Elizabeth galloped back, her hair glowing like fire in the sunshine, her smile wide. Robert immediately forgot all about me, and rode after her, she laughing as he followed in hard pursuit.
William Cecil was a hard-working man. He had a wife, an intelligent woman who loved book-learning as much as her husband, and he enjoyed gardening when he had an hour to himself, which was rare these days.
Cecil dove into the business of running Elizabeth’s kingdom with dedication, helping her restore the church in her own way—doing away with the elaborate ceremony of Catholicism but not paring it down to the austere Protestantism of John Calvin. Elizabeth wished her priests to retain their costly vestments and some of their ritual, though she frowned coldly at excessive ornamentation, hordes of candles, and blanketing clouds of incense.
Cecil had had to persuade her to take the possibility of the French gaining a foothold in Scotland seriously, and to commit troops. He’d resorted to threatening to resign if she continued to dismiss his advice on this score.
In addition to all this, he had to contend with a queen who not only was evasive on the question of marriage but put off her council when asked to name a successor.
“Marriage is a dangerous undertaking,” Elizabeth had declared. “Naming a successor is equally dangerous, if not more so. See how many plots and intrigues revolved around me—without my approval, of course—when Mary was queen?”
She’d never condemned the plots to elevate her to the throne, I remembered. She’d pretended not to know about them but had quietly provisioned her estates while the conspirators planned to raise armies against Mary.
All in all, Cecil had a difficult job, steering the queen without incurring her displeasure. Elizabeth was generally reasonable and intelligent, but she had her blind spots, and Robert Dudley was one of them.
“He makes me laugh,” Elizabeth said when she learned of more complaints about her flirtation with him. “He understands me better than anyone, and raises my spirit high. Why should I not have that?”
“I cannot blame her,” I told Colby after she’d said this to me. “She spent years alone, keeping quiet and never putting a foot out of line. Why should she not enjoy herself in the light after such a long darkness?”
“No one minds that she enjoys herself,” Colby said patiently. “Her entertainments are becoming legendary, and I am pestered every day to use my position to finagle invitations to them. But she stirs anger and disgust with her favor to Dudley. She will divide the kingdom over him as surely as Mary did with Philip.”
“I remember that well.” I shivered. “I spent the winter in horrible rooms at Woodstock and had to meet you in a ruined house if I wished to speak to you.”
Colby sent me a grin. “You loved the duplicity.”
“Of conspiring under Mary’s nose?” I smiled in return, reflecting that it was easy to romanticize hardship in a comfortable chamber before a warm fire, with one’s beloved husband and cooing child nearby. “Of course, I did. If I’d sat meekly sewing, I should have been wretched.”
He nuzzled my hair. “You ever like to meddle, Lady Colby.”
“Uncle John says that about Aunt Kat.”
“It must be a trait of the Champernownes, then.” Colby became serious once more. “But you do see, don’t you, Eloise? If Elizabeth has an affair with Dudley—or God help us, marries him—she will divide her council and Parliament as much as Mary did. More, because Dudley is widely despised. He is too …” Colby went silent, groping for words.
“Handsome and charming?” I supplied.
I did understand. Dudley was the sort of man susceptible ladies swooned over but whom other gentlemen did not like. Add to that his father, the Duke of Northumberland, had been executed as a traitor, and King Henry had executed Robert’s grandfather, citing the same reason.
“No one wants Dudley to charm the queen into molding England into what he wants.” Colby leaned to me, the firelight catching on his red hair and somber expression. “I say this not because I don’t wish happiness for Elizabeth, but because I fear she will ruin all she has begun. There will be rebellion and evil once more. At the moment, Elizabeth is the sun to England, the golden princess who became their beloved queen. But if that opinion ever changes, England will be plunged into chaos.”
I knew he spoke the truth, and I heaved a sigh. “What a shame she does not love a stodgy, ugly gentleman who would give her many children, make friends of her advisors, and fade into the woodwork.”
Colby laughed out loud. “Is that your description of a perfect husband?”
“For a queen,” I said without mirth. “For a queen as radiant as Elizabeth. She is a Tudor, and she will rule, not her husband. Make no mistake about that. Not even Lord Robert would be able to tell her what to do against her own wishes.”
“I agree with you,” Colby said. “And if he should rise up against her? He obediently rose against Mary for Jane Grey and then supported conspiracies against Mary, even while trying to keep his own nose clean. What if Dudley decided he should have more from his wife the queen than her smiles? What if he wanted her kingdom?”
A qualm touched me. “She would have to fight him.”
Colby nodded. “England will not be stable if Dudley becomes its king. Too many do not trust him. We cannot let that happen, Eloise.”
His voice rang with determination. I had seen that determination before—in Elizabeth, in Mary, in Henry himself.
I’d speculated ere this that Henry’s descendants seemed to possess his temper and unwavering belief in themselves in pure form, undiluted by their mothers’ blood.
“What are you going to do, James?” I asked with some trepidation.
Colby subsided. “Nothing, for now. But if she makes a foolish mistake, I will have to act.”
