Merry, merry England has kissed the lips of June:
All the wings of fairyland were here beneath the moon,
Like a flight of rose-leaves fluttering in a mist
Of opal and ruby and pearl and amethyst.
Merry, merry England is waking as of old,
With eyes of blither hazel and hair of brighter gold.
A Song of Sherwood - Alfred Noyes
1553
Shade-dappled light, sunshine sifting through the forest leaves, the haze of a midsummer afternoon flickering. She vaults down from her saddle, in a swirl of black and silver. Under a sheer veil, she wears her tumbling hair loose, copper and bronze and rust-red, dusted with gold. A mantle of fire around her shoulders. She sweeps a sidelong glance at her companion, through long-lashed dark eyes. A witch's eyes, a pagan smile.
"Come, my lord, and let us make love under the trees," she says dryly and sits down on the grass. Whispering silk and crackling leaves. "We shall be like to another Maid Marian and her Robin Hood, a Diana and her princely swain."
He leans against a tree. Looks down at her, the barest trace of a smile on his darkly handsome face. "Monsieur le duc would not approve."
"Ah, but I am not Madame le duchesse yet," she replies archly. "I am a virgin princess, a maid not yet familiar to a man's touch-"
He raises one eyebrow. "Let us leave aside lovetalk," he says companionably, sitting down beside her and taking one hand. "Lovetalk is for children and fools-"
"So says the man who would have made a carnal marriage! My, what would the good Mistress Amy Robsart have said if she heard-"
Suddenly, he leans forward, much closer to her. Smiles mockingly as her breath catches and color burns into her pale cheeks, white as the Roses of York. "Let us talk treason," he whispers into her ear.
She tilts her face ever so slightly, her eyelashes brushing against his cheek, fluttering. She is tantazingly close, her hair falling over his shoulder, the long line of her slender neck bare. She smells like the horses they have riden all afternoon long, like honey and herbs and sun-warmed leaves. She smells like a woman.
There is an indiscreet cough.
She heaves a soft sigh, right into his ear, but she does not move. Just loud enough for their audience to hear, she murmurs, "Harry, dearest, sweetest brother of my bosom, were you not meant to be our chaperone?"
"I-"
"And did no one ever teach you that silence and discreetness are the chiefest charms, the most desirable traits of a chaperone?"
"Yes but-" Inwardly, Robert Dudley sighs and tries to wriggle out of Elizabeth's grip but the woman has a tiger's talons - and it's roar, when moved to it. He wears a sheepish smile for the benefit of their audience, Henry IX, King of England. An eleven-year-old boy.
"Brother mine, the sunlight on the garden hardens and grows cold, we cannot cage the minute within its nets of gold."
"So-"
She waves her hand graciously. "Ponder that. A monarch is but the chaperone of his realm, as you would do well to remember. I bid you good day."
Finally permitted the chance to speak, Harry calls out, "And I bid you both much merriness of heart, in your pursuits to which I shall leave you!" They can hear his laughter ringing behind him as he rides further on.
Elizabeth's head lolls on Robert's shoulder and she smiles up at him through crinkled black eyes. "He was ever the more tractable of the two," she says quietly. "Had Edward seen us in this fashion-" She sighs and looks down. "Is it true that he believed that God whispered in his ear, at the end, and thenceforth had Mary and I declared bastards?"
"Sickbed fancies, and you have been reinstated by My Lord of Norfolk who heads the Regency Council now-"
But she is not listening to him. "I taught him to sew," she says, and there is a hard little knot of pain in her voice. "He was but four and I was eight. My royal father would have had my head for it, of a surety-"
"Sewing being hardly a manly occupation."
"-But he would stitch, he commanded me as Prince of Wales to teach him to stitch shirts! Never was such a command delievered in the realm." She pauses. "I was twelve when Harry was four. He never asked me to teach him to sew, and I marked that well. Merry, I marked that well and took it as an omen of the times-"
"Why, how weak and womanish we find ourselves growing! What omen did My Lady find?"
"That our prince would grow to be weak and womanish - God bless his soul, poor child. A slight, sickly Tudor prince and a strong, lusty Howard boy."
"You say a Tudor prince and a Howard boy," he murmurs, his voice pitched lower than the rustle of the wind through the leaves. If the stone walls of palaces have ears, the wooden walls of forests are not far behind.
"I mean what I say," she says steadily, though softly, ever so softly that he has to strain to catch the words. Her lips scarcely move - it could be lovetalk she was whispering, her lips so close to his own. It should be lovetalk - a man and a maid. Who would dare call it treason? "The Tudor line died with my only brother's death. Not that I would call it lamentable, though some might..." She laughs dryly.
"The Lady Mary? She is a bastard, a barren bastard if the Duke of Norfolk has his way."
"Aye... that is so. They only made me a princess again, not because I am their kinswoman, but because they need the French alliance and they believe me to be tractable. And of course if ill should come to Henry - if the choice came down to the Spanish Papist who is near the change of her life and a bonny Protestant girl, who would they rather have? And after me, there are the Grey girls and God knows your father has seen to them." Her eyes twinkle. "Now let me see - our dour Lady Jane is Guildford's most loving bride. Catherine, they wed to the Earl of Pembroke's boy who dances on your father's strings and if that hunchbacked child, Mary was old enough - but there. Peace from hard words." She smiles coquettishly up at him. "Let us have naught but sweet words now, for it is meet that we play at sweethearting - as my brother fondly believes us to be."
"Luck to us that Harry is a child, and a mooncalf at that. His mother must have taught him to believe in love for he could never have had that from his father."
Silence falls, a cold, crackling silence creeping in through the warmth of the summer afternoon. She toys negligently with his dark curls, lips pursed. Presently, she says, an edge in her voice, "Were you very well acquainted with his father, my bonny, sweet Robin?" She continues, "Hazel eyes and hair like gold, when all the rest of us - Mary, Edward, I - were carrot-tops. But then my father doted upon the very idea of a son, no matter how he got one." She sighs, "Three Tudor boys all gone the same way - Prince Arthur, the Fitzroy boy, Edward... perhaps it will be better for England with a Howard on the throne."
"If his wily Uncle Norfolk permits him to do more than sit on it."
She laughs. "His father was a man of fire- he does not take very much in his looks after him, God's benison on his sweet Howard face, but, in spirit..."
She does not finish the sentence. There is no need to. He listens to the chirping of the birds, and above that, the faint rumble of horses' hooves beating against the dirt track. The king and his companions will be near the clearing soon. "Let us make love," he says pleasantly and is rewarded by her roguish smile.
"Brush my hair for me, Kat."
Obediently, Katherine Ashley picks up the silver hairbrush, set with a great pink pearl, and begins to brush her princess's hair. The light from the squat, square wax candles strikes Elizabeth's long hair and it shimmers like spun gold. She tips her looking glass and gazes at her reflection with catlike satisfaction. Rosy cheeks and dimpled chin, silken hair, very fair, eyes, not blue, yet lovely too. "I am the most strikingly beautiful woman in all Christendom," she says.
"They say that French King's maîtresse-en-titre, Diane de Poitiers is the very loveliest," Kat answers.
"Oh, you are determined as ever to quash my vanity! It will not be quashed, I revel in it - very well, if I am not the most beautiful woman in Christendom I shall call myself the most beautiful princess in all the world. Tell me, is my hair not fine? Fine to superfluity?"
"As fine as the manes of Robert Dudley's pet mares. He is said to brush them himself, and will not let his grooms tend to them."
Elizabeth replies evenly, "Robin is a great lover of horses."
"A great lover, too, they say."
"They will say anything."
"That they will, and who ought to know it better than yourself? Though it seems to me that it is a lesson that you would like to forget!"
"It was a hard lesson, harshly learnt, Kat. I am not fool enough to forget it."
"It is a dangerous game you are playing, mistress."
She smiles. "I being a maid-"
"Am nothing cunning! Yes, how long will that serve you? Call yourself a maid?"
"I do." She is serene, poised. "My mother was once the most notorious virgin in Christendom - it was the best part of her dower."
"Her dower did not serve her well, then."
"Peace, Kat. My maidenhead is worth more than a pair of fine eyes and well-turned calves."
"Sudeley Castle." It is a reprimand, a warning, a reminder. As though she needed reminding.
"Five years," she replies calmly. "I was a child. He was a man, and he would take his pleasure."
Whore's child, Kat thinks but says, with a mother's tenderness, "It is my fault. I should have kept better watch on you, you were only fourteen-"
"Old enough to be bedded," she replies, an unwilling smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "Dear God, but he was handsome!"
"So is your Robin."
"Robin has no wife. Robin stands well in the eyes of the world. And I am not a child any more."
Were you ever? "His Majesty's Regency Council might think he stands too well. Certainly too well for the only princess, the king's heiress."
"Why, Kat, you are meddling with the succession! And here we were, giggling like two girls in love, over fine men!" She giggles for effect, a low, husky chuckle that could turn a man's head.
"Where you are concerned, Princess, treason-talk shadows lovetalk." She continues brushing Elizabeth's hair. "The coronation robes have arrived and the ladies of the court will try them on, tomorrow?"
"Yes. Kitty requires me to attend her tomorrow as she dresses, to tell her how very lovely she is," Elizabeth sneers. "Cat! She still thinks she's the Rose of Court, my father's child-bride and the mother of two bonny boys. She forgets that she is twenty-seven, to a day, and as for her figure-"
"Childbearing will do that to one," Kat agrees. "As you will very soon find out for yourself."
"What an ignoble sacrifice - to bring forth children to the ruin of one's figure!"
"Your vanity rises as the candle wick dips," Kat says dryly. "If they do not send you off to the Duke of Orleans, you will arrange a marriage for yourself with Robert Dudley but either way, mistress, they will expect you to do your duty by bearing their heirs, figure bedamned."
Elizabeth laughs. "There they will find themselves mistaken, for if I must bear heirs, it shall not be for them that I do it, but for myself. Lovely Tudor princelings with red-gold hair, not swarthy Dudleys or dainty French boys. I shall be queen of myself, wed or unwed, and I shall..."
"Perhaps it will be better if you hie yourself to Robert Dudley's bed."
"Aye?"
"You will ride him with bridle and spurs and tame him and make tractable. I do not think he shall be the worse man for it - indeed, it might make a man out of him instead of the lounging dandy he is."
"Yes, he shall find that if he weds a true Tudor princess he shall not lounge. I shall make him work."
"Oh, Elizabeth, your tongue is as coarse as your hair is fine."
"I am but my father's daughter," she replies cheerfully. "I am my father's daughter."