The Fallen Queen Part 14

I bade Kate lie down and rest with a cold compress over her tear-swollen eyes while I set the scene. I sent Hetty, heedless of her grumbling, for candles, at least a dozen, all white and sweet scented, I stipulated. Their soft golden glow would be flattering and deceptive and work for us, like a faithful friend, to help hide Kate's condition and the fact that she had been weeping. I gave orders for the fire to be lit, with apple logs to give a pleasing scent, and for the copper tub to be brought and filled with water just as hot as Kate could stand. Then I drew Kate to my desk and had her pen a note, which I dictated as I arranged and lit the candles, bidding Berry come to her "now, my beloved, for I cannot bear to spend even one more hour without you." While Kate's devoted Henny, with a bewildered expression, but knowing better than to presume to ask questions, went to deliver it, I found Berry's miniature at the bottom of Kate's jewelry coffer and laid it on the table beside her bed, as though she had been gazing upon it often and thinking of him. Then I helped Kate undress, gathered her curls up loosely so they would easily fall down, got her into the tub, and tossed in handfuls of dried red rose petals, lavender, and chamomile.

"You know what to do-charm him, be playful as a kitten, my Kate!" I kissed her cheek and withdrew into the small adjoining room where Kate's maid usually stayed as Berry's footsteps stopped outside the door.

I cringed back against the wall and wished the walls weren't thin as parchment. Like a flirty little girl I heard Kate's breathy coquette's voice calling, "Come in, Berry, darling! I haven't seen you in such a long time; I've missed you so!"

Always soft-spoken, all I could hear was a low murmur whenever Berry spoke.

I heard the water slosh, and in my mind's eye I pictured Kate sitting up. "Will you wash my back? My front too? And my ..." A delighted little giggle, then Kate was urging, "Take off your doublet, Berry dearest, and your s.h.i.+rt too. I don't want you to ruin such beautiful velvet by getting it wet because of me."

Soon she had coaxed Berry out of the rest of his clothes and was exclaiming, wide-eyed, I could well imagine, in feigned alarm. "Oh, Berry, it's so big! I'm frightened! Hold me!"

She must have hurled herself into his arms. There was a creak as they fell as one onto the bed, followed by more giggling. Then the expected sounds that accompany coitus, for in truth, I cannot be sentimental and call what happened between Kate and Berry on that bed "lovemaking."

After Berry left, I went to her.

She looked at me with tear-bright eyes. "I didn't lie, Mary," she said with a tremulous little smile. "When I told him they were tears of love. They are-for Ned, not Berry! That old, childish love has long grown cold and dead." She lay flat on her back and rubbed her belly. "I did this only for the sake of my child. He, or she, shouldn't suffer because I loved, and trusted, Ned Seymour. I must learn now to be selfless instead of selfish; my child must now come first, and better that he-for I do believe I carry a boy, I don't know why, but I do-should grow up to be the Earl of Pembroke than Kate Grey's b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Kate continued to entice Berry, admitting him to her bed several times, but to our frustration, he seemed content to draw out and just enjoy the dalliance.

"It's time, Kate," I finally said, after I had dressed her in the subtly altered farthingale and laced her as tight as I dared, and she stood before me gowned in black and evergreen velvet holding a fan of dyed emerald ostrich plumes before her waist. "Lie down upon the bed. When Berry comes to escort you to the Great Hall, I will let him in, and we shall pretend you fainted, and you must weep and tell him you suspect you are with child. We dare not tarry any longer. He must propose tonight!"

But Berry didn't come; instead, a servant in the Pembroke livery came bearing a letter.

"Here, Mary." Kate thrust it at me. "You read it. Berry's hand is atrocious and my head really does ache."

Mayhap Berry was cleverer than we thought, or his wily, treacherous father was doing his thinking for him. Did someone talk or start a rumour? Did Ned himself, during a drunken carouse, let the truth spill out and leak back to London? I only knew, all hope of Berry remedying the hurt he had once caused Kate, by saving her now, was gone.

"To cover your own wh.o.r.edom, you went about to abuse me," he wrote. "Having hitherto led a virtuous life, I will not now begin with loss of honour to spend the rest of my life with a wh.o.r.e that almost every man talks of. You claim promise of me, madame, when I was young, and since, confirmed as you say at lawful years, but you know I was lawfully divorced from you a good while ago. And if through the enticement of your wh.o.r.edom and the practice and device of those you hold so dear, you sought to entrap me with some poisoned bait under the colour of sugared friends.h.i.+p, yet (I thank G.o.d) I am so clear that I am not to be further touched than with a few tokens that were, by cunning slight, got out of me, to cover your abomination. I require you to send me, madame, all letters from me that reside in your possession as well as my portrait, or else ... to be plain with you, I will make your wh.o.r.edom known to all the world as it is now, thank G.o.d, known to me, and spied by many scores more."

Though I loathed to give in to him, I knew it was safer to return some now meaningless tokens than risk Berry acting upon his threats. I gathered up Berry's letters-Kate had saved every one he had ever written her, tied in bunches with cherry red ribbons-along with his diamond-framed miniature, and went to his room. When the servant let me in, I, without a word, tossed them with great contempt onto Berry's lap.

"Your sister is nothing but a wh.o.r.e!" he called after me, but I ignored him. "You vile, G.o.d-forsaken goblin, do you hear me?"

"No, my lord"-I paused at the door to answer-"like many dwarves, deafness plagues me; I am stone-deaf in my left ear and not inclined to listen to you out of my right." It was a lie of course, but I didn't care. I smiled to myself at his confusion and closed the door before he could think of a suitable answer.

In July, Kate was in her seventh month, and it was high time we were making plans. Since we could not see her safely wed to Berry, and it was too late to try to dupe some other young man, and by the way many were now looking at her, some tales must have spread.

As our wretched luck would have it, when we were on the verge of asking leave to withdraw to Bradgate, with myself this time feigning illness to draw attention away from the fuller figured Kate, the smallpox came, striking down the Queen when she went for a walk, with her hair still wet from her bath, and caught a late-summer chill. Though it meant Elizabeth was too busy fighting for her life to fix a keen eye on Kate, it also meant that we must stay, as Elizabeth now had great need of all her ladies. I begged Kate not to go too near, for fear that she might catch it, or it might harm the child inside her. I took upon as many of her duties as I dared. I was already ugly, with a body and face that would never lure and tempt a lover; so what mattered it if I emerged from this ordeal with my face scarred, ravaged, and raddled by the pox? All I cared about was keeping Kate and her child safe.

Burning with a fever so hot it hurt our hands to touch her, lapsing often into unconsciousness, with her entire face and body, even the inside of her mouth, covered with red pustules, many gave Elizabeth up for lost and began looking to the future. For many, that meant Kate. My poor, frightened sister hid in her room, cowering in fear of the Crown, and wept every time there were footsteps in the corridor or a knock upon her door, fearing they had come to force it upon her just like they had done to Jane.

Many of the ladies resented Kate's absence, scoffing at my claims that she was ill, with a fever and aching head, making snide remarks as we followed the German physician's orders and gently rolled Elizabeth's fever-flamed body into a many layered coc.o.o.n of red flannel and laid her on the floor before a blazing fire to "sweat the disease out." Nay, they said of Kate, she was ill only with her own vanity, selfishly trying to save her pretty face, while they sweated and risked the pox. Lady Mary Sidney, Robert Dudley's sister, was the most devoted of all the Queen's attendants and hardly left her side until she was out of danger. Poor Lady Mary suffered the full horror of the disease. Once amongst the fairest ladies of the court, she was left as foul a woman as the smallpox could make her and would never again appear in public without a velvet mask or a thick veil.

But Elizabeth survived. "Death possessed me in every joint," she would say. Soon the pustules dried and the scabs fell away, leaving her marble-white skin relatively unscathed. But to her dismay, her famous Tudor red hair did not fare as well. The fever's fire must have singed and weakened the roots, and it began to fall out in hanks and handfuls, and every time we brushed her hair or she raked her fingers through it more would come out.

While the Queen still rested abed, nigh bald beneath her gold-embroidered nightcap, fitful, bored, and irascible by soft candlelight-Dr. Burcot, the German physician, had ordered this as her eyes were not yet strong enough to brave bright light-waiting for the wigmakers to work their magic and restore what she had lost, Kate made the mistake of wearing a gown of deep purple satin. The glossy fabric s.h.i.+mmered in the candlelight, and as she bent to set down Her Majesty's breakfast tray, Elizabeth's envious eyes lighted upon the rich, rippling cascade of red-gold hair falling over her shoulders. She knew all too well that many had looked to Kate when her own life was at stake.

Like a cannonball, Elizabeth shot from her bed and hurled herself at Kate, screaming at her to "take that presumptuous rag off!" and tearing at it with her nails. "You think yourself fit to wear the royal purple, do you?" Elizabeth's anger spared nothing. She raked Kate's pale skin raw, leaving behind long red scratches welling with blood. Even when the purple gown and the grape-and-rose-festooned petticoat beneath were ripped to shreds, her fury didn't abate. As Kate stepped back, inching gradually to the door where she might summon help, and brought up her hands, trying to s.h.i.+eld her face, the screaming royal harpy's talons caught and tore the laces that held up Kate's farthingale. Down it fell, around Kate's feet. She tripped over it and fell sprawling at Elizabeth's feet. Though her stays were laced as tightly as we dared, her belly showed big and round as the moon beneath. She was in her eighth month-we almost made it.

The rain of blows stopped as Elizabeth stood, wild-eyed and staring, and then she was bellowing for the guards. "Take this s.l.u.t to the Tower!"

They marched my sister through the palace, refusing her even a cloak to decently cover herself. Her things, they said, would be sent later. They paraded her shame before the court, her bulging belly covered only by her white lawn s.h.i.+ft and leather stays, scratched and bleeding from the Queen's crazed a.s.sault, with her lip burst, her nose dripping blood, and her left eye swollen nigh shut.

Forsaking all dignity, I hitched up my skirts and ran after her, heedless of the t.i.tters my waddle-wobble and bowed limbs provoked. Kate saw me and dug in her heels. "I must speak to my sister," she said. "I must tell her what things to send me." When they took hold of her arms, to compel her to keep walking, she spun around and laid a hand meaningfully upon her belly. "The child could come at any moment, and there are certain things I must have."

They nodded and withdrew just a little ways, but it was enough.

Kate knelt and enfolded me in her arms, both of us knowing that this might be our last embrace. As she kissed my cheek, she whispered quickly into my ear. "You know nothing of my marriage, Mary, you were never there! Let me do this for you; let me save you, as you tried to save me. Hold your tongue as you love me; do not cause me greater pain by letting me see you, my sister, punished for what I did."

Moments later, she was gone, whisked away to the Tower, and G.o.d alone knew if she would ever come out or perish within its grim, b.l.o.o.d.y walls as Jane did.

17.

At Traitor's Gate, when she slipped and fell on the slimy, wet stone steps and banged her belly, Kate feared she had lost everything. She sat, tears streaming down her battered face, cradling her stomach, crooning to her unborn child, and praying that everything would be all right, that no cramps would seize her or blood rush from her womb vacating it of life. She felt her child move and thanked G.o.d. When he came to help and gently raise her, she smiled up at Sir John Bridges, the kindly old lieutenant of the Tower, who still harboured in his heart fond memories of Jane.

She was housed in comfort, albeit of a shabby sort, with cast-off furnis.h.i.+ngs left over from our sister's nine-day reign. There were three old stools covered in faded green damask, some musty, moth-eaten tapestries, and a pair of mismatched chairs, one upholstered in plum purple velvet that our sister used to sit in, the other in tarnished gold brocade that had been Guildford's favourite fireside chair. "It makes me feel like they are here with me," Kate would write to me, from the desk that used to be Jane's.

She was subjected to intense interrogation; day after relentless day they tried to break her, but they could not shake her. Through it all, Kate stoutly maintained that she was a wife, not a wanton, but when asked to prove it, of course she could not do it. She insisted that the only witness to her marriage, the Lady Jane Seymour, was dead. When asked what of me, surely she would have wanted her sister, her only close relation, who served at court with her, and thus was conveniently close at hand, to be there on this most joyous of days, Kate said nay, she had kept her nuptials secret even from me, because I was the only sister she had left and she loved me. She wanted to ensure that only she and Ned, who knew full well what they did, should suffer the consequences. When queried about the priest, Kate could only recall he had been big and red-bearded. If she had ever been told his name, which she doubted, she had forgotten it. They asked her to produce any doc.u.mentation to prove her marriage valid, even a letter in which Ned addressed her as his wife, but she could not do it; they had been discreet in their correspondence, and Ned had proved, despite his promises, to be a poor letter writer. As for the deed, Kate had no choice but to admit that she had lost it.

Ned Seymour had been summoned home, and when his s.h.i.+p docked at Dover he was taken straight to the Tower for questioning. But his interrogators fared no better with him than they had with Kate. "Both sing the same song," they reported.

The lengthy investigation concluded with a verdict that theirs had been a "pretend marriage." The child Kate was carrying was declared illegitimate, and Ned was fined the walloping sum of 15,000 "for seducing a virgin of the blood royal." Both would remain in prison at the Queen's pleasure; they must simply wait for her wrath to cool however long it took, even if it be days or whole decades.

When on the twenty-fourth day of September 1561, at half past noon, Kate's body bucked on the molten red waves of pain and her son, Edward Seymour, the Viscount Beauchamp, emerged into the world, my joy was sadly subdued. I had been hoping for a girl. That pet.i.te phallus between her infant son's thighs made him a dangerous rival for Elizabeth's throne, poised to become the p.a.w.n of factions, the centrepiece of conspiracies; his s.e.x made him more of a threat than Kate herself had ever been. Ned, Kate, and their baby boy formed a potent and powerful trinity, as pretty as a picture to look upon; one could almost imagine them painted as king, queen, and prince. As such, they were a threat Elizabeth took seriously and would have been a fool not to. Even if the three of them harboured no regal ambitions of their own, no matter what they said, what they signed, even if Kate publicly renounced all claim to the throne for herself and her heirs, it didn't matter, it was what others might do in their names. One could be a p.a.w.n and unwilling; Jane had taught me that. As much as I loved my sister and loathed to think of her a prisoner, in truth I could not blame Elizabeth; it would have been the most dangerous folly to throw wide the prison doors and set them free.

But Kate wasn't thinking about that. How she delighted in her son! She regarded all he did with breathless wonder, marvelling at each little movement, smile, and gurgle. She called him her "little sunbeam," "the light of my world," who lit up her "grey and dreary life." Motherhood wrought a wondrous change in Kate-how I wished I could have actually seen her!-pa.s.sionate, capricious Aphrodite, light as the sea foam she had been born from, had become bountiful, nouris.h.i.+ng Demeter, devoted to her child with a depth of feeling that made any carnal love seem callow in comparison.

She sent me letters telling me how she would sit by her window, nursing her son, and watch the pink dawn spread across the city and dream she had a gown of that colour, and that she could "go to that chamber where my sweet love lies sleeping and kiss him awake." "I languish for want of him," she wrote. She must have said as much to her gaolers, for one of them took pity and presumed to play the role of Cupid. Each night he would lead Ned to her door, let him in, and lock the lovers in together for the night, returning at dawn to retrieve him. Kate was in ecstasy over "the sad and splendid solitude of these nights of love" during which they felt as though time had stopped and they were the only two people left alive in the world.

In another of her letters, Kate described how the heavy oak headboard, carved most fittingly with cherubs and floral garlands, of her bed battered the wall when they were at their pleasures, causing bits of stone to chip away and shower down upon them. "Proof of our pa.s.sion!" Kate would say as she gathered them up into a little red velvet bag, which she would keep as a souvenir of their nights together. "I pity the poor queen," she wrote of Elizabeth, "alone in her big bed every night, unable to marry the man she loves, and never to feel a babe suckling at her breast."

Of course they weren't thinking about precautions. They were busy living only for the moment, grasping greedily at what time they had together, and Kate soon found herself with child again. She was overjoyed. Kate loved being pregnant; she thought carrying and giving birth to a child was the most worthwhile and rewarding experience a woman could ever know. But Elizabeth was furious; she vowed that Kate and Ned would never meet again. And the gaolers who had helped them soon found out for themselves what it was like to be prisoners in the Tower.

Kate's second son, Thomas, was born on the cold morning of February 10, 1563. By then, Kate, having observed two birthdays in prison, was sunk deep in a dark despair that not even her "little sunbeam" could lighten. It wasn't right, she said. Her sons should be in a proper nursery, with games, toys, and pets, and nursemaids to look after them, and they should have other children to play with and be free to frolic in the fresh air and suns.h.i.+ne, and there was their education to think of, and when they were a little older they should have ponies to ride. "Will we ever be free to walk in the sun, to walk out and gather wildflowers?" she wondered.

Indeed, freedom, of a sort, would soon come. Elizabeth decided that she could keep them in the Tower no longer. But she would not bring them to trial either. I overheard her telling Cecil that the English people ever loved an underdog; her own mother, Anne Boleyn, had been hated and reviled, until she stood trial. She had emerged from that ordeal transformed into a tragic heroine. The English people would be apt to fall in love with Kate-a beautiful young mother in love with her husband, guilty only of having royal blood in her veins and marrying without the Queen's permission. Better to consign them to a quiet country oblivion than to risk the public rising as their besotted champions.

She timed their departure well, during an outbreak of plague in London, when her subjects were more concerned with their own survival than the succession and scandal.

Until the very last moment, Kate thought her children would be going with her. Then a pair of white-capped and ap.r.o.ned nursemaids came out into the courtyard. Kate brightened at the sight of them, thinking they had come to join her little household. Without me or her loyal Henny she had realized just how much she missed female companions.h.i.+p. But no, the women showed themselves stern and unsmiling as each took one of the little boys and carried them to another litter. Kate barely had a chance to kiss them good-bye. They wept and reached out for her over the nurses' hard and unyielding shoulders, and Kate had to be restrained from going after them. She would have fought those women with everything she had, but the kindly Sir John Bridges held her and let her weep in his arms, and bade her "take comfort, madame, they are going to be with their grandmother and your husband, their father; they shall not be reared up amongst strangers." Only that, and the hope that they might someday be reunited, kept Kate from falling apart. "We just have to wait for the Queen's anger to cool, and then we shall all be together again," she wrote me hopefully, and I knew Kate well enough to know that by trying to convince me, she was also trying to convince herself.

Denied a proper farewell, not even a parting kiss or even a handclasp, Ned and Kate, kept apart and watched with all vigilance per the Queen's decree lest Kate conceive again, stared longingly at each other across the courtyard, which suddenly seemed as wide as an ocean, Kate would later confide. One of the guards, moved by the gold Ned slipped him, or even genuine pity perhaps, brought Kate a bouquet of red and white gillyflowers, bound with red and white silk ribbons, with a note from Ned.

My sweet and lovely Kate, My heart breaks that I cannot be with you. I will never forget you.

Yours until the day I die, Ned Kate buried her face in the flowers and wept, watering them with her tears. Then each climbed into a leather-curtained litter and took to the road, going their separate ways. Each was thoughtfully provided with a pomander ball filled with herbs to protect them from the virulence. Sitting up all night, burning the candles till the sun came up, so that it would be ready in time, I made my sister a petticoat embroidered around the hem with beautiful tussie-mussies, nosegays of sweet herbs believed to keep away the plague. I dearly hoped that my loving st.i.tches would keep her safe. As long as she wore the garments I made for her, I hoped she would remember that she would be clothed in love.

Elizabeth chose to be kind in her own way, though it was very cruel to Kate. She could have sent the boys to board with strangers, but she gave them into the custody of their formidable grandmother, the d.u.c.h.ess of Somerset, and sent them to Hanworth, in Middles.e.x, where Ned would also be going to live, under house arrest, in his boyhood home, forbidden to cross its boundaries or have any communication with the outside world except by letter.

She might have done the same for Kate and sent her to Bradgate, but she did not. Elizabeth could never forgive Kate for her beauty or her impetuous nature that always let pa.s.sion have free rein, for being a free spirit while Elizabeth was earthbound in chains of duty also forged by painful and bitter experience; Kate trusted blindly and followed her heart, but Elizabeth never could. So instead of going to a home familiar and dear, where she might see kith and kin every day, as Ned would their sons and his mother, Kate was sent deep into the English countryside, to Gosfield Hall in Ess.e.x, home of the aged and gallant knight Sir John Wentworth and his lovely silver-haired wife, Lady Anne. This elderly couple, both in their seventh decade of life, were given to plainly understand that Her Majesty "meant no more by this liberty than to remove the Lady Katherine Grey from the danger of the plague," and that she was a prisoner, to be kept strictly isolated, and forbidden to have "any conference with the Earl of Hertford or any person being of his household either." I could only hope and pray that these new gaolers would be kind to Kate and learn to love her. For I knew my Kate could never live without love. I could not be with her, except by letter, and she had lost her "Sweet Ned" and her little boys, so G.o.d must, in His infinite kindness and tender mercy, give her some other love; to deny her would be a death sentence.

18.

Redbrick and turreted, just like Bradgate, only larger, with wide gla.s.s windows that invited the sunlight in, surrounded by pretty pleasure gardens and fishponds stocked with golden carp and bordered with yellow irises, Gosfield Hall was heaven on earth compared to the h.e.l.lish, horrible prisons Elizabeth could have sent her to, and I hoped Kate realized and was grateful for it. I was, but I could not even thank Her Majesty.

After Kate was sent from court, the first time I saw Elizabeth, in a pearl-embroidered ivory gown and one of her magnificent new red wigs festooned with pearls and white ostrich plumes, I trembled as I sank down into the requisite curtsy as she pa.s.sed. She paused before me and reached down to cup my chin, lifting it so I would look at her.

"Do not think to plead for your sister, little gargoyle, for I will not hear you."

"Yes, Your Majesty, I understand." I nodded, gulping down my fear.

Elizabeth's shrewd dark eyes bored into me like nails.

"Yes ... I believe you do." She nodded. She walked on, only to stop again and look back. "I have been a prisoner too, and I do not forget what it is like to be young and trapped behind thick walls and iron locks, to wonder if each day will bring death, and if you will ever be free to walk in the sun. I have a long memory, Lady Mary."

Elizabeth would always put England first, and though it was of necessity hardened and often hidden lest others see it as a sign of vulnerability, she still possessed a heart. I truly think, after the hot temper and wounded vanity that had fuelled her vicious attack on Kate had cooled, the only anger that remained was at Kate for being such a fool, for marrying Ned Seymour heedless of the consequences.

It is easy to say that Elizabeth, being Queen, with the power to condemn or pardon as she pleased, ruined Kate's life, but that is not entirely true. Kate was a woman grown, not a child, and she knew the danger and the consequences, and she did it anyway. She willfully chose to make love in the arms of danger. By doing so, she left Elizabeth little choice. Elizabeth did what she had to do, but not without some care and comfort for Kate, though many angered and outraged by her fate forgot that. A queen who rules alone in her own right has to be ruthless if she wants to survive and hold her throne. It could have been much worse; she could have left Kate to rot and die in a damp, rat-infested cell, sleeping on lice-ridden straw, with water and mouldy bread her daily meal, or killed her outright, but Elizabeth did neither, and I always remembered that, even when others forgot.

The Wentworths-thank You, G.o.d, for answering my prayers!-adored Kate and doted upon her like a daughter. They did their best to make her comfortable, giving her a beautiful and s.p.a.cious suite in the west wing overlooking the gardens. They tried, heaven knows they tried, to help her find peace and some measure of happiness in her new life.

When Kate arrived at Gosfield Hall she was already mired deep in black depression. She rejected her finery, shunning the bright colours she adored, and wore only black, like one in mourning. Ned's miniature, worn on a black silk cord about her neck, the great tear-shaped sapphire on its long golden chain, which Kate would often sit and listlessly finger, calling it the "emblem of all my sorrows," and the rings he had given her-the sky blue diamond and the golden puzzle of her wedding ring-were her only adornments. "I know every line of his dear, handsome face," she wrote me. "I wear his miniature always over my heart and feel like it goes deeper, as though the lines were etched deep into my heart instead of Lavinia Teerlinc's featherlight brushstrokes barely caressing the canvas."

At first, she slept a great deal. Sometimes she even took sleeping draughts, preferring the oblivion of sleep to wakefulness without Ned and her boys. "Sometimes I wish I could sleep the rest of my life away," she wrote me. "Morpheus is very kind to me; he does not send me dreams to torment me, instead he gives me sweet oblivion, a refuge, a haven, where I can escape from the pain and rest in peace." Time no longer meant anything to Kate, only that each dawn heralded a new day without those she loved most, and dusk meant another night alone in bed without her "sweet bedfellow" beside her.

Whenever she was not wearing it, she kept Ned's picture on the table beside her bed alongside the miniature Lavinia Teerlinc had painted of the young mother, proudly displaying her baby son. Though it made her feel vain to pa.s.s so many hours staring at her own likeness, this was the only picture Kate had of her firstborn, and she often bewailed the fact that there had not been time to have a picture painted of little Thomas. When her own imploring letters received no answer, she begged me to write to the d.u.c.h.ess of Somerset and ask her to have a picture painted of Thomas, but I was also ignored.

When she was not sleeping or weeping, Kate spent hours bent over her desk, writing endless letters to Ned, pouring out her love, reminding him of the pa.s.sion they had shared, always signing herself "your constant, loving Kate." Even though they were too young to read them, she wrote often to her "sweet boys," just so they would know how much their mother loved and thought of them every waking hour. It was the only way she could still be a part of their lives, to make sure they didn't forget her, but she didn't know that they would never be delivered, that she was just wasting time, paper and ink, and breaking her heart; her boys would never read her letters; their grandmother burned them.

She addressed countless missives to the Queen, begging her forgiveness, "for my most disobedient and rash matching of myself without Your Highness's consent," and to Sir William Cecil, imploring him to intercede on her behalf. And she wrote to me, "the only one to whom I can be true, and tell all, without having to pretend, feign a cheerfulness I don't feel, or try to keep alive the hope that is fast dying inside my heart." She sent me great, long, rambling letters, pages and pages, weeks in the making, thick as books sometimes, wherein she set down her every thought and deed, giving me a window into her life through which I could see her so achingly clearly as though I were right there at Gosfield Hall standing outside her window looking in.

In a strange way, I felt closer to my sister than I ever had before in all the years when I saw her almost daily. At any given hour of the day or night, I could picture her and feel the sorrow weighing her down, and I tried, so hard, to send my strength across the distance, to will her to fight this pain that held her more a prisoner than the Queen's commandment. I even sent her a new petticoat, embroidered around the hem with healing herbs-white-petaled chamomile with cheery yellow suns at each flower's centre to calm and soothe her, delicate pink and white cl.u.s.ters of valerian for the banis.h.i.+ng of nightmares and to give her restful sleep, pale purple thyme to give peace to a troubled mind, and yellow St. John's wort to fight the melancholy, lift her spirits, and restore good cheer.

"Your life isn't over, Kate, even if your life with Ned is," I wrote her, even though I knew these words would hurt her and make her heart bleed anew, but she needed to face the truth and accept and learn to live with it. If she continued to live in this constant, unrealistic hope of a reunion, the wound would never heal; it would bleed and fester and spread a poison that would kill her in the end.

Lady Wentworth, such a kind soul, also took it upon herself to write to me about how "our Kate" fared. She was alarmed by the way the flesh was falling from Kate's bones and was determined to save her. Resorting to what she called "sweet temptation," she set about feeding Kate mint, lilac, and rose jellies, spooning these, and rich, creamy custards, or compotes of summer fruits and berries, into her mouth like a mother feeding a balky babe. She tempted her with dainty cakes too pretty to resist, moist golden cakes iced with rich cream, crowned with sugar-crusted violets and heart's ease pansies, their vibrant colours sparkling through the sugar crystals, "like blossoms fallen on snow not yet wilted or withered by the frost," she said, writing words worthy of Father.

She would rush in excitedly with the first strawberries of the season, or all manner of berries baked into tarts. She dosed her every day with thyme and St. John's wort and gave her a draught of valerian and chamomile every night. She stirred spoonfuls of sugar into Kate's milk and made her drink wines of honeysuckle, dandelions, cherry, and elderberry. She would, in time, succeed in luring Kate out of her bed, on the pretext that her rooms must be "aired, swept, and sweetened," to help make meadowsweet beer, coaxing her out to gather the foamy white flowers, which the country folk called "kiss-me-quick" or "courts.h.i.+p and matrimony," and the dandelions and stalks of starry yellow agrimony, then into the kitchen to boil and mix these blossoms with lemons, sugar, honey, and yeast.

When I heard this news I smiled and hoped it would remind Kate of the time we made gillyflower wine for Jane and Guildford at Chelsea. I could still see my Kate in the meadow that day, smiling at me over the rim of her cup as she sipped the sweet, syrupy golden "wine of love" we, acting as Cupid's emissaries, had made.

Lady Wentworth kept Kate's rooms, clothes, and person sweet and fragrant with rosemary, lavender, chamomile, and rose petals. Even as Kate winced and turned away, burrowing deeper into the bedclothes and hiding her head beneath the pillows, she would throw the windows wide and welcome the suns.h.i.+ne in. She refused to let Kate languish and lie about unwashed. She would pull her up, out of bed, and undress her as though she were a living doll, stripping off "that rank black rag," and sending it off to the laundress for a good scrubbing, then roll up her sleeves, and plunge Kate into the tub. "I will not let you go, my lady, even if you would let yourself go," she said as she scrubbed the stink and sweat, oil and grime, from my sister's body and hair, bemoaning that it was "a sad and sorry sight to see so beautiful a lady mired so deep in the black mud of misery."

Each and every week without fail, she washed Kate's hair, which had darkened with her pregnancies, with chamomile and lemon juice to lighten it, and vigorously towelled it dry with silk to restore its s.h.i.+ne and l.u.s.tre. She simply would not give up on her; she fought for Kate just as I would have, even when it meant actually fighting Kate herself, and for that I bless and thank Anne Wentworth every day.

After that first outing, to make meadowsweet beer, Kate began to slowly step outside her self-imposed solitude. Security at Gosfield Hall was lax, and she might wander where she wished as long as she did not venture beyond the estate's boundaries.

Sometimes she was seen to sit listlessly by the fishpond. But instead of delighting in the golden carp and feeding them breadcrumbs, she would create a little flotilla of leaves, bidding them "sail away, little boats, and carry my love to Ned and my sweet boys." Other times she would be seen in the vegetable garden behind the kitchen, kneeling in the dirt, covering her face with her hands and weeping, for the sight of the tender new green shoots emerging from the earth reminded her of the joy she had experienced carrying and giving birth to her children, of seeing a new life come out of the red darkness of her womb into the light of the world. It made her even more aware that her sons were growing up without her. Even the sight of the fruit-laden trees in the orchard made her cry, for they reminded her that she would spend the rest of her life bereft and barren, she who loved being pregnant and longed to swell with the promise of new life and proof of the love she lived for. She would return from these excursions and fall weeping onto her bed, crying out, "What a life this is to me, to live thus in the Queen's displeasure; but for my Sweet Ned, and our boys, I would to G.o.d I were dead and buried!"

The sight of little boys, the tenants' sons and peasant lads, tugged and tore at her heart and made it bleed. Yet she would call them over to her and ask them questions, just to see what her sons might be like at that age. She took an avid interest in the servants' sons, explaining that she had never had brothers, so she did not know what boys were like, and would beg them to tell her all about their boys, anything and everything, good and bad, funny and sad; her thirst for this knowledge was unquenchable. "The years go by," she said sadly, as she watched the children of others playing and changing, growing up every day before her eyes. "You cannot get them back."

There would be small glimmers of hope that Kate's spirit was fighting back, endeavouring to slay the dragon called melancholy, but then they would of a sudden disappear, and the light would go out. Even after a year, then two, and three with the Wentworths her letters were filled with a deep and alarming sadness that made me fear for my sister's life.

Although there is suns.h.i.+ne and roses outside, it is raining, cold and barren, in my heart. And all that grows are thorns that pierce my heart and make it bleed anew every time I think of Ned and our boys going on with their lives without me, mayhap even forgetting me.

Once I was filled with love, now loneliness has taken its place. It presses on me like a great, heavy stone upon my breast, when my husband, the only lover I long for, should lie on me instead, filling me with warmth, joy, and life."

"How do you go on living when your heart has been cut out?" she demanded of me in angry, anguished words writ so hard the quill tore through the paper and tears blotched and blurred the black ink.

The grief gnaws at me so sharply I feel like I am weeping blood! I've shed so much, why have I not yet bled to death? My heart is shackled and weighed down by sorrow, and I know now that I shall never be free of it. Why does my life endure when its ending would be far kinder? Why has life, which should be G.o.d's greatest gift, become a burden, curse, and torment, why does He punish me when all I did I did for love, sweet love?

How do I stop wanting what I cannot have? How do I make peace with it? How do I make the pain stop? Everywhere I look I see love-but not for me! If I go outdoors, I see animals mating, mother hens tending their chicks, ducks and ducklings, geese and goslings, cows and calves, dogs and puppies, cats and kittens, even squirming pink piglets glad and greedy at the teat! And everywhere I see people, I see couples courting, stealing a kiss when they think no one is looking, or husbands and wives, mothers and children, brothers and sisters! I wish I could cut out my heart. I can think of no other way but dying to make the pain stop! I've tried everything else. I cannot close my heart, harden or freeze it! I just don't know how to make my heart stop feeling, far easier if it would just stop beating!

There is an emptiness inside me where all my love, hopes, and joy used to be. It is like a bottomless night-black pit, only it is not truly empty for it is filled with pain, like an unbearable well of loneliness, ever replenis.h.i.+ng, day by day, so that it never runs dry. I try, I try, and try, and try again, and I keep trying to find something to fill it with, to drive out all that darkness, and cold and black pain, but I cannot! I have failed, but not from lack of trying. I tried so hard, with all my heart, I tried.

Sometimes for days on end she sat in darkness refusing all sustenance, even water. I was sorely worried about her and wished I could go to her. But Lady Wentworth knew what to do. She was willing to put her own life, and all that she and her husband possessed, in peril, to risk the Queen's wrath, in order to save my sister. Oh, Kate, you were loved more than you ever realized! So many people tried to save you from your own sorrowing self! Sometimes you helped them and fought back against that crus.h.i.+ng, stifling sorrow, sometimes you just went along docile as a milk cow, and other times you fought and resisted everything and everyone that might have saved you. You were, like me, a study in contradictions.

Lady Wentworth knew that Kate could never find peace anywhere in the world, whether it be palace, prison, or paradise, unless she first found peace within herself. In order to do that, she had to take the risk, she had to let Kate run, to let Kate find out that there was nothing left to run to, what she wanted most was already lost and gone forever. She had to trust that once Kate found out, she would come back, because there was nowhere else to go, and her disappearance would bring destruction cras.h.i.+ng down on the heads of those who had tried to help her.

They made it easy for her, and even used a servant girl, sent to tidy the room while Kate lay listless in her bed, both body and sheets rank and in need of was.h.i.+ng, to put the idea in her head. The windows were thrown wide to air the room, and the guards, usually stationed outside, were called away. Kate leapt ravenously at the opportunity and ran, through the dust and mud, wind and rain, scorching sun and cool moonlight of that tempestuous summer, tearing fruit and nuts from the trees or berries from the brambles whenever she was hungry, drinking milk from the teats of cows she pa.s.sed, or cupping water from pa.s.sing streams, all the way to Middles.e.x, to Hanworth. She never stopped, fearing if she did, she would be caught and all would be for naught.

By cover of darkness, she crept to a window and saw, framed by that window, the picture of a perfect, happy family-Ned in evergreen velvet, seated by the fire, with little Neddy laughing on his knee, brandis.h.i.+ng a wooden toy cow, part of a set of wooden animals that lay scattered on the floor. Ned was smiling at the young woman in plain and prim brown velvet seated opposite him, the dark red of her hair, coiled neatly at the nape of her neck beneath her hood, s.h.i.+ning in the firelight as she bent over little Thomas, smiling and waving a pink wooden pig on her own lap. Who was she? The governess? A daughter of a neighbouring family? A cousin perhaps? Who was she? Why was she here? Why was she so familiar and seemingly dear to Kate's husband and sons? Had she replaced Kate in their hearts? In Ned's bed? Was my sister now, to them, a dying, best forgotten memory not worth even trying to keep alive? Convenient and easy always trumps distance and difficulty.

Kate later wrote me: My children will grow up without me, they will forget all about me, if they have not done so already. Ned's mother will see to that. She will raise them to believe I was a brazen strumpet who tried to lure and trap her son into marriage, or else l.u.s.ty youth led him into a make-believe marriage simply to bed a beautiful girl who had taken his fancy. I know the d.u.c.h.ess of Somerset, and she shall work to restore her son's reputation, a day will come when he is welcomed back at court, and he will marry again as soon as a suitable bride is found. Their lives will go on without me. I have become an inconvenience, an embarra.s.sment, a disgrace to those I love most dearly!

And she was right.

"I marvel that they did not hear my heart breaking as I stood and watched outside that window," Kate wrote me afterward.

In quiet defeat, she crept away and took to the road again, returning to Gosfield Hall because there was nowhere else to go. The house that was her prison was in truth the only safe haven. There was no one who had the power to defy the Queen and shelter and protect her. She had no money of her own, and no home. She arrived after dark and staggered into the courtyard during a violent downpour. Lady Wentworth found her collapsed and weeping, kneeling in a puddle as the rain, like a punishment, hammered down upon "this poor young woman who was already beaten down as much as a body could bear without dying."

Kate looked up at her, the tears streaming from her eyes mingling with the pouring rain. "I was hurt by love, yet I went back for more," she said, and fell, fainting, into the arms of Lady Wentworth.