She smiled and leaned against him.

Kat, watching, sighed. Why does she refuse him? wondered Kat. How can she refuse such a man? He does not lose his graces. He has murdered his wife for her. Dearest and most perverse, most strong and most frail Mistress, what more do you ask of a man?

But Elizabeth drew away from her lover. “Why should you plead for that girl? Is it because she has a fair face?”

“Is it fair? I had not noticed. I remember I have rarely seen her but in your presence.”

“She is pretty enough.”

“A pale moon compared with the blazing sun. When I plead for her, I think of you. That is why I say deal leniently with her. It is what the people would expect.”

“Robert, there are some who would make her Queen. My father would have chosen this moment to send her to the block.”

“But you have wisdom as well as beauty.”

“Was my father not a wise man, then?”

“Not always.”

“I think that could be called treason.”

“Nay, call it love … love for you, my dearest Queen. The people would not like to see you murder your rivals as your father did his. It is unworthy of you. You are stronger than that. A lioness does not slay mice.”

“What! Should I pardon her! Should I leave her and her husband to raise a brood of children to menace the throne!”

“Not so. Keep her prisoner and keep Hertford prisoner, but do not take their lives.”

She tapped his cheek in her affectionate way. “Did you think I should take their lives? Nay! I would not have her blood upon my hands. I shall keep her prisoner in the Tower, and Hertford shall be my prisoner. There I shall know that she is harmless. I would not hurt her silly head. Let her live … my prisoner.”

He kissed her hand fervently. “You are the wisest as well as the most beautiful of women.”

“Enough of Madam Catharine. Let us talk of more interesting matters.”

“Of Madam Elizabeth perhaps?”

“And Master Robert.”

“Then let us talk of the days when they met in the Tower, and of how he in his lonely cell dreamed of the future.”

“Well, that will make pleasant talk, I doubt not. I’ll send for a musician to charm us with his lute while we talk.”

He looked reproachful; but she felt too soft toward him to trust herself alone with him.

The Queen was pleased that the Lady Catharine Grey should be her prisoner. Lord Hertford was now in the Tower on a charge of treason. They should spend the rest of their lives there, decided the Queen. None should accuse her of having their blood on her hands.

She thought continually of that other and greater menace to her peace of mind. The very mention of Mary Queen of Scots could send her into a black mood.

If she had the Queen of Scots—and the Lady Mary Grey—in prison, she would be a happier woman. But there was another who had come to her notice; this was Margaret, Countess of Lennox. This lady was not very far removed from the throne, since she was the daughter of Margaret Tudor, Henry the Eighth’s sister. The Countess needed careful watching, for she had a son, Lord Henry Darnley; and women with sons could be very ambitious.

Prying into the affairs of the Countess of Lennox, the Queen’s spies soon discovered that she had been corresponding with Mary Queen of Scots.

Elizabeth laughed when the news was brought to her. “’Tis clear to me what she would wish. She would marry that boy of hers to the Queen of Scotland, and then plot to give him England as well.”

Robert agreed with her that this was doubtless in the lady’s mind.

“I wonder if Mary would take him,” mused Elizabeth. “But I doubt it. Madam Lennox sees him with a mother’s eyes. I see a beardless boy—more like a girl than a man.”

“Your Majesty’s Eyes sees him in the same way.”

She laughed at her “Eyes”—her new pet name for him. “What else do my Eyes see?” she asked tenderly.

“That the woman may well be a danger to my beloved one.”

“We’ll put her into the Tower. That’s where she should be.”

It was not difficult to find an excuse. The Countess’s apartments were searched, and some charts of the stars were found. Her servants, under torture, confessed that she had employed astrologers to discover how long Elizabeth would live, and they had foretold that she would die during the next year.

Here, beyond dispute, was high treason.

The Countess of Lennox became the Queen’s prisoner in the Tower.

Now she had two dangerous women behind bars; but her thoughts were still of Scotland.

That autumn Elizabeth fell ill of the smallpox.

All the country believed that she would die and that the prophecy of the Countess’s astrologers was to be fulfilled.

There was tension throughout the country. Two brothers of the Pole family, who had Plantagenet blood in their veins, tried with their followers to march on London. The plot was discovered and the brothers taken prisoner. They insisted that they had not meant to depose the Queen but merely to demand that the succession should be fixed on Queen Mary. Cecil and his ministers forcefully declared that there would be trouble until the Queen married and produced an heir.

Meanwhile the Queen had become so ill that she believed death was near. She opened her eyes and seeing Robert at her bedside she smiled feebly and held out her hand to him. “Robert,” she said, “so you are here with me. That is where you should be. You … of all others. Had I not been a Queen I should have been your wife.”

Those who heard those words were sure that if she recovered she would marry him.

She was filled with remorse because she had not treated Robert with fairness. She loved Robert; she would never love any as she loved him; and if she died, what would become of him? He had many enemies, and he had nothing but her favor. She could have given him the highest position in the land, and she had given him nothing … nothing but lands and riches, not even the earldom he had so ardently desired. Such nobles as Norfolk would deride him, taunt him with his lowly birth; he had no place in the Privy Council; she had delighted in having him by her side, and she had made a lap-dog of the most perfect man in her kingdom.

She sent for her ministers and gathered her strength to address them. “There is one thing I would ask of you, my lords. It is my dying wish, and I beg of you not to ignore the wish of a dying woman. When I die I wish Lord Robert Dudley to be Protector of this Realm. I wish you to swear to me that you will obey him, respect and honor him, for, my friends, he is a great and good man; he is the most perfect and virtuous gentleman it has ever been my lot to know.”

And when they had left her, having sworn to do as she asked, she lay back on her pillows and imagined him—Lord Protector as his father had been. She pictured him in all his manly beauty, his dignity and power; and she thought: How can I bear to leave a world that contains him? For what happiness could there be elsewhere compared with that of being near him?

She was not going to die! Life was too good while she had a crown which she had long coveted, and Robert Dudley was at her side.

She began to recover; and a few days later she again called her ministers to her. Robert Dudley was immediately to be made a member of the Privy Council. He was no longer to be a lap-dog. He was to be the Queen’s passionate and devoted friend, the statesman who must always be beside her to give her his advice, her Eyes, her companion, the man who must never cease to hope to be her husband.

In a happy mood she pardoned the two Pole brothers, providing they were exiled from the country; and each day her health improved and, with Lord Robert beside her, she planned entertainments to celebrate her recovery.

The Queen was fully restored to health when there came news from Scotland which infuriated her.

The Archduke Charles, who had for so long been her suitor, had now turned his attention elsewhere; and to none other than the Queen’s hated rival, that other Queen, Mary of Scotland.

The Queen sent for Cecil and declared herself to be insulted; she assured him she would never consent to Mary’s marriage with that philanderer of Austria.

As the Archduke had shown the utmost tolerance, patience, and courtesy, Cecil shrugged his shoulders and wrote to the Emperor requesting that his son’s advances should be made once more to the Queen of England. Elizabeth meantime wrote to Mary telling her that she would never give her consent to a marriage which could not fail to cause enmity between them; and as Mary’s heirs might succeed to the English crown she would be ill-advised to marry without the consent of the English Queen.

But the courtship of the Queen of England was beginning to be looked upon as one of history’s farces, and the Emperor wrote to Cecil that he could not have his son exposed to insult a second time. Cecil was perturbed. Eric of Sweden was now out of the marriage market. He had romantically married a beautiful girl whom he had seen selling nuts not far from his palace. So struck had he been with the grace and charm of Kate the nut seller, that he had defied all opposition and married her.

The Queen had laughed with great heartiness when she had heard of this, although she was piqued, as always, to lose a suitor. But now the news of the retirement of the Archduke from the field was disturbing.

The Queen must marry, and in Cecil’s opinion, if she now married Dudley the people would be ready to believe that she at all events was innocent of the unsavory suspicions connected with Amy’s death.

Perhaps, thought Cecil, when Mary had married the Archduke, Elizabeth would so intensely wish to be married that she would follow the example of the Queen of Scots. But Mary was ambitious. She wanted the throne of England for the son she hoped to have, and therefore she had no intention of offending Elizabeth.

She wrote humbly to the Queen saying that she would decline the Archduke, and was very willing to listen to any good advice on the matter of matrimony which her good sister of England would deign to give her.

So Elizabeth began to look for a suitable consort for Mary Queen of Scots.

Elizabeth was spending a good deal of time in the company of Sir James Melville, the Scottish ambassador.

The man amused her; he was so dour, so unlike the rest of her courtiers who had come to understand that one of their indispensable duties was to make love, conversationally, to the Queen, for the more accomplished they were in this, the more likely were they to succeed at Court. None, of course, had the elegant looks, the magnificent figure, the exuberant charm and the manner of paying a compliment which were Robert Dudley’s; but many of them were beginning to learn these arts, and almost to rival him.

Therefore it amused the Queen, while she plotted in her cautious way against Mary, to entertain this man who seemed somewhat uncouth. She would have him sit beside her, very close; she would tap his cheek affectionately; she enjoyed shocking him by the magnificence of her clothes, with the love-making of her courtiers to which she so archly responded; she would have music played while they talked, for she knew that he believed any sensuous pleasures to be sinful.

She insisted on his talking of that woman who was hardly ever out of her thoughts and for whom she felt an overwhelming jealousy.

“They tell me your mistress is a very fair woman, Master Melville,” she said.

“Aye, ’tis so.”

“And do you think so, Master Melville? Do you admire her as we hear all men do?”

“She is my mistress. How could I do aught else?”

“As a Queen and your mistress, yes. But then such a righteous man as you would admire a humpbacked one-eyed witch. Now tell me, how doth she look?”

“Her Majesty the Queen of Scots is neither humpbacked nor one-eyed.”

“You tease me, sir. Tell me of her clothes. Which does she favor? She has lived long in France, and they say that the French fashions are more becoming than the English. What do you say, Master Melville?”

“I know little of fashions, Madam.”

“But you must know which she likes. I myself favor the Italian caul and the bonnet. Do you know what is said of my preference? They say that I like it because it does not hide my hair, and I am very proud of my hair, of its color and curl. It is this redness which makes them say that.”

Melville was uncomfortable. It seemed an odd thing that the Queen should consider it part of his duty to discuss fashions and the color of hair.