A Court Affair. Emily Purdy

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СКАЧАТЬ done with birthing once and for all. But I was a girl, and my birthing damaged her inside, dislodging her womb from its proper place, causing her much discomfort until the end of her days and giving her an excuse to permanently abstain from any further marital relations and spend the rest of her life as a pampered invalid in pretty lace-trimmed caps and robes with a comfit box always at her side. Everyone expected Father to be disappointed, to curse and rage as King Henry VIII had done when first Catherine of Aragon and then Anne Boleyn failed to give him a son, but my father took one look at me and breathed the word “Beloved!” and thus named me Amy.

      That very day he wrote proudly inside his prayer book: Amy Robsart, beloved daughter of John Robsart, knight, was born on the 7th day of June in the Blessed Year of Our Lord 1532.

      He petted, indulged, and spoiled me like no other child, as if I were indeed a princess, and longed for my happiness above all else. So now, when I was of an age and of a mind to marry, he could not bear to deny me, though he had grave qualms about the man I had chosen to be my husband.

      “But you barely know each other!” again and again he protested, worry ploughing deep furrows into his brow. He urged us to tarry a year, or two, or even more. Four-and-twenty, he said, was thought by many to be the ideal age for a man to marry, to have sown his wild oats and seasoned his mind so that he was able to govern himself and make the right decision when choosing a wife, not a hasty pick led by hot blood and a pointing prick. But neither of us could bear it; we were seventeen, and to wait even a year seemed like an eternity. We were in love and impatient to start living our life together.

      My lips trembled, and tears filled my eyes. Robert gave my hand a reassuring squeeze and stepped forward before my tears could overflow onto the accounts ledger lying open on Father’s desk.

      “Sir, we love each other truly,” he said. “Getting to know each other will be a joy and an adventure, like unearthing buried treasure each day of our life together. Each new discovery will be a priceless, precious jewel,” he promised my father as he gallantly raised my hand to his lips and kissed it, then pressed it over his heart.

      And my father was won over by the sight of tears glimmering in my blue green eyes and Robert’s eloquent and impassioned words, though I know in his heart worry would ever dog him like his faithful hound Rex.

      I understand far better now than I did then; Father thought by marrying Robert I was wading in over my head, and he was afraid I was going to drown. The one time in my life when I should have listened and been guided by my father’s advice, I turned my back and ignored his wisdom. But I would not realise my mistake until the waters were already closing over my head. My only comfort is that Father, as much as I miss him, did not live to see the bitter fruits our hasty and impetuous union have reaped, the sourness that was left behind after the sweet passion died. It is a dismal harvest, with the fruits of young love all blackened and blotched; diseased and spurned, they tempt no one. I am glad he did not live to see what I have come to. It would have broken his heart to see the child he named “Beloved” unloved, unwanted, and dying, while my husband dallies with the highest lady in the land and dreams of wearing a golden crown, dancing while he waits for me to die; for Robert my cancer will correct the mistake he made when he was a lusty lad of seventeen. My end will be Robert’s new beginning. Sometimes I dream of him and Elizabeth dancing with joyous abandon upon my grave, and I wake up with my whole body aching as if their dancing feet had actually trampled and bruised me, and Pirto has to dose me against the pain that makes every bit of my body feel as if it were screaming.

      Even on the very morning of my wedding day the following summer, Father was still trying to save me from myself, to arm Reason with a sword that would vanquish Lust. “First love is rarely evergreen love, my dear,” he warned as he stroked my hair and pressed a kiss onto my brow. “Bide at home a while longer with me, lass,” he cajoled. “Wait, and you’ll see, something’ll come along that is better, far better, for you than Robert Dudley.”

      But with tears in my eyes I turned to him and said simply, “Father, I love him.” And there was an end to all discussion. Within the hour I was kneeling beside Robert at the altar, my heart swelling nigh to bursting with love, believing all my dreams were coming true, that this was just the first step of the many we would walk together …

      3

      Amy Robsart Dudley

       Cumnor Place, Berkshire, near Oxford Sunday, September 8, 1560

      “What is it, love?” Pirto, her face all concern, asks, tugging gently at my sleeve as she kneels beside me. “You look so sad! Is it the pain again?”

      “I’m all right, Pirto,” I sigh with a wan, halfhearted little smile, “but I shall not go to the fair today. No, no”—I stop the protests forming on her lips—“you and the others go, and have a good time today. I insist, I will hear no argument. Take my purse, and bring me back some cakes and cider and hair ribbons—a whole rainbow of hair ribbons. Spend whatever you like, and tell me all about it when you come back tonight. Do this for me as you love me, Pirto. I have a sudden craving for solitude. I can’t really explain it, but I want to be all by myself in a quiet house, where I can truly hear myself think and listen to what my mind is saying. Please!” I take both her hands in mine. “There is so little anyone can do for me now, but you can do this.”

      “My Lady, I like not to leave you alone …” Pirto frowns, and the lines on her face seem to bite a little deeper.

      “It is just for one day, Pirto, one peaceful day, and I shall be fine,” I promise her. “Please, do this one thing for me! And tell the others to go—make them go if you must—but just give me this one quiet Sunday all to myself.”

      Pirto sighs and gives in, as I know she will. “Very well, My Lady!” Then, with a creak of her aged knees, she stands and begins bustling about, sending down to the kitchen for a platter of food, covered so that the sight and smell of it will not sicken me, just to be there in the event my appetite should awake and stir its sluggish self, and bringing medicines, water, wine, a basin, and ginger suckets to combat the nausea, and putting them all on the table beside my chair so that I will have anything I might need within ready reach. And also, at my request, she brings the pretty red and gold enamelled comfit box filled with sweet and sour cherry suckets Tommy Blount brought me last time he rode out from London. Though I cannot bring myself to eat them—my stomach raises a sword of threatening protest each time I think to try one—I love looking at them, the candied cherries glowing in neat rows like a jeweller’s tray of round, perfect cabochon rubies, waiting for me to make a selection.

      Voices raised in argument outside my door suddenly penetrate my reverie, and, even though Pirto hastens out to try to quiet them, I lever myself up and follow her out into the Long Gallery, where watery sun pours in through the gabled windows to pool upon the cold stone floor, trying vainly to warm it, like an ardent lover wooing an icy maid.

      “But what nonsense is this?” Mrs Oddingsells demands, fluttering the note I had sent late the night before to be given to her upon arising. Her bosom heaves in such a mighty and zealous show of hypocritical outrage that I fear her breasts will burst like two cannonballs from her too-tightly-laced mulberry silk bodice, and I step back lest I suffer a blackened eye. “Sunday is the Lord’s Day, Lady Dudley, and all God-fearing people should be at home and at their prayers and reading their Bibles, not gallivanting at the fair! And certainly it is no day for gentlefolk like us to mingle with the sort of low, common people who are likely to frequent a fair upon a Sunday; no doubt they will be very loud and vulgar and given to drunken and lewd disport and excess!” She wrinkles her nose as if the very thought of such folk conjures up a stink as powerful as a cart heaped СКАЧАТЬ