“On that day, I will have to decide where my own loyalties lie,” I said quietly.
“Yes.” Colby leaned closer to me, a watchful look in his blue eyes. “You will.”
I sat silently for a long time. I wanted my life to continue as it was at the moment—in a privileged position with the new queen, working with fabrics I never dreamed I’d be able to touch: costly cloth of gold and gold tissue, velvets so fine they were like rippling silk.
The clothes I designed for Elizabeth’s portraits, her balls, her entertainments, and her progresses had already begun to become famous. Great ladies of the world wrote to me begging for my advice or trying to tempt me from Elizabeth’s service, which of course I would not leave.
I wished to remain here with my husband by my side, for my daughter to grow up unharmed and happy. I wanted this, and I wanted Colby to be an ordinary man, son of another ordinary gentleman of Shropshire.
But he was James Colby, ever driven to act for England. Colby had once told me he worked for the greater good, and I had not believed him. I believed him now.
Colby wanted England to prosper as much as did Elizabeth. He’d always known Elizabeth would make a great queen and had worked hard to install her. I realized now that if Colby ever considered Elizabeth bad for England, he would not hesitate to remove her. He’d told me he did not want the crown for himself, but he might decide he had no other choice.
“Oh, James,” I said, heartfelt.
Colby sent me a faint smile. “Perhaps you should have married the dull gentleman your stepfather offered you.”
“No.” I surged to my feet, gazing down on him where he lounged on his chair. “I pledged myself to you. I love you, James Colby.”
Instead of answering, Colby pulled me down into his lap. I buried my face in his neck, my heart thumping. I’d never believed I would one day have to make a choice between my husband and my queen, and I would be heartbroken no matter which way I went.
Elizabeth continued to play with Lord Robert. I saw courtiers grit their teeth when she and Robert made them the butt of their jokes. The pair were shameless, whispering, heads together, smiling as one at the baffled courtiers, and teasing them unmercifully.
She would play the lute and shoot fond glances at Robert as he watched her, in view of everyone at court. But she’d turn a dangerous glare on anyone who even appeared as though they might rebuke her.
I ceased trying. Not because I was afraid of her retaliation, but because I knew she would not listen. If she would not listen to Aunt Kat and Cecil, she would certainly not heed me.
Cecil speculated in early September of 1560 that if things continued as they were he would have to resign. “Even if the queen were to lock me in the Tower for the rest of my life,” he sighed. “I cannot stay.”
If Cecil went, I asked Colby in panic, how long would it be before the entire council followed suit, and Colby’s fears of civil war came to pass?
These decisions were taken away from all of us.
On September 8 Amy Dudley was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in Cumnor Manor in Oxfordshire, her neck broken.
Chapter 28
The uproar of Amy’s death drowned out all else.
Had she killed herself in despair, many wondered? Because her husband was the queen’s lover? Amy’s servants reported that she had been ill and depressed, and expressed hope that her end would come soon.
Or, had Lord Robert had her murdered so he could be free to marry the queen?
Amy had been alone in the house, the other inhabitants having walked to a local fair. Amy had sent them away, they said, claiming the need to remain quietly at home. Did that point to an intention to end her own life?
On the other hand, the staircase she fell from apparently was not steep. That the fall alone had killed her was unlikely. More probably, someone had broken her neck elsewhere and arranged her at the bottom of the staircase in an attempt to make it appear an accident.
Rumor put it that Robert and Elizabeth had discussed poisoning Amy—perhaps she’d been weak with poison when she fell.
Tongues wagged, gossip soared. The scandal spread across the Channel to the courts of Paris and beyond, royals across Europe shaking their heads at the English queen’s folly.
Elizabeth, to my amazement, remained oblivious of the rumors, or at least she pretended to be. Both she and Robert made certain that Amy’s tragic end was investigated, and a jury was sent to examine the nature of her demise.
The investigators decided Amy’s death had indeed been an accident, but this did not dampen the speculation. The uproar continued.
My husband said nothing of the matter. He did nothing, until the day he learned that Elizabeth had told Cecil she would wait a short interval and then let Robert begin courting her.
Colby took me with him when he requested an audience with the queen. Elizabeth was at Whitehall, in the very chamber from which Mary had watched the men of Thomas Wyatt’s army swoop down the street, coming for her.
