Part 16 The Queen's Rivals - 🍇GrapeNovel.com

Part 16

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.

For a fortnight the fever burned her. She didn't fight; and everyone feared this was the end, she had lost all will to live, the hope that had been keeping her alive was dead, and Lady Wentworth feared that in trying to help Kate she had made a grave mistake. In a moment of rare consciousness, when Lady Wentworth said, "You must try to get better, dear," Kate looked at her, in full and knowing seriousness, and said, "I don't want to," before she shut her eyes and fell into oblivion again. But, just as suddenly as the fever had come, it was gone. Kate opened her eyes, as though waking from an ordinary sleep, and sat up and said, "I would like a bath, please."

She truly began to try then, striving to find a purpose, something to go on for, to give her life meaning. Though the wound dealt her heart would never truly heal, the effort still was valiant. She began to a.s.sist the local midwife, delivering the tenants' babies. In this work she found a kind of peace, but also a quiet torment. "Every time I hold a new baby, my heart mends and at the same time breaks," she wrote me. Yet she fought relentlessly for each little life, never giving up even on the most difficult deliveries; when even the old midwife shook her head and said it was all in G.o.d's hands, Kate persevered. "I can't let another mother lose her child, or a baby lose its mother!" she would cry as she fought to keep Death away and save both mother and child. Sometimes she succeeded in cheating Death, other times He won, and Kate took each triumph and failure to heart.

An unexpected glimmer of romance came again into Kate's life in the person of the Wentworths' new steward-Mr. Roke-Green. He was a handsome, clever, kind, dark-haired, and bearded young man in his early thirties, half English, half French, who had married early in his impetuous youth, and lost his French wife in the birthing of their sixth child. With his black-haired brood of three boys and three girls, he had come to Gosfield Hall to start a new life. He fell in love with Kate at first sight.

At first, she tried to fight it, making excuses to avoid his company, as her hope of being reunited with Ned and their boys, like the most stubborn, hard to kill weed, tried to revive itself, but then she would remember the red-haired girl she had seen through the window at Hanworth and remind herself that Ned had already moved on. And Mr. Roke-Green was tenacious; like the Wentworths, he simply would not give up on Kate. Rather than see her sink like a stone, he would teach her to swim again. He had a habit of appearing seemingly out of nowhere to walk beside her. When the maids came to tidy and freshen her rooms, he would appear to take Kate's arm and lead her out to walk in the gardens, observing, "You need a little color in your cheeks. You've been hiding indoors far too long, Mistress Kate. The sun has grown lonesome for sight of you, as I have too." He would appear to accompany her to and from the birthings she attended, even at dusk or dawn or any hour in between, falling seamlessly into step with her. She tried to discourage him with brooding silence, by refusing to talk except in clipped and rude monosyllables, but he had a knack for drawing her out. I think, knowing my sister as I do, deep down she was truly flattered to have the attention of a man again; she had always been a pert, pretty flirt, and I'm certain, even if she pretended otherwise, that she missed it.

Soon he began to bring her books, and for the first time in her life, Kate, always an indifferent, bored, and easily distracted student, became a reader. She found that she enjoyed, and even looked forward to, the discussions she would have with Mr. Roke-Green about the volumes he lent her. He took her home, to his comfortable cottage on the grounds of Gosfield Hall, to meet his children. Soon Kate was there every night, laughing and smiling, enjoying the company of them all, as she prepared their evening meal. She learned to cook, simple country fare, and became quite good at it. When Mr. Roke-Green protested that she would ruin her hands and should leave such things to the housekeeper, Kate laughed and said, "Things like soft, ladylike, lily-white hands have no place in my life anymore." With her swain at her side, insisting that he must be allowed to help, the better to be close to her, the two would stand side by side in the little kitchen and chop chunks of beef or lamb and slice carrots and onions to make a stew. Sometimes one or the other would steal a kiss. And they would each take a sip of red wine from the bottle before Kate carefully poured it into the pot to thicken the gravy.

But Kate, no matter how hard she tried, could never truly banish her melancholy. It was always there, lurking just below the surface, ready to seize just the right moment and come bursting forth like a crocodile to bite and rend her heart again and drag it down to drown. When Kate would stand, watching the stew pot and the bay leaves she had just added bobbing like little boats atop the bubbling brown brew, she would remember the little leaf boats she used to float upon the fishpond, to carry her love to Ned and her boys, and tears would fill her eyes, though she would always whisk them away and claim it was only the onions that made her cry.

Then a night came when she stood naked in a pool of silver white moonlight pouring in through her open window, a gentle breeze stirring the curtains. She was still very beautiful despite her sorrow; everyone said so. Nervously, she daubed rosewater behind her ears and on her throat, b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and wrists. She pulled on her purple wool stockings, and with trembling hands tied the violet-embroidered nightcap over her hair and took a deep breath, opened her arms, and let Mr. Roke-Green in. It was the first time she had known a man's touch in five years.

The next morning she awakened to find Lady Wentworth standing smiling beside her bed with a cup of pennyroyal tea to guard against conception. She was not going to make the same mistake as the gaolers in the Tower had. Each morning, after Kate and Mr. Roke-Green had pa.s.sed a pa.s.sionate night in her bed, Lady Wentworth was always there with a cup of pennyroyal tea, to make sure Kate drank every drop. There would be no "little accidents" on Lady Wentworth's watch. "Must I?" Kate would always ask, even though she knew she must, though she longed to feel a new life growing inside her, fluttering like a beautiful b.u.t.terfly in her belly and making her feel alive, giving her sweet proof that G.o.d truly was giving her a fresh start. But it could not be, and as she obediently drank the pennyroyal tea, Lady Wentworth would put an arm around Kate's shoulders, kiss the tousled flame of her hair, and say, "Don't think about it, my dear. It will only take another bite out of your heart. Best to enjoy what you can have, and not brood and dwell on what you cannot." Sage advice. If only Kate's mind could have imbibed that wisdom the way her body did the pennyroyal tea.

19.

Though I was now Kate's confidante, more than I had ever been before, I kept my own life a close-guarded secret. Grown even more self-interested in her sorrow, Kate never asked about me. Perhaps she thought she was being kind? That to ask would only remind me just how little I had to hope for and look forward to? Maybe her own loneliness made her more conscious of mine? After all, dwarves have never been deemed desirable paramours, and there was little else to recommend me and encourage a suitor's interest. All I had now was the trickle of Tudor blood in my veins, my yearly stipend from my service at court, and a small annuity. All the Greys' wealth had been squandered, gambled, or frittered away, and even Bradgate was no longer ours; after our lady-mother died it went, with all the rest of her remaining property, to her second husband, Adrian Stokes. The once lowly Master of the Horse had certainly done well by us; he had risen in the world, going from groom to master, and was now the proud owner of the estate where he had come to work as a stable boy. For him, playing stallion to our lady-mother's mare and suffering the bite of her riding crop on his b.u.t.tocks and haunches had proved most profitable. Mayhap, as with her own daughters, she left him with a few scars to remember her by? But by saying this I really do not mean to be unkind. I saw him occasionally at court, and he always had a shy smile for me and looked as though he wanted to tarry and talk with me but was too bashful to try. I did not encourage him, especially after I realized, to my horror, after bolting up in bed in a sweat with his image still hovering naked above me, how much I wished he would, and that I liked Master Stokes's shy smiles and quiet ways a little too well, much more than was seemly for a maid to like the man who was her stepfather. And I shoved Master Stokes out of my mind.

I was four-and-twenty and I had a beau now. Kate never knew. No one did. The laughter would have been too loud to contain if they had. I myself blushed to even think it, and could not bear to actually say the words acknowledging it, lest bad luck come and s.n.a.t.c.h him away and give him to another. He was the most unlikely mate for me anyone could have imagined, the tallest man in London, as big as I was small, and when he stood beside me it was like a great oak towering over a tiny acorn far down below on the ground. I hadn't grown even half an inch since I was five, and he was but a smidgen under seven feet. He had been offered vast sums to tour the provinces and show himself at fairs, or to take up residence in the curiosity cabinets of royalty avid for human oddities, but he chose instead to serve his queen as sergeant porter, guarding the gate at Whitehall Palace, turning out the troublemakers and keeping the undesirables out. He quelled the drunken quarrels, arguments over dice and cards, and even lovers' spats when fists were raised and claws came out. His name was Thomas Keyes. And I loved him.

He'd been there all along, guarding the gate at Whitehall, but strange as it may sound, especially when speaking of a giant, and one with a taste for showy garb at that, I never noticed him until after Kate was gone, when I was alone . . . and in need of a friend. He knew what it was like to be different and lonely too. Our differences, though great to the world around us, made us alike in a way that no one else could see. Though he was tall and I was small, my birth was high and his was low, his years were well seasoned and mine were tender and raw, he was a widower with six children and I was a virgin spinster, we both knew what it was like to be set apart, shunned, laughed at, and to feel alone even in the midst of a crowd. He sent me a tiny sparrow, an exquisite little bird carved out of a walnut sh.e.l.l. Then, a few days later, he sent me a mate for her, slightly larger than herself, so that when they were put together, her head nestled comfortably in the crook of his neck, and it was as though he were sheltering and protecting the one he loved most. A week later, he sent me a nest for them, woven out of straw. Then came three little speckled stones shaped like eggs. I have them still, now as they were then, perched upon my dressing table, on a little ledge above the mirror. Later, he would give me a little mother-of-pearl bottle on a golden chain. Filled with some of Kate's cinnamon rose perfume that I kept, it still hangs between my b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

We began to talk. I was little and no one noticed me going to and from his rooms above the water gate at night after our duties were done for the day. He was ever the perfect gentleman, and we only met privily to spare ourselves the deep belly laughs, pointing fingers, and jests our tender companionship was certain to inspire. We tried to pretend that we wanted only friendship, and he was supremely and humbly conscious of my royal blood, saying I was "too high a star for me ever to aspire to." If a giant has ever spoken more ironic words to a dwarf I have never heard them. But did it truly matter? I thought the Tudor blood in my veins an irrelevant nuisance. None had ever come to me whispering conspiratorially about the Crown, imagining a day when I, Mary Grey, would be queen.

Pause a moment and imagine me as queen, and I dare you not to laugh. Not to let your mind conjure up lively pictures of dwarfish jesters with tin crowns and bell-spangled scepters. If I ever sat upon the throne, I would turn the monarchy into a monumental jest, and everyone would keep expecting me to spring up and dance or do acrobatic tricks, boggle my eyes, and put out my tongue, and make funny faces and jokes at my courtiers' expense with the freedom that is allotted only to the royal fool. Just think if I were mated with my Mr. Keyes as my king, what a freak show we would make. People would gladly pay a penny to come into the presence chamber to gawk and gape at us. I was no threat to Elizabeth! None at all! Suddenly things like the Queen's permission, and all the counsel I had given Kate against marrying Ned Seymour, didn't seem so important anymore. Why should I not follow in Kate's footsteps and listen to my heart and go where it led me? I knew it was leading me straight into the arms of my Thomas.

One night, after the Queen had been put to bed, I went to him, still in my black velvet and silver tinsel-cloth court finery, with a diamond star pinned to the top of my high-piled hair. He was sitting by the fire with a book when I came in. Boldly, I clambered up onto his lap, and, planting one silver-shod foot on each of his thighs, I stood up straight. Even though my hair was only barely above his salt-and-pepper stubbled pate-that was why I had piled it as high as I could even though it strained and pulled at the roots and made my head ache-it was enough for me to make my point. I pulled the diamond star free and let the scarlet-sheened sable tumble down to caress his face and curtain my own as I kissed him. It was the first time I had ever kissed a man's mouth.

"What a bold one you are, Mary Grey!" he beamed, his eyes twinkling like stars, as his broad hands grasped and encircled my thick tree-trunk waist, making it feel all of a sudden tiny as Kate's seductive hourgla.s.s shape. He kissed me back. He held me close, I clung to him, and we kissed again and again until I quite lost count. I only know that when we stopped the stars had left the sky and the sun had come out.

20.

But just as love, and life, I felt, was beginning for me, for Kate it was all about to end. The brief, bright candle of her life was about to burn out, and I didn't even know it.

One winter's day, when she was out playing in the snow with Mr. Roke-Green's three daughters, a milk cow wandered past, dragging a frayed rope and crying to be milked, her angry pink udders swollen and swaying. Kate's mind was instantly catapulted back in time, to that February day, so long ago, when we three sisters had our syllabub before our lives changed forever. Looking at her suitor's three girls, she must have seen us. Perhaps she was driven to try to recapture the joy of that day, the last day when we were truly little girls, to remind herself of her youth and zest for life, to prove to herself that it was still there, that she could be that Kate again if she really tried.

"A syllabub! We shall have a syllabub! A sweet, sweet syllabub!" my Kate impulsively cried, echoing her long ago girlhood self.

I can see her now, in the black gown I had made with the row of buckram stiffened bows on the bodice, its skirt trailing listlessly, like a wilted black tail, behind her in the snow, and her hair, now faded to peaches and cream, either streaming free in a ma.s.s of wilted ringlets or braided into a coronet perched high atop her head, a coiffure made in mockery of the Crown she never coveted but had nonetheless cast such a giant shadow over her life. She sent Mr. Roke-Green's three little girls scurrying off to fetch sugar, cinnamon, wine, honey, and a long-handled spoon, while she fetched a three-legged milking stool and a pail from the barn and sat down to milk the cow.

But when it was ready, everything changed suddenly, and she could not partake of it, not even one sip. She just suddenly seemed to lose interest.

"I thought I wanted it," she said apologetically, and walked away, black skirt trailing through the snow. She took to her bed again and sank deep down, back into the black mud of melancholy, and this time nothing and no one could pull her back out. All the fight had gone out of her; she simply gave up. A part of her died that day.

She was still abed, in the same black gown, a few weeks later, staring at the rose-patterned spice-orange damask canopy above her head, refusing all sustenance, complaining that everything tasted burnt and bitter, as though her mouth were full of ashes, when the Wentworths died, one after the other. A trifling cough and fever of the kind common in winter had proved deadly for the elderly couple, and it had flooded their lungs and drowned out their lives.

Mr. Roke-Green decided to write to the Queen, to ask her permission to marry Kate. Since her union with Ned had been adjudged a "pretend marriage" this should prove no barrier, he reasoned, and, by taking a husband of lower birth, as her own mother and grandmother had done before her, she would be proving, once and for all, that she lacked any royal pretensions. For good measure, he promised that he would a.s.sure the Queen that Kate was willing to make a public renunciation as well as a written declaration, barring herself and any children born of her body from the succession permanently and forever. Kate stood beside his desk and watched him eagerly sign and seal the letter. Then, without a word, she took it from his hand and held it unwaveringly into the candle's bright flame and watched it burn until its scorching tongue lapped her fingertips. After that she walked away, without a word of explanation. Why did she do it? She never told me. But it is my belief that Kate chose to destroy her own happiness rather than give Elizabeth another chance to. Or mayhap she did it for her boys? Every mother wants the best for her children, and perhaps she did not think she had the right to deny them any hope of England's throne? Or maybe it was simply that she still loved Ned and could not envision herself with any husband but him? I do not know.

Shortly afterward, she was removed to what would be her final prison, c.o.c.kfield Hall in Yoxford, a bleak, gray, ramshackle manor in Suffolk, surrounded by a cl.u.s.ter of dilapidated cottages and a church falling fast into ruin.

Too weak to walk, Kate was carried upstairs to her bed by Sir Owen Hopton, her new gaoler. She never left it. Though when she was first laid down, she raised her head and laughed when she saw that the walls were hung with a series of tapestries depicting the tale of the prodigal son. She pointed feebly to the one showing him being welcomed home, back into his father's loving embrace. "Would that were me, being forgiven by Elizabeth!" She sighed. "But I know now I shall never lie in my husband's arms again or hold and play with my sweet little boys. They are growing up now-seven and six, Sir Owen! My how the time flies! The years go by without me, and I cannot get them back!"

She fell to weeping piteously into her pillows.

At midnight on January 26, 1568, I awoke, or thought I did, to the touch of a hand, a gentle caress, upon my cheek. I found Kate sitting beside me, smiling down at me, pale as a white rose lightly blushed with pink. She was wearing the black gown with the ladder of bows on the bodice, the last I had made for her, and her peaches and cream hair was a ma.s.s of shining ringlets that seemed to have captured the sun in their curls. The storms of anguished torment that had filled her blue gray eyes had all blown out, leaving only peace and tranquility behind. She was glowing, radiant, and I knew instinctively that the last faint ember of her life had finally burned out; there was nothing left in this world that she could hope to have that would make her shine so.

"Live for love, Mary, all for love!" she said to me with urgent, loving tenderness-the Kate I had known and loved restored to me for one brief, shining instant.

She pointed out my window, and I saw a star fall, like a diamond dropped down into dark water, and when I looked back, she was gone. "Going toward G.o.d, as fast as I can!" a faint voice whispered with a hopeful smile I heard but couldn't see, then silence, sad but sacred silence that told me that my Kate was at long last at peace.

I sat in the darkness, hugging my knees, and wept for my sister, then I got up and did what I knew she would want me to do.

I threw a dark cloak over my shift, and, without even bothering to put on my slippers, I went to my Thomas's rooms above the water gate.

Fearlessly, I let my cloak fall, and wriggled out of my shift. Naked as a babe, unashamed, for the first time in my life, of my squat, gnarled, thick goblin's body, I crawled into his bed and kissed him awake and told him yes, I would marry him, and felt his arms close about me and his lips upon mine.

When the messenger finally came, he didn't have to tell me she was gone; Kate had already told me herself. All he could give me were the details, how Kate had entrusted three rings to Sir Owen Hopton, asking him to see them safely delivered to her husband-her sky blue diamond betrothal ring, the five-banded gold puzzle ring he had put on her finger the day they were wed, and, lastly, a silver skull, an ornately wrought death's head set with sapphire eyes, its band engraved inside with the words While I Lived, Yours. Then, seemingly content, she folded her arms across her breast, shut her eyes, and prayed, "O Lord, for Thy many mercies, blot out of Thy book my many sins."

Alarmed, Sir Owen sent a maid running to the nearby church, to ask that the bells be rung, calling all to pray for the departing soul of one, though not acknowledged, they considered a princess.

"Yes, good Sir Owen"-Kate smiled without opening her eyes-"let it be so."

Sensing Death's approach, Kate sat up, for the first time in many days, "jubilant and radiant as I had never seen her before," Sir Owen reported. She rejoiced to see her fingernails turning blue. "Look you, here He comes!" she cried eagerly, excitedly holding out her hand for those about her-the maids, doctor, priest, and Sir Owen and his wife-to see. "For all the world like a girl happily displaying her betrothal ring to her dearest friends," Sir Owen would say after. Then she flung wide her arms, "like a woman welcoming her lover," and cried out, "Welcome, Death!" and fell back, eyes closed, lips parted as if in ecstasy, like a woman surrendering to the most pa.s.sionate embrace.

So died the broken spirit that was once my sunshine girl, my lovely, lively Kate. She was only twenty-eight.

I didn't go to Yoxford to see her buried; I wanted to remember her as I saw her last, beautiful and radiant, and blissfully at peace. But I sent a gown of soft orange silk, to complement her sorrow-bleached hair, since I couldn't bear the thought of Kate being buried in black, and a wreath of gilded laurel leaves for her hair, to show all who looked upon her that she had won her battle with life.

21.

We were married by candlelight in his quarters at Whitehall on July 16 by a silver-haired priest, with Thomas's eldest son and his wife as our witnesses. A pair of pipers played for us, and the feast that followed was fine but small, with the table laid with fruits, cheeses, meats, and a golden cake baked full of red currants and raisins. It was a brief repast. We were impatient to be alone together. When I appeared in my black and yellow gown, he called me his "b.u.mblebee bride." That night was the first and only time, since I was a child, that I dared dance before others. Then everyone was gone and we were all alone. I unlaced his leather doublet and he opened my gown. He said my b.r.e.a.s.t.s were like little pears and kissed and nibbled them as I laughed and cried at this most exquisite pleasure.

The first time we made love I lost myself. Me-that was the first thing to go, even before my virginity. I forgot all about my stunted, little misshapen lump of a body, my crooked spine, and the face and figure that made people recoil and call me "goblin," "gargoyle," "changeling," and "Satan's imp." As his lips devoured me and his hands caressed me, gently probing my secret depths where no one, not even myself, had ever dared explore, I felt no shame; I experienced only pleasure. It was as though I was climbing out of myself, going higher and higher, to the top of the world's tallest mountain, and then, with a breathless gasp of wonder, I jumped, I fell and floated down, in lovely terror, only I did not crash and impale myself on the jagged rocks below, for my Thomas caught me and held me close and kissed me. Soon I was ready to scale the heights again.

A month of love was all we had, a four-week feast of pa.s.sion before we had to pay the penalty for that pleasure and the ring of gold that my Thomas had put upon my tiny finger. We were abed, after midnight, by candlelight, when the door crashed down and the guards came pouring in. A full dozen of them surrounded our bed, gaping at our nakedness, eyes bulging wide with astonishment at the odd and indecent sight spread before them.

In the golden flattery of the candlelight, and the shadows cast by the dark red curtain of my hair, I must have looked like a child, instead of a woman-a pa.s.sionate woman-my legs stretched like a wishbone about to break as I straddled my husband. His c.o.c.k must have loomed large, like the most threatening battering ram, poised and ready to a.s.sault an innocent child.

"For shame!" one of the guards cried as he reached out and plucked me off my Thomas, and out of, what he must have thought, was harm's way. He bundled me in a cloak, as if I were his own little girl, and carried me out, even as I shamelessly bawled and cried and reached out over his shoulder for my Thomas, my lover, my husband.

Like Philistines surrounding Samson, they fell upon my Mr. Keyes, and bound him in chains. I never saw him alive again. They took him to the Tower and stuffed and crammed his giant's body into the tiniest cell, crushing his bones and causing his joints to cramp and swell. The gaoler was cruel and sometimes denied him food, causing my tenderhearted Thomas, who loved all creatures great and small, to have to resort to killing with his bare hands the birds that sometimes perched upon his windowsill. He ate them raw since he had no means to cook them. When his children found out and went to plead before Sir William Cecil, begging him to remedy and ease their father's plight, the gaoler retaliated by feeding my love rotten meat that had been dropped into the poison used to treat the mange that afflicted his dogs. When they finally let him out of that "noisome and narrow cell," it was too late; he was broken and crippled beyond repair and soon died. My only consolation was that he was allowed to go home to his cottage in Kent, the one we had dreamed of retiring to, to die surrounded by his many children and grandchildren, with birds singing and the roses he loved blooming outside his window.

As for myself, Elizabeth sent me under house arrest to Chequers, the sumptuous country house of Sir William Hawtrey, the high sheriff of Buckinghamshire. It was a sprawling estate, adorned with stately elms and several pleasure gardens, each of which had been given a name evocative of its particular theme. I had a fine view of the ones called "Silver Spring" and "Velvet Lawn" from my window, but I didn't care.

Our married life was pa.s.sed in separate prisons, with no hope of a reunion. Still my heart dreamed of the two of us and that little cottage in Kent he had told me about, even though my head knew better. Annul me, divorce me, I don't care, only let my love go free! I said, it was cruel to keep him so confined. I had been a fool to think Elizabeth would discount me as a danger because I was a dwarf-royal blood was royal blood.

When I heard that he was dead, I lost my mind. The hair began to fall from my head, like the tears from my eyes, until I hacked it off. Bald and naked, keening out my grief, I drew pictures on the white plastered walls, with my own blood and feces when they saw what mischief I was about and took away my ink. Over and over again, I drew my Thomas sprouting wings and flying free. I wished him G.o.dspeed and told him he was well rid of me, for loving me had brought him nothing but misfortune.

I felt blasted, bitter, and blighted, the ache inside me was at once b.l.o.o.d.y red and raw, dry as if scorched by desert suns, and wet as though drowned in a salty ocean that burned my nose, throat, and eyes. Pain filled my lungs like water, and the weight dragged me down into darkness so deep I feared I would never see the light again. I had lost the one person who truly saw and loved me. I was his Mary, not one of Mother Nature's mistakes, to toss a penny and shout, "Dance, dwarf, dance; make me laugh!" He never saw me that way. He loved me, the real me!

In this way five years of my life slipped past. "The years go by," as Kate said. "You cannot get them back." I fell-but there was no one there to catch me, and I shattered. I was supposed to be the strong one, practical and pragmatic. I was the one who had kept pushing Kate in the same circ.u.mstances to fight, to not give in to the darkness that would swallow up her soul if she let it. But I didn't fight it, I was weak; I failed to practice what I preached, and there was no one to push and bolster me. Madness and melancholy took me as their wh.o.r.e and did whatever they wanted to with me. Even now when I think about it, I still disgust, and disappoint, myself.

In 1573, when Elizabeth finally set me free, I made a pilgrimage to Kent, and in the gray gold light of dawn, I planted raspberries and rosemary, for remorse and remembrance, on my beloved's grave and watered them with my tears. I sat with him, my hand atop the soil that covered him like a brown velvet blanket, and imagined him holding my hand as we watched the sun rise together, though in truth he should have crushed it with anger for what I did to him. Had I not been as rash and foolish as I once chided Kate for being, I would not have brought destruction crashing down like the jawbone of an a.s.s upon his head. I lay on his grave, as I used to lie with my head upon his shoulder, listening to his heartbeat, but that heart had been stilled forever while mine went on beating knowing that I was responsible for the stopping of his. Then I slunk away, too cowardly to face his children, fearing that they would hate and blame me, even though I well deserved it.

I returned to London and took lodgings in the cheapest inn I could find. I hadn't a friend in the world and did not know what would become of me. I had little money, and as small as a child myself, I knew I would not present a very imposing figure as a nursery governess.

My stepfather, Adrian Stokes, came to my rescue. He insisted on settling a sum of money on me and offered me a home at Bradgate: "For it is your home, Mary, and always will be." When I refused, wanting something new in reckless defiance of my strained circ.u.mstances, he helped me find and buy my little house in St. Botolph's-Without-Aldgate. He even planted with his own hands a little garden of raspberries and rosemary for me, yet when I was not looking he added purple hyacinths for forgiveness. "Because you must forgive yourself, Mary. Thomas Keyes married you because he loved you, and if he had the chance, he would do it all the same again. Don't dishonor your marriage by regretting it, Mary, he never did, nor would I if . . ." He left the words unspoken and hung his head, as a crimson blush spread across his lean and handsome face, still boyish even at forty with a few skeins of silver snaking through his black hair. He had dared to almost say the words that should never be spoken, yet they hung in the air between us, like a specter, the ghost of a dream that could never be more than a dream.

I was astonished. How could he want me? A handsome man who could have his pick of women, like flowers from a garden. But I couldn't let myself even consider, I couldn't let myself desire or even dream, I knew that part of me that longed for love and its carnal expression had to die forever lest it lead another to disaster.

I let him kiss me, just once-I promised myself-just one first and last sweet kiss in the little garden he had made for me, knowing it really would be my last.

With a shaky hand. I caressed his cheek as I breathed out a long, trembling sigh. Then I sent him away, because I had to, for his sake, and my own.

"I will ever love and protect you, Mary," he said as he closed the garden gate behind him, just as my heart closed the door upon love. But I was weak. Even though in my heart it was still Thomas I pined for, that long ago stifled and denied attraction was still there. I kicked that closing door back open again. "Adrian-wait! Come back!" I cried. And he did. He swept me up into his arms and held me close against his heart and kissed me as I thought I would never be kissed again.

Sometimes there are no second chances, but sometimes there are.

As we knelt together on my bed, pausing to kiss the flesh as we bared it, he told me he had always loved me, even when he knew he shouldn't on account of my high and his humble birth. When he had finally, after our string of misfortunes and I had been forsaken by Lord Wilton, worked up the courage to ask my lady-mother for my hand, she flew into a terrifying riding-crop-swinging, screaming rage, "madder than any woman I ever saw." " 'Twas rather bewildering," he confessed. "I still can't make sense of it all-one moment I was asking for you, and the next I was standing before the priest with her with my ear bleeding and feeling like nails were being driven into my arm the way she held it, and between the two there was a red and raging storm that left me sorely battered and my soul feeling all tired out and wrung dry."

"Aye"-I nodded as I kissed his throat-"I understand full well-such was my lady-mother."

But I was older and wiser now; I didn't let him ruin his life because of me. I chose to be a mistress rather than a wife. As I was his stepdaughter none ever suspected. Why ever would they? How could it ever be anything but innocent? In fairy tales the handsome prince never woos, weds, or beds a troll or goblin. I made him marry, and I even helped him choose a bride, a sweet, sensible widow with several children. Her name was Anne Carew, and if she ever knew of the delightful afternoons, and occasional nights, he spent in my bed, she was too well-bred to mention it and never gave a sign. She had the security of marriage; I had someone who was both a lover and a friend to keep the sharp teeth of loneliness from biting too deep. Sometimes one must compromise and bargain to get the best out of life.

To my surprise, Elizabeth summoned me to Hampton Court to attend the New Year's celebrations. Though it taxed my meager funds considerably, I knew I could not arrive without a suitable offering for my sovereign. I bought her a set of four dozen gold floral b.u.t.tons, each one studded with a pearl at its center, and a pair of sweet-scented buff-colored leather gloves sewn with seed pearls and gold embroidery in a floral pattern.

I put on the finest gown I had, my gold-lace-garnished, black velvet wedding gown and my black-and-yellow-striped "b.u.mblebee" kirtle. Though it was a few years out of fashion, I didn't care; it meant more to me to be once again my Thomas's "b.u.mblebee bride." Beneath it, I wore once again my red silk petticoat embroidered with three golden b.u.t.terflies for three sisters, two dead, one living, and around my solid, tree trunk waist the girdle of fine goldsmith's work, pearls, and red orange jacinth stones Adrian had given me as a New Year's gift. I felt the little mother-of-pearl bottle hanging between my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, cool against my hot skin, and lifted it to inhale the spicy-sweet cinnamon rose of Kate's perfume, and any fear I felt melted from me; I knew, in spirit, my love was with me, as were my sisters. Nothing is ever truly lost, I told myself as I straightened the mound of gaudy pearl-impaled sable red curls atop my head, certainly not true love, like that betwixt sisters, or that which I gave to and received from my Thomas. As I left my little house, to climb into the coach Adrian had so thoughtfully provided, I felt my sisters walking alongside me, their hands reaching out to hold mine, and the protective presence of my Thomas hovering, like a great oak, mighty and sheltering, high above me. I walked in love and knew I would never walk alone.

Now past her child-bearing years, her face an inscrutable white-marble mask beneath the flaming red of her pearl-encrusted wig, Elizabeth, "The Virgin Queen," sat on her throne resplendent in a gown of olive green and yellow satin embroidered with olive branches and wheat stalks to symbolize peace and plenty, the two things she wanted most for her beloved people.

Everyone turned and stared in stunned silence when they saw bold black-and-yellow-clad me standing in the wide doorway of the presence chamber.

The chamberlain banged his staff upon the marbled floor and announced-"Lady Mary Grey!"

But I shook my head, and instead of approaching the Queen, I went to him and tugged sharply at the hem of his doublet to get his attention.

"Mrs. Thomas Keyes!" I insisted in a voice clear and steady that carried throughout the cavernous chamber.

Across that great, wide room that intimidated so many, an amused and approving gleam lit Elizabeth's dark eyes, and she gave an imperceptible nod as a smile twitched at her taut bloodred rouged lips. But it was enough. I could tell that she approved of me. My audacity had not offended the Queen's Majesty, though in truth I wouldn't have cared if it had.

She gave a quick nod to the chamberlain, and the staff pounded the floor again as his voice rang out, announcing-"Mrs. Thomas Keyes!"

Proudly, with head held high, like a little queen, I approached the dais and made my curtsy to my cousin, the Queen.

POSTSCRIPT.

Lady Mary Grey died alone in her little house in St. Botolph's-Without-Aldgate in April 1578, her const.i.tution fatally weakened by the plague that had visited London that winter. The "mystic ruby," crystallized, legend claimed, from a drop of blood at the base of a unicorn's horn, believed to protect the wearer from plague, that Thomas Keyes had given her, was still on her finger. She was thirty-four years old. Her small, child-sized coffin was entombed with her mother in Westminster Abbey. No plaque or monument marks her grave.

Kate's "Sweet Ned," Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, went on to marry twice more-first to Lady Frances Howard, his mistress of many years, and after her death in 1598, a wealthy wine merchant's widow, Frances Prannell.

In 1608, the validity of his marriage to Lady Katherine Grey was at long last proven when the red-bearded priest, now old, stoop-backed, and gray, and sworn off strong drink, emerged from the obscurity of a sleepy little country parish. Though forty years had pa.s.sed since her death, Katherine's body was exhumed and laid to her second rest beneath a beautiful white marble effigy with all honors due her as the rightful Countess of Hertford in Salisbury Cathedral, where Ned would come to sleep beside her when he died in 1621 at the age of 83, having outlived both their sons.

Kate's "sweet little boys" grew to manhood, dabbling in romance and royal intrigue. Thomas died with the new century in 1600; his elder brother, Edward, Viscount Beauchamp, outlived him by a dozen years, dying in 1612.