gold capered and danced around me, serenading my every step.
Blissfully happy, I walked in a dream with pink clouds of love swirling round my head. I was so happy, so light of step, I felt as if I were floating, my feet never once touched the ground. I can’t even remember the green grass tickling my toes that day, the way it always did, or the hard-packed earth beneath my soles, or even the cool, smooth wood and stone floors inside the manor house; I have not one single memory of feeling solid ground beneath my feet that entire day.
I went out amongst our guests with a gilded wooden yoke about my shoulders, carved with cherubs, garlands of flowers, and frolicking sheep and goats, from which hung two gilded pails, and served them delicious cold milk from our dairy. And Pirto, smiling as proudly as if she were my own mother in her new spring green damask gown, followed alongside me with a big gilded tray of specially made clay cups fashioned and painted to look just like a woman’s full, bountiful breast. These were a souvenir, a special wedding favour, for our noble guests to take home with them and keep to remember this day by, and to wish us all luck, happiness, and fertility. Some years ago, my father had met a man, a scholar of ancient lore, at a wool fair who had told him a story about cups moulded from the perfect breasts of Helen of Troy. The tale caught Father’s fancy, and he never forgot it and vowed that I should have such cups made for my wedding day, and I knew it pleased him much to see his promise fulfilled. Though some seemed startled and even embarrassed when presented with these most unusual cups, I didn’t care; the smile on Father’s face was worth more than all the cups in the world to me.
I served the King first, as he was the guest of honour, though when I knelt before him with a tentative smile, timidly offering up milk in one of the special cups to him, he never once smiled. Instead, he sat there stiff-backed in his bower of white roses, evergreen boughs, and softly fluttering gold lace and creamy satin bows and streamers, glowering at me, with his mouth a firm, straight-across line, his eyes as hard as blue-veined marble, and his arms folded across the chest of his cream and gold doublet as if he were impatient to have done with all this and take his leave. He seemed so solemn and stern for a boy of twelve, as if he did not even know what the word fun meant. He should have been romping and running, playing, bobbing for apples, and tossing them about with boys of his own age, jumping and tumbling in the hay, or going fishing and dangling his bare toes in the river, not sitting there all bitter and grim as a gouty old grandfather who has outlived all life’s pleasures and everyone he ever held dear. I fully expected the hair beneath his cream and gold plumed cap to be grey instead of ruddy-fair; it was as though he had been born old, and God had not blessed him with the gift of good humour.
Quaking with fear that I had unknowingly done something to offend him, I backed away, with tears brimming in my eyes, but Robert hugged me tightly against his elaborate oak leaf, acorn, ivy, and yellow gillyflower embroidered chest, and kissed my cheek and told me not to be afraid, such was just Edward’s way.
“He may be King of England, but that doesn’t stop him from being a self-righteous little prig, and as cold as the Devil’s prick,” he whispered in my ear, giving the lobe a playful little nibble that made my knees tremble unseen beneath my skirts. “And I, for one—and the most important one, if I do say so myself—love my buttercup bride. And it’s just as well that Edward isn’t impressed, for I will have no man for my rival, not even a king. Remember that, Lady Dudley, when I take you to court and you are formally presented, and you will do just fine; you’ll carry yourself as proudly as the grandest lady, knowing that you are all mine.”
At his words, my face lit up with joy, and I threw my arms around his neck, standing up, straining on my tippy-toes, and covered his face with kisses. I was so eager to be alone with him! Even though the revelry had scarcely begun, the King was not the only one to want it over and done; I wanted to be with my husband in the curtained privacy of our bridal bed with all our finery stripped away, leaving only warm, naked skin and hands and lips eager to explore, caress, and kiss. But duty beckoned, and I must resume serving the milk and meeting and making welcome our guests, so many of whom were complete strangers to me. And I fear I gave offence to many, for, as I did not know them even by their lofty names, they seemed annoyed by the blankness in my eyes, my tentative, uncertain smiles, and my clumsy, faltering attempts to make conversation with them. But they were all smiles for Robert, and he moved amongst them with the utmost confidence and easy grace. I will have to do better, I told myself sternly. I must not disappoint him; I must school myself and become the woman Lady Dudley should be, a worthy consort for my husband, not a pig-ignorant Norfolk squire’s daughter he will always be ashamed of.
I was serving the milk when I first saw her. I instantly froze, stricken by that horrible realisation one feels when one has accidentally trod upon a serpent hidden in the grass, at first sight of that tall, taper-slim woman, as white as the pearls around her throat, her vivid scarlet hair the only spot of colour about her. Her dark eyes seemed to hammer nails into me, and I felt my heart jolt inside my breast. She was so cool, so supremely regal and poised, I shivered, and for a moment I think I actually believed she had the power to call down rain to ruin my wedding day and banish the golden sunshine that warmed this happy day and shone down so brightly upon me. I was afraid the milk in my gilded pails would curdle beneath her gaze. I couldn’t rightly tell if she hated me or if she just envied me.
Of course I knew who she was—the Princess Elizabeth. I’d heard titbits of tattle about her, that she was fresh from a scandal, a frolic with her stepfather, the Lord Admiral Sir Thomas Seymour, that went too far and led to their both being disgraced and the Admiral losing his head on Tower Hill, leaving Elizabeth with a besmirched reputation that she tried to whitewash by wearing virgin-white gowns dripping with pearls and living a quiet life. All around me people whispered behind their hands and darted swift glances at her stomach. Though it was as flat as a board beneath the tightly-laced white satin stomacher, rumours had long been rife that she had been with child by the Lord Admiral; some even said it had been born, delivered by a midwife brought blindfolded into her lying-in chamber, and foully murdered by being thrown alive, kicking and wailing, into a fireplace. She seemed so brittle and hard, tense and wary, that I couldn’t believe the rumours were true and that she had ever cast caution and decorum to the winds and let herself go with a man, or that she had ever loved Tom Seymour, or anyone at all. She seemed entirely too cold, frozen too solid, to ever be melted by the flames of passion. That flaming red hair was deceptive; I felt certain there was a core of solid ice and steel inside Elizabeth.
I forced myself to approach and offer her a cup of milk. She refused it with a wave of her hand, but when I started to back away, she reached out and took my face between her cold, long-fingered white hands and stared at me as if she meant to suck out my soul with her eyes, like a cat on a baby’s chest, stealing its breath as it lay sleeping. She studied me so intently, searching my face, but I don’t know what she was looking for. She never said one word to me. And then, just as suddenly, she released me and turned away to converse with a plump, grey-haired little dumpling of a woman who waddled like a duck when she walked and whom the Princess called Kat—that must have been her governess, who had also been implicated in the Seymour scandal. And I was left standing there shivering as though a goose had just walked over my grave. She scared me, though I was at a loss to explain why, and had I tried, I know I would have been thought quite silly.
Later on while we all sat merry with our tankards and ate our fill of apple cake, the men decided to have some sport. There was to be a joust in which they sought not to unhorse each other but to impale upon the sharpened tip of a spear a goose with a lacy gold bow tied about her neck. When I realised what they were about, I burst into tears; I wanted no blood spilled upon my wedding day, and I ran out amongst the men, already mounted on their horses, and caught the goose up in a protective embrace, hugging her tightly against my breast. I would not release her until Father himself came and gently took her from me, dried my tears, and swore the goose would not be harmed but would live out her natural life unharmed, pampered like a beloved pet. Then he called for the musicians to play, and for us to have dancing instead, even as the men still grumbled and lamented their spoiled sport, ruined by a silly, soft-hearted girl who would shed a bucket of tears over a plump goose that cried out for roasting. But Robert dismounted and drew me closely against his chest, kissed me, and declared he loved me all the more for it. “No