"My father forced you to make it legal, remember?"

"I wanted to marry you. I loved no one as I loved you."

"And then you proceeded to desert me."

"Only for the Queen."

I laughed at that. "There were three of us, Robert—two women and one man. It makes no difference that one was a queen."

"It makes all the difference. I was not her lover."

"She did not let you enter her bed. I know that. But you were her lover, nonetheless, and she your mistress. Therefore do not stand in judgment on others."

He took me by the shoulders; his eyes blazed and I thought he was going to kill me. There was violence in his eyes. I wished I could see what else. He was making plans, I knew.

He said suddenly: "We shall be leaving tomorrow."

"We ... ?" I stammered.

"You and I and your paramour among others."

"Where shall we go?"

A wry smile touched his lips. "To Kenilworth," he said.

"I thought you were going to take the baths."

"Later," he said. "First to Kenilworth."

"Why do you not go straight to the baths? That was what your mistress ordered you to do. I can tell you, you look sick ... sick unto death."

"I feel so," he answered. "But first I would go to Kenilworth with you."

Then he left me.

I was afraid. I had seen the look in his eyes when he had said Kenilworth. Why Kenilworth? The place where we had met and loved wildly, where we had had our secret meetings, where he had made up his mind that however he angered the Queen he must marry me.

"Kenilworth," he had said, with a cruel smile about his mouth; and I knew some dark plan was in his mind. What would he do to me at Kenilworth?

I went to bed and dreamed of Amy Robsart. I was lying in a bed and saw someone lurking in the shadows of the room ... men who began to creep silently towards the bed. It was as though voices were whispering to me: "Cumnor Place . .  Kenilworth ..."

I awoke, trembling with fear, and all my senses told me that Robert was planning some terrible revenge.

The next day we left for Kenilworth. I rode beside my husband and, glancing sideways at him, I noticed the deathly pallor of his skin beneath the network of red veins on his cheeks. His elegant ruff, his velvet doublet, his cap with the curling feather could not hide the change in him. There was no doubt that he was a very sick man. He was approaching sixty and he had lived dangerously; he had denied himself very little of what the world calls the good things of life. It was now apparent.

I said: "My lord, we should go to Buxton without delay, for it would seem you are in need of the beneficial baths."

He answered abruptly: "We are going to Kenilworth."

But we did not reach Kenilworth. The day was coming to a close and I saw that he could scarcely sit his horse. We stayed at Rycott, the home of the Norris family, and he retired to his bed and stayed there for several days. I attended him. He did not mention Christopher Blount. He wrote to the Queen, though, and I wondered what he said to her and whether he would tell her of my infidelity and what effect it would have on her if he did. I was sure that it would enrage her, for although she deplored my marriage, she would take it as an insult to herself that I preferred another man.

I was able to read that letter before it was dispatched. There was nothing in it but the protestations of his love and devotion to his goddess.

I remember it now, word for word.

I must humbly beseech your Majesty to pardon your poor old servant [he had drawn the two "o's" in the word "poor" as though they were eyes by putting dots in the middle of the circle to remind her of that affectionate nickname] to be thus bold in thus sending to know how my gracious lady doeth and what ease of her late pains she finds, being the chiefest thing in the world I do pray for, for her to have good health and long life. For my own poor case, I continue still your medicine and find it amends much better than with any other thing that hath been given me. Thus hoping to find perfect cure at the bath, with the continuance of my wonted prayer for your Majesty's most happy preservation, I humbly kiss your foot, from your old lodging at Rycott this Thursday morning ready to take my journey. By your Majesty's most faithful and obedient servant.

                                                               R. Leicester

He had added a postscript thanking her for a gift she had sent him and which had followed us to Rycott. No, there was nothing there about my misdemeanor; and of course he had written it from Rycott because it was a place where, in the past, she and he had stayed often. Here in the park they had ridden and hunted together; here in the great hall they had feasted and drunk and played at being lovers.

I told myself I was justified in taking a lover. Had not my husband been the Queen's lover all these years!

I sent for Christopher and we met in a small chamber apart from the rest of the household.

"He knows," I told him.

He had guessed it. He said he did not care, but that was bravado. He was trembling in his boots.

"What do you think he will do?" he asked, trying to appear nonchalant.

"I know not, but I am watchful. Take care how you go. Do not be alone if you can help it. He has his murderers everywhere."

"I shall be ready," said Christopher.

"I think he will revenge himself on me," I told him, which threw Christopher in an agony of fear, and gratified me.

We left Rycott and traveled through Oxfordshire. We were not very far from Cumnor Place, I realized, and there seemed something significant in that.

"We should stay the night at our Cornbury house," I told Leicester. "You are unfit to go farther just yet."

He agreed.

It was a dark and rather gloomy place—a ranger's lodge really, in the middle of a wood. His servants helped him to the paneled room which had quickly been made ready and he sank onto the bed.

I said we must stay there until the Earl was well enough to continue his journey. He needed a rest, for even the journey from Rycott to Cornbury had exhausted him.

He agreed that he must rest and was soon deep in sleep.

I sat by his bed. I did not have to feign anxiety, for I was indeed anxious to know what was brewing in his mind. I knew by the manner in which he pretended to be unconcerned that he was planning something which affected me.

There was a hushed atmosphere in the house. I could not rest. I was afraid of the shadows which came with the darkness. The leaves were beginning to bronze, for September had come; the wind had brought many of them down and the forest was becoming littered with them. I gazed out of the windows at those trees and listened to the wind moaning through their branches; and I wondered whether Amy had felt a similar sense of brooding during her last days at Cumnor Place.

On the third of September the sun was shining brightly and he rallied a little. In the late afternoon he called me to him and told me that we would resume our journey the next day if the improvement persisted. He said we would sort out our differences and come to an understanding. We were too close, he said, to part while there was life in us.

Those words sounded ominous; indeed his eyes glowed with a feverish intensity.

He felt so much better that he needed food, and he believed that when he had eaten his strength would have revived sufficiently for him to continue.

"Should you not go with all speed to the baths?" I asked.

He looked at me intently and said: "We'll see."

He ate in his bedchamber, being too tired to come down to the dining hall. He said he had a good wine which he wanted me to try with him.

All my senses were alert. It was like a warning signal jangling through my mind. I must not drink this good wine. There was not a man in the whole of the country more skilled in poisoning than Dr. Julio, who worked assiduously for his master.

I must not drink that wine.

Of course he might have no intention of poisoning me. He might have thought of a revenge other than death. If he had kept me a prisoner at Kenilworth, perhaps giving out to the world that I had lost my reason, that would have hurt me more than sudden death. But I must be watchful.

I went to his chamber. On a table was a jug of wine with three goblets—one had been filled with wine, the other two were empty. He lay back on his pillows; his face was very red and I think he had already drunk more than was wise.

"Is this the wine I am to try?" I asked.

He opened his eyes and nodded. I put it to my lips but I would not take any. That would be folly.

"It's good," I said.

"I knew you would think so." I fancied I heard triumph in his voice. I set the goblet on the table and went to his bed.

"Robert, you are very sick," I said. "You will have to give up some of your duties. You have done too much."

"The Queen will never allow it," he replied.

"She is concerned for your health."

He smiled and said: "Yes, she always was." His voice was tender, and I felt a sudden wave of anger to think of those two aging lovers who had never consummated their love and, now that they were old and wrinkled, still glorified it or pretended to.

What right had a husband blatantly to admire a woman other than his wife—even if she was the Queen?

My love affair with Christopher was justified.

He closed his eyes and I went to the table. With my back to him I poured the wine, which I had been afraid to drink, into another goblet. It was one which he used because it had been a gift from the Queen. I went back to the bed.