And now … to Kenilworth.

It was July and very warm when the procession arrived at Long Ichington, which was six or seven miles from the Castle. Here Robert had erected a tent in which a banquet was prepared.

The Queen, in good humor and most affectionate, would have Robert sit beside her; and when the banquet was over, Robert had a fat boy, six years old, brought to her—the fattest she had ever seen, but so foolish as to be unable to understand that she was his Queen. After the fat boy, she was invited to inspect an enormous sheep: the biggest of their kind, these two, and both bred on Robert’s territory. The Queen laughed immoderately, and this was a good beginning.

They left the tent and followed the chase which was to lead them to Kenilworth Castle.

The Queen, at the head of the chase, kept Robert beside her, and while he pointed out with pride all the beauties and richness of the scene, he said: “I owe all this to my dearest mistress. May I die the moment I forget it!”

She was pleased, and as she was reluctant to give up the hunt, there was little daylight left when they reached the gates of Kenilworth Park.

In the Park, pageants greeted her. Smiling, she acknowledged the greetings of all; and when she reached the castle itself, there at the entrance stood a man of immense stature, carrying a club and keys. As she approached he expressed surprise at the magnificence of the company, until, affecting to see the Queen for the first time, he went on with great wonder:

“Oh, God, a priceless pearl!


No worldly wight, I doubt—some sovereign goddess sure!


In face, in hand, in eye, in other features all,


Yes, beauty, grace and cheer—yea, port and majesty,


Shew all some heavenly peer with virtues all beset.


Come, come, most perfect paragon, pass on with joy and bliss:


Have here, have here, both club and keys, myself, my ward, I yield.


E’en gates and all, my lord himself, submit and seek your shield.”

The Queen smiled happily; she loved such eulogies; and she loved this particularly because it had been designed by her Robert.

As the company passed through the castle gates, Robert saw, for the first time, one in that company who made his heart leap with sudden pleasure.

Lettice Knollys had come to Kenilworth.

Robert conducted the Queen to her chamber. Through the windows she could see the fireworks which made a good display in the Park, a sign to the countryside that the Queen had come to Kenilworth. At intervals the guns boomed forth. It was as though a King entertained a Queen. And that was how Elizabeth would have it.

“Robert,” she said, “you are a lavish spender.”

“Who could spend too lavishly in the entertainment of Your Majesty?”

She gave him the familiar tap on the cheek, thinking: Age cannot take his charm from him. It is there just as it was in the days of his flaming youth; and now he is a subtler man, and I doubt not many would love him still; yet he has remained unmarried for my sake.

“I shall remember my stay in Kenilworth to the end of my days,” she said. Then, to hide her emotion, added: “The clock there has stopped.”

He smiled. “All clocks in the Castle were stopped the moment Your Majesty entered.”

She “pupped” her lips and raised her eyebrows.

“Time stands still for goddesses,” he said.

That was a nice touch and typical of Robert.

He took her hand and kissed it. “You have promised to rest here for twelve days. During that time we will forget clocks. We will forget all but the entertaining of Your Majesty.”

“There was never one like you … never!” she said tenderly.

“Madam,” he answered, “a goddess might lose her Mutton and her Bellwether, her attendant Moor, and even her Spirit; but her Eyes do her better service than any of these.”

“Mayhap there’s truth in that,” she said. “Now leave me, Robin. I am tired with the day’s journey.”

He bowed over her hand and raised it to his lips.

She was smiling affectionately after he had gone.

In a corridor he came face to face with Lettice, and he knew that she had waylaid him. She was more beautiful than she had been in those days when he had first attracted her. She was no longer Lady Hereford, for her husband had been made Earl of Essex. She seemed bolder, and because of that faint resemblance to the Queen which came from her grandmother, Mary Boleyn, she reminded him of the young Elizabeth whom he had known in the Tower of London.

“A merry day to you, my lord,” she said.

“I knew not that you would come.”

“You remember me?”

“Remember! I do indeed.”

“I am honored. So the great Earl of Leicester forgets me not! The most honored man in the realm—by the Queen if not by the people—does not forget a humble woman on whom he once looked without disfavor.” Her eyes flashed angrily. She was reminding him that he had dropped her while their affair had still promised much enjoyment to them both.

“How could a man look with disfavor on one so beautiful?” he asked.

“He might if his mistress commanded him to do so … if he were so much her creature that he dared do no other.”

“I am no one’s creature!” he retorted haughtily.

She came nearer and lifted her brown eyes to his face. “Then you have changed, my lord,” she mocked.

Robert was never at a loss. He could not with any credit to himself explain his neglect in words, so he embraced her and kissed her. Such kisses were more adequate than any words could have been.

Douglass came to his apartment, bringing her boy with her. Poor Douglass! She felt that their son might appeal to his affections, even if she could not.

He dismissed his servants, trusting he could rely on their loyalty.

“It was foolish of you to come here,” he burst out when they were alone.

“But, Robert, it is so long since I saw you. The boy so longed to see you.”

He lifted the boy in his arms. It seemed to him dangerously obvious that this little Robert had the Dudley looks. The child smiled and put his arms about Robert’s neck. He loved this handsome glittering man, although he did not know that he was his father.

“Well, my boy. What have you to say to me?”

“This is a big castle,” said the boy.

“And you like it, eh?”

The boy nodded, staring in fascination at his father’s face.

“Mamma says that it is Kenilworth.”

Had she said: “You are the rightful heir to Kenilworth!” No! she would not dare.

He held the boy against him. For the sake of this child he was almost ready to acknowledge Douglass as his wife. He would have been proud to have taken young Robert by the hand and introduce him to the company. “Behold my son!” What consternation those words would cause.

The Queen would never forgive him; and indeed, he was weary of this boy’s mother. Her meek compliance and her suppressed hysteria reminded him uncomfortably of Amy. Why could not these women fall out of love as easily as he could?

Lettice was a different kind of woman; and Lettice too had a fine son. She had called him Robert. Was that in memory of Robert Dudley? This boy of hers, now eight years old, was of outstanding beauty. Why should Lettice not give him sons?

He thought of their embrace in the corridor. They were two experienced people, he and Lettice; she could give him much that he had hoped for all his life, and which, because of the Queen, he had missed: pleasure, children, and family life.

Lettice had a husband. Robert shrugged his shoulders. Then he looked at Douglass, who was watching him closely, and it seemed to him that he heard the mocking laughter of Amy Robsart in that room.

He said angrily: “Have a care! This is a great indiscretion. If the Queen should discover aught, this might not only be the end of me but of you.”

She fell down onto her knees and covered her face with her hands. “Oh, Robert, I will take care. I promise you … she shall not know.”

“You should never have come here,” he reproved her.

But the boy, seeing his mother’s distress, began to cry, and, picking him up to comfort him, Robert thought: If his mother were another woman—not one of whom I am heartily tired—if she were Lettice, I believe I would marry her for the sake of this boy.

The next day, being a Sunday, all the company went to church; and later in the day there was a banquet more splendid than that of the previous day; there was dancing and music, and as soon as darkness came, the sky was illumined with greater and better displays of fireworks; and the guns boomed once more.

During that day three women thought often of their host, each longingly, each in her own way in love with him.

There was Douglass—apprehensive and nervous—knowing that he no longer loved her and that, but for the child, he would have wished he had never loved her; it seemed to her that throughout the Castle of Kenilworth there was an air of foreboding, of warning perhaps from another woman who had been Robert’s wife and whom he had found an encumbrance.

The Queen thought of him tenderly—the best loved of all men in her life. Even Thomas Seymour had never excited her as Robert did; she doubted whether, had Thomas lived, he could have held her affection as did this man. For all Robert’s weaknesses she loved him now as once she had loved him for his strength. In those glorious days of youth when he had been the hero of the tiltyard, she had loved him as the most perfect and virtuous man she knew. Now she knew him to be neither perfect nor virtuous, yet she loved him still. She was the very contented guest at Kenilworth.

Lettice’s thoughts were all of him. She wanted Robert for her lover, but she was no Douglass to be taken up and cast aside. If Robert Dudley became her lover she must become the Countess of Leicester. She brooded and smiled, for she was a woman who, when she wanted something badly, had found that it invariably fell into her hands.

The days were hot and sultry. The Queen kept within the castle until five in the evening, when she would ride forth with a great company of ladies and gentlemen to hunt in the surrounding country. There was always a pageant to greet her on her return to Kenilworth Park, and each day’s pageant strove to be more grand, more splendid than the last.

But the first day’s pleasure was clouded as the days passed. Perhaps she was tired of listening to speeches concerning her own virtues. Robert was preoccupied, and she had an uneasy feeling that this was not only due to the vast pains he was taking to entertain her. He was looking worn and strained.

She brought her horse close to his and asked: “Are you not sleeping well, my lord?”

He started, and such a look of guilt came into his face that her fears were increased. She suspected an entanglement with a woman. She knew Robert’s nature. It was to his eternal credit that he had remained outwardly faithful to her; but surely at such a time he would not dare to think of another woman.

“You start!” she said harshly. “Is it a crime then, not to sleep?”

“It should be a crime to be laid at my door, Your Majesty, if you did not sleep whilst under my roof.”

“We were not discussing my rest, but yours.”

“I feared that Your Majesty had been put in mind of the matter because of your own ill rest. I beg of you to tell me if your chamber be not to your liking. We will have it changed. We will have an apartment refurnished for you.”

She tapped him sharply on the arm. “A plain question demands a plain answer, my lord; and it should be given its reward … unless it is feared that the giving might not please.”

“My dearest lady, I would not wish to trouble you with my ailments.”

“So you are sick again?”

“It is naught but an internal humor.”

She laughed aloud in her relief. “You eat too much, my lord.”

“I could not expect Your Majesty to do full justice to my table unless I did so also. You might think I disdained that which had been prepared for your royal palate.”

“Then ’tis just a sickness of the body. I feared it might be an indisposition of the mind that kept you awake at night.”

Sensing her suspicion, he said: “Your Majesty shall know the truth. It is a woman.”

He saw her quick intake of breath and he turned to her with all the passionate fervor of which he was capable. “Knowing that she whom I love lies beneath my roof,” he said, “how could I sleep at night unless she lay with me.”