One night, after the torches were snuffed in the bedchamber and Squires of the Body quietly prowled the hallways to keep watch for her security, Her Majesty was abed, with only me and Mary Radcliffe, another of her maids of honor, in the room, and she spoke quietly. “Lady von Snakenborg?”

“Yes, Majesty?” I said sleepily from the trundled bed at the foot of her bed of state.

“I prefer the marjoram-scented water you bathed in this evening. It leaves a soothing scent upon my linens and I believe I shall sleep most soundly.”

“If it pleases Your Majesty, I shall ensure to use it each time I am called to serve you in this manner,” I said.

Mary Radcliffe had had nary a word for me before that, but that night she sent a smile in my direction, visible by moonlight. The next day, I asked Blanche Parry if I might ask Mrs. Morgaynne, who was the queen’s apothecary, for some essence of marjoram to add to my own store of herbs and essences. “I shall sprinkle some upon Her Majesty’s linens each night whether or not it’s my turn to warm the bed.” Blanche Parry readily agreed.

There was no comfortable rest to be found in the week after, as we waited upon her in her Privy Chamber, where she was haranguing some of her councilors ahead of her presentation to Parliament. “Though I be a woman, yet I have as good a courage, answerable to my place, as ever my father had,” she scolded them all.

“Majesty,” Lord Robert began, “Mr. Molyneux has suggested that the money you have requested should be given only upon the contingency that Your Grace makes a declaration about your successor. This motion was very well approved by the greater part of the House!”

“It would be wise to consider it, Your Highness,” William said softly. “They mean it for your good, and the good of the realm. They want a successor named.”

“Was I not born in the realm? Were my parents born in any foreign country?” she demanded. “Is there any cause I should alienate myself from being careful over this country? Is not my kingdom here? Whom have I oppressed? How have I governed since my reign began?”

She sat down upon her chair of state, her stomacher pressing into her, bosom heaving. “I will marry as soon as I can conveniently. And as to the succession—I stood in danger of my life, my sister was so incensed against me. I did differ from her in religion, and for that I was sought for diverse ways from plotters and overthrowers. So I shall never name my successor, who may will to unseat me!”

She calmed and continued. “Some would speak for their master, some for their mistress, and every man for his friend. But my very life would become a target. Men foment about the second when the second is known. I know this better than any in the realm. As your prince and head, we must be left to judge the timing of the move, without prompting from our subjects. For it is monstrous that the feet should direct the head.”

No reassurance was forthcoming from those “feet” she trusted most. She waved to silence Cecil, her secretary of state and most trusted principal advisor, who’d begun to speak, then turned to my marquess. “Northampton,” she said to my great horror, “methinks you had better talk about the arguments used to enable you to get married again, to yon lady”—she looked toward me— “when you have a wife living, instead of mincing words with us.”

She rounded toward Lord Robert and said, “We had thought that if all the world abandoned us, you would not have done so.”

“I am ready to die at your feet, madam!” Lord Robert protested. He, more than any, would press her to marriage. With himself, if it could be!

“That has nothing to do with the matter.”

She loudly banned them entrance to the Presence Chamber and stormed off, calling for the comfort, of all persons, of the Spanish ambassador. We ladies, of course, said nothing at all, as was our place, but quietly slipped down the corridor.

•   •   •

By June the storm seemed to have lifted and the queen was dancing and making merry after dinner when Cecil took her aside and whispered something in her ear. Her face, normally pale, waxed into a death mask. She left the room immediately, and we ladies followed her.

She dismissed all but Lady Knollys, Blanche, Anne Russell Dudley, Mary Radcliffe, and myself.

As we helped her undress, silent tears slid down her face, coursing through the light powder she’d been made up with, streaking the faint sheen of whipped egg white that held said powder in place and smoothed her first wrinkles.

“Our cousin, the Queen of Scots, has given birth to a fair son,” she said. Our hearts broke for her. Queen Mary had provided her kingdom, and if the plotters were satisfied, perhaps Elizabeth’s kingdom, with a prized heir, which meant stability, continuity, surety. A male heir was what the English desired but which our queen was as of yet unable or unwilling to provide.

As I readied myself for bed that evening, I, like the queen, wondered if I should ever have a child of my own, something I had greatly desired since my own girlhood. I had recently realized that William had been married twice and had not yet sired a child.

•   •   •

Almost every summer, barring illness or plague, the queen would journey through and stay at some of the towns and estates in her kingdom, greeting the common people she held with motherly affection and being entertained by her courtiers. That summer on Progress, we stayed for some time at Lord Robert’s estates in Kenilworth. Some said that the queen was his wife in all but name, but I, having slept in her room and observed how impossible it would be to be in the queen’s presence alone, vigorously disagreed. We women surrounded her chambers night and day, and anyone who thought the queen could be expertly redressed by an unpracticed man, alone, had not been present in her bedchamber when the hour-long gowning and pinning was under way.

I would admit, though, that they oft strolled together in the public gardens at Kenilworth unmolested by courtiers or other subjects. One afternoon William and I were arm in arm enjoying the roses when we came upon Robin, as she called Lord Robert, and the queen. I wondered if this Robin was a songbird she would like to cage, and was about to jest about it with William, but stopped myself. I did not think he would find it particularly amusing, as he was not given to either wry humor or to Lord Robert. As we passed them and I curtseyed, I thought I spied a faint bit of beard burn upon the queen’s fair and smiling face. Though I could not be certain, I hoped it was true. Every lady deserved to be kissed.

We stayed at many manors and in many towns on Progress. Her people, her “children,” came to greet her with poems and poesies at each stop along the way. In Sandwich the good housewives had prepared a feast for the queen of 140 dishes, and to the horror of William Cecil, she tasted of them all without first having her taster test them for poisons. Instead, she indicated loudly enough to bring honor to all who had prepared them that some of them should be reserved for her and brought back to her lodgings for private consumption, which put a satisfied, and adoring, smile on the face of each and every townswoman.

The queen listened attentively to the Latin discourse of a young scholar in Norwich, declaring it to be among the finest speeches she had ever heard. I rather thought that the young man would have taken up arms for her then and there if it had been required. She praised all and berated none.

Late that evening, as we were unpinning her gown, Lady Knollys commented on the time the queen took with each of her subjects.

“In truth, I love them well,” the queen responded. “And I am certain they know it. For if they did not rest assured of some special love toward them, they would not readily yield me such good obedience. As it is, they know I have their highest and best interests always in mind.”

I spoke of that with William, late in the eve, before the dying fire in his apartment within the home of our host. He sipped his wine thoughtfully and then said, “Yes. But they greatly desire the queen to marry and to bring forth a son, to have the succession settled. They are discomfited by the thought of years of war that threaten a kingdom without an heir. And many feel it is unnatural for a woman to rule.”

“Will she marry?”

He lowered his voice. “She must. But whom? No matter the offers, parrying, and diplomatic considerations, I believe that the queen’s honor and faith will not let her choose a Catholic prince for herself or for her people. Protestant princes are few, and they are entangled in costly wars that would bring this realm nothing but debt, of which we already have an abundance after the . . . generous spending of His Majesty King Henry and the warring of Queen Mary at the provocation of her Spanish husband, Philip.”

“An Englishman, then?” I grinned, truly fond of William. “I find myself much given to marrying an Englishman.”

“Ah, that it should come quickly to pass,” he said as he kissed me lightly.

“Our marriage or hers?”

“Both. We know whom you should marry, my lady.” He clasped his hand over mine. “But the queen?”

“Lord Robert?” I asked.

“Mayhap,” he admitted. “As she has raised him to earl, making him of sufficient rank to partner her.”

“Why do I sense your reluctance?”

“The Dudley family is scattered with traitors who tried, like vines, to circle the royal oak and climb to the throne. Elizabeth loves Lord Robert well, but I am certain she does not forget that Lord Robert’s father conspired to keep her from her throne by placing her cousin Jane Grey, married to Lord Robert’s brother Guildford, on it in her rightful stead.”