The Fallen Queen. Emily Purdy

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СКАЧАТЬ deep orange and brown velvet garments edged with golden braid that our lady-mother had chosen for him. With hands on hips, she often declared, “If Hal Grey were left to his own devices in matters of dress, he would come out of his room every morning looking like a sunlit rainbow, dazzling and gaudy enough to blind every beholder, and be mistaken by all for a fool in motley!”

      At the sight of us he smiled and opened his arms wide. “My little girls!” he said fondly in a voice that conveyed, even though we were all girls, and none of us the son he longed for, he was nonetheless proud of us.

      We cast a quick and wary glance around to ascertain our lady-mother was not present. She wasn’t—that meant Father would be fun! And we ran into his arms and hugged him tight; even Jane forgot her solemn dignity and hurled herself into his arms. Kate settled herself on his lap, and he tousled and kissed her bright curls and took from the secret “sweet drawer” in his desk a special treat he had been saving to share with us. When he was last in London he had visited his favourite sweetshop and purchased a box of the most wonderful marzipan; the box was lined in blue silk, and each dainty, brightly coloured piece was an exquisite replica of a creature from the sea—there were seashells, all manner of fishes, blue and green crabs, and bright red lobsters, oysters that opened to reveal candy pearls, sharks, dolphins, and whales, billowy branches of coral, undulating sea serpents, and even bare-breasted mermaids combing their flowing tresses or playing harps, and lusty, leering, blue-bearded mermen clutching tridents.

      “Don’t tell your lady-mother,” he said with a slightly sad smile, his words only half jesting. “She thinks I overindulge in sweets, though I tell her that one can never have too much of a good thing. She says one day I’ll get as big as old King Henry was and then she’ll divorce me and find herself a lean, lusty lad to replace me.” He lowered his voice to a whisper and confided, “I think she has her eye on our Master of the Horse, young Master Stokes.”

      “No one could ever replace you, Father!” Kate cried as she flung her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. “And certainly not Master Stokes! He’s only twenty—just five years older than Jane! Our lady-mother would never be so foolish!”

      “Never!” Jane and I chorused, squeezing Kate so tight she squealed as we pressed to embrace Father and kiss the red-bristled sun-bronzed cheeks that bulged with marzipan.

      He swallowed hard and smiled. “Now then, on to serious matters …”

      And suddenly I felt the icy touch of fear upon my back, prickly as frozen needles. In that instant I just knew that he was about to speak the words that would set in motion actions that would shatter my world.

      “My three little girls are about to leave me.” Father shook his head and sighed dolefully. “How time flies! You’re not little girls anymore; you’re young women—young women about to become wives.”

      “Married?” Jane gasped and tottered back, tripping over her hems and stumbling hard against the desk. She leaned there looking white as a ghost, tugging hard at the high collar of her funereal black velvet gown as though it were a noose strangling her. And I was sorely afraid that she might faint.

      “Married! I’m to be married!” Kate jumped up with a jubilant squeal, spinning around, hugging her clasped hands tight against her excitedly beating heart. “When? Will it be soon? Oh, Father, can I have a golden gown and golden slippers and a cake, a great big cinnamon spice cake, as tall as I am? No! Taller! And covered with gilded marzipan and inside filled with chunks of apples, walnuts, and golden and black raisins, and lots of cinnamon, lots and lots of cinnamon! And minstrels to play at my wedding clad from head to toe in silver since I shall be all in gold!”

      “Aye, my love, my beautiful Katey, aye!” Father sat back in his chair and roared with laughter even as tears filled his eyes. “And, yes, it will be soon, in a month’s time you’ll be married and have left maidenhood behind. But as important as the cake and your dress and slippers and the minstrels are, don’t you want to know whom you’re going to marry?”

      “Oh yes!” Kate stopped her giddy prancing and turned expectantly to Father. “Of course I do! Is he young and handsome? Do I know him? What’s his name? Is his hair dark or fair? Does he have blue eyes or brown, grey or green? Shall we have a house in London and one in the country as well? Will he take me to court? Will we have our own barge? Shall I go to court to serve the Queen when Cousin Edward marries? Will he buy me jewels and gowns and puppies and kittens and pet monkeys and songbirds in gilded cages? Oh, Father, I do so long to have a pair of monkeys! I shall dress them in little suits and gowns just like babies! And parrots, talking parrots—I can teach them new words and feed them berries from my hand! And will my husband and I have lots of babies? I want a nursery full of babies! I want to be a little woman round and stout as a barrel with a baby always in my arms, filling out my belly, and a bunch of them tugging at my skirts calling me ‘mother’! I want our home to be filled with joy and laughter!”

      Father laughed heartily. “So many questions! You’re curious as a cat, my Kate! Stop a moment and still your eager tongue, my lovely love, and let me answer! No, you’ve never met him. His name is Henry, Lord Herbert, he is the Earl of Pembroke’s son, and a handsome, fair-haired youth not quite two years older than yourself, and I believe his eyes are blue. You’ll like him. I’m as sure of it as I am that this marzipan is delicious!” He waved a hand at the nigh empty box on his desk. “As for the rest, all in good time, my pretty Kate, all in good time! Stop chomping at the bit, raring to be off, my fine filly; slow down and enjoy your life, without racing through it at breakneck speed. If you go too fast, it will all pass by you in a blur and you’ll miss it all.”

      Nervously, I tugged at Father’s sleeve to get his attention. “Me too?” I asked timidly. “I am to be married? Someone wants to marry me?”

      “Aye, my little love.” Father swooped me up to sit upon his lap. “Though being as you are only eight, you shall have to bide at home and content yourself with being betrothed a while, but, aye, my little Mary, you are to be a bride just like your sisters! And Time has a sneaky habit of flying by, and all too soon the dressmakers will be marching up the stairs to unfurl their banners of silk before you and make you a fine wedding gown of any cut and colour you choose!”

      “Who?” I asked in a dazed and breathless whisper. The man I was to marry was of far greater importance to me than any new gown, though honesty compels me to admit that a rich deep plum velvet and silver-flowered lavender damask trimmed with silver fox fur billowed briefly through my mind, and my inner eye caught a teasing, tantalizing glimpse of the fine wine sparkle of garnets and deep purple amethysts set in silver. “Who would want to marry me?”

      “I’ve chosen someone very special for you, my little love.” Father chucked my chin and kissed the tip of my nose. “Now he is a wee bit older than you are, five-and-forty, and a kinsman of mine. Mayhap you’ve heard tell of him, for he’s a war hero, one of our greatest—my cousin William Grey, Lord Wilton.”

      Kate gave such a frightful shriek that I nearly toppled off Father’s lap, and Jane momentarily forgot her own staggering surprise as horror, then pity, filled her eyes as she stared at me. Then both my sisters were there, crying and clinging tight to me, as though they could not bear to let me go. But all I could do was nod, my disappointment and hurt went too deep for tears, and there are times in a dwarf’s tormented life when one feels all cried dry of tears.

      The whole of England knew the story of Lord Wilton, and little boys fought to play him in their war games, their vying for this prized part often leaving them with bloodied lips and blackened eyes. He had been hideously wounded, his face grotesquely mutilated at СКАЧАТЬ