The Fallen Queen

Feigning a loving interest, our lady-mother, now apparently recovered from her headache, leapt up with a gasp and gushed, “Never before have I seen my daughters look lovelier!” But we were all more interested in Cousin Mary’s next surprise. She clapped her hands, and two servants in the green and white Tudor livery came in carrying what I at first took to be a gilt-framed portrait of a beautifully jewelled and apparelled lady. And it was, of sorts, but closer inspection, to our immense delight, revealed that this portrait was made entirely of sweets—shaped, coloured, and gilded marzipan, sugar both artfully spun and coloured, and crystals that shimmered like diamond dust, all sorts of sweetmeats and sugarplums, a glistening, tempting rainbow array of candied, sugared, dried, and glacéed fruits, comfits, lozenges, pastilles, suckets, wafers, sugared flowers, crystallized ginger, candied orange and lemon peel, and sugared and honeyed almonds both slivered and whole. The canvas it was created upon was crisp gingerbread, and the frame that bordered it was made of gilded marzipan. Father, who loved sweets so, would have been so delighted if he had seen it. When we told him about it, I knew his mouth would water and he would not be able to look at a portrait without imagining it made of sweet things to eat.

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.

Kate and cinnamon, to this day I cannot think of one without the other—she loved everything about it, its taste, colour, and smell; she always delighted to suck on cinnamon sticks and candies, and when she was older, she even had it blended into her rose perfume to create a special aroma that was all Kate’s own. Though other ladies tried to copy it, they could never get it quite right.

When Cook said she could not give the wine without our father or lady-mother’s consent, Kate’s blue grey eyes filled with tears and her pink lips pouted and quivered. Cook was no match against Kate’s tears, and she quickly relented, with hands upon her broad hips, declaring that “neither God nor the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk can hold me accountable for what happens when my back is turned!” and pointedly turned away, giving her full attention to the pastry crust she was making, as Kate crept into the cellar to pilfer a bottle of our father’s favourite red Gascony wine, the kind that is spicy and sweet all at the same time.

Kate concealed the bottle inside her coat as she passed back through the kitchen, smiling sweet and brazen, pausing only long enough to kiss the cook’s cheek and whisper a promise that when she returned the cups and spoon she would bring her back some of our syllabub.

Everyone loved Kate, and no one could resist her; she was so saucy and vivacious, with a heart tender and loving as could be. She had a smile that made you feel like roses were growing around your feet, beautiful, sweet-smelling roses without the nasty thorns, just like my rosy, pink-cheeked, and smiling sister. She was thirteen then, glowing, and growing more beautiful every day, ripening into womanhood with rounded hips and pert little breasts of which she was very proud and longed to feel a lover’s hand reach around to cup as he kissed the nape of her neck. Unlike Jane, who shrank from such “sordid speculations,” and far preferred her ancient Greek, Latin, and Hebrew texts instead, Kate was avid for more fleshly knowledge, to learn all she could about carnal matters, and the “good and merry sport that happens between a man and his wife behind the bedcurtains at night.” She was eager to be wedded and bedded and prayed that our parents wouldn’t tarry too long over finding her a husband.

When Kate appeared at the kitchen door, I left the pail with Jane and the cow and ran to help relieve her of her sweet burden—the three full, brimming tin cups, wine bottle, and wooden spoon made a clumsy and precarious armful. Kate handed the rest to Jane and approached the cow. She rubbed her gloved hands together to warm them for the cow, she explained, for she would not like someone’s icy fingers on her teats and didn’t imagine the cow would either. Then, furrowing her brow in concentration—she had never milked a cow before—she gave the cow a pat, said, “Please pardon the presumption, My Lady Brown Eyes,” squatted down, and began to gently pull at its cold pink teats, squirting the milk straight into the ice-cold pail I had brought from the barn. When the pail was full, we poured in the cinnamon, sugar, honey, and wine and took turns stirring vigorously, whipping it into a rich, creamy froth that we scooped into the now empty cups.

We sat back, sipping our syllabub, sprawled in a snowbank, as if it were a warm feather bed and not wet and cold, giggling and waving our arms and legs, making angels with flowing skirts and fluttering wings, laughing as the wine warmed us within, imagining the sugar, cinnamon, and wine blazing a zesty, spicy-sweet trail through our veins, racing to see which would be first to reach our heads and make us giddy. Jane started to expound on something she had read in a tedious medical tome, but neither Kate nor I was listening and she soon drifted back into glum silence again.

Suddenly Kate flung her cup aside and leapt up, pulling me and a most reluctant Jane after her, and we began to dance.

I was eight then, and my joints not yet so badly afflicted that I could not dance a joyful jig. Though in my bed that night I might ache and cry and beg Hetty, my nurse, to heat stones in the fire, then wrap and tuck them in against my back and hips or ’neath my knees, I was not thinking about that then; time enough for that when the pain held me in its grip, impossible to ignore, when all I wanted to do was sleep. I kicked up my heels, raising clouds of snow, like dainty, dwarfish blizzards, and gave myself wholeheartedly to the dance, laughing at the wet slap-flap my skirts made when I kicked my little legs as high as I could. With my sisters, I could dance, free and easy, giddy and gay, as I would never dare do before others.

When I was a little girl and first discovered the delight of twirling round and round, skipping, prancing, kicking, and leaping, I thought there could be nothing better than to be a dancing girl, but when my lady-mother overheard me prattling this dream to my nurse one evening, she seized me roughly by the arm, her fingernails biting hard enough to draw blood, and dragged me out into the gallery overlooking the Great Hall. There she swung me up, with a roughness that made the burly men who carted and carried sacks of grain seem tender, to stand upon a bench, and pointed down to where a troupe of dwarves clad in rainbow motley and tinkling bells capered and danced before my parents’ guests seated around the banqueting table, rocking and howling with laughter and tossing coins, crusts of bread, fruit, and sweetmeats at them.

“Look!” she commanded. “Never forget, children like you are often put out to die, exposed to the elements if the wolves don’t get them first! If you were not my daughter, with royal Tudor blood flowing through your veins, if you had been let to live, that would be you down there, puffing out your cheeks and boggling your eyes, cavorting and playing the fool for pennies and crusts from a nobleman’s table! Never forget that, daughter! Only my blood saves you from being a fool in motley, no better than a performing monkey, and worse because you’re no dumb animal and have the wit to understand what is said of you and feel the hurt of it!”

I understood at once. After that, though I never lost my joy in dancing, it became my secret. I never dared let any but my sisters and, many years later, the husband I thought I never would have, see me dance. When the dressmaker came the next day and unfurled her lengths of vivid, jewel-hued silks, I remembered the rainbow patchwork of the fool’s motley the dancing dwarves had worn and burst into tears, fearing that my lady-mother had changed her mind and, as a punishment for my deformity and the shame it brought my family, had decided to clothe me thus and send me away to join their troupe. How I screamed and bawled in my terror, so incoherent with fear that I could not make its cause clearly understood. And though Kate and Jane were quick to comfort and shush me, before our lady-mother came storming in, and Hetty made excuses for me—“For the life of me, I do not know what has gotten into the child! She is usually so quiet and sweet. I am with her every day and night and I can assure you …”—I ever afterward, though my heart craved and cried out for bright colours, chose to clothe myself in darker, more somber, and subdued shades, the better to blend into the shadows and hide, lest I ever be mistaken by my bright, festive attire for a jester, some nobleman or lady’s pet fool, instead of the Duke of Suffolk’s youngest daughter, and someone hurl a penny at my feet and command, “Dance, dwarf, dance!”

Perhaps that was why I loved dressmaking so, especially for my beautiful Kate, and Jane when she let me. With Kate I could let my fancy fly free and unfettered and deck her peaches and cream and red gold, stormy-blue-eyed beauty with all the bright colours I longed to wear but didn’t dare. For Kate I could stitch gold and green together, like the diamond-shaped panes in a window, and trim it with a double layer of green silk and gold tinsel fringe, to create the kind of gown I, with my dwarf’s body, didn’t dare wear. No one would ever mistake my beautiful Kate for a fool; they would only applaud her dazzling beauty. Kate was my living doll and I loved to dress her. And when she wore the dresses I made, I, vicariously, went out with her, and in those moments I was in the world and of the world, beautiful and brilliant, zesty as a pepper pot but sweet as cream, not hiding shy and nervous in the shadows. In those ruffles and frills, embroideries, cunningly cut bodices, and gracefully draped skirts, I was, through my glorious Kate, the centre of attention, adored and admired.