But, anon, as the days passed their fears diminished, and finally the jury at Cumnor—delayed in their finding, and spurred by my lord to exhaustive inquiries—returned a verdict of “found dead,” which in all the circumstances left his lordship—who was known, moreover, to have been at Windsor when his lady died—fully acquitted. Both he and the Queen took courage from that finding, and made no secret of it now that they would very soon be wed.
But there were many whom that finding did not convince, who read my lord too well, and would never suffer him to reap the fruits of his evil deed. Prominent among these were Arundel—who himself had aimed at the Queen’s hand—Norfolk and Pembroke, and behind them was a great mass of the people. Indignation against Lord Robert was blazing out, fanned by such screaming preachers as Lever, who, from the London pulpits, denounced the projected marriage, hinting darkly at the truth of Amy Dudley’s death.
What was hinted at home was openly expressed abroad, and in Paris Mary Stuart ventured a cruel witticism that Elizabeth was to conserve in her memory: “The Queen of England,” she said, “is about to marry her horse-keeper, who has killed his wife to make a place for her.”
Yet Elizabeth persisted in her intent to marry Dudley, until the sober Cecil conveyed to her towards the end of that month of September some notion of the rebellion that was smouldering.
She flared out at him, of course. But he stood his ground.
“There is,” he reminded her, “this unfortunate matter of a prophecy, as the Bishop of Aquila persists in calling it.”
“God’s Body! Is the rogue blabbing?”
“What else did your Majesty expect from a man smarting under a sense of injury? He has published it broadcast that on the day before Lady Robert broke her neck, you told him that she was dead or nearly so. And he argues from it a guilty foreknowledge on your Majesty’s part of what was planned.”
“A guilty foreknowledge!” She almost choked in rage, and then fell to swearing as furiously in that moment as old King Harry at his worst.
“Madame!” he cried, shaken by her vehemence. “I but report the phrase he uses. It is not mine.”