Lady in Waiting: A Novel (29 page)

I began to describe it again.

“Well, first, there is a long flowing skirt of the softest golden lawn, gathered here and there in billowy pleats like clouds. On the bodice, I will embroider, with silver thread, tiny thistles that will glisten like diamonds. Over the shoulders, there shall be puffings of white and silver gauze. And a needlepoint collar with more silver thread and trimmed with a length of Venetian lace.”

“And your veil?” Jane asked, smiling.

“It shall look like a waterfall, and there shall be tiny white roses and pink asters and larkspur, tumbling down from it onto my train.”

“I wish you would wear some of my jewelry.” Jane’s voice was wistful. “My necklace with the diamonds and amethysts would look splendid with that dress.”

She said it to tease me. Jane knew I couldn’t possibly wear any of her jewels at my wedding. She likely would not even be permitted to attend.

Jane rose from the couch. That day, she was wearing a gown of plain velvet with just a bit of lace at her throat. It was all she ever wore since turning fifteen, unless her parents took her out and insisted on opulence. She wore black, gray, and bottomless brown. As her dressmaker, it had been saddening to see her attired in such somber hues by choice. But Jane had begun to turn inward as her destiny hung day after day like a broken pendulum, swinging neither to the left or right, and her gowns reflected that. The duchess didn’t care much for Jane’s attempts at extreme modesty, but there was much the duchess didn’t seem to care about when it came to Jane. Though a Reformer herself, the duchess didn’t understand her daughter’s wish to be free of all things vain and impious and arrogant. I didn’t truly understand it either—beauty to me was also a creation of the Lord God—but Jane and I existed in different worlds. I knew this. And so I respected her choice. Even admired it.

“I wish you were the one who would be making my wedding dress.” Jane turned to face me. “It should be you. Mother will no doubt insist on her own dressmakers.”

“I am sure it will be lovely, my lady. I am sure of it. What shall it look like?”

She exhaled heavily. “How would it look were you to make it, Lucy?”

Her gaze on me was laden with equal parts trepidation and desire. It was a look that seemed out of place for a young woman about to be married. I spoke carefully.

“Perhaps a gown of Italian fashion, hmm? A skirt of silver tissue, with an overlay on the bodice of silvery netting sparkling with your favorite gems. Gently puffed sleeves to match—”

“And no farthingale,” Jane intoned. “I don’t want to look like a bulbous turret.”

I laughed. “So. No farthingale hoop. Instead, your skirt shall be made of narrow panels of silver tissue bordered with golden passamayne and laced together with pearled cords.”

“And no ruff. And a simple veil. With flowers. Like yours?”

“Of course.”

Jane again settled onto the couch. I went back to my stitching, expecting her to describe for me what Edward would wear. After a moment or two of silence, I looked up at her. She was staring at me.

“Are you afraid?” she said.

“Afraid?”

“Of … of being alone with Mr. Staverton?”

I colored slightly. As the weeks approached for Nicholas and I to be together at last, I had wrestled with a strange kind of anxiety that was more akin to yearning than fear. But I could see that Jane was afraid to lie in a man’s bed, even a man she was attracted to.

“My mother says ’tis natural to be scared of the unknown, my lady. Do not fret over it. ’Tis God who made the way between a man and a maiden, yes?”

She nodded. “Yes.” But she seemed far away in her thoughts.

“What is it, my lady?”

Jane hesitated for a moment. Then she looked about her room. “I have never known any life but this one. Mama and Papa have always decided everything for me, who I associate with, who I don’t, even where I lay my head at night. I have never been alone with a man behind a closed door. I have never been outside my parents’ wishes and control. It seems very strange to me that soon I shall not be under their roof. Or under their thumb.”

She was quiet for a moment before continuing.

“I wonder what it will be like to make the kind of choices Mama makes,” she went on. “She does make choices, you know. She is a woman,
like me, and subservient like I shall be to the will of her husband, but she makes choices. She makes choices every day. I wonder what that will be like.”

Her spoken thoughts fell away, and I said nothing. She did not expect me to. Over the years, I’d been privy to many of Jane’s innermost thoughts. Most of them she did not voice for me. She simply said them to hear them said. And have them heard.

A moment later, Mrs. Ellen swept back into the room. A page had been sent from Jane’s parents.

They were ready to receive her.

Jane rose slowly from the couch and smoothed her skirt, and I got to my feet as well. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. As she let the breath out of her lungs, she opened her eyes and the sixth beatitude fell from her lips, in Latin.

“Beati mundo corde, quoniam ipsi Deum videbunt.”

The English translation floated into my head.
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God
.

She took two steps toward the door and then turned to me.

“Wait for me here.”

I curtsied. And before I had completed it, she had turned again to the door and was walking away from me.

Mrs. Ellen went with her.

I waited for her on the couch, unable to take up my sewing. My thoughts were a jumbled weave of excitement and dread. It seemed my own future was being decided as well, at least the near future.

Mrs. Ellen and Jane were not gone long. When I heard footsteps rapidly approaching the closed doors, I stood. Someone was running to the door. My heart began to skip with anticipation.

The doors flew open and Jane swept in, clutching her breast, her face streaked with tears. She flew past me, her swishing skirt of black the only
sound that came from her. She went into her bedchamber and closed the door, and then the first sound came from her: a sob racked with anger and hopelessness.

My own eyes were already moist with empathy, even though I did not know yet what had happened. I turned from Jane’s closed door and saw that Mrs. Ellen had entered the room too. She was biting her lip, shaking her head, and fighting back an emotion that might have been sorrow, might have been fury, might have been exasperation.

“What has happened?” I said.

Mrs. Ellen closed the doors behind her and eased her back against them.

“The duke and duchess have not chosen Edward Seymour,” she said.

“Someone else?”

She closed her eyes and nodded.

“Who?”

She said the name slowly as if it tasted sour on her tongue. “Guildford Dudley.”

John Dudley’s son.

I
did not see Jane for two days. She stayed in her bedchamber and did not summon me. I was, however, sent to her sister Katherine’s rooms. The fluttering thirteen-year-old had also been betrothed, the same hour as Jane, and the girl was anxious to be about her prewedding wardrobe.

“Has Jane told you?” she gushed when I arrived at her room the morning after the news had made the rounds of the household.

I had curtsied. “Yes, my lady.”

“Isn’t it most exciting?”

“Indeed, my lady.”

“Have you met Lord Herbert? He is older than I, you know. He is nineteen. But he is quite handsome, don’t you think?”

I had never met Henry Herbert, but I knew he was the Earl of Pembroke’s son. And I knew Katherine barely knew him. Talk on the stairs was that Lady Katherine’s marriage was a hastily planned political maneuver.

As was Jane’s.

“Yes, my lady,” was all I said in reply.

“Can you let out these seams, please, Lucy?” She showed me a peach-colored bodice of satin and ermine. “’Tis tight on me now that I am a woman!”

She pushed out her chest, tiny though it still was, and I told her it would be my pleasure to let out the seams. I asked her if I could take her measurements.

“Jane is not happy, though,” she said as she lifted her arms so I could measure her bosom and waist. “I suppose you know that. She oughtn’t to be so glum, if you ask me. Guildford is the most handsome man in all of London. He’s had eyes for her for the longest time.”

I didn’t know what Jane would have me say to Katherine. But I did not wish to keep saying, “Yes, my lady,” to everything she said. Jane deserved to have some sympathy from her family, especially Katherine.

“She is fond of someone else,” I ventured.

Katherine had her back to me, but she swung her head around. “You mean Edward Seymour? I’m the one who wanted to marry Edward. She knew that. Did she not tell you? I’ve been pining away for Edward since before his father got into all that trouble. Long before then.”

Jane had not mentioned Katherine’s infatuation with Edward. It was like her not to. I said nothing.

“But the Seymours are in such dreadful straits,” Katherine went on. “I daresay they shall never recover. And if I cannot have Edward, then I am lucky to have Lord Herbert. Jane is luckier to have Guildford. His father is counselor to His Majesty. Did you know that?”

“Yes, my lady. He is indeed a very powerful man.”

“Oh!” Katherine said suddenly, twirling around again. “Did you hear His Majesty is having our wedding gowns made? Mine and Jane’s? Can you believe it? And we’re to be married the same day. At Durham House.”

My heart fell when Katherine said this, even though I had no delusions that I would be making Jane’s wedding gown.

“When are you to be married?” I asked.

“Whitsunday! In three weeks!” she said gaily.

At this, my heart truly sank to my feet. Three weeks.

Katherine chattered on as I set about opening the seams, readjusting them, and closing them again. As soon as I finished, I asked if there was anything else I could do for her, and I prayed there wasn’t.

To my gratitude, she dismissed me, and I went back to my garret room to await a summons from Jane that did not come that day. While I waited, I penned a note to Nicholas, apprising him of the events of late. I still had no idea what to expect as to the matter of my employment. I also wrote to my parents that I would likely be returning to them at the end of May, a month before my own wedding, if I could find no other post in London.

I had no desire to be in the employ of the Dudley family. I did not trust John Dudley.

I knew Jane also did not, and I ached for her that she would soon bear his name and be married to his son.

But I would not work for him.

I did not think for a moment he would ask me.

On the third day, the duchess called me to her room. The Duke of Northumberland and his son Lord Guildford would be calling that day, and I was to see to it that Jane was properly attired to greet them.

“Absolutely nothing in black.” Her harsh tone was accompanied by rolled eyes and a wave of her hand.

I curtsied and left to carry out her orders.

I found Jane in her sitting room, seated at a round table where she sometimes took a meal. But today, the tabletop was covered with letters and bits of sealing wax. She was absently picking at a broken seal as I came in.

I curtsied. “Good morning, my lady.”

“I can stomach everyone’s patronizing tone except yours, Lucy.”

I searched for words to reply and nothing seemed appropriate. After a moment of silence, she bid me to approach the table.

“These letters,” she said. “They speak of the Jane that no one knows. Not even you. I don’t think even you know this Jane.”

I looked down at the spread of parchments. I saw the flowing script, the lengthy pages, a couple of signatures. Henry Bullinger. John ab Ulmis. Theologians on the Continent whom Jane had been writing to since she was fourteen. I had never read the letters she wrote, nor the ones laid out before me, but I knew that Jane had come to a place where she saw her faith not as an extension of her position but the essence of her very soul. Faith to Jane was not something to be bargained with or leveraged. It was to be as subtle and unstoppable as the beating of your own heart.