“Never mind that,” Elizabeth said dismissively. “And this is the seamstress who was recommended?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The plump lady standing beside Mrs. Dobkins curtsied. She had a distracting wart with a hair growing out of it above one eye.
“And you have experience with Italian fabrics? I ask because I have some left over from those my father once gave to me. Although I believe that Rose, along with those forbidden fabrics, has also brought some swatches of fabrics that my dear sister, the queen, has suggested might prove suitable for the wedding.” The way Princess Elizabeth said “dear sister,” it was as if two poison darts had been shot through the air.
“Yes, I have had some experience, ma’am.”
“Some is quite enough, believe me. I think none of us has to go out of our way for this . . . this wedding.”
Rose stepped forward. “I can show you the sketches I made for the queen’s dress and the fabrics to be used, if you like.”
“Certainly.” Princess Elizabeth gestured toward a long table.
Rose unfurled the parchment with the design she had sketched in charcoal. And then she laid out the fabrics that must be avoided per the queen.
“This plum color is for the skirt and bodice. It’s satin with an overlay of a soft gold in a tangled rose and leaf design. And the inset in the front of the skirt is bright gold cloth, which I believe will set off the plum color. The sleeves are cone with insets as well, in gray taffeta.” Rose continued to explain the other details of the dress and then presented a list of forbidden fabrics and design elements signed by Sir Edward, the master of the queen’s wardrobe.
Elizabeth read them. Silently her mouth curled into a sneer. “Petal collar. My my,” she said softly. “Won’t that chicken neck of hers look lovely in that.” She rolled the list up and thwacked it against the palm of her hand.
“All right!” she said with a small note of triumph in her voice, then looked at Rose. “Rose, you have a keen eye for fashion and you are familiar with my style, my look. Might you have any suggestions?”
“Well, Your Highness, as I have said in the past, the queen seems to like very ornate styles. You see how her dress will be embellished with huge clusters of pearls. But do you remember the draping wing-style sleeve that I made for you those years back at Hatfield?”
“Oh yes, you called them the Princess Leia–style sleeve, based on some obscure fairy tale your mother told you.”
“Indeed, ma’am. I would suggest something like that. Therefore you avoid entirely the cone sleeve, which as you can see from the list is forbidden. As a matter of fact, I would think you should avoid any rich colors. Perhaps just white.”
“White?”
“It’s simple and pure. As a matter of fact”—Rose tapped her chin as if in deep thought—“I think white could become very popular in the future for weddings—especially for brides.”
“Really?” Elizabeth said.
“Yes, very—how should I put it—fashion forward.”
“Fashion forward—what a peculiar phrase, but quite descriptive, I think. I can just imagine a bride in a white gown on a white horse charging forward!” the princess exclaimed gaily, and laughed.
“Bless you, child,” Mrs. Dobkins whispered as Rose left the room. “That is the first time I’ve heard the royal princess laugh in months.”
Princess Elizabeth fell asleep dreaming of a white gown that would make her half sister look like the tawdriest bride in Christendom in that plum-colored atrocity of a wedding dress. Outside the palace the summer night hung with flickering fireflies as Franny Corey walked home toward the tiny thatched cottage where she lived with her parents. In a hidden pocket she had sewn into the coarse wool of her skirt was a Bible, and she felt the pleasant weight of it thumping against her thigh. Hush books, they were called. Small, easily tucked away in the crannies of a cottage or beneath the floorboards, these books were clung to by the secret worshippers, the remnant Protestants who were stubbornly resisting the queen’s return to Catholicism and the pope.
As she walked, Franny knew that her parents suspected that she attended the secret prayer meetings and would be furious. Furious not because they were devout Catholics; anything but. However, they were fearful of the danger. The Coreys, after all, were time migrants themselves. They had fled a future century, one hundred forty years ahead of this one in England. Franny’s home century was not the twenty-first, like her best friend Rose Ashley’s, but the seventeenth. The year they had left was 1692. They had escaped from Salem, Massachusetts, on the eve of what would have been her mother’s hanging for witchcraft. Her mother was of course not a witch at all, but a serious God-fearing woman of the Protestant faith. Her grandparents had gone to the New World of America more than a half century before, with a band of Puritan pilgrims on the Mayflower. They had gone for religious freedom. But now the family was back where the flight of their ancestors had begun, being persecuted again.
Sometimes Franny was unsure if she felt twelve years old or one hundred fifty. Traveling through time, though quick, was in some ways endless. Was she just going around in circles? If she dared go back, would it be to that dreadful autumn night when her mother would be taken with four other witches to Gallows Hill? Twelve people had been hanged by that time. And one pressed to death with stones. Her uncle Giles Corey.
“Safe, Franny, we’re safe,” her mother kept muttering every time she brought up the subject. “Only God can see into your heart. He knows what your true faith is. You don’t need to seek out these meetings.”
“But Mum,” Franny argued, “they’re just meetings, not services.”
“It doesn’t matter, Franny,” her father interrupted. “If you fall under suspicion, they won’t care what you’re doing if they discover you with like-minded Protestants.”
But Franny did go to the meetings, at least when they were somewhat close to Hatfield. Now she was on her way back from a lambing shed where Master John Cabot, a yeoman farmer, had held a meeting. Not really a service, she had persuaded herself. They never said the Our Father out loud, at least. Though many mumbled it very quietly to themselves. Not Franny!
Rose Ashley knew Franny’s story as Franny knew Rose’s. Franny had told Rose everything about her life in Salem during that dreadful year. Franny was shocked when Rose told her that in fact she had been to Salem with her own mother. They had taken a tour and actually gone to Gallows Hill, where so many had been hanged.
“A terrible place,” Franny had muttered.
“You won’t believe what’s there now,” Rose had said.
“What?”
“A Walgreens.”
“What’s a Walgreens.”
Oh dear, Rose thought. How to explain? “It’s this store where you can go and buy medicine and a lot of different things like toothbrushes and toothpaste, and toilet paper and candy. . . .”
Franny shook her head in dismay. “I have no idea what you are talking about, but it sounds better than gallows and people hanging in the air.”
“Believe me, it is.”
It was funny how that conversation drifted back to Franny. It must have been several years ago when Rose first came.
“Franny!” A voice threaded out of the blue summer night. She gasped.
“Rose—Rose Ashley!” How odd. She had been just thinking about Rose and now here she was. Could it be true?
“Oh, Franny!”
Franny tried to hasten her own pace, but with her lame leg she simply could not run. Nevertheless she lurched ahead. Within five seconds Rose was embracing her. Together they tumbled to the ground, laughing.
“You’re back!” Franny yelped. “It seemed like forever.” Unlike the other people who knew Rose in this century and never seemed to notice her absences, Franny did. Rose felt it was because Franny herself was a time traveler. This tangled time seemed to have rules or principles of its own.
“Yes, yes, I’m here but just briefly.”
“Why did you come?”
<
br /> “The queen.”
“She’s here?” Franny’s voice grew taut.
“Oh no. It’s just that, well, you know she’s to be married next month and I was charged with bringing the sketches and fabric samples of the wedding dress here to show Princess Elizabeth and . . .”
“She doesn’t want Elizabeth to outshine her.”
“Exactly. No one must wear the same color or have the same cut to their gowns.”
“Does your father know you’re here?”
“No, Franny, and you must not tell him.” She paused as she saw the book on the ground beside Franny, where she had tumbled. “What’s this?” she said, picking it up. Franny snatched it from her. But Rose knew in an instant what it was.
“Franny, you can’t. You simply cannot own a Bible.”
“But I do, Rose.” She looked at her steadily. “I do.” In a gentler voice she reached out and touched Rose’s hand. “And you taught me how to read!”
“But that was before, long before Mary became queen.”
“I’m not going to stop, Rose.”
“It’s simply too dangerous, Franny. If you were caught, it would be terrible. It’s a crime to worship the way you do. To own this book.” She tapped it with her finger. “My father was so frightened, he told me that I had to go back home, to my own time. That the queen was gathering kindling, kindling to burn Protestants. And you remember Sara, don’t you?”
“Yes, she served alongside you in the princess’s wardrobe, then went with you to serve the queen.”
“Yes. And I think she suspects me of not following the faith. I am fearful she could report me.”
“Sara? You never know about people, do you?”
“No, you don’t.”
“I always thought maybe Sara might be jealous of you. You had risen so quickly in Princess Elizabeth’s favor as a wardrobe maid, then seamstress.” Franny paused. “So why did you come back?”
“To see you. I was worried.”
“To see me but not your father?”
“Well, I want to see him. But I sort of lied to him.”
“Sort of?” Franny asked.
Rose giggled softly when she remembered what her father had said before. You are no better a liar than your mum was. “I kind of promised to stay away. But I really want him to come back with me. I want to try to persuade him and you. . . . You could come back with me too.”
Franny shook her head. “I don’t think so, Rose. If I tried to go back with you, I could very possibly end up in my home century. Once you become a migrant, it’s very bad to go to another time other than your own century. Your father might be luckier. He has never gone to your century. But if he did, and for some reason he wanted to leave, he would end up right back here again. With luck, maybe Mary would no longer be queen.”
Rose sighed. She felt the threat of tears building, welling up in her eyes. “But I wouldn’t want him to go back here. I’d want him to stay and be my dad, in my century. I wouldn’t want you to go back to Salem, but to come with me, come live in the future.”
“It’s impossible, Rose.” She took Rose’s hand again. “Rose, you must go back. I’ll miss you dearly, but you have to go back before it gets too dangerous.”
“But what about you, Franny? You’ve come from one of those meetings, haven’t you?”
Franny nodded but would not meet Rose’s eyes with her own.
“Can’t you just go to Mass and pretend? You know, cross your fingers when they say those prayers? Just pretend. It’s just a smidgen of their religion while you have your own, tucked safely inside of you.”
“That’s what my mum says. You sound just like her. She says only God can see into your heart. He knows what your true faith is.”
“Your mom is right. Totally. You have to get rid of this book. It’s a death sentence.”
“I’ll think about it. I’ll hide it somewhere where no one will find it.”
“Not good enough, Franny,”
“It has to be good enough for now, Rose.”
Chapter 26
The Wedding
It was the first time Sara had seen Rose since she’d been back. They had adopted a manner of living close to one another but rarely speaking. Now they sat across from each other at a long worktable. Another seamstress, a woman large with child, stood up and stretched her back. Her name was Rowan. “I really can’t believe it. But that is the last pearl I just stitched on the gown. We’ve actually completed this gown in time, good ladies! And now I can go have my baby in peace.”
“And just think, here we are in Winchester. If you have the baby while we’re still here for the wedding, the archbishop can baptize it!”
“Honestly, Sara, that is the least of my concerns. I’d much rather be in my home village with my husband than here next door to the cathedral. I don’t need a fancy bishop to baptize my babe.”
Sara looked up from her needle and thread. “Mind your tongue, Rowan. You skirt blasphemy.”
Rowan’s mouth dropped open. “Imagine that—a woman ten years younger than me, ne’er married, ne’er given birth to anything beyond this dress, telling me how to bear a child and where!” Rowan stabbed her needle into a pincushion. An awkward silence welled up in the stuffy workroom.
Rose coughed a bit. “What I can’t believe,” Rose replied as she broke off a length of thread with her teeth, “is that the groom, Prince Felipe, has not yet shown up. Two days to go until the wedding, and they have not even met. Unbelievable.”
The sewing room was in Wolvesey Castle, which had once been the palace of the Bishop of Winchester and was now housing the queen and her court. A large attic room had been converted to a workroom for Rose and six other seamstresses, who had been hired to help with the dress. They had worked night and day to finish it on time. Rain had been hammering down for days, it seemed, and when it stopped it was hot and muggy. The attic smelled like a locker room. And did anyone wear deodorant here? Of course not! Their remedy for underarm odor was a sprig of rosemary or mint. Rose shook her head and thought, Doesn’t work, ladies. Of course, she probably stank herself.
They heard running steps coming up the staircase. It was Bettina. She burst into the room, her face flushed with excitement.
“He’s here! The prince is here!”
“But it’s close to midnight,” Sara said. “Is she meeting him now?”
“You think she’s going to wait one minute, let alone until morning, after all this time?” another woman, Edith, said, barely disguising a sneer.
Sara shot Edith a harsh look. “How unkind, Edith.”
“Truth is often unkind,” Edith retorted.
Oh, give me a break, Sara. Rose had immediately sized up Sara’s role. She was the little Goody Two-shoes. The Goody Two-shoes with a dark heart and evil designs.
“Oh, Bettina, go to the room and find out what is going on,” Rose urged.
“You think they’re going to let me in the room? A dwarf. The queen doesn’t want me tumbling around turning somersaults and those stupid tricks. She wants privacy.”
But she was not going to get privacy. Unknown to the matrimonial couple, their first meeting was being observed by none other than Jane the Bald. The woman had a knack for eavesdropping, and a sixth sense about where to find a perch for such surveillance. The first thing Jane did when arriving in a new royal residence was to scout for such spots. As so many of these palaces and castles were old and in poor repair, it was never difficult to find such a place. She was happy that she did know more than a smattering of Spanish after all her years in service to Queen Mary. Before that she’d served her mother, Catherine of Aragon from Spain. The prince did not speak much English. So the couple conversed in three languages, actually—Spanish for the most part, but also small bits of Latin and some French. Mary could hardly restrain herself when he entered the room, and she raced forth to seize his hand and kiss it. The prince looked less enthusiastic. Jane couldn’t wait to tell Rose. She had grown quite fond of the gi
rl. Rose was not just smart, but clever beyond her years. Yet there was a mystery about her. Even Jane, who prided herself on being very perceptive, could not solve the mystery of Rose Ashley.
When the couple parted ways, Jane waited a few minutes before leaving her perch. She knew that Rose and the other seamstresses were still working into the wee hours, but she would wait until she heard them start to come down and then catch Rose’s attention.
She had to wait almost an hour before she caught the sound of their feet. She spied Rose turning down a corridor.
“Psst!” Jane hissed. Rose turned around.
“It’s me,” Jane said, stepping out into the small pool of light cast by Rose’s candle.
“Jane! What are you doing here?” Then she giggled. “I knew it. You spied on them, didn’t you?”
“Indeed, my lass.”
“What was it like? What happened?”
So Jane began to tell her all she had witnessed. Then, with a triumphant look on her face, she said, “But I save the best for the last.”
“And what’s that?”
“While I was waiting for you to come down, the prince came walking along that corridor that leads into this one. I was right around the corner just as the prince was coming along with one of his attendants. I heard him say that the queen was ‘más vieja’ than he thought.”
“Más vieja? What’s that?”
“Much older than he thought. And that ‘el tiempo no ha favoricido mucho a ella.’”
“Huh?”
“Time had not been kind to her.”
“Well, that’s the truth.” Rose sighed. “Not exactly a marriage made in heaven, I guess.”
“No. Sounds like hell to me.” Jane cackled.
The eyes should have been on the bride. And they were, for the first minute. It took only a minute, perhaps two at the most, for the wedding guests to discover Princess Elizabeth dressed in a stunning yet simple white gown. In contrast to the queen’s encrusted plum satin gown with the overlay of embroidery and slashed with gold insets, the royal princess was like a calm beacon of light. Then when Prince Felipe handed off his mantle of cloth of gold, and people saw he was wearing a white doublet and white breeches, there was a slight gasp. Edith leaned over and whispered in Rose’s ear, “And to think you trooped all over the countryside showing the queen’s dress design and the swatches of fabric!” The princess certainly followed orders. “What could be more different?”
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