The Fallen Queen (17 page)

Seeing Jane’s distress, I tried to suggest that the gold and jewelled gillyflower necklace that had been specially made would be far better on its own, that the bloodred seemed so jarring, like blood splashed upon the shimmering golden pallor of Jane’s gown, but I was overruled. Our lady-mother insisted that Jane must wear the rubies so as not to offend our royal cousin, though I personally thought she would be far more offended by not having been invited. And besides, our lady-mother continued, with Kate standing beside her, glowing with the green fire of emeralds, Jane must have gems of a contrasting colour but similar richness to adorn her.

“Stop it, Jane!” Kate, radiant as the sun itself in her cloth-of-gold and cream gown with her unbound hair blazing and bouncing down her back like ringlets of red gold fire, stuck out her lips in a pout and stamped her foot down hard in its dainty golden slipper, rattling her grass green emeralds, diamonds, and pearls. “Why must you try to spoil it? You’re not the only one who matters! This isn’t just
your
day. In case you’ve forgotten, there are two other brides, and I happen to be one of them, and while I cannot speak for Catherine Dudley,
I
want today to be happy, a
grand
and
glorious
day that will live forever in my memory so that when I’m an old lady I can tell my grandchildren about it, and I would like to spare them a description of my sister’s glum and sour countenance sulking and brooding throughout the ceremony and feast. You look beautiful, as every maid has a right to on her wedding day, and I am sure the learned Protestants of Europe will understand and forgive you for forsaking those glum, dowdy weeds you favour for just
one
day, since it
is
your wedding day, and I’m sure God will as well; He is said to be most forgiving.”

“Well said, Katherine.” Our lady-mother nodded as she moved to straighten the crown of gilded rosemary and jewelled flowers that Kate’s impetuous tirade had knocked awry and gently turned her around to untangle and smooth the vibrant rainbow of silken ribbons trailing down her back. “A tad peppery perhaps, but you show promising signs of practicality and reason. If Lord Herbert is ever given a diplomatic post, I trust you shall prove yourself a great credit to him, and not merely as an ornament he will be proud to display.”

I wormed my way between my two sisters, standing glaring at each other, and reached out to take their hands.

“
Please,
don’t quarrel,” I pleaded, my voice trembling with the tears I was trying so hard not to shed. “This is the last day we shall all be together for what may be a very long time. We are sisters, despite our differences, and even if we cannot agree about things like dresses, we can at least agree to love each other and not let our differences divide us.
Please,
Jane, forget the dress, it doesn’t
really
matter. It’s just material to cover your body, and, for your own sake, as well as ours—we who love you and like not to see you sad and sulking—
please
smile and try to make the best of it. Like Father always says, ‘If Life gives you lemons, slice them and sprinkle them with sugar; if the hand of Fate hurls almonds down on you, mash them and make marzipan.’ And I
know
you can, Jane;
you’re so clever!
And you are
so
beautiful. I wish you could see that, and that it is truly not a bad or sinful thing. How could it be when it was God Himself that gave you your beauty? And you do not have to choose. You can be beautiful
and
brilliant too! Verily I should think most men would account it even more of a marvel to see a beautiful woman display such a sharp intellect when most care only for primping and pretty clothes. And I’m sure, if you are kind and make friends with him, once Guildford sees how much your studies mean to you, he will not make you forsake them. They say he studies singing; so you could be at your books while he is at his lessons, you could both set aside time for your private studies, I’m sure of it!”

With a great rustling of stiffened petticoats and embroidered and shimmering skirts and sleeves, my sisters knelt down and put their arms around me and leaned their cheeks against mine, and I tasted their tears as well as my own.

“I’m sorry, Kate,” Jane said softly, reaching around me to squeeze her hand. “I shall endeavour not to spoil your day. You are right, as is Mary. I have been selfish, and I am sorry.”

“Thank you, Jane,” Kate said in a tremulous, tearful little voice. “I’m sorry too. I should not have lost my temper. I know you are unhappy, and I am sorry for it, so very sorry; I wish there were some way, some magic words or a wand I could wave, that would make you as happy about your marriage as I am about mine.”

“The heart in those words is magic to me,” Jane answered, and I was nigh crushed between them as they embraced, but I was so happy they had made their peace that I didn’t mind at all. “And I shall try,” Jane promised, “as Mary with Father’s deliciously sage words advises, to make sugared lemons and marzipan out of what Life has given me.”

“With Guildford you already have the lemons and gilt for the marzipan, so all you really need is sugar and almonds.” Kate giggled, and I opened my eyes and saw both my sisters smiling through their tears and laughing. And it felt good; I felt warmed by love, sunshine, and hope.

“Everything will be all right now,” I whispered, but it was more a prayer rather than an assertion.

I took each of my sisters by the hand and led them to stand before the mirror. We smiled at each other. We knew what to do; the ritual was dear and familiar.

“The brilliant one!” Jane stepped forward and declared herself to the looking glass.

“The beautiful one!” Kate followed with a saucy smile and sashaying hips.

And then came I. “The beastly little one!” I piped.

And then our lady-mother announced that it was time for the brides to go downstairs. As we clung together, I felt my sisters’ bodies, and the hearts within them, jolt and start at those world-changing words. Silently, they each pressed their lips against my cheeks, then stood and let the maids straighten the ribbons and cascading hair flowing down their backs and smooth down their skirts and sleeves one last time. Then, their hands still holding mine, trembling beneath the great, gracefully flowing fur-cuffed bells of their over-sleeves, we three sisters walked out to the top of the stairs. I stood and watched them descend, and then I turned and made my way higher upstairs to the musicians’ gallery where I would stand and watch, “like a little angel from her cloud,” Kate said. “Our angel,” Jane added. And then they left me and went downstairs to meet their destiny, to become wives and leave maidenhood behind, just as they had to leave me.

Standing on my tiptoes, despite the protesting pains it caused to cry out in my back, hips, and knees, I folded my arms atop the rail and gazed down upon the scene transpiring in the Great Hall below. The musicians, costumed in silver, to make yet another of Kate’s dreams come true, were playing a short distance from where I stood, and they smiled and nodded kindly to me. Being players, who had spent their lives roving, entertaining others to fill their purses, playing at both fairs and the private parties of the nobility, I was not the first dwarf they had seen, and they did not regard me with the same repulsion and superstitious dread as most did, and between songs one of them laid down his lute and brought me a small stool to stand upon, to take the strain off my toes and ease my aching joints.

The wedding passed in a gold and silver blur, through the shimmering wet veil of my tears and the blare of the music filling my ears, and then the feasting and dancing began and the musicians changed to a livelier tune. Though I could not see his face from my perch so high above, Father was, I could tell, as proud as a goose who had laid a golden egg as he presided over the long tables groaning beneath the weight of gilt platters heaped high with all kinds of dainties and delicacies he had chosen. There were towering pyramids of fruit and nuts, cheeses and sweetmeats, even little roast birds, and crayfish boiled to an angry red. There were so many, piled so high, that I feared they would collapse in an avalanche upon some unsuspecting guest who dared pluck a sugarplum from below. And in the centre of it all an immense and awesome wonderland of a salad with every kind of salad greens, vegetables, roots, and sugared flowers that human imagination could possibly think of tossed and mixed into a great gilded basin shaped like a scallop shell, presided over by a large marzipan sculpture rising out of its midst, depicting a trio of mermaids made in the brides’ likenesses, with carrots and turnips and all the vegetables that could be carved like fishes, sharks, whales, dolphins, and turtles swimming upon the leafy sea of salad greens. I could just imagine Father boasting that one way or another he was determined to have a mermaid for his daughters, and that though he had lost one he had gained three more and these even better as they were made of marzipan.

And of course there was the cake. At one point Father even swung a squealing, happy Kate up onto the table to stand beside it in her golden gown to show that, true to his word, it towered above her. Kate was so happy! She picked up her skirts to show her pretty ankles and dainty, twinkling golden slippers and pranced joyously around the cake as though it were her dancing partner, until she stopped, laughingly crying out that she was dizzy, and several gentlemen pressed close to catch her as, with a joyous whoop, she leapt into their outstretched arms. And, as though she were a little girl, they threw her high into the air and caught her several times before setting her on her feet again and relinquishing her to the timidly smiling boy who was now her husband. Kate plucked a sunny yellow dandelion from the salad and smilingly tucked it behind his ear and gave his cheek a hearty, smacking kiss before she grasped his hand and laughingly led him off to dance, while Father, groaning and salivating in an ecstasy of gluttonous delight, dug both his hands into the cake, tearing out two great handfuls, and brought them to his mouth. The expression upon his face as he chewed conveyed such bliss I was certain he was imagining that he had died and gone to heaven.

Seeing her with him, I gave a great sigh of relief, feeling the fear fall from my heart and sink away into nothing; what had been big as a boulder was now the tiniest, most minuscule piece of gravel. She didn’t seem disappointed at all; she must have been looking at him through the eyes of love. I pressed my hand to my lips, and though she could not see me, blew a kiss to my lovely, loving Kate, wishing her all the happiness in the world.

I glanced over at Jane and Guildford, sitting at the banquet table, and wished I could see love lighting up their faces. There seemed to be an invisible wall about them setting them apart from the other guests; though they were surrounded by smiling, happy revellers, these two alone took no pleasure in the day, looking as though they wished they were any place than at this grand party meant to celebrate their nuptials.

Fastidiously nibbling on a slice of sugared lemon and occasionally sipping from a gilded goblet, Guildford Dudley looked bored and beautiful. But Jane just looked sad and very pale, her eyes, indeed her entire expression, dull and dead. From time to time Guildford would reach out and touch her hand, as though to assure himself that she was still alive. Each time Jane would flash him an annoyed grimace and pull her hand away.

“Jane, you promised!” I wanted to shout down at her.

Watching them sitting there together, so strikingly and discordantly apart from all the gaiety, I sighed and shook my head as my fingers fiddled with the cameo pinned to my plum damask bodice. It was a wedding favour, given to all the most prominent and influential guests. Specially carved by an Italian craftsman, it depicted Guildford Dudley’s handsome profile, and was wreathed by golden gillyflowers creating a cunning little frame that could be worn as either a pendant or a brooch. I was so surprised that I had been given one, I thought myself of so little consequence, but Guildford himself had presented it to me when I arrived at Durham House. Still in his gold brocade dressing gown and slippers with his golden hair bound up tight in curling rags, he had waved aside the servants who rushed to help him and knelt down before me and pinned it to my bodice with his own lily-white hands, explaining that I more than anyone deserved to have some beauty in my life. The words were pompous and condescending, but I could tell by his smile and the look in his pale green eyes, and the very fact that he made the gesture when there were so many much more important people he could have given it to, that this was a genuine act of kindness. Guildford was really not as bad as Jane made him seem. As I spent more time with him, I began to think that there was more to Guildford Dudley than most people realized, that his flamboyant ostentation was part of a role he was playing, and the joke was truly on those who never bothered to look beneath the surface.

I watched with great interest as Father approached this dour couple. Smiling broadly, with a flourish, he presented each of them with a golden bowl heaped high with salad. I saw Guildford smile, his hand reaching out to touch Father’s as he set the bowl before him. Jane sullenly shoved her salad away, and Father smilingly drew the shunned bowl to himself as he sat down between them. He waggled his golden fork at Jane, his scolding marred by the great smile that graced his face, before he stuffed his mouth full of salad and gave his full attention to her bridegroom, chewing and nodding assiduously at whatever Guildford was saying as a dandelion waggled up and down his chin, its stem caught in his beard. Jane folded her arms across her chest and glared hard at them, and harder still when Father, in a distinctly, and disturbingly, coquettish manner, leaned forward to feed Guildford some salad from his own fork, but neither of them appeared to feel the scorch of her censorious stare; they seemed lost in their own little world. Jane would later, most disparagingly, repeat some of their conversation to me.

His eyes on Guildford all the while, Father sipped from a golden goblet of “the splendid Rhenish” he had chosen and, laying a hand over Guildford’s, asked how he found the wine.