Elizabeth by Evelyn Anthony Page A

impossible to know what she’ll do or say from one moment to the next. But she’s not trembling with anxiety to see you, I can tell you that. Step carefully; a wrong word now and she might banish you for good!”
    Dudley’s face darkened. “I’ve no need to be careful. I’m proved innocent; she owes me an apology after the way she treated me!”
    â€œIf you really mean that,” his sister whispered, “then turn round and get out of the Palace as fast as you can. Don’t see her if you’re not prepared to crawl upon your knees!”
    His eyes narrowed, and then he shrugged and patted her shoulder.
    â€œI’ve crawled before, Mary. I can do it again if I have to; we Dudleys have a great facility for starting on our knees and ending head and shoulders above everybody else.”
    He turned away and walked towards the room where Elizabeth was waiting.

CHAPTER FIVE
    At dusk on the 14th of August, 1561, a galley moved slowly out of the mouth of Calais harbour, its oars dipping in the grey seas, a light wind whipping the white pennants, and the Standard with the arms of France flying from the masthead. It was a French ship, its graceful hull painted a dazzling white, its poop-deck gilded and hung with velvet awnings, and at the poop-rail the Dowager Queen of France stood staring out through her tears at the receding coastline of the country where she had spent her childhood and known her happiest years.
    Mary Stuart was eighteen years old, but she had been Queen of Scotland since childhood. Queen of a wild and barren country where her father’s death had begun a long and savage civil war. The little Queen was sent to her mother’s home in France for safety, while her mother had remained behind to struggle with the rebels. Mary had seen very little of her mother. She remembered her as a very tall woman with a commanding presence, a typical Frenchwoman of a militant courageous character, as proud and ambitious as all the family of Guise who were virtually rulers of France.
    Mary had been very happy in France; she grew up in an atmosphere of indulgence and admiration as her grace and charm outstripped her years. She was an exquisite child and she became a beautiful girl, gay, quick tongued, supremely sure of herself. There was no reason for self-doubt when every person said how fascinating she was and every mirror bore them out. She was feted and spoiled by her uncles, the Cardinal Prince, the Grand Chancellor, the immensely powerful Duc de Guise, and dozens of other relatives, all of them rich and influential. Mary’s was a world of music and enjoyment, of hunting and dancing and learning the arts required of a Princess already gifted with every personal and material advantage.
    When she married, she married the future King of France, and her sickly young husband spoilt and indulged her as completely as her uncles. Unlike most egotists, Mary was naturally kind. She pitied the boy, so obviously wasting with disease and hurrying his end in the effort to ride as well as his bride, to dance and feast until the small hours, buoyed up by the hope that he would one day consummate his marriage. But he came to the throne and died within a year, and his widow was still a virgin. She wept for a companion, almost a brother; but she knew nothing of him as a husband, and in her heart she had never wanted to find out. If she was kindly, she was also infamously proud; proud of her splendid birth, proud of her health in an age when so many were as delicate as her poor Francis, proud of her good looks and her countless friends. Whatever she wished for, God placed in her lap; she had been brought up in the unshakeable conviction that her right was to rule over kingdoms as well as men’s hearts, and the kingdom which attracted her most was the one possession which had been withheld from her so far.—She was also the rightful Queen of England, a far brighter prize than the damp,