Queen's Pleasure

by Brandy Purdy

  Lady Dudley gave a cry and wilted against her husband in a half swoon while Mary, Robert, and their father all stared at me as if I had suddenly turned green, and, had Guildford’s eyes been daggers, they would most assuredly have cut me into mincemeat.

  It was the much-put-upon valet who broke the silence. “Amen to that, even if I’m horsewhipped for sayin’ so! God save you, ma’am”—he bowed to me—“that is the most honest and sensible thing I’ve heard anyone in this house say the whole week I’ve been here. No need to throw me out, My Lady”—he bowed to Lady Dudley—“I know where the door is.” And, so saying, he turned his back on us all and walked out, whereupon Guildford shattered the stunned silence by bursting into tears.

  “You can’t leave me! You can’t! What will I do without a valet? How will I live? If I don’t have a valet, I know I shall die! These curl rags are too tight; they make my head ache, and I can’t take them out myself!” And with that declaration he flung himself weeping onto the fireside settle and buried his face in the crimson velvet cushions, weeping as though he had just lost the love of his life. I was appalled. I had never seen a boy of any age carry on so, and this one, at seventeen, was accounted a man.

  “Now, darling, don’t cry!” Lady Dudley pleaded as she rushed to embrace him. “Mother and sister Mary will take the hateful curl rags out to ease poor Guildford’s head, and we shall get you a new valet... .”

  “I want the King’s valet!” Guildford screamed.

  “Now, son”—the Duke hurried to his side, to comfortingly pat his back—“the King is very ill right now and needs his valet, but ...”

  “I don’t care! I shall be ill myself if I don’t get the King’s valet, and then I shall die, and it will be as though the sun has gone out of all your lives, and then you will be sorry you were all so mean to me! No one loves me! She”—he stabbed an accusing finger at me, causing everyone to turn and stare at me—“thinks I should be walloped with a broomstick!”

  “Now see what you have done!” Lady Dudley rounded on me with fury blazing in her eyes like fire from a dragon’s mouth. “You have upset Guildford!” The way she pronounced those words, one would have thought I had committed bloody murder right there in the parlor.

  “Robert,” the Duke said with a severe frown, “your wife is nothing but a troublemaker. Walloping Guildford with a broomstick indeed! Such may be the ignorant and ill-bred way things are done in the country, but not in London, and not by civilized, highborn people like us! And Guildford is such a delicate, sensitive boy... .”

  “Robert, don’t just stand there,” Lady Dudley said urgently as she bent over the prone and sobbing form of her youngest and dearest child, stroking his back. “Take your fastest horse and fetch Dr. Carstairs. And, for God’s sake—hurry! And get an apothecary too! The poor dear will make himself ill if he goes on like this! Oh, Guildford, Guildford, my dearest, darling boy, please don’t cry! No one wants you to be walloped with a broomstick, and no one ever shall do such a horrid thing as long as either I, or your father, or any of your brothers, has a breath left in their body! We all love you and would lay down our lives rather than see a hair on your head harmed!”

  As Robert strode past me, hastening for the stables, he flashed me an angry glare. “You’ve not even been here an hour, and you’ve already made my brother ill and offended my parents!”

  As he left, his elder brother Ambrose walked in, drawn no doubt by Guildford’s sobbing. “What ails Guildford now?” he asked as though such scenes were very much commonplace. “Did he lose another valet?”

  “Ambrose, thank God you are here! Guildford is very upset— yes, his valet has left him—again!—and that dreadful, lowbred girl from the country Robert so foolishly married thinks Guildford should be walloped with a broomstick and made to sleep in a cellar and dine—if you can call it dining—off table scraps! Table scraps! Oh, my darling boy!” She clutched Guildford protectively against her bosom. “Mary”—she turned suddenly to her daughter—“there is your lute on the window seat. Sing that song about the old maid; you know how it always amuses Guildford. And, Ambrose, do some cartwheels or flips or something—you know how Guildford adores acrobats and tumblers.”

  “But, Mother ...” Ambrose began to protest, gesturing down at his rich court clothes, which anyone could see were ill-suited for that sort of thing, but he was sharply rebuked by his father, who shouted at him to do as his mother said.

  And so Mary took up her lute and began to sing, over and over again, the maddeningly repetitious tune:

  “There was an old maid who was forty,

  As rich as Croesus was she,

  And every swain

  Who came courting

  She would shoo out her door

  As she sang:

  “Oh, fie, fie, fie!

  I’ll live an old maid till I die!

  Oh, fie, fie, fie!

  I’ll live an old maid till I die!”

  And as she sang, Ambrose reluctantly did cartwheels and flips back and forth across the room in his sky blue and silver, diamond, pearl, and satin-beribboned court attire, while Guildford’s mother and father bent over him, Lady Dudley endeavoring to calm him with soothing words, kisses, and caresses, and the Duke with more restrained pats upon his back. Both urged him to sit up and watch Ambrose’s antics and sing along, and, to encourage him, they loudly joined in the song.

  I just couldn’t bear it a moment longer and, in tears, with my head hung low, crept out and, not knowing where to go, sank down on the bottom step and wept as I waited for my husband to come home while Guildford continued to sob and scream lamentations that put all our eardrums in peril and would have put a banshee to shame, and his parents and sister sang out with great gusto:

  “Oh, fie, fie, fie!

  I’ll live an old maid till I die!

  Oh, fie, fie, fie!

  I’ll live an old maid till I die!”

  Poor Jane Grey! I thought. Though I had yet to clap eyes on her, I pitied her already; I would not wish such a bridegroom as Guildford upon my worst enemy. Unless she died young or was endowed with a remarkably placid manner that cast a calming spell over Guildford, she was likely to spend the rest of her life singing silly songs and turning cartwheels in the parlor to soothe her husband’s tears and savage temper. If she were blessed with understanding parents, she would do far better to heed the words of the song and chase Guildford away, even if it meant living an old maid till she died. I wouldn’t be in that young lady’s shoes for a kingdom, I told myself as in the parlor Guildford keened like a banshee and his parents and sister boisterously burst forth with yet another chorus of “I’ll Live an Old Maid Till I Die!”

  That night in bed I awaited Robert, naked and inviting, with my golden hair spilling across the pillows and my body laid bare and ready for his embrace. But when he came, he merely nudged my hip to push me over onto the other side of the bed. He spoke not a word—not one single word!—and turned a cold back to me. I knew by his silence that I had greatly displeased him. Even when I reached out a hand to stroke that hard, unyielding back, expecting to find it as cold as a wall of ice, he jerked away from me, and when I dared to try again, to stroke lightly that stiff spine, he turned and dealt my hand a fierce slap. I turned away then, buried my face in my pillow to stifle my sobs, lest the sound of them disturb Robert, and cried myself to sleep.

  I knew then, no matter what I did, no matter what I said, it would never be good enough, and I would always be found wanting. Even if I memorized every etiquette book from start to finish and comported myself as gracefully as a queen, correct and perfect in every way, still the Dudley family, and amongst them the one I loved best, would find some fault with me. I would never be good enough for them.

  Even when, in my sleep, I turned to him, wanting to drape my body around his, to curve ’round him as if we were two spoons stored in a drawer, Robert woke me by shoving me away so hard, my brow banged the edge of the table beside the bed, causing me to wake with a s
tartled and pained cry and send the heavy silver candlestick clattering onto the floor, so Robert had to scold me for making enough noise to rouse the whole house and the dead as well. And when I appeared at the table to break my fast the next morning with my eyes red, swollen, and bleary and a red gouge upon my forehead and a bruise upon my hand, I had to listen to the Dudley family talk around me, as if I were not even there, about how country women let themselves go and did not care about appearances the way highborn ladies did. Though they said they pitied such creatures, they spoke with scorn and used the words stupid and slatternly, ignorant and unkempt so many times that I lost count. I wanted to bolt from my chair and run all the way back to Norfolk and not stop running until I was safe inside Stanfield Hall again, but when I leapt up, upsetting the marmalade in my flustered haste, and started for the door, Robert’s hand shot out to grasp my wrist, twisting it painfully. As he forced me back into my chair, he hissed into my ear: “Sit down, Amy, you’re making a spectacle of yourself!” And then there was more talk of uncouth manners and a lack of decorum as a maid came in to clean up the marmalade, and my tears dripped into my cup to further water down my breakfast ale, and I gently clasped my throbbing wrist.

  “Your wife wants discipline, Robert,” said the Duke of Northumberland.

  “This filly is yet a bit wild,” my husband admitted, comparing me to a horse, “but, never fear, Father, I’ll soon break her and teach her who her master is.”

  “Aye.” The Duke nodded. “I’ve no doubt you’ll soon have her docile and eating out of your hand. You’ve a way with horses and women, Robert”—he nodded approvingly—“and know how to use it; you know best when to use the whip and spurs and when to spare them.”

  I couldn’t even raise my eyes to look at the array of unfriendly faces staring at me; all I could do was sit there, staring down, cradling my hurt wrist, and silently weeping into my ale until the Duke of Northumberland rose to signal that the meal was finished and we could all quit the table.

  Rather than spend a day with Robert’s mother and sisters, listening to them gossiping about people I didn’t know and finding fault with me as we plied our needles, I claimed to feel unwell and stayed in bed all day. Nor did I come down for dinner or supper either. I had Pirto undress me and put out the candles, and in my shift I cowered under the covers, pulling them up high above my head, and hid from my in-laws. And even though it greatly vexed him when he came, expecting to find me elegantly gowned and ready to accompany him downstairs, I told Robert I was far too sick to sit up and could not bear to even look at a morsel of food, claiming it must be the London air or something I had eaten that had made me ill, though the latter he took as an insult to his mother’s table and said he would not “emulate my bad manners by telling her so.”

  Thus I passed each day up until right before the wedding, hiding in my room, cowardly feigning illness, though it led Robert’s family to dismiss me as “a useless thing” and meant all my beautiful new gowns, intended to dazzle and impress my in-laws and their fine friends, were all for naught—“a splendid waste of money!” Robert declared them—but I just could not bear to face all those hostile faces that branded me so unsuitable and unworthy to take my rightful place amongst them at my husband’s side. Even my husband’s eyes burned me, and his tongue spat out scornful, scorching words every time he spoke to or of me. And that—the solid wall of disdain he readily and willingly joined his family in building against me, the lowly outsider who thought the golden ring on her left hand was enough to make her one of them—that is what hurt me most of all. I thought Robert was the one person I could count on to be on my side, to encourage, defend, comfort, and support me; I thought his love would keep me safe. Finding out how wrong I was was like a hammer’s blow to my heart.

  The night before the wedding, Robert came into the room and ripped the covers off me and ordered me to get up or else he would take his riding crop to my back and flay my hide off. I leapt trembling from the bed and stood shivering before him in my shift. He barked at Pirto to get out my gowns and lay them on the bed so he could inspect them; he would choose what I would wear on the morrow, as it was the only way to be certain I did not disgrace him.

  One by one, he rejected them, always finding some fault with them—“too gaudy,” “too pale,” “too bright,” “too sentimental,” “too whimsical,” “too complicated; that pattern will make any who beholds it cross-eyed or else drive them mad trying to puzzle it out,” “too bland,” “too plain,” “too prim,” “ugly as a monkey’s arse,” “too common,” “that color hasn’t been worn in London since last year; if I were a woman and that was the last dress I owned, I would go to my grave naked rather than be buried in it!”; “too whorish; with that neckline, you’re ready to walk the streets of London—you might as well stick a banner on your arse that says Fuck me!” and so forth, never sparing me, despite my tears and hurt and appalled exclamations. Not a one of my new dresses seemed to please him. Not even one! Not even my precious seashell-embroidered dress, though I had hoped it would stir happy memories in his heart and make him turn to me, kind and loving once more, just as he had been at Hemsby. At last, with an irritated sigh, he flicked his riding crop at the willow green silk extravagantly embroidered with silver artichokes and said I might as well wear that one, and pearls and emeralds with it, and the silver slippers, and then he walked out. Even the splendid array of gowns made for me by one of London’s finest tailors could not render me pleasing in my husband’s eyes! In a mixture of anger and despair, I swept all the dresses onto the floor and flung myself weeping onto the bed.

  Later, I rose unsteadily, picked up the dress Robert had chosen, and, hugging it against my body, went to stand before the looking glass. Through my tear-swollen eyes I peered anxiously at myself, staring hard, trying to see myself as others saw me. How had I changed? How had I altered from the girl who used to delight Robert and make his eyes light up until a smile seemed to be the only expression he ever wore upon his face? What had happened to the girl he used to kiss and caress and call his “Buttercup Bride” and tickle and tease because she was so tenderhearted she could not bear to see even a crab or a goose die? What had I done wrong? What had brought my marriage to this low and sorry state? I wished with all my heart that I knew, and then I might, somehow, some way, correct my mistake before it was too late and bring Robert back to me, kind and loving just as he used to be. I was trying so hard to be what he wanted me to be, but I didn’t know how to be anyone else but me. And I was being me when he fell in love with me, so why was I no longer good enough?

  The next morning when I arose to don my wedding clothes, I felt a bubble of rebelliousness suddenly burst inside of me. I flung aside the green and silver gown and ordered Pirto to bring the vibrant peach satin one festooned with yellow lace and embroidered with a wealth of yellow roses. I had loved that gown from my first sight of it and always planned to wear it to the wedding. Then, with my head held high, clad in the gown that I had chosen for myself, I boldly walked toward the door. But as my hand was reaching out to open it, my steps faltered, and I felt a shrill and sharp pang of alarm. What if the gown really was all wrong? What if it stood out as too bright and garish? What if Robert really did know best? The doubt that assailed me now was as violent as the rebelliousness I had felt earlier and made my stomach churn with cowardice and uncertainty. And instead of opening the door, my trembling hands reached behind me to frantically fumble and claw at my laces as I cried for poor, bewildered Pirto to “hurry and get me out of this!” and to “bring the green and silver gown My Lord chose for me; he surely must know best!”

  When Robert came in, I was standing morosely before the looking glass, frowning as Pirto finished lacing me, inwardly cursing my cowardice and repenting my decision to change gowns and to let Robert win. Would the peach and yellow dress really have been so very wrong? It was ever so pretty! He waited until Pirto was finished and then stepped behind me and unclasped the opulent, shimmering ropes of pearls
and emeralds from about my throat and tossed them aside, onto the unmade bed, as if they were nothing more than tin and glass trinkets country swains bought their sweethearts at the fair instead of a fortune in precious gems, and replaced them with a necklace of diamond artichokes to match the silver ones embroidered on my gown.

  “What’s the matter?” Robert asked, looking over my shoulder at my glum expression. “Don’t you like it? When I give a woman diamonds, I expect her eyes to light up to rival their sparkle!”

  “I never did care much for diamonds,” I reluctantly admitted, for better or worse choosing the truth over a lie. “They seem so cold and hard, like ... ice that never melts, or ... tears frozen in time.”

  Robert threw back his head and laughed. “I never heard anything so absurd in my life! ‘Ice that doesn’t melt! Tears frozen in time!’” He brayed with laughter. “Oh, Amy! Don’t be a fool; every woman loves diamonds; most would sell their soul for them!”

  “Really?” I was surprised to hear it and turned to look him full in the face, to see his nod of affirmation for myself, not merely a reflection over my shoulder in the glass. “You’re serious? You’re not just teasing me? Well, then,” I said with a shrug and a sigh and a little shake of my head, “they must account their souls of very little value if they would sell them so cheaply. Pretty though they are in their way, they’re just sparkly rocks, Robert.”

  “Sparkly rocks! This from the woman who says lace is like wearing snowflakes that don’t melt.” Robert laughed and good-humoredly kissed my cheek whilst inwardly I sighed, relieved to hear his laughter instead of a barrage of vexed and angry words. “You dear, sweet fool! If married life doesn’t suit you, you can always earn your bread and board as a jester; you’ve nigh made me split my breeches laughing! Sparkly rocks indeed! Oh, that is funny!”