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The Queen's Favourite - Chapter One

By ladym

19 July 2007

Hello,

This is the first chapter of a novel about Robert Dudley, the favourite of Queen Elizabeth I. It's fiction, but I've based it on known events, letters etc from literally hundreds of books I've read for research.
This is a book I have been working on for about 10 years (possibly more). It's finished, but I just can't stop redrafting it (I'm probably on about the 5th draft). I know I'm improving it each time, but I need outside opinions to know if it's worth it.
I appreciate any feedback.
Thanks, Laura.

CHAPTER ONE

     Robert Dudley sighed, stroked his cheek with the quill feather and looked about him with weary despair. His brother, Ambrose, sat alongside him, his eyes half closed, his chin resting on his hand as he idly turned the pages of his book. Younger brothers Henry and Guildford sat behind, playing at some game beneath the desk, while across from them, Edward Tudor and Jane Grey paid earnest attention to the tutor, Master Cheke, as he rambled on about Seneca and other Romans, long dead. And then there sat Elizabeth, head bent low as she scraped furiously upon a sheet of paper, rushing ahead in the lesson for she knew all that Cheke had to teach.
     'Master Robert,' the tutor said wearily, leaning against his desk.
     'Master Cheke,' he returned politely, his charming smile spreading across his face.
     'Is it too much to ask that I should have your attention, boy? I realise that study of the Classics holds little interest for such an energetic boy as you, but your father has arranged for you to be educated in such company,' he gestured towards Edward and Elizabeth, 'and you would do well to make yourself worthy.'
     Robert bent his head penitently and dipped the tip of his quill into the inkpot. Elizabeth glanced around at him. He grinned at her and she sniggered, earning herself a disapproving glance from Cheke. She understood Robert's restlessness. For more than a week, the weather had been too inclement to allow the delicate Prince to venture outside, and as his companion, where the Prince went, he had to follow. Robert's slim, lithe body was unused to inaction, and he longed to mount his favourite horse and gallop across the fields, the wind stinging his eyes.
     He saw an opportunity when Master Cheke turned his back, searching for one book among a pile of many. Robert hissed at Elizabeth. She turned and frowned. He jerked his head at the door. She shook her head. He pursed his lips and stamped his foot insistently. She shook her head again. Undeterred, Robert eased off his stool and edged around the desk on tiptoe. Grabbing Elizabeth's wrist, he dragged her from her seat, and she allowed herself to be led from the schoolroom.
     'I wanted to read,' she protested as he pulled her along the corridors of the palace.
     'You can read tomorrow. Oh come on, Bess,' he tugged at her testily, ' we've been inside for a week, and it's stopped raining.'
     'Very well, you can let go of me,' she said, shaking her wrist free. 'Where are we going?'
     'To the stables, of course.' Free of his burden, he broke into a run, dodging servants as they went about their work.
     She ran after him, hitching her goose-turd green skirts up to her bony knees. 'Wait for me,' she demanded, and grew annoyed when he ignored her.
     Jumping over piles of steaming dung, his heels clipping against the cobblestones, he hurried across the yard. Curving his body around the stable door, he whistled, a low sweet sound that made the inhabitants prick up their ears and whinny in greeting.
     'Hello, my sweets. He moved along the stalls, his fingertips stroking their chins as they pressed their noses into his palm.
     The door clattered behind him. 'I told you to wait.'
     He ignored her frown. 'See, Bess? They've missed me.'
     She bent and snatched an apple from a bulging sack propped against the wall. 'I don't know why they should miss you,' she said, snapping off a bite.
     'They love me.'
     'They love the caresses you lavish on them. That doesn't mean they love you.'
     'I don't see the difference,' he frowned, prising the apple from her hand as she stomped past and flung herself onto a bale of hay.
     She shrugged. 'They're what Kat calls fair weather friends. Do something to displease them or trust them too deeply, and they will take advantage. Then their true nature will show through.'
     He proffered the apple to his favourite horse who began to munch contentedly. 'Such a bitter thing for a mere girl of eight years to say.'
     'You're but a year older, Robin. You will mock me too often one day and then...'
     'And then what will you do? Banish me to the Tower, cut off my ….' He stopped abruptly as he realised what he was saying.
     'Cut off your head,' she finished, her voice high and unnatural. She covered her face with her hands.
     'Bess, Bess,' he said soothingly, hurrying to her side. 'Cry not. Hush.'
     'Katherine, my stepmother,' she gasped in shuddering breaths.
     'I know, I know.' Of course he knew. Everybody knew. Katherine Howard, fifth wife to the King, was condemned to the block, for daring to make a cuckold of her husband.
     'Why?' Elizabeth pleaded. 'Why is my father doing this?'
     Robert bit his lip. He had heard the conversations his mother and father had had, shaking their heads at the Queen's scandalous behaviour, but still wondering how the King's love could turn to such murderous hate. How could he, who had loved this young girl so dearly, cut off her pretty head? No one was safe. Not with this King.
     'What have you heard?' he asked carefully.
     'I heard some of the women talking in the kitchen. I did not really understand,' she admitted with a shake of her head. 'All I know is that she will suffer as…as my…'
     'As your mother did.'
     She nodded. 'Do you know what she did? Katherine, I mean?'
     'I know she betrayed the King.'
     'I know that. But how?'
     He sighed, knowing that if he said more and it was discovered, he would be in trouble. But she was his friend and he had never yet been able to deny her. 'She bedded one of the King's Gentlemen.'
     'Bedded?' she repeated, her brow creasing in confusion. 'What does that mean?'
     'Surely you know?'
     'Do not make fun of me,' she cried, slapping his hand.
     His eyes twinkled mischievously. 'I can tell you, if you want.'
     'I do want. Tell me.'
     So he told her, and laughed even harder when she clamped her hands over her ears and yelled at him to shut up, to stop lying, that her parents had never done such a thing.
     'It's true,' he insisted.
     'It's disgusting. I am never going to do that.'
     'You will have to when you marry.'
     'Then I will not marry.'
     'Of course you will marry.'
     'Will not.'
     'Will.'
     'Will not.'
     'Why, there you are!'
     They started guiltily. Katherine Ashley, Elizabeth's governess, stood in the doorway, glowering.
     'Kat,' Elizabeth said, 'how long have you been there?'
     'Oh, is it for you to question me now, my lady?' Katherine retorted haughtily. 'I have been looking all over for you. I went to the schoolroom. The others were there, doing their lessons like good children. And do not roll your eyes at me, young lady. Master Cheke says the pair of you had it away when his back was turned. I told him that you must have been misled by him.' She jerked her head at Robert. 'I shall have to talk to his father about him, leading you astray like this.'
     Robert jumped down. 'I beg you would not do that, mistress.'
     'Ha, that has frightened you, has it not?' Katherine crowed.
     'No, Mistress Ashley, but my father is a very busy man, and I do not think he would like to hear tales of me.'
     Katherine's mouth fell open in indignation. 'I am no tell-tale, you impudent wag.'
     Elizabeth hurried to her mistress and tugged at her hand. 'Let us go, Kat,' she urged, anxious lest her friend land himself in trouble with his tongue. 'I will see you tomorrow,' she promised over her shoulder as they left.
     'Fooling in the stable with a courtier's son,' he heard Katherine say. 'Whatever will people say?'
     He watched them leave, smarting at the description of him, so scornfully made. He may be a courtier's son, but what of it? What was Elizabeth but an acknowledged bastard of the King?   Plain Robert Dudley he may be at present, but he had no intention of remaining so for the rest of his life. His father was ambitious, did it not run in the Dudley family? He would be more than a courtier's son one day. He would show them. He would show them all.

Reviews

Written by fellpony (1611 comments posted) 22nd July 2007

I'm surprised nobody has reviewed this yet. Perhaps we don't have many readers of historical fiction on here?

I thought the bones of this were very good, and the construction also. Starting with the two children playing truant is a nice little hook into the coming tale - and as most people know of Elizabeth even if they know little of Dudley, it should keep them reading.

What struck me as incongruous was the tone of the writing. It echoed Georgette Heyer and other light historical novelists, yet in places we had phrases like "goose-turd-green" and "had it away" (I know what you meant but it jarred, even if you did mean to echo the conversation Bess and Robert have just had). Working in a period so far back it is hard to know whether to write dialogue as Shakespeare would have done, or allow characters to speak in a modern voice. At present it reads as rather self-consciously "historical" language and because of the self-consciousness it doesn't quite convince. You say you've read a lot of background for this, and it shows; I think one of the tricks of historical writing is to have read the background and know it so thoroughly that it doesn't show, but informs everything you write so that nothing is inconsistent and little is brought in that does not inform the story.

There are a few details I'd challenge, eg about the yard maintenance (I doubt there'd be much steaming dung left on the stable yard in a palace, I mean, what DO we keep all these servants for?) but I thought the location was a clever one for Robert to tell Bess about "country matters", and to show how different Bess's perceptions of life are from his.

Written by bluecity (376 comments posted) 17th August 2007

Like Fellpony, I'm surprised you have had only one review (hers), BUT you have had 89 hits, which means that people are reading it anyway.

I liked this. A nice gentle tone and a flowing style. What worried me was that Elizabeth, aged 8, sounded too grown up except when she wa actually playing. A child trying to come to terms with difficult issues would have articulated them differently, I think.

You wrote 'Why?' Elizabeth pleaded. 'Why is my father doing this?' Wouldn't an 8 year old be more likely either to deny that her father had anything to do with it OR attribute to Katherine Howard the most terrible crimes OR just wallow in the macabre?

Your thorough research shows ............ excepting the bit about the stable dung, and I understand that Fellpony knows about these things (hence the name!)

And language is always difficult to gauge, especially for Elizabethan. You've got either to do Shakespearean or contemporary and I think you have mixed the 2. Even though , you've been revising and revising, I think you're going to have to go through it again and just check the language. (I know what it's like to keep revising and revising, and I really admire the people on creative writing sites who have the confidence to put up a chapter immediately after they've written it.)

But it still held my interest! Where are the other chapters? I would like to see them!

In my own defence .........
Written by Bagheera (683 comments posted) 17th August 2007

........ I can claim [and it's true!] that I was out of the country for c. 14 days since you posted this - but I also have to admit that History is a 'blind spot' for me (though I know as much as most people, probably, about Shakespearian & Elizabethan society! :grin

)

Perhaps if you "relax" a bit more and let what you've learnt from your research to flow NATURALLY and at points in the story when they feel "right" (I can't express it another way, I hope you know what I mean!) you can avoid sounding too 'schoolmistressy' ...........?

I know what you mean about "revising" ....... I;m currently revising AGAIN!!! an eco/disaster thriller I started over TWENTY years ago .... I have never been completely satisfied with it, but this time, maybe, I might have it cracked.... every rewrite involves an 'update' to keep track of medical & technical developments - such as, when I began writing this, mobile phones were yuppie playthings and tended to be the size of a housebrick ..........!

Look forward to another chapter when you have time :grin

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