The Fallen Queen (27 page)

I peeked out from behind our lady-mother and smiled and waved at Kate, who nodded back at me and called, “You look
beautiful,
Mary!”

At first it had seemed very likely that I would be left behind, our lady-mother insisting that I would be mistaken for a fool, a jester, that my very presence would make a mockery of this momentous occasion, but Jane, exerting her will as Queen, announced that I would walk behind our lady-mother, and have the honour of carrying Jane’s black velvet bound prayer book—the one she was never without and most often wore hanging from a chain or cord about her waist—upon a white satin pillow. “You shall be the torchbearer of the
true
religion, the Reformed Faith, Mary!” Jane announced. And when our lady-mother continued her protests, Jane adamantly declared, “I shall not go without
both
my sisters!” Father set aside his comfit box, brushed away the sugar clinging to his chest, and said there was really no cause for concern since I would be dressed with such opulence no one could possibly mistake me for a fool unless they were one themselves.

So I walked proudly behind my sister, the scarlet-infused sable of my hair plaited with pearls beneath a deep green velvet hood edged with emeralds resting in nests of silver braid. I wore a gown of white satin embroidered with ornate flourishes of silver vines and leaves blooming with dainty flowers made of emeralds and pearls, and over it a loose, silver-braided green velvet surcoat flowing gracefully over my hunched and twisted spine. In my hands, like a sacred relic, I carried my sister’s prayer book lying stark black against a white pillow. Originally four long silk tassels dangled from each corner, but Jane, despite the appalled gasps of those surrounding us, ripped them off one by one, saying, “God’s truth needs no adornment!”

Behind me and Kate followed Northumberland, his wife, and their elegantly arrayed brood of sons and daughters, and the spouses of those already married. Only Amy, to my great dismay, was absent. When I dared pluck Robert Dudley’s cloak and timidly asked her whereabouts, he glared down at me from his haughty height and said she was in the country where she belonged and could not embarrass him or anyone who mattered. Then he turned away from me, barely managing to conceal the disgust in his dark eyes, directed both at me and the absent Amy, whose very existence by then was enough to kindle her husband’s anger. The Dudleys were trailed by the gentlemen of the Council in their long black velvet robes, white neck ruffs, and gold chains of office, the highborn lords and ladies who had been appointed to serve the royal family, and dozens of servants in the royal Tudor green and white livery and the Dudleys’ blue velvet emblazoned with their proud emblem of a bear clutching a ragged staff.

As we set sail, I noticed that the people who thronged the riverbanks were very glum and silent. None of them waved or cheered. There were a couple of lacklustre cries of “God save her!” as though they were praying for Jane’s deliverance from a cruel fate, not celebrating her ascension to England’s throne. The truth was they didn’t know Jane; she was a stranger to them, unlike Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, whom they had watched grow up and come to love. They distrusted Jane; they saw her, and, given the circumstances, with good reason, as Northumberland’s puppet, a tool to set his own son upon the throne.

“They don’t seem very happy,” Jane worriedly observed.

“Nonsense!” Guildford scoffed. “They are simply awestruck by my beauty—I mean our beauty”—he laid a hand on Jane’s arm which she contemptuously jerked away—“and my majestic presence, which, with a little effort I am sure you will, my queen, acquire in time. King Edward was a poor, scrawny lad, a pale, puny weakling,” he continued. “And, though accounted a most handsome man in his youth, his sire, Henry VIII, was a hideous, monstrous mountain of bloated, rotting flesh, and bald as an egg beneath his cap too. I’ve heard it said that three goodly sized men could fit inside one of his doublets. But
we
”—Guildford smiled—“are young and beautiful! Look!” He waved a hand out to encompass the mute and scowling masses. “Some of them are weeping from the sheer joy of beholding me—I mean us. Thank you, my good people, thank you, your tears are more eloquent testament of your adoration than your words could ever be!” he called out to them and blew them a single kiss.

“You idiot, you addle-pated ninny, they
hate
us!” Jane snapped. “You can’t even see it; you’re so besotted with your own beauty! You empty-headed nincompoop! I
hate
you!”

“My dear wife,” Guildford said, favouring her with an indulgent smile. “I am not so empty-headed that it has escaped my notice that you have just admitted that you find me beautiful, even though you tried to hide it amidst a volley of insults. There is too much passion in your hate for me to be deceived and not see through it to what it really is—you love me and you know it. Everyone does; I’m very lovable! You shouldn’t be ashamed, you know, I am your husband, so it is quite all right, even expected, for you to love and adore me like the sun that lights up your dreary little life. Besides, many find me beautiful, and how could so many people possibly be wrong? Now smile and wave at our people, Jane, smile and wave!” he coaxed, lifting her limp hand by the wrist and waggling it in the air. “That’s it! You’re doing splendidly!
Smile!
I said
smile,
not pout and puff out your cheeks like you have a toothache. And no glowering at me as though your eyes were daggers you want to bury deep in my heart, when we all know it’s my fleshly dagger you want buried deep inside you instead. But you won’t admit it, not even to yourself. You’re frightened by your desires and fighting to deny them, but ’tis a losing battle, and your love, and lust, for me shall in time be the victor. It’s inevitable—I’m irresistible! Now
smile
and wave! Watch me and try to be as wonderful as I am. Smile and wave! Smile and wave!”

“You’re wonderfully
dreadful!
Pompous, conceited, vain, and I hate you!” Jane retorted, stamping her foot and nearly falling, grimacing as she twisted her ankle in her unaccustomed chopines.

“Wonderfully
desirable,
you mean, Jane,” Guildford calmly corrected as he caught her arm to help steady her. “Look out there, my wife”—he swept a hand over the silent crowds thronging the riverbanks—“there stand our subjects, and every one of them wishes they could make love to me; I can tell by their smouldering eyes and silent, reverential awe. Not everyone who wants me makes so bold as to tell me so; some of them are shy, but I can
always
tell. When you’re as beautiful as I am, you become accustomed to being the unattainable object of desire to so many people; why, I couldn’t even begin to count them even if I wanted to try! How they envy you to have me in your bed! That is what each and every one of them is thinking, you’ve incited the envy of all London, you lucky girl!”

Jane just glowered at Guildford and tried to pull her hand away. But, despite his seemingly delicate beauty, he maintained a masterful grip upon her wrist, forcing her limp hand to flutter up and down, until the barge reached the Tower just as a deafening hundred-gun salute was fired to welcome them.

“I hate you!”
Jane hissed when he finally released her wrist. “I’ll hate you until I die!”

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much!” Guildford simpered to his brothers, who snickered and nodded.

“I’ll hate, detest, deplore, and despise you until you die!” Jane stamped her cumbersome cork-soled feet and screeched like one of the cantankerous, old women who sold fish in the marketplace, heedless of our lady-mother’s swiftly delivered pinch and hissed reminder that such undignified behaviour did not become a queen.

“Then you’ll cry when you realize how much you love and miss me,” Guildford serenely surmised to the tune of his brothers’ encouraging laughter.

“Hmp!” Jane snorted and, gathering up her full skirts and thrusting her nose disdainfully high in the air, started past him. Her indignant exit, however, was ruined when her chopines threw her off balance and she began to fall. But Guildford acted quickly; he caught and swept her up into his arms, and, as all those aboard the barge gave a hearty cheer, he carried her ashore and through the Tower gates.

After Northumberland stepped forward and most presumptuously accepted the keys to the Tower, which were always given to the new monarch upon their arrival, Sir John Bridges, the Lieutenant of the Tower, smiling back over his shoulder at Jane and Guildford from time to time, thinking them no doubt a pretty and playful pair of young lovers, began leading the way to the White Tower, where the royal apartments were. Kate giggled and snatched a basket of rose petals that had been intended to carpet the ground the new king and queen would walk upon from a startled page boy and rushed after them, flinging handfuls of red and white petals in the air so that they wafted down in a perfumed rain over Guildford and Jane.

“Do stop it, Kate!” Jane snapped over Guildford’s shoulder. “You’re wasting perfectly good rose petals that could be made into cough syrup!”

“To give to the poor no doubt, pardon me, my bride, the
Protestant
poor,” Guildford jibed. “
Not
the Papists for we
loathe
them and do not want to ease their coughs and sore throats, better that they should die and burn in Hell. Is that not an apt assessment of your way of thinking, my love?”

“It’s no laughing matter! It is our Christian duty to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and give drink to the thirsty! But unless they mend their ways and turn their back upon the Roman Church, they deserve to be damned and burn for all eternity!” Jane retorted heatedly, shaking her head hard to dislodge the shower of petals that had just landed there courtesy of Kate.

“You put covering nakedness before quenching thirst,” Guildford observed. “How interesting! I’m rather surprised you didn’t put it before appeasing hunger as well. After all, we don’t want people falling on their food like naked savages, do we? No, far better that they should be clothed first before they even think of food and drink. Is that not so, my queen? You see, I am endeavouring to understand how you think. I do everything else so well, I should hate to think that I would fail to be a good husband.”

“It is not a jest!” Jane cried, looking as though she was about to burst into tears.

Guildford heaved an exaggeratedly languid sigh. “Life is a joke, Jane. Better to laugh through it than to cry! Don’t you think I know that everyone laughs at me? But what they don’t know is that
I
laugh
first!
”

Just for a moment, as I waddled along, struggling to keep up and not let Jane’s black velvet prayer book slide off the slick white satin cushion, I thought I saw the ghost of sadness in Guildford’s eyes, but it flitted past so tantalizingly swift, I was never
really
sure, though in my heart I always felt certain that I had in that moment caught a glimpse of Guildford Dudley’s soul. But whatever it was, he shrugged it off and laughed and Kate gave a joyous whoop and flung another handful of rose petals over their heads.

Once in the royal apartments, Guildford tossed Jane onto the bed and called for wine. “I’m rather parched,” he added as Jane floundered amidst her full skirts and cumbersome train and kicked her feet in the clunky cork chopines and screamed for Kate and me to “get these things off!” We hastened to unbuckle the leather straps only to have Jane seize them from our hands and fling them across the room. She was aiming for Guildford but hit the big silver mirror he was standing in front of instead. Guildford calmly stepped aside, utterly unfazed, sipping his wine as the mirror shattered. “You shouldn’t have done that; that’s seven years bad luck,” he remarked. “Now your eyes shall have to be the mirror I see myself in.”

With a scream, Jane flung herself back on the bed, arms and legs wide, and began kicking her feet and pummeling the bed with her fists just like a child in the throes of a tantrum. Then, all of a sudden, she heaved herself up, her face flushed crimson and chalky pale all at the same time and covered with a pearly sheen of sweat. Nearly falling, tripping over her skirts as she went, she began tearing at her clothes, ripping laces and fastenings, desperate to get them off, slapping Kate’s hands away and knocking me down when we tried to assist her. “I’m burning up!” she screamed. “These sweltering velvets are a foretaste of the flames of Hell, lit by the bonfire of our vanity! God save me! I can
feel
the flames already, burning inside me, devouring me!”

Without even trying to unfasten the clasp, she tore Cousin Mary’s necklace from her throat, cutting the back and side of her neck, and letting the broken links of gold and deep red rubies fall like tears of blood onto the floor. Kate tried to go to her and press a cloth over the cuts, but Jane snarled like a mad dog and shoved her away. Once she had stripped herself down to her shift and torn off her garters and stockings, Jane raced across the room to the washstand where the heavy white porcelain pitcher and basin sat, lifted the pitcher high, and poured the water down over her upraised face, sighing with ecstatic relief as it drenched the front of her shift and dripped down onto her bare toes to puddle on the floor.

A lusty gleam came into Guildford’s eye as he saw how the water had plastered the thin white lawn shift to her form and turned it nigh transparent. He thrust his wine cup into Kate’s hand and said in a regal tone, “Be gone! The King would be alone with his Queen!”

Kate giggled and grabbed my hand and as we pulled the door closed behind us we couldn’t resist peeping around and catching a last glimpse of Guildford struggling to lift our kicking, squirming sister into his arms, and carry her, fighting and protesting all the while, back to the bed.

“Kiss me the way you did in the meadow at Chelsea, Jane!” he urged as Jane snatched up a pillow and bashed him over the head, rumpling his beautifully arranged curls and sending white feathers wafting down over them like snow.

“Oh ho!” Guildford chuckled as he lunged to pin her down again. “I thought I’d married a dove, but I see I am saddled with a scorpion instead! But, nay, she shall
not
sting me; I shall saddle and tame her instead!”