care of all the ceremonies and celebrations as well?’

‘Of course,’ he said easily. ‘I will bring you a list of entertainments that you might enjoy.’

She hesitated. ‘You have new ideas for entertainments?’

He shrugged, glancing at Cecil, as if he wondered what the question might mean. ‘I have some new ideas, Your Grace. You are a princess new-come to her throne, you might like some new celebrations. But the Christmas masque usually follows tradition. We usually have a Christmas banquet, and, if it is cold enough, an ice fair. I thought you might like a Russian masque, with bear baiting and savage dancing; and of course all the ambassadors will come to be presented, so we will need dinners and hunting parties and picnics to welcome them.’

Elizabeth was taken aback. ‘And you know how to do all this?’

He smiled, still not understanding. ‘Well, I know how to give the orders.’

Cecil had a sudden uncomfortable sense, very rare for him, of being out of his depth, faced with issues he did not understand. He felt poor, he felt provincial. He felt that he was his father’s son, a servant in the royal household, a profiteer from the sale of the monasteries, and a man who earned his fortune by marrying an heiress. The gulf between himself and Robert Dudley, always a great one, felt all at once wider. Robert Dudley’s grandfather had been a grandee at the court of Henry VII, his son the greatest man at the court of Henry VIII, he had been a kingmaker, he had even been, for nine heady days, father-in-law to the Queen of England.

Young Robert Dudley had been running in and out of the halls of the royal palaces of England as his home, while Elizabeth had been in disgrace, alone in the country. Of the three of them it was Dudley who was most accustomed to power and position. Cecil glanced at the young queen and saw, mirrored in her face, his own uncertainty and sense of inadequacy.

‘Robert, I don’t know how to do this,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I can’t even remember how to get from the queen’s rooms to the great hall. If someone doesn’t walk before me I’ll get lost. I don’t know how to get to the gardens from the picture gallery, or from the stable to my rooms, I … I’m lost here.’

Cecil saw, he could not be mistaken, the sudden leap of something in the younger man’s face – hope? ambition? – as Dudley realised why the young queen and her principal advisor were standing outside her premier London palace, looking almost as if they did not dare to go in.

Sweetly, he offered her his arm. ‘Your Majesty, let me welcome you to my old home, your new palace. These walks and these walls will be as familiar to you as Hatfield was, and you will be happier here than you have ever been before, I guarantee it. Everyone gets lost in Whitehall Palace, it is a village, not a house. Let me be your guide.’

It was generously and elegantly done, and Elizabeth’s face warmed. She took his arm and glanced back at Cecil.

‘I will follow, Your Grace,’ he said quickly, thinking that he could not bear to have Robert Dudley show him his own rooms as if he owned the place. — Aye — Cecil thought. — Go on, take your advantage. You just had the two of us at a loss. We stood here, the newcomers, not even knowing where our bedrooms are; and you know this place like the back of your hand. It’s as if you are more royal than her, as if you were the rightful prince here, and now, graciously enough, you show her round your home. —

But it was not all as easy as Elizabeth learning her way round the corridors and back stairs of the warren that was Whitehall Palace. When they went out in the streets there were many who doffed their caps and cried hurrah for the Protestant princess, but there were many also who did not want another woman on the throne, seeing what the last one had done. Many would have preferred Elizabeth to declare her betrothal to a good Protestant prince and get a sensible man’s hand on the reins of England at once. There were many others who remarked that surely Lord Henry Hastings, nephew to King Henry, and married to Robert Dudley’s sister, had nearly as good a claim as Elizabeth, and he was an honourable young man and fit to rule. There were even more who whispered in secret or said nothing at all; but who longed for the coming of Mary, Queen of Scots and Princess of France, who would bring peace to the kingdom, a lasting alliance with France, and an end to religious change. She was younger than Elizabeth, for sure, a sixteen-year-old girl; but a real little beauty, and married to the heir to the French throne with all that power behind her.

Elizabeth, new-come to her throne, not yet crowned or anointed, had to find her way round her palace, had to put her friends in high places and that quickly; had to act like a confident Tudor heir, and had somehow to deal at once with her church which was in open and determined opposition to her and which would, unless it was swiftly controlled, bring her down.

There had to be a compromise and the Privy Council, still staffed with Mary’s advisors but leavened by Elizabeth’s new friends, came up with it. The church was to be restored to the condition in which Henry VIII had left it at the time of his death. An English church, commanded by Englishmen and headed by the monarch, that obeyed English laws and paid its tithes into the English treasury, where the litany, homilies and prayers were often read in English; but where the shape and content of the service were all but identical to the Catholic Mass.

It made sense to everyone who was desperate to see Elizabeth take the throne without the horror of a civil war. It made sense to everyone who longed for a peaceful transition of power. Indeed, it made sense to everyone but to the church itself, whose bishops would not countenance one step towards the mortal heresy of Protestantism, and, worst of all, it made no sense to the queen, who was suddenly, at this inopportune moment, stubborn.

‘I won’t have the Host raised in the Royal Chapel,’ Elizabeth specified for the twentieth time. ‘When we have Christmas Mass, I will not have the Host raised as an object of worship.’

‘Absolutely not,’ Cecil agreed wearily. It was Christmas Eve and he had been hoping that he might have got to his own home for Christmas. He had been thinking, rather fondly, that he might have been there to take Christmas communion in his own chapel, the Protestant way, without drama, as God had intended it, and then stayed with his family for the rest of the days of Christmas, returning to court only for the great feast of present-giving on Twelfth Night.

It had been a struggle to find a bishop who would celebrate Mass in the Royal Chapel before the Protestant princess at all, and now Elizabeth was trying to rewrite the service.

‘He will let the congregation take communion?’ she confirmed. ‘Whatever his name is? Bishop Oglesham?’

‘Owen Oglethorpe,’ Cecil corrected her. ‘Bishop of Carlisle. Yes, he understands your feelings. Everything will be done as you wish. He will serve at the Christmas Mass in your chapel, and he won’t elevate the Host.’

Next day, Cecil cradled his head once more as the bishop defiantly held the pyx above his head for the congregation to worship the body of Christ at the magical moment of transubstantiation.

A clear voice rang out from the royal pew. ‘Bishop! Lower the pyx.’

It was as if he had not heard her. Indeed, since his eyes were closed and his lips moving in prayer, perhaps he had not heard her. The bishop believed with all his heart that God was coming down to earth, that he held the real presence of the living God between his hands, that he was holding it up for the faithful to worship, as they must, as faithful Christians, do.

‘Bishop! I said, Bishop! Lower that pyx.’

The wooden fretwork shutter of the royal pew banged open like a thunderclap. Bishop Oglethorpe turned slightly from the altar, and glanced over his shoulder to meet the furious gaze of his queen, leaning out from the royal pew like a fishwife over a market stall, her cheeks flaming red with temper, her eyes black as an angry cat’s. He took in her stance – up from her knees, standing at her full height, her finger pointing at him, her voice commanding.

‘This is my own chapel. You are serving as my chaplain. I am the queen. You will do as I order. Lower that pyx.’

As if she did not matter at all, he turned back to the altar, closed his eyes again and gave himself up to his God.

He felt, as much as he heard the swish of her gown as she strode out of the door of the pew and the bang as she slammed it shut, like a child running from a room in temper. His shoulders prickled, his arms burned; but still he kept his back resolutely turned to the congregation, celebrating the Mass not with them, but for them: a process private between the priest and his God, which the faithful might observe, but could not join. The bishop put the pyx gently down on the altar and folded his hands together in the gesture for prayer, secretly pressing them hard against his thudding heart, as the queen stormed from her own chapel, on Christmas Day; driven from the place of God on His very day, by her own muddled, heretical thinking.