A Court Affair (12 page)

“He may be King of England, but that doesn’t stop him from being a self-righteous little prig, and as cold as the Devil’s prick,” he whispered in my ear, giving the lobe a playful little nibble that made my knees tremble unseen beneath my skirts. “And I, for one—and the
most
important one, if I do say so myself—
love
my buttercup bride. And it’s just as well that Edward isn’t impressed, for I will have no man for my rival, not even a king. Remember that, Lady Dudley, when I take you to court and you are formally presented, and you will do just fine; you’ll carry yourself as proudly as the grandest lady, knowing that you are
all
mine.”

At his words, my face lit up with joy, and I threw my arms around his neck, standing up, straining on my tippy-toes, and covered his face with kisses. I was
so
eager to be alone with him! Even though the revelry had scarcely begun, the King was not the only one to want it over and done; I wanted to be with my husband in the curtained privacy of our bridal bed with all our finery stripped away, leaving only warm, naked skin and hands and lips eager to explore, caress, and kiss. But duty beckoned, and I must resume serving the milk and meeting and making welcome our guests, so many of whom were complete strangers to me. And I fear I gave offence to many, for, as I did not know them even by their lofty names, they seemed annoyed by the blankness in my eyes, my tentative, uncertain smiles, and my clumsy, faltering attempts to make conversation with them. But they were all smiles for Robert, and he moved amongst them with the utmost confidence and easy grace. I will have to do better, I told myself sternly. I must not disappoint him; I must school myself and become the woman Lady Dudley
should
be, a worthy consort for my husband, not a pig-ignorant Norfolk squire’s daughter he will always be ashamed of.

I was serving the milk when I first saw
her
. I instantly froze, stricken by that horrible realisation one feels when one has accidentally trod upon a serpent hidden in the grass, at first sight of that tall, taper-slim woman, as white as the pearls around her throat, her vivid scarlet hair the only spot of colour about her. Her dark eyes seemed to hammer nails into me, and I felt my heart jolt inside my breast. She was so cool, so supremely regal and poised, I shivered, and for a moment I think I actually believed she had the power to call down rain to ruin my wedding day and banish the golden sunshine that warmed this happy day and shone down so brightly upon me. I was afraid the milk in my gilded pails would curdle beneath her gaze. I couldn’t rightly tell if she hated me or if she just envied me.

Of course I knew who she was—the Princess Elizabeth. I’d heard titbits of tattle about her, that she was fresh from a scandal, a frolic with her stepfather, the Lord Admiral Sir Thomas Seymour, that went too far and led to their both being disgraced and the Admiral losing his head on Tower Hill, leaving Elizabeth with a besmirched reputation that she tried to whitewash by wearing virgin-white gowns dripping with pearls and living a quiet life. All around me people whispered behind their hands and darted swift glances at her stomach. Though it was as flat as a board beneath the tightly-laced white satin stomacher, rumours had long been rife that she had been with child by the Lord Admiral; some even said it had been born, delivered by a midwife brought blindfolded into her lying-in chamber, and foully murdered by being thrown alive, kicking and wailing, into a fireplace. She seemed so brittle and hard, tense and wary, that I couldn’t believe the rumours were true and that she had ever cast caution and decorum to the winds and let herself go with a man, or that she had ever loved Tom Seymour, or anyone at all. She seemed entirely too cold, frozen too solid, to ever be melted by the flames of passion. That flaming red hair was deceptive; I felt certain there was a core of solid ice and steel inside Elizabeth.

I forced myself to approach and offer her a cup of milk. She refused it with a wave of her hand, but when I started to back away, she reached out and took my face between her cold, long-fingered white hands and stared at me as if she meant to suck out my soul with her eyes, like a cat on a baby’s chest, stealing its breath as it lay sleeping. She studied me so intently, searching my face, but I don’t know what she was looking for. She never said one word to me. And then, just as suddenly, she released me and turned away to converse with a plump, grey-haired little dumpling of a woman who waddled like a duck when she walked and whom the Princess called Kat—that must have been her governess, who had also been implicated in the Seymour scandal. And I was left standing there shivering as though a goose had just walked over my grave. She scared me, though I was at a loss to explain why, and had I tried, I know I would have been thought quite silly.

Later on while we all sat merry with our tankards and ate our fill of apple cake, the men decided to have some sport. There was to be a joust in which they sought not to unhorse each other but to impale upon the sharpened tip of a spear a goose with a lacy gold bow tied about her neck. When I realised what they were about, I burst into tears; I wanted no blood spilled upon my wedding day, and I ran out amongst the men, already mounted on their horses, and caught the goose up in a protective embrace, hugging her tightly against my breast. I would not release her until Father himself came and gently took her from me, dried my tears, and swore the goose would not be harmed but would live out her natural life unharmed, pampered like a beloved pet. Then he called for the musicians to play, and for us to have dancing instead, even as the men still grumbled and lamented their spoiled sport, ruined by a silly, soft-hearted girl who would shed a bucket of tears over a plump goose that cried out for roasting. But Robert dismounted and drew me closely against his chest, kissed me, and declared he loved me all the more for it. “No goose-down pillow is softer than my Amy’s heart,” he said, and later, when he engaged an artist to paint a portrait of me in my wedding gown, he ordered the beribboned goose painted in, standing beside me and eating from my hand.

And then, at long last, as the sun was sinking like a great orange too heavy for the sky to hold up any longer, the time came to put the bridal couple to bed. Amidst much bawdy jesting and singing and showers of flowers, sweetmeats, and herbs, my stepbrother John Appleyard and my dear old swain, Ned Flowerdew, swept me up onto their shoulders, as two of Robert’s brothers, John and Ambrose, did the same to him and, in a torchlit procession, carried us inside the manor. At the top of the stairs, I untied the ribbons that bound the stems of my bouquet of buttercups and flung them high into the air, laughing delightedly, as hands reached up to catch them. I only wished there were enough; I wanted everyone to have a flower. Then they carried us to our bridal chamber, where, on opposite sides of the room, modestly shielded by guests of the proper gender, we were divested of our wedding finery.

After they had stripped me bare, a bevy of giggling girls and smiling matrons stood facing one another in two rows alongside the bed and formed themselves into a human passageway, lifting their arms and joining hands to create an arched roof. And I, blushing rose-red and hugging my arms over my jiggling breasts, ran naked, clad only in my unbound hair and crown of buttercups, through the tunnel they made for me and leapt under the covers to join Robert, whose friends had already performed the same service for him. I felt the warmth of his naked thigh press mine as we leaned to kiss; then I pulled the covers up high, clutching them tightly about me as everyone clapped and cheered and raised their cups to drink one last toast to us.

We drank a loving cup, a special brew of warm red wine mixed with milk, egg yolks, sugar, and spices, to give us “strength and vigour for the night’s passionate exertions”, those about us teased, and everyone applauded when we had drained it to the dregs. And then they drew the bed-curtains and left us alone. But just before the curtains closed at the foot of the bed, I caught a glimpse of the Princess Elizabeth watching us, her dark eyes narrowed and intent, her long, slender white fingers twirling a buttercup by its stem. And again I shivered as if I could feel those very fingers closing murderously around my neck, squeezing the life out of me.

I turned to Robert to seek refuge in his warmth and found him staring straight at her, until she dropped the buttercup and, with an abrupt and angry tug, jerked the curtains shut, then slammed the door behind her in such a way that the sound must have rung throughout the manor. She was like a human cannon packed with gunpowder, and the tiniest spark would make her explode, and I was deathly afraid that somehow
I
was that spark. I wanted to talk to Robert about it, to ask him why it should be so—what had I done?—but some inner instinct warned me to keep silent, and I was too afraid to defy it.

I slipped my arms about Robert’s neck and laid my head upon his shoulder, but I found his body rock-hard and tense. The silence that had so suddenly replaced the merry, good-natured ribaldry hung heavy and awkward about us, and I felt so afraid, though for the life of me I couldn’t explain why. I felt Robert’s hands upon my waist, and I started to relax and allow a smile to form upon my lips, but it died midway as he put me from him, wrenched open the curtains, and leapt from the bed. Naked, he stalked across the room and, not even bothering to pour it into a goblet first, drank long and deeply from the flagon of wine that had been left for us. I grew alarmed as I watched a ribbon of red wine dribble down his chest, like a crimson snake winding its way through black grass, yet still he drank as if his thirst could never be quenched. Then, just as suddenly, he flung the flagon into the fireplace, where it shattered, and, like a lion attacking a trembling and helpless lamb, sprang at me from the foot of the bed and pinned me flat beneath him, grabbing my wrists, leaving bruises where his fingers pressed, as he held my arms above my head.

I cried out when I felt his savage thrust. He was rougher with me than he had ever been before and ignored me when I begged him to be gentler, as he had been when we coupled in our bed of buttercups. I knew he
must
be angry with me, but I didn’t know why; I also knew that asking would only make it worse.

Later, when I lay sobbing, huddled and hugging my pillow with my back to him, he kissed my shoulders and stroked my hair and spoke softly, blaming it all upon the wine, but I knew it was something more than that, and I felt certain it had to do with Elizabeth.

He coaxed me to sit up, saying he had a present for me. To spare me any embarrassment upon the morrow, when all would expect to see the sheet we had coupled upon hung up to proudly display the dried red rose petal stain of my vanquished maidenhood, he took his jewel-hilted dagger and made a tiny cut to his chest, right over his heart, so that it would be his heart’s blood masquerading as my maiden’s blood that stained our sheets and saved me from dishonour. For the rest of his life he would bear a little scar there, just over his heart, that would be our secret that only we two, husband and wife, would know; that tiny raised white line upon the bronzed beauty of his chest that my tongue would seek out so many times to tease and trace would be a precious remembrance of our wedding night. And then he took me in his arms again and loved me so gently that I cried. And I fell asleep after with my head upon his chest, listening to his heart beat, like a lullaby, singing me to sleep.

The next morning while I was still asleep, my husband rose early to hunt. I lay abed for a long time, lazily savouring the fact that I was now a married woman, a wife, and, God willing, soon to be a mother, caressing my little round belly and wondering if it had already become a warm nest for our baby to grow in. When I rose, I noticed that my husband had left our chamber in some disarray; clothing lay strewn about the floor and protruding from beneath the lid of his big oak travelling chest, carved with his initials and coat-of-arms, the Dudleys’ great bear and ragged staff, and beautifully bordered with acorns and oak leaves. I instantly set about tidying it, gathering up garments from the floor, and, observing the crumpled and wadded disarray inside, I scooped everything out of the chest, thinking to do my duty as a wife and put it all right, everything perfectly placed and folded, all pristine, perfect, and neat, and later amongst the folds I would put little bags of sweet-smelling herbs tied with blue silk ribbons, as that was my husband’s favourite colour. As I lifted out the last linen shirt, something clattered against the bottom—a small rectangle-shaped portrait framed in black enamel and pearls.

I instantly recognised the haughty and imperious young woman who stared back at me from beneath the feathered brim of her round, pearl-studded black velvet hat, with her hair caught up like a pair of plump, fresh-baked buns on each side of her head protruding from a caul of pearls. It was the Princess Elizabeth in a black velvet riding habit worked with gold embroidery all down the front and around the hems, with its tight, close-fitting sleeves studded with an elaborate lattice pattern of pearls. But what struck me most was her hand murderously clutching her gloves as if they were a neck she wished to break.

I remembered the look that had passed between her and Robert last night as she stood at the foot of our marriage bed and began to tremble violently as tears overflowed my eyes. Feeling of a sudden ill, I dropped the portrait back into the chest as if it burned me and bunched up all the clothes my arms could hold and crammed them back inside the chest and slammed the lid shut. Perhaps I should have confronted Robert when he came back, asked or said something, but every time I tried, fear tied my tongue in knots, and the words just would not come out. I suppose I was afraid that knowing would be even worse than not knowing. But every time I glanced at that chest, knowing that portrait was hidden away inside it, I felt a surge of blind terror that made the breath catch in my throat and my vision dim and at the same time dance with jewel-coloured sparks like gems sewn on black velvet. I didn’t know then that that flame-haired princess would ignite such a blaze of passion and ambition in my husband’s soul that it would reduce all my hopes and dreams to ashes.