Brandy Purdy

by The Queen's Rivals

  Though his stomach had settled, and he had passed a peaceful night, Guildford, his face startlingly pale against the ornate gold-embroidered claret velvet of his traveling clothes, was still feeling weak and wobbly, and Father insisted on carrying him down the stairs and laying him gently in the barge and pressing into his hand a gilded pomander ball, scented with oranges and cloves, to mask the river’s vile reek. He tarried quite a time, causing our lady-mother to tap her booted toe impatiently, as he tucked a fur rug around Guildford, caressed his golden hair, plumped his pillows, petted Fluff, nestled in the crook of Guildford’s arm, and presented his “beautiful new son-in-law” with two comfit boxes—a silver one with icy green enamel filled with sugared aniseeds, mint lozenges, candied quinces, and crystallized ginger in case his stomach should trouble him again, and a gold one with sunny yellow enamel emblazoned with golden suns containing sugared lemon slices, “just because you like them, and because I like you, and these remind me of you, so I hope they will remind you of me and how much I . . . like you.” Father blushed and rambled as our lady-mother sighed and rolled her eyes, saying aside to Guildford’s mother that having such a husband was like having a little boy who never grew up.

  “I’m so happy!” Guildford, suddenly all aglow, exclaimed, sitting up and hugging his knees and smiling. “I feel like singing!” He threw his arms wide, as if to embrace the sun above, and opened his mouth in readiness to let the first notes out.

  “Oh no, Guildford, you mustn’t do that!” his older brother John exclaimed, quickly throwing himself forward to clap a hand over Guildford’s mouth. “All that puking last night will have left your throat frightfully raw.”

  “If you force it, you will only make it worse,” his brother Ambrose cautioned severely.

  “Quite right,” his father, the all powerful John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, agreed, so suave and smiling, gracious and benign that any who didn’t know him and his reputation would never have guessed that here was the most ruthless and ambitious man in England, a man who would stop at nothing to get what he desired. “You might damage your voice,” he continued. “Don’t you agree, Maestro Cocozza, that Guildford should not sing?” He turned to Guildford’s Italian music master, waiting to board another, rather crowded barge with Guildford’s valet, hairdresser, the secretary who wrote all his letters and also read aloud to him, the French and Italian tutors Guildford considered vital to his singing aspirations, laundress, page boys, musicians, sewing women, the man who looked after his pets, the French pastry cook Father had given the young couple as a wedding present, and, just for Jane, the prim, black-clad Mrs. Ellen, who had with Jane’s marriage risen from nurse to lady’s maid.

  With much flourishing of his hands and a spew of rapid Italian, the music master agreed, in the most emphatic terms, that Guildford should most definitely not sing.

  I tugged Lady Amy’s skirt to get her attention, and when she bent down I asked, “Does he not sing well?”

  “Well . . .” Her smile faltered. “His talent doesn’t quite match his enthusiasm. Which is a right shame since he loves singin’ so, but, to put it as kindly as I can,” she whispered, lowering her voice even more to make sure Guildford wouldn’t hear, “when he hits the high notes he sounds just like a cat yowlin’ in heat, he does, poor lad!”

  “When he was fifteen, Guildford ran away from home and tried to join a theatrical company,” the Duchess of Northumberland with a fond and indulgent smile, confided to our lady-mother, who was standing beside her, tapping her leather-booted toe and looking impatient and bored, “but the manager brought him straight home, and right back into my loving arms. He said that Guildford was not made for the stage. Even he could see how delicate and sensitive my darling is, just like a hothouse rose that would wilt and perish without his mother’s love.”

  “I don’t think that’s quite what the man meant, Mother,” Ambrose Dudley opined.

  “Nonsense!” the Duchess cried. “What else could he mean?”

  “Well, I took it to mean that Guildford can’t sing to save his life much less to earn his bread and board,” Amy’s husband, Robert, the fifth surviving Dudley son, whispered back to her, and Ambrose and John nodded their heads in emphatic agreement.

  “For shame!” the Duchess scolded her brood of black-haired boys. “I’m ashamed of you all! You should be proud of your brother’s talent and accomplishments, not jealous!”

  “Come now, Mother, you know we all love Gillyflower!” Robert retorted, using the family’s pet name for their gilt-haired darling. “ ’Twas just a jest! You wouldn’t want Guildford to think too highly of himself and get a reputation for being conceited, would you?”

  “My Gilded Lily conceited? Never!” the Duchess scoffed.

  I found it rather touching that though they all, with the possible exception of the deluded Duchess, deplored Guildford’s singing and strove vigilantly to keep him from embarrassing himself, none of them wanted to hurt his feelings by letting him know.

  Guildford frowned uncertainly and reached up to stroke his throat. “Well, if you really think it unwise . . .” And since everyone was so quick to assure him that they did indeed think it “most unwise,” he lay back against his pillows again. “Perhaps I should rest my throat for a few days. It does feel a trifle red . . .”

  “I think that’s a wonderful idea, dear!” his mother exclaimed, and all his brothers and sisters were quick to agree and praise him for his self-discipline and good sense.

  “I shall have the apothecary prepare a soothing syrup and send it on to you,” his sister, the recently married Lady Mary Sidney, promised.

  “One that tastes good,” Guildford stipulated. “If it doesn’t taste good, I won’t drink it!”

  “I shall insist upon it,” she promised.

  “Threaten him with hanging,” Guildford advised, “if it tastes the least bit vile or bitter, then he will be sure to make it very sweet.”

  “When he knows who it is for, I am sure he will make it just as sweet as you are!” Father breathed like a love-bedazzled maid.

  “Of course he will.” Guildford smiled and nodded confidently as he sank back against the velvet cushions, drawing the purring Fluff close against his chest and stroking his silky white fur. “If my beauty doesn’t inspire him, fear of hanging certainly will.”

  “Oh what a wit you are!” Father breathed rapturously. “You have such a way with words!”

  “They just spring up in my head like roses in full bloom, and I say them so that the world can enjoy them too.” Guildford beamed. “It would be selfish to keep my thoughts entirely to myself.”

  “Beautiful and generous too!” Father sighed, and I could see that he was perilously close to swooning into the Thames. “I’m sure you sing as beautifully as a nightingale,” Father said gallantly, “and I hope to hear you soon.”

  Then our lady-mother, who had had quite enough of this absurd spectacle, took command. “Hal, come stand over here beside me before you fall into the river! Now into the barge, Jane,” she directed, pointing the way with her riding crop.

  With a mutinous scowl and a marked ill-grace, Jane climbed into the barge and dropped down heavily beside Guildford and sat there with her back straight and her eyes staring forward. Even when Guildford reached out and playfully ran his fingers up and down her spine, she didn’t relax or relent, only stiffened her spine even more.

  As the oarsmen dipped their oars and began to row away, and we all waved and called out cheerful good-byes, Godspeeds, and good wishes, it gladdened my heart to see my stubborn sister relent and lean back against the cushions. Her hand went up to fuss with her hat. I suspected a pin was poking her and thought nothing more about it until she slowly, making a grand gesture of it, extended her arm straight out over the side of the barge and, following a lengthy pause, dropped the spray of white feathers, with the hideous dragon brooch her mother-in-law had just given her acting as an anchor, right into the dirty, reeking waters of the Thames.

&n
bsp; “Oh, Jane!” I sighed, shaking my head as the Duchess of Northumberland gave an anguished cry of, “My brooch! My beautiful brooch! Look what that girl has done to my beautiful brooch!”

  Then Kate, nestled up against Lord Herbert, with her head pillowed on his chest, and his arm close about her, beamed and waved at me as their barge glided past. At least one of my sisters was happy, I thought as behind me our newly extended family fell to brawling over the loss of the ugliest brooch I had ever seen. While I couldn’t condone or applaud my sister’s conduct, it truly was an unforgivable snub and most ungracious and ill-mannered, the brooch itself really was better off stuck in the muddy bottom of the Thames where it could offend no one’s eyes except the fishes, as our lady-mother quite candidly informed the Duchess, who had begun to stagger and sway and clasp her head and call for her smelling salts. “I know I shall faint!” she cried several times while failing to actually do so. In the end, she had to be helped back into the house, supported between two of her sons, while her daughter ran ahead, calling for smelling salts and cold compresses, and her husband sent Robert riding fast to fetch the family physician and an apothecary.

  When they had all gone back inside, and only Lady Amy and I remained, she smiled down at me and held out her hand and suggested we take a turn in the garden until all the ruffled feathers had been smoothed back down again. I nodded eagerly and gave her my hand. When my lady-mother called for me, I was sorry to leave Lady Amy behind with her husband and in-laws. After I turned back to wave at her, I saw the sadness on her face and impulsively ran back and gave her a hug as though a part of me knew that I would never see her again.

  3

  I was back at Suffolk House on what was to be my last night in London, helping Hetty pack my traveling chest, preparing to return to Bradgate on the morrow and dreading the long, lonely hours that lay ahead of me without my sisters. Regretfully, I folded away the lovely new gown I had worn to the wedding with sachets of crushed lavender nestled amidst its luxuriant folds and wondered when I would get to wear it again. I was heaving a doleful sigh and trying to resign myself to my fate when a letter came from Kate, bidding me come to Baynard’s Castle. I was so surprised I had to read the letter through three times to make sure wishful thinking hadn’t caused me to misread the words, and even then I couldn’t quite believe it and handed it to Hetty for confirmation. Kate had scarcely been gone a week, and I had thought not to receive an invitation to visit either of my sisters for months and months. But, as Kate explained, since she and Lord Herbert were still forbidden to consummate their marriage, and she found it “wearisome, vexing, and dreary” being always chaperoned “like a pair of guilty prisoners” she craved my comforting presence, as both a sister and a friend, someone she could be free and easy with. “I cannot even touch my husband’s hand,” she lamented, “without people eyeing me like a hawk about to swoop down and pounce on a poor little mouse. They’re afraid if they leave us alone for an instant I will ravish him.”

  I was so excited I could barely sleep and was bouncing on my toes, impatient as could be, to set off right after breakfast the next morning. I drove my poor nurse to such distraction that I set off for Baynard’s Castle wearing a pair of mismatched gloves with my bodice only haphazardly laced in back because I could not stand still and dear old Hetty’s eyes were not what they used to be. “Don’t be cross with me,” I said to her, “my cloak will hide it. I know you’re excited too, to see Henny again.” For her own dear sister was Kate’s nurse, now, like Jane’s Mrs. Ellen, raised up to serve as lady’s maid. Everyone loved Henny; she was a plump, good-natured mother hen of a woman who doted on Kate and clucked over her constantly, and she was much sweeter than my sour, always complaining Hetty, who had misery in her bones, aching back, stiff fingers, tired old eyes, and just about everywhere else. Father had offered to provide Kate with a real French lady’s maid, one skilled with perfumes, paints, and fashions, and nimble fingers for the styling and curling of hair, but Kate had wept and clung to her “dear old Henny” and refused to be parted from her, and Henny had wept too and wrapped her arms like a pair of protective wings about Kate and said, “I’ll not have my chick painted like a French whore!” Then Father had offered around his comfit box filled with pink sugared almonds and nothing more was ever said about Henny leaving or a French maid.

  At Baynard’s Castle, I followed a footman up the grand stone staircase and walked in on a scene of utter chaos. Like two naughty children playing at house, Kate and Lord Herbert, whom Kate had christened “Berry” because “he blushes red as one and is just as sweet,” received me in the large, spacious parlor that divided their bedchambers.

  Dogs and cats, barking and meowing, hissing and growling, chased each other all around the room, clawed the furniture, or curled up in their baskets or napped or groomed themselves on the bearskin rug by the fire, and gilded cages crowded the windows in which a profusion of rainbow-plumed songbirds sang or chirped and flapped their wings against the bars, and a big blue and yellow parrot danced on his perch or hung upside down from a large ring suspended from the ceiling, while constantly demanding a cherry over and over again until I wished I had a whole basket of cherries to throw at him just to shut him up.

  There were bowls of fruit, candies, and nuts, cups and flagons of wine, and platters of meat, cheese, and cake strewn over every possible surface, even balanced precariously upon the mantelpiece, and several garments and items of jewelry, vials of scent, combs, hairbrushes, and pins, bits of sewing, and the accoutrements of needlework, and several spoons and knives, all apparently laid down in scattered distraction and then forgotten.

  In the midst of it all stood Kate, in a shimmering emerald satin gown that was more appropriate for a court ball than a quiet rainy day spent at home, her coppery curls, unleashed from their pins and held but loosely back from her face by a jade butterfly comb, cascading down her back as though she was bored with pretending to be a proper married lady and wanted to be a little girl again. She didn’t see me enter nor hear the footman announce me, which was hardly surprising given the din created by her menagerie. She was preoccupied, plumping the pillows behind her husband’s back as he reclined on a couch, looking pale and smiling weakly, in his quilted mulberry satin dressing gown and slippers. She perched on the edge of the couch beside him and a brown and white spaniel hopped up onto her lap as she sweetly coaxed the invalid to take a sip of milk punch. Two implacable, blank-faced servants in the Pembroke livery stood stationed at either end, eyeing the young couple vigilantly, ready to put a stop to any affectionate displays that threatened to grow too familiar, and Henny, a much more familiar and friendlier face, smiled at me from over her sewing. I was astonished to see that she was making a tiny yellow dress trimmed with sky blue silk ribbons—a baby garment! My jaw dropped, and I flashed a startled glance down at Kate’s stomach as with a cry of delight she sprang up, dislodging the spaniel from her lap, and rushed to embrace me.

  “Not for me, silly! How could it be when we’re not allowed to . . .” She giggled. “For the monkeys! Look!” She pointed across the room to where the two little creatures were rudely snatching cakes off the table and gobbling them greedily as Berry on his couch eyed them nervously and shrank back against his pillows. “That’s Rosamund.” Kate pointed to the one dressed up like a little lady in a rose damask gown and hood. “And that’s Percival.” She indicated the other, clad in a handsome forest green velvet doublet replete with gold buttons and fringe and a round velvet cap with a jaunty plume just like a courtier in miniature. “Aren’t they adorable? My new father, the Earl of Pembroke, gave them to me. He simply adores me! As does Berry”—she ran to hug and plant a smacking kiss on her husband’s cheek—“they both spoil me so. I even have an ermine coverlet for my bed! Look what they gave me this morning at breakfast!”

  She thrust out her hand to display an enormous emerald in an ornate gold setting. It was so ostentatiously large it made me wonder how Kate could even lift her hand. Lord Herbert
favored me with a shy smile, wincing as Rosamund snatched the silver-tasseled nightcap from his head and Percival hopped up to “groom” his pale, lifeless hair until it stood up on end like stalks of wheat, then clambered down over Berry’s body and took off his slippers and began slapping their leather soles together, gibbering with delight at the noise they made. Then the parrot flew from his perch and landed on top of Berry’s head and resumed his imperiously squawked demands for a cherry.

  Laughing, with puppies nipping at her trailing skirts, Kate ran to snatch up a blue glass bowl filled with cherries that was sitting alarmingly near the edge of the mantel, and began tossing them, one by one, to her parrot. “Isn’t life marvelous? Truly, my dear Mary, it is delightful to be married! I never dreamed it would be this much fun!” Kate’s aim went awry and one of the cherries hit Berry’s nose.

  With a cry of alarm, she thrust the bowl at me, never noticing that I fumbled and almost dropped it, and ran to him and began smothering him with kisses until one of their chaperones cleared his throat loudly then, finding himself ignored, stepped forward and took Kate’s arm and gently pulled her away.

  “Milady mustn’t be so exuberant,” he said, wagging a reproving finger at her. “She must show some restraint and not be so free with her affections; there are some who might misunderstand and think her a wanton.”

  But Kate just laughed and threw her arms around him. “Don’t scold me, Master Perkins, I can’t help it; I’m just so happy! So wonderfully, gloriously, blissfully happy!” She began to spin around the room, and I marveled that with all the clutter and the bevy of boisterous animals crowding around her that she didn’t trip and fall. “I wish all the world could be as happy as me! Oh, Mary!” She suddenly grabbed my hand and began tugging me across the room. “Come, I must show you Fussy’s new trick! My little boy is so clever!”