"May I be allowed to ask what that is, Your Majesty?"
"Certainly. I am sending his wife back to Chartley, so that when he returns to his home he will find her there."
"He is at this moment busily engaged in the North."
" 'Tis so. But we have got the better of these rebels, and should he return I would not have him disappointed and missing his wife."
It was dismissal. The friendliness she had felt in our mutual grief was over. I was not to be forgiven for Robert's brief interest in me.
My children were growing up. Penelope was nearly ten and Robert five. The domestic life, however, could never satisfy me. I was certainly not in love with my husband and felt little excitement during his visits. I was growing more and more restive because life was so dull. I was fond of my children—and in particular young Robert—but a child of five could not compensate a woman of my nature and provide the stimulus she needs.
When visitors came to Chartley I heard scraps of news—very often about the Earl of Leicester, who continued to dominate life at Court, and to these I listened avidly. He was still in high favor with the Queen, and the years were passing. It seemed unlikely now that Elizabeth would ever marry. She had recently flirted with the idea of taking the Duc d'Anjou, but like all her previous proposed matches, it came to nothing; and she would soon be forty, which was a little old for childbearing. Robert was still her favorite man, but no nearer to marrying her than he had ever been. And with each passing year the possibility must be becoming more and more remote.
There were uneasy rumors about certain amours of his. It was hardly to be expected that a man like Leicester would be prepared to be dangled on a string forever. I heard that two ladies of the Court (one of these was Douglass, wife of the Earl of Sheffield, and the other her sister, Lady Frances Howard) were both enamored of him and vied with each other for his attention.
"He likes them both well enough," said my informant, a visitor from Court who stayed a night or two at Chartley on his way North, and he added with a sly smile: "But the Queen has noted their follies and she likes them not."
Certainly she would not like it if they were involved with Leicester. I expected their dismissal would soon come as mine had. I was surprised to discover that I could still be jealous. I remembered hearing it said that there was something fascinating about the Howard women. Anne Boleyn was a Howard through her mother; Catherine Howard, who had been Henry VIII's fifth wife, had possessed that same attraction. Poor girl, it had cost her her head, though if she had been a little more subtle she might have saved it. They were not subtle, though, these Howards. They were attractive to men because they had need of them; but they were not calculating enough to take advantage of their assets.
I was now avid for news, and I asked myself how I could ever have thought I had ceased to be concerned with Robert Dudley. I knew very well that I only had to meet him again and I should be as eager for him as I ever was.
I asked my visitor what he knew about the Douglass Sheffield and Frances Howard matter.
"Oh," he told me, "rumor has it that Lady Sheffield became Leicester's mistress when they were both staying at Belvoir Castle."
I could picture it. The affair would progress rapidly as mine had, for Robert was a very impatient man and as the equivocation of the Queen drove him to distraction he would not want to endure similar frustration from other quarters.
"The story goes," went on our visitor, "that Leicester had written a love letter to Douglass in which he recklessly said he deplored the existence of her husband, thus implying that he would have married her if she had not already been a wife. Then, they say, came the hint that Sheffield might not long be there to plague them."
I gasped in horror. "Surely he could not have meant..."
"After the death of his wife there have been rumors about him. The silly Douglass—but perhaps she was not so silly and intended it to happen—dropped the letter on her return home, and it was found by her sister-in-law—who had little love for her—and promptly showed it to the cuckolded husband. They parted beds that night and Sheffield went off to London to arrange a divorce. He had the letter, you see, with what might be construed as a threat against his life ... considering the direction it came from."
"All men in the public eye are envied and slandered." I found myself fervently defending Robert. "And surely there never was one more so than the Earl of Leicester."
"Well, you see, he has this Italian physician."
"You mean Dr. Julio."
"So he is called. He is in truth Giulio Borgherini, but people find difficulty in pronouncing his name. He is said to have great knowledge of poisons and to use them in the service of his master."
"You believe this?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "There was the death of his wife. People will never forget that. They will always remember it when something like this arises."
When he had left us I thought a good deal about Robert. I was bitterly hurt that he should want to marry Douglass Sheffield.
Walter came back. He was puffed up with pride because of the Queen's approval and had some wild scheme in his head about colonizing Ulster. The Queen had made him a Knight of the Garter and Earl of Essex—a title which had formerly been in his family through a marriage with the Mandevilles. That it was restored to him was a sign of the Queen's great favor.
I was a countess now and should have liked to accompany Walter to Court, but the Queen's invitation was clearly for him alone, so I was obliged to remain behind.
When he returned he was full of the latest scandal. As I might have expected it involved Robert Dudley.
"They say," he told me, "that the Earl of Sheffield, having discovered that his wife had betrayed him with Leicester, decided to seek a divorce. Imagine the scandal that would have meant. I doubt it would have pleased Her Majesty."
"Is she still as enamored of him as ever?"
"Clearly so. She is peevish when he is not at her side and it is a marvel—the manner in which her eyes follow him around."
"Tell me about the Sheffield scandal."
"Unnecessary now. He died."
"Died!"
"Oh yes, just at the right moment to avoid the scandal. It's not difficult to imagine the Queen's wrath if she had known Leicester was philandering with Lady Sheffield."
"How did he die?"
"They say poison."
"They always say these things."
"Well, he is dead and that means that Leicester will sleep easy at night."
"And Lady Sheffield ... has he married her?"
"I've heard nothing of marriage."
"What is Lady Sheffield like?"
Walter shrugged his shoulders. He never noticed what a woman looked like. He was more interested in politics than private lives, and it was only due to Leicester's position in the country that he considered his love affairs for a moment; they were only important because they might alienate him from the Queen.
Walter was more concerned with a plot to marry Norfolk to the Queen of Scots, which Lady Scrope had possibly set in motion when she was with her husband at the time he was guarding Mary with my father.
Norfolk had always been a fool. He had already been married three times and all his wives had died. He was in his thirties, and no doubt the reputation of the Queen of Scots enthralled him. She was reckoned, after all, to be one of the most fascinating women of the day, and she had had three husbands to match Norfolk's three wives. Doubtless the foolish fellow thought it would be rather intriguing to be a queen's consort. So the plot went on. Norfolk professed to be a Protestant, but at heart he was a Catholic. I expect that he imagined he could one day be King of England in all but name. He could never forget that his family was of higher rank than the Tudors.