None But Elizabeth Read online

  In the gardens, Robert and Amy were joined by the man who was to marry them and who occupied the unusual position of chaplain, physician, and gardener to Edward Seymour. At this stage in the proceedings, Dr William Turner’s mind seemed to be upon caterpillars and blight, and he was examining the leaves of newly planted mulberry trees for signs of the enemy. Robert thought he probably saw every nasty garden worm wearing a papal tiara; he worked up so much spleen against either. Robert liked Dr Turner, he was outspoken, irascible, honest and talented. He had been Dean of Wells under King Henry, but had been deprived when he made the Deanery too hot to hold him because of his extreme Protestant views. Protector Seymour, being of rather similar views, had been the only lord willing to employ him, much to the advantage of the gardens at Syon.

  Robert began telling Amy the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, amazed to find that she had never heard it before. ‘They were going to meet by a mulberry tree, but when Thisbe came she met a lion with bloody jaws and she ran away. But she dropped her cloak and the lion worried it and stained it with blood. So when Pyramus arrived he thought she had been eaten, and threw himself on his sword. When Thisbe came back, she found him dead and fell on the sword too. It was their blood that gave the mulberries their dark colour.’

  Amy’s lip trembled and tears came to her eyes, so Robert hastily changed the subject and walked on towards the chapel. Inside it was all fresh whitewash, bare as a bone, except for texts from the scriptures written up on boards on the wall. This was how those of Dr Turner’s mind ordered their places of worship.

  The most important guest of all, the young King, arrived to see the bride and groom come out of the chapel man and wife, to the wheat thrown over them for luck and a large family. He was greeted by a crowd of children, singing.

  ‘Sing up heart, sing up heart, and sing no more down,

  For joy of King Edward, that weareth the crown.

  Ye children of England, for joy of the same,

  Take bow and shaft in hand, learn shooting to frame,

  That you another day may so do your part,

  As to serve your King as well with hands as with hearts!

  Sing up heart, sing up heart.’

  During which song young archers gave a display of shooting at the target with gilded arrows.

  The King smiled and stared, intense, and rather short-sighted. A being from another world, Robert thought, as he watched. Edward VI looked as if he had been grown in the dark under a forcing pot, a faery boy with long elfish ears and sharp chin and almost white eyelashes. He cannot be expected to live here, the fairies will take him back; Robert wondered why he should have such a whimsical thought. King Edward was not ailing, was reasonably well made for twelve, and though not an athlete like his rumbustious father was already taking part in manly sports. Too much learning. Too much Protector Seymour (or had been). Too many uncles. Robert’s own father would see things went more sensibly in future.

  Then the sports began. The King and the ladies watched from the green leafy bowers. There was tilting at the ring, wrestling, and such unskilled riotous things as pulling off the head of a live goose, hanging up by its feet. In the squawking and feather-flying, the men launched themselves at the flapping bird and often fell flat on their faces if they missed. But most applause was for a display of horsemanship by Robert the bridegroom himself, which had every lady present wishing she were the bride.

  Before they all sat down to dinner, a procession of serving men brought in the wedding cakes: huge, flat, platter-shapes, glistening with beaten egg and sugar, reaching from their chins to their knees, carried slung in snowy napkins big as sheets knotted at the back of their necks. Robert wondered whether if these cakes were dropped, they would not bowl across the grass like runaway cartwheels. As he wondered, his brother Guilford, with the devilment of fourteen, cut the knot of one of the napkins, and away the cake went, people shrieking and laughing in the chase, grabbing handfuls as it disintegrated in the grass.

  The cakes were followed by the rosemary garland, borne aloft in the gold vase, all its coloured ribbons streaming on the river breeze, and covered with tinkling spangles. Everyone cheered.

  In the middle of the feasting, Robert slipped a little poesy ring on Amy’s finger, nowhere near as grand as the wedding ring, or the ring the King had given her — worth £20. Robert reflected that John’s new wife, yesterday, had received a ring from the royal gift worth £40. But that was how it was for younger sons.

  ‘God above, increase our love,’ he said; and our fortune, he hoped.

  Afterwards the musicians struck up the dance round, ‘Hey jolly Robin!’ and Robert and Amy led the dancers, capering until her white satin shoes turned green from the grass, and his cheeks were as red as his own shoes. Amy’s curls and breasts bounced merrily.

  ‘Jolly Robin won’t stay long in Norfolk with Hob, Dick and Hick,’ grinned the bridegroom’s brother Ambrose.

  ‘A little time will be well spent. He’ll sit in Parliament for Norfolk soon, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said John smiling and drinking out of the indignant Ambrose’s cup because it was full and his own empty. Robert’s childhood pattern, apart from the omniscient genius of his father, had been his elder brother John. He was noble and accomplished, the most intellectually able of them all, ‘A very perfect gentle knight’.

  At the end of the dancing, in the June dusk, Robert was seized by his brothers and carried noisily off to Isleworth Ait at the bend of the Thames, aboard a boat with one oar, in a hilarious, lurching, splashing progress. There, on top of the knoll, he was crowned King of the castle, before he was brought back with even greater hilarity, and seen off to bed with Amy.

  Mr William Cecil, observer of both yesterday’s and today’s jollifications, wondered how long the ex-Protector Seymour would last at the hands of the bridegroom’s father. He feared that, in the end, Edward Seymour would lose his head. Mr Cecil steered a careful course of self-preservation. So did the Princess Elizabeth.

  *

  By March 1552, the King’s ‘sweet sister Temperance’ had regained much of her lost reputation, so that she was able to visit her brother at Whitehall in state, with an impressive retinue of several hundred. It was three years since the beheading of the Lord Admiral.

  One of those who saw her ride from St James’s Palace, through the park to the great gate of Whitehall, was Lord Robert Dudley, now one of the Gentlemen of the King’s Privy Chamber. The Princess Elizabeth rode exceptionally well for a woman, mounted on a mettlesome dapple grey. She would have made a flamboyantly stylish picture if she had been dressed like the other ladies of rank around her. But she wore a mole-grey velvet gown with a kirtle of crane-coloured damask and huge sleeves of speckled grey lynx fur, a flat grey riding cap like a marmalade tart hiding every thread of her vivid hair. Not a single jewel that he could see. White lawn at wrist and throat. All grey, ugh! Robert disapproved. The nun of Hatfield, well! He had not seen Elizabeth for nearly four years. Their rare visits to court had not coincided. She was overplaying Lady Temperance; no one who knew her well would believe it. Would the King?

  The King’s court had changed its coat in the last six months. Edward Seymour of the long nose, who had been Protector, had gone to the block, because no one wanted to save him. Robert’s father had sole charge of the King. By treating him as a King who was also a boy, as his own sons had been boys, John Dudley had allowed him more of a life worth living.

  Those who called Robert’s father Jack Upstart had been given their own comeuppance. John Dudley was now a Duke, not of Dunghill as some had suggested, but Duke of an entirely new dukedom — Northumberland, a title which by its very name suggested the prestige of the old Percy earldom (now in abeyance). But a Duke was better than an Earl any day.

  How things could change in less than two years, since his own wedding at Syon, since John’s wedding to Seymour’s daughter. Robert was now aware that his wife Amy bored him, that the godforsaken flatlands of Norfolk which had nurtured her bored him,
and that if he had not been fool enough to lust after her Norfolk barley curls, he would now be free to select a bride more suitable to his status as son of the governor of the realm. Why, he might even have bid for the Princess Elizabeth, whom he suspected of being less nunlike than her dress indicated. Amy had about as much education as a Norfolk turnip. She could write her own name — just — and read a tailor’s bill, but she could not write a letter, nor discuss much more than the colour of her petticoats or the making of a junket in the kitchen. If only she had not been so aware of her deficiencies, without trying to remedy them, or so often spoiled her pretty looks with tears. Robert liked women with style and wit who could equally read and discuss a book and behave with wit and style in bed at night. Now that he was twenty, his tastes had matured; the boy of eighteen had chosen the wrong wife. Hey-ho! Perhaps things would change. Life at court offered compensations.

  The King had arranged a feast and tournament in his sister’s honour. In the tiltyard at Whitehall, Robert rode against his brother-in-law Henry Sidney for the best of three, and once against his father. He was the victor over them both. His father, now fifty, had once been as unbeatable as himself.

  Up in the gallery, the King sat with his sister Temperance. He had been showing her the odd perspective picture of himself, put up there to amuse visitors. You had to look at his portrait through a special piece of tin with a tiny hole in it which made the grotesque, long-nosed, flat-headed imp into the King’s normal self. He was very fond of showing off this picture. Elizabeth watched her half-brother closely. Since her last visit to court of over a year ago, his fourteenth birthday had brought heavier burdens than before, which would grow even heavier with each succeeding year. He did not look a child any more, as he was in the picture. He even had a young man’s voice.

  ‘Dearest sister,’ he said, sober as a bishop, ‘your dress is becoming. You are an example to all the ladies here. I wish my court was full of young ladies in such chaste, modest dress, but alas, some of them certainly aren’t ladies.’ He sighed. He was going to be the sort of young man who blushed at the sight of an ankle, and condemned the sinner to everlasting fires. Elizabeth was not sure whether he regarded her as a magdalen reclaimed; he had been a child when the scandal had erupted around her. He never, ever, mentioned Anne Boleyn in her presence, though he often spoke of his own mother.

  Elizabeth did indeed stand out from the other women, Lord Robert Dudley noticed again. This time she was in black, dull black silk, all sheen and no shine, with the same crane-coloured kirtle as yesterday, and not a jewel in sight, unless one counted a few buttons of jet. A neat little winged collar of white lawn, with her one decorative extravagance, Spanish blackwork embroidery, framed a face of transparent pallor. All her red hair was hidden again, scraped back, and regimented with hairpins under a black cap with lawn bands and not so much as a seed pearl to relieve its severity. The other women looked like Popish idols in their cut velvets and tinsel tissue and gold lace and jewels and frizzed, crimped hair. Robert without hesitation returned a verdict of ‘not pretty’ on the Princess, but nevertheless could not take his eyes off her. She was different from any other woman he had known. He suspected that this was just the image she wished to present to the world, to stand out, one way or another. Even in her choice of nunlike non-colours, she could not conceal a taste for texture and cloth and cut which showed her far from uninterested in what she wore. She had been a pretty child, marigold-haired and lively. The young woman of eighteen seemed no blood relation. She and the King were two of a kind, white faces and needle wits, with a superiority over lesser mortals not entirely accounted for by their royal blood.

  King Edward, looking down into the tiltyard, said, ‘I have ridden at the ring with Lord Robert. He’s very skilful. He has given me some riding lessons, too.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Elizabeth, and leant her chin on her hand as she looked down from the gallery at the participants in the jousting. Lord Robert had amazing control over his horse and this gave him a special advantage in the lists. He should have been born a centaur.

  ‘He has studied the manege, I can see,’ she said appreciatively. She knew from her own efforts at this fancy horsemanship that it involved great skill, practice and patience.

  Elizabeth looked at the group of young men below, and decided upon a small ploy. Was Lord Robert as handy with his courtly compliments as with his horsemanship? A handkerchief tucked in her sleeve had worked loose and an unobtrusive wriggle of her wrist finally freed it to flutter down into the tiltyard. The Princess’s bait was wafted in front of Lord Robert who was dismounting to change horses. Robert bit. He saw his opportunity, picked up the scrap of blackwork-edged lawn and bowed towards the gallery.

  ‘May I have your grace’s permission to wear your token?’ he called up to her in the gallery, and smiled, like a dark angel. He had very white teeth.

  Elizabeth, the picture of maidenly modesty, nodded. From under her eyelids, she looked him up and down. He was very handsome. Men should be tall.

  ‘Lord Robert, let my token be the winner.’ Her voice belied her meek manner, was not mumbly and self-effacing like Amy’s, but high, clear, carrying and slightly imperious, just as it had been in childhood.

  Robert accepted the Princess’s command, and won.

  Book Two

  Destiny

  III

  Prisoner’s Base

  1553 – 1555

  The City’s July stink, the sun on the White Tower. The Tower, with all its homely huddle of buildings, green lawns, scurrying people who owed it their livelihood, pet ravens, and little village church. No other village in England was enclosed by high, grey walls, or had so many rooms and houses where England’s greatest men had passed their last days as prisoners. No other hamlet employed a headsman as well as a blacksmith, no other village green had seen royal blood spilt upon the block. No other village church was tenanted by so many inmates lying headless in their graves.

  Lord Robert Dudley, prisoner, rode under escort to the Tower. There, he would join his father and his four brothers to await, inevitably, trial and execution. The Dudleys’ luck had run out. Robert’s hands were bound and his feet tied to the stirrups. As if he could escape into this mob that howled for Dudley blood. He was thankful to be surrounded by the Queen’s guard. Queen Mary. Last week, it had been Queen Jane. Nine days Jane had reigned. For nine days Robert had been brother-in-law of a King, his brother Guilford being Jane’s husband.

  In nine days, the grand schemes of his father had crumbled. On 6 July King Edward VI had died, of a horrible, galloping consumption. By his will, largely dictated by Northumberland, the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth had been excluded from the succession and his cousin, Lady Jane Grey, made his heir. Queen Jane. The name had no ring of success. The country preferred Queen Mary, in spite of her Catholic faith.

  Only two days before, Northumberland had been brought through the City to the Tower, and the mob had hurled stones and filth. Someone had been careful to tell Robert that, and how, seeing his father’s face cut by flying stones, John had broken down in tears. The crowd in Bishopsgate would have torn them limb from limb.

  In the Tower Robert’s lodgings were solitary and grim. He was not allowed to see his father or his brothers. The Dudley horizons, which only a fortnight ago had seemed so limitless, were narrowed to a semicircular cell of stone, and Robert’s destiny to go by the fall of the axe.

  *

  Elizabeth was twenty. Yesterday had been her birthday. Today, she walked meekly behind her sister. Once, Mary had been forced to give precedence to a red-haired infant, carried before her, who had usurped her title of Princess of Wales. Recollecting this Queen Mary eyed her sister — if indeed she were her sister — with a hostility that she felt for no one else.

  ‘“This is my body,” saith the Lord,’ the Queen said. Everyone heard whatever Mary said; her voice boomed along the gallery at Richmond Palace. ‘Sister, I should like to know that you interpret His sacred words as you
should.’

  ‘Hoc est corpus meum,’ Elizabeth’s voice, high in contrast to Mary’s. ‘Why, it is so.’ Then, hunting for salvation, her tormented, wary brain produced:

  ‘As Christ willed it and spake it, and thankfully blessed it and brake it, and as the sacred word doth make it, so I believe in it and take it. My life to give therefore — in earth to live no more…’ she said hastily, breaking into an outright rhyming couplet.

  Mary lost her temper. ‘You make rhymes on it!’ she roared, bright red in the face. ‘You disobey my instructions to the rest of my realm. I will not have lewd rhymes made about the Mass!’ She could not believe that Elizabeth came out with this on the spur of the moment. ‘You have saved this blasphemy for my presence, to taunt me!’ Mary’s brain was not the kind to fashion rhymes ad lib.

  ‘But I would not defame the Mass!’ Elizabeth protested. ‘I was brought up to a different world of ideas from you, Your Majesty. You must forgive me if I am ignorant of the finer points of Catholic doctrine.’

  ‘You are ignorant of loyalty to any faith, or you would take a firmer stand against me, and the Mass.’ Mary was not to be placated, and perversely altered her argument to maintain disagreement, whatever Elizabeth said.

  So things had come to a head so soon. Already, within a month of Mary’s accession, she sought to impose her beliefs upon her realm, and upon her sister. There was little sisterly feeling. Elizabeth anticipated danger. If she refused to go to Mass, Mary would call her heretic, if she went, hypocrite. On the whole, the last was less dangerous. She was frightened of where Mary’s reign would lead the realm and herself. Others, as frightened as herself, were beginning to leave England for safer places. Her cousin Kate Knollys and her family had left, with other Protestants, for Frankfurt. But a Princess would not be able to seek exile.