The Fallen Queen (44 page)

I remember every word and blossom. I would later weave them all into an intricate beribboned border, the most elaborate I had ever embroidered, around a petticoat for Kate.

Kate threw back her head and laughed. Had her hands not been brimming over with so many flowers it took both her hands to hold them, she would have applauded in sheer delight. She thought it all gallant flattery and was awed by the smooth and silky delivery, as polished as an actor in a play; he had never once faltered over the flowers or their meanings.

“These flowers were intended for your sister,” she observed. “Should I
really
carry her such a bold and ardent bouquet? Truly, sir, it seems overly …
passionate
for an invalid.”

“Nay”—Ned shook his head, his eyes never once leaving Kate’s face—“they are all for you and none other, Mistress Kate. For Jane we shall have to pick another, with purple coneflowers for strength and health, and flowering hawthorn to express our deeply cherished hope that she will soon recover; she will like that. But the message in
this
bouquet is, as you say, too overwhelming for an invalid, though I daresay if she knew, it would gladden her heart immeasurably to know I had picked it for you, just as she picked you, the most beautiful rose in all of England, for me. She planned this, you know. She conspired with Fate, who first put you in my path many years ago when I was sent to woo your sister, and now my sister, by bringing you here, has done the same. Call it what you will, my Kate—for you
are
my
Kate—God, Fate, or Jane, we were meant to be together.”

“When I looked from my window”—he pointed up to it—“and saw you here in a gown bluer than the sky, the same robin’s egg blue as I remembered, with your hair shining in the sun, bright as a robin’s red breast, in the midst of this garden, like a beautiful little blue egg in a nest, I knew I must put on my blue and red doublet too”—he touched his chest—“and come down to you, so that we two might be one as we were meant to be.” Then, offering her his arm, he asked, “Now shall we add some ivy to finish this bouquet, for steadfastness, an attachment that ends only with life itself?”

That was the moment Kate decided that Berry was rotten and felt love for Ned Seymour ripen, full and beautiful, in her heart. Like Eve plucking the apple, then and there she gave her heart to him. I wasn’t there to stop her, though ’tis folly to think I could have. Kate was ever one to follow her heart wherever it led, oblivious to any danger, pain, or obstacles that might lie in her path; even if it brought disaster crashing down onto her own pretty head, she would race blindly ahead, her eyes always on the pretty prize, never glancing at the ground and the ruts and rocks that might trip her up, following Love as though it were a pretty golden butterfly she must hold within her reverently clasped hands. “All for love,” that was ever my Kate. It was her blessing, and her curse.

I saw so little of my sister over the next two years we were all but strangers. I rarely saw her except when she wanted some pretty embroidery for her petticoats or a new gown. Though I noticed, whenever I passed her in the palace corridors or glimpsed her at some celebration, there was a new lightness in her step, she seemed to always be smiling, and I often caught snatches of a song on her lips. Though her best friend was dying slowly, her bloom fading fast, Kate was dancing through the days just as she did the nights, until the schemers wore her nerves down to a shadow, and she and Jane Seymour must retreat back to Hanworth again.

Even our lady-mother’s sudden death did not dampen Kate’s newfound joy. We had been distant and cordial since her remarriage, but, like dutiful daughters, we donned mourning black and went to Suffolk House to wash and dress her body in preparation for the grand funeral Elizabeth had generously arranged to honour our lady-mother as she was the daughter of a queen. She was to be laid to rest amidst pomp and splendour and illustrious ancestors in Westminster Abbey, conveniently forgetting the fact that she had lost her title when she married so far beneath her. Kate and I shared the role of chief mourner. Though it should have been Kate’s alone as the eldest, she insisted. As we led the ponderously slow procession, with black-clad maids behind us helping to bear the burden of our heavy black velvet trains, we stared straight ahead and tried to ignore the tittering in the pews about how our lady-mother had perished. In bed with Master Stokes, just as November 20 became the 21, she died with her boots on and smiling, seized by a sudden stroke.

“She went like that,” our boyish young stepfather had informed us, snapping his fingers to illustrate the swiftness. “I do not think she felt any pain though—she was greatly smiling and just afore that had given me every indication that she was well pleased.” Indeed, the embalmers, mindful of the deceased’s dignity, had used bands of linen and small weights to give our lady-mother’s dead face a more appropriate expression for when she lay in state, for which Kate and I were most grateful.

Nor a year later, when the court reeled with scandal and my own heart grieved the loss of one I scarcely knew but remembered fondly, was Kate’s glowing happiness the least bit diminished. The Lady Amy, Robert Dudley’s wife, who was rumoured to be ailing with a cancer of the breast, had been discovered dead, with her neck broken, at the foot of a staircase, yet the hood remained straight upon her head, and her skirts were not disarrayed as one might expect after such a fall. Many cried
“Murder!”
and pointed at Lord Robert, and the Queen’s reputation was also besmirched by the scandal. Gossip raged that they were lovers, and that Lord Robert, grown weary of waiting for God to take his unwanted wife home to Him, and fearing that Elizabeth might succumb to one of her many foreign suitors, had taken matters into his own hands and had Amy killed, thinking her demise would clear the way for their marriage and another coronation at Westminster Abbey from whence he would emerge crowned King Robert I of England.

But Elizabeth knew better—Robert Dudley wasn’t worth a kingdom. Even when Lord Robert was sent away to await the inquest’s verdict and the court was ordered to don mourning for Lady Dudley, Kate still smiled and sparkled and showed the world how beautiful she looked in black.

Eventually a day came, after Robert Dudley had been welcomed back at court, after the inquest had adjudged Amy’s death an accident, and we were allowed to doff our mourning and don colours again, when Kate came dancing into my room. Spinning in her long maroon velvet cloak, with pink roses blooming in her cheeks, and her eyes bright as stars, a blue ostrich plume billowing gracefully on her hat, to match the border of blue roses I had embroidered on the petticoat peeking from beneath the hem of the elegant apricot satin gown embroidered with maroon roses and vines I had made for her, she came to rest, kneeling beside my chair. I was hard at work on the petticoat she had begged of me, the one I would come to know only after it was finished as “Ned’s bouquet.” She put her arms around me and kissed my cheek, and I giggled and pulled away as the feather on her hat tickled me.

“It’s your own fault, you know,” she laughed. “You chose the feather and fashioned the hat, and most becoming it is too,” she added as she turned to admire herself in the looking glass. Then she told me that she
must
have a nightcap, “the most
beautiful
nightcap
ever
made, and I want
you
to make it for me, Mary,” embroidered all over with deep purple violets and trimmed with silver-veined lace, with a purple satin bow to tie “just so” beneath her chin. “I
must
have it and
soon,
” she insisted.

“All right,” I sighed indulgently. “You shall have it.” I gazed hard at my sister, then shook my head and sighed again. “If I didn’t know better, I would think you were in love.”

“Just in love with life, Mary,” Kate said with a merry trill of laughter. “Just in love with life!” It wasn’t exactly a lie. I just didn’t know it then. But, to Kate, Ned Seymour was her life.

Before I could ask any more questions, she was gone; with a another quick kiss, and a song on her lips, she danced out my door again, glad-hearted, featherlight, and diamond bright.

I just smiled and shrugged it off, chuckled, and shook my head at Kate’s latest caprice. It made my heart glad to see her so happy and light of step, always smiling, with pink roses blooming in her cheeks again. Mayhap it was stupid or naïve of me, but I
never
thought it had aught to do with any man. Kate didn’t seem to favour any particular gentleman; she danced and flirted with many, and sometimes even let them kiss her—in quiet corners, forest glades during hunting parties, velvet-curtained alcoves, and moonlit gardens. Twice or thrice, that I knew of, she even let their fingers delve inside her bodice or rove daringly beneath her petticoats. Best of all, she had forgotten all about Berry; she could now pass him by without a glance. She was done moping and weeping for what she had lost and could never have again, and I hoped she now realized that he was never worth it. But I
never
saw her single Ned Seymour out or show any sign that he was special; she treated him with the politeness due the brother of her best friend and nothing more. I don’t even recall that I ever even saw them dance together or heard her mention his name. I saw them nod and smile in passing and exchange polite greetings and comments on the weather and Jane Seymour’s health, but that was all.

So I shrugged and went on with my sewing, foolishly surmising that flowered nightcaps were set to become the latest fancy, and soon other ladies would come knocking at my door with little velvet purses filled with coins or pretty trinkets and other gifts, prattling of ribbons, laces, and the flowers they favoured. God help me, I never thought it was anything more! I should have laid down my sewing and gone out and boldly confronted Kate, grabbed her arm, stared her down, and gotten to the heart of the matter, but I, to my everlasting regret, didn’t. I sat and sewed and did nothing.

15

O
n a blustery December morning, two years after Elizabeth had come to the throne, when Kate was twenty and I was sixteen, the Queen would hunt anyway despite the cold, cold weather. Elizabeth defiantly declared the air “bracing” and that she was not afraid of its bite. I heard that Kate was ailing and had sent Henny to beg that she might forgo the pleasure of the hunt and remain abed. Since I was never a good choice to follow the hunt, being too likely to get in the way and be trampled, Elizabeth readily gave me leave to stay behind and tend my sister. “Lady Jane Seymour is ill too,” she tartly commented as I snipped a stray thread from the hem of her evergreen velvet riding habit, “though it would be more remarkable if she were well.”

As soon as I could, I made my curtsy to the Queen, thanking her again, and rushed to the room Kate and Jane Seymour shared, expecting to find them both coughing and feverish.

I burst in without knocking. A startled cry greeted me, and I whirled around to see Kate standing before the looking glass as Lady Jane finished lacing her into the gown of butter yellow satin bordered with rich golden braid and embroidered all over with hundreds of dainty royal purple violets with gold-veined green leaves, that I had only put the final stitches in the week before at Kate’s anxious urging. I had thought to have more time with it; after all such a gown was better suited to springtime, so surely in the deep of winter there was no need to hurry, but Kate had wept and stormed, stamped her feet, and pleaded with me to make haste, insisting that she must have it and soon. But when I asked her why, she shrugged it off as merely “a fancy to be clothed in spring when outside the world is all snow and ice.” She had come to my room to check its progress every day, sometimes twice or even thrice. Only when the last stitch had been put in did this fearful, frantic impatience fall from her like a dead rose petal.

“What are you doing here?” Kate rounded on me angrily.

“I—I heard that you were ill,” I stammered.

“Well, I’m not, but don’t you
dare
tell anyone! My cloak—quickly!” Her rude snappishness, so unlike Kate, told me that she was very nervous about something.