The Fallen Queen (16 page)

Undaunted, Father let it be known in the fish markets that he would pay well for a magnificent sturgeon, but that it must be “a veritable giant of a fish,” so that every day fishermen came to the house vying to present the largest and handsomest specimen. Father actually went out amongst these rough, dirty, salty-tongued men, with their coarse hands, fishy fragrance, and weathered, nut brown skin, claiming it was a task of too vital importance to be entrusted to the steward or even the cook. We leaned from the windows and watched as Father personally measured and examined each fish himself with as much care as though he were buying a pedigreed stallion. He also expressed an interest in acquiring a porpoise to grace the banquet table, to be carried in on an ice-covered silver tray festooned with seaweed, oysters, crayfish, and crabs. The salad, he insisted, must be the largest ever seen in England and contain everything under the sun that might possibly be put into a salad, with sugared flowers, and all the vegetables that could be carved into whimsical shapes and figures. Of course, he had not forgotten about Kate’s cake. “How could I?” he laughed when Kate asked. “My darling, don’t you know I must have spent half my life thinking about cake? Why, if I had a penny for every time cake has crossed my mind I would be the richest man in England, mayhap even the whole world! So how could I possibly forget the most important cake of all—my beautiful Katey’s wedding cake!”

Sure enough, the very next afternoon, he proudly marched a mincing little black-bearded Frenchman upstairs as Kate stood upon a stool before Mrs. Leslie, clad in only her shift, which, being of the most delicate cobweb lawn, left very little to the imagination. Father gently put Mrs. Leslie aside so that the worldly and blasé Frenchman might measure Kate’s height, to thus ensure that the giant cinnamon spice cake—to be stuffed full of apples, walnuts, and raisins, both golden and black, and covered in gilded marzipan, Father promised, thus proving he had not forgotten—would tower over the “pretty little bride and her bridegroom too!” Kate gave a squeal of delight and flung her arms around the Frenchman and kissed his cheek, then fell to giggling because his moustache tickled.

To silence the outraged cries of Mrs. Leslie and Mrs. Ellen, who were both volubly insisting that this was not at all proper for the cook, a man—and a
Frenchman
at that!—to come in while the girls were all but naked in their shifts, Father extended his trusty gilt and pink and blue enamelled comfit box, confident that it could make everything all right. It was newly filled with sugarplums, sweetmeats, candied violets, sugared almonds, cinnamon lozenges, crystallized ginger, marzipan, glacéed apricots, sugared orange and lemon slices, and anise wafers. In but a few moments all was pleasant as could be and the pastry chef was promising Kate the tallest, grandest cake ever seen at any wedding and regaling us with descriptions of the latest French fashions as we all laughed like lifelong friends and passed the comfit box amongst us.

Only Jane sat apart, crammed into the corner of the window seat with her bare toes tucked up under her and an old rat-grey shawl with moth-eaten fringe wrapped modestly over her shift. Through it all she never once looked up from her Greek Testament or uttered a word, not even when Father called out to her to come get some sweets before they were all gone.

When he heard a tale of a genuine mermaid being exhibited at a nearby fair, Father, knowing that we three girls had loved mermaids from childhood—even Jane, though she was loathe to admit it lest it make her appear childish and frivolous in the eyes of Europe’s most esteemed scholars—decided to hire the attraction away from the fair and have it shown at the wedding for all to marvel at. According to the painted placard outside the tent, the mermaid was supposed to be quite beautiful with long flowing hair like liquid gold, a tail that shimmered like dew-drenched emeralds, and a comb and necklace of red coral that she prized as remembrances of her ocean home. Father was so taken by the idea, that he procured the mermaid’s services sight unseen. He said later that he didn’t want to spoil the surprise for himself; he wanted to see it for the first time along with us.

But when the mermaid arrived at Suffolk House, our sumptuous brick and Portland stone London home, where we had moved the week before the wedding, it was such a ghastly shrivelled brown thing that none of us could bear the sight of it. Kate, who dearly loved all animals, began to weep and pummel the chest of its keeper. “Oh you evil, evil man! The poor mermaid!” she wailed. “What did you do to it?” Whilst Jane simply arched her brows and said, “Ask rather what he did to the monkey and the fish that he cut in half and sewed together to make it.” Whereupon Kate, realizing that
two
of God’s creatures had been killed to create this monstrosity, slapped his face and ran sobbing from the room.

Above the waist, the sea maiden was quite dark-skinned and had the appearance of a shaven monkey, obviously a female one as its breasts sagged like a pair of empty leather purses, and it was wearing such a hideous grimace, revealing a fearsome set of fangs, beneath the coarse blond wig glued crookedly to its scalp, that it had obviously perished in the utmost agony. The lower portion was a scaly, dried, brown fishtail ineptly slathered with green paint and a few daubs of silver for good measure, and the coral necklace and comb were clearly pebbles that had been dipped in red paint and strung together with wire.

With a cry of disgust, our lady-mother flung it out the window, and the man from the fair scurried off in a high panic to reclaim his prize exhibit lest he have to find a more strenuous form of employment.

Crestfallen, Father stood before the fire, sweating in his new marigold velvet doublet, tugging nervously at his beard, and balancing first on one foot and then the other. At last, he sighed. “I had such hopes! A
genuine
mermaid, just think of it!” Then he turned to our lady-mother and said, “I … I’m s-sorry, Frances. But it seemed like such a brilliant idea at the time.”

Our lady-mother folded her arms across her chest and glared hard at him. “Please, Hal, for all our sakes, tell me that you haven’t any more of these
brilliant
ideas in store for us—I don’t think I, or the girls, can stand it if you do.”

Father opened and closed his mouth several times, nervously bit his bottom lip, and shuffled in place like a child sorely in need of the privy, then he hurriedly made his excuses and left, murmuring something about a pair of real unicorns garlanded in flowers for the girls to ride to the altar upon. I could not help but smile, but our lady-mother merely shook her head and rolled her eyes, while Jane tucked her feet up in the window seat, bit loudly into an apple, and bent her head back over her book.

2

T
hat Whitsunday morning of May 25, 1553, I was up with the sun, already dressed in my new silver-shot plum damask and blue grey satin gown trimmed with seed pearls and soft grey rabbit fur, standing at the window, nervously twisting my amethyst and sapphire beads, and watching the dawn break like a great purple and orange egg, spilling its sunny yellow yolk out to seep over the sleeping city. As my sisters lay deep in their last sleep as maidens, silent tears coursed down my cheeks. Everything was changing when all I wanted was for it to stay the same. In but a few short hours, they would be wives off on their way to new lives, leaving me behind. Kate would be going not very far as it turned out; she wouldn’t even be leaving London, just sailing down the Thames to Baynard’s Castle, the Earl of Pembroke’s ancestral seat, a stark medieval stone fortress, named for the Norman who had built it. And Jane and Guildford would be bundled off to the pastoral solitude of Sheen, a former Carthusian monastery in Surrey, where it was hoped that, in this bucolic setting, love, or at least friendship, would flower between them. I knew better than to expect an invitation to visit either of them any time soon, and our lady-mother had already warned me not to pester and fish for one; both couples would surely want privacy and time alone together, and I would only be in the way; instead of a beloved sister, I would be the houseguest one forces a smile and endures while secretly wishing they would leave.

An hour later, wrapped in cloaks over their new embroidered lawn shifts, with their hair still up in curling rags hidden beneath their hoods, my yawning, sleepy-eyed sisters and an exhausted Mrs. Ellen, who had passed the entire night sitting beside Jane’s bed to keep her from removing the hated curl rags, boarded a barge amidst a flurry of maids, including Kate’s Henny and my Hetty, several seamstresses, supervised by Mrs. Leslie, and trunks filled with their wedding finery.

At Durham House, while the maids and sewing women flocked around my sisters, layering on the petticoats, lacing them breathlessly tight into their stays, and strapping on the padded bum rolls to lend an added fullness to their hips and a bell-like sway to their skirts, their hands fluttering with busy haste over their bodies from head to toe, making sure each lace was tied and each layer fell smooth, nipping and tucking, pinning and primping, snipping away stray threads, and making a quick new stitch where necessary, I sat alone by the window, my head resting against the cool, smooth glass, gazing down at the river. With my short stature I knew I would only be in the way if I tried to help, trampled underfoot and the scapegoat for nervous and frayed tempers. Thus, I alone saw Lord Herbert arriving with his handsome father, the Earl of Pembroke. But I kept silent. I didn’t tell Kate. I knew that if I did she would shake off the maids and come rushing to the window, and I would always remember the look on her face as all her heavenly dreams came crashing down to earth.

The slight, sickly, whey-faced boy down below who stumbled and almost fell into the Thames while disembarking from the barge was no romantic hero. Indeed, his dashing, dark-haired father, so tall and slender in his black and silver brocade and velvet, with striking sleek silver wings at his ebony temples, was more likely to make a maiden’s heart flutter. Poor Lord Herbert, even his hair seemed colourless! His clothes hung loose upon him, and even his hat seemed too large for his head, and the ostrich feather pinned to the sapphire blue velvet just seemed silly, not the graceful curling pure white plume on Lancelot’s sparkling silver helm. No, this was not a strong, virile hero who had stepped out of a story to overwhelm his bride with bold embraces and kisses that burned like fire. This was another ailing animal to be added to Kate’s menagerie, to be petted and pitied and nursed back to health. I could more readily picture Kate holding a cup of warm milk to his lips, stroking his hair, tucking him into bed, and telling him a story, more like a mother than a wife. I vowed then and there that I would close my eyes when the fatal moment came, when Kate approached her bridegroom at the altar; I just could not bear to see the disappointment upon her face.

“Look at me!”
At Jane’s despairing wail, I turned to see her shoving her way out from amidst the crush of maids and sewing women.
“Look at me!”
She flapped her hands futilely against the luxuriant richness of her gown as she stood, frowning, before the big silver looking glass even as Mrs. Leslie stepped forward to adjust the fall of green and yellow silk ribbons that floated down Jane’s back from her crown of gilded rosemary and yellow gillyflowers. “I look as brazen as a bawd!” Jane cried, miserable and on the threshold of tears, as her hands twitched against the rich stuff of her skirts, itching to rip them away. She reached up and began to tug at the ruby necklace encircling her throat, insisting it was too tight. But our lady-mother slapped her hands away, hissing at her to stop lest she break it. How Jane
hated
that necklace! It was the one she called “Cousin Mary’s bloody necklace” because the thin gold chain fit so snugly that the dark red rubies, shaped like tiny teardrops, created the illusion that her throat had been cut and blood was seeping from it, and the looser second and third chains, lined with the same rubies, made it appear as though drops of blood were dripping down to stain her breast. Since our Tudor cousins had, most strangely I thought, not been invited to the wedding, something which no one would explain to me, our lady-mother had sat Jane at her desk last night and made her pen a letter saying that though her dear cousin could not be with her on this most joyous day she would be wearing the necklace she had given her and thus would feel her dear presence hovering around her—“like a pair of loving arms,” our lady-mother dictated—and Jane wrote obediently.