“MY ANSWER TO HER INQUIRY IS STILL no,” Elizabeth told Cecil.
Vengeance shall fall on thy disdain,
That makest but game on earnest pain:
Think not alone under the sun
Unquit to cause thy lover’s complaints,
Although my lute and I have done.
— SIR THOMAS WYATT, the Elder
“MY ANSWER TO HER INQUIRY IS STILL no,” Elizabeth told Cecil.
She noted well her courtiers ceased their chatter and pricked up their ears as if they were all in de Quadra’s hire to spy on anything she said, even in her presence chamber. Indeed, she herself had grown wiser about using informants lately: She had not only sent Dr. Dee to France for several months, but had dispatched a handsome messenger to her cousin Margaret Douglas in Yorkshire with a fine Christmas gift—and the command he come back with intelligence about what was going on up there in the wilds.
“But, Your Majesty,” Cecil protested gently, taking the petition she shoved back at him across the table, “Queen Mary Stuart writes of the burdens of barren widowhood in her young age and how far she has fallen.…”
His voice trailed off, and he exchanged a hooded look with the queen before plunging on. “Therefore, the Queen of Scots and France—”
“Former queen of France now her young husband is dead of an ear infection,” she interrupted. “We all know her mother-in-law, Catherine de Medici, is regent of France for her second young son, so let Mary of Scots go home and try to rule her nation on her own, as I do—until, of course, my Lord Cecil, we make a fine foreign marriage for me.”
“Then let me bring to your attention, Your Grace, that the former queen of France did at least finally ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh.”
“Which you worked hard for, my lord. But the woman dared to slander me and to quarter England’s insignia on her coat-of-arms and to say she should rule here in place of me. I will not have her passing through my kingdom, foul North Seas weather or not. If she means to go home to Scotland, she may land in Scotland.”
She noted Cecil sighed heavily before he placed the petition up his sleeve. He would not look so melancholy for long, she thought, not when she sprang her surprise on him today. And the one she had for Robin.
As if her thoughts had summoned him, Robin stepped forward from her coterie, handsome and glittering in his black and gold, the colors he had worn since he had been back at court. She supposed the gold was to imply he could yet be royalty, the black that he remained in mourning. Mayhap he was the latter since she had made him her friend but not her favorite these last months.
Elizabeth inhaled deeply to steady herself for this. The halls, even this presence chamber, smelled of fir and holly boughs the servants had been hanging for the coming holidays. Her own scent of rosewater and lavender—she wondered again how Meg Milligrew was faring, for she missed her hand on the herbs—made her nostrils flare.
“My friends, as you know,” she said to quiet them again, “I have summoned you today for the bestowment of an earldom on Lord Robert Dudley. But first, now that my comptroller, Sir Thomas Parry, has departed this life to leave the office of Master of the Court of Wards open, I must tell you I am bestowing that great office on William Cecil, in addition to his duties as my chief secretary.”
It pleased her to see she had taken Cecil by surprise. And Robert, who no doubt thought that lucrative post should be his. In addition, of course, to his elevation to the peerage he’d dared to push for as a outward sign that she believed he was innocent of Amy’s death.
“Ah, here is the other matter,” the queen said, holding up the patent for the peerage that would create him Earl of Leicester and place him permanently in the House of Lords, as he thought was his due.
Robert Dudley glowed with confidence. He could not help it, she thought. It was his way, and that would make him a dominating king and difficult husband. But she could not help loving him, though she had grieved for and buried all those girlish dreams now.
She reached for Amy Dudley’s knife, which she now used to break seals on correspondence. Whether or not Robin recognized it did not matter, for it was the queen’s keepsake, a reminder of many things.
“No,” she said, frowning and cocking her head, as she gazed at the document so dramatically that she knew Ned Topside would approve. “I fear not just now, for certain pains still smart and cause agony to us all. Mayhap at a later time.”
She stuck the knife in the ornately lettered patent and sliced it cleanly in two.
Some gasped audibly; others stood speechless. Cecil got a coughing fit. A telltale vein throbbed in Robin’s neck, and he simply looked the angriest she had ever seen him.
“Are you mad?” he cried, balling up his fists, one on the ornate hilt of his dress sword. “You shame me and my name!”
She stood and, tossing the knife and the torn paper to the table, leveled a straight arm and index finger at him. “I have raised you to where you now stand, my lord, and may someday raise you higher. But I tell you—all of you—there is no master and but one mistress here!”
No one breathed. Cecil knelt first, then the others randomly until only she and Robin were left standing. Their eyes met and held, his fury fading to fear, hers unblinking and steady.
Then Robert Dudley went down on both knees before the queen of England as she swept from the room. By the time her ladies caught up with her, she walked alone through the frozen privy garden in the shadow of the palace towers.