LITMIR.BIZ

      Elizabeth, in her private apartment at Whitehall Palace, was re-reading a love-letter from Philip of Spain, the third of a series that had grown increasingly passionate as the correspondence had gone on. One of her ladies in waiting, Lady Betty, craned to see the words upside down but could not make out the Latin, and silently cursed her poor education.

      ‘Oh, listen,’ Elizabeth breathed. ‘He says that he cannot eat or sleep for thinking of me.’

      ‘He’ll have got dreadfully scrawny then,’ Catherine Knollys said robustly. ‘He was always too thin; he had legs like a pigeon.’

      Lady Mary Sidney, Robert Dudley’s sister, giggled.

      ‘Hush!’ Elizabeth reprimanded them primly; she was always sensitive to the status of a fellow monarch. ‘He is very distinguished. And anyway, I daresay he is eating. It is just poetry, Catherine. He is just saying it to please me.’

      ‘Just nonsense,’ Catherine said under her breath. ‘And Papist nonsense, at that.’

      ‘He says he has struggled with his conscience, and struggled with his respect for my faith and my learning, and that he is sure that we can somehow find a way that allows us both to continue in our faith, and yet bring our hearts together.’

      ‘He will bring a dozen cardinals in his train,’ Catherine predicted. ‘And the Inquisition behind them. He has no affection for you at all, this is just politics.’

      Elizabeth looked up. ‘Catherine, he does have an affection for me. You were not here, or you would have seen it for yourself. Everybody remarked it at the time, it was an utter scandal. I swear that I would have been left in the Tower or under house arrest for the rest of my life if he had not intervened for me against the queen’s ill wishes. He insisted that I be treated as a princess and as heir …’ She broke off and smoothed down the golden brocade skirt of her gown. ‘And he was very tender to me.’ Her voice took on its typical, narcissistic lilt. Elizabeth was always ready to fall in love with herself. ‘He admired me, to tell the truth; he adored me. A real prince, a real king, and desperately in love with me. While my sister was confined we spent much time together, and he was …’

      ‘A fine husband he will make,’ Catherine interrupted. ‘One who flirts with his sister-in-law while his wife is in confinement.’

      ‘She was not really confined,’ Elizabeth said with magnificent irrelevance. ‘She only thought she was with child because she was so swollen and sick …’

      ‘All the kinder of him then,’ Catherine triumphed. ‘So he flirted with his sister-in-law when his wife was ill and breaking her heart over something she could not help. Your Grace, in all seriousness, you cannot have him. The people of England won’t have the Spanish king back again, he was hated here the first time, they would go mad if he came back again. He emptied the treasury, he broke your sister’s heart, he did not give her a son, he lost us Calais, and he has spent the last few months in the most disgraceful affairs with the ladies of Brussels.’

      ‘No!’ Elizabeth said, instantly diverted from her love-letter. ‘So is that what he means when he says he neither eats nor sleeps?’

      ‘Because he is always bedding the fat burghers’ wives. He is as lecherous as a sparrow!’ Catherine beamed at her cousin’s irresistible giggle. ‘You must be able to do better than your sister’s left-overs, surely! You are not such an old maid that you have to settle for cold meats, a second-hand husband. There are better choices.’

      ‘Oh! And who would you want me to have?’ Elizabeth asked.

      ‘The Earl of Arran,’ Catherine said promptly. ‘He’s young, he’s Protestant, he’s handsome, he’s very, very charming – I met him briefly and I lost my heart to him at once – and when he inherits the throne, you join England and Scotland into one kingdom.’

      ‘Only if Mary of Guise were to helpfully drop dead, followed by her daughter,’ Elizabeth pointed out. ‘And Mary of Guise is in good health and her daughter is younger than me.’

      ‘Stranger things happen to further God’s will,’ Catherine said confidently. ‘And if the regent Mary lives, why should she not be pushed off her throne by a handsome Protestant heir?’

      Elizabeth frowned and glanced around the room to see who was listening. ‘Enough, Catherine, matchmaking doesn’t suit you.’

      ‘It is both matchmaking and the safety of our nation and our faith,’ Catherine said, unrepentant. ‘And you have the chance to secure Scotland for your son, and save it from the Antichrist of Popery by marrying a handsome young man. It sounds to me as if there is no decision to take. Who would not want the Earl of Arran, fighting on the side of the Scottish lords for God’s kingdom on earth, and the kingdom of Scotland as his dowry?’