A Court Affair. Emily Purdy

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      I reached out and gently straightened a ruffle of lace on Amy’s wedding apron and tweaked a silk bow, adjusting the sunny yellow ribbon streamers and the strands and loops of tiny seed pearls until they lay just right. I could still smell the lavender and rosemary from when the apron had been lovingly packed away, no doubt with dreams of the daughter Amy longed to have, and of tying it around her waist, with a mother’s love and kiss, on her own wedding day. A dream sadly fated never to come true.

      At least Robert had not begrudged her her lace. Amy loved lace; she said it was “like wearing snowflakes that don’t melt”. I hadn’t actually heard her say it, only Robert’s cruel parody when he slapped his hand against the tailor, Mr Edney’s, bill, loudly complaining, “Lace, lace, and more lace!” Laughing at and belittling her. Robert left her alone in the country, foisting her off on his friends instead of giving her a home of her own and children, while he danced attendance on the Queen of England, showered her with jewels, lost hundreds of pounds at cards and dice, spent excessively on his own ornate wardrobe and lavishly laden table, and was known to every moneylender in London, yet he begrudged his wife a few lengths of lace. That was one of the times when I did not like the man I loved.

      Sometimes I sent Amy lace and other pretty baubles, trinkets, and tokens in Robert’s name—a bolt of bright blue silk the colour of bluebells; a pretty white silk headdress edged with silver braid and embroidered with violets and pinks; a Venetian looking glass framed in enamelled flowers; and dusky-rose-coloured gloves fringed with gold and embroidered with bright pink rosebuds for her birthday. I knew he would not deny the gifts; he would rather be worshipped like a gilded god, basking in her humble, loving gratitude, even if it were for a gift he had not actually given. I know something of this too. I am the living embodiment of chaste Diana, the Virgin Queen, a secular Holy Virgin; I am worshipped and adored, the subject of poetry and songs. It would be all too easy to let this adulation go to my head like strong wine, and though some may think I have done just that, I have not, for I also know that no one sits easily upon a throne; for all its gilded, jewel-encrusted glory, it is as insecure as a high, rickety stool with one leg shorter than the rest, and no crown fits so firmly that it cannot be knocked or tumble off. The higher the pedestal, the farther the fall; no one who rises to power should ever forget that.

      Amy’s little notes of love and gratitude were proof Robert could point to that he had always been a good husband. And always I would ponder the perversity that it is often the lot of womankind to give our love to those who are unworthy of it, like my sister, who destroyed herself all for love of Spanish Philip. We do it, I think, because we fear that if we withhold our love, we may never find a truly worthy recipient for it, so with the largesse of a rich philanthropist we give the precious gold of our affection away rather than be miserable misers and hoard it. What good does a fortune do a spinster on her deathbed? Better to have lived well and spent it. And so we do, we spend our love, though very seldom wisely, and many of us die paupers for it.

      Amy’s love of lace—“like wearing snowflakes that don’t melt”—was just one more of those little titbits Robert’s tongue had casually let fall, scornfully, mockingly, or exasperatedly dropped over the years, which my mind had gathered up. As I stood there gazing down at her in her coffin, I staggered under the realisation that perhaps I, Amy’s glittering and much resented diamond-and-pearl-encrusted-alabaster-tower-of-confidence-strength-and-pride rival, the woman, the Queen, who all the world thought had stolen her husband’s love away from her, had known and understood Amy better than her own husband ever had throughout their ten years of marriage, from the first stirrings of the wolf of lust hiding under the sheep’s clothing of love, to the death of that lovely illusion, and the loneliness and hurt, the estrangement, indifference, and callousness that came afterwards.

      Robert wanted something he couldn’t have, something that was not his right—my crown, to rule England. And I was guilty of the same, of wanting something I couldn’t have, that I had no right to, something that didn’t belong to me. I wanted a handsome, fun, virile man whose company I could revel and delight in, someone whom I could be free and just be me with, to just be Bess with, not Queen Elizabeth, someone who could never truly hold and chain and enslave me in the bonds of holy wedlock. I wanted to be free, but I wanted love, passion, and excitement; I wanted a lover, not a husband, and certainly not an ambitious schemer after my throne. I had known and loved Robert Dudley since I was eight years old, and I eagerly let myself believe his assurances that he and Amy were estranged, that the love betwixt them had long ago died; I didn’t think to look, to inquire, whether there was truth or lies behind his words. And even if I had, would I have released him, would I have let him go? My head says yes, but my heart says no. And a woman lies dead because of this game Robert and I have been playing with each other, this taut and tense flirtation, a wild dance, a chase, but at the end … only Death has made a conquest, a helpless and innocent bystander who unwisely but all too well also loved Robert Dudley, and with more right than I had to, as she was his lawful wife.

      We are—we were—a triangle, with Robert at the apex and Amy and I on the sides, but at the bottom, I like to think two arms, two hands, stretched out to form that short, straight line. If I had been kinder and reached out an understanding hand to you, Amy, would you have reached out and taken it, or would you have bitterly, angrily, or fearfully pushed it away? Now, when it is too late to make amends, I want so much to stand before you, a living, breathing woman, not a cold, dead corpse, and touch your chin, to stop its trembling, look into your eyes, glistening like rare blue green jewels beneath the tears, and say, “You don’t have to be afraid of me, Amy; you never did.” Could I, if I had it to do over again, in all my glittering, regal, emerald green jealous, possessive pride have done that, and could you, timid, hurt, afraid, sick, and lonely, simmering—and rightfully so—with resentment, have believed and accepted? That is yet one more mystery the answer to which we may never know, just like how you met Death and how He came to leave you lying broken at the foot of that staircase. Did He hurl you down violently or lay you down gently? Will we ever know?

      1

      Amy Robsart Dudley

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

      The hot bath feels heavenly—the billowing clouds of steam caress my face as they rise, like warm and comforting angels’ wings—but it has also sapped my strength. I feel light-headed, and a little dizzy and faint, with a persistent fear of falling should I dare attempt to stand. Part of me wants to give up, to surrender to the desire for sleep that never leaves me now, to lay myself down in the arms of Lethargy and never rise again. Now, each time I sleep, I feel as if I am floating out to sea, and the tether that binds my boat to the shore is stretching farther, growing frailer, and fraying more and more. Sometimes it scares me, and sometimes I don’t even care; I turn my back to the shore, stare straight ahead, and face the horizon boldly, ready to drift away and leave all my pains and woes behind me. Nausea stirs deep inside my stomach, like a serpent slowly uncoiling and waking grumpily from its slumber, just enough to make me aware of it but not so urgent as to send me grasping for the basin that is now never beyond my reach. But I say nothing of this to dear Mrs Pirto, who has attended me faithfully and lovingly for all of my eight-and-twenty years, as a nursemaid turned lady’s maid turned nurse again; it would only distress her, and she worries so about me; my failed marriage and failing health are the cause of most of the lines on that kind and careworn face and have turned her ebony hair to pewter and dingy silver.

      From my bath I can see the sky, black and starless, through the high, arched windows, yet one more reminder that monks once made their home at Cumnor, for two hundred years or more, before King Henry ordered the dissolution of the monasteries and cast their cloistered inhabitants out to fend for themselves in a confusing and frightening, often unkind world. Before Cumnor fell into private hands, my spacious apartment was divided up into several stark and tiny monks’ cells furnished with only the bare necessities—a СКАЧАТЬ