She implied that she expected fidelity from him; but in reality she did not. He must be essentially masculine; and he was. Men, she believed, were not noted for their fidelity. Not for her some sighing love-sick fool. She must have a rampaging lover, impatient, angry sometimes, wayward perhaps. Robert had all these characteristics; and he provided all the joy in her life.
He longed for rank that he might flaunt it in the faces of such as Norfolk. He wanted to take first place, not only through the Queen’s love, but in his own right of nobility.
He would come familiarly into her bedchamber, startling her ladies; and once, after he had kissed her hand, he had the temerity to kiss her cheek … before them all.
“My lord!” she reproved him with mock dignity, but her eyes sparkled and he was in no mood to be moved by her assumed anger.
“I have kissed you before them all,” he said. “So would I serve you careless of others … all through the day … all through the night … all through my life.”
“Listen to him!” she cried. “What if the whole Court came in to kiss me good morning!”
“They should never enter this chamber. My sword would prevent them.”
She looked at her women, commanding them to admire him. She knew there were several among them whose thoughts were occupied unduly with Lord Robert Dudley.
He had dared to take her shift from the hands of the woman who held it; but Kat had snatched it away from him, declaring that it was not meet for a man to know the Queen wore such a garment.
How Elizabeth loved such games! She sat there imperiously, aware of his desires, protected by her women.
“Don’t dare leave me with Lord Robert! I fear this man!” she cried.
And his answer came: “If I read your Majesty’s meaning, you have need to fear him … though he would protect your life with his.”
“I know it,” she said tenderly. “But I forbid you to come thus into my chamber … ever again.”
But he heeded not the warning; he knew that she would be dis appointed if he did not come. Kat said it was as it had been with my lord Admiral. Did Her Majesty remember? It seemed that these big and handsome men found great delight in storming her chamber.
Kat’s face was slapped affectionately; and Elizabeth was very gay that morning.
When she next saw him she reproved him, whispering to him under cover of the music which was played in the gallery.
“My lord, you go too far.”
“Nay,” he said, “not far enough!”
“In my bedchamber! And daring to hand me my garments!”
“Ere long I trust I shall be with you all through the days and nights.”
“Ah … if that might only be!”
He showed his exasperation, which set a frown between his well-shaped brows. “It could be … quite simply.”
“No, Robert, not yet.”
“Not yet!” he cried hopefully; and he would have seized her hand but she prevented him.
“Have a care, foolish one. Do you want the whole Court to start its scandals once more?”
“They have never stopped.”
“How dare you suggest there are scandals concerning me? You forget I am your Queen.”
“Would I could forget it! Would it were not so…. Then …”
“Then you would have no need of me?”
“If you were a dairymaid I would have need of you.”
She laughed and retorted with the Tudor frankness: “Yes, for five minutes under a hedge.”
“Five minutes under a hedge and for the rest of my life.”
“Robert, when you look at me thus I believe that to be true. But we are too far apart.”
“That could be remedied.”
“It shall be, my darling.”
But later, when the papers which would have made Robert an Earl and restored the Earldom of Warwick to his brother Ambrose were put before her, she was in a perverse mood.
He was with her at the time; she looked from him to the papers. If he were an Earl—and the Earldom she would grant him would be one which hitherto had been granted to none but persons of royal blood—she knew that she would be very close to marriage with him. She could not help noticing the gleam in his eyes; she remembered how she herself had coveted the crown. She pictured herself relenting—for indeed there were times when, for all her resolutions, she felt herself weak in his company. She hardly ever granted him an interview with herself alone. She was strong, but so was he. To her he was the perfect man and as such would necessarily be triumphant, and how could he be unless she surrendered? It was only because she was a Queen that she could resist him.
He should not have his earldom yet. He should remain her gay Lord Robert. So she frowned and, to the astonishment of all, asked that a knife be brought to her. When this was done she drew it across the papers, cutting them through.
“How can I heap honors on these Dudleys!” she cried. “Have they not been traitors to the Crown for three generations!”
Robert faced her, his eyes blazing. How she loved him! What a man he was! He cared for nothing.
“Madam,” he said, “I understand you not. How, pray, have the Dudleys failed to serve you?”
“What excitement is this?” she asked as she smiled at him. “How can I, my lord, grant honors to the Dudleys? Do you forget that my great father had good cause to send your grandfather to the block? Do you deny that your father rose against the Crown and tried to make your brother King?”
“If my service to Your Majesty is considered treachery …”
She lifted her hand and gave his cheek a light slap—the most affectionate of slaps—denoting familiarity and indulgence.
Those present smiled. This was nothing but a lovers’ quarrel.
She is as much in love with him as ever, they thought; but he has offended her of late because his eyes have been straying to a fair young lady of the Queen’s bedchamber. The Queen is merely telling him that there must be only one love affair in the life of Robert Dudley.
All the same he continued to be plain Lord Robert.
The Queen was tormented by thoughts of those who she feared might be deemed to have a greater claim than herself to the throne. Nobles of royal blood always haunted, like grim shadows, the lives of the Tudors. Henry, her father, had solved his problems by murder; he liked to know that those who might have ousted him were dead. That was a wise policy, Elizabeth often thought; but times had changed, and she was not the absolute monarch that her father had been; she was more dependent on her ministers. After the persecutions of the Marian reign, the people looked to Elizabeth for clemency.
There were three women who gave her cause for anxiety; two of these were the sisters of Lady Jane Grey—Lady Catharine and Lady Mary. She knew that there were some who still considered her to be a bastard and usurper; these people would like to make the Lady Catharine Queen. The grandmother of the Grey girls had been Henry VIII’s sister and there was no doubt of their legitimacy.
Elizabeth was continually afraid that there would be a rising against her. Indeed that had been her great fear at the time of Amy’s death. The Grey sisters had been carefully brought up and their conduct was not likely to give rise to scandal. There had never been any admirals in their lives to burst into their bedchambers and slap and tickle them while they were in bed. There had never been a handsome man so in love with them that he was suspected of murdering his wife. The characters of Lady Catharine and Lady Mary were quite different from that of Elizabeth. They were quiet, learned, and good Protestants. Many remembered that Elizabeth had been ready to change her religion when she deemed it expedient to do so. The Greys were gentle, pliable; Elizabeth was full of feminine vagaries. Many people in this land might think Lady Catharine or Lady Mary would make a more suitable Queen than this red-headed virago who had a penchant for goading men to scandalous behavior.