The Queen was sorry and mourned for him. "I shall miss my Moor," she said. "Aye, miss him sadly. He was a good servant to me and I did not always treat him kindly, but he knew well that my respect for him went deep, and I was not the ungrateful mistress I might sometimes have appeared to be. I hear there is very little left for his poor widow and his girls."

After that she took a little interest in Frances and made her sit and talk to her. This had a rather unfortunate sequel because Frances quickly became pregnant.

The Queen was very observant of her women; she seemed to have an extra sense where their romantic attachments were concerned.

Frances herself told me what happened.

The Queen never minced her words and it often seemed that she tried to remind people of her father Henry VIII by a certain masculine coarseness.

She prodded Frances in the stomach and demanded to know whether she carried anything there which a virtuous widow should not. Frances was not the most subtle of women and she immediately flushed scarlet, so that the Queen knew her suspicions were correct.

That extraordinary interest in the sexual activities of those about her, which could flare into sudden anger, bewildered many. She behaved as though the act of love fascinated her while it disgusted her.

Frances said she received a sharp nip in the arm with a demand to explain by whom she was pregnant.

For all her quietness, Frances had dignity; she lifted her head and said: "My husband."

"Your husband!" cried the Queen. "I do not recall anyone's asking my permission to marry you."

"Madam, I did not think I was of sufficient importance to make that necessary."

"You are the daughter of the Moor and I always had a regard for him. Now he is dead your welfare is more than ever my concern. He married you in secret to Philip Sidney and excused himself with talk of no importance! I rated him sharply then, and you knew it. And have I not kept you here beside me since he died!"

"Yes, Madam, you have been most gracious to me."

"So ... you thought fit to marry. Come. Tell me who he is."

Frances was terrified. She could only burst into tears at which the Queen's suspicions were aroused. Frances asked leave to retire that she might compose herself.

"You will remain," said the Queen. "Now tell me when you married, and I'll swear it was that the child you carry might be born in time. I tell you this: I will not have this lewd behavior in my Court. I do not treat this matter lightly." She then took Frances by the arm and shook her roughly, and when Frances fell to her knees she received a blow at the side of her face to remind her that she was withholding information which the Queen was demanding.

Frances was aware that sooner or later she would have to reveal her husband's name and that the Queen's fury would be great. She was old enough to remember what had happened when Leicester had married me.

Because of Frances's obvious fear, the Queen began to grow suspicious.

"Come, girl," she cried. "Who is your partner in this? Tell me, or I'll beat it out of you."

"Madam, we have long loved each other. Ever since my first husband was so cruelly wounded ..."

"Yes, yes. Who? Tell me, girl. By God's blood, if you do not obey me, you will be sorry. I promise you that."

"It is my Lord Essex," said Frances.

She said that the Queen stared at her as though struck dumb, and forgetting she was in the presence of her sovereign, from which only permission should release her, so great was her terror that she rose to her knees and stumbled from the room, while the Queen just stood there staring at her.

As she ran away she heard the Queen's voice, raised and deadly.

"Send for Essex. Bring him here without delay."

Frances came straight to me at Leicester House in a state of collapse. I got her to bed while she told me what had happened.

Penelope, who was at Court, came shortly after her.

"All hell has broken loose," she said. "Essex is with the Queen and they are shouting at each other. God knows what will be the outcome. People are saying that before the day is out Essex will be in the Tower."

We waited for the storm to burst. I remembered so vividly the time when Simier had told the Queen that Leicester was married. She had wanted to send him to the Tower and had only been restrained from doing so by the Earl of Sussex. But she had relented. I did not know how deep her affection went for my son, but I did know that it was of a different nature from that which she had borne my husband. That had gone deep, entwined with the roots of her girlhood. I believed that which she bore my son was a more frail plant and I trembled for him. He would lack the tact of Leicester. He would show bravado where Leicester would have brought out his considerable diplomacy.

I waited at Leicester House with Penelope and Frances. In due course Essex came to us.

"Well," he said, "she is furious with me. She calls me ungrateful, reminding me that she brought me up and can as easily cast me down."

"A favorite theme," I commented. "Leicester heard it again and again throughout his life. She did not suggest sending you to the Tower?"

"I think she is on the point of doing so. I told her that much as I revered her, I was a man who would live his own life and marry where he chose. She said she hated deceit and when her subjects kept secrets from her it was because they knew they had something to hide, to which I replied that, knowing her uncertain temper, I had had no wish to arouse it."

"Robin!" I cried aghast. "You never did!"

"Something of the nature," he said carelessly. "And I demanded to know why she was so against my marriage, at which she replied that if I had come to her in a seemly manner and told her what I wished, she would have given the matter her consideration."

"And refused you permission!" I cried.

"And that would have meant that I should then have been obliged to disobey you instead of merely displeasing you."

"One day," I told him, "you will go too far."

I was to remember those words later, and even then they sounded like a tocsin ringing in advance to warn me of danger.

"Well," he went on, swaggering a little before us, "she told me that it was not only the secrecy which angered her but that I, for whom she had had grand plans, should have married beneath my station."

I turned to Frances, understanding her feelings. Had it not happened once to me? I wanted to comfort her and I said reassuringly: "She would have said that of anyone unless she were royal. I remember how she was ready—or said she was—to consider a princess for Leicester."

"It was an excuse to hide her fury," said Essex complacently. "She would have been mad with rage whomsoever I had married."

"The point is," said Penelope, "what happens now?"

"I'm in disgrace. Cast out of Court. 'You will want to dance attendance on your wife,' she said, 'so we shall not be seeing you at Court for some time.' I bowed and left her. She is in a vile mood. I do not envy those who serve her at close quarters."

I wondered how much he cared. He did not appear to in the least at that moment, which was comforting for Frances.

"Think how much he loves you," I pointed out to her, "to incur the Queen's displeasure for your sake." Those words were like an echo coming down through the years—a repetition of the dance—with Essex the Queen's partner now, instead of Leicester. There was the usual buzz of speculation at Court. Essex is out.

What excitement for the others—men like Raleigh, who had always been at odds with him, and the old favorites. Hatton perked up considerably. Poor Hatton, he was showing his years, which was particularly noticeable in a man who had been so active and at one time the best dancer at Court. He still indulged and even took the floor with the Queen, as graceful as ever. Essex had outshone them all; and it was the younger ones like Raleigh and Charles Blount who stood to gain from his disgrace.

Poor Hatton did not benefit long from the decline of Essex. He became more and more weak during the days that followed and before long retired to his house in Ely Place, where he suffered acutely from an internal disease and died by the end of that year.

The Queen was melancholy. She hated death, and no one was allowed to mention it in her hearing. It must have been sad for her to see her old friends dropping from the tree of life like so many overripe plums, riddled by insects and disease.

It made her turn more and more to the young.

When Frances gave birth to a son we called him Robert after his father. The Queen relented. Essex might come back to Court, but she did not wish to see his wife.

So the Queen and my son were good friends again. She kept him by her side; she danced with him; they laughed together and he delighted her with his frank conversation. They played cards until early morning, and it was said that she was restless when he was not beside her.

Oh yes, it was like the old pattern with Leicester but, alas, where Leicester had learned his lessons, Essex never would.

I had at last accepted that fact that the Queen would never forgive me for having married Leicester and that I should always be an outside observer of the events which were shaping our country. That was hard for a woman of my nature to accept; but I was not one to sit down and mope. I suppose like my son and daughter I would fight to the end. I always felt, though, that if only I could have once met the Queen and talked to her, we could have repressed our resentment and I could have amused her in the way I had so long ago; then we could have come to some understanding. I was no longer Lettice Dudley but Lettice Blount. True I had a young husband who adored me, and that might displease her. She would think I ought to be punished for what I had done. I wondered if she had heard rumors about my having helped Leicester out of this world. Surely not. She would never have let that rest.