Part 15 (1/2)

For a fortnight the fever burned her. She didn't fight; and everyone feared this was the end, she had lost all will to live, the hope that had been keeping her alive was dead, and Lady Wentworth feared that in trying to help Kate she had made a grave mistake. In a moment of rare consciousness, when Lady Wentworth said, ”You must try to get better, dear,” Kate looked at her, in full and knowing seriousness, and said, ”I don't want to,” before she shut her eyes and fell into oblivion again. But, just as suddenly as the fever had come, it was gone. Kate opened her eyes, as though waking from an ordinary sleep, and sat up and said, ”I would like a bath, please.”

She truly began to try then, striving to find a purpose, something to go on for, to give her life meaning. Though the wound dealt her heart would never truly heal, the effort still was valiant. She began to a.s.sist the local midwife, delivering the tenants' babies. In this work she found a kind of peace, but also a quiet torment. ”Every time I hold a new baby, my heart mends and at the same time breaks,” she wrote me. Yet she fought relentlessly for each little life, never giving up even on the most difficult deliveries; when even the old midwife shook her head and said it was all in G.o.d's hands, Kate persevered. ”I can't let another mother lose her child, or a baby lose its mother!” she would cry as she fought to keep Death away and save both mother and child. Sometimes she succeeded in cheating Death, other times He won, and Kate took each triumph and failure to heart.

An unexpected glimmer of romance came again into Kate's life in the person of the Wentworths' new steward-Mr. Roke-Green. He was a handsome, clever, kind, dark-haired, and bearded young man in his early thirties, half English, half French, who had married early in his impetuous youth, and lost his French wife in the birthing of their sixth child. With his black-haired brood of three boys and three girls, he had come to Gosfield Hall to start a new life. He fell in love with Kate at first sight.

At first, she tried to fight it, making excuses to avoid his company, as her hope of being reunited with Ned and their boys, like the most stubborn, hard to kill weed, tried to revive itself, but then she would remember the red-haired girl she had seen through the window at Hanworth and remind herself that Ned had already moved on. And Mr. Roke-Green was tenacious; like the Wentworths, he simply would not give up on Kate. Rather than see her sink like a stone, he would teach her to swim again. He had a habit of appearing seemingly out of nowhere to walk beside her. When the maids came to tidy and freshen her rooms, he would appear to take Kate's arm and lead her out to walk in the gardens, observing, ”You need a little colour in your cheeks. You've been hiding indoors far too long, Mistress Kate. The sun has grown lonely for sight of you, as I have too.” He would appear to accompany her to and from the birthings she attended, even at dusk or dawn or any hour in between, falling seamlessly into step with her. She tried to discourage him with brooding silence, by refusing to talk except in clipped and rude monosyllables, but he had a knack for drawing her out. I think, knowing my sister as I do, deep down she was truly flattered to have the attention of a man again; she had always been a pert, pretty flirt, and I'm certain, even if she pretended otherwise, that she missed it.

Soon he began to bring her books, and for the first time in her life, Kate, always an indifferent, bored, and easily distracted student, became a reader. She found that she enjoyed, and even looked forward to, the discussions she would have with Mr. Roke-Green about the volumes he lent her. He took her home, to his comfortable cottage on the grounds of Gosfield Hall, to meet his children. Soon Kate was there every night, laughing and smiling, enjoying the company of them all, as she prepared their evening meal. She learned to cook, simple country fare, and became quite good at it. When Mr. Roke-Green protested that she would ruin her hands and should leave such things to the housekeeper, Kate laughed and said, ”Things like soft, ladylike, lily-white hands have no place in my life anymore.” With her swain at her side, insisting that he must be allowed to help, the better to be close to her, the two would stand side by side in the little kitchen and chop chunks of beef or lamb and slice carrots and onions to make a stew. Sometimes one or the other would steal a kiss. And they would each take a sip of red wine from the bottle before Kate carefully poured it into the pot to thicken the gravy.

But Kate, no matter how hard she tried, could never truly banish her melancholy. It was always there, lurking just below the surface, ready to seize just the right moment and come bursting forth like a crocodile to bite and rend her heart again and drag it down to drown. When Kate would stand, watching the stew pot and the bay leaves she had just added bobbing like little boats atop the bubbling brown brew, she would remember the little leaf boats she used to float upon the fishpond, to carry her love to Ned and her boys, and tears would fill her eyes, though she would always whisk them away and claim it was only the onions that made her cry.

Then a night came when she stood naked in a pool of silver white moonlight pouring in through her open window, a gentle breeze stirring the curtains. She was still very beautiful despite her sorrow; everyone said so. Nervously, she daubed rosewater behind her ears and on her throat, b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and wrists. She pulled on her purple wool stockings, and with trembling hands tied the violet-embroidered nightcap over her hair and took a deep breath, opened her arms, and let Mr. Roke-Green in. It was the first time she had known a man's touch in five years.

The next morning she awakened to find Lady Wentworth standing smiling beside her bed with a cup of pennyroyal tea to guard against conception. She was not going to make the same mistake as the gaolers in the Tower had. Each morning, after Kate and Mr. Roke-Green had pa.s.sed a pa.s.sionate night in her bed, Lady Wentworth was always there with a cup of pennyroyal tea, to make sure Kate drank every drop. There would be no ”little accidents” on Lady Wentworth's watch. ”Must I?” Kate would always ask, even though she knew she must, though she longed to feel a new life growing inside her, fluttering like a beautiful b.u.t.terfly in her belly and making her feel alive, giving her sweet proof that G.o.d truly was giving her a fresh start. But it could not be, and as she obediently drank the pennyroyal tea, Lady Wentworth would put an arm around Kate's shoulders, kiss the tousled flame of her hair, and say, ”Don't think about it, my dear. It will only take another bite out of your heart. Best to enjoy what you can have, and not brood and dwell on what you cannot.” Sage advice. If only Kate's mind could have imbibed that wisdom the way her body did the pennyroyal tea.

19.

Though I was now Kate's confidante, more than I had ever been before, I kept my own life a close-guarded secret. Grown even more self-interested in her sorrow, Kate never asked about me. Perhaps she thought she was being kind? That to ask would only remind me just how little I had to hope for and look forward to? Maybe her own loneliness made her more conscious of mine? After all, dwarves have never been deemed desirable paramours, and there was little else to recommend me and encourage a suitor's interest. All I had now was the trickle of Tudor blood in my veins, my yearly stipend from my service at court, and a small annuity. All the Greys' wealth had been squandered, gambled, or frittered away, and even Bradgate was no longer ours; after our lady-mother died it went, with all the rest of her remaining property, to her second husband, Adrian Stokes. The once lowly Master of the Horse had certainly done well by us; he had risen in the world, going from groom to master, and was now the proud owner of the estate where he had come to work as a stable boy. For him, playing stallion to our lady-mother's mare and suffering the bite of her riding crop on his b.u.t.tocks and haunches had proved most profitable. Mayhap, as with her own daughters, she left him with a few scars to remember her by? But by saying this I really do not mean to be unkind. I saw him occasionally at court, and he always had a shy smile for me and looked as though he wanted to tarry and talk with me but was too bashful to try. I did not encourage him, especially after I realized, to my horror, after bolting up in bed in a sweat with his image still hovering naked above me, how much I wished he would, and that I liked Master Stokes's shy smiles and quiet ways a little too well, much more than was seemly for a maid to like the man who was her stepfather. And I shoved Master Stokes out of my mind.

I was four-and-twenty and I had a beau now. Kate never knew. No one did. The laughter would have been too loud to contain if they had. I myself blushed to even think it, and could not bear to actually say the words acknowledging it, lest bad luck come and s.n.a.t.c.h him away and give him to another. He was the most unlikely mate for me anyone could have imagined, the tallest man in London, as big as I was small, and when he stood beside me it was like a great oak towering over a tiny acorn far down below on the ground. I hadn't grown even half an inch since I was five, and he was but a smidgen under seven feet. He had been offered vast sums to tour the provinces and show himself at fairs, or to take up residence in the curiosity cabinets of royalty avid for human oddities, but he chose instead to serve his queen as sergeant porter, guarding the gate at Whitehall Palace, turning out the troublemakers and keeping the undesirables out. He quelled the drunken quarrels, arguments over dice and cards, and even lovers' spats when fists were raised and claws came out. His name was Thomas Keyes. And I loved him.

He'd been there all along, guarding the gate at Whitehall, but strange as it may sound, especially when speaking of a giant, and one with a taste for showy garb at that, I never noticed him until after Kate was gone, when I was alone ... and in need of a friend. He knew what it was like to be different and lonely too. Our differences, though great to the world around us, made us alike in a way that no one else could see. Though he was tall and I was small, my birth was high and his was low, his years were well seasoned and mine were tender and raw, he was a widower with six children and I was a virgin spinster, we both knew what it was like to be set apart, shunned, laughed at, and to feel alone even in the midst of a crowd. He sent me a tiny sparrow, an exquisite little bird carved out of a walnut sh.e.l.l. Then, a few days later, he sent me a mate for her, slightly larger than herself, so that when they were put together, her head nestled comfortably in the crook of his neck, and it was as though he were sheltering and protecting the one he loved most. A week later, he sent me a nest for them, woven out of straw. Then came three little speckled stones shaped like eggs. I have them still, now as they were then, perched upon my dressing table, on a little ledge above the mirror. Later, he would give me a little mother-of-pearl bottle on a golden chain. Filled with some of Kate's cinnamon rose perfume that I kept, it still hangs between my b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

We began to talk. I was little and no one noticed me going to and from his rooms above the water gate at night after our duties were done for the day. He was ever the perfect gentleman, and we only met privily to spare ourselves the deep belly laughs, pointing fingers, and jests our tender companions.h.i.+p was certain to inspire. We tried to pretend that we wanted only friends.h.i.+p, and he was supremely and humbly conscious of my royal blood, saying I was ”too high a star for me ever to aspire to.” If a giant has ever spoken more ironic words to a dwarf I have never heard them. But did it truly matter? I thought the Tudor blood in my veins an irrelevant nuisance. None had ever come to me whispering conspiratorially about the Crown, imagining a day when I, Mary Grey, would be queen.

Pause a moment and imagine me as queen, and I dare you not to laugh. Not to let your mind conjure up lively pictures of dwarfish jesters with tin crowns and bell-spangled sceptres. If I ever sat upon the throne, I would turn the monarchy into a monumental jest, and everyone would keep expecting me to spring up and dance or do acrobatic tricks, boggle my eyes, and put out my tongue, and make funny faces and jokes at my courtiers' expense with the freedom that is allotted only to the royal fool. Just think if I were mated with my Mr. Keyes as my king, what a freak show we would make. People would gladly pay a penny to come into the presence chamber to gawk and gape at us. I was no threat to Elizabeth! None at all! Suddenly things like the Queen's permission, and all the counsel I had given Kate against marrying Ned Seymour, didn't seem so important anymore. Why should I not follow in Kate's footsteps and listen to my heart and go where it led me? I knew it was leading me straight into the arms of my Thomas.

One night, after the Queen had been put to bed, I went to him, still in my black velvet and silver tinsel-cloth court finery, with a diamond star pinned to the top of my high-piled hair. He was sitting by the fire with a book when I came in. Boldly, I clambered up onto his lap, and, planting one silver-shod foot on each of his thighs, I stood up straight. Even though my hair was only barely above his salt-and-pepper stubbled pate-that was why I had piled it as high as I could even though it strained and pulled at the roots and made my head ache-it was enough for me to make my point. I pulled the diamond star free and let the scarlet-sheened sable tumble down to caress his face and curtain my own as I kissed him. It was the first time I had ever kissed a man's mouth.

”What a bold one you are, Mary Grey!” he beamed, his eyes twinkling like stars, as his broad hands grasped and encircled my thick tree-trunk waist, making it feel all of a sudden tiny as Kate's seductive hourgla.s.s shape. He kissed me back. He held me close, I clung to him, and we kissed again and again until I quite lost count. I only know that when we stopped the stars had left the sky and the sun had come out.

20.

But just as love, and life, I felt, was beginning for me, for Kate it was all about to end. The brief, bright candle of her life was about to burn out, and I didn't even know it.

One winter's day, when she was out playing in the snow with Mr. Roke-Green's three daughters, a milk cow wandered past, dragging a frayed rope and crying to be milked, her angry pink udders swollen and swaying. Kate's mind was instantly catapulted back in time, to that February day, so long ago, when we three sisters had our syllabub before our lives changed forever. Looking at her suitor's three girls, she must have seen us. Perhaps she was driven to try to recapture the joy of that day, the last day when we were truly little girls, to remind herself of her youth and zest for life, to prove to herself that it was still there, that she could be that Kate again if she really tried.

”A syllabub! We shall have a syllabub! A sweet, sweet syllabub!” my Kate impulsively cried, echoing her long ago girlhood self.

I can see her now, in the black gown I had made with the row of buckram stiffened bows on the bodice, its skirt trailing listlessly, like a wilted black tail, behind her in the snow, and her hair, now faded to peaches and cream, either streaming free in a ma.s.s of wilted ringlets or braided into a coronet perched high atop her head, a coiffure made in mockery of the Crown she never coveted but had nonetheless cast such a giant shadow over her life. She sent Mr. Roke-Green's three little girls scurrying off to fetch sugar, cinnamon, wine, honey, and a long-handled spoon, while she fetched a three-legged milking stool and a pail from the barn and sat down to milk the cow.

But when it was ready, everything changed suddenly, and she could not partake of it, not even one sip. She just suddenly seemed to lose interest.

”I thought I wanted it,” she said apologetically, and walked away, black skirt trailing through the snow. She took to her bed again and sank deep down, back into the black mud of melancholy, and this time nothing and no one could pull her back out. All the fight had gone out of her; she simply gave up. A part of her died that day.

She was still abed, in the same black gown, a few weeks later, staring at the rose-patterned spice-orange damask canopy above her head, refusing all sustenance, complaining that everything tasted burnt and bitter, as though her mouth were full of ashes, when the Wentworths died, one after the other. A trifling cough and fever of the kind common in winter had proved deadly for the elderly couple, and it had flooded their lungs and drowned out their lives.

Mr. Roke-Green decided to write to the Queen, to ask her permission to marry Kate. Since her union with Ned had been adjudged a ”pretend marriage” this should prove no barrier, he reasoned, and, by taking a husband of lower birth, as her own mother and grandmother had done before her, she would be proving, once and for all, that she lacked any royal pretensions. For good measure, he promised that he would a.s.sure the Queen that Kate was willing to make a public renunciation as well as a written declaration, barring herself and any children born of her body from the succession permanently and forever. Kate stood beside his desk and watched him eagerly sign and seal the letter. Then, without a word, she took it from his hand and held it unwaveringly into the candle's bright flame and watched it burn until its scorching tongue lapped her fingertips. After that she walked away, without a word of explanation. Why did she do it? She never told me. But it is my belief that Kate chose to destroy her own happiness rather than give Elizabeth another chance to. Or mayhap she did it for her boys? Every mother wants the best for her children, and perhaps she did not think she had the right to deny them any hope of England's throne? Or maybe it was simply that she still loved Ned and could not envision herself with any husband but him? I do not know.

Shortly afterward, she was removed to what would be her final prison, c.o.c.kfield Hall in Yoxford, a bleak, grey, ramshackle manor in Suffolk, surrounded by a cl.u.s.ter of dilapidated cottages and a church falling fast into ruin.

Too weak to walk, Kate was carried upstairs to her bed by Sir Owen Hopton, her new gaoler. She never left it. Though when she was first laid down, she raised her head and laughed when she saw that the walls were hung with a series of tapestries depicting the tale of the prodigal son. She pointed feebly to the one showing him being welcomed home, back into his father's loving embrace. ”Would that were me, being forgiven by Elizabeth!” She sighed. ”But I know now I shall never lie in my husband's arms again or hold and play with my sweet little boys. They are growing up now-seven and six, Sir Owen! My how the time flies! The years go by without me, and I cannot get them back!”

She fell to weeping piteously into her pillows.

At midnight on January 26, 1568, I awoke, or thought I did, to the touch of a hand, a gentle caress, upon my cheek. I found Kate sitting beside me, smiling down at me, pale as a white rose lightly blushed with pink. She was wearing the black gown with the ladder of bows on the bodice, the last I had made for her, and her peaches and cream hair was a ma.s.s of s.h.i.+ning ringlets that seemed to have captured the sun in their curls. The storms of anguished torment that had filled her blue grey eyes had all blown out, leaving only peace and tranquillity behind. She was glowing, radiant, and I knew instinctively that the last faint ember of her life had finally burned out; there was nothing left in this world that she could hope to have that would make her s.h.i.+ne so.

”Live for love, Mary, all for love!” she said to me with urgent, loving tenderness-the Kate I had known and loved restored to me for one brief, s.h.i.+ning instant.

She pointed out my window, and I saw a star fall, like a diamond dropped down into dark water, and when I looked back, she was gone. ”Going toward G.o.d, as fast as I can!” a faint voice whispered with a hopeful smile I heard but couldn't see, then silence, sad but sacred silence that told me that my Kate was at long last at peace.

I sat in the darkness, hugging my knees, and wept for my sister, then I got up and did what I knew she would want me to do.

I threw a dark cloak over my s.h.i.+ft, and, without even bothering to put on my slippers, I went to my Thomas's rooms above the water gate.

Fearlessly, I let my cloak fall, and wriggled out of my s.h.i.+ft. Naked as a babe, unashamed, for the first time in my life, of my squat, gnarled, thick goblin's body, I crawled into his bed and kissed him awake and told him yes, I would marry him, and felt his arms close about me and his lips upon mine.

When the messenger finally came, he didn't have to tell me she was gone; Kate had already told me herself. All he could give me were the details, how Kate had entrusted three rings to Sir Owen Hopton, asking him to see them safely delivered to her husband-her sky blue diamond betrothal ring, the five-banded gold puzzle ring he had put on her finger the day they were wed, and, lastly, a silver skull, an ornately wrought death's head set with sapphire eyes, its band engraved inside with the words While I Lived, Yours. Then, seemingly content, she folded her arms across her breast, shut her eyes, and prayed, ”O Lord, for Thy many mercies, blot out of Thy book my many sins.”

Alarmed, Sir Owen sent a maid running to the nearby church, to ask that the bells be rung, calling all to pray for the departing soul of one, though not acknowledged, they considered a princess.

”Yes, good Sir Owen”-Kate smiled without opening her eyes-”let it be so.”

Sensing Death's approach, Kate sat up, for the first time in many days, ”jubilant and radiant as I had never seen her before,” Sir Owen reported. She rejoiced to see her fingernails turning blue. ”Look you, here He comes!” she cried eagerly, excitedly holding out her hand for those about her-the maids, doctor, priest, and Sir Owen and his wife-to see. ”For all the world like a girl happily displaying her betrothal ring to her dearest friends,” Sir Owen would say after. Then she flung wide her arms, ”like a woman welcoming her lover,” and cried out, ”Welcome, Death!” and fell back, eyes closed, lips parted as if in ecstasy, like a woman surrendering to the most pa.s.sionate embrace.

So died the broken spirit that was once my suns.h.i.+ne girl, my lovely, lively Kate. She was only twenty-eight.

I didn't go to Yoxford to see her buried; I wanted to remember her as I saw her last, beautiful and radiant, and blissfully at peace. But I sent a gown of soft orange silk, to complement her sorrow-bleached hair, since I couldn't bear the thought of Kate being buried in black, and a wreath of gilded laurel leaves for her hair, to show all who looked upon her that she had won her battle with life.

21.