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 harbored 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 relinquishing 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 color of a mud puddle!” Kate cried, snatching a bolt of dung brown from out of Jane’s hands. “Ugh! Take it away! And not that one either. It’s the color of wet moss and can’t make up its mind whether it wants to be green or gray, but either way it’s hideous! No, Jane, no!” She snatched 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, colors that bring your hair to life and make the red in it glow like embers beneath the brown, colors 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 snatch 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 colors.
“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 favored 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 cocoon, and she stood again, just like Kate, in her shift, I unwound a bolt of shimmering 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 snatched 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 God 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 embarrass 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 endeavor 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 peacock! I am a godly 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 shine again, even if it means putting aside her pretty clothes and giving up dancing and gambling, to curry favor 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 peacock 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 favored gold-embroidered red satin—is that not the Magdalene’s color? 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 a one of them without jewels and gilt embroidery; they were not the sackcloth and ashes sort, I assure 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 shine 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 color 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 shimmer were the colors 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 fashions 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 ou
r lady-mother to one of her rare acts of kindness.
“The time is not ripe, my petite 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 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 center 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 shimmering 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, butterflies, and bees, flowers, budding or in full bloom, fruit, cherubs, grandiose geometric intricacies as ambitious as they were beautiful, both marvelous and bewildering to the eye, swirls, loops, lozenges, crescents, mazes, stars, and scrolls until my eye fastened upon a lustrous 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 wish!”
“I know it will.” Our lady-mother nodded, as though it had never even occurred to her to doubt it, and turned back to Kate. “For your gown, my darling, you shall have cloth-of-gold just as you have always dreamed of wearing on your wedding day, trimmed with diamonds and pearls of course—it is just foolish superstition that a bride should forsake them on her wedding day as they invite tears and sorrow—and the sleeves shall be furred in purest white, and you shall have a crown of gilded rosemary with pearl and jeweled flowers for your hair. And you may wear my emeralds—the big ones so green that grass would envy them,” she added, laughing as Kate hurled herself into her arms, crying out her thanks. “I remember when you used to sneak into my room, you dear, naughty mite.” She chuckled fondly, reaching down to caress Kate’s curls. “You would creep in while I was out hunting and take out my gold gown, spilling crushed lavender all over the floor. Even though it was far too big for you, and you always stumbled and tripped and bruised your chin upon the floor, wear it you would, and parade solemnly up and down the Long Gallery, as though you were trying to wade through a sea of gold and in dire peril of drowning, so engulfed and overwhelmed were you by that great gold gown, pretending you were a bride upon your wedding day and that your father’s suit of armor was your bridegroom waiting at the altar for you. Now, my beautiful little girl has grown up, and she will wear a wedding gown of gold and there shall be a handsome young man who is truly worthy of her waiting at the altar to make her his wife.”
“My lady-mother, I am so happy!” Kate cried.
“As you deserve to be.” Our lady-mother smiled. “Beauty such as yours should never know what sorrow means.”
Jane gave a loud, derisive snort, and our lady-mother whipped around to impale her with a daggerlike stare. “Jane,” she said severely, “you shall wear silver.”
At those words, my heart sank. Our lady-mother was playing favorites again, and sending a silent message, giving Kate the full glory of gold and making Jane appear second best, and the lesser valued, in silver. Kate would be dazzling and radiant in gold, with her sunny, vivacious smile and laughing, loving jewel-bright eyes, and Jane standing glum and serious, sulky and silent, in silver beside her, with her downcast eyes and frowning mouth, would make a poor showing in comparison. With the gilded idol of Guildford Dudley as a bridegroom the effect would be even worse. They would all outshine Jane; even if they were naked, their smiles alone would do it! It wasn’t fair!
Even worse, Jane didn’t care, even though she should; she who would rather wear plain black, dung brown, or dull gray would never fight for gold. But Jane needed gold, she deserved it, just as much as Kate did! Gold would bring out the red and gold embers hiding in her brown hair, like coals glowing beneath wood and ashes, and make the green, blue, and hazel sparkle like jewels against dust and eclipse the harsh gray of her eyes. I had always associated gold with warmth, like sunshine, and silver with cold and ice, and even though Jane’s personality was in truth better suited to chilly silver, and I had long ago given up my childish hope that if Jane wore gold these golden qualities would be magically and miraculously absorbed through her skin and she would smile and laugh and be merry just like Kate, I still longed to see her arrayed in gold on her wedding day. I wanted Jane herself to see when she stood before her looking glass that there was no sin in beauty, only in the vain attitude and condescending pride that often accompanied it, and that she could have her precious books and be beautiful too.
I swallowed down my tears and fears and steeled to do battle on Jane’s behalf since she would never fight for a cloth-of-gold gown. Timidly, I gave a tug to the skirt of our lady-mother’s crimson velvet riding habit.
“Please, my lady-mother, let Jane wear gold too. It is such a special day, and I would like to see both my sisters gowned in the full glory of gold on their wedding day. Let the Dudley girl wear silver if she will, but please garb both the Grey sisters, through your illustrious person kin to royalty, in gold.”
“Your point is well taken, Mary; appearances are everything, and it is imperative that we present an image of importance, solidarity, and regal grandeur. Very well then, let it be gold for Jane as well as Katherine. And Jane can wear the ruby necklace Princess Mary so thoughtfully sent her for her birthday; that bloodred shall look splendid against the pallor of her skin and help coax out the red in her hair, and we shall wash it with my own mother’s recipe for a saffron rinse with just a hint of henna the night before the wedding so the effect will be even more striking. Now, what pattern would you suggest for Jane’s kirtle and sleeves? Thorns and acanthus leaves or thistles perhaps, to suit her unpleasantly sharp and prickly personality?”
“To symbolize pain, punishment, suffering, and humiliation, my lady-mother?” Jane retorted, her voice hard and her eyes cold as gray ice.
I felt the anger rising inside our lady-mother and the imminent rain of blows Jane was courting as I watched her hand curl tighter around the jeweled handle of her riding crop. Quickly, despite the jerking pain that shot up my spine, I ran and snatched up a bolt of ivory satin blooming all over with embroidered yellow gillyflowers amidst glorious swirls of green and gold foliage.
“This please, my lady-mother”—I held it up for her to see—“gillyflowers for marital devotion and fidelity. Since Guildford Dudley seems to favor this particular flower, and in yellow, he is certain to appreciate the gesture and take it as a comp
liment—a loving tribute from his bride, who has chosen to array herself in his special flower on their wedding day. It will bode well for the marriage, I think.” Then, glancing at Jane’s scowling countenance, I hastily amended, “I hope.”
“A pretty choice as well as a diplomatic one.” Our lady-mother smiled and reached down to give my head a pat. “So be it! Oh, Mary, my poor little gargoyle, had you not been born grotesque, squat, and twisted, you would have been such a credit to me! Though you lack Kate’s beauty and Jane’s scholarly brilliance, you have something even more important—tact and common sense; you know how to be pleasing and practical. I could have made so much of you! What a most deplorable waste!”
“What a waste indeed,” I said softly, for in spite of our lady-mother’s words, none regretted more than I all the chances that were lost to me because of my stunted and deformed body. The love I would never have, the babies I would never bear, a spine and limbs that didn’t ache until old age beckoned, people who would smile and warmly embrace me rather than shrink away fearfully and avert their gaze, the good times I could never take part in, the bright parti-color gowns I could never wear without being mistaken for a fool in motley, to be able to dance without provoking laughter, and to be able to walk the London streets free from the fear of being snatched and sold into a troupe of performing dwarves or to a fair in need of a new attraction.
I was a small, shy creature meant to hide in the shadows, to live on the edge of the world, peeping out at it, not in the bright, frenetic center of it, never a participant and reveler, only an observer. But now was not the time to dwell on my misfortunes. My sisters needed me, so I forced myself to smile and, knowing that Jane detested Cousin Mary’s “bloody necklace,” I set about cajoling our lady-mother to send to the goldsmith and have a necklace of golden gillyflowers with emerald leaves crafted for Jane instead. “Perhaps a wreath of gilded rosemary with yellow gillyflowers for Jane’s hair? It will look well beside Kate’s.”
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