The Stolen One (13 page)

“Does she love him?” I asked as Mary Howard came over with her own needlework and pointed to a line of stitches. I nodded my head in approval and she giggled and went back to her cushion. Anne Russell frowned at her and threw her own work down in exasperation.

“Of course,” Mrs. Ashley continued in a low whisper. “He’s one of the few men who have stood up to her,
and secretly I think she likes it.” She laughed, as one does who doesn’t laugh often. “He’s intelligent. Smart. Handsome. But she cannot marry him. He’s beneath her. Sadly, there are some things a queen cannot have.” Her eyes riveted to the queen’s door. “And that’s why she is now quite beside herself.”

“I know a potion,” I said quietly as I pulled up another stitch. “For nerves.”

“A potion. And how would you know such a thing?” she asked, her head swiveling around and her eyes now meeting mine with great interest.

For Anna. Sometimes Grace had given Anna potions when her nerves had attacked. “Thyme, pig’s tail, and digweed,” I said quietly to myself.

“Dorothy,” Mrs. Ashley softly called across the room. Dorothy put her stitching down and approached Mrs. Ashley, who whispered the ingredients to her. “Go to the kitchen, please and instruct someone to prepare this.”

Dorothy’s smile disappeared at mention of the kitchen. “Why, Mrs. Ashley,” she began. “They don’t dare make such a potion for fear if she take a turn, they will be worse for the blame.”

“And how would you know the inner workings of the kitchen?” Mrs. Ashley asked, one eyebrow raised.

Dorothy shrugged. “Only what we all know, I assure you,” she said and she went back to her stitching.

“The queen will never let her marry her young man,” Mrs. Ashley commented, her voice low.

“Is it true the queen chooses husbands for her ladies?” I asked.

“Of course,” Mrs. Ashley responded. “We are the closest to her in the whole wide world. It is only natural she should pick our husbands so there isn’t a rat amongst us. Not that one doesn’t sneak in once in a while. Oh, I’ve prattled on too long, one of my great faults, I do have to say. So why don’t you, dear girl, tell me more of your life in the country.”

The queen’s door opened. “She’s quite distressed,” Blanche Parry said to Mrs. Ashley. “I fear for her, I do. She’s asking for you.”

“I think I know where I can get my potion,” I said quietly after Blanche had returned to the room.

“Well then, get it, by all means.”

“One more thing,” I said as Mrs. Ashley rose, a look of a soldier going into battle on her face. “Have you ever heard of a Mrs. Eglionby?”

She turned her head briefly toward me, her mouth gently falling open. Then she looked back toward
the queen’s door. “No, never, never in my life have I heard that name.”

I gathered some linens in our room. Anna, as was becoming usual, was nowhere to be found. I came across Dorothy Broadbelt in the hall, fetching a blanket for the queen. “Do you know where I may find the laundress?” I asked.

She narrowed her eyes. “Why shouldn’t your maid take care of such matters?”

“She’s indisposed,” I lied.

“She always seems indisposed now, doesn’t she? I can’t tarry,” she said, walking on down the hall. But over her shoulder she said, “Below the stairs beyond the kitchen. Mind no one sees you, for they’ll think you have secret maladies.”

I wound my way through several long corridors, and down one set of creaky stairs, asking directions at least twice before I finally found the room. A dark cavity it was, like a dark, dank dungeon. Mrs. Twiste stood before two great pots, stirring with a long stick. “Leave it there,” she nodded to me without looking up. Farther back in the gloom were two figures laughing as they worked at a long trestle table.

It took a moment to realize it was my Anna with a
young man with curly locks. He looked up at me and I started, so like Christian he was. Anna glanced up slowly, then lowered her eyes.

“Oh, it be you,” Mrs. Twiste said as she pulled the long stick out of a pot, a mound of wash wound around it. She flopped it down on the table with a big grunt. “And why would a fine lady the likes of you be down in my lair?” She laughed.

“What are you doing down here?” I mouthed to Anna. She pretended not to see me. The young man next to her caught my eye. I saw now, he was no Christian. He had the devil spark in his eyes. And then I saw a movement behind him, a large cow-faced boy in a red tattered jacket sitting on a stool holding a broom.

“Your sister is assisting me Oliver, that’s all,” Anne Twiste said. “She needs a little happiness and she gets it here.”

My head swung away from Anna back to Anne Twiste. Our eyes met. She knew. She knew Anna was not my maid. And I knew that Anna had not told her. She would never betray me. “She shall not come back. It’s unseemly,” I said.

“Hmmmph,” she snorted. “I think she has more will than you know.” She started to lay the garments out one by one. She sighed, the deep sigh of one who has
seen too much of the world. “Nay, tell me. What is your need? A babe in the womb? Warts? A herb for your bad breath like that Mary Ratcliff.”

“Ratlip.” Oliver laughed, and the other boy joined in. I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, so strange he looked.

“That be George the sweeper,” Mrs. Twiste said, seeing my look. “He means no harm. I found him meself as a baby, left in a basket on the wharf. Poor thing, and I nursed him myself, I did. But he disappears, my boy, usually to the wharf, looking for his real mama, I suppose. And he has eyes for the maids, he do, but they all spurn him, the wenches, and make fun of his queer looks, they do.”

“I need you to make a potion for one of the ladies,” I said, pulling my eyes away from George the sweeper. Indeed, there was something about him, something hell-born. Perhaps his mother had seen it the moment he was birthed.

“Aye, now you are talking. It’d be my pleasure. But it will cost you a pretty coin.”

“I need digweed, thyme, and pig’s tail.”

“Oliver.” She tilted her head. “Go to the market for me.” He brushed past me, looking me over, a small grin tilted on his lips.

W
hen I walked into the queen’s chamber, Ipollyta was sitting next to the queen’s head, like a little harpy bird on a hedge. She gently stroked the queen’s temples, chanting some sort of incantation. The queen was still in her linen nightgown, with a quilted silk jacket over it. She lay in a great wooden canopied bed, her hair, natural and full, fanned out on the pillow like a setting sun. The aroma from a pomander—benjamin, sweet cinnamon, civet, and cloves—hung in the air. The queen’s eyes opened and lit upon the window. “Someone pull the drapes,” she murmured in a low voice, unrecognizable. “I can see it, how it vexes me always, even in the day, smiling at me like the devil.” But then she turned her head and saw me.

“Ah, it’s my Spirit. I hear you are at work on my new gown. Bring it here. It will cheer me.” There were cushioned beds on the rushed floor where her senior ladies slept sometimes, and a delicate dressing table in a corner. On it were several small jewel caskets and a looking glass, and a collection of lidded pots. Dorothy had told me sometimes the queen’s ladies painted her face with lead and vinegar to cover her pox marks.

“Yes,” I told her. “But I’ve only just started, and I’d like it to be a surprise, if I may.”

She shut her eyes and frowned. “Bah, surprises. They are hardly ever good.”

I sat down on the bed, at her feet, holding her potion carefully in my hands. “I think you shall be very pleased. It will be my finest work ever, I promise. But it might take me a good while.” I held the potion to her.

“Shall it?” she said softly as she lifted up and drank from it. “And then what will you do when you are finished?”

“Whatever you want of me,” I said, “Your Majesty.” I took the goblet from her and set it on a table next to her bed.

“Stay with me,” she said, taking my hand. “You soothe me.” She motioned impatiently for Ipollyta to stop
rubbing her temples. Ipollyta got off the bed and left the room.

“Everyone betrays me,” the queen moaned in that eerie voice from before, her hand covering her eyes. “Everyone. Cannot I trust anyone?” She gripped my hand and pulled me closer. “Look at me, Spirit.”

I tried to pull away, but she held firm. “Can I trust you?”

I looked her straight in the eye, but could not answer. Our eyes locked, and a shiver went down my back.

“Yes,” she said after a moment, softening. “I can trust you. Eyes never lie, Spirit.” She sighed, pulling her hand from mine. “Tell me another tale. One of young love and happy kisses.”

I found indeed I could not lie, not to her, and what I said caught me by surprise. “I think I may have loved once, perhaps, but the life he offered was beneath me. He was a shepherd,” I told her.

“Ah, a country lad. Was he handsome?” she turned to me.

“Yes, very,” I said, lowering my eyes.

“Gallant?”

“Indeed,” I said, trying to hide.

“Oh, how I love a good romantic tale. If I can’t have it,
I only truly wish for it for others. As long as I approve, of course. So tell me, Spirit, why are you here and not with your shepherd? Let me guess, the noble Spaniard turned your eye and you came to London in search of him.”

I didn’t answer. She reached up and tilted my chin to her, and something strange within me turned as she searched my eyes. “Well,” she said after a moment, smiling. “You are with me. And here you shall stay. For I don’t easily let go of those that are dear to me, as you shall soon know. I am much cheered,” she said, starting to sit up. “Where are my birds? And my beloved Day! Someone fetch Robert. Eyes, Eyes, where are you!” she called. Not long after, he rushed in, as though he had barely stepped out of the room. I stood up and backed away. And it was as though I wasn’t there. They embraced and kissed, both tearful, murmuring sweet nothings. They loved each other. They truly did.

The next morning Dorothy took me to the queen’s store to select a gown for the outdoor feast. Her store was currently in the Tower, where most of the queen’s jewels were also, in the Jewel House. My stomach fluttered with anticipation as we walked up the stairs. Dorothy
explained that sometimes the store was moved when the queen went on progress or to another palace and it took dozens of yeoman, great leather trunks, and weeks of planning. “Edmund Pigeon stands there with the list, and if anything gets by him without him marking it down, his face turns beet red and he stomps his feet like a child.”

“Who’s Edmund? Wouldn’t that be Nicholas’s job as Clerk of the Wardrobe of Robes?” I asked as we continued up the stairs.

Dorothy stopped and looked at me. “Nicholas. What’s the little liar been telling you?” She laughed. “Edmund is his father, Clerk of the Wardrobe of Robes; Nicholas is his assistant. Someday, perhaps, he shall inherit his father’s position. Someday.”

“Why would he lie to me?” I asked as we walked past the guards into the store. It was a circular room the entire floor of the Tower. It was lit by two small arched windows and a low fire. A young maid walked from the back of the room. She stopped and bowed nervously. She sat down in a chair by the fire, her face lowered. My eyes adjusted to the light and I saw that there were many gowns hung on forms, others draped over rods, and stacks of boxes and trunks neatly organized. Rush
mats were strewn upon the floor, and there were several carved oak chairs about the room. On a long table was a parchment book—records, perhaps? There was the most sweet smell, like crushed roses and lily water. I inhaled the aroma as my eyes took in with wonder what was before me.

“Oh, who knows. He’s very ambitious,” Dorothy continued. “He means to marry one of us, and I tell you, as handsome as he is, he’ll probably hit his mark. That wasn’t, by chance, who you were visiting with in the garden last night, was it?”

“No, I was simply smelling the roses, as you were,” I said, smiling.

“Once a week gowns are aired from the trunks and alternated,” Dorothy explained as she lifted one off a rod and shook it. “We sprinkle sweet powders, too, to keep them from smelling. The tower is quite full of odors and long-ago ills, I tell you. The queen won’t come here; as you know, it holds many unhappy memories.

“This be just a small part of her wardrobe,” she continued. “Every other week or so she asks for certain gowns to be brought. That’s part of Nicholas’s job—to bring them to the palace and mark them in the lists.
The queen possesses a great memory; she can name all her gowns, and she has nearly two hundred. And over a hundred each of kirtles, foreparts, mantles, petticoats, cloaks, several score of jeweled fans…”

“Two hundred gowns?” I interrupted, astonished. I walked up to a gorgeous court gown that was hanging on a form, lightly touching the dark plum damask and ruched silk. The stitching was done diamond-wise, couched in gold thread, and set inside the diamond shapes were tiny pearled half-moons. I pulled the fabric closer to me.
Why, miss, you have a mark, a perfect half-moon.

“That’s Italian,” Dorothy told me as I dropped the fabric. “She doesn’t like that one for some reason or another—one never knows with the queen. That one is French,” she said, nodding to another gorgeous square-bodiced gown of dark green. “And there are plenty more in the trunks—fans, gloves, hats, cloaks. The list is there.” She nodded to the long table. “ Everything must be accounted for. At any given time her tailors might be working on three or more new gowns for her, or reworking several old ones. And of course, there’s the one you are sewing in secret.” She winked at me. “You shall show me, won’t you?”

I ignored her. I was standing in front of the black
and white harlequined gown the queen had worn the night of the masque. “Black. The queen’s favorite color along with white,” explained Dorothy. “It sets off her jewelry, you see. The white symbolizes her chastity, and the black her sincerity.”

The maid by the fire giggled.

“Hush!” Dorothy admonished. “She must be new and untrained,” she said to me. Then she pulled me farther into the dresses. “Now let’s see, the queen wants to be very fetching for Sir Melville this afternoon.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Hadn’t I just seen her crying and wretched over Robert Dudley? Dorothy glanced at my face. “She’s only trying to impress Sir Melville so he’ll send a glowing report back to Mary, Queen of Scots. But she gets double her pleasure in it all, for the jealousy she causes poor Robert.” She snorted. “Watch carefully; you can learn a thing or two from her.”

“I think I already have,” I said.

“But it’s a dangerous game, I tell you, fishing for men’s souls. It rises passions in them they cannot control. Vain doltheads most of them are.” She fingered a gown, stroking the fine cut velvet, then moved on to another.

I lifted yet another one, examining the detail of
embroidered dragonflies and pansies. The dragonfly’s wings were not quite correct. Whoever had stitched them had never sat by a country pond on a hot summer day. “Tell me, Dorothy, have you ever heard of a Mrs. Eglionby at court?” I asked casually. “My late mother said to ask of her.”

“No, I can’t say that I have,” she responded as she pulled out a jersey petticoat and held it in front of her.

But the maid near the fire spoke out. “I used to know of a Mrs. Eglionby!”

My head spun around as Dorothy said, “Hush and mind your business.”

I dropped the gown and walked over. “You did?” I whispered low.

“Not me, but me mother. My mother used to be in the service of Catherine Willoughby, the Duchess of Suffolk, she did.” She pulled up a stitch from her sewing.

“Well then, who was Mrs. Eglionby?” I asked. “Was she also in the service of the duchess?”

“No, I believe she was the governess of some ward of the duchess’s. A baby.”

“A baby?” I whispered.

“I believe the babe died, though, and Mrs. Eglionby
moved on. Crusty old bat she was, me mother said.”

“Where is your mother now?” I kept my voice low.

“Why, she be still with the duchess in the country at Grimsthorpe. The duchess does not come to court anymore. She never got over the loss of her two own sons who died. And she married one of her grooms. Those days are over for her.”

“If I were to get a note to you, do you think you could send it to your mother?”

“If I could have a coin or two I could, I suppose.”

“And your name?”

“Iris, me name is Iris.”

“What are you two mumbling about over there?” Dorothy called as she walked over to us.

She was holding up one of the queen’s court gowns, a white satin. She giggled and put her finger to her lip, then held up a fan and posed. “Do I look like a queen?” she asked.

“Very much so,” I said. She looked beautiful. She could probably have her pick of suitors, yet she had fallen for a kitchen boy. She opened a trunk and started pulling gowns out. “This one was refurbished from one of her mother’s. She can’t stand to see it, but she can’t stand to part with it either. These gowns all cost a fortune.
They are considered part of her treasury, so worthy they are.”

“Does she ever speak of her, her mother?” I asked as I came closer and peered over her shoulder.

“No, poor thing,” Dorothy said. “I think she has very little memory of her; she was only three when it happened. Beheaded. Right in the courtyard here. She considers Queen Katherine Parr her true mother, although there was some falling-out between the two at some point. Pure gossip, and the queen never forgave her stepmother for thinking so ill of her. Katherine Ashley knows the whole sordid tale. Chompdown, us maids have nicknamed her, for her name was Champedowne before she married and she has a loose tongue. Prod her with some wine and it will all come tumbling out, although she’s been told not to speak of it. Not the wisest one, she is. She spent months locked up here in the Tower, she did, Mrs. Ashley, for her role in the whole affair.” Dorothy kept searching through the gowns in the trunk and finally drew out a lovely crimson damask, its flowers and curlicued vines pin-tuckered and spangled with gold beads.

“This will do,” Dorothy said, holding the gown up to her chest. “It’s alluring, don’t you think?”

“Yes indeed,” I said, mesmerized by the flame red.

“Try it on, silly,” she urged.

“But won’t we get in trouble?” I asked.

“Bah.” She laughed. “She won’t tell,” she said, nodding back toward the fire. I peered over the top of the trunk and saw that Iris had disappeared.

“Here. I’ll assist you.” She helped me out of my own gown and into the red damask. “Now
you
are alluring. If your rose garden admirer could see you now!” She handed me a fan. “My, aren’t we the fine ladies,” she said with a giggle. But I was suddenly dizzy as images of half-moons and dragonflies flashed through my mind. I glanced back toward the fire. Would Iris find Mrs. Eglionby?

Dorothy pulled my arm. “Come! Come! This way!” she said. “There’s a mirror.” I followed her. We stood side by side. And then she stepped away so I could peer at myself. I looked regal. Regal indeed.