The Fallen Queen. Emily Purdy

walked behind us and around our necks, one by one, she fastened a necklace—pearls for Jane with a square spring-green emerald pendant hanging by one corner; a fiery orange stone suspended like a blazing fireball on a golden chain for Kate, a fire opal Cousin Mary said when I asked what it was called; and a long, braided rope of garnet and amethyst beads interspersed with silver roses for me. And then Cousin Mary, lamenting how faded and sparse her own lank, lacklustre locks had grown despite the washes of saffron she had lately tried, recalling wistfully, with sighs and misty eyes, the happy golden days of her childhood when the people had called her “Princess Marigold” for the orangey gold glory that was her hair, had us each stand between her knees while she gave our tresses a hundred strokes each with a thick-bristled gold-backed brush, which she had us count aloud so that she might judge how well we knew our numbers.

      Jane recited the numerals with poor grace, making clear with her voice and manner that she considered this exercise an insult to her intelligence. But Cousin Mary chose to ignore it and smiled and nodded encouragingly throughout, then she kissed Jane’s cheek and crowned her ruddy chestnut waves with a chaplet of pearls. For Kate’s coppery ringlets there was a delicate cap of gold net latticed with peach-coloured pearls, and for my stubborn sable red frizzy curls, a plum velvet hood with a garnet and silver rose border. Then, all smiles, she led us down to the Great Hall where another surprise awaited us.

      Feigning a loving interest, our lady-mother, now apparently recovered from her headache, leapt up with a gasp and gushed, “Never before have I seen my daughters look lovelier!” But we were all more interested in Cousin Mary’s next surprise. She clapped her hands, and two servants in the green and white Tudor livery came in carrying what I at first took to be a gilt-framed portrait of a beautifully jewelled and apparelled lady. And it was, of sorts, but closer inspection, to our immense delight, revealed that this portrait was made entirely of sweets—shaped, coloured, and gilded marzipan, sugar both artfully spun and coloured, and crystals that shimmered like diamond dust, all sorts of sweetmeats and sugarplums, a glistening, tempting rainbow array of candied, sugared, dried, and glacéed fruits, comfits, lozenges, pastilles, suckets, wafers, sugared flowers, crystallized ginger, candied orange and lemon peel, and sugared and honeyed almonds both slivered and whole. The canvas it was created upon was crisp gingerbread, and the frame that bordered it was made of gilded marzipan. Father, who loved sweets so, would have been so delighted if he had seen it. When we told him about it, I knew his mouth would water and he would not be able to look at a portrait without imagining it made of sweet things to eat.

      Cousin Mary beamed and clasped her hands at our delight, her toothache quite forgotten as she pinched a bit of candied orange peel from the lady’s sleeve, and told us we might eat as much as we pleased, waving aside our lady-mother’s protests that it would spoil our supper.

      With an ill-mannered squeal of delight, Kate and I fell upon it greedily, like two little pigs, our eager little hands snatching up red and green candied cherries that masqueraded as rubies and emeralds.

      But Jane would have none of it and turned her back upon our fun. She took from somewhere about her person a small black-bound book and sat down by the fire to read, ignoring the hurt in Cousin Mary’s eyes and the anger in our lady-mother’s. But that was Jane, true to her own self and no other, tactless in treading over others’ feelings, heedless of whom she might hurt, even if in the end it would turn out to be herself that her insolence and insults injured most.

      The whole visit passed in this manner, with Jane turning a cold back upon our royal cousin, snubbing and rebuffing her every act of warmth and kindness, disdaining her generosity, greeting with hostility and contempt her every attempt to befriend her. When Cousin Mary sat down to sew with us and tell us stories of the saints’ lives, Jane would often claim a sudden upset stomach, an urgent need for the privy, sometimes even daring to loudly break wind to interrupt Cousin Mary’s stories, a rude punctuation on some saint’s work of wonder, before making her excuses and hastily leaving.

      Another time, when Cousin Mary offered to teach us some exquisite embroidery stitches, Jane retorted that her skill would be better spent on plain straight stitches to make simple garments to clothe the poor. And when Cousin Mary introduced us to her confessor, Jane rudely turned her back on him and any other priest she encountered throughout our stay.

      Every day she made a point of emptying her chamber pot from the window, onto the statue of the Virgin Mary in the rose garden below. And when Cousin Mary invited us to play cards, Jane stood up and preached a heated little sermon on the evils of gambling and swept the cards into the fire, denouncing them as the Devil’s tools for ensnaring souls. When Kate admired a pink pearl rosary and Cousin Mary gave it to her, Jane promptly snatched it, breaking the strand and cutting Kate’s hand so that it bled all over her new dress and gave her double the cause to weep. And, after that first night when Cousin Mary so lovingly dressed us, Jane refused to wear any of the finery our royal cousin had given her or any of the beautiful gowns our lady-mother had insisted that Mrs. Ellen pack either.

      Throughout the Yuletide celebrations that marked the Twelve Days of Christmas and New Year’s Day, when gifts were exchanged, Jane appeared constantly in severe, unadorned black velvet, and each time made a point of standing near Cousin Mary with a frown on her face and contempt in her eyes to show up the difference between “the plain, godly garb that best becomes a Protestant maiden and our sour, old maid spinster cousin’s gaudy, overdecorated Papist fripperies.” No matter how sharply our lady-mother scolded or how hard the pinches and slaps, Jane would not draw a veil over her contempt for our Catholic cousin.

      Cousin Mary stoically endured it all and did her best to ignore my sister’s insults and ingratitude, trying hard every time not to let the hurt show, smiling and behaving as though Jane’s conduct were flawless in every respect, sweet as sugar instead of hostile as a hornet, but she would never forget it, and we would not be invited to visit her again nor would she ever again grace us with her presence at Bradgate.

      In March, after we had returned to Bradgate, Thomas Seymour, his handsome rogue’s smile long gone, laid his head upon the block and died, hoping to the last that his brother would send a messenger galloping up with a reprieve; even if it meant spending the rest of his life in prison, that was preferable to death. When our lady-mother, in her spice- and sweat-scented riding habit, swept in amongst a bevy of spotted hunting hounds, barking and howling with laughter as though she were one of them in human form, and repeated what Elizabeth had said when word of her paramour’s death was brought to her—“Today died a man of much wit but very little judgment”—Jane forced herself to stay still and show no emotion, to pull the needle through the cloth and go on with her embroidery as though nothing were wrong, when all she wanted to do was cry.

      “For all her Tudor fire,” Jane said later when we were alone and it was safe for her to weep and show her grief, “Elizabeth’s heart is cold as ice!” And when she heard that after he died and his corpse was undressed a letter to Elizabeth was discovered hidden in the sole of his velvet slipper, Jane wept, inconsolable; his last words on this earth, hastily writ in his final hour, had been addressed to Elizabeth, not her. He had sent nothing to Jane, the one he claimed was his true love, not one token, not even a single word.

      But Jane had to soldier along bravely, pretending nothing was wrong, hiding her head, and her sorrow, in her books, letting time pass and her heart heal, forcing herself to forget that love for a mortal man had ever dared trespass on that sacred ground where there was room for only God and learning.

      Another year passed, then another, followed swiftly by two more, lulling me into contentment and complacency, the false belief that life would always go on in this lovely, lazy, humdrum way at Bradgate with occasional visits to the city. Our parents divided their time between London and the court and hosting wild and libidinous hunting parties at Bradgate that sometimes lasted for weeks at a time and were known for the excessive drunkenness, debauchery, and gambling that our parents and their guests—neighbours from the surrounding countryside and nobles down from London—freely indulged in. There were always dancing girls clad only in high leather riding boots who spun and twirled and slashed the air with whips, and the serving wenches and lads wore headdresses of wood carved to emulate antlers strapped to their heads and were hunted, pursued, and preyed upon by the drunken and lusty guests who even