Lady in Waiting: A Novel

by Susan Meissner

  “Beg your pardon, my lady. Shall I come back later?”

  She didn’t answer, and I slowly raised my head.

  The Lady Jane was looking at the folds of fabric in my arms. Staring at them. Willing the dress, it seemed, to fill itself with bones and muscle and walk out of the room to find some other person to trifle with.

  “You came from Bradgate?” she finally said. Her voice was thin and smooth. Cultured. But immature.

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “Did my mother send that gown?” Her eyes were still on the dress. The room was not so dark that I could not see her unease.

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “She is not coming.”

  It was not a question. But I answered as though it was. “No, my lady.”

  She turned back then, back toward the window. She hadn’t dismissed me, so I stood there with the yards of fabric wanting to spill out of my arms like buckets of water and waited for her. Her head was cocked in a childlike way, as if she was wondering when she would wake up from this dream.

  It was inconceivable to me that one so young should be the chief mourner at the funeral of the Queen Dowager, King Henry’s widow. Bridget told me protocol forbade the presence of the widowed Queen’s new husband, the Lord Admiral Seymour, at the funeral. King Henry’s younger daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, who had lately lived here at Sudeley and who had left amid troubling rumors, would not be in attendance either, nor would the young King Edward, nor the Princess Mary, King Henry’s eldest daughter.

  Instead, an eleven-year-old girl would lead the procession to the chapel, wearing the borrowed gown I held in my arms.

  From behind us, deep within the castle, I heard the faint sound of an infant’s wail. A faraway door opened and closed, and the sound disappeared. Jane raised her head, and her gaze traveled past me to the hallway and the other rooms.

  “There will be no one to love her,” Jane whispered.

  “My lady?”

  “The Queen’s child.”

  “Beg your pardon, my lady?”

  “Lord Thomas won’t even look at her.”

  “L-Lord T-Thomas?” I stammered.

  “Lord Admiral Seymour. He won’t even look at the babe.”

  I repositioned the dress in my arms. I could not tell for whom she grieved. A moment earlier, I thought her sadness was due to missing her home and family. Then, no, it was the unnamed baby. And now, was it the Lord Admiral’s sorrow that clutched at her heart?

  I said nothing else. I didn’t know what to say.

  “You need for me to try on that dress?” she said languidly.

  “Yes, my lady. I am afraid I do.”

  “Why didn’t Bridget come? I do not know you.”

  I did not tell her Bridget was losing her eyesight and couldn’t travel alone as the dressmaker. Bridget needed to stay at Bradgate where she could blend in with the rest of the wardrobe staff. No one but me knew she struggled to see her own stitches.

  “I am new to Bradgate, my lady. Bridget sent me. And the marchioness.”

  “What is your name?” Her young voice rang with subtle authority.

  “Lucy Day, my lady.”

  “I like that name.” But her voice was sad.

  “Shall we?” I hefted the dress in my arms.

  She nodded, turned, and we headed to her wardrobe room, which adjoined her sitting room.

  I helped her remove the green dress she wore. As I began to lift the black dress—so she could step into its skirt—Jane, with the folds of the black dress now all around her, began to tremble. I held the dress open and waited. Her eyes misted over and her trembling increased, and she stepped away from the ballooning fabric.

  “My lady?” I said.

  “I cannot stain it!” she gasped, savagely wiping away tears lest they should fall onto the material.

  She grasped at her heaving chest, flat and narrow underneath her chemise, as grief silently pounded its way out of her. She sank to her knees as a sob erupted from deep within.

  I dropped the dress I had carried on my lap for one hundred miles and knelt down by her, sisterly instinct sending me there before I could think clearly. Jane leaned into me, and I nervously slipped an arm around her and patted her shoulder, vaguely aware that if anyone came into the room, I would surely be dismissed for not knowing my place.

  Her tears and anguish were innocent and raw.

  “I miss her,” she whispered.

  “Your mother?” I whispered back. Lady Jane shook her head.

  The child grieved for the Queen.

  Seven

  The seams lay open on the curved bodice as I slid the whittled whalebone stays back into their tiny pockets. Lady Jane’s nurse, Mrs. Ellen, stood over me, sipping a tisane as I worked to resize the black mourning dress to fit a girlish bosom.

  Her presence made me uneasy.

  She had come into the room earlier as I assisted Lady Jane to her feet, after my lady’s tears had all been spilled. When she saw us, Mrs. Ellen rushed, aghast, to the lady’s side as if I’d poisoned her.

  “What have you done?” Mrs. Ellen had exclaimed, wrenching the girl from me.

  Before I could answer, Jane spoke. “She has done nothing except show kindness to me. Leave her be.”

  Mrs. Ellen, so I’d heard, had been my lady’s nurse since the day Jane was born and was quite protective of her. She proceeded to fuss about us as I took the lady’s measurements, unnerved, I think, that I had been the one to witness my lady’s outpouring of grief and not her. She kept asking my lady if she was quite well, and Lady Jane finally asked her to fetch her a bit of syllabub from last night’s supper.

  “She worries over me,” Jane said as Mrs. Ellen left to find a maid to send to the kitchen.

  I bunched the skirt at her waist and nodded.

  “She knows I dread going back.” Jane’s gaze sought the doorway where Mrs. Ellen had left us, and she seemed to be speaking to no one. But then she turned to look at me, and I knew I had been spoken to. She waited for me to comment.

  “Back, my lady?” I said.

  “To Bradgate.” Jane said the name of her home with equal parts longing and dismay.

  “You … you don’t like Bradgate?”

  She’d sighed quietly. “I love Bradgate.”

  I made a mark on the skirt where I would need to take it in and waited. I didn’t know what to say to her.

  “But I was happy here with the Queen. She was happy too. Even with everything … everything that had happened.” Jane stopped for a moment as if she had said too much. Then she went on. “The Queen loved the Lord Admiral, and she loved this child … and she even loved me. At Bradgate it is … different.”

  She tipped her head and looked at me. “How long have you been at Bradgate?”

  “Since the new year, my lady.”

  “And where were you before then?”

  “In London. At Whitehall.”

  She seemed then to work out an equation in her head, measuring the odds of my understanding what it was like to live as a child of privileged birth inside your parents’ home. And outside it. It occurred to me we were not talking about the home itself but the expectations within its walls. I do not know if she arrived at a satisfying conclusion. Mrs. Ellen stepped back into the room, and Lady Jane fell silent.

  “Are you still at it, lass?” Mrs. Ellen had frowned at me, clearly disappointed that Jane still stood, dwarfed by yards of fabric, while I tucked and pinned. “Could not Bridget have come?”

  I straightened and then whispered to my lady that I would help her out of the gown. “Miss Bridget felt constrained to manage the rest of the wardrobe staff at Bradgate,” I said as I helped Lady Jane step out of the skirt. Mrs. Ellen had said nothing, so I curtsied and left the room with the dress before she could ask me anything else.

  Now, an hour later, Mrs. Ellen had come to the wardrobe room to inspect my progress.

  I slipped the last bone into place and began to thread the needle to sew t
he seam shut.

  “Have you news of Bradgate?” she finally asked me.

  Not knowing Mrs. Ellen, I did not know if she was asking for below-stairs gossip, of which there was surely plenty. Since I worked above stairs, Bridget had endeavored as best she could to shield me from it, lest I spill something unpleasant in front of the marchioness or Jane’s little sisters. But there is always whispering on the stairs. Those of us who work above stairs pretend we do not hear it. Those below stairs know we do.

  I responded that the marquess and marchioness were very well and had been entertaining hunting guests.

  She set her cup down. “Who were the guests?”

  I poked my finger with the needle as I tried to remember who had been guests of late. There had been several. They had had no wardrobe needs that I was charged with meeting. Bridget had seen to those. Mrs. Ellen cocked her head, waiting.

  “The Lord and Lady Darlington were guests the week before last. And … and a nobleman from Leeds. His name escapes me now.” Mrs. Ellen looked down at her cup, bored.

  And then I remembered.

  “Oh. And the young Edward Seymour, the Lord Protector’s son, and his mother were there.”

  She raised her eyes to me at this and set her cup down. “The Lord Protector’s son? Are you quite sure?”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “He and his mother were hunting-party guests?” Mrs. Ellen frowned.

  “I believe so, yes.”

  It was clear she wished to ask me what conversations I had been privy to, but she could not. She did not know me yet either.

  I did not tell her that talk in the kitchen on the days that the Seymours were at Bradgate revolved around the Lord Admiral’s and the Lord Protector’s insane sibling rivalry and that since the admiral had not been able to advance the Lady Jane’s prospects, her father, the marquess, was entertaining the notion of a marriage between Jane and young Edward Seymour. The admiral’s nephew.

  The jealousy between the two Seymour brothers was legendary. Mrs. Ellen already knew this. We all did. And she guessed young Edward Seymour’s reason for being at Bradgate without my even hinting at what I’d heard below stairs.

  “Poor Jane,” she whispered, but I heard it. I’d observed the young Edward Seymour as a guest at Bradgate. He was polite to the staff, gracious to the marquess and marchioness, and respectful of his mother. He seemed a gentleman. I chanced a question to let Mrs. Ellen know she could speak freely if she wished.

  “Is Edward Seymour not a kindly young man?” I dared not to look up from my stitches.

  Mrs. Ellen did not answer, and I raised my eyes to see if she was forming a reprimand for my boldness. I saw not anger there, but disquiet, as if she could already see that we were to be paired, she and I, intertwined with the life of the young Lady Jane as her destiny was decided—and that neither one of us would be able to do anything to hold back its progress.

  “He is a fine young man.” Her answer was slow and measured, inviting me into our partnership, albeit begrudgingly. “But you and I both know that is seldom a consideration of betrothal for young women of royal blood.”

  She waited for me to nod my head, to acquiesce that I knew whomever Lady Jane married, it was no concern of mine or hers, or even Jane’s, for that matter.

  “Yes.” I held her gaze a moment and then fell back to my stitching.

  She stood there a moment longer, and then I heard her turn and leave the wardrobe room. I raised my head just as her skirt swished out the door.

  I looked at the curved bodice before me, thinking of the tiny bosom that would fill it and wondering what Jane thought of her father’s strategies to first have her wed to the King and now possibly the son of the King’s Protector. Did she even know of these campaigns? Bridget told me the Lady Jane was all the time reading, writing, and translating texts. Her tutors were brilliant men. The young lady could speak five languages. She was intuitive and clever. Surely she knew.

  My thoughts naturally flew to my sister, Cecily, the same age as Jane, whose marital prospects were of no consequence to anyone.

  Like my own.

  Eight

  My mother, a dressmaker also—and a fine one—told me once that black is the color that whispers. Crimson shouts, yellow laughs, blue and green sing, white heralds, and violet woos. But black is always hushed, and at times silent. I asked her what does black whisper, and she told me when you are victorious, it whispers applause, and when you are grieved, it whispers condolences. What if you are neither? I asked. And she said that is when you wear a different color.

  When the alterations were finished on my lady’s mourning dress, I hefted it into my arms to hang the wrinkles out. And as I did so, I knew my mother was right. The dress whispered to me, “She weeps, she weeps, she weeps.”

  It was nigh unto sunset when I laid the needles down, and I was alone in the wardrobe room. I made my way down the servants’ stairs to the kitchens to see if supper was still being served to the household staff. The staff dining room was nearly empty. A few were finishing their meals, but my entrance was barely acknowledged. The Queen Dowager had been loved in this house. A cloak of sadness hung even in here, a room she likely hadn’t ever set foot in.

  I sat down next to a girl about my age, whom I’d seen earlier in the wardrobe room repairing a pair of men’s breeches. An older woman, who had also been in the wardrobe working on a length of black velvet, now sat on her other side, and she scowled at me as I sat down. They had left the wardrobe long before me. Mrs. Ellen had called the scowling woman Alice. Another woman sat a few chairs away, her head resting in an upturned palm. She looked tired. A bowl of broth and a plate of joint and potatoes were set before me.

  Presently, Miss Alice stood and clucked her tongue. “Finish up then, Nan!” she growled at the younger girl. “The admiral wishes to be off.”

  The girl named Nan took a tiny bite of potato. “Yes, madam.”

  Alice moved away from us, and Nan watched her leave, chewing slowly.

  She turned to me. “I’m Nan Hargrave.”

  “My name’s Lucy Day.”

  Nan tipped her head toward the doorway that Alice had disappeared into. “Miss Alice can’t decide if she is vexed or relieved you were sent for. She doesn’t like outside dressmakers using her needles and threads. But she wouldn’t have been able to come up with a dress for Lady Jane on such short notice. And she knows it. Pay her no heed.”

  “You been at Sudeley long?” I asked.

  “I’ve been with the Seymours since I was twelve, but they only spend the summer months here in Gloucestershire. The admiral prefers Chelsea. He likes to be near court, if you know what I mean.”

  “Since you were twelve?”

  “First with his mother, Lady Margery, then with the admiral. My father was the admiral’s primary tailor. Papa died two years ago. The admiral kept me on, though. He likes my even stitches. Better than a man’s, he says.”

  The woman near us raised her head from its resting place in her palm and stared at Nan. One eyebrow arched upward like the back of a startled cat. Nan disregarded her.

  “How long have you been at Bradgate?” Nan asked me.

  “Just since January.”

  “Ah. So you’d not met Lady Jane before today. She’s a sweet thing. Quiet. So different than the Princess Elizabeth, as I am sure you know. They were all together at Chelsea earlier this year. Those two are like night and day.”

  I knew she meant Elizabeth, the unfortunate Anne Boleyn’s daughter. I nodded. The woman in the other chair cleared her throat, and again Nan ignored her.

  “I rather miss having the Princess’s dresses to attend to,” Nan mused.

  “Didn’t the Princess have her own seamstress?” I asked.

  “She had several. But she was always tearing and ripping her clothes on one thing or another.” Nan smiled at me as if she was letting me in on a secret. “I sewed more than one ripped seam on her chemises,” she continued, but in a voice not much more t
han a whisper.

  The woman across from us pushed her plate away and stood. “If I were leaving tonight, I’d be finishing up my meal and packing my things.” This, she said to Nan.

  Nan turned to look at the woman, but she said nothing. After an uncomfortable moment of silence, the woman turned and left. We were now alone in the room.

  Nan turned back toward me. “That one has the unpleasant task of looking after the nursery. I hear the Queen’s babe cries for hours at night, and the wet nurse can’t soothe her. ’Tis no wonder the woman is ill-tempered.”

  “What … what will happen to the babe?”

  Nan shrugged. “The admiral won’t care for it, you can be sure of that. She’ll be sent to distant family, no doubt. He wanted a boy, you know.”

  “So … you are leaving tonight?” I was unsure which topic of conversation to attempt to continue.

  “Aye. The admiral cannot be here for the Queen Dowager’s funeral. Even though he was married to her. She was King Henry’s widow, after all. It would be unseemly, or so I have heard. As if all had been proper until now.”

  Nan seemed to be waiting for me to press her for more information. I wiped my chin. “So you are going back to Chelsea?”

  “Well, of course. Although,” and she leaned in, though there was now no one else in the room, “I am sure the admiral will send for Jane straightaway.”

  “But Jane told me she is to go home to Bradgate.”

  “Yes, but that does not mean the admiral has not asked that she be allowed to continue on as his ward. Or maybe as something else.”

  She cocked her head as if waiting for me to finish her sentence. I honestly did not know what she was suggesting.

  “Something else?”

  “His wife, of course!”

  I gasped. “Surely you are mistaken. Lady Jane is but eleven years.”

  Nan nodded. “Aye, but the Lord Admiral has already approached Princess Elizabeth, and she is but my age. Fifteen! She would not have him, by the way.”

  My spoon hung suspended in air. “The admiral has approached Princess Elizabeth? Already?”

  “She had to leave us because he fancied her. Did you know that? Even before the poor Queen died, he fancied the Princess. Now that the Queen is dead, the admiral has no one. And his brother, the Protector, whom he loathes, has the young King’s ear. If the admiral can’t have the Princess Elizabeth, of course he would look to his ward. That’s how he is. He must have power. Trust me. I have seen much in the three years I have sewn his clothes.”