Then he would be his gay self, enchanting her as he knew so well how to; he would play the passionate lover. “How could I tear myself away from you unless it were necessary! But this is important. We shall be rich again. We shall have power. I shall take you to Court with me, and your beauty will startle them all.”
She believed him; and she longed to go to Court as Robert’s wife.
When he left her he would leave her with happy dreams. She would see herself dancing at the Court balls, clad in velvet, stiff with jewels. She would lie on her couch eating the sweetmeats which she loved so well, lazily planning the future.
Pinto would shake her head, and while she warned her mistress that she would grow very fat if she ate so many sweetmeats, she would be thinking that Robert was visiting a woman in London. Poor Pinto! She did not understand Robert. He was very ambitious, but he was content with his wife. Amy remembered the passion between them. But he had another love, it was true; the love of power, the longing to see his riches restored; and was that not natural in one so proud?
But Pinto went on sorrowfully wondering. If Amy could not hold him when he was a simple country gentleman, how would she when he became the great man he intended to become?
He came riding home from London one summer’s day. Amy saw him from her window, coming into the courtyard with his servants about him. Her heart fluttered. She was wearing an old muslin and she called frantically to Pinto.
“Pinto, my lord is come. Quick … quick …”
Pinto helped her to pull off the old muslin, but before she was in her cherry velvet he was in the room. He stood looking from her to Pinto.
“Robert!” cried Amy.
Pinto scarcely turned, because Pinto always pretended to be unaware of him. She would say: He may be the gay Lord Robert to others; they may tremble at the sight of him; but not Pinto. To Pinto he is just a man—no different from any other.
Amy’s cheeks were first red then white; she was almost swooning at the sight of him. “Pinto … Pinto … look!”
And he cried, his words mingling with his merry laughter: “Pinto, look! Lord Robert is here!”
“A merry good day to you, my lord,” said Pinto, turning her head very slightly and making do with a nod instead of a curtsy.
He strode toward them; he caught them both in his arms. He lifted them and kissed first Amy, then Pinto. Amy was blushing with pleasure; Pinto was prim with disapproval.
“Now, Pinto,” he said, “get you gone, and leave a wife to her lawful husband.”
“I’ll first see my mistress dressed,” said Pinto.
“You’ll not!” he retorted. “For I like her best as she is.” And he took the cherry velvet and threw it to the other side of the room.
Amy squealed in delight, and Pinto went sedately to the dress and, without looking round, picked it up and walked out of the room.
Robert, laughing, began to kiss and caress Amy.
“Robert!” she gasped. “No warning! You should have let me know.”
“What! And give you time to send your secret lover packing?”
Amy clung to him. Pinto often said that his constant references to Amy’s secret lovers worried her. It was as though, said Pinto, he would put bad thoughts into the head of an innocent girl. But Pinto was against him. Poor Pinto! Poor simple countrywoman, she had never really known a Court gallant; and such a man as Robert must seem to her full of a sinister strangeness.
But why think of Pinto when Robert was here, glad to be home and full of passionate longing for his wife?
But his high spirits did not endure.
He and his brothers had been warned, he told her, that if they did not keep away from London, they would find themselves under arrest. The Queen’s agents had most seriously warned them that they must not forget that although they had been pardoned and had eluded the death penalty they still stood attainted of high treason. One false step, and they would again find themselves the prisoners of the Queen; and if they were once more in trouble, it was hardly likely that they could hope for their former good fortune to be repeated.
Robert was thinking—as he often did—of the Princess who had so much to win, so much to lose, and who had survived most miraculously by waiting. He and she were young, and the Queen had played out her ridiculous farce of false pregnancy; it was clear that there would be no royal offspring.
He longed to see Elizabeth. He made plans for breaking into her house either at Woodstock or Hatfield and presenting himself to her as her constant knight, her desperate lover who was ready to risk his life for a glimpse of her. But he quickly realized the folly of doing any such thing. He must wait, and waiting meant that he must endure the simple life and a return to the woman who was fast losing any power she had once had to attract him.
He was exasperated often and there were quarrels which reached their climax in her peevish reproaches. But always he could sweeten her when he wished to do the sweetening. Often he wished that she were not so madly in love with him. Even when he was harsh with her, when he took her clinging hands from about his neck and put her from him, even when he cried out that he had been a fool to marry her, still she came back whimpering for more love or more rough treatment. There was about him—whatever his mood—that ever-present fascination which could not fade. His power was in his person—the tall slim figure, the powerful shoulders, the haughty set of his well-shaped head, the strong features, the flashing eyes, the air of extreme masculinity, the curling mustaches and pointed beard, the blue-black hair, the arrogant, careless charm; and above all perhaps the certain assurance that there was only one thing on Earth which Robert Dudley could not do, and that was make women cease to love him.
Amy had to accept his carelessness, his philandering; all she asked was that he should stay with her and give her some of his attention.
But he was, of course, impatient to leave her; he was longing for adventure and excitement, and when, after two and a half years of this unsatisfactory existence, Philip of Spain persuaded Mary to join in war against France, Robert seized the opportunity as heaven-sent.
When St. Quentin fell to the English and Spanish soldiers under Philip, Henry Dudley met his death. Robert was complimented on his bravery which was so marked that Philip himself sent for him to thank him and tell him that he had played no small part in the victory.
In the King’s quarters on the French battlefield the two men faced each other—the trim little Spaniard with the fair hair and the blue eyes, and the powerfully built black-haired Englishman.
Robert could not resist the thought which occurred to him: If strangers had come into the tent and were asked which was the King and which the commoner, it was not difficult to guess what their answer would be. Kings should tower above their subjects as great Henry had over his.
But the mild young man, who was heir to more than half the world, had a kindly smile for the handsome beggar.
“Your Majesty,” said Robert kneeling, “you sent for me.”
“Rise, my lord,” said Philip. “I know of your circumstances. Now that the battle is won you have my leave to return to England if you wish to go.”
“Retire, Sire! With the French in flight and Paris open to your Majesty’s armies!”
Philip shook his head. “I have seen sights this day which have sickened me of war. We shall stay here. It would be unsafe to go on to Paris.”
Robert said nothing. A wise man did not argue with Kings. Not to seize the opportunity of marching on Paris would surely be the biggest mistake that had ever been made; but it was not for a penniless lord to tell a commander that.
Philip said: “You have displeased the Queen.”
“Your Majesty, I am the son of my father. I obeyed my father, as it seemed to me a son should.”