Chapter 27
I’d hoped Aunt Kat’s cautionary words would sink into Elizabeth’s very sensible head, and that would be the end of the matter. But alas, it was not to be.
August merged into a blustery September, which gave way to winter, before spring came once more. My daughter grew plumper, and against the odds, became robust and strong, for which Colby and I fervently thanked God.
As Elizabeth expected us all to work with the same dedication as Cecil, I didn’t see as much of my husband and daughter as I could have wished, but I still managed to enjoy my domestic bliss.
Elizabeth, vivacious and a natural coquette, teased the gentlemen who pursued domestic bliss with her, and drove her council mad with her prevarications.
Ambassadors and go-betweens continued to parade their masters before her, and English hopefuls flirted with her at court.
Elizabeth pretended to consider each one, some a longer time than others, before saying either no or a provocative maybe.
And all the while, Dudley was at Elizabeth’s side, especially when she rode the hard-to-handle horses she favored, as spirited and reckless as the horses themselves. As Master of Horse, this was Robert’s job, of course, but few mentioned that when they criticized him.
Whenever Elizabeth invited me to ride with her, a coveted and much-sought-after position, she would gallop into the woods and bid me act as lookout while she and Robert kissed each other in the shadows.
When Cecil went north to Scotland with an army to help the Scots noblemen tame the French there, Robert stayed behind with the queen.
Colby stayed behind as well—now the captain of the queen’s personal guard, he was with Elizabeth at all times. My husband did not want to leave me or our child, either, but I could see he’d prefer a clean and simple confrontation with an angry French soldier to the complex intrigues of court.
Elizabeth’s dalliances with Robert, if anything, increased. The two were not often out of each other’s company. Robert was at her side when she received ambassadors, and he teased them along with her.
Robert lounged on barges she took down the river when in London or to sun herself in the country, and ran his fingers through the satin, velvet, bejeweled skirts I sewed for Elizabeth. He pulled ribbons from her gowns and tied them around his wrists and, some whispered, around more intimate parts.
In short, almost everyone at court muttered that Elizabeth was a wanton. Such was to be expected from a wanton’s daughter, they whispered, although no one dared mention the name Anne Boleyn.
Elizabeth never mentioned her mother, either, but I knew she wore a locket with her mother’s portrait inside it, and was rarely without it.
“I hear that your wife has sickened,” I said to Lord Robert one day when I’d ridden out with Elizabeth, Robert’s presence inevitable. Elizabeth had galloped a little ahead, her guards fanning out to keep watch over her, but Robert dropped back to spell his horse.
“Indeed, the poor lady,” Robert replied in earnestness. “A sickness in her breast that she has had for some time now. It makes her weak and wretched. I send her gifts and hope they cheer her.”
Charming, smiling, handsome Robert was playing the devoted husband. I restrained myself from making a skeptical comment. “Please convey to her my hope for her swift recovery, my lord.”
“I will. You are kind, Lady Colby. Your daughter does well?”
My immediate smile blossomed in spite of myself. “She grows by the day. We are most pleased with her.”
I was unable to keep the pride from my voice, and Robert laughed at me. “A fine hit by my friend, Sir James Colby,” he said, and sent me a bawdy wink. “My felicitations.”
I flushed, which only made Robert laugh the harder. “Thank you, my lord,” I said stiffly.
Elizabeth galloped back, her hair glowing like fire in the sunshine, her smile wide. Robert immediately forgot all about me, and rode after her, she laughing as he followed in hard pursuit.
William Cecil was a hard-working man. He had a wife, an intelligent woman who loved book-learning as much as her husband, and he enjoyed gardening when he had an hour to himself, which was rare these days.
Cecil dove into the business of running Elizabeth’s kingdom with dedication, helping her restore the church in her own way—doing away with the elaborate ceremony of Catholicism but not paring it down to the austere Protestantism of John Calvin.
Elizabeth wished her priests to retain their costly vestments and some of their ritual, though she frowned coldly at excessive ornamentation, hordes of candles, and blanketing clouds of incense.
Cecil had had to persuade her to take the possibility of the French gaining a foothold in Scotland seriously, and to commit troops. He’d resorted to threatening to resign if she continued to dismiss his advice on this score.
In addition to all this, he had to contend with a queen who not only was evasive on the question of marriage but put off her council when asked to name a successor.
“Marriage is a dangerous undertaking,” Elizabeth had declared. “Naming a successor is equally dangerous, if not more so. See how many plots and intrigues revolved around me—without my approval, of course—when Mary was queen?”
She’d never condemned the plots to elevate her to the throne, I remembered. She’d pretended not to know about them but had quietly provisioned her estates while the conspirators planned to raise armies against Mary.
All in all, Cecil had a difficult job, steering the queen without incurring her displeasure. Elizabeth was generally reasonable and intelligent, but she had her blind spots, and Robert Dudley was one of them.
“He makes me laugh,” Elizabeth said when she learned of more complaints about her flirtation with him. “He understands me better than anyone, and raises my spirit high. Why should I not have that?”
“I cannot blame her,” I told Colby after she’d said this to me. “She spent years alone, keeping quiet and never putting a foot out of line. Why should she not enjoy herself in the light after such a long darkness?”
“No one minds that she enjoys herself,” Colby said patiently.
“Her entertainments are becoming legendary, and I am pestered every day to use my position to finagle invitations to them. But she stirs anger and disgust with her favor to Dudley. She will divide the kingdom over him as surely as Mary did with Philip.”
“I remember that well.” I shivered. “I spent the winter in horrible rooms at Woodstock and had to meet you in a ruined house if I wished to speak to you.”
Colby sent me a grin. “You loved the duplicity.”
“Of conspiring under Mary’s nose?” I smiled in return, reflecting that it was easy to romanticize hardship in a comfortable chamber before a warm fire, with one’s beloved husband and cooing child nearby. “Of course, I did. If I’d sat meekly sewing, I should have been wretched.”
He nuzzled my hair. “You ever like to meddle, Lady Colby.”
“Uncle John says that about Aunt Kat.”
“It must be a trait of the Champernownes, then.” Colby became serious once more.
“But you do see, don’t you, Eloise? If Elizabeth has an affair with Dudley—or God help us, marries him—she will divide her council and Parliament as much as Mary did.
More, because Dudley is widely despised.
He is too …” Colby went silent, groping for words.
“Handsome and charming?” I supplied.
I did understand. Dudley was the sort of man susceptible ladies swooned over but whom other gentlemen did not like. Add to that his father, the Duke of Northumberland, had been executed as a traitor, and King Henry had executed Robert’s grandfather, citing the same reason.
“No one wants Dudley to charm the queen into molding England into what he wants.” Colby leaned to me, the firelight catching on his red hair and somber expression.
“I say this not because I don’t wish happiness for Elizabeth, but because I fear she will ruin all she has begun.
There will be rebellion and evil once more.
At the moment, Elizabeth is the sun to England, the golden princess who became their beloved queen.
But if that opinion ever changes, England will be plunged into chaos. ”
I knew he spoke the truth, and I heaved a sigh. “What a shame she does not love a stodgy, ugly gentleman who would give her many children, make friends of her advisors, and fade into the woodwork.”
Colby laughed out loud. “Is that your description of a perfect husband?”
“For a queen,” I said without mirth. “For a queen as radiant as Elizabeth. She is a Tudor, and she will rule, not her husband. Make no mistake about that. Not even Lord Robert would be able to tell her what to do against her own wishes.”
“I agree with you,” Colby said. “And if he should rise up against her? He obediently rose against Mary for Jane Grey and then supported conspiracies against Mary, even while trying to keep his own nose clean. What if Dudley decided he should have more from his wife the queen than her smiles? What if he wanted her kingdom?”
A qualm touched me. “She would have to fight him.”
Colby nodded. “England will not be stable if Dudley becomes its king. Too many do not trust him. We cannot let that happen, Eloise.”
His voice rang with determination. I had seen that determination before—in Elizabeth, in Mary, in Henry himself.
I’d speculated ere this that Henry’s descendants seemed to possess his temper and unwavering belief in themselves in pure form, undiluted by their mothers’ blood.
“What are you going to do, James?” I asked with some trepidation.
Colby subsided. “Nothing, for now. But if she makes a foolish mistake, I will have to act.”
“On that day, I will have to decide where my own loyalties lie,” I said quietly.
“Yes.” Colby leaned closer to me, a watchful look in his blue eyes. “You will.”
I sat silently for a long time. I wanted my life to continue as it was at the moment—in a privileged position with the new queen, working with fabrics I never dreamed I’d be able to touch: costly cloth of gold and gold tissue, velvets so fine they were like rippling silk.
The clothes I designed for Elizabeth’s portraits, her balls, her entertainments, and her progresses had already begun to become famous. Great ladies of the world wrote to me begging for my advice or trying to tempt me from Elizabeth’s service, which of course I would not leave.
I wished to remain here with my husband by my side, for my daughter to grow up unharmed and happy. I wanted this, and I wanted Colby to be an ordinary man, son of another ordinary gentleman of Shropshire.
But he was James Colby, ever driven to act for England. Colby had once told me he worked for the greater good, and I had not believed him. I believed him now.
Colby wanted England to prosper as much as did Elizabeth.
He’d always known Elizabeth would make a great queen and had worked hard to install her.
I realized now that if Colby ever considered Elizabeth bad for England, he would not hesitate to remove her.
He’d told me he did not want the crown for himself, but he might decide he had no other choice.
“Oh, James,” I said, heartfelt.
Colby sent me a faint smile. “Perhaps you should have married the dull gentleman your stepfather offered you.”
“No.” I surged to my feet, gazing down on him where he lounged on his chair. “I pledged myself to you. I love you, James Colby.”
Instead of answering, Colby pulled me down into his lap. I buried my face in his neck, my heart thumping. I’d never believed I would one day have to make a choice between my husband and my queen, and I would be heartbroken no matter which way I went.
Elizabeth continued to play with Lord Robert. I saw courtiers grit their teeth when she and Robert made them the butt of their jokes. The pair were shameless, whispering, heads together, smiling as one at the baffled courtiers, and teasing them unmercifully.
She would play the lute and shoot fond glances at Robert as he watched her, in view of everyone at court. But she’d turn a dangerous glare on anyone who even appeared as though they might rebuke her.
I ceased trying. Not because I was afraid of her retaliation, but because I knew she would not listen. If she would not listen to Aunt Kat and Cecil, she would certainly not heed me.
Cecil speculated in early September of 1560 that if things continued as they were he would have to resign. “Even if the queen were to lock me in the Tower for the rest of my life,” he sighed. “I cannot stay.”
If Cecil went, I asked Colby in panic, how long would it be before the entire council followed suit, and Colby’s fears of civil war came to pass?
These decisions were taken away from all of us.
On September 8 Amy Dudley was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in Cumnor Manor in Oxfordshire, her neck broken.