The Fallen Queen (33 page)

“My husband, as Your Majesty well knows,” our lady-mother said apologetically, “is a weak and foolish man, and, alas, he fell into the power of Satan’s emissary—the evil Northumberland. I tried, with a wife’s gentle persuasions to dissuade him, but alas”—she sighed—“it is a wife’s duty to obey her husband and be guided by him, not to counsel him or try to usurp his power.”

I choked on my laughter and had to quickly feign a sneeze when she turned and glared furiously at me.

I remember our proud lady-mother, sweating and red-faced, crawling laboriously on her fat knees up the stairs of the dais to kiss the hem of Cousin Mary’s purple velvet gown and then receive her embrace and a kiss on each cheek. Then Kate and I were there, in our cousin’s arms, feeling her soft velvet sleeves enfolding us like a pair of purple wings, and the hot yet dry caress of her lips brushing our cheeks and the overpowering odour of her musky perfume mingling with her sweat on that hot July day.

“We are family,” the new queen magnanimously declared, “and all is forgiven!” Though all, I would later discover, didn’t include Jane; she had been conveniently forgotten, like dust a lazy servant had swept under the grand Turkey carpet.

I gazed up into our royal cousin’s pale, pinched, and lined face, half blinded by the rainbow of jewels bordering the purple velvet hood that crowned her faded hair as the sun poured in through the high arched windows and struck them, and prayed God that she could read my mind as I gripped her hands and silently beseeched her to be kind and merciful to Jane.

But Cousin Mary merely smiled and bent down to pat my cheek as she whispered, “You need not be in awe of me now that I am queen, little cousin; you are still as dear to me as ever.” Then Kate was in her arms, as Cousin Mary crooned over her and caressed her face—“so pale, my pretty Kate!”—and condoled with her over the loss of her husband and, taking the pearl rosary that hung from Kate’s waist and wrapping it comfortingly around her pale, bloodless fingers, promised that God would provide a balm for her wounds if she asked Him to. “
Pray,
Cousin Kate,
pray,
and in God’s love you will find a
greater
consolation than in the arms of Pembroke’s lad.”

Kate nodded blankly and answered softly with a dazed, “Yes, Your Majesty.” She looked ready to fall over in a faint, and I quickly moved to help guide her down the dais as we retreated, backward, curtsying thrice as royal etiquette demanded.

Cousin Mary said more, but neither Kate nor I remembered. We felt as if we were watching it all from under water and the babbling current muffled our ears; it all seemed so foreign and far away as though it were happening to someone else and the scene was being played out in a foreign language that neither of us could comprehend. And then it was all over, and we were home again, back at Suffolk House, and our lady-mother was calling in the dressmakers again, to outfit Kate and me for court, where we were to go and live and serve our gracious queen as ladies of the bedchamber, and at the same time sternly shaking a finger at Father, who had padded in in his velvet slippers with his comfit box in hand and his valet in tow bearing a gilded tray groaning with fruit and cream-filled pastries and pretty marzipan cakes. He sat pale and shivering by the fire in a cinnamon and white, swirled, brocade dressing gown, listing to our lady-mother insisting that he must, when questioned, say that he did not remember, that he had been ill, and in fear—
deadly
fear—for his life, and that he must lay
all
the blame upon Northumberland and say that he had given him poison that had made him follow docile as a dog wherever he led, even unto the folly of committing high treason.

“Yes, dear.” Father nodded distractedly as he nibbled on a piece of marzipan.

“But what about Jane?”
I asked.

“Shut up, Mary!”
our lady-mother hissed as she swung around and dealt me such a slap that I, sitting on the foot of Kate’s bed, fell backward, my legs actually flying up over my head, in a somersault that would have been comic had it all not been so very tragic.

Seeing our woebegone, tear-streaked faces, Father came and sat down between us. He gave us each a sugar roll and put his arms around us.

“There, there”—he patted our shoulders—“it’s not so bad; think of all the wonderful pastries and sweetmeats you shall have to eat at court! Cakes filled with berries in wine and slathered with rich cream, honeyed pear tarts in flaky golden crusts, marzipan cakes with gilded frosting—mmmm …
edible gold!
—bitter oranges and tart lemons made sweet with shimmering coatings of sugar crystals, tangy candied figs and apricots, candied cherries bright and fine as rubies, red jewels to delight the tongue, sugarplums, almonds hidden inside shells of coloured sugar, mincemeat pies, moist golden cakes sodden with cinnamon syrup, and the subtleties—just think of the subtleties, my dears!”

As our lady-mother rolled her eyes, he mused rapturously about these wonderful works of edible art, wrought from spun sugar and marzipan, in marvellous, miraculous, and magnificent designs, confectionary art and architecture, made especially for the Queen’s table, by confectioners who deserved to stand shoulder to shoulder with the world’s most brilliant architects. “I’ve never understood it! Why are the greatest architects remembered but the best pastry cooks forgotten? Where are their memorials? I’ll tell you—melted like sugar in the rain! Oh the fickleness of humanity! It makes me want to weep!” he cried and reached into his comfit box and shoved another handful of sugared almonds into his mouth.

Kate and I just sat there, staring down at the sugar rolls growing sticky in the heat of our hands. It just wasn’t fair! We were to be ladies-in-waiting, to live in luxury at court, with dancing, feasting, and beautiful clothes, and a generous allowance for each of us of eighty pounds per annum, while our sister was to languish in prison with the shadow of the axe hanging over her. Just as Nero fiddled while Rome burned, our lady-mother was draping our shoulders with pale orange satin to see which of us it suited best and debating whether the gold braid or vermilion silk fringe made the best trim, and Father was railing against the unjustly forgotten pastry cooks of bygone centuries. There seemed to be no justice left in the world!

8

T
o appease the fears and keep—or win—the good regard of her nobles, Queen Mary decreed that they should keep their church spoils and plunder, that while the religion would in time be restored, the properties and goods would remain where they were, in private hands. But there were other things that made the men squirm uneasily in their seats around the council table—Queen Mary seemed to trust Señor Renard, the Spanish ambassador, more than she did any Englishman. She deferred to him at every turn. And though it was true these men, most of whom had betrayed and sacrificed my sister to save themselves, did not merit great trust, they were all Englishmen born and bred who would put their own proud little nation before the interests of any foreign country and fight for it unto the death.

It all seemed such a fraud to me! My family and many of the men who now sat on the Queen’s Council had, until a scant few weeks ago, been Protestants, ardent devotees of the Reformed Religion, yet now we all decked ourselves with rosaries and crucifixes, listened to the priests’ Latin litanies, and marvelled at the miraculous moment when the bread and wine became the body and blood of our saviour Jesus Christ, and never missed a Mass.

“We are all turncoats and hypocrites,” I said to Kate one day as we were dressing in the room we shared at Greenwich Palace, donning the russet and black velvet livery we wore during our daily attendance upon the Queen, saving our finery for evenings, holy days, Sundays, special celebrations, banquets, balls, and feasts.

Kate vehemently agreed, adding, albeit softly lest the walls have ears, that she herself believed that Princess Elizabeth had it right and that there was but one Jesus Christ and all the rest was naught but dispute and debate over trifles.

As I finished lacing the back of her gown, Kate turned and in all seriousness said to me, “I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and try to honour and live by his teachings, I read my Bible, follow the Ten Commandments, and say my prayers; why is that not enough, Mary? Why must we be either Catholic or Protestant? Why must lives be ruined and sacrificed for either faith?”

“Heaven only knows.” I sighed as I stepped up onto the trunk at the foot of our bed and grasped the bedpost so Kate could return the favour and lace mine. “For I certainly don’t!”

Meanwhile, in Master Partridge’s house, Jane waited, through the sweltering heat and summer storms.
Wait
—that was really
all
she could do. She had already written and justified herself as best she could to the Queen.

Day after day she passed sitting tensely by the window, quietly observing the gate to see who came in and out, warily watching the Tower Green, gazing at the Beauchamp Tower, where Guildford and his brothers were kept, and the chapel. All the while the fever burned slow and steadily within her, making the August heat even harder to bear. Mercifully it never rose alarmingly high, never enough to drive her out of her senses into the arms of delirium, or to require more than cooling compresses, but it never departed either.

From her window, Jane watched our royal cousin ride through the Tower gates in triumphal procession, amidst heralds and trumpets and splendidly arrayed nobility, mounted on a white palfrey caparisoned in gold embroidered white velvet nigh down to the horse’s hooves, with Cousin Mary herself in grand purple array embroidered with a blinding blaze of gold and a jewelled coronet casting rainbows over her faded hair and haggard face.

Before we hastened to take up her train, Kate and I waved and blew a swift kiss to Jane, just to let her know that we had not forgotten her.

And Jane was there at her window, to observe in stern and disapproving silence the Catholic requiem Mass Queen Mary ordered in memoriam of the late King Edward. Though, in fairness to our royal cousin, I must say this was more for her than for him, for she had already given Edward the stark Protestant funeral service at Westminster Abbey that he would have wanted. Kate and I, as well as our lady-mother, walked, veiled and black clad, each of us with a large silver crucifix on our breast and a black onyx rosary in our hands, behind the new queen, amidst priests in embroidered and brocaded robes and miters and swinging censers that engulfed us in perfumed blue clouds of incense that made us cough and feel light-headed.

And Jane was there at her window to watch Northumberland embrace the Catholic faith in a desperate ploy to preserve his life. Whenever she saw him being escorted under guard to hear Mass in the Tower’s chapel, she pounded the glass and loudly denounced him as “a hypocrite,” “an evil fraud,” “a base and false man,” “a white-livered milksop,” and “the devil’s imp.” She accused him of “trading the beautiful temple of God for Satan’s stinking, filthy kennel” and shouted, “Whoso denieth Him before men, he will not know Him in His Father’s kingdom!” But if he heard her, Northumberland gave no sign, studiously bowing his head over his book of hours as a pearl rosary swung from his hand, the dangling silver crucifix catching the last rays of the dying sun. Sometimes his sons followed after—Ambrose, John, and Robert—a penitent trio of bowed, dark heads, but strangely never Guildford. Later I heard that when he was coaxed to convert, to try to save himself, Guildford—vain, foppish, frivolous Guildford—replied that since his wife valued the Reformed Faith so highly he didn’t think “it should be cast off lightly like one suit of clothes for another.”

On the twenty-third day of August, Jane was there at her window to witness the poignant farewell between Northumberland and his sons, outside the chapel where he had just heard Mass for the last time. Stoically, he bade each boy a fond farewell, until he came to Guildford. It was then that Northumberland’s famous composure deserted him. He pressed his golden boy to his breast again and again and wept and kissed him, before Sir John Bridges gently parted them and led Northumberland away to die upon the scaffold, where he once again renounced the Reformed Religion and implored the Queen to be merciful to his children, and remember that they had only obeyed their father as all good and obedient children were reared to do.