She dropped her head to her hands. “This pain in my breast which throbs all the time is my wound of grief,” she said. “It is like a spear thrust into my heart. I have to forgive him to make it heal. Every time I pluck at it with my jealousy the pain breaks out afresh. I will make myself forgive him. I will even make myself forgive her.”

She lifted her head from her hands and looked toward the altar. Faintly against the stone she could see the outline where the crucifix had hung. She closed her eyes and prayed to it as if it were still there. “I will not agree to the heresy of divorce. Even if he was to come back to me and say that she had changed her mind and she wanted them to marry, even then I would not consent to it. God joined Robert and me together; no one can put us apart. I know that. He knows that. Probably even she, in her poor sinful heart, knows that.”


In his grand rooms in Whitehall Cecil was laboring over the writing of a letter. It was addressed to the queen, but it was not in his usual brisk style of numbered points. It was a far more formal letter, composed by him for the Scottish Protestants to send to her. The circuitous route of the letter, from Cecil to Scotland, copied by the Scots lords in their own hands and sent back south urgently to the queen, was justified in Cecil’s mind because something had to shake Elizabeth into sending an English army into Scotland.

The French garrison at Leith had burst out of the siege and defeated the Scottish Protestants encamped before the castle. In the horror of his defeat the Earl of Arran, Cecil’s great hope in Scotland, was behaving most oddly: alternately raving with rage and lapsing into silence and tears. No feats of heroic leadership could be expected from poor James Hamilton, and no triumphant marriage with Elizabeth; the poor sweet-faced young man was clearly half mad and his defeat was pushing him over the brink. The Scottish lords were leaderless, on their own. Without Elizabeth’s support they were friendless too. What was a retreat now would be a rout when the French reinforcements landed, and Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, newly arrived from Paris, frantic with fear, warned that the French fleet was massing in all the Normandy ports, the troops were armed and would set sail as soon as there was a favorable wind. The ambassador swore that the French had no doubt that they would first conquer Scotland, and then march on England. They had no doubt at all that they would win.Your Grace, Cecil wrote for the Scots.      As a fellow religionist, as an ally who fears the power of the French, as a neighbor and a friend, we beg you to come to our aid. If you do not support us, we stand alone against the usurping French, and there can be no doubt that after Scotland falls, the French will invade England. On that day, you will wish that you had helped us now, for there will be none of us alive to help you.      We are not disloyal to Queen Mary of Scotland; we are defying her wicked advisors, the French, not her. We are defying the regent Mary of Guise who is ruling in the place of our true Queen Mary. The regent’s countrymen, French troops, are already engaged, any treaty you have with the French is already broken since they have taken up arms against us, on our soil. The regent’s family are our sworn enemies, and yours.       If we had appealed like this to your father, he would have defended us and so united the kingdom; it was his great plan. Please, be your father’s true daughter and come to our aid.       You can add what you like, Cecil wrote in a postscript to the Scots lords, but take care that you do not sound like rebels against a legitimate ruler; she will not support an outright rebellion. If the French have murdered any women and children by the time you come to write, you should tell her of it, and do not stint in the telling. Do not mention money; give her good reason to think that it will be a swift and cheap campaign. I leave you to tell her the current situation when this letter comes to you and you copy it and send it on. God speed, and God help you.

And God help us all, he said fearfully to himself as he folded it up and sealed it in three places with a blank seal. He had left it unsigned. Cecil only rarely put his name to anything.


A new masque, planned by Robert, was to have the ever-popular theme of Camelot; but not even he, with his determined charm, could put much joy in it.

The queen played the spirit of England, and sat on the throne while the young ladies of her chamber danced before her and the players came later with a specially written play to celebrate the greatness of Arthur’s England. There was an anti-masque of characters who threatened the golden glory of the round table, let no one doubt that one of the signs of a great kingdom was the existence of its enemies, but they were thrown down without much difficulty; in Robert’s fictional England there was no sign of Elizabeth’s constant terror of war.

Elizabeth, looking around the court through the dancers, saw Robert and made herself look past him. Robert, standing near enough to the throne to be summoned, should she want to speak to him, saw her dark eyes go by him and knew that he had been caught gazing at her.

Like a greensick boy, he said angrily to himself.

She looked once directly at him and gave him a faint smile, as if they were ghosts already, as if the shade of Elizabeth had dimly seen, through mist, the young man she had loved as a boy; and then she turned her head to Caspar von Breuner, the archduke’s ambassador, the ally that she must have, the husband she must marry, to ask him when he thought the archduke would arrive in England.

The ambassador was not to be diverted. Not even Elizabeth, with all her charm deployed, could bring a smile to his face. Finally he rose from his seat, pleading ill health.

“See the trouble you have caused?” Norfolk said sharply to Dudley.

“I?”

“Baron von Breuner thinks my cousin the queen unlikely to marry while she is openly in love with another man, and has advised the archduke not to come to England yet.”

“I am the queen’s loyal friend, as you know,” Dudley said disdainfully. “And I want nothing but what is best for her.”

“You are a damned aspiring dog,” Norfolk swore at him. “And you have stood in her light so that no prince in Europe will have her. D’you think they don’t hear the gossip? D’you think that they don’t know that you are all over her like the Sweat? D’you think they believe that you and she have called it off now? Everyone thinks that you have just stepped back for her to pick her cuckold, and no man of honor will have her.”

“You insult her; I will see you for it,” Dudley said, white with anger.

“I may insult her, but you have ruined her,” Norfolk threw back at him.

“Because some archduke won’t come to pay court?” Dudley demanded. “You are neither a true friend nor a true Englishman if you think she should marry a foreigner. Why should we have another foreign prince on the English throne? What good did Philip of Spain do us?”

“Because she must be married,” Norfolk said in a heat of rage. “And to royal blood, at any rate to a better man than a dog like you.”

“Gentlemen.” The cool tones of Sir Francis made them turn. “Noblemen indeed. The queen is looking your way; you are breaking up the pleasant harmony of the feast.”

“Tell him,” Norfolk said, pushing past Dudley. “I am beyond listening to this nonsense while my kinswoman is ruined and the country sinks without allies.”

Robert let him go. Despite himself he glanced at the throne. Elizabeth was looking toward him. The ambassador had left and in her concern for what her uncle was saying to the man she loved, she had not noticed even his farewell bow.


The Scots Protestants’ letter, duly travel-stained and authentically rewritten, came to the queen’s hand at the end of November. Cecil brought it to her and laid it on her desk as she was prowling around the room, unable to concentrate on anything.

“Are you ill?” he asked, looking at the pallor of her skin and her restlessness.

“Unhappy,” Elizabeth said shortly.

That damned Dudley, he thought to himself, and moved the letter a little closer so that she would open it.

She read it slowly.

“This gives you cause to send an army to Scotland,” Cecil said to her. “This is an appeal by the united lords of Scotland for your help in resisting a usurping power: the French. No one can say you are invading for your own ends. No one can say that you are overthrowing a legitimate queen. This is your invitation from the legitimate lords, citing their justifiable grievances. You can say ‘yes.’”

“No,” she said nervously. “Not yet.”

“We have sent funds,” Cecil enumerated. “We have sent observers. We know that the Scots lords will fight well. We even know that they can defeat Mary of Guise; they threw her back right to the very shore of the sea at Leith. We know that the French will come, but they have not yet set sail. They are waiting for the weather to change. Only the wind stands between us and invasion. Only the very air stands between us and disaster. We know this is our moment. We have to take it.”

She rose from her desk. “Cecil, half the Privy Council warn me that we are certain to lose. Lord Clinton, the High Admiral, says he cannot guarantee that our navy could hold off a French fleet; they have better ships and better guns. The Earl of Pembroke, the Marquess of Winchester advise me against going into Scotland; your own brother-in-law, Nicholas Bacon, says the risk is too great. Caspar von Breuner warns me in secret that although he and the emperor are my friends, they are certain that we will lose. The French court laughs out loud at the thought of us trying to make war against them. They find it laughable that we should even dream of it. Everyone I ask tells me that we are certain to lose.”