Free A Court Affair by Emily Purdy Page B

her much discomfort until the end of her days and giving her an excuse to permanently abstain from any further marital relations and spend the rest of her life as a pampered invalid in pretty lace-trimmed caps and robes with a comfit box always at her side. Everyone expected Father to be disappointed, to curse and rage as King Henry VIII had done when first Catherine of Aragon and then Anne Boleyn failed to give him a son, but my father took one look at me and breathed the word
“Beloved!”
and thus named me Amy.
    That very day he wrote proudly inside his prayer book:
Amy Robsart, beloved daughter of John Robsart, knight, was born on the 7th day of June in the Blessed Year of Our Lord 1532.
    He petted, indulged, and spoiled me like no other child, as if I were indeed a princess, and longed for my happiness above all else. So now, when I was of an age and of a mind to marry, he could not bear to deny me, though he had grave qualms about the man I had chosen to be my husband.
    “But you barely know each other!” again and again he protested, worry ploughing deep furrows into his brow. He urged us to tarry a year, or two, or even more. Four-and-twenty, he said, was thought by many to be the ideal age for a man to marry, to have sown his wild oats and seasoned his mind so that he was able to govern himself and make the
right
decision when choosing a wife, not a hasty pick led by hot blood and a pointing prick. But neither of us could bear it; we were seventeen, and to wait even a year seemed like an eternity. We were in love and impatient to start living our life together.
    My lips trembled, and tears filled my eyes. Robert gave my hand a reassuring squeeze and stepped forward before my tears could overflow onto the accounts ledger lying open on Father’s desk.
    “Sir, we love each other truly,” he said. “Getting to know each other will be a joy and an adventure, like unearthing buried treasure each day of our life together. Each new discovery will be a priceless, precious jewel,” he promised my father as he gallantly raised my hand to his lips and kissed it, then pressed it over his heart.
    And my father was won over by the sight of tears glimmering in my blue green eyes and Robert’s eloquent and impassioned words, though I know in his heart worry would ever dog him like his faithful hound Rex.
    I understand far better now than I did then; Father thought by marrying Robert I was wading in over my head, and he was afraid I was going to drown. The
one
time in my life when I should have listened and been guided by my father’s advice, I turned my back and ignored his wisdom. But I would not realise my mistake until the waters were already closing over my head. My only comfort is that Father, as much as I miss him, did not live to see the bitter fruits our hasty and impetuous union have reaped, the sourness that was left behind after the sweet passion died. It is a dismal harvest, with the fruits of young love all blackened and blotched; diseased and spurned, they tempt no one. I am glad he did not live to see what I have come to. It would have broken his heart to see the child he named “Beloved” unloved, unwanted, and dying, while my husband dallies with the highest lady in the land and dreams of wearing a golden crown, dancing while he waits for me to die; for Robert my cancer will correct the mistake he made when he was a lusty lad of seventeen. My end will be Robert’s new beginning. Sometimes I dream of him and Elizabeth dancing with joyous abandon upon my grave, and I wake up with my whole body aching as if their dancing feet had actually trampled and bruised me, and Pirto has to dose me against the pain that makes every bit of my body feel as if it were screaming.
    Even on the very morning of my wedding day the following summer, Father was still trying to save me from myself, to arm Reason with a sword that would vanquish Lust. “First love is rarely evergreen love, my dear,” he warned as he stroked my