“Maisy was full of talk. Lady Ludmore is much changed since her son returned home. Seems the lady has been full in her cups by day and full of fear by night. Something about Lord Rafael and his demeanor has not set her at ease at all. Lady Ludmore told me herself that his eyes have changed, gone to the devil, and she fears he will do someone some great harm.”
“Lady Ludmore is a strange woman,” I said as I drew my first stitch. Oh, how I felt the exhilaration with the movement. I closed my eyes a moment. “And he’s harmless,” I continued. “A lost soul. There’s no evil in being lost, only sadness.”
“Are you so sure?”
I ignored her and continued to stitch, working around the lion’s mane.
“Have you not thought of Christian and Uncle Godfrey?” she asked after a moment.
I set the needle down. “Of course! Of course I have,” I said, over-loudly. Oh, but had I? As I should have?
“No, you haven’t. Not if you’ve let another man in your arms.”
I blushed as I poked the needle down into the fabric. “Did you watch us, Anna?” I asked.
“I didn’t have to. I know,” she said.
It was quiet a good long time. “I’m not welcome here,” she said finally. “I feel trapped as though I’m in cage.”
“Then come with me tomorrow to the entertainment. Please, Anna, I want you to come.”
I couldn’t help thinking of the little golden birds in the queen’s birdcages. Dorothy told me they often died, so unhappy they were. Blanche Parry had to have them replaced quickly before the queen was aware.
“No, my place is not there.”
“Your place is by my side,” I said.
There was a tap on the door. Anna opened it. Nicholas Pigeon stood in the hallway wearing an impeccable green cloak over a silk doublet. He bowed deeply, and she blushed.
“And where have you been hiding?” he asked.
She didn’t respond but stepped back as he walked into the room, looking her over.
“I have a delivery for you from the Wardrobe,” he said, handing me a small pouch. I opened it and poured the contents into my hand. Jewels, tiny but perfect: rubies, emeralds, and pearls shimmering and translucent.
“For your design,” he explained. “The queen is very fond of her jewels. These were removed from a former queen’s gown, a gown that was not salvageable. Will they work?”
“Yes, oh yes,” I answered as I ran my fingers over the jewels. The pearls could be attached to the flowers; the rubies would be perfect for the lion’s eyes. I was not sure where the emeralds would go.
“I must be back to the Wardrobe.” He bowed. “Shall I see you tomorrow at the entertainment?” He said this to the both of us.
“Yes, yes,” I responded. “Of course.” He bowed again, then left us. Anna peered down at the jewels, her pale eyes reflecting their shimmers.
“Kat, your eyes have been turned. Have you not forgotten why you are here?” Anna asked. “You are supposed to ask of Mrs. Eglionby.”
I looked over at her but before I could answer, the door opened again. It was Dorothy Broadbelt, dressed sumptuously in yellow, her face distressed. “The queen is having one of her nervous maladies. Quite indisposed she is. No one is to know, of course, but she wants her ladies nearby. Hurry. Hurry. Bring your stitching. No telling how long this one shall last.”
Grace said once you can never trust a woman who doesn’t meet your eyes, for this is how a woman truly shows herself. And when Katherine Ashley sought me out, making a point of sitting next to me on my cushion as I stitched with the other ladies in the privy chamber, she would not meet my eyes, no matter how amiable and sweet her way was.
“Why, it’s lovely,” she said of the small panel I worked on. I had just given the ladies a short instruction on couch stitching and they were all sitting, working their stitches on fine cambric and lawn, delicate items for the queen’s underclothes. It was a dark-clouded day, the birdcages had been covered, the ladies’ chatter quiet and subdued. Suddenly Blanche Parry was called into the queen’s private bedchamber as two of the maids bustled out. Day, in a new jewel-studded collar, ran after her. Soon he was put out the door, and Katherine Knevit took him into her lap. The rest of us kept stitching. “Oh, but she does love pretty things,” Mrs. Ashley continued. “Fastest way to the queen’s heart. But where is the special gown you are to make for her?”
I’d left it behind in my room, carefully hidden. “It will be a surprise,” I said.
“The queen is not fond of surprises; life has given her too many. Believe you me, she will pull it out of you. How long do you think it will take? She is not a patient woman.”
“I’m thinking it will be done by the New Year,” I responded. I wasn’t sure myself. I’d never undertaken such an elaborate work.
“You’ll still be here?” Mrs. Ashley asked, her thin, plucked eyebrows raised. She was what one would call a full-faced woman, yet chinless and thin-lipped, an unfortunate combination. As the queen’s top gentlewoman, though, her livery and jewels were the finest at court. But Dorothy had told me Mrs. Ashley did not have a friend among the ladies, for in Mrs. Ashley’s heart there was room only for the queen. “Won’t your family have need of you in the country?” she continued. “I believe you came from Gloucestershire or somewhere abouts.”
“Yes, Gloucester,” I responded, looking at her. But her eyes were now on the chamber door. I’d come to realize her eyes hardly wavered from Elizabeth, no matter if she be behind a door or not.
“What ails her so?” I asked, speaking softly as I pulled up another stitch.
“The queen?” Mrs. Ashley asked. “Oh, but she has always been a sweet, sensitive soul, her nerves always raw. And the crosses she’s had to bear! I’ve borne them with her, I have, unbearable treacheries, some by the ones who loved her most. I’d do anything for her, anything. Even die for her.” She glanced at me from behind her lashes. “So no family, my dear, back home? No family at all?” She pulled a knot on the chemise she was making for the queen.
“Just a few to speak of. I was lucky to be taken in by my aunt, Lady Ludmore.”
“Your sleeves are lovely. You learned such beautiful work in the country?”
I nodded my head as I pulled up another stitch. Today I wore yet another of my creations, a russet silk gown, the sleeves peach with gold spangles and stitched flowers of pink carnations. The flowers were those I’d seen once growing wild near Blackchurch Cottage. Here they were called lover’s pinks. “Yes, I was taught well,” I answered.
“And your maid,” Mrs. Ashley began. “I hear she’s been as long with you practically as I’ve been with the queen.”
“Yes, indeed, Anna is like family,” I answered, wondering what question might be next. I looked at her, but still her eyes would not meet mine. Mary Shelton and Anne Windsour, working together on a piece of cambric, had their heads tilted just so, trying to catch our words. Suddenly Robert Dudley burst into the room, startling everyone. He stalked the length of the sitting room before any of the ladies could stop him, opened the door, and walked into the queen’s private bedchamber.
Mrs. Ashley jumped up after him. “Out!”
“Out!” I heard the queen scream, and soon Robert Dudley stormed back through, his face purple as a plum above his white ruffed collar. Katherine Knevit snorted with laughter and Mrs. Ashley bade her be quiet. She sat down next to me again.
“The queen has always had troubles with love,” she said, sighing. “Trouble seems to follow her around like a dark star. And believe me, I tell you, she is always innocent in the matter. Always. My good queen can do no wrong, that’s for sure. She learned early on, poor thing, how a man can manipulate, seduce. Break one’s heart. Learned a pretty lesson there she did. Could have cost her her head if it weren’t for my sage advice.” She sighed, looking back to the queen’s door. “But here we go again.” She waved her hand, exasperated. She’d long since forgotten her stitching. “They had a nasty row last night, they di
d. Seems he was quite jealous of her playful talk with James Melville, innocent as it was. And he doesn’t want to sacrifice himself on the bed of that Scottish mare. The queen rightly put him in her place, and he apparently, in turn, had some unkind words for her.”
“Does she love him?” I asked as Mary Howard came over with her own needlework and pointed to a line of stitches. I nodded my head in approval and she giggled and went back to her cushion. Anne Russell frowned at her and threw her own work down in exasperation.
“Of course,” Mrs. Ashley continued in a low whisper. “He’s one of the few men who have stood up to her, and secretly I think she likes it.” She laughed, as one does who doesn’t laugh often. “He’s intelligent. Smart. Handsome. But she cannot marry him. He’s beneath her. Sadly, there are some things a queen cannot have.” Her eyes riveted to the queen’s door. “And that’s why she is now quite beside herself.”
“I know a potion,” I said quietly as I pulled up another stitch. “For nerves.”
“A potion. And how would you know such a thing?” she asked, her head swiveling around and her eyes now meeting mine with great interest.
For Anna. Sometimes Grace had given Anna potions when her nerves had attacked. “Thyme, pig’s tail, and digweed,” I said quietly to myself.
“Dorothy,” Mrs. Ashley softly called across the room. Dorothy put her stitching down and approached Mrs. Ashley, who whispered the ingredients to her. “Go to the kitchen, please and instruct someone to prepare this.”
Dorothy’s smile disappeared at mention of the kitchen. “Why, Mrs. Ashley,” she began. “They don’t dare make such a potion for fear if she take a turn, they will be worse for the blame.”
“And how would you know the inner workings of the kitchen?” Mrs. Ashley asked, one eyebrow raised.
Dorothy shrugged. “Only what we all know, I assure you,” she said and she went back to her stitching.
“The queen will never let her marry her young man,” Mrs. Ashley commented, her voice low.
“Is it true the queen chooses husbands for her ladies?” I asked.
“Of course,” Mrs. Ashley responded. “We are the closest to her in the whole wide world. It is only natural she should pick our husbands so there isn’t a rat amongst us. Not that one doesn’t sneak in once in a while. Oh, I’ve prattled on too long, one of my great faults, I do have to say. So why don’t you, dear girl, tell me more of your life in the country.”
The queen’s door opened. “She’s quite distressed,” Blanche Parry said to Mrs. Ashley. “I fear for her, I do. She’s asking for you.”
“I think I know where I can get my potion,” I said quietly after Blanche had returned to the room.
“Well then, get it, by all means.”
“One more thing,” I said as Mrs. Ashley rose, a look of a soldier going into battle on her face. “Have you ever heard of a Mrs. Eglionby?”
She turned her head briefly toward me, her mouth gently falling open. Then she looked back toward the queen’s door. “No, never, never in my life have I heard that name.”
I gathered some linens in our room. Anna, as was becoming usual, was nowhere to be found. I came across Dorothy Broadbelt in the hall, fetching a blanket for the queen. “Do you know where I may find the laundress?” I asked.
She narrowed her eyes. “Why shouldn’t your maid take care of such matters?”
“She’s indisposed,” I lied.
“She always seems indisposed now, doesn’t she? I can’t tarry,” she said, walking on down the hall. But over her shoulder she said, “Below the stairs beyond the kitchen. Mind no one sees you, for they’ll think you have secret maladies.”
I wound my way through several long corridors, and down one set of creaky stairs, asking directions at least twice before I finally found the room. A dark cavity it was, like a dark, dank dungeon. Mrs. Twiste stood before two great pots, stirring with a long stick. “Leave it there,” she nodded to me without looking up. Farther back in the gloom were two figures laughing as they worked at a long trestle table.
It took a moment to realize it was my Anna with a young man with curly locks. He looked up at me and I started, so like Christian he was. Anna glanced up slowly, then lowered her eyes.
“Oh, it be you,” Mrs. Twiste said as she pulled the long stick out of a pot, a mound of wash wound around it. She flopped it down on the table with a big grunt. “And why would a fine lady the likes of you be down in my lair?” She laughed.
“What are you doing down here?” I mouthed to Anna. She pretended not to see me. The young man next to her caught my eye. I saw now, he was no Christian. He had the devil spark in his eyes. And then I saw a movement behind him, a large cow-faced boy in a red tattered jacket sitting on a stool holding a broom.
“Your sister is assisting me Oliver, that’s all,” Anne Twiste said. “She needs a little happiness and she gets it here.”
My head swung away from Anna back to Anne Twiste. Our eyes met. She knew. She knew Anna was not my maid. And I knew that Anna had not told her. She would never betray me. “She shall not come back. It’s unseemly,” I said.
“Hmmmph,” she snorted. “I think she has more will than you know.” She started to lay the garments out one by one. She sighed, the deep sigh of one who has seen too much of the world. “Nay, tell me. What is your need? A babe in the womb? Warts? A herb for your bad breath like that Mary Ratcliff.”
“Ratlip.” Oliver laughed, and the other boy joined in. I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, so strange he looked.
“That be George the sweeper,” Mrs. Twiste said, seeing my look. “He means no harm. I found him meself as a baby, left in a basket on the wharf. Poor thing, and I nursed him myself, I did. But he disappears, my boy, usually to the wharf, looking for his real mama, I suppose. And he has eyes for the maids, he do, but they all spurn him, the wenches, and make fun of his queer looks, they do.”
“I need you to make a potion for one of the ladies,” I said, pulling my eyes away from George the sweeper. Indeed, there was something about him, something hell-born. Perhaps his mother had seen it the moment he was birthed.
“Aye, now you are talking. It’d be my pleasure. But it will cost you a pretty coin.”
“I need digweed, thyme, and pig’s tail.”
“Oliver.” She tilted her head. “Go to the market for me.” He brushed past me, looking me over, a small grin tilted on his lips.
As we sat stitching for the nursery today, the queen proclaimed her “little knave” must know the work we did for him, for he stirs within her. She bade me come feel, and I reluctantly did so, laying my hand on her belly as it kicked and turned. She laughed, for she finds as much joy in the upcoming birth as I find fear in mine. I have dreamed I shall die and the babe with me, and I tell you I welcome it, as it will be a release from my miseries. I am like a ghost, I am with no home above or below the earth, waiting for the end. The admiral looks straight through me when we pass as though he never knew me, the blackguard. But thank God he hasn’t turned his attentions on Lady Jane Grey, who is merely a sweet but whey-faced little child who always has her big nose in a book. Poor thing, for she greatly admires the admiral. And he in turn has named her godmother of the babe to be. And now with the princess gone and me invisible, he’s turned his attentions on his wife and the babe. Agnes says a cow doesn’t change its spots, and he’s probably up to no good somewhere. But alas, we’ve heard he’s spent a fortune preparing a castle in the country for his wife and baby, and we are to leave for this place soon, where she may have a safe and peaceful birth, away from the intrigues and summer plagues of London.
CHAPTER 19
When I walked into the queen’s chamber, Ipollyta was sitting next to the queen’s head, like a little harpy bird on a hedge. She gently stroked the queen’s temples, chanting some sort of incantation. The queen was still in her linen nightgown, with a quilted silk jacket over it. She lay in a great wooden canopied bed, her hair, natural and full, fanned out on the pillow l
ike a setting sun. The aroma from a pomander—benjamin, sweet cinnamon, civet, and cloves—hung in the air. The queen’s eyes opened and lit upon the window. “Someone pull the drapes,” she murmured in a low voice, unrecognizable. “I can see it, how it vexes me always, even in the day, smiling at me like the devil.” But then she turned her head and saw me.
“Ah, it’s my Spirit. I hear you are at work on my new gown. Bring it here. It will cheer me.” There were cushioned beds on the rushed floor where her senior ladies slept sometimes, and a delicate dressing table in a corner. On it were several small jewel caskets and a looking glass, and a collection of lidded pots. Dorothy had told me sometimes the queen’s ladies painted her face with lead and vinegar to cover her pox marks.
“Yes,” I told her. “But I’ve only just started, and I’d like it to be a surprise, if I may.”
She shut her eyes and frowned. “Bah, surprises. They are hardly ever good.”
I sat down on the bed, at her feet, holding her potion carefully in my hands. “I think you shall be very pleased. It will be my finest work ever, I promise. But it might take me a good while.” I held the potion to her.
“Shall it?” she said softly as she lifted up and drank from it. “And then what will you do when you are finished?”
“Whatever you want of me,” I said, “Your Majesty.” I took the goblet from her and set it on a table next to her bed.
“Stay with me,” she said, taking my hand. “You soothe me.” She motioned impatiently for Ipollyta to stop rubbing her temples. Ipollyta got off the bed and left the room.
“Everyone betrays me,” the queen moaned in that eerie voice from before, her hand covering her eyes. “Everyone. Cannot I trust anyone?” She gripped my hand and pulled me closer. “Look at me, Spirit.”
I tried to pull away, but she held firm. “Can I trust you?”
I looked her straight in the eye, but could not answer. Our eyes locked, and a shiver went down my back.
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