Elizabeth by Evelyn Anthony Read Free Book Online

advisers. Most of them supposed the reason to be political, and these were right; others imagined the cause was Robert Dudley, with whom she was said to be in love.
    They were lovers in all senses but the true one. She had allowed him growing intimacies on the understanding that he did not attempt the last of all.
    The danger of pregnancy was too obvious to need stressing; Elizabeth refused to contemplate such a risk, but with Dudley at least she was too honest to pretend that her nominal chastity was due to moral scruples. If she could take a lover, she would take him. Those words, wrung from her in a moment of passionate abandonment, fed Dudley’s innermost ambition and made the rules governing their strange relationship not only bearable but proper.
    Elizabeth refused to become his mistress, and he no longer urged her, because he had conceived the fantastic ambition of making her his wife. He had watched the progress of the Archduke Charles’s courtship, terrified that Policy and the promptings of her Council would encourage her to place herself beyond his reach. But the longer the negotiations dragged on, the more ambassadors and politicians did the Archduke’s wooing for him, the more confident Dudley felt that no man would win Elizabeth in cold blood.
    He showed that he was jealous in order to be reassured; jeering at the paper courtship, as he called it. And he waited patiently for the obvious solution to their problem to present itself to her. If and when she saw the point of marrying as her subjects demanded, and choosing a husband to her own taste, he would need every friend at Court he could enlist. It was all planned in his quick, unscrupulous mind. He would divorce Amy, whom he hardly ever saw, since he forbade her to come to London, and Amy would agree as she agreed to everything he said. And he, Robert Dudley, would be Consort, perhaps even King of England. Even his father, who had been uncrowned King in Edward’s reign, had never conceived an ambition as daring as this one.
    If Dudley’s intentions were kept secret from Elizabeth, they were obvious enough to her advisers. Cecil’s worst fears were being realized, and all the antipathy of the old nobility towards the elevation of an upstart concentrated in a clique against Dudley, headed by the Earl of Sussex. He was a middle-aged man of great courage and discernment; he had befriended Elizabeth when she was Mary’s prisoner, and she was known to respect his opinion. She was also so averse to criticism that the other members of the Council, Cecil included, gladly elected Sussex as their spokesman.
    She was in her Privy Chamber, playing virginals with her ladies, when the Earl asked permission to see her privately.
    She was in a good temper, soothed by the melody and her own musical skill, and by the memory of the exasperation on the face of the Spanish ambassador when she told him she could not consider the Archduke as a husband because of his religion and her own reluctance to get married.
    â€œMy Lord Sussex, Madam.”
    She continued playing, well aware that the Earl liked music and that she presented a lovely, graceful picture, seated at the instrument in the light of the setting sun. After a moment she looked up and smiled and beckoned to him.
    â€œWelcome, my Lord. You find me idling, I fear. Music is my greatest relaxation. Have you come to divert me for a change or to harry me with business?”
    â€œNeither, Madam. I come to you, as I always will, as a loving servant and councillor. May I see you alone?” At a sign from the Queen, her ladies rose, curtsied, and left the room. Elizabeth left the virginal board and took her favourite position in the window. As a special sign of her favour, she patted the ledge beside her.
    â€œSit down, my Lord. What do you want from me?”
    Sussex faced her without flinching. He had known her for many years; he admired her courage, her natural dignity and intelligence, but