A Court Affair. Emily Purdy

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      Such was the way that Robert courted me; he left me breathless and burning and too dazzled and dumb to speak. He must have at times thought me a pretty mute or a starry-eyed simpleton with nary a brain in my skull. It seems to me now, upon reflection, that only after we were married did I really learn to speak; it was as if wedlock untied the knots in my tongue.

      The bed of buttercups by the river became our trysting place. We used to lie there and kiss, caress, hold each other, and dream of the life we would make together, the golden future that awaited us as husband and wife. I imagined the future unfurling before us like a road paved with gold, glowing brilliantly in the sun, which we would walk down together hand-in-hand, confident, brave, and sure in our love, to face whatever lay before us, come what may. And one day he fastened round my neck an amber heart, the rich golden colour of honey, suspended from a cord of braided black silk. “Here is my heart, beloved,” he said, “so that even when we are apart, you will know my heart is always with you. And as these flecks and leaves and tiny creatures, these little bits of nature’s flotsam, are caught, captured, frozen in time forevermore inside it, so shall my love for you remain always as true and ardent as it is at this very moment; let this token stand as surety for my eternal, undying love.”

      Lying back in our bed of buttery yellow blossoms, watching the clouds drift by, Robert told me of his dream to breed and train his beloved horses, vowing that he would become famous throughout the world for the perfection in both appearance and disposition of his mounts. “Someday,” he boasted, as if he could see the future unfolding in the clouds above us, “all the crowned heads of the world will vie to have my horses in their stables; every king, queen, prince, and princess, even the Emperor of China and the Sultan of Turkey, will want my horses!”

      He came to me whenever he could, galloping back to Norfolk, thundering down the road to sweep me up in his arms and hold and caress me again, forsaking London and the court just for me. And I would come running out to meet him, pink-cheeked and breathless, scampering through the wildflowers, my hair streaming out wild behind me. “Ah, here comes my wild harvest-gold filly!” Robert would laughingly declare as he watched me race towards him to throw myself into his arms. And together we would loll back in our bed of buttercups by the riverside, and he would hold me in his arms, and we would watch the clouds drift, and dream of the wonderful life we would make together.

      I was amazed that he wanted me. Robert Dudley had been raised a veritable prince, sharing nurseries and schoolrooms with King Henry’s children. His father, the mighty Earl of Warwick, was the king in deed, though Edward VI was the king in name. Even at seventeen, though his sword was but newly blooded in his first battle, Robert was already a suave and practised seducer, well versed in the allure and mysteries of women. Elegant court beauties, who painted their faces as white as consumptives with blood red lips and lounged about in a perpetual swoon, never lifting anything heavier than a fan, and rough, hardworking servant girls with strong shoulders and callous hands but no fine manners or learning, had all been pierced by his fleshly sword. He could have had anyone, and yet … he wanted me, me—Amy Robsart! I doubted whether I was worthy of him. He was the Earl of Warwick’s son, and I was a squire’s daughter, best suited to be another squire’s wife, a country chatelaine presiding over a hardworking landed estate, not a grand lady like those at court, but he wanted me! When I tried to talk to him about it, he just laughed at me. “Are you trying to talk me out of it, little fool?” he asked teasingly, and he hugged me tightly and kissed the tip of my nose.

      He said I was like good, wholesome custard, with a touch of pretty garnish, like raisins or saffron or a dash of sprinkled cinnamon, not elaborate marzipan and spun-sugar subtleties, confectionery turned art, like the ladies of the court. I was a pure, country-bred beauty, a true English rose, not some exotic, easily wilted, hothouse flower. I was fresh, clean air, blue skies, sunshine, and acres of green grass to their close, over-ripe, and perfumed chambers, tapestried walls, and Turkey carpets. My words were sweet, plainspoken, and true, not barbed and double-edged, honeyed words filled with hidden, sometimes poisonous, meanings, or all done up in flowery parcels with the true meaning concealed inside the poetry. He said he loved my pure, unvarnished charm. I was natural and real; I had no sleek and deceptive veneer of sophistication, no studied, artful airs. “You wear no mask. Your life is no masquerade. When I look at you, I see the real you, the real Amy, not a pretty painted façade that is false and ugly when it is laid bare and washed clean of paint, and I love what I see. With Amy Robsart seeing is believing!”

      But I doubted that his father, the high-and-mighty Earl of Warwick, would be swayed by all this talk of love. It was only common sense that he would want a greater, grander match for his son, even a fifth one like Robert. And then I did something that still shames me. I was desperate not to lose him; there was no one else in the world like Robert, and I loved him so much, I couldn’t bear to let him go, to think of him with another who loved him less or not at all but whose pedigree and education were better than mine. And so I surrendered. I lay down and let him lift my skirts; it was the only sure way to defeat common sense and worldly realities and let true love prevail. Or maybe it was merely that I was too weak to resist the heat of his hands burning through the cloth of my gown, cupping my breasts, and the kisses that made me feel more alive than I ever had before and that made me tilt my head back, like a hungry baby bird ravenous for the nourishment of his kisses. When pleasure met pain, and my maiden’s blood watered the roots of the buttercups, I knew that he was mine. I was Sir John Robsart’s daughter, his only legitimate heir, sole heiress to his lands, estates, flocks, and fortune, not some poor little milkmaid whose father would accept a purse as compensation for his daughter’s lost virtue and be grateful for it, tug his forelock, and say, “Thank you, kind sir.”

      Afterwards, still wrapped in Robert’s arms, I trembled and wept, afraid, but not sorry, for what we had just done. What if I conceived a child? But Robert smiled his easy smile and laughed his ready laugh and kissed me from my brow to my belly, teasing my navel with his tongue and doling out great, smacking kisses all over my stomach, making me laugh in spite of myself. He assured me that he wanted me and our baby—if we had indeed just made one—and he wanted all the many babies we would go on to make in our long life together. We made love again, then tenderly tidied each other, washing each other with a kerchief dipped into the river, and smoothing and fastening each other’s clothes; then, hand-in-hand, pausing often to kiss, we walked back to Stanfield Hall and into my father’s study so that Robert could ask him for my hand in marriage.

      My father was a wonderful, jolly man, stocky and sturdy, with a head of untamable iron grey curls, and cheeks like the famed apples from his orchards. He loved me as no one ever did before or ever would again. From the moment I came into this world until the mind that knew and loved me so well abandoned his body as a snail does a shell and left behind a dazed wanderer, a stranger even unto himself, I was his pride and joy. I was most aptly named Beloved.

      I was born when he had given up hope of ever having a child of his own to love, nurture, and teach. Arthur, my half brother, was baseborn, the result of a drunken tumble with “a conniving, black-haired witch of a tavern wench”, when he was a young man and too foolish to know how many cups were too many. Father paid generously for Arthur’s care, but his mother would not relinquish him, and Father never saw his son unless a need for money brought him and his mother with their greedy palms outstretched to his door. And Arthur grew up an ignorant wastrel frittering his time away in a tavern, rather than as a squire’s son learning how to manage an estate; he sneered and turned his back on a chance to better himself. Content to be a ne’er-do-well, he never really cared about Father, only his money, and only when he had need of it.

      When he married her, my mother, Elizabeth Scott Appleyard, was the proud widow of Sir Roger Appleyard. She had already borne four children—two uppity girls, Anna and Frances, who always treated me like manure sullying their satin shoes, and a pair of pompous boys, John and Philip, who thought the sun rose and set solely for their sake. She thought that that part of her life was well behind her, when I came along, unexpectedly, СКАЧАТЬ