Robert recoiled. “What?”

She was on her feet, squaring up to him like a fighter. “I have to play myself like a piece in a chess game,” she panted. “I am my own pawn. I have to keep the Spanish on our side, I have to frighten the French, I have to persuade Arran to get himself up to Scotland and claim his own, and I have nothing to bring to bear on any of these but my own weight. All I can promise any of them is myself. And …and…and…”

“And what?”

“I am not my own!”

He was silenced. “You are not?”

Elizabeth gave a sobbing breath. “I am yours, heart and soul. God knows, as God is my witness, I am yours, Robert…”

He reached out for her, took her hands, started to draw her close.

“But…”

He hesitated. “But what?”

“I have to play them, Robert,” she said. “I have to make them think that I will marry. I have to look as if I will take Archduke Ferdinand; I have to give Arran hope.”

“And what d’you think happens to me?” he asked her.

“You?”

“Yes. When you are known to be spending hours of time with Pickering, when the court is abuzz with the word that you will marry the archduke.”

“What happens to you?” She was genuinely puzzled.

“Then my enemies mass against me. Your kinsman Norfolk, your advisor Cecil, Francis Bacon, his brother Nicholas, Catherine Knollys, Pickering, Arundel, they hunt in a pack like hounds waiting to bring down a stag. When you turn from me they know that their time has come. They will bring charges against me, pull me down, accuse me. You have raised me so high, Elizabeth, that I am envied now. The hour that you announce your betrothal to another man is the hour that I am ruined.”

She was aghast. “I did not know. You did not tell me.”

“How should I tell you?” he demanded. “I am not a child to run crying to my nurse because the other children threaten me. But it is true. The moment they know that you have turned from me to another man I am ruined or worse.”

“Worse?”

“Dead,” he said shortly. “Every day I half expect to be dragged into some dark alley and knifed.”

She looked up at him, still clinging to his hands. “My love, you know I would do anything to make you safe and keep you safe.”

“You cannot make me safe, unless you declare your love for me. Elizabeth, you know that I would do anything to love you and protect you. Marry me, for God’s sake, and let us have a child. Marriage and a son and heir will make us safer than any other way, and you will have me at your side forever. You need not play yourself like a pawn. You can be yourself, your dear, lovely self, and belong to no one but me.”

Elizabeth twisted her hands from him and turned away. “Robert, I am so afraid. If the French come into England from Scotland they will march through the northern kingdoms as welcome friends. Where can I stop them? Who can stop the French army? Mary lost us Calais and they still curse her name. What will they say of me if I lose Berwick? Or Newcastle? Or York? What if I lose London itself?”

“You won’t lose,” he urged her. “Marry me and I shall take an army north for you. I have fought the French before. I don’t fear them. I shall be the man to fight for you, my love. You need not beg for help from others; I am yours, heart and soul. All you have to do is trust yourself to me.”

Her hood had fallen back; she took the thick tresses of hair at her temples in her fists and pulled them, as if she hoped that pain would steady her thoughts. She gave a shuddering sob. “Robert, I am so afraid, and I don’t know what to do. Cecil says one thing, and Norfolk another, and the Earl of Arran is nothing but a pretty boy! I had hopes of him until I met him last night; but he is a child dressing up as a soldier. He is not going to save me! The French are coming, there is no doubt that they are coming, and I have to find an army, and find a fortune, and find a man to fight for England and I don’t know how to do it, or who to trust.”

“Me,” Robert said instantly. Roughly he pulled her into his arms, overwhelming her protests with his weight and his strength. “Trust me. Declare your love for me, marry me, and we will fight this together. I am your champion, Elizabeth. I am your lover. I am your husband. You can trust no one but me, and I swear I will keep you safe.”

She struggled in his grip, pulled her face free; he could hear only the word: “England?”

“I will keep England safe for you, for me, and for our son,” he swore. “I can do it for him, and I will do it for you.”


Amy, on the road again to Chislehurst, after a brief visit with Robert’s friends the Forsters at Cumnor Place, kept her rosary in her pocket and every time she had a jealous thought she put her hand to the beads and said a silent “Hail Mary.” Lizzie Oddingsell, watching her companion ride quietly through the dry August countryside at the end of a hard summer, wondered at the change in her. It was as if, under the burden of terrible uncertainty, she had grown from being a petulant child into a woman.

“Are you well, Amy?” she asked. “Not too tired? Not finding it too hot?”

Instinctively Amy’s hand went to her heart. “I am well,” she said.

“Do you have a pain in your breast?” Elizabeth asked.

“No. There is nothing wrong with me.”

“If you feel at all ill, we could call in at London on the way and see his lordship’s physician.”

“No!” Amy said hastily. “I don’t want to go to London without my lord’s invitation. He said we were to go to Chislehurst; there is no need for us to go through London.”

“I didn’t mean we should go to court.”

Amy flushed slightly. “I know you did not, Lizzie,” she said. “I am sorry. It is just that…” She broke off. “I believe that there is much talk in the country about Robert and the queen. I would not want him to think I was coming to London to spy on him. I would not want to look like a jealous wife.”

“No one could ever think you were that,” Lizzie said warmly. “You are the most tender-hearted and forgiving wife a man could wish for.”

Amy turned her head away. “Certainly, I love him,” she said in a very small voice. They rode on for a few more minutes. “And have you heard much gossip, Lizzie?” she asked very quietly.

“There is always gossip about a man like Sir Robert,” Lizzie said stoutly. “I wish I could have a shilling for every unfounded rumor I have heard about him; I would be a rich woman now. D’you remember what they said about him when he was with King Philip in the Netherlands? And how distressed you were when he came home with that French widow from Calais? But it all meant nothing, and nothing came of it.”

Amy’s hand went to the cool round beads of the rosary in her pocket. “But have you heard a rumor of him and the queen?” Amy pressed her friend.

“My sister-in-law told me that her cousin in London had said that the queen favors Sir Robert above any other, but there is nothing there that we did not know already,” Lizzie said. “They were friends in childhood, he is her Master of Horse. Of course they are friendly together.”

“She must be amusing herself,” Amy said bitterly. “She knows he is a married man, she knows that she has to marry the archduke, she is just enjoying the summer in his company.”

“Flighty,” Lizzie said, watching Amy’s face. “She is a flighty young woman. There was gossip enough about her in her girlhood. If you want to think of scandal—Elizabeth was it!”

Hidden by the flap of her pocket, Amy wrapped her rosary around her fingers. “It is not for us to judge,” she reminded herself. “It is my duty to stay loyal to my lord and wait for his return home.”

“She would do better to mind the affairs of state,” Lizzie Oddingsell volunteered. “They say there must be a war with the French and we are quite unprepared. She would do better to marry a good man who could run the kingdom safely for us all. Her sister married as soon as she came to the throne and chose a man who brought his own army.”

“It is not for me to judge,” Amy said, holding her beads. “But God guide her back to the path of right.”


Autumn 1559

THE COURT, newly arrived in September at one of Elizabeth’s favorite houses, Windsor Castle, started the preparations for her birthday celebrations. Robert planned a day of festivities with the queen awakened by choristers, a choreographed hunt in which huntsmen would pause to sing her praises, woodland nymphs would dance, and a tamed deer with a garland round its neck would lead the queen to a dinner laid out in the greenwood. That night there would be a great banquet, with dancing, singing, and a tableau depicting the Graces, with goddesses in attendance and Diana, symbolizing Elizabeth the huntress, taking the crown.

The ladies-in-waiting were to dance as goddesses and the maids-in-waiting were to be the Graces. “Which Grace am I?” Laetitia Knollys asked Robert as he allocated parts in a quiet corner of the queen’s presence chamber.

“If there was a Grace called Unpunctuality, you could be her,” he recommended. “Or if there was a Grace called Flirtation, you could be her.”

She shot him a look that was pure Boleyn: promising, provocative, irresistible. “I?” she said. “Do you call me flirtatious? Now that is praise indeed.”

“I meant it to be abuse,” he said, pinching her chin.

“From such a master at his trade it is a great compliment.”

He tapped her on the nose, as he would have reproved a kitten. “You are to be Chastity,” he said. “I could not resist it.”

She widened her slanting, dark eyes at him. “Sir Robert!” she pouted. “I do not know what I can have done to so offend you. First you call me unpunctual, then you call me flirtatious, and then you say that you could not resist giving me the part of Chastity. Have I annoyed your lordship?”