I thought that when my lord had first met her he must have loved the unspoiled freshness of her, when she was a young girl who knew nothing of the court or of his father’s sly progress to power. When she was a simple squire’s daughter in Norfolk with big blue eyes and large breasts pressing against the neck of her gown, she must have seemed to be everything that the ladies of court were not: honest, unsophisticated, true. But now all those virtues were disadvantages to him. He needed a wife who could watch the direction of change, could trim her speech and style to the prevailing tides, and could watch and caution him. He needed a wife who was quick in understanding and skilled in any company, a wife he could take to court, and know he had a spy and an ally among the ladies.
Instead he was burdened with a woman who, in her vanity, was prepared to insult the chaplain of one of the most powerful priests in the country, who had no interest in the doings of the court and the wider world, and who resented his interest.
“We’ll never have another Dudley if she does not make more effort with him,” one of the upper maids whispered indiscreetly to me.
“What ails her?” I demanded. “I’d have thought she would be all over him.”
“She can never forgive him for going to court in his father’s train. She thought his imprisonment would teach him a lesson. Teach him not to overreach himself.”
“He’s a Dudley,” I said. “They’re born to overreach themselves. They’re from the greediest most ambitious line in the world. Only a Spaniard likes gold better than a Dudley, only an Irishman desires more land.”
I looked down the table at Amy. She was eating a sweetmeat, the sugared plum distending her mouth as she sucked on it. She was staring straight ahead, ignoring her husband’s intense conversation with John Dee. “You know her well?”
The older woman nodded. “Yes, and I’ve come to pity her. She likes a small station in life and she wants him to be small too.”
“She’d have done better to have chosen a country squire then,” I said. “For Robert Dudley is a man with a great future, not a small one, and he will never allow her to stand in his way.”
“She will pull him down if she can,” the woman warned.
I shook my head. “Not her.”
Amy had hoped to sit up late with her husband, or to go to bed early together, but at eight o’clock he made excuses and he and John Dee and I gathered in John Dee’s room with the door closed, the shutters across the window and only one candle lit and glowing in the mirror.
“Are you happy to do this?” John Dee asked.
“What are you going to ask?”
“If the queen will have a boy child,” Robert said. “There is nothing more important to know than this. And if we can win back Calais.”
I looked toward John Dee. “And if my husband lives,” I reminded him.
“We will see what is given us,” he said gently. “Let us pray.”
I closed my eyes and at the rolling gentle sounds of the Latin I felt myself restored, returned. I was at home again, at home with my gift, with my lord, and with myself. When I opened my eyes the candle flame was warm as well as bright on my face and I smiled at John Dee.
“You still have your gift?” he asked.
“I am sure of it,” I said quietly.
“Watch the flame and tell us what you hear or what you see.”
The candle flame bobbed in a little draft, its brightness filled my mind. It was like the summer sunshine of Spain, and I thought I heard my mother calling me, her voice happy and filled with confidence that nothing would ever go wrong. Then abruptly I heard a tremendous banging that made me gasp and leap to my feet, jolted out of my dream with my heart thudding in fear of arrest.
John Dee was white-faced. We were discovered and ruined. Lord Robert had his sword from his belt and a knife from his boot.
“Open up!” came the shout from the barred door and there was a great blow against the wood which made it rock inward. I was certain that it was the Inquisition. I crossed the room to Lord Robert. “Please, my lord,” I said rapidly. “Don’t let them burn me. Run me through, before they take me, and save my son.”
In one fluid movement he was up on the window seat, pulled me up beside him and kicked out the windowpane. “Jump out,” he advised me. “And run if you can. I’ll hold them for a moment.” There was another terrible blow on the door. He nodded at John Dee. “Open up,” he said.
John Dee flung open the door and Lady Amy Dudley fell into the room. “You!” she exclaimed as soon as she saw me, half out of the window. “As I thought! Whore!”
A servant behind her raised a mace in a half apologetic gesture. The Philipses’ elegant linenfold door panels were splintered beyond repair. Robert slammed his sword back into the scabbard, and gestured to John Dee. “Please, John, do shut what is left of the door,” he said wearily. “This will be halfway round the county by dawn.”
“What are you doing here?” Amy demanded, striding into the room, her eyes taking in the table, the candles, their flames guttering in the draft from the window, the holy symbols. “What foul lechery?”
“Nothing,” Robert said wearily.
“What is she doing here with you? And him?”
He stepped forward and took her hands. “My lady, this is my friend and this my loyal servant. We were praying together for my prosperity.”
She broke from his grasp and struck at him, her hands clenched into fists, pounding against his chest. “She is a whore and he is a dealer in black arts!” she cried. “And you are a false deceiver who has broken my heart too many times to count!”
Robert caught her hands. “She is a good servant of mine and a respectable married woman,” he said quietly. “And Dr. Dee is chaplain to one of the most important churchmen in the land. Madam, I beg you to compose yourself.”
“I will see him hanged for this!” she shouted into his face. “I will name him as a dealer with the devil, and she is nothing more than a witch and a whore.”
“You will do nothing but make yourself a laughingstock,” he said steadily. “Amy, you know what you are like. Be calm.”
“How can I be calm when you shame me before your own friends?”
“You are not shamed…” he started.
“I hate you!” she suddenly screamed.
John Dee and I shrank back against the wall and glanced longingly at the door, wishing to be away from this uproar.
With a wail she tore herself from his grip and threw herself facedown on the bed. She was screaming with grief, quite beside herself. John Dee and my lord exchanged an aghast look. There was a little tearing noise and I realized she had bitten the counterpane and was ripping it with her teeth.
“Oh, for the sake of God!” Robert took her shoulders and pulled her up from the bed. At once she went for his face with her nails, her hands clenched like a cat’s unsheathed claws. Robert grabbed her hands and bore her down till she fell on the floor, kneeling at his feet, her wrists in his grip.
“I know you!” she swore up at him. “If it is not her, then it is another. There is nothing about you but pride and lust.”
His face, suffused with temper, slowly calmed, but he kept a tight hold of her hands. “I am a sinner indeed,” he said. “But thank God, I at least am not crazed.”
Her mouth trembled and then she let out a wail, looking up into his flinty face, the tears pouring from her eyes, her mouth drooling sobs. “I am not crazed, I am ill, Robert,” she said despairingly. “I am sick of grief.”
He met my eyes over her head. “Fetch Mrs. Oddingsell,” he said briefly. “She knows what to do.”
I was transfixed for the moment, watching Amy Dudley grinding her teeth, scrabbling at her husband’s feet. “What?”
“Get Mrs. Oddingsell.”
I nodded and went from the room. Half the household was busy on the landing outside the chamber. “Go to your work!” I said abruptly, and then I ran down the long gallery to find Mrs. Oddingsell seated before a mean fire at the cold end of the chamber.