The Virgin Queen's Daughter - Ella March Chase (9 page)

Chapter Eight

Whitehall Palace

W
HEN MY GUIDE FLUNG OPEN THE DOOR OF THE
Maids’ Lodgings the chamber with its clusters of beds and chests and women might have been a Roman bacchanal, it was so different from anything I had seen before. I was not used to crowds of women. Perfumes wrestled each other in the stuffy space. Cloth of every color and pattern swam before my dust-irritated eyes. Quilts and cushions, petticoats and embroidered shifts drooped over every surface. Small chestnut and white spaniels fought over confits some lady had abandoned within their reach, while women in various states of undress squabbled trying to be heard above the din.

I could not help but mark the contrast between this room and my own tidy bedchamber at Calverley with its sun-drenched windows, well-ordered chests, and the fresh-scented rosemary Mother insisted be strewn about the rushes.

I hesitated outside the door as the usher announced me. “Mistress Elinor de Lacey of Calverley.” Silence fell in an instant.

A thin-faced blonde froze in the midst of boxing her maid’s ear; a handsome dark-haired woman stopped trying on a ruby necklace before a polished metal mirror. A dwarf, her back twisted and her head too large for her tiny body, pushed aside the skirt of a vain-looking redhead to pierce me with a hostile glare. I felt as outlandish as the butterflies pinned upon a bit of cork one of Father’s friends had sent from Brazil. I curtseyed, aware the travel dust had turned my gown to the dull muck green of Calverley’s cow pond.

“So this is the mysterious Mistress de Lacey.” The red-haired beauty twitched her skirts out of the dwarf’s grasp as if the tiny woman had spit upon the precious damask folds. “Someone had best order our newest maid a bath and comb her hair for lice or Her Majesty will send her back to Lincolnshire before the sun sets.”

My cheeks burned. “It is a long journey from Lincolnshire. I would be grateful for a chance to scrub the dirt of the road away.”

A woman with honey-colored curls and a face round as an overblown rose bustled over to me. “You had best beware lest Lettice toss you out with the bathwater. She does not tolerate anyone save the queen having hair more glorious than hers. I swear yours is more fiery gold than any I have ever seen. My name is Isabella Markham.”

“You were at the Tower with the princess.” My father had told me how loyally Markham had served Elizabeth even in the darkest hours. Suffered the terrible uncertainty of that damp cell, then walked from the dread fortress—but not to Tower Green and the block. Elizabeth had been placed under house arrest at the manor of Woodstock. I imagined the reunion the women shared when Elizabeth was no longer a friendless princess, but rather, queen.

Markham’s eyes narrowed as if she had traced my thoughts. “You are a cunning little snip.” I was not sure whether she meant it as compliment or criticism. “Have you studied the lot of us before you arrived here? Perhaps Lettice is wise to be wary of you.”

“I have not studied you at all. I visited the Tower as a child, and asked many questions about the princess. Sir John Bridges and my father indulged my curiosity.”

Markham’s eyes darkened. “Curiosity can be a dangerous thing at court.”

The flame-haired Lettice flounced over to me. “You will find that out for yourself, Mistress, for all of Whitehall will be turning its scrutiny upon you.”

“May I present Lady Lettice Knollys?” Markham said, an edge to her voice. “She is quite a great lady here. And not just in beauty. She is the queen’s own cousin. Granddaughter of Mary Boleyn, Queen Anne’s sister.”

It was no secret that Mary Boleyn’s eldest daughter, Catherine Knollys, was King Henry’s child. So royal blood flowed in Lettice’s veins—unless you believed the Boleyn women were something more sinister. There were many who would claim the proud Lettice was niece not only to a beheaded queen, but to a witch. Lettice made a token curtsey; she looked like a more finely drawn copy of portraits I had seen of the queen herself.

“My mother was still near a child herself when Queen Anne was executed,” Lettice boasted. “She stayed with Queen Anne in the Tower and walked with her, even to the scaffold. And when Elizabeth was a neglected princess my mother was her most loyal friend. It broke Elizabeth’s heart when my mother chose to flee England for the continent, rather than live under Catholic rule.”

Many prominent Protestants had left thus during Mary Tudor’s troubled rule. But they had flocked back home when the Catholic queen died.

“There is much Tudor blood in this room.” Lettice shook me from my thoughts. “Lady Mary Grey’s sister, Jane, thought herself royal enough to steal the crown.”

I scanned the women, searching for the one who had grown up in the nursery with the ill-fated nine days’ queen. I glimpsed a brown-haired lady with great, soft eyes and a sweet yet lively smile. Lettice followed the direction of my gaze.

“You mistake Lady Sidney for Mary Grey?” she snickered. “The sister of the famous Sir Phillip, bred from one of the handsomest lines in England for that bad animal? Perhaps Lady Sidney could hoist Lady Mary onto a table so our new guest can see her.”

At that moment, the dwarf who had glared so sourly stalked within a hand’s breadth of me. Craning her head back so far back that her French hood seemed like to tumble off, she crimped her lips together.

I swallowed hard. “You are Lady Mary Grey?”

“I am.” Her eyes dared me to doubt her. I know she read my thoughts. I had been certain she was a court fool, her task to amuse the ladies with her capering and her jests. But the blood of both Lancaster and York flowed in her torturously shaped body. She was Plantagenet as well as Tudor. Royal as well as disfigured.

I was groping for words to soothe her when the Mother of the Maids of Honor charged up to me with such force of character I had to lock my knees to keep from taking an involuntary step back. “I am Lady Betty,” she said, “and it is my responsibility to see you presentable when the queen summons you. It will be no small task from the look of you. Hot water, at once,” she barked at a servant. “Nigh on to boiling. And soap and rags to scrub her.”

Moll scoured me scarlet with scented soaps and rinsed the dust from my hair to make me ready to take the oath all the queen’s ladies-in-waiting must swear: To serve Her Majesty loyally in all things.

I tried not to fidget as Markham laced up my bodice. She ordered Lady Mary Grey to tie the points of my sleeves, which would attach them to the shoulders of my bodice. Lady Mary had to climb on a stool to reach, her thick hands clumsy, struggling with the laces. I remembered how Father felt when people first saw his scarred face. Even blind, he could feel when the staff recoiled from his deformity. I was half tempted to work the laces myself, to save Lady Mary’s dignity. And yet, she was bristly as a hedgehog. She even seemed displeased with the gown chosen for the occasion. It had been plucked out by the other ladies once the contents of my trunks were spread across the cluster of beds the maids of honor shared. The five other women whispered among themselves, fingering my garments as if to measure their worth. Measure
my
worth. An oozing sensation filled my stomach, but I would not let them see my unease.

Lettice Knollys looked down her nose at me as if my gown had been rummaged from the rag bag. “I think it only fair to warn you, Mistress Nell. You have overturned the hive with this appointment to court. There are few posts for young women this close to the queen. The most powerful families in England were vying to win the privilege for their daughters.”

“It is an honor to serve the queen’s majesty.”

“La, yes. It is easy to understand why men throughout England are eager to have someone to whisper in the queen’s ear and gain rich appointments for their sons, exalted marriages for their daughters, settle disputes in their family’s favor. You have taken this chance from them. There is no telling how long it will take for another position to open. The hive is swarming with angry bees since you leapt out of nowhere to unseat them.”

“And no one has a nastier sting than you do,” Lady Mary retorted sourly.

“Did I feel some insignificant creature beating its wings?” Lettice grabbed a feathered fan on a chain at her waist and fluttered it close to her catlike face. “Ah. It was only Crouchback Mary. You will learn to ignore her like the rest of us do, Mistress Nell.She is like a pesky spaniel yapping over nothing. We often tread upon her.”

“Then perhaps you should watch where you are going.” The retort spilled out. I did not cap my folly with my coup de grace—
Looking down that haughty hawk’s nose as you do, you should be able to notice a person right beneath your feet.
Yet my insult stung enough without the cream.

Lady Mary gaped at me beneath her silver headdress. Markham and the others reminded me of sheep waiting to see if two rams were about to lock horns.

I forced myself to smile, but it felt more like a grimace. “Of course,” I tried to salvage the moment. “I have no spaniel, so I would not know about them.”

“Every lady-in-waiting is allowed one.” A fresh-faced girl whose name I could not remember tried to ease the tension in the room. “One spaniel and one servant to lodge at the palace.”

“Perhaps Mistress Nell has already found her pet.” Lettice patted Mary Grey’s head. “You two may share a bed. We have to double up, and no one wishes to be Mary’s bedfellow. She snores, what with her squashed-up face.”

Lady Mary did not even flush. Yet, I could not help but imagine what it might be like to be the object of such scorn.

At that moment, the door to the maids’ lodging swung open beneath one of the ushers’ hands. A woman of about sixty years, garbed in bright yellow damask, swept in. Brown hair gathered into an elegant gabled headdress. Soft lines feathered an animated mouth and the corners of eyes that seemed both restless and kind. The other ladies-in-waiting curtseyed. I did the same. The woman bustled over to me, her bead-bright eyes reminding me of a jackadaw who has just discovered a diamond in the dirt.

“So, my dear Lady Calverley’s daughter has come to us at last!” The woman clasped my hands. “I am Lady Katherine Ashley.”

A murmur told me how astonished the others were at the head lady of the queen’s bedchamber taking an interest in a lowly newcomer. In the days after Elizabeth’s coronation, Father had told me how the new queen rewarded those who had served her in the troubled years before a crown was placed on her head. Elizabeth had summoned her beloved governess to her side, given her the highest rank of any lady-in-waiting. Katherine Ashley had suffered prison twice because of her loyalty to her royal mistress, and thus shared in Elizabeth’s triumph as no one else ever would.

“Mistress Nell is nearly ready for the ceremony, my lady,” Mary Grey said. “But she fidgets worse than a child and her gown is hopelessly countrified.”

Irritation sparked at me. I had made an effort to defend her and now she was maligning me to Katherine Ashley! Perhaps there was a reason the other maids did not like her. One that had nothing to do with her deformity.

“Peace, Mary,” Lady Ashley scolded. “Mistress Elinor looks lovely. There will be time enough later to remake her things more fashionably.”

My lips tightened. So my gowns were not up to court standards? These garments my mother had labored over and worried over and packed with so much care?

“Look, now,” Lady Ashley clucked. “Mistress Elinor has barely arrived and we have already offended her.” The woman touched my arm. “Forgive our bluntness. I fear what is considered quite fine in Lincolnshire is not appropriate in London. I shall summon up women to sew for you as soon as the ceremony is over.”

I thought of the coin mother had locked in my coffer. Money I had intended to hoard to buy new books. I remembered my mother’s fingers, raw from stitching, not because we had no servants to sew for me, but rather, because she had wished to make the garments with which I would start my new life.

“I am quite satisfied with my gowns,” I insisted. “My mother made them for me.”

Lady Ashley chuckled gently. “Lady Calverley has been away from court too long to know the fashions. Let us begin again, my dear. Forget Lady Mary’s unfortunate blunder. She is a tiresome creature at best, and at worst—well, I believe she enjoys prickling things up so others are as uncomfortable as she is.”

Lady Mary busied herself applying more pins to my bodice, but I glimpsed a hint of something I had not seen before. Vulnerability?

“Uncomfortable, bah,” I heard Mary mumble. “Who isn’t uncomfortable with the head lady of the bedchamber barging into the Maids’ Lodgings? It is hardly fitting.”

“Perhaps that is why no one sent for me as I directed.” Lady Ashley shot Mary a quelling glare, then turned back to me. “I asked to be told the moment you arrived, Mistress Nell. Your mother and I were dear friends in the old days back at Chelsea Manor. And even before, when Katherine Parr was still queen. Those were dangerous times for all of us. I thank God they are over. And now, here you are! My Elizabeth queen and you to wait upon her. Is that not glorious indeed?”

“It is.” I put injured pride behind me and warmed to the woman’s welcome.

“Yet I swear I would never have guessed you belonged to Thomasin had I not known you were coming to court. You look nothing at all like your mother.”

“Father said I was independent from birth, determined to look like myself.”

Ashley’s features softened. “We were grieved to hear of his death. I met him several times over the years and found him a most knowledgeable man. So bold in his thinking he might have been taken up for heresy had he not been wise enough to remain in Lincolnshire.”

“Father was in danger?”

“That is why your mother forbade him to come to court. If King Henry could not ask him the questions, your father could not answer. England lost a great thinker when John de Lacey died. It must have been a sorrow to him that he had no son to carry his studies forward now he is gone.”

I thought of the lessons Father had planned out to guide me. Let the world think he mourned having no male heir. I knew better.