the balcony, crushing the sweet-smelling roses that garlanded the stands in attempt to catch Robert’s eye. In contrast I tried to draw back a little. I hated the dust and the heat and the blood of the tourney. My head was already aching and I put up a hand to rub my brow.
‘Amy?’
My sharp-eyed mother-in-law had noticed my withdrawal. She was a kind woman, the Duchess, in a brisk manner that still intimidated me after two years of marriage. Weakness was not something that she either understood or tolerated. Generous to me though she was, I knew that she, along with the rest, had thought Robert should look higher for a bride. It was a long time since his love for me had seemed sufficient to protect me from those slights either real or imagined. Now our desire seemed an ephemeral thing; it was no longer so heady as in the early days of our marriage and it was all too quickly satisfied. Often it left nothing but emptiness between us in its wake.
I needed a child. Without one, I was nothing, less than a wife. The knowledge that a son would transform my status was becoming an obsession with me. Anna had lost her babe the previous year and yet still, ashamed as I was of it, I envied her. I had not even conceived yet.
‘Do you feel the heat?’ her grace enquired. ‘Is it the sun?’ She drew me beneath one of the fluttering canopies. ‘Sit, my dear. Take some rest.’ Her gaze flickered to my stomach. ‘You look very pale. I wonder… Do you think you may be with child?’ She looked at me with her kind, hopeful eyes.
I could have told her no. I should have done. I was hot and sick because my flux was coming, as regularly as it always did. But I was tired of disappointing them, of the monthly letters to my mother that were full of inconsequential chatter and no news of a babe. Pain gripped me and a desire to be of consequence for once. It was pleasant to be approved of, to be ushered to a seat in the shade, to sit quietly whilst the Duchess sent a servant scurrying for a glass of wine to revive me. I lowered my gaze and pretended that I did not see the glances of surprise and hear the whispers that had already started:
‘Can it be true? Amy Dudley is enceinte?’ Then a voice, quickly hushed: ‘I thought she was barren.’
Ah, my sister-in-law Anne Seymour, so loud and tactless, articulating what everyone else was thinking. Anne had grown sourer still with the death of her father and I supposed that was no surprise, for who would wish to be trapped in a marriage to the son of their father’s murderer? It was a harsh world we inhabited for all that it was dressed up in silks and gaudy colours.
I swallowed the bitterness of Anne’s words. She had no children herself so perhaps like me she was driven by envy. Yet how little time it had taken the whole court to condemn me because I had failed to perform a woman’s natural function, a woman’s only important function, and fall pregnant. Robert, even now demonstrating his virility in the lists, was surely as fecund as the stallion he was riding. Thus ran the logic. If there was no child then it must be my fault.
Even as I rested my hands demurely over my stomach, I knew this could only end in more disappointment, more disapproval. Yet still I said nothing, sitting in the dusty June heat, dreaming, as though that would make it true.
It was not long, of course, before everyone knew there could be no child. The year slid into autumn and then into winter and I did not increase. I felt a curious sense of disappointment and loss, as though I had almost convinced myself of the lie along with everyone else. I grieved for the child I was not carrying and the canker of doubt, of a belief in my barrenness burrowed a little deeper into my heart.
Nobody mentioned that there was no babe. Indeed, I think perhaps that Robert barely noted it. He was too occupied with other matters, not that he ever discussed them with me. I had tried to talk to Robert about affairs of state, of the court business, of politics when he attended the parliament, but he had no interest in my opinions. I quickly