“If he had come for me when he had promised, I would have married him. I gave my word,” Elizabeth said lightly, secure in the knowledge that he would not come now, and that if he did, Robert would think of some way out of it.

But Kat Ashley, Mary Sidney, and all the court were right: he would not come now. The ambassador, deeply offended, asked to be recalled, and wrote to his master that he thought the whole episode of Lady Sidney coming to him and begging him to propose once more to the queen had been nothing more than a plot to take the attention from the clandestine love affair which was notorious once more throughout England and throughout Europe. He wrote that the queen had become a young woman inured to shame, corrupted without hope, and that he could recommend no honorable man to marry her, let alone a prince. She was living as a whore to a married man and their only way out was a semi-legal divorce, or the death of his wife: which was hardly likely.

Cecil, reading the first draft of this letter, retrieved by Cecil’s agent from the ambassador’s kindling paper basket, thought that his foreign policy lay in ruins, that England’s safety could not be guaranteed, and that the Queen of England had run mad for lust and would lose the war in Scotland and then her head, and all for a smile from a dark- eyed man.


But when Elizabeth summoned Cecil by name he came to her at once.

“You were right, I am sure of it now,” she said quietly. “I have found the courage you wanted me to find. I am quite decided on war.”

Cecil glanced past her to where Sir Robert leaned against the shutters of the window, apparently absorbed in a game of bowls taking place in the cold garden below.

So we have the benefit of your advice, do we? And you, in your wisdom, have decided to adopt a policy I have been begging her to deploy for months. Aloud, Cecil asked: “What has Your Grace decided?”

“We shall invade Scotland and defeat the French,” she said calmly.

Cecil bowed, hiding his sense of intense relief. “I shall see that the moneys are raised and the army mustered,” he said. “You will want to meet with the Privy Council and issue a proclamation of war.”

Elizabeth glanced toward Robert. Minutely, he nodded his head. “Yes,” she said.

Cecil, too wise to object to advice that agreed with his own, merely bowed again.

“And Cecil, you will be my Lord Secretary again, won’t you? Now that I have taken your advice?”

“What of the archduke?” he asked.

Robert, at the window, recognized at once that the question was not as irrelevant as it seemed, striking as it did at the very heart of what he was doing there, within earshot of the queen and her most trusted advisor, nodding through her decisions as if he were her husband and king-consort. But this time, the queen did not even look at Robert.

“I shall be betrothed to the archduke as soon as he comes to England,” she said. “I know that the alliance with Spain is more vital than ever.”

“You know very well that he will not come,” Cecil said flatly. “You know that his ambassador is leaving London.”

Robert levered himself up from the shutter. “Doesn’t matter,” he said briefly to Cecil. “King Philip of Spain will stand her ally against France, marriage or no marriage. He cannot risk the French creating a kingdom in England. Their borders would run from Perth to the Mediterranean; they would destroy Spain after they had enslaved us.”

You think so, do you? Cecil demanded silently. And I am to save this kingdom for your bastards to inherit, am I?

“What matters now,” Dudley ruled, “is that we call up the men and arm them. The survival of the kingdom and the queen herself depends on swift action. We are looking to you, Cecil.”


That night Cecil worked furiously, sending out the hundreds of instructions that were needed to recruit, arm, and supply the army that must march north at once. He wrote to Lord Clinton, the High Admiral, to say that the navy must intercept the French fleet in the North Sea, they must prevent at all costs the French reinforcements landing in Scotland, but they must destroy his letter and seemingly attack on their own initiative. He wrote to his spies with the Scots, and to his men positioned at Berwick and to his most secret correspondents at the court of the queen regent, Mary of Guise, to say that at last the Queen of England had found a warlike resolution, and that England was to defend the Lords Protestant of Scotland, and her own borders, and that he needed the fullest information and at once.

Cecil worked so speedily and so efficiently that when the Privy Council met, a few days later, in the last days of February, and the queen announced that, on reflection, she had changed her mind, and that since the risk was too great, there would be no venture in Scotland, he apologized but said it was too late.

“You will recall the fleet,” she commanded, white to her ruff.

Cecil spread his hands. “They have sailed,” he said. “With orders to attack.”

“Bring back my army!”

He shook his head. “They are marching north, recruiting as they go. We are on a war footing; we cannot reverse the decision.”

“We cannot go to war with the French!” she almost screamed at him.

The Privy Councillors bowed their heads to the table. Cecil alone faced her. “The die is already cast,” he said. “Your Grace, we are at war. England is at war with France. God help us.”


Spring 1560

ROBERT DUDLEY came to Stanfield Hall in March, a bad month for traveling on ill-maintained roads, and arrived chilled and bad-tempered.

No one was waiting for him; he had sent no warning that he would be coming, and Amy, a reluctant listener to the constant rumors that said that he and the queen were once more inseparable, hardly expected ever to see him again.

As soon as the horses clattered into the yard Lady Robsart came to find her.

“He’s here!” she said coldly.

Amy leapt to her feet. “He” could only ever mean one man at Stanfield Hall. “My lord Robert?”

“His men are unsaddling in the yard.”

Amy trembled as she stood. If he had come back to her, after their last parting when she had insisted that she would always be his wife, it could mean only one thing: that he had finished with Elizabeth and wanted to reconcile with his wife. “He is here?” she said again, as if she could not believe it.

Lady Robsart smiled wryly at her stepdaughter in the shared triumph of women over men. “It looks as if you have won,” she said. “He is here and looking very cold and sorry for himself.”

“Then he must come in!” Amy exclaimed and dashed toward the stairs. “Tell Cook he’s here, and send word to the village that he will need a couple of hens and someone must slaughter a cow.”

“A fatted calf, why not?” Lady Robsart said under her breath; but she went to do her stepdaughter’s bidding.

Amy dashed down the stairs and flung open the front door. Robert, travel-stained and weary, walked up the short flight of steps, and Amy stepped into his arms.

From old habit he held her close to him, and Amy, feeling his arms come around her, and that familiar touch of his hand on her waist and the other on her shoulder blade, leaned her head against his warm, sweat-smelling neck and knew that he had come home to her at last, and that despite it all, all of it, she would forgive him as easily as accepting his kiss.

“Come in, you must be half frozen,” she said, drawing him into the hall. She threw logs on the fire and pressed him into her father’s heavy carved chair. Lady Robsart came in with hot ale and cakes from the kitchen and dipped a curtsy.

“Good day to you,” she said neutrally. “I have sent your men to find beds in the village. We cannot accommodate such a large company here.”

To Amy she remarked, “Hughes says he has some well-hung venison that he can let us have.”

“I don’t wish to put you out,” Robert said politely, as if he had not once cursed her to her face.

“How could you put us out?” Amy demanded. “This is my home; you are always welcome here. There is always a place for you here.”

Robert said nothing at the thought of Lady Robsart’s cold house being their home, and her ladyship took herself out of the room to see about beds, and a pudding.

“My lord, it is so good to see you.” Amy put another log on the fire. “I shall get my maid Mrs. Pirto to lay out your linen; the shirt you left here last time is all mended, you can’t see the darn, I did it so carefully.”

“Thank you,” he said awkwardly. “Surely Mrs. Pirto does the mending for you?”

“I like to do your linen myself,” Amy said. “Shall you want to wash?”

“Later,” he said.

“Only I will have to warn Cook, to heat the water.”

“Yes, I know. I lived here long enough.”

“You were hardly here at all! And anyway, things are much better now.”

“Well, in any case I remember that you cannot have a jug of hot water without mentioning it first thing in the morning on the third Sunday in the month.”

“It’s just that we have a small fireplace and…”

“I know,” he said wearily. “I remember all about the small fireplace.”

Amy fell silent. She did not dare ask him the one thing that she wanted to know: how long he would stay with her. When he broodingly watched the fire in silence she put on another log and they both watched the sparks fly up the dark chimney.

“How was your journey?”

“All right.”

“Which horse did you bring?”

“Blithe, my hunter,” he said, surprised.