The Fallen Queen (43 page)

I was thirteen and fancied myself too old for dolls, so I felt a trifle foolish, and embarrassed for her as well as for myself, but I didn’t dare disobey nor could I bear to disappoint someone who had been so kind to me, one I knew to be in such pain, mayhap even dying if the whispers gliding like serpents through the palace corridors were true.

The hours dragged slowly past as we dressed and undressed the dolls and enacted little dramas with them. Suddenly she turned and rummaged in the chest and brought out two more dolls—a replica of herself in her sumptuous black velvet wedding gown, so densely embroidered with gold you could barely see the black beneath, and a male doll, golden-haired, with a little golden dagger of a beard decorating his chin, clad in gold-embellished white velvet and a bloodred cloak embroidered with pearls and golden thistles. She started to give him to me, but then, with a horrified gasp, as though she could not believe what she had almost done, snatched him back and hugged him possessively against her breast and glared at me with crazed eyes that
dared
me to try and take him from her. I didn’t know what to do. Thankfully the moment passed, and she realized that I was no threat. With tears rolling down her face, she thrust the doll fashioned in her own likeness at me. Then, though she was crying so hard she could scarcely see, we reenacted the couple’s nuptials until Queen Mary collapsed weeping on the floor and her two most devoted ladies-in-waiting, Jane Dormer and Susan Clarencieux, emerged silently from the shadows to help her back to bed.

“Go away, little gargoyle,” Susan said over her shoulder as they led their weeping mistress away. “This is no place for you.”

As I closed the door behind me, I heard Cousin Mary’s sobs grow into keening wails as she cried for her Philip.

Soon she was dead. We were bathing her corpse and dressing her for the last time in the blue velvet and ermine gown she had worn on her coronation day, carefully pinning it to conceal how loose it hung upon her emaciated frame. Kate’s clever fingers worked wonders with the dirty, matted hair, snaring it in a golden net beneath a coronet of spring flowers formed of precious gems.

As we worked silently over her corpse, outside the bells tolled and the people sang and danced in the streets, and wept with joy, to welcome the young woman they called “Our Elizabeth.” She was the phoenix that had risen from the ashes of all the Protestants “Bloody Mary” had burned to cinders along with her popularity, throwing her people’s love onto the pyre and eradicating all memory of the once-beloved “Merciful Mary” and the even more dimly remembered “Princess Marigold.” Now her death was cause for jubilation, a national holiday that would be celebrated for many years to come.

As Kate rubbed rouge onto the gaunt cheeks that were like yellow wax in the candlelight, our eyes met over that poor, pathetic body and we silently wondered, now that Elizabeth was queen, what would become of us. Elizabeth, unlike Mary, had never favoured or befriended us, but neither had she been cruel, only coolly indifferent; to Elizabeth we were just there, like pieces of furniture. I hadn’t told Kate, but I had already set to work embroidering a petticoat with red and white Tudor roses and the crowned golden initials
ER,
“Elizabeth Regina,” as a gift for her, to show that we had no royal pretensions, we weren’t pretenders to the throne, and we wanted only peace, not to be embroiled in conspiracies and schemes. I prayed Elizabeth would read correctly the message embroidered in those royal roses of red and white petals that symbolized the union of the houses of York and Lancaster. Our very survival might depend on it.

14

W
ith the advent of Elizabeth, Lady Jane Seymour’s health began a sharp decline; her bad days now far outnumbered her good. The Queen didn’t like having a fever-bright consumptive with a hacking cough too near about her and often gave her leave to retire from court to her family’s country estate, Hanworth, in Middlesex. She sent Kate with her as “a remedy against loneliness for a young girl so accustomed to the crowded life at court.”

To our immense relief, Queen Mary’s demise had not substantially altered our position, except we, like most of the court, were Protestants again. We rode once more in golden chariots clad in ermine-banded crimson as part of an even more splendid coronation procession, and wore again our red silk petticoats with the golden butterflies in remembrance of our lost sister. We also retained our privileged posts as ladies-of-the-bedchamber.

But Elizabeth, though graciously cool and largely indifferent to me, was always very wary of Kate. Though Kate would have gladly gone on her knees and sworn that she didn’t want to be queen, she wanted only to be happy, as a wife and mother, that a loving, happy household was the only kingdom she coveted, it wasn’t enough. Elizabeth knew that as long as she remained the unmarried “Virgin Queen,” which she seemed bound and determined to do despite the confusion and consternation it caused, Kate would be regarded as the heir presumptive; thus many would flock around and flatter her and even devise plots to bring her to the throne sooner rather than later.

There were many in the world who thought Elizabeth’s claim to the throne tenuous at best. Those who refused to acknowledge the marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn said Elizabeth was a bastard born of an illicit and illegal union, and thus the Crown should go to someone more worthy and of unblemished pedigree, someone like my sister Kate, and her resemblance to the “Tudor Rose,” Mary Tudor, “The French Queen,” was often favourably cited. There were even whispers of a Spanish plot to abduct Kate and marry her by force to Philip’s imbecilic son Don Carlos, a youth who took fiendish delight in torturing animals and servants. But Kate wanted no part of any of it, and certainly none of Don Carlos and his manias and madness. If anyone dared try to speak to her about her “royal destiny,” she would stop her ears and flee their presence as fast as she could.

That was why, I thought, it pleased her so much to escape the court, to travel by a slow horse-drawn litter to Hanworth with her invalid friend. It was the
only
way Kate could know
true
peace, away from the maelstrom of plotting that was Elizabeth’s court. “Deliver me from this viper’s nest of intrigue!” she would always cry as she bolted down the steps into the courtyard and leapt, unassisted, into the litter, impatient to be off and away from it all, looking forward, never back, not even to wave at me.

But there was more to these visits to Hanworth than I ever knew until much later. That was where she met Ned again. Edward Seymour the younger, the handsome Earl of Hertford, who had once, briefly, been our sister Jane’s suitor.

As though Fate had decreed it, Kate told me when she finally bared her soul and confessed all, nigh two years after that fateful day, she had been wearing a robin’s egg blue gown—the very same colour she had worn that long ago morning when they had first met on the stairs at Bradgate—when Ned Seymour, the sun making a golden blaze to burn out the brown of his hair, descended the sunken stone steps into the garden where Kate was busily gathering a pretty bouquet to brighten his sister’s sickroom.

Gallantly, Ned insisted that he must help her. As he bent to pluck the blossoms, his hazel eyes gazing deeply into Kate’s stormy blue grey ones, he let his fingers brush against hers as he handed them to her. He showed himself exceedingly well versed in the lore and secret language of flowers and recited what each blossom stood symbol for.

“Purple iris for a message,” he began. “Like the one hidden in this bouquet. Scarlet poppies because everyone deserves one fantastic, extravagant folly in their life, like a foolish or impossible love”—he smiled knowingly at Kate—“even if the memory makes us cringe forever afterward.”

His words conjured memories of Berry and made Kate blush. To give her a quiet, private moment to compose herself, Ned knelt over a patch of purple blue blossoms.

“Jacob’s ladder,” he announced. “To bid thee, fair maiden, come down to me like an angel from heaven and bless me with your love and favour.”

Then he was down again, enthusiastically reaching for more.

“Goldenrod”—he twirled the feathery spire of golden flowers around by its stem before giving it to her—“for encouragement, for I would have that from you, just as I would give it. Snowdrops for consolation, that we might find comfort together, and be a balm to each other for the many sorrows and disappointments that have dotted our lives like a field of these dainty white flowers.”

Both paused to ponder the many painful losses that had scarred their families and the day they knew would inevitably come when they would both lose a beloved sister and friend—the Lady Jane Seymour.

But Ned was quick to shrug off his sorrow.

“Daffodils!” With an excited grin he bent to gather some of the jaunty yellow flowers that could always coax a smile out of any who beheld them. “To herald a new beginning, and—dare I hope?—a new love.” He paused and stared deep and hopefully into Kate’s eyes before breaking away to snatch up some sunny yellow flowers. “Here! I know you like yellow, so we must have celandine—for the joys yet to come, for all that we have to look forward to!”

Like a man possessed, again and again Ned swooped down to gather more flowers, thrusting them into Kate’s hands then darting back for more. “Like a seagull diving for fish,” Kate would later laugh when she recalled this scene for me.

“Lilacs for the first stirrings of love; lily of the valley to welcome the return of happiness; larkspur so that your heart may be as light and gay as the lark’s song; crocuses for joy and gladness; red roses for passionate love, white for purity, and pink for your perfect grace—your movements are as beautiful as your face.” He paused to take a breath and just to look at her, long and deep, like a parched and thirsty man who had just stumbled out of the desert drinking his fill from a welcome oasis. Kate would say afterward it felt like a whole lifetime passed in that moment, before he resumed gathering flowers again.

“Honesty for honesty, of course, that most precious gift which lovers should
always
give to one another; periwinkles for tender memories to cherish, like the day I met a little girl in a robin’s egg blue dress fraught with worry over her beloved cat. Pinks for love pure and true; ranunculus for one so radiant and charming it would be a grievous sin not to tell her so. And here”—he brandished a posy of fragrant little pink flowers—“sweet peas for the most delicate, delectable pleasures. Look at them, blushing, bright pink, like the lips both above and below, visible and modestly hidden beneath your petticoats, that I
long
so much to kiss.”

Then, as though fearing he had said too much, and that Kate might slap his face, he rushed on, snatching up more flowers.

Yet he could not stop. He had dared be bold and still Kate lingered.

“Honeysuckle for lovers entwined in passionate embraces who dream of each other whenever they are apart both by night and by day; vetch because I would cling to thee; gentian because you are so
very
dear to me; Canterbury bells for constancy.” He added a generous spray of the swaying purple blue bells to Kate’s already overflowing bouquet.

“Pink gillyflowers to remind us to always remember a love that should never be forgotten, yellow for fidelity and devotion, and white to tell you how sweet and lovely you are. And sweet-scented white stock, because you will
always
be beautiful to me even when your hair is white as snow and wrinkles web and crinkle your face. You will always be as beautiful to me just as you are now.” His fingers caressed Kate’s as he added these to her bouquet.

Then he was gathering a feathery and ticklish spray of leafy greenery.

“Ferns for sincerity,” he explained. “To stand surety for the truth in every word I speak to you. Feverfew for warmth like the yellow sun at the heart of their white petals; wallflowers, red gold like your hair”—he dared twirl a curl around his finger—“for faithfulness in adversity. And lungwort because you
are
my life, like the air my lungs breathe; you, and hope of you, of someday calling you mine, keeps me alive. And these flamboyant beauties—heart’s ease pansies—to remind you,
my
flamboyant beauty”—he gazed possessively at Kate—“to think of me, always and fondly. Peppermint for warm feelings because that is how I would have you think of me; rosemary for remembrance and a love that never forgets or dies; and forget-me-nots because I can
never
forget you and hope you never will me. Lastly, this pink cabbage rose”—he thrust it boldly into the centre of the by-then enormous bouquet—“as a confession of my love in case you have any doubt.”