The Fallen Queen (8 page)

Cousin Mary beamed and clasped her hands at our delight, her toothache quite forgotten as she pinched a bit of candied orange peel from the lady’s sleeve, and told us we might eat as much as we pleased, waving aside our lady-mother’s protests that it would spoil our supper.

With an ill-mannered squeal of delight, Kate and I fell upon it greedily, like two little pigs, our eager little hands snatching up red and green candied cherries that masqueraded as rubies and emeralds.

But Jane would have none of it and turned her back upon our fun. She took from somewhere about her person a small black-bound book and sat down by the fire to read, ignoring the hurt in Cousin Mary’s eyes and the anger in our lady-mother’s. But that was Jane, true to her own self and no other, tactless in treading over others’ feelings, heedless of whom she might hurt, even if in the end it would turn out to be herself that her insolence and insults injured most.

The whole visit passed in this manner, with Jane turning a cold back upon our royal cousin, snubbing and rebuffing her every act of warmth and kindness, disdaining her generosity, greeting with hostility and contempt her every attempt to befriend her. When Cousin Mary sat down to sew with us and tell us stories of the saints’ lives, Jane would often claim a sudden upset stomach, an urgent need for the privy, sometimes even daring to loudly break wind to interrupt Cousin Mary’s stories, a rude punctuation on some saint’s work of wonder, before making her excuses and hastily leaving.

Another time, when Cousin Mary offered to teach us some exquisite embroidery stitches, Jane retorted that her skill would be better spent on plain straight stitches to make simple garments to clothe the poor. And when Cousin Mary introduced us to her confessor, Jane rudely turned her back on him and any other priest she encountered throughout our stay.

Every day she made a point of emptying her chamber pot from the window, onto the statue of the Virgin Mary in the rose garden below. And when Cousin Mary invited us to play cards, Jane stood up and preached a heated little sermon on the evils of gambling and swept the cards into the fire, denouncing them as the Devil’s tools for ensnaring souls. When Kate admired a pink pearl rosary and Cousin Mary gave it to her, Jane promptly snatched it, breaking the strand and cutting Kate’s hand so that it bled all over her new dress and gave her double the cause to weep. And, after that first night when Cousin Mary so lovingly dressed us, Jane refused to wear any of the finery our royal cousin had given her or any of the beautiful gowns our lady-mother had insisted that Mrs. Ellen pack either.

Throughout the Yuletide celebrations that marked the Twelve Days of Christmas and New Year’s Day, when gifts were exchanged, Jane appeared constantly in severe, unadorned black velvet, and each time made a point of standing near Cousin Mary with a frown on her face and contempt in her eyes to show up the difference between “the plain, godly garb that best becomes a Protestant maiden and our sour, old maid spinster cousin’s gaudy, overdecorated Papist fripperies.” No matter how sharply our lady-mother scolded or how hard the pinches and slaps, Jane would not draw a veil over her contempt for our Catholic cousin.

Cousin Mary stoically endured it all and did her best to ignore my sister’s insults and ingratitude, trying hard every time not to let the hurt show, smiling and behaving as though Jane’s conduct were flawless in every respect, sweet as sugar instead of hostile as a hornet, but she would never forget it, and we would not be invited to visit her again nor would she ever again grace us with her presence at Bradgate.

In March, after we had returned to Bradgate, Thomas Seymour, his handsome rogue’s smile long gone, laid his head upon the block and died, hoping to the last that his brother would send a messenger galloping up with a reprieve; even if it meant spending the rest of his life in prison, that was preferable to death. When our lady-mother, in her spice- and sweat-scented riding habit, swept in amongst a bevy of spotted hunting hounds, barking and howling with laughter as though she were one of them in human form, and repeated what Elizabeth had said when word of her paramour’s death was brought to her—“Today died a man of much wit but very little judgment”—Jane forced herself to stay still and show no emotion, to pull the needle through the cloth and go on with her embroidery as though nothing were wrong, when all she wanted to do was cry.

“For all her Tudor fire,” Jane said later when we were alone and it was safe for her to weep and show her grief, “Elizabeth’s heart is cold as ice!” And when she heard that after he died and his corpse was undressed a letter to Elizabeth was discovered hidden in the sole of his velvet slipper, Jane wept, inconsolable; his last words on this earth, hastily writ in his final hour, had been addressed to Elizabeth, not her. He had sent nothing to Jane, the one he claimed was his true love, not one token, not even a single word.

But Jane had to soldier along bravely, pretending nothing was wrong, hiding her head, and her sorrow, in her books, letting time pass and her heart heal, forcing herself to forget that love for a mortal man had ever dared trespass on that sacred ground where there was room for only God and learning.

Another year passed, then another, followed swiftly by two more, lulling me into contentment and complacency, the false belief that life would always go on in this lovely, lazy, humdrum way at Bradgate with occasional visits to the city. Our parents divided their time between London and the court and hosting wild and libidinous hunting parties at Bradgate that sometimes lasted for weeks at a time and were known for the excessive drunkenness, debauchery, and gambling that our parents and their guests—neighbours from the surrounding countryside and nobles down from London—freely indulged in. There were always dancing girls clad only in high leather riding boots who spun and twirled and slashed the air with whips, and the serving wenches and lads wore headdresses of wood carved to emulate antlers strapped to their heads and were hunted, pursued, and preyed upon by the drunken and lusty guests who even sometimes chased them out into the surrounding forest to drag them to the ground and couple with them like wild beasts.

The parties at Bradgate were so salacious they were even deemed scandalous by London standards, and many notables eagerly vied and angled to procure an invitation. At one such party our lady-mother and the other female guests climbed up to stand upon the table and raised their skirts high to show their legs, even above their garters, so that some important gentleman from London could present a solid gold apple to the lady he judged to have the loveliest limbs. And at another party, where everyone was terribly drunk, they decided not to risk the contents of their purses and instead used their clothes and gems as stakes. By dawn when I peeked out, both our lady-mother and father, as well as many of their guests, were stark naked, and many were nearly so. There was hardly a lady present with her gown still on or a man who had not lost his breeches.

I was always kept out of sight and away from these goings-on, but standing on my toes high above in the musicians’ gallery, I often peeked down into the Great Hall, curious to see what was going on. But Kate and Jane were often ordered to don their best and descend the stairs to entertain the guests with a musical recital, early in the evening of course, before the drunken lewdness was in full sway. Jane was a true prodigy and played the virginals, lute, harp, and cittern with great skill, but Katherine’s playing was more passionate and that, coupled with her vivacious beauty and smiling countenance, won her much applause and kisses and caresses from our parents and their guests. After she finished, Father would always call her over to sit upon his lap and feed her sweetmeats and dainty cakes and pat her coppery curls, our lady-mother would lavish her with praise, and some of their guests were so charmed by her they would pluck a gem from their lavishly apparelled person and present it to her. While Jane’s air of pious disapproval, with which she regarded our parents’ guests as she sat in morose and sulky silence after she finished playing, waiting to be dismissed, so she could rush back upstairs to shed her hated finery and return to her beloved books, earned her only angry words, slaps, and pinches.

There were occasional murmurs of marriage plans for Jane and the Lord Protector’s eldest son and namesake, Edward Seymour the younger, the Earl of Hertford, whom everyone called Ned. He was a likeable lad of fifteen, soft-spoken and rather reserved, but handsome beyond words, tall, slender, and hazel-eyed, with gleaming waves of golden brown hair, and a somewhat shy, but oh
so
charming smile. And when he
truly
smiled, broad and wide, with laughter in his eyes, he could light up a room. He came to visit us once, bearing letters from his father, and stayed overnight. Jane exhibited a rude disinterest. She donned her dullest gowns, addressed as few words as possible to him, speaking mostly in mumbled monosyllables, and pointedly settled herself in the window seat with her nose buried in her Greek Testament, curled on her side so that her back was turned to him, and refused to budge. And on the sly she downed a purge, so that when our lady-mother stormed in that evening in all her finery to drag Jane down to supper, she found the room stinking and Jane with her shift bunched up about her waist crouched over her chamber pot with a volume of Cicero balanced on her bare thighs.

The next morning as Ned was descending the stairs to take his leave, he was waylaid by Kate, wringing her hands in a teary-eyed, trembling lipped tizzy. She seemed to come out of nowhere, springing from the shadows, her shimmering copper ringlets glowing like embers, a vibrant vision in a satin gown the exact same heavenly vibrant blue as a robin’s egg.

Ned was thunderstruck, dazzled by her beauty, and all he could do was stand and stare as Kate grabbed hold of his arm and implored, “
Please
, sir, can you sing?
Please
say you can!” She was already dragging him after her, even before his lips could form an answer.

Her beloved cat, Marzipan, was birthing a litter of kittens and enduring a hellishly long labour that Kate was convinced she could help make easier by singing. She had been up since before dawn singing herself hoarse. Now her voice needed a rest. She simply could not sing another note and needed to find someone who could, and my own voice she rightly deemed too shrill and reedy to soothe poor Marzipan. “Mary, I love you dearly, but I think your voice will only add to poor Marzipan’s woes,” she said, tempering her blunt honesty with a kiss and hug before we each set off in search of someone blessed with a more melodious voice. Thus, Kate found her Ned; it was as if Fate pushed them together and struck the tinder that would ignite the first spark of love—if it ever truly was love, cynical me has to say—in both their hearts. And Ned spent the next two hours kneeling beside Marzipan’s basket while Kate sucked mint lozenges to ease her aching throat and strummed a lute as Ned sang his heart out until the seventh and last kitten was birthed and Kate was all smiles again, hugging an armful of squirming, mewling kittens to her breast and lavishing kisses, praise, and loving pats upon dear Marzipan. She lingered long enough to kiss Ned’s cheek and thank him yet again before she hastened to the kitchen to fetch a bowl of milk for Marzipan.

“That was the day I fell in love,” both Kate and Ned would always say each time they fondly recalled their first meeting. But both were nobly born children, well-schooled in their duty, and they knew all too well that their hearts would not dictate who they married; their parents would make that decision. And Kate knew that Ned was supposed to be Jane’s suitor, and Jane was her sister and as such had a prior claim upon Kate’s heart. At eleven, almost twelve, with her head full of tales of chivalry and doomed love, like her favourite story of Guinevere and Lancelot, Kate saw exquisite beauty and true nobility of the heart and soul in making such a sacrifice for her sister’s sake. She had yet to learn that life isn’t like stories, and the things that sound beautiful and grand on the golden tongues of minstrels are in truth often full of pain that stabs deep into the heart and is bitter as gall.

But the dim and distant possibility that Ned
might
someday
marry Jane was little more than a faint and gentle ripple upon the placid pond of our existence. He came and went, then his father, the Lord Protector, was disgraced, his head and fortune lost, and John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland, stood in his stead, holding King Edward’s weak, frail hand as it wielded the sceptre of power, and not another word was said of Ned Seymour; he was now a person of no importance.

Then came the February day, in 1553, when our lives would change forever.

We were outdoors, frolicking in the snow that Kate said made rosy-bricked Bradgate look like a great mound of strawberries covered with cream, bundled against the cold in thick wool gowns and layers of petticoats, fur-lined velvet coats, boots, and gloves, with woollen scarves tied tight around our heads to keep our ears warm, as we three girls were from babes ever prone to ear pains. We had even persuaded Jane to forsake her beloved books and join us. A milk cow had gotten loose, and upon seeing it, Kate had instantly conceived the notion that we should have a treat.

“
A syllabub!
We shall have a syllabub!
A sweet, sweet
syllabub!
” Her voice sang out like an angel’s sweetest proclamation through a frosty cloud of breath as she danced in delight, her boots raising lively billows of powdery snow.

She sent me scurrying to the barn to fetch a pail. Jane, fifteen and more sullen than ever if that were possible, was left to mind the cow, under strictest orders not to let it stray from her sight or to let anyone take it away. And Kate ran quickly to the kitchen to charm the cook with her winning smile and wheedle a cup each of sugar, cinnamon, and honey, a long-handled spoon, and a bottle of wine.

Cook always used to tell us there was no need to add cinnamon and honey; wine and sugar alone were enough to make a tasty syllabub, but Kate always insisted it must be “sweeter than sweet” and “as sweet as can be,” and she loved cinnamon best of all spices, so it must be a part of our special syllabub. And in the end, Cook threw up her hands and let her have her way.