sitting at the octagonal table, her head bent over her book in the prettiest pose imaginable, my first sensation was disappointment rather than anything else.
She is but a woman like me.
I had seen her before, of course, but I realised that in my jealousy I had built her up to be more than she truly was. After all, she was my own age, and less beautiful than I, and her history was mired in scandal. What was there here to fear? What was there to hate?
A moment later I knew the answer, for she looked up, haloed in a sunlight that turned her hair to spun copper and gold. She was dazzling, radiant, not simply to my eyes but somehow to my soul as well. I saw her and recognised her worth. Robert had been right; Elizabeth was special. She burned with a spark few could ever match, certainly not the Queen, her embittered husk of a sister. Elizabeth was everything that Mary was not, charming, clever as a scholar, demure as a milkmaid, cunning as a thief. Had she not been all of those things and more she would have been dead before now.
As she put the book aside and stood to greet me, I felt the same frisson of antagonism that always stung me in her presence. I felt at a disadvantage in so many ways. I might be beautiful but she was dazzling, faceted like a jewel where I was dull and simple. The hanging cupboards of books that surrounded us only served to emphasise my own lack of learning and made me feel slow and stupid.
‘Your Highness.’ I inclined my head in the briefest of acknowledgements.
‘Lady Dudley.’ I could read nothing from her tone. She did not ask how I was. She said nothing to ease my discomfort.
‘I bring a gift from my lord, madam,’ I said. I opened my leather satchel and took out a book, the cover finely tooled in deep red leather, lettered in gold. It was a gift that typified Robert, extravagant, showy, proclaiming a wealth and importance he longed for but did not possess. I placed the book on the table next to the one she had been reading and as I did so we all heard the clink of coin from the hollowed-out compartment within. Lady Vane’s eyes widened but Elizabeth showed no surprise.
‘Robert assures you of his steadfast loyalty,’ I said.
Elizabeth nodded slowly. Her gaze was on the book, not on me. She ran her fingers gently over its smooth surface. ‘Thank you. Sir Robert is a dear friend and generous when he has so little himself.’
I swallowed the retort that Robert – and I – would have a great deal more if he were not given to such extravagant gestures. Bitterness consumed me as I remembered the hopes I had nourished when the money and Robert’s letter had first arrived. Mr Hyde had called me into his study and I had seen the gold and thought for one brief dizzy moment that it might be for me, that I might buy myself a new gown, or indeed several.
‘Does Sir Robert plan to visit us?’ I had asked Hyde, hating myself for the pleading tone in my voice. But he had shaken his head and looked at me pityingly and then I had realised that I was the one who was giving away my inheritance to the Princess Elizabeth for this money had surely come from the sale of some of my Norfolk estates.
‘Has Sir Robert returned from Picardy now?’ The Princess was addressing me directly. She did not invite me to sit, or offer refreshment. This, then, would be a very brief exchange.
‘Yes, Your Highness,’ I said.
I saw the glimmer of amusement in her eyes as she waited for me to elaborate and I stolidly refused. I might have appeared churlish but in truth I knew very little news to pass on to her. After a cursory enquiry into my health, Robert’s letter had told me only that his brother Henry had been killed in battle, blown to bits by a cannonball before his very eyes. He and King Philip had returned to court and he would be lodged for a time in London. He made no suggestion that I should join him. Instead he had gone on to exhort me to deliver the coin to Elizabeth at Hatfield with all protestations of his love and loyalty. That had been the sum total of his correspondence.