A Court Affair (21 page)

I looked at the tapestry depicting Griselda, golden-haired and blue-eyed, rather like a less buxom and voluptuous me, clad only in her shift, kneeling humbly in the dust at her regal, resplendently apparelled husband’s feet, as though he were a bejewelled altar meant to be worshipped, as, nose in the air as if she stank and pointing adamantly away from him, at the gate and winding road beyond, he turned her out of his kingdom to make way for a new bride, one of more lofty rank and pedigree far more worthy of himself than the poor and humble peasant maiden he had lifted up to high estate when he had chosen her to be his wife.

The sight of those tapestries made me sick at my stomach, and I dearly hoped Robert would forget about sending them home with me. I didn’t want them near me. I would sooner have my life bled out by a surgeon’s lancet than spend every day having my eyes bombarded by images of a woman who would let her children be taken away to be slain and herself turned out in her shift to make way for another woman, all without a murmur of protest—no tears, no fight, no argument, just an amiable smile and an “as you will, My Lord!” That wasn’t me, but I was afraid that these tapestries were Robert’s way of telling me that that was what he wanted me to be, that he wanted his own amiable and smiling “I would lay down my life if it would make you happy” Griselda waiting at home for him, never crossing, contradicting, or questioning him.

I shook myself out of my reverie, banishing Griselda from the kingdom of my thoughts. The wedding was about to begin.

Though I had been told all three marriages were arranged, I hoped nonetheless that the wedding would be a joyous occasion, that duty would blossom into love, and the couples would find true happiness together.

But the Lady Jane Grey, who would have been a
great
beauty if she ever smiled, wore an expression as dark and stormy as a thundercloud and dripped tears like rain; one would have thought she was going to her execution instead of the altar. The poor little thing seemed so weighed down by her ornate gold and silver brocade gown, thickly encrusted with diamonds and pearls, that more than once I saw her mother pinch and slap and scold her for being as slow as treacle. I remembered how light and frothy my own wedding gown had felt despite the rich, embroidered fabric and gold lace, and how I felt as if I were walking on air. It made me want to rush over and gather up the heavy train and help that poor little girl, but, knowing how in the eyes of the Dudleys I could do nothing right, I didn’t dare, and to this day I regret it and wish that I had.

Her younger sister, the Lady Katherine Grey, however, was
radiant
. Though only twelve years old, she was a pert and pretty little thing, all bouncy auburn curls and dancing eyes that seemed smitten already with her bridegroom, the handsome young Lord Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke’s son. By the way they looked at each other I could tell, having been an impatient young bride myself, that they were longing to be put to bed together. I said as much to Robert, hoping to remind him of how we had felt on our own wedding day, but I gave a great cry of dismay on the young couple’s behalf when he told me that this was not to be, that, for the time being, none of the marriages would be consummated. Robert’s father thought it best to delay for reasons he was, at the moment, not prepared to disclose; he was keeping his cards close against his chest.

The third bride, another Catherine, also aged twelve, was Robert’s youngest sister, and she and her bridegroom, Lord Hastings, gave no sign of amorous attraction but were cordial to each other and dutiful to their parents’ wishes.

Of them all, it was the Lady Jane I most pitied, especially when Guildford walked in, pausing dramatically, framed in the doorway like a living portrait, so that everyone might bask in the sun of his radiant golden beauty, as he stood there arrayed in a splendid ivory doublet lavishly embroidered with yellow gillyflowers and swirls of gold and green vines sewn with diamonds and pearls. Each golden curl upon his head was a work of art, perfectly coiffed with not a hair out of place. When he at last began to move forward, graceful as a dancer, his liveried manservant, the latest in a long line of valets, followed solemnly three steps behind, carrying Guildford’s white plumed satin hat adorned with jewelled yellow gillyflowers upon a gold tasselled cushion as if it were a king’s crown.

“Methinks the groom is prettier than the bride,” an elderly lady gowned in pear-coloured damask trimmed with sable standing next to me declared. “A tasty morsel!” she added, smacking and licking her lips, even though Guildford was young enough to be her grandson.

“Someone can have the prettiest face in the world and still be ugly,” I replied, speaking my mind without stopping to think how it sounded. I was, after all, a member of the Dudley family by marriage, so I should not be criticising my brother-in-law, and the fact that I was doing so, quite candidly, in words no one could misinterpret, and to a complete stranger at his own wedding, only compounded my fault.

“You are Lord Robert’s wife?” the woman asked, raising to her eye a jewelled peering glass that hung from a chain of diamonds about her waist. Squinting hard as she peered through the crystal at me, she looked me up and down several times. “You’re pretty enough, but the tongue wants schooling.
Never
speak your mind, my dear—better to say the opposite. A lie will take you further than the truth any day of the week, even Sunday.”

“I understand”—I nodded politely—“sincerity is not the fashion.”

“My dear, there is no such thing!” this dispenser of grandmotherly advice proclaimed. “At least not in London or at court. There is no falser face than the one that dons the mask of sincerity!”

“I think that rather sad,” I ventured. “I don’t know that I want to live in a world where I cannot believe in anyone’s sincerity.”

With a nod of her head and a knowing smile, she patted my arm. “Better you stay in the country, then, my little dairymaid; let Lord Robert attend to matters at court while you tend the cows instead.”

I was stung by her words and turned away and let myself be swept up in the grandeur of the ceremony. Lady Jane, in her ornate gold gown and silver kirtle and under-sleeves, stood with Guildford upon a dais, raised higher than the other two couples as they were the most important, while below them on either side, the two Katherines, one with her head in the clouds, the other completely down to earth, wore silver gowns over golden kirtles and sleeves, and their bridegrooms wore silver-shot grey satin doublets sewn with pearls and diamonds so as not to outshine the white, gold, green, and yellow glory that was Guildford Dudley. Of the six young people standing before the altar, I thought only three of them were in love—Katherine Grey and Lord Herbert, and Guildford Dudley with himself. I later heard that Lord Herbert’s wedding clothes had originally been blue studded with sapphires, but an hour before the wedding Guildford had locked himself in his room and refused to come out unless the handsome youth changed into something more subdued, which had occasioned a frantic consultation with a tailor.

At the banquet that followed I was dumbstruck. I stopped in my tracks and stood there, silent, slack-jawed, and staring at the sight before me until Robert pinched my arm and hissed into my ear not to make a fool of him by acting like I had never been to a wedding banquet before. He grabbed my arm and, feigning good cheer and flashing smiles to those about us, led me to sit at the great trestle table beside him. The serving maids were all clad in diaphanous, flowing silver, lavender, and palest rose gowns, like classical nymphs, with wreaths of gilded rosemary and ribbons crowning their unbound hair, and the musicians in the gallery above also wore silver and gold cut in diamond shapes all sewn together like patchwork. And the food! There must have been at least two hundred different dishes, all served on golden plates, and each one like a work of art, as though it had been arranged to pose for its portrait and wanted to look its best.

At the centre of it all was the most amazing, gigantic salad I had ever seen. It sat on a gilt-embellished blue marble pedestal table all its own, with two fountains flanking it flowing with red and white wine. The great bowl that contained it was made of gilded marzipan shaped like a giant scallop shell, and it was filled with all manner of salad greens—lettuce, both purple and green varieties, spinach, scallions, mint, cabbage, parsley, seaweed, chives, red sage, samphire, purslane, skirrets, endives, red dock, watercress, parsnips, sea holly, and violet leaves, and I thought I even spied some nettles, dandelions, and ivy in the mix. And there was a whole rainbow of sugared flowers arranged so that they seemed to float upon the leaves. There were deep purple violets, marigolds, daisies, yellow cowslips, feverfew, meadowsweet, heart’s ease pansies, and pink, red, yellow, and white roses. And there were carrots in three colours, radishes, and turnips carved like fishes, great and small, I even spied a couple of turnip sharks, and there were currants, raisins, blanched almonds, strawberry, lemon, and orange slices, dainty little pickles, chunks of apple, grapes both red and white, cauliflower, raspberries, rhubarb, asparagus, dates, candied mallow root, bean pods, peppers, cucumber slices, eggs, onions, olives, capers, and snippets of toasted bread, and just about everything under the sun one could ever think to toss into a salad. And there were arranged around it a few smaller fountains that flowed with salad oil, vinegar, and other dressings. At each side of the great scallop bowl, posed as if it were leaping out of the salad sea, was a big blue and silver fish, so lifelike I thought they were real, but they were actually sculpted out of marzipan, and the droplets of water sparkling on their scales and fins were actually sugar. And out of the midst of it all rose an ornate blue, green, and gold marzipan pedestal upon which sat three bare-breasted marzipan mermaids, their faces and hair exquisitely rendered likenesses of the three brides. And behind their bare backs a second pedestal rose even higher, and, at the very top, standing inside a gilded scallop shell, like a male version of Aphrodite, born from the sea, stood a marzipan likeness of Guildford Dudley in all his golden-haired naked glory with a small golden cockleshell covering his privy parts. And, kneeling, one on each side of him, as if to worship him, were the two other, darker-haired bridegrooms, their nakedness veiled by pale blue and green marzipan draperies, for none, it was clear, must ever outshine Guildford.

As the banquet progressed, the marzipan mermaids became an occasion of great lewdness amongst the young men who clamoured, balancing upon one another’s shoulders or teetering atop chairs whilst their fellows held their ankles lest they topple into the salad, to lick and nibble and suck at the candy breasts until all semblance of a woman’s bosom had melted away and they were flat-chested as little girls more suited to the nursery than the marriage bed.

But there was something awry with that great big wonderful salad, as awesome as it was for the eye to behold; it made everyone who ate of it green-faced and sick from both ends, so that there was a stampede and even fistfights for every privy, pot, and basin in Durham House that began when Guildford snatched up a great golden basin heaped high with boiled red crayfish and flung them onto his startled bride. And then, as the Lady Jane was disentangling crayfish claws from her long chestnut hair and plucking them from out of her bodice, he leaned over the table, thrust his head into the basin, and vomited.

With my husband groaning and green-faced on our bed, hugging his bloated, aching belly, and my in-laws all laid low but nonetheless dragging themselves and their basins to rally round Guildford’s bedside as he screamed like one in mortal agony, I discovered that here was something I
could
do. Pirto and I pinned up our long, flowing sleeves and tied on aprons over our new gowns and set to work mixing up and ladling out great batches of celery tonic to calm the nerves and cool the fevers of those who were ailing, and handing out ginger suckets to fight down the nausea, sugared aniseeds and, for those who preferred them, quinces to aid their digestion, and dosing them with spoonfuls of mint syrup, conserve of roses, and a balm of wormwood and mint to settle the aching, angry tempest raging in their bellies. In between ministering to the sick, we had a jolly time in the kitchen. None of the servants had eaten of the salad, and after so many had sickened from it, none wanted the leavings, so we passed round trays of mincemeat tarts and gingerbread and baked apples sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar in the great stone fireplace, and sang songs and told stories, and no one looked down upon or thought badly of me at all; it was the
best
time I had the whole time I was at Durham House.

When I left the kitchen and went upstairs to look in on Robert again, I remembered that I had seen naught of Lady Jane and thought to tap on her door and see how she fared.

“Come!” she called, and I opened the door to see the elaborate gold and silver wedding gown thrown, reeking of crayfish, with its laces torn, in a great, glittering heap in the middle of the floor, along with a few stray crayfish that had been caught in its folds, while the slight, black-gowned figure of Lady Jane, her glorious chestnut hair severely pulled back and pinned under a plain black French hood, curled up on the window seat, nonchalantly munching a pear, her head bent over a book.

“I just came to see if you were unwell and might need anything.” I nodded down at my basket of remedies.

“No.” She shook her head, barely bothering to look up from her book. “While I cannot honestly say that I am well, I did not partake of the salad, so …” Her words trailed off as she turned the page.

Her rude indifference irked me, and I snapped, “There are a great many ill, you know, including your husband, both your parents, and all your in-laws; you might have come and helped us tend the sick instead of burying your nose in a book and leaving all the work for others to do!”

For the first time since I had come into the room, Jane lifted her head and looked at me with a chilling stare that froze my blood and made the nape of my neck prickle. “Why should I help those I hate?” she asked in a voice as smooth as glass.