Part 13 (1/2)

But Lady Jane seemed to understand, and as she draped the heavy, fur-trimmed, forest green velvet cloak around Kate she paused to give her shoulder a comforting pat.

”Kate ...” I took a step forward and put out a hand to her, but she brushed me aside.

”Go away, Mary! I haven't time for you now!”

I thought I caught a flash of purple and white as Kate s.n.a.t.c.hed up her green velvet reticule and stuffed something inside. Then she was gone, out the door as though her life depended on it, leaving Lady Jane to flash me an apologetic smile as she quickly threw on a cloak of blue velvet edged with grey rabbit fur and hurried out after her, even though the rapid pace brought on a violent coughing fit.

I know I shouldn't have, but I followed them. Even though it was very difficult, as they chose to brave the busy London streets instead of taking a barge, and I was much jostled and even knocked down twice, I refused to stop. Soon I found myself standing in Cannon Row, watching as my sister and her friend hurried up the steps of Hertford House, Ned Seymour's fine redbrick London residence. As though he had been watching for them, Ned Seymour himself, in a brown velvet doublet richly worked with gold, opened the door and let them in. He came out onto the stoop and glanced swiftly left and right before he followed them inside and shut the door. How curious, I thought, to see a n.o.bleman open his own front door. The Seymours were wealthy and had many servants. Why had Kate and Jane come out unchaperoned when both had ladies' maids who might have accompanied them? Kate had always put great trust in Henny, who had been with her since birth, and was robust and strong-armed enough to make any man who might have dared accost the girls think twice. Something strange was happening, and I was determined to know what.

Boldly, I squared my shoulders and strode toward the door, only to nearly be knocked down by Lady Jane Seymour as she ran out in a swirl of blue velvet and grey fur. She caught me before I fell, and her face paled even more if that were possible, and the spots of red in her cheeks glowed even brighter. But she didn't try to stop me.

”It's not right to keep it from you. You're her sister, and you should be there,” she murmured as she took her hand from my shoulder and hurried away, down the street, intent on some seemingly urgent errand.

I squared my shoulders and walked straight into Ned Seymour's house, unhindered and unannounced, and followed their voices into the oak-panelled parlour. Kate's green velvet cloak lay draped over the fireside settle, and they stood embracing before the hearth's bright warmth. They broke apart, gasping guiltily, at the sight of me. Ned murmured something about seeing to the refreshments and hurried out, leaving Kate alone to face me.

”What are you doing, Kate?” I asked wearily, for I was suddenly very tired of deceptions, secrets, and games. I wanted only to have the truth full plain even if it killed me.

”We're to be married, and you can't stop us!” Kate said hotly with a defiant toss of her curls, which I noticed now were crowned with a wreath of gilded rosemary, purple velvet violets, periwinkles, heart's ease pansies, and yellow gillyflowers: a bridal coronet, all fas.h.i.+oned from silk and velvet, to bring warm, bright, and beautiful spring into cold, wet, white, and grey winter.

Married! I staggered back, as though the word were a dread disease I would avoid. Only if Kate had told me she had the plague, I would never have drawn back. I would have stepped forward and done anything and everything I could to save her. Oh no, no, no, no! All of a sudden I felt faint and reached up to clasp my head, to make sure it didn't float away, it felt so dizzy, sick, and light. Now I understood. They were marrying in secret because it was the only way; Elizabeth would never give her consent to Kate, with her royal Tudor blood, marrying Ned Seymour, scion of a powerful family with Plantagenet blood, albeit a dilute strain, coursing through his veins. It was too dangerous and potent a combination to allow Elizabeth to sit easy on her throne, and heaven knew she already had cause to be vigilant and wary. As much as she was loved by her people, she was hated by many who had the power to finance a rebellion or pay an a.s.sa.s.sin.

And if Kate should conceive a son ...

If Kate gave birth to a boy, all who opposed the petticoat rule of Elizabeth would know exactly where to turn; they would think an infant male was better than any full-grown woman, even one as shrewd and savvy as Elizabeth. Some might even be tempted to usurp the throne in that child's name, even if Kate wanted no part of it. She and her son would become, like Jane, innocent p.a.w.ns in the game powerful men played, men who would not scruple to take Elizabeth's life, just so a Tudor crested instead of cloven betwixt the thighs, and untainted by talk of illegitimacy and debate about the validity of his parents' marriage, could sit upon England's throne.

”Kate, this is madness! Think what you are doing! You are defying the Queen! You know you cannot marry without her permission-neither of us can! Elizabeth is not Mary; she doesn't love us! Elizabeth's a tigress, fighting for her life and throne, kill or be killed, and she will not hesitate to kill you if she has to! She'll always put herself and England first because, to herself and most of her subjects, she is England!”

”Stop it!” Kate put her hands up to block her ears. ”You're only trying to scare me, but I won't let you! I won't! It will not come to that; I won't let it!”

I crossed the room and took her hand, which I saw now wore a pale blue diamond, pointed at one end, like a great glimmering tear. ”Kate,” I sighed, ”I am not your enemy; do not treat me as such! Talk to me, as your sister, and your friend, as you used to. Confide in me!”

With a great, heaving sigh, Kate sank down onto the settle and hung her head. I came and stood before her, taking both her hands in mine.

”Kate, look at me,” I pleaded.

”I'm sorry I didn't tell you, Mary. My heart has been troubling me sorely, but I did what I did only to protect you. If you didn't know ... no one could blame or hurt you.” She pulled one hand away from mine and caressed her yellow and purple skirt. ”You made my wedding gown, even though you did not know that was what it was, with your love for me in every st.i.tch, as in every garment you have ever made for me. It's so beautiful! So how could I even think of shutting you out? On the happiest day of my life too!” She raised her head and gave me the full glory of her smile. ”I love him, Mary! I have to follow my heart, even if it leads me into danger. We will keep our nuptials secret ... for now, but later ... someday ... when the time is right, I will go on my knees before the Queen and confess all and do whatever I must to a.s.sure her I harbour no royal ambitions, I make no claim, now or ever, for myself or any children I may, G.o.d willing, bear. I will sign or say whatever I must to renounce it all, permanently, and Ned and I will go away, to live quietly in the country. All I want-for myself and for my family-is love and to be happy.”

It was a beautiful dream, but I couldn't quite believe it could ever come true. I hated myself for doubting, but I couldn't help it; to do otherwise would be willful blindness and self-deception. I hung my head, so that she would not see my tears.

”I don't want to lose another sister, Kate. I don't want to see you die a traitor's death or rot your life away in prison. No man is worth such a sacrifice.”

She reached down and cupped my face between her soft hands and smiled at me. ”That will never happen, Mary; G.o.d wouldn't let it. What I do, I do for love-all for love. All will be well in time; you will see. You're just scared and imagining the worst. But our union was meant to be, all signs point to it, and G.o.d will bless us. I know! And, even if it did-but it won't!-you're wrong, Mary! Ned is different from other men; he is worth any sacrifice Love demands of me. Sometimes the greatest loves come hand in hand with suffering and sorrow. If you would have music to dance to, you have to pay the players; 'tis only just and fair.” She shrugged and smiled brightly, as though this were a trivial matter like doling out coins to a troupe of musicians instead of treason.

I wished with all my heart that I could believe and share her auspicious euphoria, but I couldn't keep the fear from clutching my heart like a hand of ice. It made me s.h.i.+ver and not even Kate's warm smile could melt the fear away; I was afraid it would never leave me.

I took a step forward and reached up and gripped my sister's shoulders and stared deep into her bright, joyful eyes that were blind and heedless to all danger. ”Kate, for G.o.d's sake, listen to me and see reason. If you do this fool thing, if you marry Ned Seymour you are committing treason-high treason! You can be burned or beheaded at the Queen's pleasure or sent to rot in a prison cell!”

But Kate just smiled at me. ”Don't worry, Mary; everything's going to be all right! But ... just in case ... you were never here, and if you say you were, I shall deny it and say you are lying to try to protect your sister's honour.”

That she would say such a thing told me clouds of concern lurked behind that sunny smile. Kate wanted to believe everything would be all right, to think she could will into being the bright future she wanted so much, but doubt and worry would dog her steps like trainbearers she could never shake off or leave far behind her.

With a smile and a carefree laugh, she was up and dancing across the room as Ned came back in, smiling broadly over a great silver tray laden with heaping platters of sliced meats, a sampling of cheeses, fresh baked bread, festive piles of dried and candied fruits and nuts, sliced apples draped with melted cheese, gla.s.s bowls filled with sweet, syrupy berries stewed in wine, creamy custard, a compote of honeyed pears and another of peaches, candied violets arranged upon a pretty yellow plate to match Kate's wedding dress, and at the heart of it all, a pretty pink cake made with raspberries crowned with candied pink cabbage roses. ”A sweet repast for my sweet,” he said as he set it down on a table where goblets and bottles of wine were already arranged. Kate gave a delighted squeal and clasped her hands as she admired the cake, lamenting that Father was not here to enjoy it with us, he would have been so pleased. ”He always loved raspberries and said pink was a heaven-sent colour for confections!”

”I am glad you are here, my soon to be sister Mary.” Ned smiled as he knelt down to face me. It was very kind of him to do so; many enjoyed the lofty feeling of superiority they experienced when they towered high above and looked down on me. He had a very pleasant face, and a smile so charming and disarming, and there appeared to be genuine warmth in his hazel eyes. I had to stop myself from impulsively reaching out and brus.h.i.+ng back the wing of sun-lightened brown hair that fell over his brow.

Looking at him, this great, smiling overgrown boy of twenty, I could almost believe he loved my sister as much as she loved him. But there was always something, I can't put it into words; I only know that it was always there, niggling at the back of my mind, never letting me truly trust Ned Seymour. Possibly my soul was too sullied from all the ambitious machinations I had witnessed almost from the cradle, power plays, coups, conspiracies, and court intrigues; perhaps it made me overly conscious of the royal lines that would be united with their marriage and what this could mean for their, and their children's, futures. Kate was, after all, the unacknowledged heir presumptive, and thus a splendid catch for any ambitious young man, and one with Plantagenet blood in his veins could make much of that if he were so inclined, and might even consider such a wife worth feigning love for. After all, many had pretended pa.s.sion for far less. How many men since time began had declared their love just to woo a maiden into bed? Maybe it was because this ”great love” had blossomed so suddenly? To my suspicious mind it just seemed too ch.o.r.eographed, too much like a romantic stage play; those sweet dreams we want to believe but know rarely do come true. Or perhaps it was just that I was too cynical to believe in love at first sight? Or maybe Kate was right-I was scared and imagining the worst. I just don't know.

”I know it broke Kate's heart to think you wouldn't be here. And now you are here, and it all ends happily!” Ned's face brightened with a broad smile. Oh my, he was very comely! ”It was meant to be,” he declared, making so bold as to kiss my cheek, before he rose and went back to Kate. He led her to sit upon the settle and stood beside her, smiling down at her, as she gazed up at him, holding her hand, until the moment we heard the front door open again.

Her face terribly flushed and her shoulders shaking with a hacking cough, that by the looks of the handkerchief she tried to conceal, squashed tight in her fist, had brought up blood, and by its violence had shaken her fair hair from its pins, Lady Jane came in, tugging with all her fragile might at the hand of a big, black-gowned man with a long, tangled, greasy, and unkempt red beard.

”This way, Father, this way!” she cried between coughs, pulling hard at his hand and urging him toward Kate and Ned as he was apparently incapable of walking straight and finding the bridal couple himself. As he weaved his way across the floor, his unsteady gait aping the undulations of a slithering snake, he brought with him the fumes of the tavern, along with those of his own unwashed body, and his bleary, bloodshot eyes roamed the room as though the bride and groom might be hiding on the ceiling or concealed in a corner. As he stood, belching and swaying, before the bridal couple, I discreetly moved away; as I was shorter than the others, and thus nearer his nether regions, the stink of urine was unmistakable and undesirably near my nose.

Many burps and hiccups and fumbled words marred the marriage service he tried to read from the Book of Common Prayer he held upside down in hands like a pair of great pink bear paws, their backs thickly covered with coa.r.s.e red hair. But Kate and Ned never seemed to notice, their eyes rapt and adoring, never leaving each other. They smiled, clasped hands, and spoke their vows staring into each other's eyes. Kate, I know, spoke straight from her heart.

Then it was over. They were man and wife and kissing and clinging pa.s.sionately. A puzzle ring of five interlocking gold bands had joined the sky blue diamond on Kate's left hand.

Not daring to wear it openly at court, when she removed it to put it on a long golden chain so that she might wear it always hidden safely in the warm crevice between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, Kate let me read the verse engraved on the five bands: As circles five, by art compact, show but one ring in sight, So trust unites faithful minds, with knot of secret might, Whose force to break but greedy Death, no one possess power As time and sequels well shall prove, my ring can say no more.

With joyous good humour, and more than a little relief, we all laughed as we bade the wine-sodden priest good-bye. He tottered out, pocketing the purse of gold Lady Jane gave him, and taking two bottles of wine from the table, one red and the other white, and raising them by turns to his mouth, suckling greedily as an infant from one and then the other as he made his way out onto the London streets, miraculously without walking into the wall or falling down the front steps. No one ever thought to ask his name. If he ever gave it, not a one of us recalled it. There was no paper; though I was a novice to such matters, I would learn later that there should have been a paper that we all signed-bride, groom, priest, and two witnesses. But no one thought of that. Kate had been married before, so she should have known, but she was just too happy to think. The priest, who should have known this business better than any, as Ned and Kate were not the first couple he had ever married, was too drunk to realize the omission. It was not, at first glance, all that serious; after all, a couple's agreement that they were wed was considered legally binding. It would only become a crucial issue in this case because of who the bride and groom were and their nearness to the throne.

Kate and Ned exchanged mischievous glances, nodded to one another, and whooped with joy as she flung her floral crown in the air and he did the same with his feathered cap. Then, seizing her hand, he bounded toward the stairs, calling back over his shoulder to his sister and me, ”Eat, drink, and be merry, for my bride and I shall be!”

”A moment, my love!” Kate laughed and spun away from him. She embraced first Jane Seymour. ”We really are sisters now!” Then, after pausing to retrieve her reticule from the settle and pull out the nightcap she had stuffed inside, she knelt before me and held it out, like a sacred offering, to me. ”Will you put it on me, please?” she asked.

Tenderly, I brushed back the wealth of red gold curls and set the violet-embroidered white linen cap upon her head, tweaked the lacy frills, and drew the long purple satin ribbons around and beneath her chin to carefully tie a beautiful bow.

”There now.” I nodded, smiling through my tears, which, Kate couldn't know, sprang from fear rather than joy. ”Off you go!”

”Thank you, Mary!” She hugged me tight and kissed my cheek, then she was off, dancing across the room. At the foot of the stairs, she gaily announced, ”I'll never be Queen of England, and that's fine with me. I don't want to be, not even in my dreams. All I want to be is queen of my husband's heart and our home. But every girl should feel like a queen on her wedding day, and I want to go to our marriage bed for the first time happy as a queen on her coronation day. That's why I asked you to embroider regal purple violets on my nightcap-for today this is my crown!”

As she twirled around and darted up the stairs, without a backward glance, her eyes upon the future, not the past, I saw embroidered beneath her skirts the intricate floral border of the bouquet Ned had picked for her. She was also, I noted, wearing purple woolen stockings, dyed to match the violets I had embroidered on her nightcap.

Lady Jane and I remained in the parlour, the silence broken only by her coughing and my footsteps as I paced restlessly back and forth. The refreshments sat on the table untouched. We knew better than to talk; we would only fall to quarrelling. Jane thought she had done a wonderful thing by bringing her brother and best friend together. She was like one looking through a stained gla.s.s rose seeing only love and romance, but I saw the shadow of the axe hovering above the neck of my sole remaining sister. I saw danger and treason. Beside that, to me at least, this great love they supposedly shared mattered very little. It wasn't worth Kate's life.

Two hours later they were bounding back down the stairs, ludicrously unkempt, neither of them being accustomed to dressing themselves without a.s.sistance. In spite of ourselves, Lady Jane and I laughed and rushed to help them set right the many clumsily, missed, or wrongly fastened b.u.t.tons, hooks, and laces, for we must all hasten back to court, before our absence was noted; for so many of us to be gone at the same time would never be dismissed as mere coincidence. We didn't dare take chances.

”But what of our banquet?” Kate asked. ”It seems a shame to waste it, especially that beautiful cake! Father would weep in Heaven if he knew!”

”We shall take it with us and have our wedding feast in the barge,” Ned declared. He then carefully picked up the tray and asked Kate, ”Will you bring the wine, my love?”

”A movable feast! What a splendid idea!” Kate smiled as she s.n.a.t.c.hed the bottles up.

”I'll bring the cups,” I volunteered, and carefully gathered the four golden goblets as best I could against my chest and hoped I would not drop them. But Lady Jane, to my immense relief, insisted on taking half my burden and relieving me of two. So it was settled, and we all followed Ned out to the water stairs where he whistled and hailed a barge to convey us back to the palace. We laughed and feasted all the way, gladly sharing our bounty with the bargemen, who were unaccustomed to such luxuries. Just before we pa.s.sed under London Bridge, where Father's head had been displayed, we each raised a piece of the beautiful pink raspberry cake up high, as though we were lifting our goblets in a toast, ”to Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, G.o.d rest his soul!” Kate laughed and whisked the tears from her eyes and fed Ned a bite of cake, and he did the same, then they fell into each other's arms, kissing hungrily, long and deep, tasting sweet raspberries and cream upon the other's mouth.

We arrived just in time to race into the Great Hall and take our seats around the banquet table, though our bellies were already well stuffed; it would not do to miss dinner. No one suspected anything. As far as the Queen and court knew, Kate had recovered from the headache that had kept her abed, Lady Jane's cough was neither better nor worse, I had spent the day sewing and tending them, and Ned had been absent on business for his family.