For a moment it was hard for Hunsdon to speak.
“If it was you, father,” Robin went on gently, “If it was you…I’ll take my leave and say no more about it.”
This was tricky. The Queen had used a good young hound to find an old trail and he had done very well, far better than she could have expected. But he had to be careful. The Queen had given her orders. On the other hand…
“Do you really think I could have done a such a dishonourable thing?”
“For your sister the Queen? Yes. I would do it for Philadelphia if she needed me to.”
Hunsdon couldn’t help smiling although it might be misinterpreted. Robin and Philly as the two youngest had always been close and had constantly got into terrible scrapes together. Only the absolute cold truth would do here, that was obvious, although it had to be edited.
“Well, Robin, it’s true I would have done it if she asked me, despite the wickedness and dishonour, but the fact of the matter is that she didn’t ask me to and I didn’t kill Amy Dudley. On my word of honour.”
Robin looked no happier, standing tense with his fist where his swordhilt would have been.
“I had hoped you would say you had done the killing, father,” came Robin’s voice, softened to a breath of sound that the wind in the red and yellow leaves could cover, so he had to strain to hear it.
“Oh? Why?”
“Because otherwise all I can think is that the Queen did it herself.”
Hunsdon nearly gasped. It was clear Robin had worked out a great deal of what had happened at Cumnor place in the year of his birth. But he didn’t have all of it.
“No,” Hunsdon said positively, “I’m not saying she wasn’t capable, but no. She didn’t.”
“Nor ordered another man to do it?”
“No. My word on it, Robin, she didn’t.”
“But you and she were both at Cumnor Place when Amy Dudley nee Robsart died.”
It was a statement not a question. Hunsdon’s eyes widened as he saw how he had been trapped and he couldn’t help a shout of laughter. Damn it, the boy was bright. Carey didn’t join with the laugh.
“You were there to discuss the divorce, the Queen’s Great Matter,” Robin went on remorselessly, using the term Cromwell had used for Henry VIII’s long-ago divorce from Katherine of Aragon. “Amy Dudley would petition Parliament and convocation for an annullment of her marriage to the Earl of Leicester, on grounds of non-consummation. Amy was being difficult about it so the Queen decided to convince her in person. And so she dressed up in Aunt Katherine’s riding habit, put on a black wig and a married woman’s headtire, and rode out from Windsor to Cumnor Place thirty miles away, under cover of hunting. You went with her because really you were the only person who could. A man to protect her, but her half-brother so there could be no suggestion of impropriety. You would agree the deal for freeing Dudley and perhaps make a downpayment in gold. It was a deadly secret for if Burghley had realised what was afoot, he would have put a stop to it immediately by blocking the annullment in Parliament and Convocation, much as the Pope did thirty odd years before. It was ironic, really. Nobody would have given Dudley the divorce, but they might have done it for Amy given enough oil and pressure, because there was no breath of scandal whatever against Amy and she had borne no children in ten years of marriage.”
He was good, damn, he was good. Hunsdon watched Carey’s face and his heart swelled with pride. Carey had started to pace, squinting a little when the sun poked through the clouds.
“Amy lived so quiet a life, so carefully, she couldn’t be treated the way Ann Boleyn was and have charges trumped up against her. She had to sue for her divorce. And the Queen decided to visit her personally to get the agreement.”
“Not quite,” Hunsdon said softly.
“Amy was in a panic that week, trying to get clothes fine enough to feel confident in. She had one gown ordered from London that didn’t come in time, altered another to put gold lace on the collar. That’s what told me it was the Queen for sure, that she had to dress fine. You might say it was for her husband, true, but gold lace wouldn’t have impressed Leicester. A beautiful French lady once told me that women dress for other women, not men.”
Hunsdon said nothing. He was back in the past, when he was young and the finest tournament jouster at the Queen’s Court, when the Queen was young. How often had he actually noticed what any woman was wearing?
“So you and the Queen rode to meet her at Cumnor Place, since Amy couldn’t or wouldn’t ride herself. You took remounts, rode thirty miles across country at top speed. Meanwhile Lady Dudley had bidden all her servants out of the house for the meeting, sent them off to the Abingdon fair though some of them didn’t want to go. She was alone apart from a couple of her women playing cards in the parlour.”
It had been a wild ride, the Queen egging him on, challenging him, risking her neck for joy, taking hedges and ditches on her fine hunter, named Jupiter, a fire sprite, light in her sidesaddle, laughing as their horses ate the miles with their legs.
“And then…”
Hunsdon put up his palm to stop him. “Robin, you’re very nearly right. But…I must ask Her Majesty before I break the matter fully with you? Do you understand? I simply can’t…”
Robin had taken out his warrant. “So why did she tell me to dig? Come on, father, this authorises you to break silence.”
“This is dangerous ground,” Hunsdon rumbled, “Trust me, Robin. It was neither me nor Her Majesty…”
“Then who was it?”
“We don’t know.”
“You must know. You were there!”
“We tried. I tried when it happened, but I lost him, had to get back to the Queen. Unfortunately, the Queen hired Richard Topcliffe from the Earl of Shrewsbury in ‘66 when she came to Oxford. He must have found something and I know he turned against her and…”
“He’s been a licensed monster ever since.”
“He has. He was very clever. Whatever it was he found, he took it to one of the Hamburg merchants at the Steelyard and sent it overseas. If he ever dies unexpectedly or is arrested or word gets out, the box will be sent unopened to the Jesuits at Rheims who will know how to embarrass the Queen with it.”
“Burghley? Surely if he’d known a divorce was in the wind, he might have organised the murder to stop…”
Hunsdon shook his head. “I don’t think so. It would have been safer to block it in Convocation and Parliament. Cecil was never a gambler, he has only ever bet on a sure thing. If he was going to murder anyone, it would have been Dudley, I think. And not a bad idea at that, if he didn’t mind being hanged, drawn, and quartered for it.”
“But it only had to be made obvious that Dudley had killed her. Burghley could have seen to a verdict of unlawful killing from the inquest and put Dudley in the Tower no matter what the Queen thought. She wasn’t so secure on her throne then; she would have taken notice of her entire Privy Council and her magnates calling out their tenants.”
“Would she? I doubt it, Robin. You didn’t know her then. She learnt a lot from the troubles of her cousin Mary Queen of Scots.”
“The only thing I don’t understand is why the Queen took the risk of meeting with her at all.”
“Amy Dudley was an appallingly obstinate woman, no doubt how she trapped a Dudley in the first place. She was a God-fearing dull woman who loved her husband deeply and could never understand how Eliza could fascinate men, the magic she had-still has, for God’s sake. Amy struggled terribly with her conscience, I think because she would have to testify on oath that the marriage had not been consummated when of course it had been. She was just barren.” Hunsdon sighed. He could no longer see the matter as he had as a young man. “She kept changing her mind and asking for more money, more guarantees and she insisted she had to meet the Queen and see her sign the agreement. Nobody would do as a go-between, it had to be the Queen herself. Eliza was furious about it.”