Queen's Pleasure Read online

  “Robert, oh, Robert,” I kept saying over and over until he put me from him, observing that my conversation was woefully repetitious and lacking in originality.

  “Robert does not have a witty wife!” Guildford chortled.

  And then, to my surprise, though we were not alone, my husband swept me up in his arms and carried me to one of the beds.

  “Robert!” I protested. “Your brothers are here—they will see us!”

  But he just shrugged as he laid me down and climbed on top of me.

  “There are no virgins here to offend or shock,” he said, and he proceeded to have his way with me.

  Thankfully, he left me dressed and merely lifted my skirts, and his body over mine kept his brothers from seeing overmuch of me, but, from over his shoulder, I could see them watching us as they munched the pastries and nudged and whispered to one another, laughing, smirking, and winking, and even sometimes calling out words of encouragement or advice to Robert. I shut my eyes and swallowed hard when I felt the sickness rising up inside me.

  When it was over, as John, Ambrose, and Guildford applauded their brother, calling out, “Fine show, Robert, fine show!” he clambered off me and took several bows before he fastened his codpiece.

  I bolted from the bed and ran straight for the door, hammering hard upon the thick wood and crying for the gaoler to let me out. I couldn’t bear to stay and try to pretend that nothing had happened; I couldn’t bear their eyes on me. I wanted to fly at Robert, scream and curse him, and demand, how could he do that to me? Take me like a common bawd, a woman hired from the streets, there before his brothers. He cared nothing for my feelings or my dignity!

  “Come again tomorrow, and bring more candy!” Guildford called after me as I fled with my face burning red with shame. “And some lemon and chamomile for my hair; if I stay in prison too long, it will turn as dark as Robert’s!”

  “Well, there are worse tragedies!” I heard the eldest, John, sharply retort, as I rounded the corner.

  I wept and clung to Pirto all the way back to Camberwell, where we were staying with some of my mother’s people, my cousins, the Scotts, at their fine town house. Once safely back inside I tearfully waved aside their polite and concerned queries, unable to speak for the tears clogging my throat, stifling the words in a knotted jumble, and nothing would do but for me to have a hot bath and go straight to bed.

  After that, I made my visits to the Tower as brief and seldom as I could. Though it shamed and hurt me to desert my husband, what he had done, and might do again, shamed and hurt me more. I knew that, as a man, Robert had needs, and as my husband, he had rights, and that it was my duty to submit and obey, but whenever I thought of going to the Tower, I would, in my mind, see myself back on that bed again, looking over his shoulder and seeing John, Ambrose, and Guildford winking, smirking, and laughing as they passed between them a jar of strawberry preserves and another of cream to dip the crispy sweet wafers in as they ogled us as if we were a public show they had paid their pennies to see. The thought of enduring that again made me sick. There were many times when I dressed myself and prepared to set out, only to turn back at the last moment when queasiness and faintness overwhelmed me on my cousins’ threshold, and the coachman had to be paid for his futile journey, and I helped back to bed.

  “Whoever would have thought she would be so fastidious?” Guildford said of me another time when Robert reached for me and would have taken me to the bed, but I demurred, lowering my eyes and implying that I was unwell with my monthly courses. “Everyone knows country folk rut like animals and don’t care who sees them!” But I wouldn’t give in, and I didn’t care what Guildford thought of me.

  On a late August morning I stood beside my husband and his brothers at the back of St. Peter ad Vincula, the Tower’s chapel, under which the bones of the condemned moldered, and watched as their father—who had, in a failed endeavor to save himself, converted to Catholicism—celebrated Mass. Before he was led out to die upon the scaffold, Queen Mary had granted him the privilege of hearing Mass and to confess and be shriven of his sins by her own priest.

  “Truly I profess before you that the plague that is upon us now is that we have erred from the true faith these sixteen years,” the humbled and fallen Duke of Northumberland proclaimed, still hoping to the last for a reprieve.

  Huddled together despite the summer heat, we watched as the man who had once been the power behind the throne and fancied himself a kingmaker, the almost founder of a new royal dynasty, betrayed everything he believed in to try to save himself. But it was all for nothing.

  From the scaffold, he tried to save his sons. With his dying speech he begged Queen Mary for forgiveness and implored her to be kind and merciful to his children, “considering that they went by my commandment, who am their father, and not of their own free will.” And then he laid his head upon the block, the ax fell, and he died as I shut my eyes and cowered against Robert’s chest, jumping when I heard the heavy ax thud down.

  Afterward, back in his cell, Robert threw me onto the bed again. This time, though he was rough and hurt me, I did not protest. I closed my eyes tightly against his brothers’ lewd smirks and stares, and when I felt my husband’s hot tears drip down between my breasts, I held him even closer, as his hard flesh pounded and bruised my softness, and let my body give him whatever comfort it could.

  In February, I forced myself to be brave and bent my head against the brutal, icy wind and rode to London again.

  But I chose the wrong day to go visiting. I found myself caught up in a crowd from which I could not fight my way free. The press of their bodies pushed me forward, battering me against those surrounding me even as I tried to break free, until I found myself staring right up at the scaffold.

  Clad in crow black with her shoulders and neck bare, I saw Lady Jane standing with her head bent over a small black book, then handing it aside and tremulously speaking her last words. And I bore witness to the macabre parody of Blindman’s Buff that followed when she knelt, blindfolded, and groped helplessly for the block before she found it and laid her head upon it. And though I shut my eyes tightly, I heard the ax come down, the crunch and crack as it broke though skin and bone.

  Screaming like a madwoman, striking out at those who surrounded me, slapping, kicking, and scratching, desperate to get free, not caring who my nails clawed or whose shins I bruised, I finally managed to clear a path for me and ran screaming all the way to Robert’s cell and threw myself weeping into his arms, begging him to hold me tightly and never let me go again.

  As I clung to him, shaking and sobbing, I managed to blurt out what I had seen. Robert had also seen it looking from his window high above. He had watched it alone, Ambrose and John having been moved recently to another cell. And, though he had not seen him die, as Guildford was bound for Tower Hill, not Tower Green, twice he had seen his youngest brother pass below his window. The first time, he had walked pale-faced, trying so hard to be brave and hold himself proud, even though his chin and lips did mightily quiver, clad in somberly rich, elegant black velvet embroidered with burnished gold roses and trimmed with frills of golden lace, with not one golden curl out of place. The second time, he rode in a cart, a broken, lifeless corpse, naked—the executioner had claimed Guildford’s clothes as part of his fee—carelessly wrapped in a blood-soaked sheet, thrown on straw to sop up the blood and keep it from staining the wood.

  Robert had no comfort to give me, and, in truth, I should have been the one to give it. But I did not, and failed yet again as a wife. He was the one who had just lost a brother, not I. He thrust me away and rounded on me in a fury, speaking harsh words, shaking and slapping me, ordering me to compose myself; all the tears and hysterics in the world would not bring Guildford and Jane back, nor would they save him from following in their footsteps if Queen Mary so decreed it.

  Later, when I had regained some semblance of calm, half-frightened back to my senses by my husband’s slaps, I went to him again as he stood w
ith his back to me, still staring from that same window. I put my arms around him and lay my smarting cheek against his back.

  “Are you still sorry that Guildford stole your destiny, that you were not the one to marry Jane?” I asked.

  “You little fool!” Robert spun ’round and shoved me away so forcefully that I fell hard onto the stone floor. “If it had been me, it might all have been a different story with a different end! They were a pair of weaklings and fools, he for his vanity and she for her books. Neither of them had it in them to rule; it was inevitable that they would be crushed. They hadn’t a dollop of my bravery and strength! But I was born to be King; it is written in the stars, that is my destiny!”

  And he turned his back to me again, and I, knowing that it was wiser not to provoke him again, left him to his thoughts instead, with a pinch of grief for Guildford simmering, like salt, in the rich stew of his ambitions.

  The second time I saw Elizabeth Tudor, I was hurrying in to visit my husband with a special treat for him, one I hoped would brighten his day and make him smile—a large sack bursting full of walnuts—when I chanced to look up. I saw the flame-haired Princess, who was now the prisoner of her own sister, accused of conspiring with the Protestant rebels to steal her throne. She was standing on the wall-walk, her black cloak flapping about her like the wings of the ravens that circled above, her vivid hair whipping in the wind. She stood there motionless, staring down at me, her face a hard, inscrutable white mask, like one carved of marble. I shivered, feeling like, as we said in the country, “a goose just walked over my grave,” and I bent my head and hurried on my way.

  Looking back, I think that was when their affair began, when both of them lived in fear, as prisoners beneath the shadow of the ax, wondering if each day would be their last, if each sunrise and sunset they witnessed would be the last one they would ever see. When you know Death is looking over your shoulder, sometimes you throw yourself full force at Life, determined to dig your fingers in and grasp as hard, and hold as tightly, and get as much as you can from it, and savor all the delights and pleasures it has to offer. I know that now, but by the time I found it out, I was too tired and timid to grab.

  I found Robert pacing restlessly about his cell. I could feel the tension and anger emanating from him like heat from a roaring fire. He was like a caged beast. I so feared his roar and bite that, had he not heard the gaoler unlock the door and announce me, I would have been sorely tempted to turn around and quietly tiptoe back out and come again another day. I should have expected what came next. Robert flung the sack of walnuts at the wall. It burst, sending the nuts that were his favorite clattering and scattering everywhere. Then he kicked a footstool with all his might into the wall, where it exploded into kindling, and then he flung a chair after it. I put my arms up to shield my face from the flying debris. I loved my husband so much, but at times like this, he frightened me.

  “My father and brother are dead, and you bring me walnuts!” he bellowed at me. “Walnuts!” he spat contemptuously.

  I backed away from him, fighting down the urge to raise my hands to shield my face again. I didn’t know whether he was going to strike me, but I didn’t want to give him any ideas either, and I was afraid that if I acted like I feared the blows, that would only be inviting them.

  Timorously, I told him that I had written a letter to Queen Mary, begging for an audience, so that I might go on my knees before her and plead for his life.

  “God’s blood, Amy!” Robert roared, slamming his fist into the wall, then turning ’round and walking away from me, running his fingers through his thick hair, tugging it, even as blood dripped from his knuckles. He swung ’round suddenly and dealt his writing desk a savage kick that left it lying on its side, shy one gilded leg. “Why can you not leave well enough alone? Go back to the country, and leave such things to my mother; you will only say the wrong thing, and that will indeed be the death of me! My mother knows how to do things right! Your country-bumpkin ignorance will be the death of me yet!”

  “As you wish!” I blurted through a great, bursting bubble of sobbing, and, turning my back, though he already knew I was crying, I ran out. I wept all the way back to my cousins’ town house in Camberwell. I was crying so hard that I quite overpaid the coachman, and he doffed his bedraggled plumed cap and smiled and bowed my sobbing form all the way up the steps to the front door as though I were the Queen of England myself.

  With tear-blinded eyes, I helped Pirto pack my things, throwing them into the trunks any which way, not caring if my gowns wrinkled or if anything broke, and set out for Stanfield Hall at first light the next morning. I was out in the courtyard whilst the sky was still dark, pacing back and forth and stamping my feet with impatience, waiting for the sun to rise so we could be off. I knew I was running away, and it would look as though I were abandoning my husband, but I didn’t care; he didn’t want me there, and I didn’t want to stay where I wasn’t wanted.

  I wanted so much to help my husband, to save him if I could, and he didn’t even think I was good enough to go on my knees before the Queen and plead for his life. He thought I would commit some terrible blunder that would seal his doom! How could he think I would ever do anything to hurt him? The Queen was a woman, and a woman in love, if the rumors spoke truth, infatuated with a portrait of a Spanish prince she longed to marry. Surely if I knelt before her and spoke from my heart, she would understand. But, even though he was locked away in prison, I had not the courage to defy my husband’s wishes, so I crept away, like a whipped and whimpering dog with its tail tucked between its legs, and left my husband’s fate in the hands of my most capable mother-in-law.

  14

  Amy Robsart Dudley

  Stanfield Hall, near Wymondham, in Norfolk

  and

  Syderstone Manor in Norfolk

  November 1554–November 1558

  Though he lost his father and Guildford to the headsman’s ax and would lose his youngest surviving brother, Henry, right before his eyes to a cannonball at the Siege of St. Quentin in Calais, and John to gaol fever, and his mother likewise to a fever, but the last smiling on her deathbed, happy in the knowledge that she had succeeded in securing a pardon for her surviving sons, Robert would save himself by swallowing his pride, changing his colors like one of those peculiar lizards that can change the hue of their skin to suit their surroundings, and crawling on his knees and groveling before Queen Mary.

  With tears in his eyes, his hand upon his heart, and a gold crucifix studded with garnets and diamonds about his throat, he swore that he had always been true to her and no other sovereign, but he had been raised and had always endeavored to be a loyal and obedient son to his father—as all children are taught from the cradle to be—and thus he had followed his father’s commands, though in his heart he raged and rebelled against them, knowing that Mary was the true and lawful Queen of England.

  “When I was sent to capture Your Majesty, my failure to do so was intentional, not some accident of fate or blunder,” he lied shamelessly.

  And the Queen, as women were ever wont to do with Robert, let herself believe him. But it was all a lie. Behind her back, Robert mocked Mary as “a pathetic old maid” and “the greatest fool who ever wore petticoats”; he laughed at her dreams of love, her desire to be a wife and mother; just because she was naïve and no longer young or pretty, he thought she was a fool for hoping, wanting, and dreaming. “That is one woman who should thank her lucky star that she was born royal; otherwise, no man would look twice at her, much less wed and bed her!” he avowed. I thought him very cruel.

  And then began the grand deception. Just like a couple of chameleons—that’s the name of the lizard I mean—we must change our colors to save our skin. Robert sent for the jeweler and ordered a number of large jeweled crucifixes of both silver and gold, the more ornate and elaborate the better, and hung them about my neck and his own. He ordered rosaries for us of pearls and precious polished jewel beads and had our feet shod and our
hands gloved in the finest and most beautifully embellished Spanish leather. He fastened beneath my skirts a cone-shaped Spanish farthingale and about my waist a long chain from which a little gilt and bejeweled book with beautifully painted and gilded pages hung. The words were in Latin, so like gibberish to me, they might have been a witch’s curse or a recipe for laundry soap for all I knew, but Robert told me to read it anyway and always make a point of saying what great comfort it brought me. He also instructed that if any great or influential personages were about, I should let myself be seen embroidering an altar cloth. He strode about in fine, gold-fringed, jeweled, and embroidered blood red Spanish array, with rubies sparkling on his spurs, like blood red centers of a pair of golden suns, and nodded in approval as Mr. Edney decked me out in a gown of sunny yellow satin embroidered and fringed in vivid red, so much that I looked as though I were dripping blood. And as he ordered ornaments for our chapel and embroidered vestments for the priest, the embroidered hanging Mary had sent us as a wedding gift was frantically sought and dug out of a box in the attic at Stanfield Hall and dusted off and hung in a place of honor for all to see. But it was all a grand, elaborate fiction, calculated to win favor with the sovereign, because Mary had won, and we must stay on the winning side.

  Talk of having me presented at court was revived, and a sparkling purple tinsel gown trimmed with diamonds and beautiful silver point lace was ordered to be “made with all haste” by Mr. Edney. But the thought of all the eyes of the court watching me, so critical and condescending, mocking me and laughing at me behind their hands and fans as I stood alone and curtsied before the Queen, made me so sick with terror that I begged to be excused. I was sorely afraid that I would commit some grievous blunder, that I would trip over my own feet or tangle them in my skirts and fall flat on my bum. I had nightmares aplenty in which I did just that or, worse, where I started to speak, but only gibberish or crude and rude vulgarity or vomit came spewing out of my mouth, or a great belch, or else I broke wind as loud as cannon fire, the humiliating sound echoing throughout the stillness of the vast presence chamber before the pointed fingers and convulsive laughter began, or that I was so nervous that I lost control of my bladder and left a yellow puddle right there at the foot of the Queen’s throne. I would start awake with my face wet with tears and my whole body quaking, fearing that the dreams might be a portent, a sign of things to come.