The Virgin’s Lover

Two days later, Cecil, still not home for Christmas, faced with a royal temper tantrum on one hand and a stubborn bishop on the other, was forced to issue a royal proclamation that the litany, Lord’s Prayer, lessons and the ten commandments would all be read in English, in every church of the land, and the Host would not be raised. This was the new law of the land. Elizabeth had declared war on her church before she was even crowned.

‘So who is going to crown her?’ Dudley asked him. It was the day before Twelfth Night. Neither Cecil nor Dudley had yet managed to get home to their wives for so much as a single night during the Christmas season.

— Does he not have enough to do in planning the Twelfth Night feast, that now he must devise religious policy? — Cecil demanded of himself irritably, as he got down from his horse in the stable yard and tossed the reins to a waiting groom. He saw Dudley’s eyes run over the animal and felt a second pang of irritation at the knowledge that the younger man would see at once that it was too short in the back.

‘I thank you for your concern but why do you wish to know, Sir Robert?’ The politeness of Cecil’s tone almost took the ice from his reply.

Dudley’s smile was placatory. ‘Because she will worry, and this is a woman who is capable of worrying herself sick. She will ask me for my advice, and I want to be able to reassure her. You’ll have a plan, sir, you always do. I am only asking you what it is. You can tell me to mind my horses and leave policy to you, if you wish. But if you want her mind at rest you should tell me what answer I should give her. You know she will consult me.’

Cecil sighed. ‘No-one has offered to crown her,’ he said heavily. ‘And between you and me, no-one will crown her. They are all opposed, I swear that they are in collusion. I cannot trace a conspiracy but they all know that if they do not crown her, she is not queen. They think they can force her to restore the Mass. It’s a desperate position. The Queen of England, and not one bishop recognises her! Winchester is under house arrest for his sermon at the late queen’s funeral, Oglethorpe in all but the same case for his ridiculous defiance on Christmas Day. He says he will go to the stake before he gives way to her. She wouldn’t let Bishop Bonner so much as touch her hand when she came into London, so he is her sworn enemy too. The Archbishop of York told her to her face that he regards her as a heretic damned. She’s got the Bishop of Chichester under house arrest, although he is sick as a dog. They are all unanimously against her, not a shadow of doubt among them. Not even a tiny crack where one might seed division.’

‘Surely a scattering of bribes?’

Cecil shook his head. ‘They have become amazingly principled,’ he said. ‘They will not have Protestantism restored to England. They will not have a Protestant queen.’

Dudley’s face darkened. ‘Sir, if we do not have a care, they will make a rebellion against the queen from inside the church itself. It is a very small step from calling her a heretic to open treason, and a rebellion by the princes of the church would hardly be a rebellion at all. They are the Prince Bishops, they can make her look like a usurper. There are enough Catholic candidates for the throne who would be quick to take her place. If they declare war on her, she is finished.’

‘Yes, I know that,’ Cecil said, keeping his irritation in check with some difficulty. ‘I am aware of the danger she is in. It’s never been worse. No-one can ever remember a monarch in such uncertainty. King Henry never had more than one bishop openly against him, the late queen, at her very worst of times, had two; but Princess Elizabeth has every single one of them as her open and declared enemy. I know things are as bad as they can be, and the princess clinging to her prospects by her fingertips. What I don’t know is how to make an absolutely solid Roman Catholic church crown a Protestant princess.’

‘Queen,’ Dudley prompted.

‘What?’

‘Queen Elizabeth. You said “princess”.’

‘She’s on the throne but not anointed,’ Cecil said grimly. ‘I pray that the day comes when I can say “queen” and know it is nothing more nor less than the truth. But how can I get her anointed, if no-one will do it?’

‘She can hardly behead them all,’ Dudley said with unwarranted cheerfulness.

‘Quite so.’

‘But what if they thought she might convert?’

‘They’ll hardly believe that, after she stormed out of her own chapel on Christmas Day.’

‘If they thought that she would marry Philip of Spain, they would crown her,’ Dudley suggested slyly. ‘They would trust him to forge a compromise. They saw him handle Queen Mary. They’d trust Elizabeth under his control.’

Cecil hesitated. ‘Actually, they might.’

‘You could tell three men, in the strictest confidence, that she is considering him,’ Dudley advised. ‘That’s the best way to make sure everyone hears it. Suggest that he will come over for the wedding and create a new settlement for the church in England. He liked her before, and she encouraged him enough, God knows. Everyone thought they would make a match of it as soon as her sister was cold. You could say they are all but betrothed. She’s attended Mass almost every day for the last five years, they all know that well enough. She is accommodating when she has to be. Remind them of it.’

‘You want me to use the old scandals of the princess as a mask for policy?’ Cecil demanded sarcastically. ‘Hold her up to shame as a woman who bedded her brother-in-law as her own sister lay dying?’

‘Elizabeth? Shame?’ Dudley laughed in Cecil’s face. ‘She’s not been troubled by shame since she was a girl. She learned then that you can ride out shame if you keep your nerve and admit nothing. And she’s not troubled by lust either. Her “scandals” as you call them excepting the one with Thomas Seymour, which got out of hand are never accidental. Since her romping with Seymour led him to the scaffold, she has learned her lesson. Now she deploys her desires; they do not drive her. She’s not a fool, you know. She’s survived this far. We have to learn from her, learn to use everything we have: just as she has always done. Her marriage is our greatest weapon. Of course we have to use it. What d’you think she was doing all the time that she was flirting with Philip of Spain? She wasn’t driven by desire, God knows. She was playing the only card she had.’

Cecil was about to argue but then he stopped himself. Something in Dudley’s hard eyes reminded him of Elizabeth’s when he had once warned her of falling in love with Philip. Then she had shot him the same bright, cynical look. The two of them might be young people, only in their mid-twenties, but they had been taught in a hard school. Neither of them had any time for sentiment.

‘Carlisle might do it,’ Cecil said thoughtfully. ‘If he thought she was seriously considering Philip as a husband, and if I could assure him that by doing it, he would save her from heresy.’

Dudley put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Someone has to do it or she’s not queen,’ he pointed out. ‘We have to get her crowned by a bishop in Westminster Abbey or all this is just mummery and wishful thinking. Jane Grey was queen as much as this, and Jane Grey’s rule was nine days long, and Jane Grey is dead.’

Cecil shrugged involuntarily, and moved away from Dudley’s touch.

‘All right,’ Dudley said, understanding the older man’s diffidence. ‘I know! Jane died for my father’s ambition. I know that you steered your course out of it at the time. You were wiser than most. But I’m no plotter, Sir William. I will do my job and I know that you can do yours without my advice!’

‘I am sure you are a true friend to her, and the best Master of Horse she could have appointed,’ Cecil offered with his faint smile.

‘I thank you,’ Dudley said with courtesy. ‘And so you force me to tell you that that animal of yours is too short in the back. Next time you are buying a saddle horse, come to me.’

Cecil laughed at the incorrigible young man, he could not help himself. ‘You are shameless like her!’ he said.

‘It is a consequence of our greatness,’ Dudley said easily. ‘Modesty is the first thing to go.’

Amy Dudley was seated in the window of her bedroom at Stanfield Hall in Norfolk. At her feet were three parcels tied with ribbon, bearing labels that read ‘To my dearest husband from your loving wife’. The writing on the labels was in fat irregular capitals, like a child might write. It had taken Amy some time and trouble to copy the words from the sheet of paper that Lady Robsart had written for her, but she had thought that Robert would be pleased to see that she was learning her letters at last.

She had bought him a handsome Spanish leather saddle, emblazoned with his initials on the saddle flap, and studded with gold nails. His second present was three linen shirts, sewn by Amy herself, white on white embroidery on the cuffs and down the front band. Her third present to him was a set of hawking gloves, made of the softest, smoothest leather, as cool and as flexible as silk, with his initials embroidered in gold thread by Amy, using an awl to pierce the leather.

She had never sewn leather before and even with a cobbler’s glove to guard her hand she had pricked her palm all over with little red painful dots of blood.

‘You could have embroidered his gloves with your own blood!’ her stepmother laughed at her.

Amy said nothing but waited for Robert, secure that she had beautiful gifts for him, and that he would see the work that had gone into every stitch, into every letter. She waited and she waited through the twelve days of the Christmas feast; and when finally she sat at the window, and looked south down the grey road to London on the evening of Twelfth Night, she acknowledged at last that he was not coming, that he had sent her no gifts, that he had not even sent a message to say he would not come.

She felt shamed by his neglect; too ashamed even to go down to the hall where the rest of her family was gathered: Lady Robsart, merry with her four children and their husbands and wives, their young children, screaming with laughter at the mummers and dancing to the music. Amy could not face their secret amusement at the depth and completeness of her fall from a brilliant marriage into the greatest family in England, to being the neglected wife of a former criminal.

Amy was too grieved to be angry with Robert for promising to come and then failing her. Worst of all – she felt in her heart that it was no surprise he did not come to her. Robert Dudley was already being spoken of as the most handsome man at court, the queen’s most glamorous servant, her most able friend. Why should he leave such a court, all of them attuned to joy, ringing with their own good luck, where he was Master of the Revels and lord of every ceremony, to come to Norfolk in midwinter to be with Amy and her stepmother, at a house where he had never been welcome, that he had always despised?

With this question unanswered, Amy spent Twelfth Night with his presents at her cold feet, and her eyes on the empty road, wondering if she would see her husband ever again.

It had been Dudley’s Christmas Feast as much as Elizabeth’s; everyone agreed it. It had been Dudley’s triumphant return to court, as much as Elizabeth’s. Dudley had been at the heart of every festivity, planning every entertainment, first up on his horse for hunting, first on the floor for dancing. He was a prince come to his own again in the palace where his father had ruled.

‘My father used to have it so …’ he would say negligently, choosing one style or another, and everyone was reminded that all the most recent successful Christmas feasts had been ordered by the Lord Protector Dudley, and Elizabeth’s brother, the young King Edward, had been a passive spectator, never the commander.

Elizabeth was happy to let Dudley order the celebrations as he thought best. Like everyone else she was dazzled by his confidence and his easy happiness in his restoration. To see Dudley at the centre of attention, in a glittering room while a masque unfolded to his choreography, and the choir sang his lyrics, was to see a man utterly in his element, in his moment of glory, in his pride. Thanks to him the court glittered as if the decorations were gold and not tinsel. Thanks to him the greatest entertainers in Europe flocked to the English court, paid in notes of promise, or sweetened with little gifts. Thanks to him the court went from one entertainment to another until Elizabeth’s court was a byword for elegance, style, merriment and flirtation. Robert Dudley knew, better than any man in England, how to give a party that lasted a long, glorious fortnight, and Elizabeth knew, better than any woman in England, how to enjoy a sudden leap into freedom and pleasure. He was her partner in dancing, her lead on the hunting field, her conspirator in the silly practical jokes that she loved to play, and her equal when she wanted to talk of politics, or theology, or poetry. He was her trusted ally, her advisor, her best friend and her best-matched companion. He was the favourite: he was stunning.

As Master of Horse, Robert took responsibility for the coronation procession and entertainment, and shortly after the final great celebration of Twelfth Night he turned his attention to planning what must be the greatest day of her reign.

Working alone in the beautiful apartment at Whitehall Palace that he had generously allocated to himself, he had a scroll of manuscript paper unrolling down a table big enough to seat twelve men. From the top to the bottom the paper was covered with names: names of men and their titles, names of their horses, names of the servants who would accompany them, details of their clothing, of the colour of the livery, of the arms they would bear, of the special pennants their standard-bearers would carry.

Either side of the list of the procession marched two more lists of those who would be spectators: the guilds, the companies, the waits from the hospitals, the mayors and councillors from the provinces, the organisations who had to have special places. The ambassadors, envoys, emissaries and foreign visitors would watch the parade go past, and must have a good view so that their reports to their homes would be enthusiastically in favour of the new Queen of England.

A clerk danced from one end of the table scratching out and amending the scroll to Robert’s rapid fire of dictation from the lists in his hand. Every now and then he glanced up and said, ‘Purple, sir,’ or ‘Saffron, nearby,’ and Robert would swear a fearful oath. ‘Move him back one then, I can’t have the colours clashing.’

On a second table, equally as long as the first, was a map of the streets of London from the Tower to Westminster Palace, drawn like a snake along a vellum roll. The palace was marked with the time that the procession should arrive, and the time that it would take to walk from one place to another was marked along the way. A clerk had painted in, as prettily as an illuminated manuscript, the various stopping places and the tableaux that would be presented at each of the five main points. They would be the work and responsibility of the City of London, but they would be masterminded by Robert Dudley. He was not taking the chance of anything going wrong on the queen’s coronation procession.

‘This one, sir,’ a clerk said tentatively. Robert leaned over.

‘Gracechurch Street,’ he read. ‘Uniting of the two houses of Lancaster and York pageant. What of it?’

‘It’s the painter, sir. He asked was he to do the Boleyn family too?’

‘The queen’s mother?’

The clerk did not blink. He named the woman who had been beheaded for treason, witchcraft and incestuous adultery against the king, and whose name had been banned ever since. ‘The Lady Anne Boleyn, sir.’

Robert pushed back his jewelled velvet cap and scratched his thick, dark hair, looking in his anxiety much younger than his twenty-five years.

‘Yes,’ he said finally. ‘She’s the queen’s mother. She can’t just be a gap. We can’t just ignore her. She has to be our honourable Lady Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, and mother of the queen.’

The clerk raised his eyebrows as if to indicate that it was Robert’s decision and would fall on his shoulders and no-one else’s; but that he, personally, preferred a quieter life. Robert let out a crack of laughter and cuffed him gently on the shoulder. ‘The Princess Elizabeth is from good English stock, God bless her,’ he said. ‘And it was a better marriage for the king than others he made, God knows. A pretty, honest Howard maid.’

The clerk still looked uneasy. ‘The other honest Howard maid was also executed for adultery,’ he pointed out.

‘Good English stock,’ Robert insisted unblinkingly. ‘And God Save the Queen.’

‘Amen,’ the clerk said smartly, and crossed himself.

Robert noted the habitual gesture and checked himself before he mirrored it. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Are all the other pageants clear?’

‘Except for the Little Conduit, Cheapside.’

‘What of it?’

‘It shows a Bible. Question is: should it be in English or Latin?’

It was a question that went to the very heart of the debate currently raging in the church. Elizabeth’s father had authorised the Bible in English and then changed his mind and taken it back into Latin again. His young son Edward had put an English Bible into every parish church, Queen Mary had banned them; it was for the priest to read and to explain; the English people were to listen, not to study for themselves. What Elizabeth would want to do, nobody knew. What she would be able to do, with the church full-square against her, nobody could guess.

Robert snatched his cap from his head and flung it across the room. ‘For God’s sake!’ he shouted. ‘This is state policy! I’m trying to plan a pageant and you keep asking me questions about policy! I don’t know what she will decide. The Privy Council will advise her, the bishops will advise her. Parliament will advise her, they will argue over it for months and then make it law. Pray God people will obey it and not rise up against her. It is not for me to decide it here and now!’

There was an awkward silence. ‘But in the meantime?’ the clerk asked tentatively. ‘The cover of the Bible for the pageant? Should it be English or Latin? We could put a Latin copy inside an English cover if she preferred it. Or an English copy. Or one of both.’

‘On the cover write BIBLE in English,’ Robert decided. ‘Then everyone knows what it is. Write it in big letters so it is clear it is part of the pageant: a prop, not the real thing. It is a symbol.’

The clerk made a note. The man-at-arms at the door walked delicately over to the corner, picked up the expensive cap, and handed it to his master. Robert took it without acknowledgement. Other people had been picking up for him since he was a child of two.

‘When we’ve finished this, I’ll see the other procession,’ he said irritably. ‘Whitehall to Westminster Abbey. And I want a list of horses, and check that the mules are sound.’ He snapped his fingers for another clerk to step forward.

‘And I want some people,’ he said suddenly.

The second clerk was ready with a writing tablet and a quill in a little pot of ink.

‘People, sir?’

‘A little girl with a posy of flowers, an old lady, some sort of peasant up from the Midlands or somewhere. Make a note and send Gerard out to find me half a dozen people. Note this: one old lady, frail-looking but strong enough to stand, and with a strong voice, loud enough to be heard. One pretty girl, about six or seven, must be bold enough to cry out and take a posy of flowers to the queen. One bright apprentice boy to scatter some rose petals under her horse’s feet. One old peasant from somewhere in the country to cry out, “God bless Your Grace”. I’ll have a couple of pretty merchants’ wives as well and an unemployed soldier, no, rather, a wounded soldier. I’ll have two wounded soldiers. And I’ll have a couple of sailors from Plymouth or Portsmouth or Bristol, somewhere like that. Not London. And they are to say that this is a queen to take the country’s fortunes overseas, that there is great wealth for the taking, for a country strong enough to take it, that this country can be a great one in the world, and this queen will venture for it.’

The clerk was scribbling furiously.

‘And I’ll have a couple of old men, scattered about,’ Robert went on, warming to the plan. ‘One to cry for joy, he’s to be near the front so they all see him, and the other one to call out from the back that she’s her father’s daughter, a true heir. Get them all spaced out: here …’ Robert marked the map. ‘Here, and here. I don’t mind what order. They are to be told to call out different things. They are to tell no-one they were hired. They are to tell anyone who asks that they came to see the queen out of love for her. The soldiers in particular must say that she will bring peace and prosperity. And tell the women to behave with propriety. No bawds. The children had better come with their mothers and their mothers should be told to make sure that they behave. I want people to see that the queen is beloved by all sorts of people. They are to call out to her. Blessings, that sort of thing.’

‘What if she doesn’t hear them, sir?’ the clerk asked. ‘Over the noise of the crowd?’

‘I’ll tell her where she is to stop,’ Robert said firmly. ‘She’ll hear them, because I’ll tell her to.’

The door opened behind him and the clerk stepped swiftly back and bowed. William Cecil came into the room and took a sweeping glance at the two tables covered with plans and the sheets of paper in the clerks’ hands.

‘You seem to be going to much trouble, Sir Robert,’ he remarked mildly.

‘I would hope so. Her processions are entrusted to me. I would hope that no-one found me wanting.’

The older man hesitated. ‘I only meant that you seem to be going into much detail. As I remember, Queen Mary had no need of great lists and plans. I think she just went to the Abbey with her court following.’

‘They had carriages and horses,’ Robert observed. ‘And an order of procession. Lady Mary’s Master of Horse made a list. I have his notes, actually. The great skill of these things is to make them appear that they have simply happened.’

‘Triumphal arches and tableaux?’ William Cecil inquired, reading the words upside down from the plan.

‘Spontaneous demonstrations of loyalty,’ Robert said firmly. ‘The City Fathers insisted on it.’

He stepped between Cecil and the table, obscuring his view. ‘My Lord Secretary, this is a very young woman whose right to the throne has been contested almost since the day of her birth. The last young woman whose right to the throne of England was contested had a crown crammed on her head in secret and lost it in hiding. I think it important that this young woman is seen as the true heir, is seen as the people’s delight, and is seen to take her crown as publicly and as gloriously as possible.’

‘Lady Jane was not the true heir,’ Cecil pointed out to Lady Jane’s brother-in-law, not mincing his words. ‘And the crown was crammed on her head by a traitor, also beheaded for treason. Your father, actually.’

Dudley’s gaze did not waver. ‘He paid the price for that treason,’ he said simply. ‘And I paid for my part in it. I paid in full. There’s not a man in her court that has not had to loosen his collar and turn his coat once or twice in recent years. Even you, sir, I imagine, though you kept yourself clear of our disgrace.’

Cecil, whose hands were cleaner than most, let it go. ‘Perhaps. But there is one thing I should tell you.’