The Fallen Queen (15 page)

“My lady-mother, I am
so
happy!” Kate cried.

“As you deserve to be.” Our lady-mother smiled. “Beauty such as yours should never know what sorrow means.”

Jane gave a loud, derisive snort, and our lady-mother whipped around to impale her with a daggerlike stare. “Jane,” she said severely, “you shall wear silver.”

At those words, my heart sank. Our lady-mother was playing favourites again, and sending a silent message, giving Kate the full glory of gold and making Jane appear second best, and the lesser valued, in silver. Kate would be dazzling and radiant in gold, with her sunny, vivacious smile and laughing, loving jewel-bright eyes, and Jane standing glum and serious, sulky and silent, in silver beside her, with her downcast eyes and frowning mouth, would make a poor showing in comparison. With the gilded idol of Guildford Dudley as a bridegroom the effect would be even worse. They would all outshine Jane; even if they were naked, their smiles alone would do it! It wasn’t fair!

Even worse, Jane didn’t care, even though she should; she who would rather wear plain black, dung brown, or dull grey would
never
fight for gold. But Jane
needed
gold, she deserved it, just as much as Kate did! Gold would bring out the red and gold embers hiding in her brown hair, like coals glowing beneath wood and ashes, and make the green, blue, and hazel sparkle like jewels against dust and eclipse the harsh grey of her eyes. I had always associated gold with warmth, like sunshine, and silver with cold and ice, and even though Jane’s personality was in truth better suited to chilly silver, and I had long ago given up my childish hope that if Jane wore gold these golden qualities would be magically and miraculously absorbed through her skin and she would smile and laugh and be merry just like Kate, I still longed to see her arrayed in gold on her wedding day. I wanted Jane herself to see when she stood before her looking glass that there was no sin in beauty, only in the vain attitude and condescending pride that often accompanied it, and that she could have her precious books and be beautiful too.

I swallowed down my tears and fears and steeled to do battle on Jane’s behalf since she would never fight for a cloth-of-gold gown. Timidly, I gave a tug to the skirt of our lady-mother’s crimson velvet riding habit.

“Please, my lady-mother, let Jane wear gold too. It is such a special day, and I would like to see both my sisters gowned in the full glory of gold on their wedding day. Let the Dudley girl wear silver if she will, but
please
garb
both
the Grey sisters, through your illustrious person kin to royalty, in gold.”

“Your point is well taken, Mary; appearances are everything, and it is imperative that we present an image of importance, solidarity, and regal grandeur. Very well then, let it be gold for Jane as well as Katherine. And Jane can wear the ruby necklace Princess Mary so thoughtfully sent her for her birthday; that bloodred shall look
splendid
against the pallor of her skin and help coax out the red in her hair, and we shall wash it with my own mother’s recipe for a saffron rinse with just a hint of henna the night before the wedding so the effect will be even more striking. Now, what pattern would you suggest for Jane’s kirtle and sleeves? Thorns and acanthus leaves or thistles perhaps, to suit her unpleasantly sharp and prickly personality?”

“To symbolize pain, punishment, suffering, and humiliation, my lady-mother?” Jane retorted, her voice hard and her eyes cold as grey ice.

I felt the anger rising inside our lady-mother and the imminent rain of blows Jane was courting as I watched her hand curl tighter around the jewelled handle of her riding crop. Quickly, despite the jerking pain that shot up my spine, I ran and snatched up a bolt of ivory satin blooming all over with embroidered yellow gillyflowers amidst glorious swirls of green and gold foliage.

“This please, my lady-mother”—I held it up for her to see—“gillyflowers for marital devotion and fidelity. Since Guildford Dudley seems to favour this particular flower, and in yellow, he is
certain
to appreciate the gesture and take it as a compliment—a loving tribute from his bride, who has chosen to array herself in his special flower on their wedding day. It will bode well for the marriage, I think.” Then, glancing at Jane’s scowling countenance, I hastily amended, “I hope.”

“A pretty choice as well as a diplomatic one.” Our lady-mother smiled and reached down to give my head a pat. “So be it! Oh, Mary, my poor little gargoyle, had you not been born grotesque, squat, and twisted, you would have been such a credit to me! Though you lack Kate’s beauty and Jane’s scholarly brilliance, you have something even more important—tact and common sense; you know how to be pleasing and practical. I could have made so much of you! What a most
deplorable
waste!”

“What a waste indeed,” I said softly, for in spite of our lady-mother’s words, none regretted more than I all the chances that were lost to me because of my stunted and deformed body. The love I would never have, the babies I would never bear, a spine and limbs that didn’t ache until old age beckoned, people who would smile and warmly embrace me rather than shrink away fearfully and avert their gaze, the good times I could never take part in, the bright parti-colour gowns I could never wear without being mistaken for a fool in motley, to be able to dance without provoking laughter, and to be able to walk the London streets free from the fear of being snatched and sold into a troupe of performing dwarves or to a fair in need of a new attraction.

I was a small, shy creature meant to hide in the shadows, to live on the edge of the world, peeping out at it, not in the bright, frenetic centre of it, never a participant and reveller, only an observer. But now was not the time to dwell on my misfortunes. My sisters needed me, so I forced myself to smile and, knowing that Jane detested Cousin Mary’s “bloody necklace,” I set about cajoling our lady-mother to send to the goldsmith and have a necklace of golden gillyflowers with emerald leaves crafted for Jane instead. “Perhaps a wreath of gilded rosemary with yellow gillyflowers for Jane’s hair? It will look well beside Kate’s.”

But one cannot always win. Our lady-mother agreed that
both
the gillyflower necklace and wreath were splendid ideas, but she decided to order the new necklace to be made long, so that Jane might also wear the shorter ruby necklace with it. “After all, we do not want to offend Cousin Mary, and even though she is not invited, we want her to feel that she is in our thoughts and a part of this special day, don’t we?”

“No,” Jane pouted her lips and said in a sulky voice our lady-mother pretended not to hear.

“In this world anything can happen,” our lady-mother continued, “and it is important never to offend anyone lest they someday be in a position to make you regret it.”

Every day we were busy with the dressmaker, seamstresses, merchants from London displaying their fine fabrics and trinkets, the glovers, cobblers, gold and silver smiths, and stay-makers. Our parents had most generously decided that Kate and Jane would each have a dozen new dresses, with all the elegant accoutrements a lady required and desired—fans, headdresses, stockings, shifts, petticoats, ribbon garters, slippers, veils, pomander balls of precious jewels and metals, and the like—so there was much to be done and little time to do it in as every day brought us nearer to the wedding.

For Kate there were gowns the colour of raspberries, cherries, and crushed strawberries, and the yellow of sunshine, egg yolks, and lemons—yellow was known as “the colour of joy,” and Kate could not get enough of it; she thought it a fortuitous omen for her marriage if her trousseau were rich in this sunny shade—honey gold, cinnamon, apricot, sage green, robin’s egg blue, and the most delicate rose, like grey ashes that had drifted down over a pink rose without stifling or scorching its beauty.

For Jane, who tried in vain to push away the gaudy trimmings and vibrant colours and reach for the dreary spectrum of greys, browns, and blacks instead, I, with our lady-mother’s approval, chose shades of garnet, damson plum, red wine, rich, regal violet, moss green, lion’s mane tawny, midnight blue, deep forest green, vivid yellow, cinnamon, and the new fashionable colour called “ruddy embers,” and an extravagant gold-worked brocade of the delicate peachy pink flesh colour known as “incarnadine.”

For each there was also an array of exquisitely embroidered and patterned kirtles and under-sleeves of contrasting colours to match and vary with their new gowns.

Kate’s favourite was a set of white silk worked with red roses in glorious full bloom and nascent buds, their thorny stems and leaves done in a style reminiscent of the Spanish blackwork embroidery that Catherine of Aragon had introduced to England and made so popular that for many a year afterward every woman had it bordering her shift and every man upon the collar and cuffs of his white lawn shirt. But Jane deplored the extravagance and complained about the great waste of silver and gold that had been used to create the gilt threads that adorned many of their new garments and said it would have been better spent to feed and clothe the poor and provide them with English prayer books.

Lastly, as a special surprise for each, gowns of cloth-of-gold and silver tinsel cloth with low square necklines and pointed stomachers edged in diamonds, and long, full, gracefully flowing sleeves that nearly brushed the floor as they belled over the full, puffed, and padded under-sleeves my sisters would wear with them. Then Father mentioned hunting and riding, and our lady-mother flew into a panic realizing she had neglected to instruct the tailor to furnish them with riding habits, so there were hurried selections of ginger velvet for Jane and Brassel red, a hue that was like a lively, lusty dance between brown and red, for Kate, and tall boots and soft gloves of brown and red Spanish leather. Then Mrs. Ellen burst in with a frantic cry of “nightgowns!” and there was a panicked flurry to equip them with embroidered lawn night shifts and caps, all calculated to delight a husband’s amorous eye, soft velvet slippers, and robes of sumptuous fur-bordered velvets, flowered damasks, and quilted satins.

Through all the fittings Mrs. Leslie, our chief dressmaker, tried to coax a smile out of Jane, deeming it unnatural to see a bride “so downcast, melancholy, and brooding.”

“Are you nervous, sweetheart?” she asked as Jane stood on a stool before her. “’Tis only natural that you should be; I know, for I’ve dressed many a bride, but you’ll see, once you’re wedded and bedded, ’twill all turn out just fine, it will.”

“No, it won’t.” Jane glowered. “I don’t want to marry Guildford Dudley. I don’t want to marry
anyone
at all!”

“But every maid wants to be married!” Mrs. Leslie laughed.

“
I
don’t!” Jane insisted with mutinous conviction.

“Give it time, love,” Mrs. Leslie smilingly advised. “You will. ’Tis unnatural for a maid not to want a man; women are meant to marry, to cleave to a husband and bear his babes. Your husband—and a handsome lad he is too!—will change your mind soon enough, I trow, and when you hold your firstborn in your arms and think back to this day, you’ll laugh at the silly chit of a girl you used to be who thought she didn’t want a husband. Why, this time next year you’ll be looking at the man lying in bed next to you and wondering what you ever did without him, and how the sun would go right out of your life if he left you.”

“No, I won’t! I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!”
Jane stamped her foot and screamed, startling Mrs. Leslie so badly that she stabbed a needle into her thumb. Blood came spurting out, and it was only her quick thinking and a sudden swerve of her arm and an apprentice seamstress racing to staunch the blood with her apron that prevented the beautiful gold, yellow, and ivory gown from being stained.

After that, Mrs. Leslie sewed in silence and made no further attempts to cheer and enliven Jane, whom she eyed henceforth as warily as though she were outfitting a madwoman.

While his womenfolk fretted about fashion, Father was in his own heaven, planning the banquet, consulting with cooks and sampling the wares of various pastry chefs, comparing marzipans and fantasies of spun sugar, sucking on sweetmeats until our lady-mother declared that it would be a miracle if he had a tooth left in his head that was not black and rotten by the time the wedding was over. But Father merely smiled and went on dreaming of “a roast piggy with an apple in his mouth, mayhap even a gilded apple for my beautiful Katey,” who of all his daughters was surest to appreciate the gesture, and a pair of roasted boar heads, one with the tusks gilded silver, the other golden, and a roast peacock with its plumage displayed in full glory, and a swan for Kate, “nay,
two
swans for Katey,” a loving pair with their long necks entwined in a sweet lovers’ embrace, and a tall pink and gilt marzipan castle that seemed to float upon clouds of spun pink sugar with marzipan sculpted likenesses of Kate, her dress spangled with sugar crystals, and Lord Herbert beside her, the two of them standing, arm in arm, upon the balcony of “the house where love dwelled,” gazing down beyond the clouds to where black and white swans glided in graceful pairs upon a blue sugar moat.

He drove himself to vexation debating whether the eels should be jellied or stewed or served in a red wine or a cream sauce until our lady-mother quite lost her temper and snatched up a raw eel and slapped him across the face with it. His indecision over the cheeses was so maddening—he could talk of nothing else for days on end—that our lady-mother, at her wit’s end, finally gathered up an armful of the white and yellow rounds that had been sent for him to sample and ran to the front door and sent them all rolling down the long, winding chestnut-lined avenue leading from the house to the main road. Poor Father ran after them, waving his arms in the air and crying frantically, “My cheese, my beautiful cheese!” But our lady-mother merely slammed the door, rolled her eyes, made a motion with her hands as though she were washing them, and went out riding with our Master of the Horse, Adrian Stokes, “who will not bore me to death by talking of cheese.”