The Virgin’s Lover. Philippa Gregory

stood on the quay at Gravesend, watching the ships limp into harbour, wounded men laid out with the dead on their decks, deckrails scorched, mainsails holed, all the survivors with their heads bowed, shamefaced in defeat.

      Robert’s ship was the very last to come in. Amy had been waiting for three hours, increasingly certain that she would never see him again. But slowly, the little vessel approached, was taken into tow, and drawn up at the quayside as if it were unwilling to come back to England in disgrace.

      Amy shaded her eyes and looked up at the rail. At this moment, which she had feared so intensely, at this moment, which she had been so sure would come, she did not whimper or cry out, she looked steadily and carefully at the crowded deck for Robert, knowing that if she could not see him he had either been taken prisoner, or was dead.

      Then she saw him. He was standing beside the mast, as if he were in no hurry to be at the rail for the first sight of England, in no rush to get to the gangplank to disembark, in no great hurry to see her. There were a couple of civilians beside him, and a woman with a dark-haired baby on her hip; but his brother Henry was not there.

      They rattled up the gangplank to the deck and she started to go towards it, to run up it and fold him in her arms, but Lizzie Oddingsell held her back. ‘Wait,’ she advised the younger woman. ‘See how he is first.’

      Amy pushed the woman’s restraining hand aside; but she waited as he came down the gangplank so slowly that she thought he was wounded.

      ‘Robert?’

      ‘Amy.’

      ‘Thank God you are safe!’ she burst out. ‘We heard there was a terrible siege, and that Calais is lost. We knew it couldn’t be true, but …’

      ‘It is true.’

      ‘Calais is lost?’

      It was unimaginable. Calais was the jewel of England overseas. They spoke English in the streets, they paid English taxes and traded the valuable wool and finished cloth to and from England. Calais was the reason that English kings styled themselves ‘King of England and France’, Calais was the outward show that England was a world power, on French soil, it was as much an English port as Bristol. It was impossible to imagine it had fallen to the French.

      ‘It is lost.’

      ‘And where is your brother?’ Amy asked fearfully. ‘Robert? Where is Henry?’

      ‘Dead,’ he said shortly. ‘He took a shot to the leg in St Quentin, and died later, in my arms.’ He gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘I was noticed by Philip of Spain at St Quentin,’ he said. ‘I had an honourable mention in despatches to the queen. It was my first step, as I hoped it would be; but it cost me my brother: the one thing in life I could least afford to lose. And now I am at the head of a defeated army and I doubt that the queen will remember that I did rather well at St Quentin, given that I did rather badly at Calais.’

      ‘Oh, what does it matter?’ she exclaimed. ‘As long as you are safe, and we can be together again? Come home with me, Robert, and who cares about the queen or even about Calais? You don’t need Calais, we can buy Syderstone back now. Come home with me and see how happy we will be!’

      He shook his head. ‘I have to take despatches to the queen,’ he said stubbornly.

      ‘You’re a fool!’ she flared at him. ‘Let someone else tell her the bad news.’

      His dark eyes went very bright at the public insult from his wife. ‘I am sorry you think me a fool,’ he said levelly. ‘But King Philip ordered me by name and I must do my duty. You can go and stay with the Philipses at Chichester till I come for you. You will oblige me by taking this woman and her baby to stay with them too. She has lost her home in Calais and she needs a refuge in England for a while.’

      ‘I will not,’ Amy said, instantly resentful. ‘What is she to me? What is she to you?’

      ‘She was once the Queen’s Fool,’ he said. ‘Hannah Green. And she was a loyal and obedient servant to me, and a friend when I had few friends. Be kind, Amy. Take her with you to Chichester. In the meantime I shall have to commandeer a horse and go to court.’

      ‘Oh, have you lost your horse as well as your plan?’ Amy taunted him bitterly. ‘You have come home without your brother, without your horse, you have come home no richer, you have come home poorer in every way, as my stepmother Lady Robsart warned me that you would?’

      ‘Yes,’ he said steadily. ‘My beautiful horse was shot out from under me by a cannon ball. I fell under him as he went down, and his body shielded me and saved my life. He died in my service. I promised him that I’d be a kind master to him, and yet I took him to his death. I called him First Step, but I have stumbled and fallen on my first step. I have lost my horse, and lost my campaign money, and lost my brother, and lost all hope. You will be pleased to hear that this is the end of the Dudleys. I cannot see that we will ever rise again.’

      Robert and Amy went their separate ways – him to court, where he was sourly greeted as the bringer of bad news, and her to their friends at Chichester for a long visit; but then they returned unwillingly to her stepmother’s house of Stanfield Hall. There was nowhere else for them to go.

      ‘We’re short-handed on the farm,’ Lady Robsart declared bluntly on his first evening.

      Robert raised his head from the contemplation of his empty bowl and said: ‘What?’

      ‘We’re ploughing up the meadow,’ she said. ‘For what little hay it gives us, it’s no use. And we are short-handed. You can help out in the field tomorrow.’

      He looked at her as if she were speaking Greek. ‘You want me to work in the fields?’

      ‘I am sure that Stepmother means that you should supervise the men,’ Amy interposed. ‘Don’t you?’

      ‘How can he supervise ploughing? I doubt he knows how it is done. I thought he could drive the cart, he’s good with horses, at least.’

      Amy turned to her husband. ‘That wouldn’t be so bad.’

      Robert could not speak, he was so appalled. ‘You want me to labour in the field? Like some peasant?’

      ‘What else can you do for your keep?’ Lady Robsart asked. ‘You are a lily of the field, man. You neither sow nor reap.’

      The colour was draining from his face till he was as pale as the lily she called him. ‘I cannot work in the field like a common man,’ he said quietly.

      ‘Why should I keep you like a lord?’ she demanded crudely. ‘Your title, your fortune, and your luck have all gone.’

      He stammered slightly. ‘Because even if I never rise again, I cannot sink to the dunghill, I cannot demean myself.’

      ‘You are as low as a man can get,’ she declared. ‘King Philip will never come home, the queen, God save her, has turned against you. Your name is blackened, your credit has gone, and all you have in your favour is Amy’s love and my patronage.’

      ‘Your patronage!’ he exclaimed.

      ‘I keep you. For nothing. And it has come to my mind that you might as well work your passage here. Everyone else works. Amy has her hens and her sewing, and her work in the house. I run the place, my sons care for the livestock and the crops.’

      ‘They order the shepherd and the ploughman,’ he burst out.

      ‘Because they know what orders to give. You know nothing so you will have to take orders.’

      Slowly, he rose from the table. ‘Lady Robsart,’ he said quietly, ‘I warn you not to push me too far. I am defeated now but you should not seek to humiliate me further.’

      ‘Oh, why not?’ She was enjoying herself. ‘I hardly fear the mightiness of your revenge.’

      ‘Because