Lady in Waiting Read online

  ‘No.’ He turned to her slowly; his mouth twisted in wry amusement. ‘I did not know my face was so transparent.’

  There was a moment’s silence between them, and then Bess said, ‘I am wondering something.’

  ‘What are you wondering?’

  ‘I am wondering why you came to me in the Long Gallery, a while since — instead of going to her.’

  ‘The answer is very simple. I was sure of your welcome.’

  ‘And are you not sure of hers?’

  ‘I — do not dare to so much as hope for it,’ he said, almost under his breath.

  She put a hand on his arm. ‘Try your fortune, Robin.’

  ‘Oh, I shall, rest assured of that. It can do no harm.’ But his voice told her how hopeless he was of it doing any good.

  She said defensively: ‘I do not see why you should have so little hope of the issue.’

  ‘Do you not?’ He gave a short unhappy laugh. ‘Kind Bess — or very blind Bess. I am scarcely formed for a successful lover.’ He turned back to the balustrade, and folding his arms along it, spoke to her over his shoulder. ‘Sufficient unto the day ... First there is this little matter of a Spanish Fleet to be dealt with. Brother Thomas is with his ship even now; and tomorrow I join him.’

  ‘You too,’ Bess said. ‘When the bells ring for our victory, I shall have a threefold pride in their pealing.’

  He laughed again, with a faint mockery. ‘Nay, my sweet Bess, you must keep your pride for your brothers, and be content to have it twofold. As for me, I go because at this time the sword is mightier than the pen, or at least — a swifter way to advancement in the Queen’s favour. That disappoints you, doesn’t it?’

  ‘A little,’ she said, chilled and startled by the sudden turn to cold calculation.

  He seemed to feel her recoil, and instantly to draw away from her in return. ‘I could have let you believe what you wanted to believe; remember that.’

  ‘You are very ambitious, are you not, Robin?’ she said after a moment.

  ‘Very. But of power, not mere position. I want my father’s power when the times comes for him to lay it down. I want to do things with it that he has never done. I want to guide the delicate threads of destiny, braiding them at my will. I want men a little afraid of me — tall men, with straight backs.’

  She protested sharply. ‘Robin — don’t!’

  He looked round again, the light from the window shining on his coppery head. ‘I crave your pardon. You must make allowances for the Queen’s Pigmy — it is a hunchback’s privilege to have a warped nature, you know.’ And before she could speak, he had pushed off from the balustrade, and half turned towards the steps, then back to her again with a small, oddly expressive gesture as though slipping something, a dark cloak, a dark mood, from his deformed shoulders. ‘Bess, Bess, I am sorry. It is that I am tired, and — something heartsick with reaching for the moon; but I had no right to vent my ill humours upon you for no better reason than that I was assured of your friendship. Forgive me.’

  Bess said in her warm, quiet voice: ‘If there were anything to forgive, I would forgive you, Robin.’

  He moved aside for her to go before him down the shallow steps, and as she gathered her skirts and passed him by, she heard his light, curiously prowling step turn in behind her. She was acutely aware of him, and anxious for him, as she made her way back to the postern door: and yet suddenly two other men were joined with him in her thoughts: the Master of the Queen’s Horse, the Captain of her Guard. All three linked by their questing after power. Power; Walter Ralegh seeking in it the tool, the weapon with which to serve his dream; Robin Devereux wanting it for a new plaything, a gerfalcon, a golden cup, a jewel for his bonnet; Robin Cecil desiring it because his brilliant brain was sheathed in a lame body. They came together in her mind with a queer significance. It was as though in that moment a wind out of the future touched her; a little chill wind, in which she shivered.

  Chapter 4 - The Open River

  THE beacon fires carried their message across the land, and the little ships put out from ports and harbours all along the coast, and flung themselves against the might of Spain, and by good seamanship and the Grace of God, prevailed. The shadow passed, and the bells rang to the summer sky, and the young men — most of the young men — laid aside their buff and steel, and came back to dance in the Queen’s Long Gallery again.

  Three times the roses bloomed in the gardens of Ely House; three times the hot chestnut sellers appeared in the London streets; three times the proud white swans on the Thames trailed their grey streamers of cygnets behind them; and it was June 1591.

  That June the Court moved to Richmond, to Bess’s great contentment. She was always glad to be back in Richmond. The Palace was smaller and more intimate than the other Royal residences, and the row of pleasant small houses that were the quarters of the Maids of Honour gave her a sense of home that she missed when the Court was at Greenwich or Windsor or Westminster. She loved the upper reaches of the Thames, too. The open river with its salt smells and crowding shipping, its restless gulls, its ceaseless change and turmoil and out-flowing into the unknown always frightened her a little. But these quiet silver reaches with their weirs and willows and drifting swans satisfied her longing for quietness and security.

  It was this same longing for security, legacy from her uncertain childhood, that drew Bess back at the earliest moment, whenever the Court returned to Richmond, to a certain forgotten corner of the garden which offered sanctuary a little as Lady Sidney’s garden had once done. It was only a half-moon of turf, sloping down to a quiet backwater, and shut away from the rest of the pleasance by a little wood. Somebody must originally have meant to include it in the formal plan of the gardens; they had made a turf seat and an arbour, and then grown tired of it, or found it unsuitable for their purpose. Nothing was left of the arbour now, save the blue convolvulus that had been meant to grow over it, and which, left to its own devices, had grown up the trunk of the nearest alder tree. But the green half-moon of turf between the wood and the river was enchanted ground.

  Would the blue convolvulus be in flower yet? Bess wondered on this particular morning, as she made her way down towards the river, forsaking the formal pleasances for the joys of the wilderness just as she had done on that long ago day, in Lady Sidney’s garden. It had been spring then, and Bess had been very young. It was summer now, and Bess was six and twenty, and judged by the standards of her day, no longer young — really young — at all. But this morning, speeding down through the pleached ways and nut alleys, her green skirts gathered in either hand, she was a child, running to her secret sanctuary. And as the springtime Bess would have done, she checked her running among the trees of the little wood that guarded it, and came at last, quietly and delicately, through the willows and alders on to the half-moon of turf sloping to the river. One did not snatch at sanctuary. As with all lovely things, one came to it humbly, gathering its joys a little at a time, careful to bruise nothing in the gathering. The blue convolvulus was not yet in flower; but time would bring the flowering, and for today, there was delight enough in the secret garden. A fitful wind blowing from the south; a soft, warm wind, full of the liquid song of a Jenny-whitethroat in the wood behind, that might have been the song of that other time, rippling from the heart of a damson tree as though the blossom itself were singing. And as Bess moved across to the crumbling turf seat, a remembered magic touched her, and fled away, leaving a small unexplained heartache behind it. She sat very still, her hands folded in her green lap, watching the river under the silver turmoil of the willows and letting the peace of the sanctuary flow into her. But the passing touch of the old magic had brought very vividly into her mind the man who had conjured it up for her; and with him, those others who were always linked with him in her thoughts.

  In the three years since they had become so linked, Robin Cecil had prospered most in his quest for power, she thought. Walsingham’s death had given him his chance, and he had be
en quick to seize it by bringing himself before the Queen as a suitable successor. He was Sir Robert now; he was acting Secretary of State, with the fine threads of destiny running through his hands as he had wanted them. He had prospered in other ways too. For almost two out of those three years he had been married — most happily married — to the spun-glass girl, despite all his fears.

  The Earl of Essex also had prospered at the first, for Leicester’s death had served to raise him still further in the Queen’s fondness. He was only Leicester’s stepson, but in many ways very like him, so that it seemed sometimes to the Court that she looked on him as the son she might, in happier circumstances, have borne to the man she loved. And with the loss of the old love, the companion of her distant girlhood, she had turned more and more to his young counterpart to fill the place left desolate. But it had not been altogether as a son that the Queen loved her Robin; and when, becoming so much the Queen’s Robin that he felt safe to do as he pleased, he had married Philip Sidney’s widow, he had found himself mistaken in the strength of his position. He had hastily returned her to her mother as he might have returned a horse or a doublet that did not meet with the Queen’s approval, and since even that had not been quite enough, he was now abroad, in command of the force sent to aid Henry of Navarre, striving by a display of courage and generalship, to win back the full favour of Belphoebe.

  And the third of the Triumvirate? She could not be sure. She knew so little of him. Robin Cecil was a close friend, Robin Devereux a casual one; but Ralegh, although she had shared with him for six years the life of the inner circle who attended on the Queen, was a stranger. Yet her face grew troubled as she remembered the sight that she had had of him that morning outside the Queen’s apartments; the brilliant figure in the flower-broidered doublet; the weary, seeking, embittered face under the arrogant crest of the Queen’s Captain. The years had brought him increase of power and riches, but the increase had been paid for, and stranger though he was, Bess’s heart whimpered over him as his mother’s might have done, because that morning his eyes had looked hot in his head. Less than a month ago he had returned from his Irish Estate to become Second-in-Command under Lord Thomas Howard of the expedition that was forming to intercept the Spanish Plate Fleet; and only yesterday, at the very last moment, it had become known through the Court that the Queen could not after all bring herself to part with her Captain and that his cousin, Sir Richard Grenville, was to take his place, in his — Ralegh’s — own ship, the Revenge. That was why he had been outside the Queen’s door this morning instead of posting down to Plymouth. That was why his dark face had worn that restless, seeking look, and his eyes had been hot. No, the past three years had not been kind to the Queen’s Captain.

  Bess had the sudden thought that if she could have given him those three years out of her own life for a second chance, she would have done it very willingly. She could have spared them well enough, for they had brought her neither gain nor loss, no change save that she was three years older. She remembered something that Penelope Devereux had said once, pitifully, of an aged aunt who had just died. ‘It must be so sad to have nothing to look back on, not even sorrow.’ Was it to be so with her, she wondered, with a sudden poignant sense of the fleetingness of youth, of life slipping by without using her. Such a little while since, she had sat in the ditch with the damson petals drifting round her ...

  She gave herself a shake. Best go and find some work to do, and do it, said her more practical self. And with a sigh, she got up, shaking out her wide skirts over the Spanish farthingale, and turned to go. But in the act of turning she saw that the blue convolvulus was in flower after all, and instantly her more practical self was forgotten.

  Just one blue trumpet, wind-swayed high among the sprays of the alder tree. She reached up with quick pleasure to touch the flower. It swayed into her hand, the silken fragility cool against her finger tips; then before she could avert the disaster, the wind caught her light oversleeve and tossed it upward into the alder tree, and the sharp twig-tangle snatched at the filmy stuff and held it, so that she was a prisoner. With an exclamation of annoyance she released the flower and turned her attention to her tangled sleeve. But the place where it was caught was just out of easy reach, and she could not free the gauzy stuff from the twigs which held it. She could drag it free easily enough, but that might spoil her gown, and it was a new gown and she could not afford to spoil it. Mistress Throckmorton was a woman of independent means, with an estate of her own at Mitcham, but the estate and consequently the means were very small ones on which to keep up an appearance at Court, and for her a ruined gown was a minor tragedy. Realising that she was only making matters worse with her fumbling, she ceased it, and stood with her arm raised so as not to drag on the sleeve, considering the situation. If she called for help, somebody would hear her eventually, though not many people came down to this corner of the gardens. But she did not want to call. She was a gentle and self-effacing woman, and the idea of raising a tumult actually frightened her. Above all she did not want to raise a tumult here, and bring scurrying gardeners into her sanctuary.

  If only someone would come uncalled!

  And then she thought that she heard whistling. She listened anxiously, her head turned in the direction from which the sound came. It died away, then rose again quite near at hand. Somebody in the little wood was whistling Greensleeves.

  Bess gathered her courage in both hands, and called, ‘Oh please — will you help me!’

  The whistling broke off between note and note. There was an instant’s silence, and then she heard someone brushing through the undergrowth, and called again, half laughing, half apologetic. ‘My sleeve is caught in the twigs, and I —’

  There was a flicker of pale colour among the wild fruit trees, and out on to the half-moon of turf stepped the Queen’s Captain.

  Ralegh had come out from the Queen’s privy apartments that morning in something very like a passion, a passion against her, himself, and all things under Heaven. The day was his, but he could make no use of it. He would have liked to ride, far and fast, but his favourite mount had gone lame, and he was in a mood to refuse any other with loathing. He was reduced to wandering drearily up and down, in and out through the palace gardens and cursing fate, his very soul uncomfortably hot within him. He had flung himself heart and soul into this expedition against the Spanish Plate Fleet, for the adventure and the hope of gain, but chiefly for the striking of a blow at Spain’s stranglehold on the New World. Now here he was, recalled at the last moment, his command given to Richard, while he remained to dance attendance on the Queen. He was the Queen’s very loyal servant; he would have died for her without question if the need arose, but his loyalty was becoming perilously strained by her constant refusal to allow him his freedom.

  It was the same with his efforts at colonisation. He might have letters patent to send out colonies to his heart’s content, so long as he did not go with them; small wonder that, lacking his leadership, his Virginia colony had failed like the rest. He would have broken free of it all, he thought, riches and power, and the delicate, dangerous game of wits, and followed his dream without her leave. He had the Garland and the Crane for his own, even with the Revenge otherwise engaged. But without letters patent for himself, he was helpless.

  Little by little, as he wandered the slow hours away, his rage died down, and dying, left behind it a fever of unrest, a sick longing after his dream, a most bitter contempt for himself and his way of life, a divine discontent. It was a young man’s mood, such as the soldier of fortune might have known, but which was less familiar to the Captain of the Queen’s Guard. A dangerous mood that was dry tinder ready for the spark.

  In this mood he found himself presently in the wild fringe of garden running to the river, where something that had been planted as a classical grove had developed with neglect into a most enchanting English spinney. The oak trees were in their first warmth of summer leaf, the young fern uncurling its dragon-head fronds, an
d somewhere among the branches a Jenny-whitethroat was singing. And suddenly for a flashing moment, the Queen’s Captain was a boy again in Hayes Barton woods. He began to whistle a tune that had been new to him then: and ‘Greensleeves, Greensleeves’, fluted the white-throat, ‘Greensleeves was my heart of gold, and who but my Lady Greensleeves.’

  As though in answer to the whistling, a voice called through the trees, a woman’s voice, with a little breathless catch in it. ‘Oh please — will you help me.’ He hesitated an instant, wondering if she were calling to some companion, for the call had been pitched as though to carry only a few yards. Then as no other voice answered, he turned his steps in the direction from which it had come.

  ‘My sleeve is caught in the twigs, and I —’ began the voice, as he reached the woodshore. He stepped out on to the half-moon of turf, and saw a woman in a green gown, standing among the branches of an alder tree, one arm raised, held captive by her filmy sleeve that had blown upward and tangled in the twigs. A tall woman, with a sensitive troubled face turned eagerly towards him.

  He doffed his feathered hat without a word, and strode quickly to her side. Her eyes, raised to his, were the deeply muted blue of wild columbine, giving her face a gravity which her wide warm mouth belied. Warm mouth and shadowed eyes; a quality of quiet in her that it seemed to him he had not met before in any woman. And God knew how he longed for quiet.

  ‘I would curtsey if I might,’ Bess said, ‘but I shall tear my poor sleeve if I do.’

  ‘Hold your arm higher,’ he commanded. ‘So — like that.’ He tossed his hat aside, and set to work, Bess standing like a docile child, her arm held high, watching the small pucker of concentration between his brows, while his skilled falconer’s fingers made short work of the tangle that had defeated her.

  In a few moments the thing was done, and he turned to her, letting the soft stuff slip through his hand. ‘The bird is loosed from the fowler’s net. See, it is not hurt — your wing.’