Part 13 (2/2)

As Kate, Ned, and Lady Jane exchanged smiles and triumphant glances, like children who had crept into the kitchen and stolen a tray of cherry tarts, revelling in the knowledge that they had gotten away with it, I knew it was only a matter of time before we were found out.

After dinner, when the dancing began, and for the first time Ned led Kate out to dance, I knew it was the beginning of the end; their love was too bold and blatant to be missed. That night, when Kate turned me out of my own room in my s.h.i.+ft and bare feet, shoving me out without even a shawl to cover myself, to ”go and sleep with Jane,” so that her ”Sweet Ned” might come and couple with her in my bed, I started counting the days, knowing that each one that pa.s.sed, though I might sigh with relief at its end, carried us ever closer to the inevitable discovery. Kate and Ned would give themselves away-of that there was no doubt.

16.

They were reckless. It was as though they wanted to get caught. Ned would tweak her coppery curls, steal a swift kiss, and call her ”Countess Carrots.” To which Kate, by wedded right the Countess of Hertford, would feign offence, lift up her nose, and haughtily declaim that her hair was red gold, or copper-hued, if you prefer, but certainly not orange like a common carrot. Sometimes he would pull her into a quiet corner and lift her skirts. As the court travelled from palace to palace, as each one required cleansing of the filth and stench, they made a game of coupling in every one of them, in any convenient nook and cranny, empty room, privy, alcove, quiet corridor, or garden bower, anywhere they could, and as often as they could. I grew weary of being turned out of my own room at night to sleep with the cough- and fever-racked Jane Seymour so they could roll about merrily in my bed. They were like little children playing, and when I tried to scold them, they hung their heads in mock-shame, glancing slyly aside at each other and stifling their sputtering giggles, as they nodded and mockingly answered, ”Yes, Mother Mary,” then went out and did exactly as they pleased.

Unbelievably, they cast all caution to the wind. Even I, a virgin of sixteen, knew that Ned should have withdrawn without spending his seed, and there were teas Kate could have drunk as a safeguard against conception, and even sheaths known as ”Venus Gloves” sold discreetly beneath the counter in glove shops that I had heard the gentlemen of the court whisper about. I had even heard women confide in each other about their own techniques, speaking of wax pessaries and wads of cloth or little sponges soaked in lemon juice or vinegar they inserted before the carnal act.

But Kate acted as though she knew better. Whenever I tried to talk to her, she would toss her hair and thrust her nose into the air, and say that I should not talk about such matters; it was ”immodest and unseemly for a girl of my youth, as yet unmarried, to know of such things and presume to speak of them.” But secretly wed in a court with a thousand eyes and an ear at every wall and door was neither the time nor the place for them to chance a child. What were they thinking? Simply put, they were not and I could not, then or now, understand why.

Sir William Cecil, Her Majesty's shrewd secretary of state, must have suspected something. He arranged to have Ned, ”the fine and upstanding young Earl of Hertford,” accompany his worrisome, dissolute nineteen-year-old son Thomas on a tour of France and Italy. Cecil hoped a good dose of culture and a dash of diplomatic service might calm young Thomas's wild streak and, if not quite curb, at least refine his taste in wine, women, and where he spent his money and time. It was an honour Ned didn't dare refuse, and in truth, I could tell by the look in his eyes, that unmistakable ambitious gleam I had seen so many times lighting up our lady-mother's eyes, that he didn't want to. He was, after all, an up-and-coming young man from a prestigious family that had been tarnished by both his father's and his uncle's executions, and he was eager to restore, and enhance, if he could, the l.u.s.tre. ”Such opportunities come but once in a lifetime,” he said to Kate, trying to hold and kiss her as she raged and cried.

They quarrelled about his going one day, then kissed and made up in the royal orchard the next, with Ned hoisting Kate's skirts as showers of apple or cherry blossoms rained down upon them. They quarrelled again, perhaps only for the sake of the sweet reconciliation in the orchard that would follow on the morrow. Angry words, tears, slamming doors, furious footsteps retreating fast, then kisses, cries, sighs, and whispers in a shower of perfumed petals, for a whole month that was the pattern. Ned said he would go, then he would say nay, for Kate's sake he would stay; then Kate would say no, she was being selfish and he must go, 'twas a grand opportunity he must not squander for her sake, they were young and had their whole lives ahead of them; then Ned would agree and say he would go, then Kate would weep and rage, and they would inevitably end back in the orchard again, in the throes of tears and torrid pa.s.sion.

During one of those afternoons of love in the orchard Ned hung around her neck a golden chain from which a deep blue sapphire dripped like a great tear, emblematic in both shape and hue of his great sorrow in leaving her, he said. Yet more kisses, caresses, tears, quarrels, reconciliations, protestations, accusations, denials, avowals, and acceptance followed, day after day. The whole thing sorely vexed and wearied me, and many times I was tempted to shout at them to ”decide and have done with it!”

One day I caught Kate crouched in a corner, greedily sucking limes, her face, neck, and fingers coated slick with the tart juice, and the drained flesh of at least a dozen discarded fruits and their torn and shredded peelings scattered on the floor around her. I knew she was in trouble, even as she denied it, shrugging it off as just a sudden craving, the way Father would sometimes wake in the night with a sudden insatiable urge for a quince and pomegranate pie. She fled from me, feigning lightheartedness and laughter, even as I shouted after her what we both knew, that she had never liked limes before. ”You hate limes and you know it! You know what this means!” But Kate laughed and ignored me.

When she came to my room to try on the new gown I had been making, an elegant lemon damask with a quilted pearl-latticed petticoat of russet satin and matching under-sleeves, she complained that I had been stingy with the material and made it too small, that the waist pinched and needed to be let out and the bodice was too tight.

”That's because you're breeding! 'Tis no wonder,” I said, ”the way you and Ned have been going at it without precaution or care. You make rabbits look like models of decorum!”

Still Kate denied it, first accusing me of coveting the material to make something for myself and cutting it too small to try to save enough for me. ”If you wanted it so much, Mary, you shouldn't have offered it to me!” Then, just as quickly, contradictorily, laughing, bending to hug me and kiss my cheek, craving my pardon, cajoling me to forgive her as her nerves were sorely jangled by the thought of parting from her ”Sweet Ned.” She stood, tossing her bright curls, and flippantly declaring that she was simply ”growing fat and happy nourished by my Sweet Ned's love!” But I was not deceived. For the life of me, I could not tell why Kate was being willfully blind to such an obvious truth. I could see it and others would too in time.

I implored her to accompany me to London, to secretly consult a midwife, but she refused. She kept insisting that she was not pregnant and that she would not stoop to the ”indignity of an examination to prove it.”

”It's my body, Mary, and if I was with child, I think I would know it! Surely I, a twice-married woman of twenty, know more about these matters than you-a virgin of sixteen-do!”

Lady Jane Seymour was too busy dying to intervene. I was tempted to go and try to talk to her, in the hope that she could accomplish what I could not, but I hadn't the heart to trouble a soul I knew to be in the act of departing. On her deathbed, she clasped both Kate and Ned by the hand and told them to ”be kind to each other and never forget how much you love each other.” They each solemnly bowed their heads, kissed her fever-hot hands, and promised faithfully so the young woman who had brought them together and engineered their marriage could die in peace, believing that she had in her brief life, like a guardian angel or a good fairy, done the two people she loved most a great service and ensured their lifelong happiness.

So Ned sailed away with Thomas Cecil in May, still grieving for his sister, leaving Kate alone, carrying a child she still denied, to fend for herself at the Virgin Queen's court, while he enjoyed a lush, l.u.s.ty spring in luxurious, lascivious Paris and spent a wild, sultry summer in sunbaked Italy. Everywhere the two of them went they drank to excess, lost vast sums at the gambling tables, hunted, danced, and wh.o.r.ed, and spent money as if it were water. I heard Master Secretary Cecil complain that he had known men to live an entire year abroad on what the two of them spent in a single month.

Before he left, Ned did at least one sensible thing; he gave Kate a deed in which he acknowledged her as his wife and bequeathed her lands with an income of 1,000 per annum, thus providing her with some financial security, and even more importantly, legally binding, written proof that they were married. If only Kate hadn't promptly misplaced it! Then none could have said they were merely pretending after the fact, to try to save her honour and prevent their children from being branded b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. The date on that deed, drawn up and signed before Ned's departure, would have proved it was a truth, not a lie that came after Kate was found to be with child. Poor Kate, thinking only of love, not money, never realized the true import of that doc.u.ment, how it might have made all the difference in the world.

In a fit of tears and foot-stamping pique, Kate stopped letting me make her dresses, saying she could not abide my comments about her widening waist and ”milk-swollen teats” and sought the services of another dressmaker instead, crying out before she slammed the door that she would not let me so much as sew up a hem for her if her life depended on it. But soon she was back, crying in my arms, now that Jane Seymour was gone, and there was no one else she could turn to. She had heard that Ned had sent baubles-some pretty enamelled bracelets-to some other ladies of the court, but nothing for her. Though Ned would later claim that he had sent the bracelets to Kat Ashley, the Queen's childhood governess and now the Mother of the Maids, charged with overseeing the welfare of all the unmarried girls who lived and served at court. He had done this, Ned said, so that Her Majesty might have first choice, then Mistress Ashley was to bring the rest to Kate and, after she had made her selection, let her, his ”well-beloved wife,” distribute them amongst the other ladies, but ”the old grey Kat was now in her dotage and had obviously muddled it.”

It was a neat excuse, tidy and pat, almost believable, especially knowing dear old Kat and how befuddled her mind was growing. But I didn't believe it. Though she refused to admit it, Kate clearly had her doubts. And where were all the letters he had promised? He had vowed to write every day so it would be as though she were right there experiencing all the wonders of foreign travel right alongside him. Thomas Cecil, young, drunken rakeh.e.l.l that he was, obviously found time to write; the badly spelled wine-blotched letters he sent back to his rowdy companions at court were filled with amusing anecdotes of Ned dragging the drunken lad out of a fancy Parisian brothel after he had made a complete a.s.s of himself by delivering an off-key serenade and proposal on bended knee to a probably poxy doxy, and tales of bawdy, balmy nights spent cavorting and frolicking nude with beautiful, buxom Italian peasant girls in olive groves by moonlight.

One letter pa.s.sed with great amus.e.m.e.nt around the court detailed a night when Thomas and Ned and their female companions had all spontaneously stripped off their clothes and leapt naked into a wooden vat to stomp the grapes with their bare feet, dancing upon them as the musicians played, then fell to making love, changing partners, then changing partners again. When they emerged from the vat, they were stained purple all over and had to take many baths and even resort to pumice stones and vinegar scrubs before they were clean enough to be presentable. Everyone at court had a good laugh over it, except Master Secretary Cecil and Kate, who each in their own way found these reports most distressing, only Kate must bear her pain in private.

Again I held my sister as she wept then tried in vain to convince herself that it didn't mean anything, Ned was a young man, after all, and young men were apt to do this sort of thing. She pointed the finger of blame at Thomas Cecil; he was clearly a bad influence and her ”Poor Ned” had found it impossible to curtail him. Thomas might even have discovered the truth about their marriage and used this knowledge to blackmail Ned into doing as he willed. ”My poor darling!” Kate cried, horrified by the thought of this cruel coercion, imagining her ”Sweet Ned” making love to another woman in a vat of grapes to keep their secret safe.

Privately, I was convinced she was grasping at straws, but I didn't have the heart to tell her so. I knew Thomas Cecil; he had once traded his best horse to a peddler lurking outside a tavern for a jar of cream guaranteed to make his c.o.c.k ”as big and hard as a battering ram,” and another time, while visiting a London fair, he had given his fine Spanish leather boots in exchange for a recipe to turn his father's dairy cows' milk to wine. He had actually interrupted a Council meeting by running in barefoot brandis.h.i.+ng the recipe, bursting with excitement to tell his father how he had just made his fortune. The idea of such a man blackmailing anyone into doing his bidding was absurd beyond words.

Soon there came a day when Kate could deny the truth no longer. She fainted while following the hunt. Only the quick intervention of the Queen's Master of the Horse, and some said lover, Robert Dudley, kept Kate from being trampled by the horses' hooves. She was carried in a sweaty swoon by litter back to the palace while the Queen, who could ”not abide these weak and frail, fainting females,” went on with the hunt.

I had stayed behind to do some sewing and I heard about Kate's fall from a pair of gossipy maids who had come in with fresh sheets to make up the Queen's bed.

I found Kate in her room, her crimson velvet riding habit and feathered hat cast aside, crouching, half kneeling, half lying on the floor, in her s.h.i.+ft and red stockings, holding her belly and retching into the chamber pot. I ran to gather back her hair and found it soaking wet and reeking of sweat, and her skin was burning, oily and a-s.h.i.+mmer with it. I said not a word and stood patiently by until she was finished, then I gently helped her up. When she stood, I reached out and boldly laid my palm upon her belly. I felt life stir within it. Kate lowered her eyes to look at me, and I raised mine to meet hers. There was no use denying it anymore.

”Don't say it,” Kate pleaded, soft and tremulously. ”Please, Mary, don't say, 'I told you so.'”

”Come here.” I opened my arms to her, and with a great sob, she dropped to her knees and came to me.

”Mary, what shall I do? I am so frightened! Ned hasn't answered my letters, though I dare not tell him. What am I to do? The Queen will think me wanton, when she finds out ...”

”Then we shall have to ensure that she does not find out,” I said decisively. ”We will have to withdraw from court when your time is near, and the child shall have to be farmed out with a wet nurse; none must know it is yours. Later, we can discreetly arrange its adoption by a respectable couple, nice people,” I a.s.sured Kate, seeing her stricken expression, ”who truly want a baby.”

”No!” Kate cried, leaping away from me as though I had suddenly grown horns and a forked tail. ”No! No! No! I will not give up my baby!”

”Would you rather give up your head?” I asked plainly.

”Oh!” Kate sighed, sitting on the floor, leaning back upon her palms. ”What a mess I have made of it all!”

I agreed but chose not to rub salt in her wounds by saying so. Instead, I held out my hand, to help her rise, and said simply, ”Come, we needn't think of these things right now. There is much to be done, and we must get started. We must conceal the truth as long as we can.”

I brought out Kate's darkest dresses and set to work letting out the seams. I made Kate stand still and took her measurements, this time with neither of us commenting on the changes in her figure. I worked in silence. When I brought out the increasingly fas.h.i.+onable farthingale, I silently thanked G.o.d and the Spanish for this birdcagelike undergarment, belling out around Kate's hips and limbs; it would help us hide the truth even longer. I would buy canvas and cane, or whalebone, if it could be had, and create a new one in which the stiff circular bands, which gradually widened as they descended to the hem, grew subtly wider earlier in their descent. That coupled with the dark colours she would be wearing, and lacing her stays tight as I dared, would make Kate's waist seem smaller above her fuller skirts. And-another stroke of luck-the Queen, being very vain of her beautiful, long-fingered white hands, greatly favoured fans, great, graceful spreads of ostrich plumes, black or white, or dyed delicate or vivid hues. I instructed Kate to make a habit of holding her fan open, down low, near about her waist.

As a special gift, I bought a length of beautiful coal black velvet, lined it with charcoal grey satin, and made Kate a long, full, flowing, sleeveless surcoat to which I then added a narrow edging of white miniver. I st.i.tched a row of beautiful braided silk charcoal grey frogs down the front so that she might wear it open or closed as she pleased. She would later don it for the miniature Lavinia Teerlinc would paint of the young mother holding one son and expecting another that would later become one of my greatest treasures. As a peace offering, to put the past months of stormy scenes and secrecy behind us, I embroidered a new petticoat for her with a border of pomegranates, both whole and halved, replete with pearl seeds, and bunches of pretty purple violets tied with yellow ribbons to recall the colours of her wedding gown. When Kate saw it she hugged me and wept, she was so very grateful and pleased, and promised never to ever keep anything from me again.

We had to be careful and clever and watch every step. Any slip could send us skidding straight into the arms of disaster. There were a few close calls. One night, Kate, unthinkingly, sat down at a banquet and greedily devoured an entire gilded platter heaped high with gingered carrots. She was about to raise the empty platter to her lips and lick it clean, so ravenous was she for the gingery glaze, when I caught her. Another night she danced with a young gallant she had once allowed some intimate familiarity with her person. When he sought a repet.i.tion and groped her b.r.e.a.s.t.s he drew back, startled, insisting that they had grown larger. I feared all was lost for us. But Kate feigned indignation. She pouted and said he had either remembered wrong or confused her with another lady, and if that were the case, she could not have meant that much to him after all. With a playful slap of her fan to his arm, coupled with a carefree smile, she danced away.

'Twas then I decided that Kate must give up dancing. Even though she complained and cried, I was adamant. I knew that it would not be easy, for Kate loved dancing, and she was so lively, graceful, and light of step that she was one of the court's favourite dancing partners, and always a favourite with the Master of the Revels for prime roles in the masques. But the more vigorous dances might hurt her child or even bring on her labour prematurely-I had heard of such things happening-and in the intimacy of the dance her partner's hands might discover her precious secret. At last, I agreed to compromise and let Kate continue to dance the more sedate, slower measures, devoid of lifts and leaps, where couples walked instead of skipped and pranced, and naught but their hands touched, lest her total abstinence from the dance be remarked. But when it came to the more lively measures, I held firm, and Kate began to suffer a series of misfortunes-badly sprained ankles, toothaches, sudden headaches, a sole come off her shoe, and I had even been known to surrept.i.tiously b.u.mp someone from behind so that their wine or a plate of food spilled on Kate's gown so that she must quit the Great Hall and go change.

As though things were not complicated enough, just when we thought that part of our lives was well behind us, the duplicitous Earl of Pembroke and his whey-faced son came back, sniffing like hounds around Kate's petticoats, bearing gifts, and voicing hopes of a reconciliation, a remarriage, now that Kate was no longer in disgrace, and many thought, if the Queen died without issue, she would become England's next queen. All sly Pembroke wanted was the Crown for Berry, but, to our shared dismay, we might have to make use of this pair of weasels after all.

Though Kate waited ”with an anxious heart” for Ned's return, her letters to him went unanswered. With tales of his frolics with French ladies and dalliances with buxom Italian peasant girls reaching our ears, and no word to allay Kate's fears, how could we not wonder if he had forgotten her? What if Ned, knowing full well that they could not reveal their marriage without braving the Queen's wrath, had decided it was not worth the trouble and just to pretend it had never happened at all? With Lady Jane dead, the deed lost, and the priest, Father Never-Known-Name, long gone, there was no one but me who could say it had happened at all. But as Kate's sister, and naturally loyal to her, and knowing my sister shamed and facing ruin, how much validity would my words truly carry? Ned might very well choose to save himself, but Kate, though she was not the first, and would not be the last, young woman at court to find herself with her belly full but a husband lacking, would be ruined. She would be forced to leave court and any hopes of another marriage would be dashed forever; she would be branded a light skirt, all her flirtatious ways recalled, and no respectable man would ever have her.

No, it could not be, I decided. Ned must look to himself, as I was certain he would anyway, but I must act fast to save my sister from certain ruin, even if it meant she must reunite with those who had hurt her so badly before. She could, if she would, use them to her own ends now.

Naturally Kate balked, not wanting to forsake her ”Sweet Ned,” or commit what she knew to be bigamy and adultery in her heart, but I was always more practical and pragmatic, and held firm to the only course I could see likely to have a fortuitous outcome.

”They hurt you once, now they can save you, so use them the way they used you!” I said. ”What choice do you really have? You know better than to trust Elizabeth to be merciful! You are younger and fairer, and many men smile upon and favour you, and your legitimacy is undisputed; our parents were well and truly married long before you were born. If you are found out, you are handing Elizabeth the perfect excuse to get rid of you. Here are your options, Kate: at best, she, and all the world, will see you as a wanton with a full belly and no golden band on her hand and banish you to live out your life in the country. At worst, if she discovers you are indeed married, without royal consent, and to Ned Seymour, thus uniting your Tudor blood with his Plantagenet, you are both-you my sister and your 'Sweet Ned'-facing the Tower or even death-to be burned or beheaded at the Queen's pleasure. Or”-I paused pointedly-”you can do as I suggest, seduce Berry, let him have his way with you, and discover you are with child and quickly, confess to the Queen and secure her permission, marry him again, and we will find a midwife who harkens to the voice of gold rather than her conscience to a.s.sist us and arrange an 'accident' to fool Berry and his father into thinking that your labour has come on prematurely. Men are notoriously and blissfully ignorant of women's matters, and would rather not know the details. You can wrap Berry around your little finger and banish any doubts he might have if he has wit enough to have any, which I very much doubt.”

Kate grasped her head and paced before me. ”I don't know, Mary. I ... you must give me time, I must think ...”

I rushed and stood straight before her, boldly blocking her path, and when she tried to turn away from me, I grabbed her skirt and made her stay and look at me. ”You haven't time, Kate! If you are going to do this, you must do it now; before you are showing too much for even a fool like Berry to be deceived. Any woman of experience, even one who has grown up accustomed to seeing her mother or older sisters and cousins breeding, could see the secret you carry if she saw you unclothed, but Berry, you can fool! A weak const.i.tution and a timid, fastidious nature have kept him from being as active in carnal pursuits as most young men his age, and he has no mother or sisters, so I'm willing to wager that he will find you only pleasingly plump. You're older now than when he knew you, you were only fourteen when you parted, so 'tis natural your body would have grown fuller and rounder. So what will it be, Kate-Elizabeth's fury leading to exile and ruination; trust that Ned will do the honourable thing and come back like a knight in s.h.i.+ning armour on a white horse and rescue you just so you can brave the Queen's wrath together and rot in prison or die for your treasonous presumption; or marry Berry again and, as Father used to say, make marzipan out of the almonds that are given you? It's now or never, Kate! Make your choice!”

”Marzipan,” Kate whispered through tremulous lips. ”I shall endeavour to make marzipan out of the almonds.” She nodded, and breathed deep and shakily. ”Will you help me, Mary? Tell me what to do?” In that moment all traces of the worldly and sophisticated woman of twenty vanished. My sister stood before me, shaking and weeping, as scared and helpless as a little girl.

”You know I will,” I answered.

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