“John, you really don’t need—”
“Oh, hush up,” he said.
So I did.
John stayed for the next week, driving the children to their schools and activities and tending to my needs. He was a brisk and efficient nurse, getting the job done with a minimum of fuss. He helped me to the bathroom and leaned against the wall, humming, while I took my first, shaky shower; then he changed the sheets and helped me back into bed. He fetched juices and broths and crackers and kept Henry from leaping onto the bed in an effort to “make Jordy feel better.”
Eventually, I did feel better. “Thanks for taking care of me,” I told him.
“You’re welcome. Good God, those children are a handful.”
I smiled.
“They talk all the time. It’s like stereo, Henry on one side of me and Katherine on the other. And the driving! I don’t understand how you can drive all four of them to four different destinations at the same time.”
“It’s not easy,” I agreed.
“If Henry is late to football, the coach scolds me. If Jane is late to school, she scolds me. And how many social engagements does Katherine have? Every day it’s a different friend and a different party!”
“I know.”
“And the hall is a disaster. My mother brings in one set of decorations, then my sister appears and takes them away and brings in another set of decorations. Honestly, it’s a madhouse.”
“I know,” I said again, secretly delighted.
“Bloody hell,” he said. “If it weren’t for your Excel schedule, I think I should have gone mad.”
I smiled.
— – — – —
And then it was June 1, the eve of the gala. With the great day finally upon us, the hall was practically quivering with excitement, and the children were uncontrollable. Henry galloped around, brandishing his pirate sword and bellowing, “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” Jane responded by lecturing him on Richard III, who died half a century before Lady Jane Grey was born, and who never uttered those immortal words anyway. Katherine rushed in and out of my bedroom to display different blue frocks.
The festivities began with a five-hundred-guest Lady Jane Grey Banquet in the great hall that evening. There was a huge marquee on the lawn and fairy lights sparkled in the trees. The hall was decorated beyond recognition; gone were the rather somber antique chests and chairs, replaced by flower-bedecked tables and glittering silverware. Lovely ornamental tapestries hung on the walls, and the flagstone floor was carpeted with rose petals.
Having been ousted from the Lady Jane Grey Society, I had no formal role at the banquet; Lady Olivia was acting as hostess. Everyone was to appear in costume, so I had decided to go as the despised Frances Grey, Jane’s mother, and wore an elegant silk gown in my favorite shade of green. Frances was reputed to have been hard and calculating; some even accused her of beating her daughter. I knew that Lady Olivia hated Frances Grey.
John refused to wear a costume. He donned his black tuxedo, and I had to admit that it set off his fair skin and hair to perfection. As we walked solemnly down the grand staircase together, I took his arm and smiled at him. “You look very dashing, Lord Grey,” I said.
“And you, my lady, are ravishing. Who are you supposed to be, by the way?”
“Frances Grey, Jane’s mother.”
“Ah yes, the alleged child abuser.” He grinned. “My mother will be appalled.”
Lit by a thousand candles, the hall appeared just as it would have in Queen Jane’s day: women in rustling silk and heavy jewelry, men in knee breeches and satin doublets. The chattering and laughter rose to a dull roar; glassware clinked; and a lutist strummed her instrument in the corner. For a moment, I felt transported.
Pamela’s husband appeared and took my hand as John melted away into the crowd. I took in his foppish bright blue costume, dripping with lace and ruffles. “And who are you supposed to be?” I inquired.
“Why, I am poor Jane’s husband, my lady. The caddish and unlovely Guildford Dudley.”
I laughed out loud. “You are very badly miscast.”
He looked pleased, and I suspected that he got few compliments from his cool, lovely wife. “Why, thank you. Would you care to dance?”
I danced with him, and with the gardener, and with the aerobics ladies’ husbands, and with assorted other gentlemen I had met before. Doris’s large and silent husband led me into a stately waltz, holding me at a respectful arm’s distance and refusing to make eye contact. I danced with the handsome veterinarian and his handsomer boyfriend and wondered where my husband was.
Every now and then I caught a glimpse of Katherine’s bouncing blond ringlets or Henry’s blue satin ruffles (he was Edward VI, Jane’s young cousin). Lady Olivia was a handsome and dignified Queen Elizabeth I, and the impish Meggie was Elizabeth’s fool (aka court jester), in skintight leggings and a multicolored jersey that clung lovingly to her small breasts.
Finally, the musicians announced the last dance. Pain radiated from my abused feet to my aching back, and I couldn’t wait to take off my beautiful but tight costume. Stuffy old Lord Stockwell appeared before me and held out his hand. “My lady?” he said solemnly.
Just then John appeared. “I believe this is my dance,” he said.
The musicians began to play “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” and John took me into his arms. “They’re playing our song,” he said softly, and we began to move together slowly, as if in a dream. Dancing with the other men had been pleasant, but dancing with John was like coming home. I rested my tired head on his shoulder and closed my eyes.
“Where were you all night?” I murmured.
“Buttering up the constituents. Working.”
“Mmmmm.”
“Did you have a good time, my lady?”
“Mmmmm.”
The song ended, but John kept his arm around me. “Let’s say good night to our guests,” he suggested. “I’d like to take my lady to bed.”
So we did.
Chapter 49
IT WAS THE great day. I awoke with a knot in my stomach and turned on my side to see John watching me.
“Are you ready for this?” he asked.
“No.”
He sighed. “Me, neither.”
It was an unusual admission of vulnerability for John, and I looked at him curiously. “What are you worried about?”
“I don’t care if bloody Jane Grey was a maiden or a slut; I even find it marginally interesting that she may have been a political manipulator at the age of fifteen. But . . .”
I suggested, “You don’t want to see your mother look like an idiot?”
He nodded. “I know how exasperating she is, Jordy. But all of this nonsense really matters to her, and . . .”
“And you love her?”
“Well,” said John. “Let’s not get too sentimental here.”
“Of course not.”
He pulled me into his arms and kissed me. “God knows what this day will bring,” he said. “So let’s start it off with a bang, shall we?”
I snuggled against him. “I like your thinking, my lord.”
— – — – —
When we went downstairs, the hall was in a state of pandemonium. Volunteers and workmen were tearing about, moving furniture and flowers and boxes from one end of the hall to the other upon Lady Olivia’s orders, then moving them back upon Pamela’s orders. Pamela’s usually perfect blond hair was mussed and tangled; she kept running nervous fingers through it until the strands practically stood up. For the first time since I had known her, Lady Olivia, too, looked imperfect. She must have put on her makeup with unsteady hands, for her eyeliner ran off in a squiggly line and her lipstick was a bright red slash across her mouth. I felt John twitch beside me.
“I’m just going to dash off to the offi
ce,” said my cowardly husband. “Jordy, fix this, will you?” He wove his way through the obstacle course that was our great hall and disappeared out the front door.
I made my way to the kitchen, where Doris was tipping a bottle of brandy into her mouth with four pairs of wide blue eyes fixed upon her.
“My lady!” she gasped.
Mary said solemnly, “Doris is feeling a little anxious.”
Henry volunteered, “She said a bad word.”
“So did Auntie Pamela,” Jane put in defensively. “She said way more bad words than Doris.”
“Oh, dear,” I said helplessly. “Doris, would you like to go home?”
“But I’m hungry!” Henry wailed.
Doris took another swig and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She squared her shoulders. “I hope I know my duty, Miss Jordy,” she said righteously. “I will not desert my kitchen.”
The children cheered, and I set her to making bacon, eggs, and coffee. “Lots of coffee,” I suggested, eyeing her uneasily.
“Yes, Miss Jordy,” she said.
I returned to the hall, where Pamela and Lady Olivia were squaring off, surrounded by a circle of grinning, sweating workers.
“You know nothing of this family and its traditions!” Lady Olivia cried.
“And you know nothing of putting on a major event!” Pamela retorted.
“Why, you ungrateful—”
“Why, you interfering—”
I was swept by a sense of déjà vu: I had witnessed this scene many, many times in the tense, testosterone-laden atmosphere of the trading room at AmCan Bank. Two alpha traders squaring off in front of their subordinates, each one determined to win and neither willing to give an inch.
I knew how to handle this. I clapped my hands for attention. “Ladies, please!” I shouted.
They stopped in mid-roar and turned to me.
Pamela protested, “She—”
Lady Olivia said, “She—”
“Shut up!” I snapped.
Eyes widened, and I heard a muffled snort from the amassed onlookers.
“Now, this is what we’re going to do!” I continued. “Pamela, you are in charge of the marquee outside. Do whatever you want there, and do not enter the hall again until the guests arrive. Lady Olivia, you are in charge of the hall, and you may not enter the marquee. Is that clear?”
Both mouths opened and then closed again.
“Good! Now get to work!”
Pamela marched out of the hall and a blessed silence fell. I had solved umpteen similar disputes by ordering one trader to handle the Euribor trades and another the Libor trades. John trusted me to “fix this,” and he was right: I knew how to do it.
“What are you looking at?” I demanded. “Get to work!”
— – — – —
I had promised to take the children into the village for the medieval celebration, but first I hurried into my little “office” and closed the door behind me. The CEO of AmCan Bank, Marcus Dyer, had called sixteen times in the past week, and I wanted to stop the barrage.
As I dialed the familiar number of AmCan’s huge, hulking Wall Street headquarters, I realized that I felt not a flutter of nervousness, or anxiety, or even curiosity. I felt nothing. And when Marcus took my call immediately and offered me not just a restoration of my job but also Lucian’s job—executive vice president (“and you could work from New York or London; I know you have a family there”)—I turned him down and said a polite goodbye. The offer held about as much appeal as a January jaunt to Siberia with only sled dogs and wolves for company.
Thoughtfully, I opened the top of my laptop, once again deleted the three chapters that I had so agonizingly managed to bang out, and started typing.
Just like an Elizabethan court, the modern trading floor is a tapestry of good and evil, the soulful and the soulless. It is all about power and brute force, more guts than glory. But in the end, as Shakespeare wrote, it is “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” There are jesters and fools, kings and queens and wenches, and master manipulators pulling the puppet strings to weave us all together.
I know because I was a jester and a fool, a queen and a wench, all at various times in this world. In the end, like Queen Jane Grey, I was beheaded and excommunicated. My short reign and ignominious defeat, like hers, began . . .
The words flowed easily, and in no time at all I had completed a thousand-word essay. I saved the file and sat back with satisfaction. It would make a nice little article, perhaps an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times. It seemed that my brief career as an author would come to an end before it began; Lady Olivia could be the writer of the family. Infuriatingly, her style was engaging and interesting, once she got beyond the sainthood of Lady Jane Grey.
As for me, how could I possibly find time to write a book while I was trying to keep Henry from flooding school bathrooms? And dissuading Katherine from dating older boys and Mary from trying to run the New York City Marathon next year?
— – — – —
I took the children to the village, where we had a wonderful morning sampling the Elizabethan treats and admiring the pageantry. There were jesters and jugglers in bright costumes, serving wenches with tankards of mead and ale, and strolling musicians singing “Greensleeves.” It was a lovely warm June day; people were smiling and cash registers were ringing. My spirits rose and I relaxed as we wandered through the crowds, inspired by the court-like atmosphere.
But when we returned to Bradgate, it was back to reality. Lady Olivia’s book launch was in the great hall at two o’clock, to be followed by Dr. MacAlister’s grand revelation in the marquee at five. Reporters were starting to gather, followed by crews toting heavy shoulder cameras and boom microphones. John was pacing in the great hall; I found Lady Olivia in her bedroom, trying and failing to apply mascara.
“Bloody hell!” she exclaimed as she poked herself in the eye.
I stopped short.
“Fuck this fucking mascara anyway!” she cried, and flung the offending wand across the room. It landed on the pristine white duvet, leaving an ugly black streak across the pillow, and Lady Olivia burst into tears.
I hurried across the room. “Please don’t cry,” I begged. I couldn’t figure out whether to hug her, so I settled for patting her on the shoulder.
“That bloody professor.” She sniffed. “He’s going to make me look like a fool and defame poor Jane forever. They’ll probably kick me out of the society, too.”
“They can’t,” I assured her. “You’re the honorary chairwoman.”
“That’s just because I donate the most money,” she said with sudden honesty.
I hadn’t realized that she understood that, and I looked at her with new respect.
“Lady Olivia,” I said, “perhaps your vision of Jane isn’t the same vision of Jane that the professor will show. But does it really matter?”
She stared at me. “Of course it matters! My life’s work has been dedicated to keeping the memory of Queen Jane alive! She deserves no less.”
For a moment, I wondered if she was slightly addled. Then I remembered the people of York publishing the memoriam on the anniversary of King Richard III’s death every year—“On this day was our good king piteously slain and murdered”—and thought of the thousands of people thronging Bradgate village today. History was alive here in rural England, and gloriously so.
I said gently, “Sometimes the historical legend—the vision—matters more to people than cold, hard facts.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Was Braveheart a heroic leader or a coarse, sheep-stealing adventurer? Did Cleopatra really wrap herself in a rug and have herself delivered to Marc Antony? Did Marie Antoinette’s hair really turn white overnight in prison?”
“I don’t know,” s
he said. “I’m not sure.”
“That’s exactly it: You don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that Braveheart became a legend and an inspiration to his people; Cleopatra seduced an entire nation; and Marie Antoinette went from a party girl to a raddled, grief-stricken old woman at the age of thirty-two. That’s what matters.”
“So . . . then Jane—”
“Lady Jane Grey was a complicated girl, a product of her time, and her legend has lived longer than five hundred and fifty years! Doesn’t that count for something? What matters is that she has meaning, a lot of meaning, to a lot of people, five hundred and fifty years later! She means different things to different people, but so what? She lives on!”
I hadn’t realized I felt so passionately about Jane until I paused for breath. “And what she means to me,” I continued, surprising myself, “is that she’s a strong woman who didn’t let herself be manipulated by powerful men. She made her own choices, her own decisions—whether or not they were mistakes, like Wyatt’s Rebellion, she made them herself!
“She chose her life, and she chose her death on the scaffold. Whether she died as a martyr to the Protestant cause or because she wanted to ensure Elizabeth’s claim to the throne, what does that matter? She chose it. Isn’t that how you want people to remember Jane? Not a helpless victim but a woman in full control of herself, and her life, and even her death?”
For the first time ever, Lady Olivia smiled at me—a warm, genuine smile. “Why, Jordy, I think you have just given me the theme for my speech. And perhaps for my sequel,” she added, her eyes sparkling.
Chapter 50
LADY OLIVIA WAS magnificent. When she concluded, “So the historical vision of Jane—minx, rebellious teenager, reluctant queen, or master manipulator—lives on in the hearts of all Englishmen. This book is dedicated to that vision, and I hope that each and every reader takes away his or her own vision of this legendary queen,” the audience surged to its feet and applauded vigorously. A beaming Lady Olivia accepted her standing ovation graciously, inclining her head toward me and John clapping enthusiastically, in the front row.
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