A Court Affair - Emily Purdy

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each coin and doled out from Robert’s coffers. Sir William Hyde? Sir Richard Verney? Sir Anthony Forster? Just lately Robert has written to say that the Hydes have agreed to have me back again. They were so glad, so relieved, to see me go before; I wonder what he has promised them. I’m to leave Cumnor and go back to lodge with them for a spell, then back to Compton Verney, before I return to Cumnor again. Thus has Robert ordered my life. I’m to go back and forth like a shuttlecock between these three houses. Whose doorstep will be stained with my blood? Whose threshold will be forever shadowed by that black, funereal pall? Which one will the Judas be?

      If not one of them, there is always Robert’s minion, his poor country cousin, sweet young Tommy Blount, with his freckled face, mass of ginger curls, and shy but ready, endearing smile, always so eager to please and bursting with a young man’s zest for life and tireless, unflagging vigour. He seems to spend all his time on the road as Robert’s courier, galloping hither and yon, back and forth between the court and wherever Robert sends him on one errand or another. He reminds me so much of the boy my husband used to be, only without Robert’s cocksure confidence, elegance, and bold sophistication. But I dare not trust even Tommy, a young man who looks at me with desire obvious in his eyes and words poised on his lips that he dare not say. Time has taught me that a sweet nature can be false or fade, especially when a man bows down to the golden goddess of Ambition. And Tommy, honoured to be favoured by such a great lord, is my husband’s loyal and trusted servant and kinsman, so I dare not trust him; succumbing to that temptation could very well be fatal for me.

      How will my husband set the deed down in his accounts ledger, I wonder. What innocuous expense will disguise my death? Will my blood be covered up with fluffy white wool, or will my corpse be hidden in a barrel of apples?

      The candlelight catches my betrothal ring, causing the golden oak leaf to glitter, and the amber acorn glows like a dollop of honey flecked with shifting glints of rich red, fiery orange, and shimmering gold, just like the memory of a beautiful sunset we once shared standing under the mighty old oak overlooking Syderstone, imprisoned inside this amber acorn. Sometimes nowadays it feels too heavy for my hand, like my end of the shackles and chains of the wedlock that hold Robert and me together. Sometimes I want to just undo the lock and let the chains fall and set us both free. I’m so tired of it all, the pain and misery and living in fear. Pride goeth before a fall, the Scriptures say; now I want to let that obstinate pride in being Lady Amy Dudley, Lord Robert’s wife, fall from me before I myself fall, pulled down by a weight I can no longer bear. I just want to let go of it all, even though I’m afraid of falling, but I’m also tired of holding on, and tired of being afraid.

      “O My Father,” I pray, “if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou will.”

      What a strange toy my mind has become! Even as I desire death, I long for life! It is as if these two contrary desires are locked in perpetual battle within me. One moment the desire for death gains and holds a sword to the throat of life; then the next the longing for life pushes back, parries the sword, and seems poised to be the victor; but within an instant it all changes, again and again and again, so that I, who used to be so certain, now never know what I really want any more. I am losing my mind; it is becoming a stranger to me! I am so afraid I am going mad!

      I rise and leave the phantom friar to his prayers. But first I reach out my hand—though I don’t quite dare to touch him—and feel the icy prickle on my trembling fingertips as they hover just above his diaphanous grey sleeve. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I was wrong to be afraid of you. I have far more cause to fear the living than I do the dead.” Then I cross myself—there is no one here to see, and the old Catholic ways bring me comfort, and I’m not sure which is the right religion any more, may God forgive me. As I rise, I utter a silent prayer that God will grant the ghostly friar absolution for whatever denies him his eternal rest and keeps his soul trapped and earthbound within the clammy walls of Cumnor.

      Across the room my husband’s proud and insolent face stares out at me with piercing dark eyes that smoulder with impatience and freeze my soul from within a gilded picture frame ornately carved with acorns and oak leaves and the Dudley coat-of-arms with the bear and ragged staff at each corner, as though once was not enough and it must be pounded into the beholder’s brain that he is looking at an illustrious scion from the House of Dudley.

      This is how I know my husband now—from his portraits.

      Handsome and haughty, as proud as Lucifer, he strikes a princely pose, like a king-in-waiting. Arrogant and condescending, in his gold-and-pearl-embellished amber brocade doublet, with an oval, diamond-framed enamelled miniature of the Queen hanging from a jewelled chain about his neck, showing the world where his heart lies. But to my eyes that chain is a very short, jewelled leash that tethers him to Her Majesty just like what he has become—her pampered and petted, much favoured lapdog, one who just might turn and bite the hand that feeds him someday or else strangle himself with his own leash.

      Remembering what he was like when I first knew and loved him, I cannot help but hate what he has become, and my heart mourns and weeps without cease for that lost love and the soul he has gambled, lost, and damned with his vainglorious ambition. He stands there so proud and lofty with his hands upon his hips, one of them lightly caressing the jewelled hilt of his sword in a subtle warning that he would not hesitate to fight anyone who dared provoke or challenge him. The wild, rumpled black curls have been cropped and tamed beneath a plumed black velvet cap. Gone is the wild, untamable Gypsy; he has donned the vestments of respectability and left a staid and proper gentleman behind in his stead. And gone also is the easy grace I remember; he looks so stiff, so uncomfortable and rigid, as he stands there so erect, head high, shoulders back, his neck encased, like a broken limb, in a high collar that holds it like a splint, his cheeks cushioned by a small white ruff. His eyes and mouth are so hard now, I no longer recognise them. Even his hands, which used to be so gentle and tender with me, seem more likely to strike a blow or strangle than caress me now.

      This is a portrait of a vain and cruel, self-consumed man with no regard for anyone else, a far cry from the kind, eager, passionate boy I fell in love with ten years ago. Had the man in this portrait come courting me, I would have shrunk from him; he would have roused only fear and uneasiness in me, not captured my heart and lit a fire inside me that made me feel as if I were melting every time his dark eyes turned my way. If this man had come to Stanfield Hall instead of the charming, winsome boy he used to be, I am sure I would have kept to my room until this insolent and disdainful creature—with the cold, hard, dark eyes that seem to freeze and burn me at the same time, and the forked, Devil-dark beard hanging from his chin—had gone away again, and I would have breathed a deep sigh of relief to see the back and, hopefully, the last of him.

      I miss the Robert I fell in love with. Sometimes I dream I rise from my bed and slit the portrait down the middle, and he, the clean-shaven boy with the dark, tousled curls and ready, winning smile comes bounding out to take me in his arms, cover my face with kisses, and sweep me up and carry me out to make love in a bed of buttercups again. But I know if I were to slit the canvas, my dagger would find only the hard stone wall beneath. The Robert I loved so much, and who I thought loved me, is gone forever; instead, within his skin resides a stranger, a cold, imperious, commanding man who shuns and disdains the sweet simplicity of a country buttercup for the regal red and white Tudor rose instead.

      I wanted so much for him to love me and be proud of me, but, I know now, I was doomed to failure from the start.

      I know I should, but somehow I can’t let go of the dream—I just can’t! My dream came true, I lived a love all girls dream about but rarely find, and then I lost it. I’m not even sure how or when it died; it just slipped away from me. I tried so hard to bring it back, as if I were digging in my heels and pulling with all my might upon its coat tails, but the Robert I loved and the life we led together simply slipped the sleeves and left me holding an empty coat, to spend the rest of my lonely life trying to deny and run away from the truth that they were gone forever, and desperately seeking a way to woo and win them back.

      Gazing upon Robert’s portrait only saddens me, so I turn away from it and go and gently ease myself down onto my bed, taking another sip from the medicine bottle before placing it

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