A Court Affair. Emily Purdy

and behind myself, as if each time I move, I have to pause and wait a moment for my body to catch up with my soul. Or is it the other way around, and my mind that must rush to catch up with my body? What a curious notion! I am filled with the oddest fancies! I can’t help but laugh, even though it makes me feel as if Death were playing my ribs like the ivory keys of a virginal, but the medicine numbs it, and there is that strange delaying sensation; even though Death’s fingers strike the keys, the sound of the notes lags behind a moment or two. I take another sip, and the chords of pain are muted even more, as if I have run too far away to hear them as more than a distant, wind-borne melody. The pain is my fool now, and I am not the fool of my pain. I giggle and take another sip of that amber liquid, and now I don’t even mind the bitter taste that burns my throat as it courses down; I welcome it as if it were my saviour. Salvation in a bottle, the nostrum peddlers should call this magic brew! And after another sip I lie back on my bed, close my eyes, and let my mind wander where it will …

      When last I visited the crumbling, overgrown ruins of Syderstone, though they were no longer my own, I put on my wedding gown and went out, barefoot, with my hair all a-tumble down my back, and walked across the meadow, just as I had on my wedding day, picking myself a bouquet of buttercups as I went. What a strange sight the sheep must have thought me as they fled baa-ing before me, pausing oft to look back and stare before they fell to munching clover and thistles again. I know it sounds silly, but I wanted to see what it would be like, how it would feel, to see if by wearing my wedding gown again I could magically recapture even a little of the joy of that day, as if an echo of it might linger, hovering in the air like a butterfly, and I could run after it and catch it in my hands. I am a silly, fanciful creature, I know. And the dress made no difference at all. Wearing it again brought me only sorrow; it had become a symbol of tarnished hopes and dead and broken dreams that could never be revived or repaired. Nothing turned out the way I thought it would. I perched upon the old, moss-festooned stone where the shepherd sometimes sat and buried my face in my hands and wept. Both my parents were gone to their graves, and my stepbrothers and sisters all had their own busy lives, with homes and families of their own and no time or care to spare for me and my troubles. The adored darling, the spoiled beloved, now had nothing. There was no one to love and adore her any more, not even a home to call her own, she had lost her highborn husband to the Queen, and cancer was slowly stealing her life away.

      The dress remained the same, but the woman who wore it had changed; it now hung loose upon my frame, and every dream that eager, smiling, happy, young bride had had that day when she walked across the meadow to serve milk to her guests in cups shaped like breasts had come to nothing or gone horribly, nightmarishly wrong. I wanted to run backward, racing, hurtling, across time, and catch hold of that hopeful young girl on the threshold of the church, draped with evergreen boughs and bows and ribbons of gold and cream, and beg her not to marry Robert Dudley. To slap and shake some sense into her if I must, and let her gaze fill upon me and know what her life would become if she persisted. I would even tear open my bodice and let her see the ravages of this disease, the ugly, seeping wound left by the worm of sorrow burrowing deeply into my breast, for I truly believe my sadness opened the door to let this disease into my life. But I knew that, even if I could, that confident, headstrong seventeen-year-old I used to be would merely laugh in my face, toss her blond curls, and shrug off my urgently grasping hands, along with my dire warnings of doom and gloom, and tell me that none but God would ever tear her and her beloved Robert apart. She would turn her back on me and, with her head held high, walk proudly up to the altar and take his hand in marriage, just as she did when her wise old father warned her just before she passed through the arched portal beneath the evergreen boughs, “First love is rarely evergreen love, my dear.” The Amy I used to be would never have listened to the Amy I am now. It’s folly to even think so.

      7

      Amy Robsart Dudley

       Hemsby-by-the-Sea, near Great Yarmouth June 1550

      We honeymooned at Hemsby Castle, by the sea. That quaint sandy-gold stone box hugged by ardent ivy, rugged, weathered yellow stones and green vines clinging together like lovers, was my new father-in-law’s gift to us, the deed presented on our wedding day in a pretty gold, enamelled, and jewelled box fashioned to look exactly like the seaside castle. He also gave us lands that had once belonged to the priory of Coxford, where we might build a house someday, but these I would never see; at some point Robert sold them without telling me.

      Hemsby sat high on the cliffs near Great Yarmouth, overlooking the sea, with a long, spiralling, sandy lane lined with stones leading down to the beach, which Robert and I would race down nigh every day to splash and play and love each other in the chilly, salty surf. He loved to tickle me; his fingers would dance nimbly over my belly, roving down to my sex, making me gasp, giggle, and writhe in pure delight.

      I could see the grey sea, the rolling waves crested in frothy white, like feisty old dowagers in lacy caps, from our bedchamber window. I used to sit and watch it, lost in a dream, for hours, with Robert’s love like a shawl draped about my shoulders to keep me warm. There was even a seagull who learned to come to the window whenever he saw me there to be fed from my hand, and I always saved titbits from our table for him. Robert laughed and said the gull was “clearly a woman’s bird”, as it struck a haughty stance and would not deign to accept even the most tempting morsels from Robert’s hand. Which was strange, as animals and children alike always adored Robert; he was a wonder with horses and seemed to know, as if he were one himself, what they were thinking and feeling and, when affrighted, what they were scared of and how best to soothe them. Yet my seagull turned up his beak and would have nothing to do with Robert.

      I remember the day we arrived, Robert bade the servants, who followed with our luggage in a cart, to see to everything and, with me in the saddle before him, nestled back against his chest, galloped down to the beach. He swung himself from the saddle, lifted me down, slapped the horse’s rump and left it free to run, and stripped off his clothes, letting them fall where they would, and plunged headfirst into the sea.

      I stood and watched him, my heart beating wild and fast, as if I lived only to love and be loved by him, and this was what I had been made for. Then he stood, laughing, as he shook the salty spray from his black curls, and, with water dripping down his hard, handsome, sun-bronzed body in salty rivulets, his erect cock bobbing against its nest of short, wiry black curls, he came towards me with a determined look in his dark eyes. In that moment he was a man who knew exactly what he wanted—me!

      I giggled and began to run, but he caught my sleeve, spun me round, quickly unfastened the gold-braid frogs, eased the russet velvet jacket from my shoulders, and let the wind snatch it from his fingers. And then, with salty kisses up and down my throat, he removed my shirt of fine white linen, laughing as the breeze caught it and sent it skipping and billowing down the beach. Had it been dark, any who chanced to see might have thought it a ghost and started a tale about a restless spirit roaming the shore in search of a lost love. As he led me down to the sea, Robert left my leather stays, russet velvet skirt, and petticoats lying where they fell, laughing as my sheer cobweb lawn shift was caught up and carried away by the wind like a dancing cloud.

      He laid me down where I could hear the sea in my ear—“like a pink seashell,” Robert whispered as his warm lips grazed and nibbled the lobe—and he made love to me, matching me smile for smile, laugh for laugh, as I squealed in surprised delight at the feel of the cool surf caressing my naked skin, and the mad, wanton feel of making love on a beach wearing nothing but my black wool stockings and brown leather riding boots. I laughed when I lifted my legs to wrap tightly around him and heard the golden buckles on my boots jingle as if they were also laughing from the wild and wanton thrill of it all. I loved this carefree, wild, raw, mad feeling of love and lust mingling on the sandy shore, the warmth of our passionately coupling bodies and the cold kiss of the sea, and the freedom to forget everything and just be us—Robert and Amy, a man and a woman, husband and wife, in love.

      Afterwards, as we lay entwined in the wet sand, being caressed by the cold waves and salty breeze, with my wet hair clinging to us like golden seaweed, Robert told me that the Goddess of Love, Aphrodite, had been born from the surf,