The Virgin’s Lover. Philippa GregoryЧитать онлайн книгу.

      All day Elizabeth had been on tenterhooks, sending her ladies to see if her cousin had entered the great hall, sending pageboys to freeze in the stable yard so that her cousin could be greeted and brought to her presence chamber at once. Catherine Knollys was the daughter of Elizabeth’s aunt, Mary Boleyn, and had spent much time with her young cousin Elizabeth. The girls had formed a faithful bond through the uncertain years of Elizabeth’s childhood. Catherine, nine years Elizabeth’s senior, an occasional member of the informal court of children and young people who had gathered around the nursery of the young royals at Hatfield, had been a kindly and generous playmate when the lonely little girl had sought her out, and as Elizabeth became older, they found they had much in common. Catherine was a highly educated girl, a Protestant by utter conviction. Elizabeth, less convinced and with much more to lose, had always had a sneaking admiration for her cousin’s uncompromising clarity.

      Catherine had been with Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn, in the last dreadful days in the Tower. She held, from that day on, an utter conviction of her aunt’s innocence. Her quiet assertion that Elizabeth’s mother was neither whore, nor witch, but the victim of a court plot, was a secret comfort to the little girl whose childhood had been haunted by slanders against her mother. The day that Catherine and her family had left England, driven out by Queen Mary’s anti-heresy laws, Elizabeth had declared that her heart was broken.

      ‘Peace. She will be here soon,’ Dudley assured her, finding Elizabeth pacing from one window in Whitehall Palace to another.

      ‘I know. But I thought she would be here yesterday, and now I am worrying that it will not be till tomorrow.’

      ‘The roads are bad; but she will surely come today.’

      Elizabeth twisted the fringe of the curtain in her fingers and did not notice that she was shredding the hem of the old fabric. Dudley went beside her and gently took her hand. There was a swiftly silenced intake of breath from the watching court at his temerity. To take the queen’s hand without invitation, to disentangle her fingers, to take both her hands firmly in his own, and give her a little shake!

      ‘Now, calm down,’ Dudley said. ‘Either today or tomorrow, she will be here. D’you want to ride out on the chance of meeting her?’

      Elizabeth looked at the iron-grey sky that was darkening with the early twilight of winter. ‘Not really,’ she admitted unwillingly. ‘If I miss her on the way then it will only make the wait longer. I want to be here to greet her.’

      ‘Then sit down,’ he commanded. ‘And call for some cards and we can play until she gets here. And if she does not get here today we can play until you have won fifty pounds off me.’

      ‘Fifty!’ she exclaimed, instantly diverted.

      ‘And you need stake nothing more than a dance after dinner,’ he said agreeably.

      ‘I remember men saying that they lost fortunes to entertain your father,’ William Cecil remarked, coming up to the table as the cards were brought.

      ‘Now he was a gambler indeed,’ Dudley concurred amiably. ‘Who shall we have for a fourth?’

      ‘Sir Nicholas.’ The queen looked around and smiled at her councillor. ‘Will you join us for a game of cards?’

      Sir Nicholas Bacon, Cecil’s corpulent brother-in-law, swelled like a mainsail at the compliment from the queen, and he stepped up to the table. The pageboy brought a fresh pack, Elizabeth dealt the stiff cards with their threatening faces, cut the deal to Robert Dudley, and they started to play.

      There was a flurry in the hall outside the presence chamber, and then Catherine and Francis Knollys were in the doorway, a handsome couple: Catherine a woman in her mid-thirties, plainly dressed and smiling in anticipation, her husband an elegant man in his mid-forties. Elizabeth sprang to her feet, scattering her cards, and ran across the presence chamber to her cousin.

      Catherine dropped into a curtsey but Elizabeth plunged into her arms and the two women hugged each other, both of them in tears. Sir Francis, standing back, smiled benignly at the welcome given to his wife.

      — Aye, well might you smile — Robert Dudley remarked to himself, remembering that he had always disliked the smug radiance of the man. — You think you will have the high road to power and influence with this friendship; but you will find you are wrong. This young queen is no fool, she won’t put her purse where her heart is, unless it serves her interest. She will love you but not advance you unless it is for her own good. —

      As if he sensed Robert’s eyes on him, Sir Francis looked up, and swept him a bow.

      ‘You are heartily welcome back to England,’ Dudley said pleasantly.

      Sir Francis glanced around, took in the court of old allies, conspirators, reformed enemies and a very few new faces, and came back to Robert Dudley.

      ‘Well, here we are at last,’ he said. ‘A Protestant queen on the throne, me back from Germany and you out of the Tower. Who’d ever have thought it?’

      ‘A long and dangerous journey for all us pilgrims,’ Robert said, keeping his smile.

      ‘Some danger still in the air for some of us, I think,’ Sir Francis said cheerfully. ‘I’d not been in England five minutes before someone asked me if I thought you had too much influence and should be curbed.’

      ‘Indeed,’ Robert said. ‘And you replied?’

      ‘That I had not been in England five minutes and I had yet to form an opinion. But you should be warned, Sir Robert. You have enemies.’

      Robert Dudley smiled. ‘They come with success,’ he said easily. ‘And so I am glad of them.’

      Elizabeth reached out her hand to Sir Francis, still holding Catherine tight by the waist.

      Sir Francis stepped forward and dropped to his knee and kissed her hand. ‘Your Grace,’ he said.

      Robert, a connoisseur in these matters, admired the sweep down to his knee and then the style with which he rose. — Aye, but it will do you little good — he said to himself. — This is a court full of dancing-master-tutored puppies. A graceful bow will get you nothing. —

      ‘Sir Francis, I have been waiting and waiting for your arrival,’ Elizabeth said, glowing with happiness. ‘Will you accept a post on my Privy Council? I am in great need of your sound advice.’

      — Privy Council! Good God! — Robert exclaimed to himself, shaken with