There had been a banquet, followed by a masque, and this again by a dance in which the young queen had paired off with Lord Robert Dudley, who in repute was the handsomest man in Europe, just as in fact he was the vainest, shallowest, and most unscrupulous. There had been homage and flattery lavishly expressed, and there was a hint of masked hostility from certain quarters to spice the adventure, and to thrill her bold young spirit. Never yet in all the months of her reign since her coronation in January of last year had she felt so much a queen, and so conscious of the power of her high estate; never so much a woman, and so conscious of the weakness of her sex. The interaction of those conflicting senses wrought upon her like a heady wine. She leaned more heavily upon the silken arm of her handsome Master of the Horse, and careless in her intoxication of what might be thought or said, she—who by the intimate favour shown him had already loosed the tongue of Scandal and set it chattering in every court in Europe—drew him forth from that thronged and glittering chamber of the Palace of Whitehall into the outer solitude and friendly gloom.
And he, nothing loth to obey the suasion of that white hand upon his arm, exultant, indeed, to parade before them all the power he had with her, went willingly enough. Let Norfolk and Sussex scowl, let Arundel bite his lip until it bled, and sober Cecil stare cold disapproval. They should mend their countenances soon, and weigh their words or be for ever silenced, when he was master in England. And that he would soon be master he was assured to-night by every glance of her blue eyes, by the pressure of that fair hand upon his arm, by the languishing abandonment with which that warm young body swayed towards him, as they passed out from the blaze of lights and the strains of music into the gloom and silence of the gallery leading to the terrace.
“Out—let us go out, Robin. Let me have air,” she almost panted, as she drew him on.
Assuredly he would be master soon. Indeed, he might have been master already but for that wife of his, that stumbling-block to his ambition, who practiced the housewifely virtues at Cumnor Place, and clung so tenaciously and so inconsiderately to life in spite of all his plans to relieve her of the burden of it.
For a year and more his name had been coupled with the Queen’s in a tale that hurt her honour as a woman and imperilled her dignity as a sovereign. Already in October of 1559 Alvarez de Quadra, the Spanish ambassador, had written home: “I have learnt certain things as to the terms on which the Queen and Lord Robert stand towards each other which I could not have believed.”
That was at a time when de Quadra was one of a dozen ambassadors who were competing for her hand, and Lord Robert had, himself, appeared to be an ally of de Quadra and an advocate of the Spanish marriage with the Archduke Charles. But it was a presence which nowise deceived the astute Spaniard, who employed a legion of spies to keep him well informed.
“All the dallying with us,” he wrote, “all the dallying with the Swede, all the dallying there will be with the rest, one after another, is merely to keep Lord Robert’s enemies in play until his villainy about his wife can be executed.”
What that particular villainy was, the ambassador had already stated earlier in his letter. “I have learnt from a person who usually gives me true information that Lord Robert has sent to have his wife poisoned.”
What had actually happened was that Sir Richard Verney—a trusted retainer of Lord Robert’s—had reported to Dr. Bayley, of New College, Oxford, that Lady Robert Dudley was “sad and ailing,” and had asked him for a potion. But the doctor was learned in more matters than physic. He had caught an echo of the tale of Lord Robert’s ambition; he had heard a whisper that whatever suitors might come from overseas for Elizabeth, she would marry none but “my lord”—as Lord Robert was now commonly styled. More, he had aforetime heard rumours of the indispositions of Lady Robert, yet had never found those rumours verified by the fact. Some months ago, it had been reported that her ladyship was suffering from cancer of the breast and likely soon to die of it. Yet Dr. Bayley had reason to know that a healthier woman did not live in Berkshire.
The good doctor was a capable deductive reasoner, and the conclusion to which he came was that if they poisoned her under cover of his potion—she standing in no need of physic—he might afterwards be hanged as a cover for their crime. So he refused to prescribe as he was invited, nor troubled to make a secret of invitation and refusal.