Queen's Pleasure Read online

  In the end, Robert relented and decided it was all for the best that I stay where I was. He rode back to court alone, leaving me and my new purple gown in the country. “Wear it for the chickens, Amy,” Robert said scathingly before he banged the lid of the chest shut upon it, with the same finality as closing a coffin. “I am sure that they and the cows and the sheep and pigs will be quite impressed, and when you walk past, you will dazzle the eyes of every peasant, and they will fall to their knees and praise God, thinking that a princess walks amongst them.”

  I knew that he was very disappointed in me. Robert and I, we always seemed to let each other down now in one way or another. I loved him so much, and I wanted to please him dearly, but at the same time I knew I would never make a courtier’s wife, and I would rather disappoint my husband in the quietness of the country than before the eyes of the entire court. I would rather my disgrace be a private one.

  To further prove his loyalty, Robert faithfully served Queen Mary’s much-detested Spanish bridegroom. And when Prince Philip made war against the French in Calais, my husband acted as personal messenger, conveying the Queen’s love letters to her consort, and his cold and brief replies back to her. Ever one to see an opportunity and seize it, when it was a spoken message instead of written words that he carried back to Her Majesty, with deft skill Robert embroidered it, weaving in words of love that made the Queen’s haggard, careworn face light up. She blossomed like a rose after every such message Robert brought her. One time, Her Majesty was so grateful that she took Robert’s arm and led him into her private chapel to hear Mass kneeling beside her and afterward gave him a gift of £100 for “bringing my languishing, lovelorn heart back to life again, pulsing with the life’s blood of hope and true love.”

  Robert was still mocking, still laughing, over her words when he lost every penny of that money in a card game and, to be in ready funds again and satisfy his debts, had to borrow at an absurd rate of interest from a London moneylender. He was in so thick with them, I later learned, to satisfy a £5 debt to his late mother’s apothecary he was left indebted to a Mr. Borrowe, a most aptly named moneylender, for £20 in interest on top of the original sum. I never did understand my husband’s financial dealings; to me they were all a tangled, knotted disarray I never could sort out. When he arranged to take over a manor called Hales Owen that had originally gone to his brother Ambrose by their late mother’s will, my heart leapt and gladdened. I thought it meant a home for us, but neither Robert nor I ever did set foot there, and somehow Robert ended up in debt to Ambrose for £800 and to his Uncle Andrew for £300, and responsible for all his late mother’s debts, a generous stipend of £50 per annum to his sister Catherine, and Hales Owen was mortgaged to the hilt to his own treasurer, Mr. Forster, as recompense for various loans, only to be leased right back to Robert, who then sold it not once but twice, first to a Mr. Tuckey and then to a Mr. Lyttleton for £2,000 from the first and £3,000 from the latter. My mind still cannot grasp it, nor do I know where the money went, but I feel as certain as certain can be that there was some chicanery at the heart of it.

  Queen Mary next sent Robert back to Calais on her fastest ship with a basket full of Prince Philip’s favorite meat pies, fresh and hot from the palace oven. Robert swore he would guard them with his life, painting a picture with words of himself bravely defending the basket of pies, keeping the hungry sailors and starving citizens of Calais who were drawn by their enticing aroma at bay with the point of his sword. Nothing, with a hand over his heart he assured the poor, lovesick Queen, would give him greater pleasure than to kneel at Prince Philip’s feet and present these pies to him with his wife’s loving words and, perchance, have the honor of watching him savor each bite so that he might, upon his return, kneel before “The Queen of My Heart” and tell her of the pleasure her gift had given her beloved, and the pleasure he himself had derived from being the messenger entrusted with this “gift to nourish love.” What nonsense and cruel, self-serving lies it all was! It hurt my heart then, and still does now, to contemplate my husband’s cruelty. And as far as the pies were concerned, Robert did no such thing. I think he ate them himself; he later pronounced them “fit for a prince,” and how else would he have known that if he had not tasted them?

  The whole time Robert was supposedly playing “Love’s Messenger” and “Cupid’s Emissary,” as he poetically described himself, he simply cut through the sentimental treacle and told Prince Philip only what he needed to know and saved the sugary word confections he concocted for Queen Mary, reassuring her that though her husband’s letters were brief and blunt, such was the way of most Spanish men in their correspondence, but the words that Philip spoke about his wife were “infinitely—and dare I say intimately? —more tender,” and left the Queen swooning back against the velvet cushions of her chair, clasping her heart, believing that Philip kept her miniature beside his bed so it would be the last thing his eyes saw every night and the first they opened to each morning.

  And when he learned that Prince Philip was an ardent admirer of Venetian Ice Glass, nothing would do but for Robert to give him our own vast set, my favorite, much-treasured wedding gift that had never even been used, never had the chance to grace our own table, over which I presided proudly as Robert’s wife. Instead, I got to watch—“to supervise,” Robert said—the servants as they packed it all with great care into crates filled with straw, and took it in carts, driven no faster than a walk, all the way to London, where they carried it gently, as if each crate were a cradle containing a royal prince, aboard a ship that would then convey it to Philip’s palace in Spain.

  Thus Robert found favor with both sovereigns, and his star was on the rise again. The attainder against the Dudleys was reversed, and all property, including Hemsby-by-the-Sea, was returned. But we would never go there again; though in those days I still continued to hope, in truth he never had any intention of returning to the place where we had spent the happiest days of our marriage. I would later learn he sold it and sent the money to the Princess Elizabeth, “so she doesn’t forget who her real friends are.” At those words I almost laughed in his face; Robert was a real friend to no one but himself, and sometimes I thought he would even betray himself for thirty pieces of silver. One day, I was certain, he would aim too high, fly too close to the sun, and see all his dreams of grandeur burned to a cinder; he would crash and burn from everything to nothing.

  In the dark days of Mary’s reign, when the burning of heretics showed England and its monarch in such an ugly light, a blaze that illuminated the murder of hundreds of innocent people, Elizabeth became like a prayer to the English, a candle burning bright and steady at the heart of a fearsome storm.

  And Robert, like a hawk diving to fasten its beak and talons on the sparrow of opportunity, became—in secret of course, lest Queen Mary find out and send him back to the Tower again—her most ardent supporter and sent her gifts and money whenever he could to feather his nest to make it comfortable for the next reign.

  He wrote and bade me sell the wool, even if it were at a loss, and I did, foolishly thinking he had sore need of the money for his own sake. But he gave every penny of it—all £200—to her! I was with him when he sent it; it was one of those rare times when he was at home with me, and I saw what he wrote: I would gladly lose my life if that would be of any service to you or procure your liberty. Robert dismissed it as mere gallantry, chivalry, the kind of thing men said all the time to royal and lofty ladies, and berated me for “being too great a simpleton to know about such things,” that it was the way of the world, and men who wanted to advance themselves and rise high had to know how to flatter the right people with pretty words about love and loyalty. I didn’t bother to contradict him; arguing with Robert always left me feeling so tired and befuddled, as if he had opened up my head and poured thick glue inside it. He always had an answer, an explanation, that always made me feel at fault and inferior.

  I noticed that he didn’t sign the note. That told me that E
lizabeth would recognize his hand; Robert was not about to risk his gift being credited to the wrong person.

  When I protested, he pulled away from me, slapping my fingers from his sleeve.

  “Don’t be such a simpleton, Amy,” he snapped. “Any dunce knows that if you want to soar, you bind yourself to a shooting star, and Elizabeth is a star—England’s brightest star! That flame-haired Tudor wench will bring such a light to England, she will outshine all Catholic Mary’s burnings!”

  With her marriage to Prince Philip and persecution of Protestants, Mary’s star was falling fast, but Elizabeth’s was rising just as rapidly. Even those bound to the stake, dying in mortal agony, whispered her name with their last breaths as if it were a prayer, as if she alone could save England. What faith they all put in that red-haired girl! I never could understand it. What had she done to make them all believe in her so much, to fill their hearts with such hope? But when I asked him, Robert snorted and said it was more trouble than it was worth to try to explain it to me; I wouldn’t understand. And perhaps I wouldn’t. I never did understand the magic and allure of Elizabeth; I just knew she possessed a rare and special power, perhaps it was simply true majesty, a power unique to those meant to become kings and queens.

  On the rare occasions when he came to me at Stanfield Hall, I begged Robert on my knees to stay away from court, to forget it all and stay with me. I was sorely afraid he would be killed in Calais as his brother Henry had been, or else become a victim of the poor, mad Queen’s delusions and end on the scaffold or at the stake, for though he dressed in fine and elaborate Spanish fashions and played the faithful Catholic, kneeling devoutly in chapel and never being seen without a jeweled crucifix about his neck and his rosary on show and often in his hand, Robert remained in secret a staunch Protestant, and I lived in fear his deception and secret support of Elizabeth would be discovered.

  I reminded him of all the things he had once said to me, how we would restore Syderstone to its full splendor and our children’s laughter would ring throughout its halls, while Robert became famed far and wide for his fine, magnificent horses. But now Robert laughed in my face and scoffed at his own dreams, claiming that he had gotten carried away, that the country was no place for a man like him, that when he had spoken of these things, he had thought they were the most he could achieve, the best that he could hope for, he was despondent and trying to make the best of things and putting on a brave face for me. But things were different now. Fate had shown him a different and better path, one that led to wealth, fame, and glory, not a dull and humdrum existence as a country squire breeding horses and overseeing the shearing and the selling of the wool, and the barley and apple harvests; Robert Dudley was meant for greater and grander things. “Just because I married beneath me, that doesn’t mean I am going to let you drag me down as low as you are, to crawl on my belly in the dust,” he said to me. “Just because you lack the wit and ambition to rise in the world, I’ll not stay at the bottom to bear you company. I intend to climb very high indeed, to claw my way to the top, and I don’t care who I have to hurt, step on, kick down, and clamber over to get there!”

  Every time he spoke such words, I felt a pain in my chest like a stab clean through my heart; they wounded so, I felt I was likely to bleed to death.

  “I thought you married me because you loved me,” I said quietly, with my head hung low beneath the weight of sorrow.

  “We were both so young!” Robert sighed, and I could feel him seething at the memory of what his youthful fancy had cost him. “Only seventeen! Oh, what a fool I was, to ruin my life for so little so young!” he bemoaned and bewailed his fate. “Lust overcame Reason when I needed Reason most of all.”

  “Lust, not love?” I asked.

  “Lust,” he repeated firmly in an adamant voice that left no doubt, staring me straight in the eye so I would know there was no mistaking what he meant or whom he blamed for it.

  It broke my heart to hear him speak thus, and whenever I could, I would flee from his words, find some excuse to quit his presence. Robert always let me go; why should he have me stay? It was clear he did not want me and there was much he blamed me for. Though I do not think I did wrong—except by not openly declaring there was no baby growing inside me to bind us. I married the man I loved; how was I to know his love was false and that he would in but a few years’ time regret it? I wished the love I still felt for him were strong enough to make a difference. But Robert was now mired deeply in worldly ambition and had no desire to be pulled free of the muck of courtly intrigue. And there was no place for me in that world; I didn’t belong at court.

  Every night that he was with me, as we prepared for bed, I would feel, as if I were too close to a simmering pot, him stewing with impatience, and I feared the moment when his anger would boil over and burn me.

  “If I were at court, my evening would just be beginning!” he would sometimes say, the words snapping like whips, as he banged his fist down on my dressing table, the desk, or mantel or aimed a kick at the fragrant apple logs in the grate. Going to bed with me was no longer something he looked forward to, a time he counted the hours up to, as it had been when he was an eager new bridegroom. Robert now saw only the fact that we were going to bed at an hour he considered far too early, not the delights that awaited him there and were his for the asking and always gladly given if only he would turn to me. But that was no longer enough for him. He wanted something that was beyond my power to give him. He wanted a glittering, exciting, perilous life filled with pageantry and excess lived on the knife’s edge of danger. How could my sincere love and open, welcoming arms and warm, ready body ever compare or compete with that?

  So I let him go. I had to. I was powerless to stop him; it was like trying to hold back and harness the wind. To me the court was a bewildering game of chess, but it was the game Robert wanted to play, the life he wanted to live. So while my husband played both sides to make sure he came out a winner, I stayed at Stanfield Hall, but even without Robert there was heartbreak within its walls.

  My father had grown as helpless as a tot, and, worst of all, a dense fog enshrouded his mind, and most of the time he no longer knew the daughter he had named “Beloved”; now I was just “the pretty lass who brings me flowers and feeds me my soup and porridge every day.” Every time he saw me, it was as if we were meeting for the first time; there was always a welcoming smile and lively curiosity but no recognition in his eyes, and I had to introduce myself, to tell him the name that he himself had given me.

  And though his old, time-battered, stained and faded prayer book lay always on the table beside his bed, and he took great comfort in holding it and having me read aloud from it, the inscription he had himself written on the day of my birth—Amy Robsart, beloved daughter of John Robsart, knight, was born on the 7th day of June in the Blessed Year of Our Lord 1532—no longer meant anything to him. He didn’t realize it had been his own hand that had written these words or know who the people therein named were; his own name as well as my own were now strangers foreign to him.

  Robert had no sympathy; he saw only that my father had “turned idiot” and exclaimed in vexation and contempt, “He’s no use to me now!” as though my father’s influence as a landowner and great man amongst the Norfolk gentry, Justice of the Peace, and former Sheriff, and what honors he might procure for or share with his son-in-law were all that mattered. I wept, but Robert didn’t care; he turned his back on me, and his eyes and his steps firmly toward the court. Father and I were of no use or interest to him anymore.

  Sometimes, to my shame, for it only dug deeper furrows into his brow and sorely confused and distressed my father, I broke down in tears and sobbed because he did not know me. “It’s me, your Amy, Father! You must remember me—you must! You’re the only one who ever truly loved me! And I need that love more than ever now; please don’t you abandon me too! I need you!” But by the next time he saw me, he would have already forgotten my fit of despair and weeping and would be a
sking me my name again, eager to “make the acquaintance of such a pretty lass.”

  But a trace of his old wisdom still remained, like a seed planted very, very deep in the soil of his mind, and sometimes he would make some apt observation, such as, “Your eyes are so sad, even though your lips are trying hard to keep smiling.” And many a time he would ask me, “Why are you not married yet, a pretty lass like you?” How could I break his heart and tell him the sorry truth about my marriage, one I had made against his better judgment? Even though he would forget it within moments, how could I for even an instant break the heart of the only one who ever truly loved me? So I just shrugged my shoulders and smiled and said I hoped someday to find a man who would love me even half as much as my dear father did. That pleased him, and he would always smile, pat my hand, and say, “You’re a good lass, and your father’s a lucky man, and so will be the man who marries you.” And I was so glad that someone saw some good in me, someone thought me worthy, that it was all I could do not to weep and fall down on my knees and kiss his hands in humble, loving gratitude.

  When my stepsisters—Anna and Frances—came ’round to sit and gossip and sew and pass the comfit box around with Mother as she held court in her bedroom each afternoon in her lace cap and one or another of her pretty damask bed gowns, they were full of advice on what I should and should not do. It was always, “If I were you, Amy, I would ...” They were always so quick to tell me how I was at fault, to make me feel that I could do nothing right. They boasted proudly about how they managed their own husbands quite nicely and, even though the men did not realize it, bent them to their own will. “A clever woman knows how to manage a man,” Anna said. And Frances agreed, “Any woman can be a wife, but it takes brains to be a good one and not let your husband get the better of you, to put your own ideas into his head and make him think they were his all along and praise him to the skies for having thought of it.” Yet whenever Robert came for one of his rare visits, they treated him like a king, fawning over him, scurrying about to satisfy his least little whim or want, and curtsied so low, they nearly banged their noses on the floor; in their eyes he could do no wrong, and the fault was entirely my own. “She’s so far beneath him,” I once heard Frances say and Mother and Anna agree. Even my own mother thought I wasn’t good enough for Robert.