The Fallen Queen (24 page)

“I don’t believe a word of it!” she declared, shaking back her curls and bravely thrusting her chin in the air. “I just hope the old witch’s potion isn’t as false as her prophecies! Love is the most beautiful, wonderful thing in the world; how could it ever, when it is true and given freely, hurt anyone?” She went on in a light, disdainful tone, ridiculing the witch’s prophecy as she refilled her cup with our sweet, potent brew. “Here, have some more wine, Mary!” She snatched my cup and replenished it. “
False
love yes,” she continued, “that is a sword that wounds, but
true
love, as
I
shall
always
love, no,
never!
It is only the absence of love and love denied and unrequited that hurts!
Me
to die starved of love?” She scoffed. “Whoever heard of such a foolish and ridiculous thing? It’s absolute nonsense, I tell you! I cannot even imagine it! Speaking of starving, I’m hungry, let us have some cake!” Before I could say a word, she bounded up and jostled her way through the crowd congregated around the flower-decked trestle table.

Are you trying to convince me, or yourself?
The question hovered unasked behind my closed lips as I watched my sister, laughing and exchanging pleasant banter with the common folk and servants as she piled a plate high with golden cake, ruby red strawberries, and big white clouds of cream for us.

I was sitting there half dozing, my belly contentedly full, my brain buzzing with gillyflower wine, and a silly smile plastered across my face, watching a yellow butterfly flit and dart from flower to flower, when Kate nudged my arm, knocking my cup from my hand and spilling what little was left of my wine.

“Look!” Kate cried, pointing as Guildford scooped Jane up in his arms and began staggering determinedly in a drunken zigzag toward the house as Jane clung to him and squealed with girlish delight and wantonly kicked her bare limbs in the air. “Now our sister will discover just how wonderful love can be! You will see,” she asserted with a confident nod, pausing to take another very sweet sip of our golden gillyflower wine. “She shall thank me for this in the morning!”

But upon that point Kate was very much mistaken.

Late the next morning, Jane awakened with a fearsome headache, pounding like an anvil on a blacksmith’s forge within her skull, stark naked and sore between her legs with Guildford sprawled blissfully beside her on his belly with one arm draped possessively across her breasts. She thrust him from her in disgust. Slowly, she sat up, cringing at the vile taste in her mouth and cradling her aching head. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, wincing at the pain, and startling at the blood crusted on her inner thighs, and staining the white sheet like a bouquet of rusty red blossoms. Her bare feet sank down and crushed the coronet of flowers Kate had made for her. Instantly it
all
came rushing back. Jane saw clearly that Kate was the culprit, the person responsible for her drunken despoiling. Snatching up the crumpled lawn and lace dress and struggling into it, Jane fled her floral-bedecked bridal bower, the room Kate had ordered arranged so beautifully while we were out in the meadow, with garlands of flowers draping the bedposts and petals scattered on the clean white sheets.

She was standing on the landing, seething, breast heaving, when she spied Kate and me poised to come up.

“You!”
she hissed venomously, pointing a rage-trembling finger right at Kate. “
You
did this to me! You made a fool of me!” She struck her brow with the heel of her palm. “There was something in the wine, there must have been, and you put it there to make me forget myself! You made me give myself to that … that …
lack-witted popinjay!
I will
never
forgive you, Kate,
never,
as long as I live! From this day forward, you are my enemy, not my sister!” Then, in a frenzy of uncontrollable tears, she hitched up her skirts and ran, stumbling blindly, tripping and barking her shins on the stone stairs.

I saw Kate’s heart break.

“Jane, wait, please!” Kate started up after her, but I, standing on a higher step so that I was of a nigh equal height with her, reached out and stayed her and shook my head, urging Kate to wait, to leave her be, and let her temper cool. But it was too late. All of a sudden we were engulfed in the voluminous, billowing folds of a pink gown and, freeing ourselves, looked up to find ourselves caught in a shower of falling finery. Jane was hurling Kate’s clothes down at us and running back for more. I hugged Kate close as she clung to me and wept amidst the hail of dresses, hats, gloves, fans, jewelry, and shoes.

“Get out! Go! I don’t want you here! I never want to see you again!” Jane screamed as she barked her shins and bloodied the creamy flow of her skirt trying to drag Kate’s heavy oak travelling chest to the top of the stairs. Kate and I quickly jumped apart as Jane gave one last hard kick to the trunk and sent it barreling down the stairs, straight at where we had been standing.
“I hate you, Kate, I hate you!”
she screamed so fiercely the words seemed to rake and tear her throat raw, and I feared that when I looked up at her panting, red-faced figure glaring down at us with shoulders and breast heaving, I would see blood bubbling from her mouth. I could not fathom how she could unloose such a scream without doing internal damage.

Kate sank down onto her knees in a welter of rumpled finery and wept as I had never seen before.

“Come away,” I said gently, tugging her hand, while Henny and Hetty silently appeared to gather everything up and pack it away inside the trunk that had landed on its side at the foot of the stairs.

I led my sister out to sit on the seawall, where we had passed many happy afternoons, eating cherries and vying to see who could pitch the pits farthest out into the river, contentedly swinging our feet, and watching the pink and yellow streaked orange sunsets. While we waited for Henny to collect the rest of Kate’s things, I did my best to soothe her, promising that I would remain, and that when Jane’s temper cooled I would do all that I could to convince her of the truth I knew—that Kate had acted out of the goodness of her heart, wanting only to see Jane find true happiness within her marriage.

“I was afraid her bitterness, contempt, and hate would destroy her,” Kate wept in my arms. “She has a chance at love—I only wanted to make her see that! She can’t be so cold as she pretends, so it
must
be fear, it
must!
I thought, if she could forget herself, just for a day, see what passion is truly like, she wouldn’t be so afraid of it!”

“I know, I know.” I patted Kate’s back as the barge that would carry her away, back to Baynard’s Castle and her wild, giddy, flirtatious whirlwind of a life, glided silently up to the water stairs.

While Henny and a footman saw to Kate’s trunk, I walked my sister carefully down the smooth, worn stone water stairs, giving her every comfort and reassurance I could that “sisters quarrel but never stay angry for long” and that “all will soon be forgiven.”

I stood and waved until she was out of sight, then I went back in to Jane with a prayer on my lips that the words I had just spoken were not just a comforting balm, that the wound truly would heal without leaving an ugly scar.

For more than a fortnight Jane kept to her chamber, maintaining a stony wall of silence, stubbornly refusing to see me or Guildford, who repeatedly banged on her door and demanded to know how she could refuse to fall in love with him. She admitted only Mrs. Ellen, but when she tried to remonstrate with her, assuring her that her sisters loved her dearly and had acted only with the best of intentions, and that Guildford was trying his best to be a good husband to her, Jane would turn her back and stop her ears, and in a loud, clear voice, that grew even louder every time poor Mrs. Ellen dared utter a word, recite Scripture, quoting, in maddening, monotonous repetition, the passage from the Book of Matthew about wolves in sheep’s clothing.

I passed many a wakeful night worrying about how I could possibly make things right between my sisters. I could understand Jane’s anger, how she felt betrayed, both by Kate and her own body, the volcano of emotions forcibly buried and concealed deep within that Madame Astarte’s potion had caused to erupt in a passionate explosion that had left Jane no longer a virgin. But I knew that Kate, more than our parents, who had arranged the match, truly had Jane’s best interests at heart. She could not bear to see the sister we both loved trapped in a loveless marriage, like a windowless cell so bleak and narrow one could scarcely take two steps in any direction, with barely an arrow slit in the wall to let the light in. She wanted to show Jane that she could have so much more.

Guildford, though vain and self-centred, and not the shining star of brilliance that Jane was, was not without kindness; he would, if Jane let him, be her friend and try to make the best of this marriage that neither of them had any choice about. But they had a choice within it, to be friends, kind, dear, loving friends, if they would, and, perhaps more, if they deigned to let Love enter and flood the sparse Spartan prison of Jane’s soul. I wanted to tell Jane this.

Some days I stood at her door and talked myself hoarse, and on many of those sleepless nights I felt compelled to creep out and kneel there and pour out my heart, to try to make her understand that Kate had truly meant only good and not a bit of harm. But Jane kept her door locked and would not hear me, and through the muffling thickness of the heavy wooden door I heard her voice loudly reciting Scripture, sometimes in English, other times in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew, but I knew it was always the same verse:
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

One unusually hot July night, when I could no longer bear tossing sleeplessly in a tangle of sweat-sodden sheets, I rose from my bed to bind the sticky curtain of my hair in a tight braid, to give some respite to my neck, and to bathe myself with a cooling cloth. As I stood poised beside the basin, ready to dip the cloth, I heard voices below my open window. I recognized them at once—my father and Guildford. I heard every word they said, but to this day I wish I had not. I wish I, like Jane, had stopped my ears and taken refuge—even if it was a cowardly refuge—in the recitation of Scripture or just jumped back into bed and hugged a pillow tight over my head.

“Must you go?” Guildford asked in a sensual, sulky voice, and I could just picture his pretty lips pouting so seductively that he was just begging to be kissed. “The night is young and I’m
so
beautiful …”

Next came a groan, torn passionately from Father’s throat and a rustle of clothing as though he were clutching another body close to his. “I can’t fight it anymore! You taste as sweet as a sugared lemon!”

“Oh, Hal!” Guildford sighed.

“Don’t call me Hal. My wife calls me Hal!” Father spoke the word
wife
so savagely, with such biting contempt it frightened me; it was as though he were stabbing my lady-mother with his words.

“Very well, I shall call you
Enrico,
” Guildford announced. “That is Italian for Henry; I asked Maestro Cocozza and he told me,” he added boastfully as though making such an inquiry of his music master was some monumental accomplishment of which he should be very proud.

Another blissful sigh and the rustle of clothing, then Father said, “And I shall call you
Il mio amore,
my love, my sweet,
mio dolce
…”

The silence that followed told its own tale—they were kissing passionately. Then, with a breathless gasp of wonder, they broke apart.

“We shall be
so
happy together, when we are away from here, in Italy.” Father sighed, dreaming their dream, their folie à deux, aloud. “My golden songbird that I keep in the gilded cage of my heart shall sing, his voice soaring like wings from the stage. You shall be showered with accolades, gold, jewels, and flowers thrown nightly at your feet by the adoring masses as you take your final bow, and I shall be right there in front every night, leading the applause, and every day I will bake the sweetest, most decadent, rich pastries …”

“Name your shop
Il Limone Zuccherato,
The Sugared Lemon, for me!” Guildford breathed, and another silence followed as I imagined their lips locked, their bodies crushed, close together, tart and sweet.

“But what shall we do for money?” Guildford asked. “When I sing, will the people throw enough money for us to live in the style to which we are accustomed?”

“Do not worry, my love, I shall supplement our earnings, from your singing and my pastry shop, at the gambling tables!” Father said, confident and reassuring.

Inwardly I groaned. Father was a
terrible
gambler. Some said he was the
worst
in London, and the higher the stakes, the better he liked it; his losses were astronomical, and we lived perpetually on the threshold of financial disaster. Dr. Haddon, our chaplain at Bradgate, had spoken to him
numerous
times,
pleading
with him,
begging
him, for the good of his soul and the sake of his family and to stave off ruin, to renounce this reckless and ruinous habit forever.

“What’s one fortune?” Father said with what I could well imagine was a blasé shrug. “I can
always
win us another and another after we’ve run through that one, and then another! You shall stand beside me and be my good luck charm! With your beauty and my brains we make a
perfect
match!”

“Heavenly!”
Guildford sighed and surrendered to Father’s embrace one more time.

Quietly, even though the heat was stifling, I closed the casement and returned to my bed, with a sick, frightened feeling in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want to hear any more and wished with all my heart I could erase from my mind what I had already heard. It was too absurd; my father, the Duke of Suffolk, wanted to run away with his son-in-law to Italy, to live and love, in the most sinful way known to man, warmed by the sun, while one sang, on a stage he would most likely be hissed and booed from as he was pelted with rotten vegetables, and the other renounced his proud and noble heritage to run a sweetshop. It was mad, utterly mad!