A Court Affair

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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 hard-as-a-board cot to sleep upon, with a chamber pot hidden underneath, and a crucifix looking down on its occupant from high upon the wall, to remind him that God is always watching us. Sometimes I fancy that I can still see their faint outlines, like the ghosts of those banished crosses haunting their former home. In spite of myself, I smile and blush a little at the thought that a monk’s cot might even have sat right here where I sit now, naked in my bath.

No doubt to the simple country folk hereabouts it seems like the height of extravagant folly or absurdity—like the French king’s mistress bathing in a tub filled with crushed strawberries to preserve her famous beauty—my rising when it is still as black as tar outside to take my bath. Many already think me a woman of a strange mind. But it’s a soothing and peculiar kind of peace, to sit in a candlelit bath while most of the world still sleeps, and I like it, and even though I am naked, I feel less vulnerable somehow. I like the quiet solitude of sitting in my bath, luxuriating in its warmth undisturbed, before the sunrise and the busy bustle of the day begins, hours before there are voices downstairs and outside the windows, the clatter of cart wheels and horses’ hooves in the courtyard, the laughing, joyfully raised voices of children playing, servants calling to one another, and footsteps and chatter in the Long Gallery outside my room where I used to walk up and down before I became so weak, and below stairs the gossip of servants and the crash and clang of kitchen pots. Though Cumnor is in reality four separate households under a shared roof, and I keep to myself most of the time, the other ladies who lodge here are more social creatures than I, and each thinks that she is the queen bee here, and over this entire hive reigns. There is the ancient Mrs Owen, the mother of Cumnor’s owner, Dr George Owen, who, like the mouse who bravely pulled a thorn from the lion’s paw, received it as a reward for his attendance on King Henry’s sore and seeping leg; and the plainspoken, sometimes tart-tongued Mrs Forster, wife of Sir Anthony Forster, my husband’s treasurer, who holds the current lease on Cumnor; and his mistress, the widow Mrs Oddingsells, one of those rare women who seem to grow more attractive and alluring as they age. My servants dart about Cumnor like busy bees doing whatever they are told to do regardless of who gives the commands; sometimes they don’t even have time for me, they are so busy doing Mrs Owens’s, Mrs Oddingsells’s, or Mrs Forster’s bidding. But I let it go; I am too tired to complain, it would take more strength than it is worth, and I just don’t care any more. Besides, I like being here with only Pirto to attend me, free from the fear that some well-intentioned or curious maidservant will come knocking and catch a glimpse of my pain-racked body and ruined left breast when Pirto opens the door, or will even boldly cross the threshold and ogle me, while pretending not to, so she can tell the others what she has seen, as she delivers a stack of fresh linens or a package from my husband containing a pretty piece of apparel to lift my spirits, or the latest doctor’s or witch’s brew calculated to restore my health or more likely hasten me to my grave if I were fool enough to drink it. With rumours rife in London and spreading throughout the land, and even across the sea, that Robert and his royal paramour mean to poison me, I would be a fool to let any potion he sent cross my lips. But the colours are pretty, and I sometimes set the glass bottles on my windowsill so that when the sun strikes them just right, rays of amber, ruby, emerald, and lemon light shoot into my room like a rainbow to fight the clammy gloom of Cumnor’s grey stone walls and floors.

Outside my windows the sky is as dark as black velvet, with not a star in sight to provide even a pinprick of diamond-white light, and the silver coin of the moon has been spent. It’s strange, but before the cancer burrowed into or erupted out of my breast, whichever description fits it best, I never realised how dark it is before the dawn. It frightens me yet at the same time makes me feel so grateful and glad to be safe and warm inside my room with numerous candles all about, beside a comforting fire that crackles with flames that move and sway and leap like dancers in red, yellow, and orange costumes, instead of wandering lost, stumbling and staggering blindly, out there in the dark, feeling likely to jump out of my skin at every noise, whether it be a rustle of branches in the breeze, the hoot of an owl, the trill of a night bird, or the howl of a beast. The thought of being enfolded by darkness terrifies me and makes me shiver despite the warmth of my fireside bath. I am so afraid that that is what death will be like. What if Heaven is only a comforting myth, a fairy story to reassure the faithful, to instil hope instead of horror, peace instead of panic, calm instead of a frenzy to cram full and make each moment count? What if death is really the permanent cessation of light and an eternal reign of darkness, like being wrapped round and round and suffocated in a bolt of heavy black velvet, unable to breathe or see or move, locked in stultifying black stillness forevermore?

Sometimes I dream that I awake in black-velvet darkness to feel a pair of strong hands about my throat intent on squeezing the life out of me. It’s funny in a way, I used to be so afraid of the city, the country used to seem such a safe haven to me, and London with all its crime, bustle, and brawls the epitome of danger, yet now I realise, secluded here in the country, that if anyone came meaning harm to me, if they chose their moment well, no one would hear me scream. I know now that I was wrong to insist on solitude. If anyone should come to me with murder in mind, I have colluded in my own demise, I have made it easier; all a killer has to do is wait and choose his moment well, and Justice will turn a blind eye.

Hot tears fill my eyes and threaten to spill over as I gasp and shiver. Gazing at me with deep concern, Pirto starts to speak, but I shake my head and reassuringly murmur, “It’s all right, Pirto. Come.” I force a smile. “Let’s wash my hair now. I want to look my best today!”

I mustn’t spoil dear Pirto’s day; up until the last moment she must think this is one of my good days, and I am excited about going to the fair.

I close my eyes and lean back as she ladles warm water onto my head and begins to massage my scalp and, from root to tip, to work in a special chamomile and lemon blend to make my hip-length yellow hair shine like straw miraculously spun into curls of living gold, as though King Midas himself had touched my head. “Harvest gold”—years ago my husband dubbed its colour as he lay upon me in a bed of buttercups by the river, our favourite trysting spot, playing with my sun-streaked hair, stroking and fanning it out above and about my head like rays of the sun, likening it to a bountiful wheat harvest flourishing proudly beneath the sun that daily bestowed a thousand kisses upon it. “Hair with a lustre that puts gold to shame,” he said, then kissed my face and declared that my cheeks were “as pink as the sweet roses of May”. He has such a way with words, my husband; his letters used to make me melt like butter left out under the hot summer sun. Does he lie by the fire with Elizabeth and fan her red hair out around her head whilst in poetic words comparing it to the dancing, crackling flames, I wonder? Does he make her melt too? And is she fool enough like I was to love, trust, and believe him?

I sigh and breathe deeply of the lemons’ tart tang and the fresh, clean smell of the chamomile, a combination at once soothing and invigorating. I wonder if this was made from chamomile I helped gather before I became too ill. I can’t help but smile at the memory of my former self standing young and strong amongst the sun-kissed flowers with a straw hat crowning my wild, wayward hair to keep my fair skin from freckling or worse—Robert would be horrified if he came riding up for a visit and found his wife burned as red as a boiled crayfish or looking like “The Nut-Brown Maid” stepped out of her song—with a basket slung over the crook of my arm, and my skirts tucked up to my knees, and the grass tickling my bare ankles and toes.

I was never sick a day in my life before this disease! I used to be a strong, happy, country lass, pretty, pink-cheeked, and smiling, brimming over with health and vigour. Not rawboned, big, and brawny like a blacksmith in petticoats, but hale and hearty, round and rosy, not like a fashionable, porcelain-skinned lady of the court who would like the world to think that she is as delicate and fragile as an eggshell, a treasure to be handled with the utmost care lest it shatter beneath the slightest pressure. I sometimes think that the real tragedy of my marriage is that for Robert the novelty of what I was paled against the reality of what I wasn’t.

As soon as it is light enough outside to see, everyone will be stirring, alive with excitement and anticipation, fidgeting through their chores and the church service at St Michael’s like children eager to go outside and play. Today the Fair of Our Lady opens in Abingdon. I have given all my servants leave to attend and cajoled the other ladies to do the same, to make this Sunday not just a holy day but a holiday, a happy day. I want them all to do what I cannot—to forget their cares and woes, and frolic, laugh at the antics of the jugglers, acrobats, dancing dogs, puppet shows, and clowns, to dance and sing, have their fortunes told, ask a question of “The Learned Pig”, gape in wonderment at the living oddities like the two-headed sheep, test their strength and skill and win a prize for their sweetheart, and glut themselves on cider and cake until their bellies feel fit to burst, and spend their hard-earned pennies on trinkets and frivolities from the peddlers who follow the fair like fleas after a dog.

My servants have been so good to me, putting up with all my pains and whims, all my tears and fears, my melancholy and maudlin fancies—if they really are fancies. There are times when I am not sure any more what is real and what isn’t. I know it is what they are paid to do, but it is no fun or easy task attending a sick woman, breathing in the stink and stale air of the sickroom, the endless changing of pus-stained dressings, laundering sweat-sodden bedsheets and night shifts, emptying basins and chamber pots, carrying in trays of nourishing broth that like as not will be carried out again untouched or nearly so, the applications of ointments to flesh that is at once alive and festering with disease and pain yet also decaying, dying right before any eyes that dare look upon it, whether it be in curiosity, revulsion, compassion, or necessity.

Death put His mark on my breast, and it is now spreading throughout my body. Sometimes I fancy I can feel it swimming through my veins like a school of tiny fish. And soon He will take my life as well. Death will take my heart in His hand and squeeze it until it ceases to beat and lies squashed, broken, and bleeding in the palm of His hand, both merciless and merciful at the same time.

My mind is already giving way. Already there are fissures through which fantasy and suspicion seep in and become hopelessly blended with my reason, and the resulting mixture is not pleasing to anyone, least of all me. It frustrates and bewilders me to always have to stop and wonder and ask myself, and sometimes even to swallow my pride and ask others, if something truly happened or if I only dreamt or imagined it. I used to be a woman with a calm and steady, sensible mind, possessed of good country common sense, dependable and reliable. Despite my very feminine love of fashions and finery, I was never a woman who could be called frivolous or featherbrained.

I used to be the chatelaine of my father’s estate. My mother was a rich widow who never had much interest in such things. She preferred the life of a pampered invalid, lounging her life away in bed, propped up against a mountain of pillows, munching sweetmeats, gossiping with the friends and family who came calling, and showing off one or another of her pretty lace-trimmed caps and bed gowns, so I took charge of the household as soon as I was old enough. I kept account of 3,000 sheep—the lambing, the shearing, the wool sales, those animals sold for mutton at market—I tallied the profits and the losses and kept account of the barley crop, the yield from our famed apple orchard and other fruit trees, the berry picking, the brewing of cider and ale, the salting of meat for winter, the milk, butter, and cream from our cool stone dairy, the honey from the hives, the distillery where we made our own perfumes and medicines and dried herbs and flower petals for sachets and pot-pourri to sweeten our rooms and the chests where we stored our clothes and bed linens; I oversaw the larder and wine cellar and made sure they were always well stocked, with plenty to eat and drink, barrels of dried fruits and salted meats, and jams and jellies to delight us with summer fruits in wintertime. I supervised the laundry and candle-making, planned the meals with our cook, and dispensed charity, packing and giving out baskets of food, clothing, and medicines to the poor, ailing, and elderly. I rode out daily to inspect the fields, orchards, and pastures. I used to be able to do it all! Father used to say I was a paragon of efficiency!

But now … Now there is no work for me to do even if I were able. Now I sit in the homes of strangers as a gracious, idle, and ailing houseguest with too much time on my hands and weighing heavily upon my mind. I was brought up to believe that idle hands are the Devil’s tool, but I think that is equally true of an idle mind. Rumours, fears, and fancies prey on me, they bite deeply like fanged monsters, and I can no longer distract myself and stave them off with work as I used to do. It is not just my body that is failing. Now my mind is a mass of contradictions—I think or say one thing and then another, I veer from the highest heights of hope to the deepest pit of dark despair, one moment joy rules my life, then, in a finger snap, I am fury incarnate or drowning in deep blue doldrums; I grasp greedily at life yet long for death, I fight to survive and then sink down, ready to yield, admit defeat, and surrender. I’ve lost control of my own mind, and I don’t know what I want any more when I used to be so certain. I’ve strayed so far from the woman I was and the woman I always meant and wanted to be. I’ve lost my way, and now it is too late to remedy my course, to stop, stand still, get my bearings, and think, turn back to the crossroads of Fate and choose a different path. As my father would say: “You’ve made your bed, Amy my lass, and now you have to lie in it!”

Some rumours already claim that I am a madwoman kept chained in an attic for my own good and the safety of others and that loyal Pirto is not my maid turned nurse but actually my keeper.

“Poor Robert!” those who hear the rumours—both the ones that tell the truth and the ones that lie—must say and sigh as they dolefully shake their heads and pat his shoulder or back sympathetically if they are acquainted with him well enough to take such liberties with his person. Under the circumstances, even those who dislike him—and there are a great many who do—cannot begrudge him his extravagances and pleasures. Eight-and-twenty is far too young to be burdened with such a wife, they no doubt think or even say outright. “Poor Robert” indeed! Healthy, handsome, virile, strong, and vigorous Robert, riding like the wind and dancing the night away, his ambitions blazing like a comet so bright, they almost turn night into day, spending every waking hour fawning over and flattering the Queen, paying poets to write her sonnets he can sign his own name to, gambling as if gold were as common as shit and all he has to do is squat down over a pot to get more, racking up debts buying her costly gifts—silk stockings by the score and an emerald that would have paid for us to have a real home of our own if such had been his desire—and dreaming of the day when he will be free of me to marry her and become King Robert I of England. It’s always “Poor Robert!” never “Poor Amy!” though eight-and-twenty is far too young to be burdened with the fatal canker of cancer in her once-beautiful breast, to live every day locked in a brutal, unbreakable embrace of pain that can only be numbed by a powerful powder of opium poppies mixed into strong wine that brings strange dreams, both sleeping and waking, that hopelessly muddles fact and fiction in her poor, befuddled brain, to live every moment knowing that her days are numbered and ever dwindling, and in such pain that she often falls upon her knees and prays to God to deliver her from her desperation. Yes, “Poor Robert” indeed! Dancing the volta with the Queen and showering kisses onto her perfect alabaster breasts; rolling silk stockings up or down her long, fair legs; flaunting his prowess on the tennis court and in the saddle; riding to the hunt or against an opponent in the tiltyard; and sitting on the Queen’s Council to arrogantly contradict the wise Sir William Cecil because he resents the trust that exists between the Queen and the Secretary of State. Robert wants to reign supreme! If Cecil said black were white, Robert would bang his fists down hard upon the table and shout, “Nay, it is green!” then pout and sulk with a face as dark as a storm cloud if Her Majesty chose to take Cecil’s word over his. Such is my husband’s life. “Poor Robert” indeed; he is the one truly deserving of sympathy, notme! If I were dead, he would be free, he would be King, but my weak and waning body stands between him and his Destiny. Poor Robert! How the heavens must weep for him!

Dried chamomile bobs about my breasts, but I don’t look down; this disease has already killed my vanity and murdered all the delight my body ever gave to me. I sometimes wonder if it has been visited upon me as a punishment for my vanity, the pride and pleasure I once took in baring and flaunting my breasts before my husband to entice and excite him and enflame his lust. Whenever Pirto helps me dress and undress, I keep the candles at a distance and my eyes fixed straight ahead. I never look down, even though I know ignoring it will not make it go away. I tried that when I first discovered the inwardly turned dimple that later pointed outward in an emphatic and angry lump that demanded my attention and could not be ignored. I shun the looking glass now and drape it in black velvet as if I were already dead and this were a house in mourning. But even though I avoid looking, I know exactly what I would see if I did. My right breast perfect and plump, like a creamy custard crowned with a cherry pink nipple, the left marred, mottled, swollen, and florid, with an ugly, oozing lump but half a thumb’s span from my nipple, as if it were my nipple’s ugly, grossly deformed twin, a grotesquerie made to nurse Death’s pet imp. Sometimes I dream that he is there, a wicked little gargoyle, a tiny bilious green and black sulphur-stinking devil, dainty only in his size, with pointy ears and a forked tail, glowing red eyes, and needle-sharp fangs he sinks with ravenous relish into the lump to suckle and suck the life out of me and make me either scream out in agony or fall fainting and breathless to the floor, defenceless against the onslaught of pain his suckling brings. I used to dream of someday having a baby, a little girl with my golden curls or Robert’s dark ones, to nurse at my breast, but instead I have this evil imp called Cancer to suck from me, and instead of good and wholesome mother’s milk my nipple leaks a foul discharge, sometimes milky in further mockery of my dreams, other times tinged pink by my blood to remind me of the pink dresses and hair ribbons I would have given the little girl I know now I will never carry under my heart, feeling her flutter and kick inside the warm, safe nest of my womb.

The swelling extends beneath my left arm so that I feel always tender and sore there. I try to carry myself carefully, as if I were a woman fashioned from the finest Venetian glass, but often, out of habit, a lifetime of moving freely without thought or worry, I forget. It has happened so many times that hearing me gasp and cry out has become commonplace; those about me have heard it so often that the maids seldom even look up from their work, or Mrs Forster and Mrs Oddingsells from their game of cards or backgammon, and Mrs Owen, who as the wife of one doctor and the mother of another, one might have expected a show of compassion from, has become immune to human suffering. At such times I fancy I could run stark naked shrieking like a banshee through the house with my hair on fire, and no one would even look up.

The candlelight is kind to me, for which I am grateful, as I am for any kindness that is given me. Lately the disease has lent a yellow tint to my skin and the whites of my eyes—jaundice. But in the kind, flattering light of the candles it isn’t obvious; it is the harsh, unsparingly honest light of the sun that cruelly gives my secret away and shows the world that I am like a woman made of straw, brittle and yellow from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, and everyone waits with bated breaths for the inevitable day when I will break, like a piece of dry straw snapped in two.

“All right, love?” Pirto asks as she finishes rinsing my hair.

I nod and smile. “Just dreaming of cinnamon cakes and apple cider, Pirto; they remind me of home, and the cider made from the apples from Father’s orchards at Syderstone. I remember how we used to celebrate the harvest, with dancing and apple bobbing and a great feast with every dish made with apples—every single one, even an apple in the roast pig’s mouth! And hair ribbons, Pirto!” I flash an even brighter smile and half turn round in my bath. I stubbornly ignore the protesting pain, sharp and grinding, at the base of my spine that makes my breath catch, though I hastily hide that, quickly turning it into a sigh of eager excitement instead. For Pirto, I pretend I am once again that giddy young girl she used to know, excited about a day at the fair. “They’re sure to have hair ribbons at the fair, aren’t they, Pirto? I’ve a fancy for buttercup yellow, maiden’s blush pink, and Our Lady’s blue.”

“Indeed they are, pet, to be sure, they will!” Pirto beams back at me. I can tell it does her heart good to see me like this—excited and looking forward to something, even a rustic and rollicking country fair.

“And apple green and cherry red! I want My Lord to see me with a rainbow of ribbons streaming down my back when he comes to visit me!” I add, still smiling, as the pain gives my spine another brutal twist, like a master torturer manning the rack to make his victim howl and beg for mercy and divulge her most deeply guarded secrets.

“Aye, love.” Pirto nods excitedly. “And if we can find one in primrose pink, it will match the new dress you’ve ordered from Mr Edney just grand, it will!”

“We must look out for one, then,” I say, the smile frozen on my face as the pain causes pearls of sweat to bead my brow as it twists round in the small of my back like a spring wound dangerously tight until it threatens to break. “Oh, I do hope Mr Edney finishes my new gown in time—dusky rose velvet embroidered with bright pink roses with the collar fringed in gold, like the one on the russet taffeta he made for me. I ordered it to match the gloves My Lord sent me for my birthday. Surely that is a sign that he still cares for me, Pirto? If he did not care, he would not have taken the time to choose something so pretty that he knew would please me so much. I want to wear it for him with the gloves when he comes to me. And surely he will come soon; the court is not very far … Windsor Castle is only half a day’s ride away. Only half a day …” I sigh. “Half a day!”

The thought of the husband I still love so much, even though I know I should not, and long to see even though with all this talk of poison and murder he now frightens me, fills me with such sorrow that the tears I have fought to hold back for so long threaten to overwhelm and drown me from within if I do not let them out. Why do I still love him when he no longer loves me? Why do I still strive to win back a love long gone? Why do I desire a man who has shattered all the trust that ever lay between us, just as he has dashed all my hopes and destroyed all my dreams? He has even tried to murder me. And yet … my head says no, but my heart cries yes, and even as I fear and hate, I still love and long. Life will never be the same as it was again, this I know, but of the dream I cannot let go. Right or wrong, I still love him.

“Come, the sheet now, Pirto.” I swallow back the tears and force myself to smile as I nod towards it, draped over the back of a chair to warm before the fire. “I will get out now and sit by the fire while you comb my hair.”

I grit my teeth and brace myself to stand up. But stand I must, and stand I will. Summoning all my strength, steeling myself against the pain that I know will flare beneath my arm and explode like fireworks within my chest, I bite my bottom lip and, with Pirto hovering anxiously beside me holding up the drying sheet, ready to wrap me in it, I lever myself up. It takes everything I have not to scream and to fight back the faintness that threatens to knock me off my feet, and the unrelenting pain twisting agonisingly in the small of my back. It feels as though a little dog were sewn inside me friskily chasing his tail round and round and bumping my spine at every turn, then rounding on it in sudden fury for getting in the way and spoiling his play. But I succeed and step triumphantly from the tub, straight into Pirto’s outstretched arms that wait to wrap me in the sheet. It is just a simple white linen sheet, no longer fit for use on a bed but perfectly fine for drying off with after a bath, and yet, as she drapes it round me, I am struck by the sudden horrific notion that it is not a sheet at all but a shroud, and it’s all I can do not to tear it from me, give way to tears, scream the house down, and curse God for the unfairness of it all.

“I’ll not have a shroud,” I say suddenly to Pirto, blurting it out before I can stop myself. “When I die, bury me in my wedding gown.”

“Now, none of that grim, melancholy talk, Miss Amy,” Pirto gently chides me as if I were still a little girl. “You’re to have a good time at the fair today and think naught but happy thoughts!”

“Yes, Pirto,” I nod and smile and say obediently as I let her lead me to sit beside the fire. She helps me to gently lower myself onto a padded stool, with a quilted purple velvet cushion as plump as the juiciest plum, then comes to stand behind me and begins to draw the comb through the wet yellow waves of my hair. Carved into the stone of the great fireplace, angels and demons fight their eternal battle, mirroring the war that rages between my heart and head, and the skirmish inside my mind as dreams and reality grapple for supremacy when the medicine blurs the boundary between the two.

I close my eyes and dream of groves of sun-kissed lemon trees and chamomile blossoms swaying in the breeze and the pink-cheeked, barefoot hoyden I used to be, running wild and free, before the chains of cancer enslaved, slowed, and weighted me. Oh, how I wish I could be her again, even if it were just for one more day! I would live it to the fullest and make every moment count! To kick Pain in the bum and tell him to clear off and leave me be until the stroke o’ midnight! I miss the Amy I used to be. Even before I banished the looking glass from my life, I no longer recognised the pale, thin wraithlike woman with the dark-shadowed, pain-glazed eyes who stared back at me. That was not the Amy I knew! That was not the Amy I was inside, and not the Amy Robert Dudley fell in love with ten years ago.

I sit and drowse and dream by the fire as my hair dries into a wealth of spun gold curls; then Pirto gently breaks my reverie. “It is time to be dressing you now, love,” she says. She helps me to rise as I grimace and brace myself against the deafening though silent scream that only I can hear that my spine unleashes inside of me. Will a day come, I wonder, when it will stop screaming and simply snap in the ultimate protestation against my defiance of the pain? Though numbness may seem like a blessing at times, not being able to move at all or feel anything fills me with such fear, I think I will drown in it. Sometimes I think I feel too much, but to live and feel nothing at all is a living death and absolutely terrifies me.

Gently, Pirto eases the sheet from my shoulders. I know what comes next and lift my chin and obstinately stare straight ahead, focusing on the inky blackness outside my window; even though I fear losing my soul in darkness, it is still better than looking down and seeing the rot and ruin of my flesh. Although I have only just bathed, already the fetid stink of decay wafts up to my nostrils as the lump begins to weep ugly tears. It isn’t right, it isn’t fair; a body shouldn’t decay until after death! Although some people are not very particular about cleanliness and bathing, I have always been, yet, no matter how much I bathe, no matter what perfume I wear, the stench of death always hovers about me, seeping from my breast.

From the corner of my eye a movement distracts me. I turn and catch Pirto reaching for the big cork-stoppered earthenware jar that holds a special blend of powders that Dr Biancospino left for me. When mixed with water, it becomes a thick paste of lime, hemlock, and belladonna that, with the deft brushstrokes of a master artist, the exotic foreign doctor used to paint my breast with, creating hope where there was none before, and whitewashing the ugliness of mottled and festering red flesh and charred-looking dead black tissue. When it dried, it hardened so that my breast appeared to have turned to white marble, as though Pygmalion’s Galatea were starting to turn back into a statue after having lived, for the brief span allotted her by the gods, as a flesh and blood woman.

I remember that story. Years ago, in the early days of our marriage, when I saw him more often, Robert used to write poetry and sometimes make clever remarks with classical allusions, but I never understood what he meant. Seeing my puzzled face, he would frown, deplore my ignorance, and sometimes even shout at me or stomp out, grumbling that talking to me was about as sensible as trying to hold a conversation with the sheep. I asked my old swain, my first sweetheart, Ned Flowerdew, who succeeded his father as my father’s steward, to send to London for a book of mythology for me, something simple and easy to understand, writ for a child new to the subject perhaps. And each and every night while I waited for my husband to come back to me, I would sit by the fire, with my father dozing nearby in his chair, and my cats, Onyx and Custard, curled up next to me, and read the stories of the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, my tongue tripping and tangling as I tried to sound out their peculiar names. But it was too little too late. By the time I knew who Aphrodite, Persephone, Artemis, and Athena were, Robert was already kneeling at the feet of the flame-haired Tudor goddess he worshipped and adored with all his ambitious passion, praying for his regal reward.

“Not that one!” I cry out, startling Pirto so that she jumps and nearly drops the jar. “The other one—the sticky one that looks like honey the wise-woman sent.”

Confusion and uncertainty furrow dear Pirto’s brow. “But I thought …”

“No, Pirto, no,” I plead as tears pool in my eyes and cause a quaver in my voice. And, seeing the tears that threaten to spill over, Pirto sighs as she, reluctantly, puts the jar back and reaches for the other, the one she thinks, perhaps rightly so, is more chicanery than cure.

The truth is, I don’t trust anyone any more, not even myself. I didn’t trust Dr Biancospino when he first came to me; like most “ill-bred country folk”, as Robert would no doubt disdainfully call us, I believed the lurid tales I had heard of the Italians and their skill at concocting and administering deadly poisons, stories of poison-doused gloves and gowns, and fiendish poisoners so adept at their nefarious craft, they could poison but a single side of a knife and sit down and boldly share a repast with their victim that would end in death for only one of them. I was so afraid he had been sent to kill me. He was like no one I had ever met before. An air of mystery hung about him, as exotic and peculiar as his accent and the blend of Italian and Arabic blood that flowed beneath his olive skin. He would only say that he had been sent by someone who wished me well and whom I had no cause to fear, someone who had heard all the disturbing rumours about my health and my husband’s intentions and wanted only for me to get well and have the best of care, free from the worry and suspicion of harm masquerading in the guise of medicine.

“This is a sincere and well-intentioned gift, else I would not be here, my lady,” he assured me.

He would only confirm that it was not my husband who had sent him, but the name of the person who had he would never reveal; he was sworn to secrecy.

“Madame, I have come to make you well if I can, not to play at guessing games,” he would smilingly chide me when I tried to guess my mysterious well-wisher’s name.

Then, in spite of myself, I began to trust him. He was able to do more for me than any English doctor or wise-woman I had seen. And, deep in my heart, as if it were buried alive, that trust kept fighting to claw its way back out of the premature grave I had consigned it to. Then the plain-wrapped parcel arrived from London, with no name writ upon it, nor could the courier tell me who it was from. Inside was a big leather-bound book, its worn gilt edges gleaming seemingly with malice. It was a long and learned, detailed and thorough, tome all about poisons, written by my Italian-Arab physician—Dr Kristofer Biancospino. When I read it, I felt the blood freeze inside my veins. There were horrors within its pages that still give me nightmares! And, stuck amongst its pages, like a bloodstain marring the creamy vellum, was a lone strand of long red hair that told me exactly who had sent it—my rival, my enemy—the Queen, Elizabeth. But my mind was too afraid and befuddled; I could not figure out if she meant to warn or merely frighten me, scare me into doing what I indeed did—send Dr Biancospino away so Death could regain the ground that He had lost while I was under that skilled physician’s care.

After I received the book of poisons with his name, Dr Kristofer Biancospino, on the title page, and a tale of terror, a litany of suffering, dispassionately detailed on every page thereafter, I would have no more of him or the medicines he gave me, some of which I knew to contain the deadly plants he wrote about—monkshood, mandrake, hemlock, thornapple, henbane, and belladonna, the deadly nightshade that has nothing to do with beauty despite its name, though I have heard it said that the Italian ladies dare to use it in their cosmetics and even put drops of it in their eyes to make their pupils larger, but I shudder at the thought of doing either. I think sometimes women go too far in their pursuit of beauty.

Again and again he came to my door, begging to come in, to just sit and talk with me, but I hardened my heart and barred my door against him and refused to answer the letters he sent. Right or wrong, I let myself become afraid of the one person who could help me.

Even now, on the table beside my bed—in the pretty little heart-shaped trinket box lined in rose pink velvet that Robert won for me in a game of skill, throwing coloured wooden balls through a hoop, at a country fair when we were courting—his last letter lay folded into a tight square, containing—if I were brave enough to take it—one last chance to save my life. A gamble, a risk, a life-and-death wager I might win or lose, he told me frankly, showing his respect for me by telling me the truth unvarnished, just as he had done when he first described this daring and dangerous procedure to me, but a chance that no English doctor, whether quack or from the College of Physicians, or even the Queen’s own doctor himself, could offer me, an operation nigh as excruciating and brutal as the hanging, drawing, and quartering condemned traitors were subjected to, but one, though it skirted death by a hairsbreadth, that might, if God were willing, save my life and let me live to be an old woman with silver hair and grandchildren. But the time to think had almost passed; today I must decide. It was now or never.

That was why I wanted to be alone today while the others were having a fine, merry time at the fair, to think, to ponder, with no distractions of any kind, to look back and decide whether I wanted to go forward, whether my life was worth saving now that I had lost everything that mattered. I had lost my husband’s love, as well as his presence, and the cancer had already destroyed my beauty, and the operation that might cure it would complete the destruction and leave me disfigured in such a way that no man, least of all my fastidious Robert, would ever want me again. What man would ever look with desire upon a woman with an ugly, scarred, and gutted crater where her breast, full, creamy, pink-tipped, and tempting, used to be?

After she returns from the fair, I will send Pirto to the inn with my answer, and Dr Biancospino will either stay or go on his way depending upon my answer, whether it comes in the form of stony, distrustful silence or words writ upon paper; I know that he will wait, and hope, for me for one more day. And I will use that day well, to weigh life against death.

I close my eyes and swallow back my tears as Pirto gently dabs away the milky discharge leaking from my nipple and coats it, and the ugly, oozing lump alongside it, with the honeylike ointment with the sharp, acrid scent and the caustic, biting tingle the old woman—wise, witch, or charlatan? I do not pretend to know which one she is—made for me. Only when the whole unsightly, sticky mess is covered over with a fresh linen dressing do I open my eyes again. The sky is starting to lighten, and outside my window, high above the trees in the park, I can see the spire of St Michael’s, the morning sun glinting on it as lightly as a lover’s kiss as he steals away with the coming of dawn after a passionate night.

A small smile plays across my lips as Pirto anoints me with the perfume I used to distil myself, my own special blend made from the pink roses of Norfolk and sweet honeysuckles. Which will last longer, this last vial of scent captured and bottled from my father’s garden or my life? I have become such a maudlin, melancholy woman! I am too young to be so bitter! Such lemon-and-crabapple tartness is better suited to a woman much further along in years, decades older than I, a woman stoop-backed, wrinkled, and grey-haired who has lost her teeth and everyone she ever loved, or never had anyone at all. I press a hand to my forehead and sigh. I hate what I have become!

Carefully, slowly I raise my arms, and Pirto gently slips a shift of fine white lawn over my head, and it billows down easily about me, unimpeded by curves, concealing the now frail and wasted figure Robert used to describe as “luscious”, playfully sinking his teeth into my breast, buttock, or hip as if it were a ripe and juicy peach. Gone is the round and rosy Amy he used to love.

Though I have no need of them now—this disease has melted away so much of my flesh, the full, buxom, rounded curves, hips, and bum, and flattened the little round hint of a belly that longed to swell with the promise of a baby nesting inside—I insist that Pirto fetch my stays from the chest at the foot of my bed, so prettily embroidered with bright yellow buttercups, and lace me up tightly, even though it ignites a lightning storm of pain rippling across my ribs and up and down my spine. Pain plays my spine like the ivory keys of a virginal, but I don’t care; I want to be perfectly dressed today. I want to look like Lady Dudley, Robert’s wife, should look.

Then come the petticoats, starched and crisp. I want my skirts to billow and rustle; I want to have full, feminine hips again, even if it is just an illusion. And then the gown, a glossy satin the colour of high-polished oak, festooned with frills of golden lace, and embroidered all over with green and gold oak leaves and amber acorns—my husband’s personal emblem.

Though everyone knows it is a play on the Latin word for his name, robur, which means oak, only I know this device once had another, more intimate and loving, meaning. Perhaps even Robert himself has forgotten, but I remember the day we stood in the drizzling rain huddled together in our cloaks beneath a mighty oak overlooking the crumbling ruins of Syderstone, fallen into decay and disrepair, too sprawling and expensive to keep up, the lands gone to seed and weed, overtaken by thistles and grazing sheep with burrs studding their woolly coats. Robert promised me that he, as my husband, would be like a mighty oak unto me, to shelter and protect me all the days of my life, and these acorns represented the many children we would have. Syderstone would rise again, he swore, and be a greater,grander estate than it had ever been before. He would double—nay, quadruple!—the size of our flock, and he would breed and train horses that would be famed throughout the land and even abroad. And, best of all, the halls of Syderstone would ring with the joyous laughter of our children playing. My husband was one of thirteen children, though five of them had died before they reached the age of ten, and, as we held our hands together, cupping a shared handful of acorns, we both dreamed that each tiny acorn represented a child that would someday grace our nursery. We both wanted a large family, “the more the merrier,” we smiled and agreed. And with a broad sweep of his arm at Syderstone, he vowed that we would have an avenue of oaks leading to the house, a new sapling planted each time my womb quickened with a new life, and we would bring our children out and show them their own special tree, planted the day they first stirred inside of me. Oh, it was a beautiful,grand, wonderful dream!

But not all dreams come true, and there were so many promises that he didn’t keep. There were never any children, not even one, to fill our nursery; we never even had a nursery. And there was no avenue of oaks. Syderstone still lies in ruins, the sheep still munch thistles, and the burrs still snag their coats, but someone else owns it all now. Robert sold it—to pay off his gambling debts and buy lavish gifts for the Queen, the one who holds his future in the palm of her hand, the one who can make him a pauper or a prince upon a moment’s whim. And though he might be a mighty oak, he does not shelter and protect me. It isn’t fair! If Robert can afford to hang the Queen’s hair with diamonds, he can afford to put a roof of my own over my head to shelter me; it’s as simple as that. I needn’t spend my days as a constant guest in the homes of others but never the proud chatelaine of my own domain. And he certainly does not protect me; even in the rustic wilds of England the rumours still find me. Divorce, poison, murder, madness, adultery! I’ve heard them all. My father would weep and spin like a chicken roasting on a spit in his grave if he knew that his daughter had become the centre of such a lurid, raging scandal, her name being bandied about like a bawdy woman’s in every alehouse in England.

I cross the shadowy room and go to sit upon my bed, made fresh by dear Pirto while I rested in my bath, enveloped by soothing clouds of steam. A sad smile flits across my face, like a pebble skimming a pond, as my hand caresses the apple green and gold brocade coverlet woven with a pattern of apples and apple blossoms and trimmed with frills of golden lace. Apples remind me of the happy years of my childhood spent at Syderstone before it became unfit to inhabit and we moved, a good, long but brisk, invigorating walk away, to my mother’s more elegant abode, Stanfield Hall. I love apples, everything about them—their colours, their smell, their taste, especially that first juicy, crisp bite, whether it be tart or sweet.

Pirto comes and kneels before me to put on my shoes and stockings, tying the satin garters into pretty bows just below my knees and easing my feet into the dainty brown velvet slippers sewn with tiny amber and gold beads. I always loved to go barefoot whenever I could. I loved the freedom and the feel of the grass, or wood or stone, rough or smooth, chilled or sun-baked, beneath my bare feet. Robert used to send me velvet and satin slippers, a dozen or more pairs at a time, as a silent signal of his disapproval, but I never let that stop me; I gave up too many other things for Robert.

When Pirto starts to gather my hair up, I stop her. “No, the pins make my head ache. Leave it free.” This is my one and only concession to comfort—a proper married lady wears her hair pinned up, while a maiden leaves hers unbound—but no one will see. Pirto, however, still thinks I mean to go out today, to church and afterwards the fair.

At times it seems too great an effort and a silly charade. I love Pirto, but I am the lady, and she is my servant, and it is not for me to placate her. I could have done without all these tedious preparations and put on my night shift and taken to my bed, unencumbered by corset and the stiff and rustling confines of petticoats and gown, garters, stockings, and shoes, all the accoutrements of a lady, but for some reason I don’t quite understand, it is important to me to be dressed today, to not lounge about languid and loose as a concubine in a sultan’s harem.

“As you wish, love,” Pirto agrees and gently sets the gold-braided satin hood that matches my gown upon my head, fastening the strap and adding just a couple of pins, placing them carefully, anxious not to cause me any more pain. “There now.” She smoothes the cascade of golden curls streaming down my back. “All ready now, you are, pet, except for your purse, though you’ll not be needing it just yet, but I have it ready—it’s there upon the desk.”

“Not quite ready yet, Pirto.” I smile. “I want my necklace. The special one My Lord gave me when he still loved me.”

“Aye, I know the one.” She nods and brings forth from my jewel coffer a rich and heavy necklace of golden oak leaves and amber acorns that matches the betrothal ring I have worn on my left hand since the day Robert put it on my finger when I was a green girl of seventeen brimming over with hopes and dreams. I could not imagine then a world in which Robert would cease to love me. Even now, I like being clothed and jewelled in Robert’s oak leaves and acorns; like cattle wearing its master’s brand, I am still his wife, even if he wishes otherwise; I still remember, even when all he wants to do is forget. I am Lady Amy Dudley, Lord Robert’s wife, and I will never surrender that until Death takes it from me. With this ring I thee wed. Until death do us part. My affections are not frivolous and fickle despite the changeable nature often ascribed to my sex; when I stood beside Robert on our wedding day to make our vows, I spoke from my heart and meant every word.

“Will you lie down for a bit, love?” Pirto hovers anxiously beside me.

“No.” I shake my head. “It will muss my gown. Help me to my chair please, Pirto.”

It is the most comfortable, beautiful, cheerful chair imaginable, so inviting that it often tempts me from my bed, which is good and exactly as it should be, Dr Biancospino said when I told him. It was the last present my husband sent to me. Such thoughtfulness surely proves that, somewhere, deep in his heart, despite his outward show of indifference, he muststill care for me. It is upholstered in the most vibrant, rich emerald green all embroidered with bright, beautiful flowers, their petals, leaves, and stems accented with threads of gold and silver. When I sit in it, it is like sinking down into a bed of wildflowers. It always makes me smile. It is so wonderfully, heavenly soft. Sometimes, when I am so sick that I think I will never leave my bed again, I gaze across the room at it, and I am drawn to it. I want to reach out and touch the pinks and daffodils; their leaves seem to beckon to me, to coax a smile from me, and I cannot resist the urge to rise and sit in it—it is too powerful to ignore.

As Pirto bustles about the room, putting things right after my bath, I sit and watch the dawn break over the park, where the pond catches the sun’s reflection. Mrs Forster’s children will be out looking for frogs in their Sunday best if their mother and nurse don’t keep a sharp eye on them. I smile at the thought, I can so well imagine it; it’s a scene I have seen before and laughed at until it hurt so much, I cried.

As my hand caresses the bright flowers embroidered on the well-padded green arm of my chair, I gaze down upon my betrothal ring, and in that amber acorn, caught like little flecks and flotsam in the golden sap, I can see the happy, joyful days when I was strong, happy, and beloved by the man I can never forget, the one who made me believe all my dreams would come true, and that there really was a happily ever after …