Chapter 10 #3
I was tired, dirty, smelly, and irritated, but I could only obey. The lady took me by the elbow and propelled me up staircases and through passages until we emerged into the suite in which King Henry’s queens had lived before being given their crowns.
Young Jane had changed little from the days when she, I, and Elizabeth had sewed together at Hatfield or Enfield, or when she’d shared lessons with Elizabeth in Catherine Parr’s house.
Jane had large eyes in a slim face and was slight for her sixteen years. She appeared even smaller under the vast beamed ceiling of the chamber in which she awaited me.
The enormous, embroidered robe she wore dwarfed her, its sleeves belling over her too-thin wrists. Her hair had been dragged back and pinned under a hood, from which her pale, rather rabbity face jutted.
Her figure was as slender as I remembered—it was obvious that, even had she shared a bed with Guildford Dudley in these last months, she had not yet conceived.
Jane was not alone in the large chamber. Her mother, Frances Grey, née Brandon, the haughty Duchess of Suffolk, paced the long room with impatience. The duchess did not even glance at me as I hurried in but lifted a long finger and pointed to a corner filled with bolts of cloth. “Over there.”
I’d grown up sitting in corners while I sewed for royal women, and had learned early in life how to discover the most comfortable, out-of-the-way spaces in a room and make them my own.
Sometimes I, sewing with all my might in a nook by the fireplace, was far warmer and more content than the great people who shivered across the chamber in cushion-strewn chairs.
The niche to which the duchess directed me was dark, shadowy, and not to my taste, but the July night was stuffy, and the corner was the coolest in the room. I took up my place without a murmur.
The duchess paced and fanned herself vigorously. Jane stood out of her mother’s path, beads of sweat on her face, her gaze following the duchess’s stride back and forth.
“It must be done by morning,” the duchess said abruptly, as though I knew exactly what she was talking about. Her glare fixed on me, and I dropped my gaze in deference. “You will finish, won’t you, girl?”
My temper splintered. I was the daughter of a gentlewoman, a Champernowne.
Though my mother had made an unfortunate marriage, I was not, and never had been, of the serving class.
I did not mind waiting on great ladies I respected, like Elizabeth, or even Jane, but I was here at the insistence of Northumberland, who had risen to a dukedom from nothing, on nothing but ambition.
But the daughter of old King Henry’s sister Mary, and now Duchess of Suffolk, had royal blood in her veins and never let anyone forget it. Thus, she glared at me and called me girl.
I did not speak directly to Jane, but I made it plain my words were for her. “This cloth is quite fine. ’Twill make up in no time, as long as I know what it is I am to create.”
The duchess’s lip curled. “Everything is there for a gown. You will sew.”
“I will need light.” I could hardly cut a pattern and seam a skirt without being able to see. “And perhaps assistance. There is enough cloth here for two or three garments. How many did you wish?”
As I hoped, I goaded Jane into speech. “Bring her light.” Jane waved to the servants who occupied the shadows. “Bring them now, and I will assist her.”
“You will not.” The duchess rounded on her daughter. “Remember who you are.”
I thought Jane would crumple to the floor. She had never been one to defy her elders, and her duchess mother had a personality that flattened all before her.
However, Jane, like most timid people, retained a stubborn streak, which, when invoked, hung on like grim death. Jane didn’t quite meet the duchess’s eye, but the corners of her mouth firmed.
“I will sew with Eloise,” she announced. “It is something I can do.”
The duchess flushed. I could point out that sewing was a most royal pastime—Henry’s wives sewed his shirts and helped in the making of linens. Mary sewed and embroidered quite well and so did Elizabeth, although Elizabeth did not always have the patience.
I had chosen a bench so I would not have to perch on a precarious stool or sit on the hard floor. I busied myself sorting the cloth while Jane had her quiet confrontation with her mother in the middle of the room.
They had certainly supplied her with sumptuous fabric—cloth of gold, green brocade, thin silk taffetas, sumptuous velvets, damask lined with silk and fur. Fur, I thought in incredulity, for hideous July weather. But they want to present her as a great queen.
I pictured the gown I’d make—a velvet overskirt revealing a sheath of the brocade, with the same green brocade trimming the sleeves. The costume would be beautiful on Jane, wearable art, and I would create it for her.
Jane must have won her small rebellion, for she plunked herself onto the bench beside me and snatched up a skein of silk. “All this is because I am married now,” she said to me. “A matron must have a larger wardrobe than a maid.”
A ridiculous explanation for cloth fit for a sovereign. I smoothed the silk in her agitated fingers before she could tear it, and found her skin ice cold.
A halo of light touched the window above Jane’s head, the rising sun, but the brightness immediately dimmed as a cloud passed over it. Inky darkness seemed to surround Jane, eating the golden light like a hungry malaise.
I shivered suddenly, sucking in a breath.
The duchess, who’d hovered to keep watch on Jane, forced my head up with a hard hand under my chin.
“What is the matter with Mistress Rousell?” the duchess demanded of Jane. “Is she ill? If she is ill, she must go at once. You cannot take sick.”
I was exhausted and longed for bed, but I held my tongue. If the duchess sent me scuttling back to Hatfield, there would be nothing to report to Elizabeth except that Jane was having new clothes made, and that her mother loved to harangue her.
The duchess mercifully released me, and I shook my head. “I am not ill, Your Grace, I promise you. I had a long journey and not much to eat, and this room is close.”
“She ought to sleep,” Jane tried. She put a chilled hand on my forehead, and it was all I could do not to shrink away from her.
“No,” I said quickly. “I will carry on.”
The duchess regarded me, stone-faced, but ceased her questions.
I sewed. Jane helped, or pretended to, but she was fairly useless this night. Pins slipped from her nerveless fingers, and I could not trust her at all with the scissors.
The duchess did little but storm up and down the room and demand servants fetch wine and cakes, which she devoured without offering any to Jane or me. Jane flinched at the mere sight of the food, but I, healthy and in no danger of becoming queen of England, was quite hungry.
Though the duchess and Jane believed themselves to be secretive, I knew quite well that I sewed Jane’s coronation wardrobe.
Though I saw no evidence of stately robes and ermine, the gowns that would come from these cloths would be worn at banquets, balls, and ambassadorial visits Jane would attend after her crowning.
The weight of the dresses would crush her. I predicted Jane would collapse when she had to face the mass of people in Westminster Abbey, no matter that the Duke of Northumberland and her mother stood behind her to prop her up.
I could better see Elizabeth in these gowns, her slim, upright form regal and strong. She’d watch with steely eyes as her ministers as well as ambassadors from foreign lands bent knees to her.
Edward’s dying deed, however, might ensure that Elizabeth never wore the robes of a queen.
The dawn light that had brushed the window grew brighter as the duchess swallowed her cakes and Jane and I quietly worked. By the time the chamber was fully lit, we heard horses and the heavy tramping of boots in the courtyard below.
I had not thought it possible for Jane to become any more pale, but her face went as white as linen. She began to sway on her stool, a small noise of terror in her throat.
The duchess marched to Jane and jerked her to her feet.
“Get up. Stand. Meet them. And you.” She kicked my bench over as I scrambled up beside Jane. “Do not sit in her presence. Ever. Do you understand?”
I held my breath, understanding very well. They were going to do it.
The ambitious, turbulent, handsome Dudleys, aided and abetted by Jane’s parents, were going to turn England upside-down.
I thought of Robert Dudley and the wicked kiss he’d shared with Elizabeth just before his wedding.
I wondered, as Elizabeth had, if he were party to this conspiracy to keep Mary and Elizabeth from the throne.
Robert stayed mostly in Norfolk these days, when he didn’t attend Parliament, but his father could have compelled him to obey.
The duchess nearly dragged Jane from the chamber. With no one watching me, I followed, keeping well behind the crowd of servants who scrambled after Jane and her mother.
The Tower’s large hall was now filled with men—the Duke of Northumberland himself, the Duke of Suffolk eyeing his approaching wife in trepidation, and Northumberland’s sons, Guildford Dudley and Robert, in Norfolk no longer.
Gentlemen of the king’s council tarried in the hall as well, along with William Cecil, his nervous gaze darting about, and the aged William Paulet, who held himself steadily in the tumult.
A canopy had been set up at one end of the great hall, which I recognized as King Edward’s cloth of gold. My heart thumped as I squeezed among the crowd, unnoticed.
Northumberland held a paper that dripped with seals, including the large red one of the dead young king. He waited for silence, though I had the feeling every single person in that room already knew exactly what he would say.
“This Devise,” Northumberland began in a loud, clear voice, “was drawn up by Edward the King of England and signed by his council not many days before he died. For yes, as I stand before you, I bring you grievous news. King Edward is dead. Long live Queen Jane!”
“Queen Jane!” Suffolk bellowed, his face already red with whatever wine he’d drunk in celebration.
He pulled his daughter forward and thrust her under the canopy, forcing her to turn and face the room.
The crowd took up the cheer, the Dudleys in enthusiasm, the men of the council less so. Paulet and Cecil stood in silence, unsmiling.
Jane, the new and regal queen, gazed upon the faces of her subjects and dropped to the floor in a dead faint.