Chapter 10

And so, on the morning after that half-surrender of Elizabeth’s, we find my lord closeted with his henchman, Sir Richard Verney. Sir Richard—like his master—was a greedy, unscrupulous, ambitious scoundrel, prepared to go to any lengths for the sake of such worldly advancement as it lay in my lord’s power to give him. My lord perforce used perfect frankness with this perfect servant.

“Thou’lt rise or fall with me, Dick,” quoth he. “Help me up, then, and so mount with me. When I am King, as soon now I shall be, look to me. Now to the thing that is to do. Thou’lt have guessed it.”

To Sir Richard it was an easy guess, considering how much already he had been about this business. He signified as much.

My lord shifted in his elbow-chair, and drew his embroidered bedgown of yellow satin closer about his shapely limbs.

“Hast failed me twice before, Richard,” said he. “God’s death, man, fail me not again, or the last chance may go the way of the others. There’s a magic in the number three. See that I profit by it, or I am undone, and thou with me.”

“I’d not have failed before, but for that suspicious dotard Bayley,” grumbled Verney. “Your lordship bade me see that all was covered.”

“Aye, aye. And I bid thee so again. On thy life, leave no footprints by which we may be tracked. Bayley is not the only physician in Oxford. About it, then, and swiftly. Time is the very soul of fortune in this business, with the Spaniard straining at the leash, and Cecil and the rest pleading his case with her. Succeed, and thy fortune’s made; fail, and trouble not to seek me again.”

Sir Richard bowed, and took his leave. As he reached the door, his lordship stayed him. “If thou bungle, do not look to me. The court goes to Windsor to-morrow. Bring me word there within the week.” He rose, magnificently tall and stately, in his bedgown of embroidered yellow satin, his handsome head thrown back, and went after his retainer. “Thou’lt not fail me, Dick,” said he, a hand upon the lesser scoundrel’s shoulder. “There is much at issue for me, and for thee with me.”

“I will not fail you, my lord,” Sir Richard rashly promised, and on that they parted.

Sir Richard did not mean to fail. He knew the importance of succeeding, and he appreciated the urgency of the business as much as did my lord himself. But between his cold, remorseless will to succeed and success itself there lay a gulf which it needed all his resource to bridge. He paid a short visit to Lady Robert at Cumnor, and professed deepest concern to find in her a pallor and an ailing air which no one else had yet observed. He expressed himself on the subject to Mrs. Buttelar and the other members of her ladyship’s household, reproaching them with their lack of care of their mistress. Mrs. Buttelar became indignant under his reproaches.

“Nay, now, Sir Richard, do you wonder that my lady is sad and downcast with such tales as are going of my lord’s doings at court, and of what there is ’twixt the Queen and him? Her ladyship may be too proud to complain, but she suffers the more for that, poor lamb. There was talk of a divorce awhile ago that got to her ears.”

“Old wives’ tales,” snorted Sir Richard.

“Likely,” agreed Mrs. Buttelar. “Yet when my lord neither comes to Cumnor, nor requires her ladyship to go to him, what is she to think, poor soul?”

Sir Richard made light of all, and went off to Oxford to find a physician more accommodating than Dr. Bayley. But Dr. Bayley had talked too much, and it was in vain that Sir Richard pleaded with each of the two physicians he sought that her ladyship was ailing—“sad and heavy”—and that he must have a potion for her.

Each in turn shook his head. They had no medicine for sorrow, was their discreet answer. From his description of her condition, said each, it was plain that her ladyship’s sickness was of the mind, and, considering the tales that were afloat, neither was surprised.

Sir Richard went back to his Oxford lodging with the feeling of a man checkmated. For two whole days of that precious time he lay there considering what to do. He thought of going to seek a physician in Abingdon. But fearing no better success in that quarter, fearing, indeed, that in view of the rumours abroad he would merely be multiplying what my lord called “footprints,” he decided to take some other way to his master’s ends. He was a resourceful, inventive scoundrel, and soon he had devised a plan.

On Friday he wrote from Oxford to Lady Robert, stating that he had a communication for her on the subject of his lordship as secret as it was urgent. That he desired to come to her at Cumnor again, but dared not do so openly. He would come if she would contrive that her servants should be absent, and he exhorted her to let no one of them know that he was coming, else he might be ruined, out of his desire to serve her.

That letter he dispatched by the hand of his servant Nunweek, desiring him to bring an answer. It was a communication that had upon her ladyship’s troubled mind precisely the effect that the rascal conceived. There was about Sir Richard’s personality nothing that could suggest the villain. He was a smiling, blue-eyed, florid gentleman, of a kindly manner that led folk to trust him. And on the occasion of his late visit to Cumnor he had displayed such tender solicitude that her ladyship—starved of affection as she was—had been deeply touched.

His letter so cunningly couched filled her with vague alarm and with anxiety. She had heard so many and such afflicting rumours, and had received in my lord’s cruel neglect of her such circumstantial confirmation of them, that she fastened avidly upon what she deemed the chance of learning at last the truth. Sir Richard Verney had my lord’s confidence, and was much about the court in his attendance upon my lord. He would know the truth, and what could this letter mean but that he was disposed to tell it.

So she sent him back a line in answer, bidding him come on Sunday afternoon. She would contrive to be alone in the house, so that he need not fear being seen by any.

As she promised, so she performed, and on the Sunday packed off her household to the fair that was being held at Abingdon that day, using insistence with the reluctant, and particularly with one of her women, a Mrs. Oddingsell, who expressed herself strongly against leaving her ladyship alone in that lonely house. At length, however, the last of them was got off, and my lady was left impatiently to await her secret visitor. It was late afternoon when he arrived, accompanied by Nunweek, whom he left to hold the horses under the chestnuts in the avenue. Himself he reached the house across the garden, where the blighting hand of autumn was already at work.

Within the porch he found her waiting, fretted by her impatience.

“It is very good in you to have come, Sir Richard,” was her gracious greeting.

“I am your ladyship’s devoted servant,” was his sufficient answer, and he doffed his plumed bonnet, and bowed low before her. “We shall be private in your bower above stairs,” he added.

“Why, we are private anywhere. I am all alone, as you desired.”

“That is very wise—most wise,” said he. “Will your ladyship lead the way?”

So they went up that steep, spiral staircase, which had loomed so prominently in the plans the ingenious scoundrel had evolved. Across the gallery on the first floor they entered a little room whose windows overlooked the garden. This was her bower—an intimate cosy room, reflecting on every hand the gentle, industrious personality of the owner. On an oak table near the window were spread some papers and account-books concerned with the estate—with which she had sought to beguile the time of waiting. She led the way towards this, and, sinking into the high-backed chair that stood before it, she looked up at him expectantly. She was pale, there were dark stains under her eyes, and wistful lines had crept into the sweet face of that neglected wife.

Contemplating his poor victim now, Sir Richard may have compared her with the woman by whom my lord desired so impatiently to supplant her. She was tall and beautifully shaped, despite an almost maidenly slenderness. Her countenance was gentle and adorable, with its soft grey eyes and light brown hair, and tender, wistful mouth.

It was not difficult to believe that Lord Robert had as ardently desired her to wife five years ago as he now desired to be rid of her. Then he obeyed the insistent spur of passion; now he obeyed the remorseless spur of ambition. In reality, then as now, his beacon-light was love of self.

Seeing her so frail and trusting, trembling in her anxious impatience to hear the news of her lord which he had promised her, Sir Richard may have felt some pang of pity. But, like my lord, he was of those whose love of self suffers the rivalry of no weak emotion.

“Your news, Sir Richard,” she besought him, her dove-like glance upon his florid face—less florid now than was its wont.

He leaned against the table, his back to the window. “Why, it is briefly this,” said he. “My lord...” And then he checked, and fell into a listening attitude.

“What was that? Did you hear anything, my lady?”

“No. What is it?” Her face betrayed alarm, her anxiety mounting under so much mystery.

“Sh! Stay you here,” he enjoined. “If we are spied upon...” He left the sentence there. Already he was moving quickly, stealthily, towards the door. He paused before opening it. “Stay where you are, my lady,” he enjoined again, so gravely that she could have no thought of disobeying him. “I will return at once.”

He stepped out, closed the door, and crossed to the stairs. There he stopped. From his pouch he had drawn a fine length of whipcord, attached at one end to a tiny bodkin of needle sharpness. That bodkin he drove into the edge of one of the panels of the wainscot, in line with the topmost step; drawing the cord taut at a height of a foot or so above this step, he made fast its other end to the newel-post at the stair-head. He had so rehearsed the thing in his mind that the performance of it occupied but a few seconds. Such dim light of that autumn afternoon as reached the spot would leave that fine cord invisible.

Sir Richard went back to her ladyship. She had not moved in his absence, so brief as scarcely to have left her time in which to resolve upon disobeying his injunction.

“We move in secret like conspirators,” said he, “and so we are easily affrighted.. I should have known it could be none but my lord himself... here?”

“My lord!” she interrupted, coming excitedly to her feet. “Lord Robert?”

“To be sure, my lady. It was he had need to visit you in secret—for did the Queen have knowledge of his coming here, it would mean the Tower for him. You cannot think what, out of love for you, his lordship suffers. The Queen...

“But do you say that he is here, man,” her voice shrilled up in excitement.

“He is below, my lady. Such is his peril that he dared not set foot in Cumnor until he was certain beyond doubt that you are here alone.”

“He is below!” she cried, and a flush dyed her pale cheeks, a light of gladness quickened her sad eyes. Already she had gathered from his cunning words a new and comforting explanation of the things reported to her. “He is below!” she repeated. “Oh!” She turned from him, and in an instant was speeding towards the door.

He stood rooted there, his nether lip between his teeth, his face a ghastly white, whilst she ran on.

“My lord! Robin! Robin!” he heard her calling, as she crossed the corridor. Then came a piercing scream that echoed through the silent house; a pause; a crashing thud below; and—silence.

Sir Richard remained by the table, immovable. Blood was trickling down his chin. He had sunk his teeth through his lip when that scream rang out. A long moment thus, as if entranced, awe-stricken. Then he braced himself, and went forward, reeling at first like a drunken man. But by the time he had reached the stairs he was master of himself again. Swiftly, for all his trembling fingers, he unfastened the cord’s end from the newel-post. The wrench upon it had already pulled the bodkin from the wainscot. He went down that abrupt spiral staircase at a moderate pace, mechanically coiling the length of whip-cord, and bestowing it with the bodkin in his pouch again, and all the while his eyes were fixed upon the grey bundle that lay so still at the stairs’ foot.

He came to it at last, and, pausing, looked more closely. He was thankful that there was not the need to touch it. The position of the brown-haired head was such as to leave no doubt of the complete success of his design. Her neck was broken. Lord Robert Dudley was free to marry the Queen.

Deliberately Sir Richard stepped over the huddled body of that poor victim of a knave’s ambition, crossed the hall, and passed out, closing the door. An excellent day’s work, thought he, most excellently accomplished. The servants, returning from Abingdon Fair on that Sunday evening, would find her there. They would publish the fact that in their absence her ladyship had fallen downstairs and broken her neck, and that was the end of the matter.

But that was not the end at all. Fate, the ironic interloper, had taken a hand in this evil game.

The court had moved a few days earlier to Windsor, and thither on the Friday—the 6th of September—came Alvarez de Quadra to seek the definite answer which the Queen had promised him on the subject of the Spanish marriage. What he had seen that night at Whitehall, coupled with his mistrust of her promises and experience of her fickleness, had rendered him uneasy. Either she was trifling with him, or else she was behaving in a manner utterly unbecoming the future wife of the Archduke. In either case some explanation was necessary. De Quadra must know where he stood. Having failed to obtain an audience before the court left London, he had followed it to Windsor, cursing all women and contemplating the advantages of the Salic law.

He found at Windsor an atmosphere of constraint, and it was not until the morrow that he obtained an audience with the Queen. Even then this was due to chance rather than to design on the part of Elizabeth. For they met on the terrace as she was returning from hunting. She dismissed those about her, including the stalwart Robert Dudley, and, alone with de Quadra, invited him to speak.

“Madame,” he said, “I am writing to my master, and I desire to know whether your Majesty would wish me to add anything to what you have announced already as your intention regarding the Archduke.”

She knit her brows. The wily Spaniard fenced so closely that there was no alternative but to come to grips.

“Why, sir,” she answered dryly, “you may tell his Majesty that I have come to an absolute decision, which is that I will not marry the Archduke.”

The colour mounted to the Spaniard’s sallow cheeks. Iron self-control alone saved him from uttering unpardonable words. Even so he spoke sternly:

“This, madame, is not what you had led me to believe when last we talked upon the subject.”

At another time Elizabeth might have turned upon him and rent him for that speech. But it happened that she was in high good-humour that afternoon, and disposed to indulgence. She laughed, surveying herself in the small steel mirror that dangled from her waist.

“You are ungallant to remind me, my lord,” said she. “My sex, you may have heard, is privileged to change of mind.”

“Then, madame, I pray that you may change it yet again.” His tone was bitter.

“Your prayer will not be heard. This time I am resolved.”

De Quadra bowed. “The King, my master, will not be pleased, I fear.”

She looked him straightly in the face, her dark eyes kindling.

“God’s death!” said she, “I marry to please myself, and not the King your master.”

“You are resolved on marriage then?” flashed he.

“And it please you,” she mocked him archly, her mood of joyousness already conquering her momentary indignation.

“What pleases you must please me also, madame,” he answered, in a tone so cold that it belied his words. “That it please you, is reason enough why you should marry... Whom did your Majesty say?”

“Nay. I named no names. Yet one so astute might hazard a shrewd guess.” Half-challenging, half-coy, she eyed him over her fan.

“A guess? Nay, madame. I might affront your Majesty.”

“How so?”

“If I were deluded by appearances. If I named a subject who signally enjoys your royal favour.”

“You mean Lord Robert Dudley.” She paled a little, and her bosom’s heave was quickened. “Why should the guess affront me?”

“Because a queen—a wise queen, madame—does not mate with a subject—particularly with one who has a wife already.”

He had stung her. He had wounded at once the pride of the woman and the dignity of the queen, yet in a way that made it difficult for her to take direct offense. She bit her lip and mastered her surge of anger. Then she laughed, a thought sneeringly.

“Why, as to my Lord Robert’s wife, it seems you are less well-informed than usual, sir. Lady Robert Dudley is dead, or very nearly so.”

And as blank amazement overspread his face, she passed upon her way and left him.

But anon, considering, she grew vaguely uneasy, and that very night expressed her afflicting doubt to my lord, reporting to him de Quadra’s words. His lordship, who was mentally near-sighted, laughed.

“He’ll change his tone before long,” said he.

She set her hands upon his shoulders, and looked up adoringly into his handsome gipsy face. Never had he known her so fond as in these last days since her surrender to him that night upon the terrace at Whitehall, never had she been more the woman and less the queen in her bearing towards him.

“You are sure, Robin? You are quite sure?” she pleaded.

He drew her close, she yielding herself to his embrace. “With so much at stake could I be less than sure, sweet?” said he, and so convinced her—the more easily since he afforded her the conviction she desired.

That was on the night of Saturday, and early on Monday came the news which justified him of his assurances. It was brought him to Windsor by one of Amy’s Cumnor servants, a fellow named Bowes, who, with the others, had been away at Abingdon Fair yesterday afternoon, and had returned to find his mistress dead at the stairs’ foot—the result of an accident, as all believed.

It was not quite the news that my lord had been expecting. It staggered him a little that an accident so very opportune should have come to resolve his difficulties, obviating the need for recourse to those more dangerous measures with which he had charged Sir Richard Verney. He perceived how suspicion might now fall upon himself, how his enemies would direct it, and on the instant made provision. There and then he seized a pen, and wrote to his kinsman, Sir Thomas Blount, who even then was on his way to Cumnor. He stated in the letter what he had learnt from Bowes, bade Blount engage the coroner to make the strictest investigation, and send for Amy’s natural brother, Appleyard. “Have no respect to any living person,” was the final injunction of that letter which he sent Blount by the hand of Bowes.

And, then, before he could carry to the Queen the news of this accident which had broken his matrimonial shackles, Sir Richard Verney arrived with the true account. He had expected praise and thanks from his master. Instead, he met first dismay, and then anger and fierce reproaches.

“My lord, this is unjust,” the faithful retainer protested. “Knowing the urgency, I took the only way—contrived the accident.”

“Pray God,” said Dudley, “that the jury find it to have been an accident; for if the truth should come to be discovered, I leave you to the consequences. I warned you of that before you engaged in this. Look for no help from me.”

“I look for none,” said Sir Richard, stung to hot contempt by the meanness and cowardice so characteristic of the miserable egotist he served. “Nor will there be the need, for I have left no footprints.

“I hope that may be so, for I tell you, man, that I have ordered a strict inquiry, bidding them have no respect to any living person, and to that I shall adhere.”

“And if, in spite of that, I am not hanged?” quoth Sir Richard, a sneer upon his white face.

“Come to me again when the affair is closed, and we will talk of it.”

Sir Richard went out, rage and disgust in his heart, leaving my lord with rage and fear in his.

Grown calmer now, my lord dressed himself with care and sought the Queen to tell her of the accident that had removed the obstacle to their marriage. And that same night her Majesty coldly informed de Quadra that Lady Robert Dudley had fallen down a flight of stairs and broken her neck.

The Spaniard received the information with a countenance that was inscrutable.

“Your Majesty’s gift of prophecy is not so widely known as it deserves to be,” was his cryptic comment.

She stared at him blankly a moment. Then a sudden uneasy memory awakened by his words, she drew him forward to a window embrasure apart from those who had stood about her, and for greater security addressed him, as he tells us, in Italian.

“I do not think I understand you, sir. Will you be plain with me?” She stood erect and stiff, and frowned upon him after the manner of her bullying father. But de Quadra held the trumps, and was not easily intimidated.

“About the prophecy?” said he. “Why, did not your Majesty foretell the poor lady’s death a full day before it came to pass? Did you not say that she was already dead, or nearly so?”

He saw her blench; saw fear stare from those dark eyes that could be so very bold. Then her ever-ready anger followed swiftly.

“’Sblood, man! What do you imply?” she cried, and went on without waiting for his answer. “The poor woman was sick and ill, and must soon have succumbed; it will no doubt be found that the accident which anticipated nature was due to her condition.”

Gently he shook his head, relishing her discomfiture, taking satisfaction in torturing her who had flouted him and his master, in punishing her whom he had every reason to believe guilty.

“Your Majesty, I fear, has been ill-informed on that score. The poor lady was in excellent health—and like to have lived for many years—at least, so I gather from Sir William Cecil, whose information is usually exact.”

She clutched his arm. “You told him what I had said?”

“It was indiscreet, perhaps. Yet, how was I to know...?” He left his sentence there. “I but expressed my chagrin at your decision on the score of the Archduke—hardly a wise decision, if I may be so bold,” he added slyly.

She caught the suggestion of a bargain, and became instantly suspicious.

“You transcend the duties of your office, my lord,” she rebuked him, and turned away.

But soon that night she was closeted with Dudley, and closely questioning him about the affair. My lord was mightily vehement.

“I take Heaven to be my witness,” quoth he, when she all but taxed him with having procured his lady’s death, “that I am innocent of any part in it. My injunctions to Blount, who has gone to Cumnor, are that the matter be sifted without respect to any person, and if it can be shown that this is other than the accident I deem it, the murderer shall hang.”

She flung her arms about his neck, and laid her head on his shoulder. “Oh, Robin, Robin, I am full of fears,” she wailed, and was nearer to tears than he had ever seen her.

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.