Queen of This Realm - Plaidy Jean. Страница 83

As we came into the inner court Robert drew my attention to the clock in Caesar's Tower. It was one of the most beautiful clocks I ever saw, the face being a delicate shade of blue and the hands of gold.

I said: “But look! It has stopped.”

“All clocks have stopped at Kenilworth,” said Robert. “It means that while Your Majesty honors the Castle with your presence, time stands still.”

He looked fondly at me and I thought: Would it be possible? Only with him. Never with another. And yet, would he be quite so tender, quite so caring, toward a wife—Queen though she was—as he was toward the one he was trying to persuade to marry him?

Marriage grew stale. Courtship never.

Even here at Kenilworth, I knew that I must be perpetually wooed but never won.

WHAT HALCYON DAYS!

Whenever I traveled my subjects took great pains to give diverting entertainments in their houses, but there had never been anything like this. Robert had thought of everything for my pleasure.

“Even the Queen must remember this forever,” he said. “I want to make these days at Kenilworth some of the most memorable you have ever spent. I want no sadness to touch you, no irritation, however slight. Here is Your Majesty at this castle with your Master of Horse, whose great task and great joy in life is to serve you. I have thought of all that you love most to see and hear and do, and that is what I have planned. There shall be no moment of dullness. While Your Majesty is under this roof, every moment must be a joy, or I have failed.”

“No one could ever arrange these matters as you can, Robert, but here you have surpassed yourself.”

We hunted a great deal for he knew how I loved the sport, and he was always beside me. There were tournaments and tilting in the days and excellent feasting in the evenings when we would be entertained by tumblers, singers and musicians. There were colorful firework displays; and of course we danced every night. I danced chiefly with Robert. Although, of course, others implored the honor of partnering me, I never enjoyed dancing with anyone as I did with him—although men like Heneage and certainly Hatton danced more gracefully than he did. But I did not want too excellent a performance from Robert. He possessed all the masculine attractions to the full, and dancing perfection was not what I expected from Robert, although such as Hatton had won my regard for the performances they gave on the dance floor.

I liked my men to show their different talents—and they did so admirably; but although I had always known that none could rank with me so high as Robert did, I realized during the days at Kenilworth how very much I cared for him and how much a part of my life he was. During the years of my glory he had never been far from my side; he was closer to me than anyone else ever could be.

Sometimes when I watched him with others I felt twinges of anger. I saw him dancing once with Lettice Knollys while Douglass Sheffield, sitting on one of the benches, followed their movements with yearning eyes. I felt annoyed—not so much with Douglass as with the saucy Lettice.

When I was being helped to bed I noticed her there among my women, and I said to her: “It is time Devereux came back from Ireland, or you went to join him there.”

“Oh, Your Majesty, I doubt I should be the slightest use to him there,” she said blithely. “He is completely absorbed in the tasks Your Majesty has set him.”

“A wife should be with her husband. Long separations are unwise.”

She said nothing but I fancied she was smirking a little, and when she was helping to unlace me, I gave her a sharp nip on the arm and said she was clumsy. I added that she must be absentminded thinking of her family at Chartley.

She was never dismayed. She presumed too much on the Boleyn connection which made us some sort of cousins.

There is a smugness about her, I thought, and I believed that at one time she must have been rather friendly with Robert.

I would watch them. I was not having any immorality at my Court. Lettice was now a married woman, and if she did not remember it, I should.

When the women left me, I dismissed Lettice from my thoughts. I was wondering what delights Robert had prepared for the next day.

IT WAS SO HOT that July and because of this we did not go out hunting until the late afternoon and we would return in the twilight. Robert always had some new pageant to greet me and the days contained such a surfeit of entertainment that but for their brilliance and originality, they might have palled. I could never be sure what was being devised for my delight, and when I heard that the cost of all this exceeded one thousand pounds a day, I wondered at Robert's extravagance. When I mentioned this to him, he looked at me reproachfully and asked how he could count the cost when he was catering for the pleasure of his Queen.

It was all very wonderful, but life had taught me that it is not natural to enjoy such unalloyed pleasure, and perhaps I began to look round for a little canker in the richness. I found that my suspicions would not let me get those women out of my mind: Douglass Sheffield and Lettice Knollys. Douglass I felt I understood; I could sum up her nature: soft and yielding, demanding affection which she should have got from Sheffield; and then there was something unsavory about Sheffield's death. Robert had feared that his promises to her might be brought to my ears. It was disturbing to wonder whether he would murder on my account. That thought brought back echoes from the past.

However, the lady who caused me the most disquiet was Lettice. There was something so sly about her; she was harboring secrets. I had noticed the way in which she and Robert deliberately avoided looking at each other. That was not natural. Lettice was one of those women at whom men looked a good deal and Robert's studied indifference was too marked.

So there were these suspicions to ruffle the soft beauty of the paradise Robert had devised for me and, though I forgot those qualms for long stretches at a time, and I threw myself wholeheartedly into the entertainments, they remained.

Perhaps some of the most amusing moments occurred when the carefully organized pageants did not proceed as intended. I shall never forget the water scene which had been arranged to welcome me back to the castle after the hunt. It was on the lake, which always looked its best at night. Lighted by torches, the scene had a look of fairyland, and as I rode in I was greeted by the mermaid who was accompanied by a huge dolphin on whose back rode a masked man dressed to represent Orion.

As I approached the lake Orion started to recite his verses; the theme was that which I had heard many times since coming to Kenilworth. I was the greatest Queen in the whole world. I had been sent by God's Grace to rule England. All was well while I was on the throne and Kenilworth was blessed because I had deigned to stay within its walls. The trouble was that Orion could not manage his words. Like everyone else he must have been instructed to learn them by heart, for to have read them would have robbed them of their spontaneity; and it was in any case unlikely that these people would have been able to read.

However, Orion was having more difficulty than most and having stumbled his way through the first lines, he lost the thread and began again. I could see that Robert was getting very restive, but I was smiling pleasantly knowing that the humble man was doing his best.

He had come to a stop and clearly he had forgotten the rest of his speech. He tore off his mask so that his hot face, purple with exertion, was exposed, and he cried out: “I am no Orion. I am but honest Harry Goldingham, Your Majesty's most loyal subject.”

There was just a brief silence. Harry Goldingham had suddenly realized that he had ruined the pageant and was looking fearfully at Robert, glowering beside me.