Part 3 (1/2)

”Ah well!” our lady-mother sighed. ”One cannot have everything, and often carnality has to ride outside up beside the driver instead of inside the coach where the quality sits. Such are the cruel vagaries of life! But, no matter, I shall be this fine young man's mother-in-law, and he shall reap the full benefit of my advice; that is the important thing! He will go far; I shall make it my business to see to it.”

”But I don't want to marry a sugared lemon or a piece of gilded marzipan either,” Jane said softly.

I crept a little closer and reached up and squeezed her hand, and she gave me a grateful but oh so sad little smile.

”Mmmm ... sugared lemons!” Father sighed again as a ribbon of drool trickled down his chin.

Our lady-mother rolled her eyes and with her own handkerchief wiped it away. ”Enough of that, Hal, we shall plan the menu for the wedding banquet later! Naturally it shall include both sugared lemons and gilded marzipan as a tribute to our beautiful new son-in-law.”

”Yes, dear.” Father nodded and agreed as he continued to stare, rapt and transfixed, at the portrait of Guildford Dudley. ”My G.o.d, I never saw anything so beautiful in my life!” I heard him murmur after our lady-mother had gone and only my sisters and I remained, but they were too caught up in their own thoughts to take note of Father's curious behaviour, and besides we were all so accustomed to hearing him sigh rapturously over sweets ... I tried to tell myself it was nothing, and that it was lewd to link it with Guildford's portrait, and yet ... I couldn't quite convince myself.

After that the bustle never seemed to cease. From the break of dawn until we laid our weary heads down upon our pillows at night we were all caught up in a feverish mad maelstrom of wedding plans that had grown from an elegant double to an ostentatious triple event with the Greys and the Dudleys, though they would ostensibly be united by marriage, each vying to outs.h.i.+ne the other. The Earl of Northumberland, Father informed us, also had a daughter named Catherine, aged twelve like our own Kate, but ”a shy, sallow la.s.s, nowhere near as pretty,” he added, giving Kate's cheek a pat and popping a candied violet in her mouth. He then went on to explain that since the wedding was to be held at Durham House, the Dudleys' opulent London residence, Northumberland had decided to make it a triple affair and join their Catherine in wedlock with the young Lord Hastings.

Kate immediately began to fret, weeping and worrying that the Dudley girl's gown would be grander than her own. But Father was quick to a.s.sure her that even if it cost him the last coin in his coffers it would not be so. And with a kiss and more sweets he sent her off to await the dressmaker's arrival, her head full of all the dreams that money can make come true, spinning rich, extravagant fantasies of cloth-of-gold, swirling, fantastically patterned cream and gold brocade, pearls and lace, and emeralds green as envy. That was our Kate; the storms never lasted long.

While Jane did her best to ignore it all, immersing herself even deeper in her studies, Kate drove our poor tutor, Master Aylmer, to frustration, ignoring the a.s.signments he set her and instead filling page after page of her copybook with graceful, flouris.h.i.+ng renditions of the name that would soon be hers-Katherine, Lady Herbert, and someday, upon her father-in-law's demise, Katherine, Countess of Pembroke; she even wrote it in the French style, Katherine, Comtesse de Pembroke, though as far as I knew she had no plans to cross the Channel and neither did Lord Herbert.

When Master Aylmer complained to Father, Kate pouted and said that since she was soon to be a married woman she didn't see why she still had need of a tutor; Master Aylmer really wasn't teaching her anything useful at all that pertained to court etiquette, housewifery, or, she added just to make him blush, amorous disport and what her husband would expect of her behind the bedcurtains, nor had he offered any sage advice pertaining to midwifery and child-rearing either. ”And not all the Latin verbs in the world will save me when I am in the agonizing throes of childbirth.”

At these words, Father smiled indulgently, patted Kate's bright curls, and said at least it was good practice of her penmans.h.i.+p, and turned to pacify Master Aylmer. ”Be a good fellow and leave things be,” he cajoled, offering him a sweet from his ever present comfit box, which he had taken the precaution of stocking with sugared and honeyed nuts beforehand knowing that they were Master Aylmer's favourite. ”And I doubt very much that the future Lady Herbert will have much need for Greek or Latin,” he added, ”just a pretty bit of French and perhaps a dollop of Italian and a smattering of Spanish for songs and poetry and such.” Whereupon he settled down beside Kate with his comfit box open between them on the table to admire the signatures that filled her copybook while I stood apart, watching my two sisters, swallowing down my tears, and keeping my fears to myself.

I could do nothing for Jane; she did not want my help, and I could do nothing without her willingness and cooperation, but she would not even meet me halfway or reach out a hand toward common sense. She would treat Guildford Dudley like an enemy until the day either she or he died, whichever came first, and by that time that is exactly what he would be-her enemy, when he might have been a fond, or even loving, husband with a little kindness and encouragement from Jane.

And Kate ... Kate was so happy! And, truly, I didn't want to spoil it. But I was so afraid for her. She had already persuaded herself that she was in love with the bridegroom she had yet to meet, a man whose face she had beheld only in a miniature portrait-and who knew how accurate that likeness was? It has been commonplace since the art of portraiture began for the painters to flatter their patrons. Though she had never heard his voice, she could already hear him whispering sweet nothings in her ear and reciting poems about her beauty and comparing their love to an immortal flame. Every night, until she drifted off to sleep, Kate would lie abed whispering the names that filled her copybook over and over again like pearls on a rosary-Katherine, Lady Herbert; Lady Katherine Herbert; Katherine, Countess of Pembroke; Katherine, Comtesse de Pembroke-savouring them on her tongue as she dreamed of her husband's ardent kisses and bold caresses. She spoke with such confidence, such utter certainty, that it terrified me. What if Dame Fortune overheard and just to be cruel or contrary dealt my sister a different hand altogether? What if Lord Herbert, who was after all only fourteen, was nothing like Lancelot in his s.h.i.+ning silver armour and white-feathered helm, riding hard and fast astride a white horse to sweep his ladylove up into his arms and carry her away to Joyous Garde to live in love forevermore? How could he be? Surely that was too much to expect of him. But it would break Kate's heart if he was anything but her dream of love come true. He had to be a hero right out of a storybook! He just had to be, for Kate's sake!

Yet every time I thought of the timidly smiling, slight-shouldered, pale-faced boy whose picture I had stolen a glance at by candlelight as Kate lay sleeping, my heart sank like a stone, and fear and worry gnawed unrelentingly at my stomach. Privately, I was convinced that my sister was in love with love, not with Lord Herbert, but I was only eight years old and didn't have the heart or the nerve to say so. I knew my sister well enough to know that she would deny it and answer me with peppery verve and heated words and demand what did I know of love and did I think my knowledge superior to hers. No, it was better, for both our sakes, that I keep silent and not invite a quarrel to come between us in the ever dwindling days that were left for us three sisters to spend together.

How envious she was when Guildford Dudley came to call on Jane. Why has Lord Herbert not done the same? she wept and stormed. But there was no time for tears then; Jane must be made ready to receive her betrothed. Our lady-mother and Kate made quite a fuss, dressing Jane in a gold trimmed and ta.s.selled carnelian velvet gown, ignoring her heated protests, as they tugged it over her head and laced her in tight and fought to free her struggling hands from the voluminous over-sleeves that almost dragged on the floor, and the long-suffering Mrs. Ellen knelt to roll a pair of gold-embroidered orange stockings up Jane's limbs and thrust her unwilling feet into a pair of golden slippers with rosettes and rubies on the toes. They thrust rings onto her fingers, heedless of the stones' colours, as long as they were large and valuable, and hung gold and jewelled chains about her neck, and slapped down the pale, slender hands with their smattering of freckles when they rose in vain to try to protect her tightly pinned and plaited hair from the intrusive fingers that would determinedly pluck out the pins and brush it out into a ma.s.s of s.h.i.+ning ruddy chestnut ripples that fell down to her waist.

As soon as our lady-mother had fastened the gold-flowered and fringed orange hood onto her head and smoothed the gold-veined white gossamer veil bordered with golden ta.s.sels down her back and Kate had pinned an amethyst brooch the size of a clenched fist-the biggest in our lady-mother's jewel coffer-onto her breast, Jane bunched up her skirts and bolted from the room to take shelter in the library. Mrs. Ellen was told to follow to provide discreet chaperonage to the couple and to make sure that Jane did not tear the ta.s.sels from her gown or the golden roses from her hood in protest of such adornment, and I tagged along, quietly following the trail of her crow-black skirt. When he arrived, Kate told me after, our parents explained to Guildford that Jane was ”a modest and shy young woman, of a most retiring nature,” and sent him into the library to meet her ”in quietude without a crowd to unnerve her.”

A little while later, Guildford strode in, dressed in gooseberry green velvet the exact same shade as his eyes, with puffs of silver-white tinsel cloth showing through his fas.h.i.+onably slashed sleeves. In his arms he carried a big, silky white cat, with a green silk ribbon tied round its neck in a most becoming bow with a gold-framed green stone pinned at its centre. Surely not an emerald on the cat, I thought, shaking my head incredulously. He paused halfway across the room from Jane and doffed his peac.o.c.k feathered cap and bowed low and grandly, pausing expectantly and looking around after as though he expected a round of applause from an invisible audience, but there was not a sound except the cat purring in his arms.

Then he came and stood before Jane, staring down at her, studying her as though she were a specimen in a gla.s.s cabinet, tapping his chin, and tilting his head from left to right. Through it all, Jane never looked up from her book or in any way acknowledged him, and I trembled for her knowing full well that our lady-mother would be certain to punish such rudeness. Nervously, I plucked at Mrs. Ellen's sleeve, and when she leaned down I whispered, ”Please don't tell Mother; she will beat Jane.” At last, Guildford took a step forward and plucked the musty, old, grey black bound copy of Virgil's Aeneid from Jane's hands and, with a fastidious grimace, flung it with a resounding thud into the room's darkest corner. Then he strode over to one of the bookcases that lined the walls, remarking as he did so that ”books are so decorative,” and selected a gilt-embellished volume bound in beautifully textured orange-red leather. ”If you really must read then read this one instead; it matches your dress better,” he said as he presented it to Jane.

He sat down beside her and introduced her to his cat, whose name he said was Fluff, and offered to let Jane pet him if her hands were clean as Fluff had just had a chamomile and lemon bath. ”His eyes are the exact colour of the finest jade,” Guildford said proudly, pointing to the gem dangling from Fluff's ribbon.

Guildford made a valiant effort to engage my sister in conversation, starting with music, ”my one true pa.s.sion,” and then moving on to food; like our father, Guildford loved sweets ”like the Devil does stealing souls,” but took great care not to overindulge and spoil his figure. He asked her if she had any pets, and when Jane didn't deign to answer, told her about his own. Besides Fluff, he had a white parrot with a great yellow crest atop its head that could catch the grapes and berries he tossed to it in its beak or claws.

After that he tried fas.h.i.+on, describing in detail the magnificent new wardrobe his tailor was making for him to start married life in. Next he tried beauty treatments, after s.n.a.t.c.hing off the rather ostentatious, overdecorated hood and exclaiming, ”Why do you attempt to hide such beauty?” as he rippled his fingers through the long fire-kissed brown waves. He went on to suggest several remedies to vanquish Jane's freckles and various washes for her hair-lemons and chamomile to lighten it, walnut juice to darken it, or henna to redden it and emphasize her Tudor heritage, any of which, he said, would be ”a novel change,” ”striking,” and ”dramatic.” He even brought up books and poetry, though he clearly fancied the more frivolous and flowery sort that Jane abhorred and turned her scholarly little nose up at. He even offered to let her kiss him. ”We're to be married, so we might as well make the best of it and be friendly,” he said, nearly knocking me off my chair as I had not expected such a wise and astute observation to come out of Guildford Dudley's pretty pink mouth.

But Jane only sat there sullenly staring at the pages of the book, though it was one of Father's cookery books containing a number of sweet recipes collected from various parts of the world that he was always begging our cook to try, and thus one my scholarly sister was ill-inclined to read.

In the end, Guildford had to admit defeat, declaring, ”I've attended livelier funerals!” as he stormed out, slamming the door behind him hard enough to cause a bust of Caesar to fall from atop the shelf containing military tomes and chip his white marble nose upon the floor.

As soon as he was gone, I ran over to Jane and s.n.a.t.c.hed the book from her to get her attention. ”Why did you not talk to him?” I demanded. ”He was trying to be friendly!”

”He's a fool!” Jane snorted contemptuously. ”A vain, pompous, empty-headed, frivolous fool and I hate him and can't stand to have him near me!” She reached again for the book, but I threw it across the room rather than let her have it to hide behind.

”He's going to be your husband whether you like it or not,” I reminded her, ”so you might as well make the best of it and try to be friends; you'd do well to make amends with him before it is too late and the insult is beyond repair. Write him a letter, Jane, tell him nervousness and fear got the better of you and made you behave badly and you are sorry for it, tell him that you are accustomed to a quiet life of study, contemplation, and prayer, and fear the loss of all that is familiar and dear to you upon marriage and the responsibilities it will require you to a.s.sume. Tell him-”

”I don't need you to dictate my letters to me, Mary! And no, I will not write to him! I'd sooner strike off my own hand! What will be will be! I am a martyr to the fate our parents have decreed for me and soon the whole world shall know it! Being married to this popinjay is another trial, another punishment I must endure and overcome as best I can, G.o.d willing! And I didn't realize you were so smitten with him. Clearly his pretty face has charmed you; you're just like a magpie diving for a bit of s.h.i.+ny gla.s.s it has mistaken for a diamond hidden in the gra.s.s!” she added spitefully, angrily swiping the futile tears from her eyes as she ran past me.

”It doesn't have to be that way! You don't have to be a martyr to anyone or anything!” I shouted after her. ”And I am not in the least bit enamoured with Guildford Dudley, but even a blind man could see that he is trying to make the best of things, unlike you! It is you I am thinking of, Jane. You're my sister, and I love you well enough to tell you that if you scorn Love and turn your back on it, Love may turn its back and scorn you.”

But it did no good; already I was speaking to an empty room. Jane had fled the library as though it were aflame. How I wished I could make her understand! Though many would laugh and wonder how someone like me could know so much about love, I knew better than most that it was the only prize truly worth winning. I wanted both my sisters to have that, even if I could not. Even though it would mean moments of the utmost sadness, a secret, yearning envy I harboured deep inside my soul that I could never reveal, I wanted to have that experience in the only way I could, vicariously, through my sisters.

With a heavy sigh and a shake of her weary head, Mrs. Ellen stood and followed her angry charge out. ”For all her fancy, high-praised book learning, the poor chit hasn't a whit of sense when it comes to the real world,” she grumbled as she went, and I had to agree with her.

Though my heart secretly wept, as my eyes did every night into my pillow, at the thought of relinquis.h.i.+ng my sisters to husbands and new homes, nothing could diminish my delight during the hours we spent with the silk merchants and seamstresses. As the banners of silk unfurled before my eyes, I dreamed I was in heaven and that I could hear fanfares of trumpets and choirs of angels singing amongst the bright, billowing lengths laid out before us.

”Not another dreary dress the colour of a mud puddle!” Kate cried, s.n.a.t.c.hing a bolt of dung brown from out of Jane's hands. ”Ugh! Take it away! And not that one either. It's the colour of wet moss and can't make up its mind whether it wants to be green or grey, but either way it's hideous! No, Jane, no!” She s.n.a.t.c.hed and kicked away every drab shade our sister touched or even glanced at. ”You should have pretty gowns in shades of gold, russet, and red, tawny, amber, yellow, and orange, colours that bring your hair to life and make the red in it glow like embers beneath the brown, colours that seem to dance and wave and cry out like a flirty maid, 'Look at me, look at me!'” As she spoke, Kate began to s.n.a.t.c.h up satins, silks, damasks, velvets, brocades, taffetas, and tinsels of the shades she had just named and wrap and wind and drape them all around Jane until she looked like an overgrown infant swaddled in a rainbow of autumn colours.

”Green and blue, in shades deep or delicate, are also good for Jane,” I added, for I knew my sister deemed these brighter hues that Kate favoured wanton and garish. I took up a length of lush green velvet and held it up, high as I could, against Jane. And after Kate had laughingly helped the seamstresses unwrap Jane from her rainbow coc.o.o.n, and she stood again, just like Kate, in her s.h.i.+ft, I unwound a bolt of s.h.i.+mmering pale green silk sewn in silver with a pattern resembling fish scales and held it up against Jane's waist. ”Wear this, Jane, and you will look like a mermaid who has dragged herself from the sea to marry the prince who has stolen her heart.”

”What, damp and bedraggled?” Jane asked sullenly.

”Nay”-our lady-mother strode into the room and s.n.a.t.c.hed the beautiful silk away from me-”with her sour countenance, since we cannot trust her to smile upon her wedding day, it will make her appear jaundiced. This will look better on Kate.” She draped it around Kate's bare shoulders and brushed her lips against her cheek.

Her rebellious gaze aimed straight at our lady-mother, Jane pointed to a bolt of blue velvet so dark that only the brightest light would prove that it wasn't black. ”That!” she said adamantly. ”I will wear that. Make the collar high and the sleeves long and close about the wrists, with frills of white Holland cloth, edged in silver if you must, at the collar and cuffs, and a hood of the same velvet, but no other adornments.” She stressed each word as her eyes bored into the dressmaker's. ”I shall wear my prayer book suspended from a silver chain about my waist; the word of G.o.d is the only adornment I want or need.”

”For all your scholarly accomplishments, daughter, you really are a simpleton,” our lady-mother declared, kicking the bolt of blue black velvet out the door to land where it would. ”You cannot go to your own wedding looking like a nun at a ball! You must put aside your plain garb, and from now on dress to suit your station; you must be like a jewel in the crown of your husband and family. I will not allow you to embarra.s.s and demean Guildford by appearing at his side dressed like a lowly little governess! I have given you a beautiful husband, and you must at all times endeavour to be worthy of him. You must adorn and adore him! Such is a wife's duty! Every time your father and I go out, everyone knows, whether they know my name or not, that they are looking at a person of importance; my jewels and my gowns, my regal bearing, and the proud way I carry myself, with my head high and my back straight, tells them so!”

”No!” Jane stamped her foot. ”I shall not play the gaudy peac.o.c.k! I am a G.o.dly and virtuous Protestant maid and mean to remain so, and plain dress is most pleasing to the eyes of the Lord! Even Princess Elizabeth has repented her wanton ways. Just as the harlot Mary Magdalene reformed and followed in the footsteps of Our Lord Jesus Christ, she has forsaken her jewels and put aside her finery, and clothes herself in pure white or plain black and always has an English prayer book about her person!”

”You little fool!” our lady-mother sneered. ”And more the fool those who think you so brilliantly clever! At book learning, yes, but at life, the things that really matter, no! Princess Elizabeth has survived a scandal. She knows her good name has been tarnished and will do anything necessary to scrub it clean and make it s.h.i.+ne again, even if it means putting aside her pretty clothes and giving up dancing and gambling, to curry favour with that insufferable little prig, King Edward, who like you takes these things to the utmost and most ridiculous extremes! But you mark my word, if the day ever comes when Elizabeth is crowned queen, she shall be as splendid as a peac.o.c.k within the hour and never again shall a plain dress cover her back! And, I remind you, Jane, your dear Dowager Queen Catherine was a devout Protestant and she favoured gold-embroidered red satin-is that not the Magdalene's colour? I'm not as well educated as you are! And her sister and their circle of learned ladies too! I knew many of them from girlhood, and I never saw one of them without jewels and gilt embroidery; they were not the sackcloth and ashes sort, I a.s.sure you, not even for the sake of their souls!”

Jane hung her head and made no answer to that. Indeed, what could she say? It was true. But I could feel the anger seething inside her. I often thought that denying herself fine clothes was just another step along Jane's path to martyrdom, to make the world marvel at so beautiful a girl denying herself pretty things and praise her all the more for being spiritually above all things worldly and vain. Or perhaps Jane thought if she let her beauty s.h.i.+ne people would take her scholarly accomplishments less seriously as beauty doth often blind the beholder?

”Enough of this!” Our lady-mother threw up her hands. ”You shall do as I say, daughter, else you go to your marriage bed with your back flayed open and stain the sheets with your willful, disobedient blood as well as your maidenhead!”

Then our lady-mother took charge, and with her riding crop pointing the way, ushered the rainbow of rich materials out the door, to await preparations for Jane's and Kate's trousseaux, since they were proving too distracting, leaving behind only those in shades of white, cream, gold, and silver. They might have all the colour they wished in their trousseaux, she said when Kate's eyes pooled with tears and her lips began to tremble, but the wedding gowns must be settled first as they were the most splendid and important gowns they would probably ever wear in their lives. In conference with the Duke of Northumberland, our lady-mother had decided that these hues of pallor and s.h.i.+mmer were the colours the three bridal couples would wear.

When I timidly tugged at her skirt and asked, ”What about me?” she said my own wedding gown must wait; time was pressing, and I would not be married for a few years yet and fas.h.i.+ons change, so it would be rather foolish to have it made now. ”Besides,” she added, ”your own nuptials shall be a quiet, private affair, so there is no need for a gown as splendid as those your sisters shall wear.”

At her words, my face fell, and the sight of my disappointment moved our lady-mother to one of her rare acts of kindness.

”The time is not ripe, my pet.i.te gargoyle, and neither are you, for wedlock, so leave the matter to rest for now. I promise that when the time comes you shall have a beautiful gown. And you shall have a fine new gown of fabric of your own choosing to wear to this wedding, though, of course, you shall not mingle with the other guests; they will be distracted and drunken and likely to mock and trample you. You must hold on to your dignity, Mary, never let go, and remember that you are a Grey, and the cousin and niece of royalty. Your grandmother-my mother-was Queen of France, and there is Tudor blood flowing in your veins! Now, turn your eyes upon these woven and embroidered patterns”-she indicated the messy but luxurious heaps of partly unwound bolts of fabric piled haphazardly in the centre of the room-”and help me choose the materials for your sisters' under-sleeves and kirtles.”

I knelt down and let my eyes feast upon the fine array of figures woven with s.h.i.+mmering gold, silver, and pearly threads into the damasks and brocades and embroidered upon the silks, satins, taffetas, and velvets, caressing and feeling my way through the wonderful maze of arabesques, lattices, lovers' knots, hearts, braids, trellises, and vines, birds, b.u.t.terflies, and bees, flowers, budding or in full bloom, fruit, cherubs, grandiose geometric intricacies as ambitious as they were beautiful, both marvellous and bewildering to the eye, swirls, loops, lozenges, crescents, mazes, stars, and scrolls until my eye fastened upon a l.u.s.trous creamy satin embroidered profusely with an intricate and opulent design of golden pomegranates nestled like babies in a womb amongst the crowded array of exquisitely embroidered blossoms, buds, and leaves, some of them whole and others sliced open to reveal their seeds, which were represented by pearls.

”This one!” I breathed, holding it up for our lady-mother to see. ”It is perfect for Kate! It is the pomegranate, which symbolizes fertility. The late King Henry's first wife, the Spanish one, Catherine of Aragon, made it popular when she chose it as her personal emblem. I think it a fine, and mayhap even a lucky, choice for a young bride, especially one who is eager to become a mother,” I added with a knowing smile directed at Kate. With an exclamation of pleasure, she dropped the cloth-of-gold with which she had been draping herself and ran to embrace and smother me with kisses.

”A perfect choice,” our lady-mother purred. ”You have a fine eye for such things, Mary, though I think”-she turned to the dressmaker-”that we should put more pearls and some diamonds on it.”

”Yes, m'lady”-the dressmaker bobbed an obedient curtsy-”it shall be exactly as you wis.h.!.+”