And Kate . . . Kate was
so
happy! And, truly, I didn’t want to spoil it. But I was so afraid for her. She had already persuaded herself that she was in love with the bridegroom she had yet to meet, a man whose face she had beheld only in a miniature portrait—and who knew how accurate that likeness was? It has been commonplace since the art of portraiture began for the painters to flatter their patrons. Though she had never heard his voice, she could already hear him whispering sweet nothings in her ear and reciting poems about her beauty and comparing their love to an immortal flame. Every night, until she drifted off to sleep, Kate would lie abed whispering the names that filled her copybook over and over again like pearls on a rosary—
Katherine, Lady Herbert; Lady Katherine Herbert; Katherine, Countess of Pembroke; Katherine, Comtesse de Pembroke
—savoring them on her tongue as she dreamed of her husband’s ardent kisses and bold caresses. She spoke with such confidence, such utter certainty, that it terrified me. What if Dame Fortune overheard and just to be cruel or contrary dealt my sister a different hand altogether? What if Lord Herbert, who was after all only fourteen, was
nothing
like Lancelot in his shining silver armor and white-feathered helm, riding hard and fast astride a white horse to sweep his ladylove up into his arms and carry her away to Joyous Garde to live in love forevermore? How could he be? Surely that was too much to expect of him. But it would break Kate’s heart if he was anything but her dream of love come true. He
had
to be a hero right out of a storybook! He just
had
to be, for Kate’s sake!
Yet every time I thought of the timidly smiling, slight-shouldered, pale-faced boy whose picture I had stolen a glance at by candlelight as Kate lay sleeping, my heart sank like a stone, and fear and worry gnawed unrelentingly at my stomach. Privately, I was convinced that my sister was in love with love, not with Lord Herbert, but I was only eight years old and didn’t have the heart or the nerve to say so. I knew my sister well enough to know that she would deny it and answer me with peppery verve and heated words and demand what did I know of love and did I think my knowledge superior to hers. No, it was better, for both our sakes, that I keep silent and not invite a quarrel to come between us in the ever dwindling days that were left for us three sisters to spend together.
How envious she was when Guildford Dudley came to call on Jane.
Why has Lord Herbert not done the same?
she wept and stormed. But there was no time for tears then; Jane must be made ready to receive her betrothed. Our lady-mother and Kate made quite a fuss, dressing Jane in a gold trimmed and tasseled carnelian velvet gown, ignoring her heated protests, as they tugged it over her head and laced her in tight and fought to free her struggling hands from the voluminous over-sleeves that almost dragged on the floor, and the long-suffering Mrs. Ellen knelt to roll a pair of gold-embroidered orange stockings up Jane’s limbs and thrust her unwilling feet into a pair of golden slippers with rosettes and rubies on the toes. They thrust rings onto her fingers, heedless of the stones’ colors, as long as they were large and valuable, and hung gold and jeweled chains about her neck, and slapped down the pale, slender hands with their smattering of freckles when they rose in vain to try to protect her tightly pinned and plaited hair from the intrusive fingers that would determinedly pluck out the pins and brush it out into a mass of shining ruddy chestnut ripples that fell down to her waist.
As soon as our lady-mother had fastened the gold-flowered and fringed orange hood onto her head and smoothed the gold-veined white gossamer veil bordered with golden tassels down her back and Kate had pinned an amethyst brooch the size of a clenched fist—the biggest in our lady-mother’s jewel coffer—onto her breast, Jane bunched up her skirts and bolted from the room to take shelter in the library. Mrs. Ellen was told to follow to provide discreet chaperonage to the couple and to make sure that Jane did not tear the tassels from her gown or the golden roses from her hood in protest of such adornment, and I tagged along, quietly following the trail of her crow-black skirt. When he arrived, Kate told me after, our parents explained to Guildford that Jane was “a modest and shy young woman, of a most retiring nature,” and sent him into the library to meet her “in quietude without a crowd to unnerve her.”
A little while later, Guildford strode in, dressed in gooseberry green velvet the exact same shade as his eyes, with puffs of silver-white tinsel cloth showing through his fashionably slashed sleeves. In his arms he carried a big, silky white cat, with a green silk ribbon tied round its neck in a most becoming bow with a gold-framed green stone pinned at its center.
Surely not an emerald on the cat,
I thought, shaking my head incredulously. He paused halfway across the room from Jane and doffed his peacock feathered cap and bowed low and grandly, pausing expectantly and looking around after as though he expected a round of applause from an invisible audience, but there was not a sound except the cat purring in his arms.
Then he came and stood before Jane, staring down at her, studying her as though she were a specimen in a glass cabinet, tapping his chin, and tilting his head from left to right. Through it all, Jane never looked up from her book or in any way acknowledged him, and I trembled for her knowing full well that our lady-mother would be certain to punish such rudeness. Nervously, I plucked at Mrs. Ellen’s sleeve, and when she leaned down I whispered, “Please don’t tell Mother; she will beat Jane.” At last, Guildford took a step forward and plucked the musty, old, gray black bound copy of Virgil’s
Aeneid
from Jane’s hands and, with a fastidious grimace, flung it with a resounding thud into the room’s darkest corner. Then he strode over to one of the bookcases that lined the walls, remarking as he did so that “books are so decorative,” and selected a gilt-embellished volume bound in beautifully textured orange-red leather. “If you really
must
read then read this one instead; it matches your dress better,” he said as he presented it to Jane.
He sat down beside her and introduced her to his cat, whose name he said was Fluff, and offered to let Jane pet him if her hands were clean as Fluff had just had a chamomile and lemon bath. “His eyes are the
exact
color of the finest jade,” Guildford said proudly, pointing to the gem dangling from Fluff’s ribbon.
Guildford made a valiant effort to engage my sister in conversation, starting with music, “my one
true
passion,” and then moving on to food; like our father, Guildford loved sweets “like the Devil does stealing souls,” but took great care not to overindulge and spoil his figure. He asked her if she had any pets, and when Jane didn’t deign to answer, told her about his own. Besides Fluff, he had a white parrot with a great yellow crest atop its head that could catch the grapes and berries he tossed to it in its beak or claws.
After that he tried fashion, describing in detail the magnificent new wardrobe his tailor was making for him to start married life in. Next he tried beauty treatments, after snatching off the rather ostentatious, overdecorated hood and exclaiming, “Why do you attempt to hide such beauty?” as he rippled his fingers through the long fire-kissed brown waves. He went on to suggest several remedies to vanquish Jane’s freckles and various washes for her hair—lemons and chamomile to lighten it, walnut juice to darken it, or henna to redden it and emphasize her Tudor heritage, any of which, he said, would be “a novel change,” “striking,” and “dramatic.” He even brought up books and poetry, though he clearly fancied the more frivolous and flowery sort that Jane abhorred and turned her scholarly little nose up at. He even offered to let her kiss him. “We’re to be married, so we might as well make the best of it and be friendly,” he said, nearly knocking me off my chair as I had not expected such a wise and astute observation to come out of Guildford Dudley’s pretty pink mouth.
But Jane only sat there sullenly staring at the pages of the book, though it was one of Father’s cookery books containing a number of sweet recipes collected from various parts of the world that he was always begging our cook to try, and thus one my scholarly sister was ill-inclined to read.
In the end, Guildford had to admit defeat, declaring, “I’ve attended livelier funerals!” as he stormed out, slamming the door behind him hard enough to cause a bust of Caesar to fall from atop the shelf containing military tomes and chip his white marble nose upon the floor.
As soon as he was gone, I ran over to Jane and snatched the book from her to get her attention. “Why did you not talk to him?” I demanded. “He was trying to be friendly!”
“He’s a fool!” Jane snorted contemptuously. “A vain, pompous, empty-headed, frivolous fool and I hate him and can’t stand to have him near me!” She reached again for the book, but I threw it across the room rather than let her have it to hide behind.
“He’s going to be your husband whether you like it or not,” I reminded her, “so you might as well make the best of it and try to be friends; you’d do well to make amends with him before it is too late and the insult is beyond repair. Write him a letter, Jane, tell him nervousness and fear got the better of you and made you behave badly and you are sorry for it, tell him that you are accustomed to a quiet life of study, contemplation, and prayer, and fear the loss of all that is familiar and dear to you upon marriage and the responsibilities it will require you to assume. Tell him—”
“I don’t need you to dictate my letters to me, Mary! And
no,
I will
not
write to him! I’d sooner strike off my own hand! What will be will be! I am a martyr to the fate our parents have decreed for me and soon the whole world shall know it! Being married to this popinjay is another trial, another punishment I must endure and overcome as best I can, God willing! And I didn’t realize you were so smitten with him. Clearly his pretty face has charmed you; you’re just like a magpie diving for a bit of shiny glass it has mistaken for a diamond hidden in the grass!” she added spitefully, angrily swiping the futile tears from her eyes as she ran past me.
“It doesn’t have to be that way! You don’t have to be a martyr to anyone or anything!” I shouted after her. “And I am not in the least bit enamored with Guildford Dudley, but even a blind man could see that he is trying to make the best of things, unlike you! It is you I am thinking of, Jane. You’re my sister, and I love you well enough to tell you that if you scorn Love and turn your back on it, Love may turn its back and scorn you.”
But it did no good; already I was speaking to an empty room. Jane had fled the library as though it were aflame. How I wished I could make her understand! Though many would laugh and wonder how someone like me could know so much about love, I knew better than most that it was the only prize truly worth winning. I wanted both my sisters to have that, even if I could not. Even though it would mean moments of the utmost sadness, a secret, yearning envy I harbored deep inside my soul that I could never reveal, I wanted to have that experience in the only way I could, vicariously, through my sisters.
With a heavy sigh and a shake of her weary head, Mrs. Ellen stood and followed her angry charge out. “For all her fancy, high-praised book learning, the poor chit hasn’t a whit of sense when it comes to the
real
world,” she grumbled as she went, and I had to agree with her.
Though my heart secretly wept, as my eyes did every night into my pillow, at the thought of relinquishing my sisters to husbands and new homes, nothing could diminish my delight during the hours we spent with the silk merchants and seamstresses. As the banners of silk unfurled before my eyes, I dreamed I was in heaven and that I could hear fanfares of trumpets and choirs of angels singing amongst the bright, billowing lengths laid out before us.
“Not another dreary dress the color of a mud puddle!” Kate cried, snatching a bolt of dung brown from out of Jane’s hands. “Ugh! Take it away! And not that one either. It’s the color of wet moss and can’t make up its mind whether it wants to be green or gray, but either way it’s
hideous!
No, Jane, no!” She snatched and kicked away every drab shade our sister touched or even glanced at. “You should have pretty gowns in shades of gold, russet, and red, tawny, amber, yellow, and orange, colors that bring your hair to life and make the red in it glow like embers beneath the brown, colors that seem to dance and wave and cry out like a flirty maid, ‘Look at me, look at me!’ ” As she spoke, Kate began to snatch up satins, silks, damasks, velvets, brocades, taffetas, and tinsels of the shades she had just named and wrap and wind and drape them all around Jane until she looked like an overgrown infant swaddled in a rainbow of autumn colors.
“Green and blue, in shades deep or delicate, are also good for Jane,” I added, for I knew my sister deemed these brighter hues that Kate favored wanton and garish. I took up a length of lush green velvet and held it up, high as I could, against Jane. And after Kate had laughingly helped the seamstresses unwrap Jane from her rainbow cocoon, and she stood again, just like Kate, in her shift, I unwound a bolt of shimmering pale green silk sewn in silver with a pattern resembling fish scales and held it up against Jane’s waist. “Wear this, Jane, and you will look like a mermaid who has dragged herself from the sea to marry the prince who has stolen her heart.”
“What, damp and bedraggled?” Jane asked sullenly.
“Nay”—our lady-mother strode into the room and snatched the beautiful silk away from me—“with her sour countenance, since we cannot trust her to smile upon her wedding day, it will make her appear jaundiced. This will look better on Kate.” She draped it around Kate’s bare shoulders and brushed her lips against her cheek.
Her rebellious gaze aimed straight at our lady-mother, Jane pointed to a bolt of blue velvet so dark that only the brightest light would prove that it wasn’t black. “That!” she said adamantly. “I will wear that. Make the collar high and the sleeves long and close about the wrists, with frills of white Holland cloth, edged in silver if you must, at the collar and cuffs, and a hood of the same velvet, but
no other adornments
.” She stressed each word as her eyes bored into the dressmaker’s. “I shall wear my prayer book suspended from a silver chain about my waist; the word of God is the only adornment I want or need.”