belong, he would not single me out like a leper.
Lavinia came into my room as I was dressing. When she saw me with my hair down, she pleaded with me to leave it so, so taken was she by the cascade of harvest gold curls rippling down to my hips. But I was stubborn and said no and had Pirto part it down the centre and braid and pin it up smooth and tight, as if I were daring even one tiny curl to escape, and fasten over it a white satin French hood edged in gold braid with a long black silk veil in back. I was a wife now and proud of it; I wanted to flaunt it, to revel and glory in it, like a pig wallowing in muck; I wanted everyone who saw my picture to know that they were looking at a married woman. I had even asked Lavinia to paint me with my hand up, resting on my bodice, to show off my betrothal ring, but she gently dissuaded me that this was not the done thing and would only detract from the beauty of my brooch, and that the gillyflowers coupled with my husband’s oak leaves and acorns made the point well enough.
Though I did not want to be mistaken for an unmarried girl, a virgin maiden with her hair unbound, even though in truth I preferred to wear it thus, hanging free without pins poking and stabbing my scalp and making my head ache, I could not bear to disappoint Lavinia, and after each session of posing for the miniature I would take out the pins and shake my hair out and give her leave to sketch me if she pleased. She would later sketch me in a pensive pose, looking out the window, waiting for Robert to come home, and again sitting on the window seat wearing a bright smile upon my face as I dangled a string for my cats—fat, fluffy Custard and sleek black Onyx, whom I’d found as a mewling, half-starved kitten, like a blot of ink spilled upon the clean white snow, with her ribs poking out and her tail broken and bleeding. I had bound it up myself to set the bones, but it had mended a trifle crookedly.
The day before Robert rode away to London, I put on my wedding gown to begin posing for the full-length portrait. I had just finished dressing when Robert walked unexpectedly into the room. I had thought him gone for the day, but he had come back to retrieve a letter he had forgotten, and my face lit up at the sight of him. Lavinia snatched up a stick of charcoal and began to sketch wildly, feverishly trying to capture the true and naked love she saw upon my face.
“This,” she would later say when she showed the rough and hasty sketch to me, “is the real Amy. This is what a bride should look like if we were not such mercenary people who make marriage a business like wool or any other trade all about goods and profits.”
The finished painting would be as different from the usual staid and formal wedding portraits as night from day—“a woman in love, not just a lady showing off her wedding gown,” Lavinia would proudly say.
I described the meadow at Syderstone, and she painted me there, walking barefoot in love and sunshine, with a big bouquet of buttercups in my hand and wreathing my wild, tumbled-down hair. And, at Robert’s request, made the night before he left, as we sat beside the fire after supper and he regaled her with the tale of how I had saved the goose’s life, she painted the goose in beside me, with a golden bow about her neck, eating from my hand.
“This is my masterpiece,” Lavinia declared when we at last stood before the finished portrait.
Robert had already been weeks away by then, and I wished fervently that he could see that happy painted girl who seemed poised to step out of the golden frame as if she were about to walk right into the arms of the man she loved. That love, that longing, showed clearly upon her face.
“That’s me,” I marvelled as I stood before it, my hand rising up tentatively, then falling back down, not quite daring to reach out and touch it lest I smear the paint. “That’s how I feel inside! Oh, thank you, Lavinia, thank you! Now the feeling will live forever. Should it ever start to fade, all I will need to do is look at this portrait, and it will all come rushing back again. Thank you!”
I liked it far better than the miniature Robert had taken with him, galloping off wearing it over his heart under his riding leathers upon the braided satin chain I had made for him from my hair ribbons. I thought the young woman captured against the azure ground looked far too solemn and grave, as though she were inclined to melancholy, as if her eyes and lips were a stranger to smiles and laughter. “Is that really me?” I bit my tongue lest I say it aloud and Lavinia see how disappointed I was and think the failure was hers, when it was in truth all mine. Without my habitual smile, I thought my nose appeared a trifle too large and my mouth too small, almost as if it were pursed in disapproval. And my eyes looked oddly vacant, flat, more blue grey than blue green, and entirely lacking their accustomed vivacity and sparkle. I looked so cold, so aloof and chilly, and that was a great shame, when I was in truth so warm and friendly; I was a little shy, that’s true, but I was not unapproachable; I wanted everyone to like me. I feared that anyone Robert might show it to would come away thinking him encumbered by a dull and grim wife whose bed was as cold as the grave.
Now, when it was too late to change it, the elegant dark gown seemed a poor choice, far too funereal, and I wished I had worn the maiden’s blush pink or the sky blue or apple green, or even one of several gowns I owned in my favourite buttercup yellow. I was a sentimental young bride, and my trousseau brimmed over with exquisite gowns embroidered, woven, and figured with hearts, flowers, and lovers’ knots. I even had a white gown sumptuously embroidered in red and pink silks with cupids and hearts and flying arrows. I should have worn something like that, something that showed who I really was, that was true to the giddy young girl who walked on pink perfumed clouds of love, not the staid and elegant lady I was trying to be. I should not have tried to impress, for in doing so I had made my face a stranger even to myself, who was accustomed to seeing it every day in the looking glass. Even Pirto, when she saw it, furrowed her brow and asked, “But where’s your smile, pet? You don’t look half like yourself without it!”
If I were superstitious, I would think the face in the portrait was a portent of the sad and sombre woman I would become.
When the larger portrait was finished, Lavinia had to pack up her paints and return to court; she had many commissions awaiting her and could not tarry, and I was left alone again, with only the servants to bear me company. Robert, though I wrote him many anxious and yearning letters, was vague and evasive about when he would return, and when he would send for me to visit him he simply could not—or would not—say. I spent my days walking listlessly upon the sandy beach, alone, with the grey waves crashing and the gulls circling overhead, sometimes pausing to pick up a shell, remembering all the joyous hours we had spent there, frolicking and loving. It made my loneliness even harder to bear.
A fortnight later, unable to bear it a moment longer, I leapt from my lonely bed in the middle of the night and shook Pirto awake and bade her, “Pack my things at once; we’re going home to Stanfield Hall!”
At my parents’ home I would at least be among familiar faces, and there was work I could be doing. I would no longer be the idle, pitiful bride the servants and common folk at Hemsby whispered about walking the beach alone with her hair billowing in the wind, pining for her husband in a windblown white gown embroidered with gold lovers’ knots. They said the sight of me reminded them of a ghost, and I wondered if such would someday be my fate, that my lonely shade would return one day to walk the beach for all eternity, waiting for Robert to come back to me. I shuddered at the thought and even had nightmares about it and prayed it was not an omen; I wanted to rest in peace when I died, not continue to exist as an anguished spirit doomed to walk the earth forevermore without peace or rest; to me that was like being damned, another version of Hell, only without the flames and demons. And resuming my old duties as chatelaine was a far better way to occupy my time than weeping and yearning and letting fearful fancies about the beautiful ladies at court, who would not scruple to flash their most beguiling smiles and gaze at Robert with invitations in their eyes, rob me of my sleep and peace of mind. So I packed up my things and went home to my parents.
10
Amy Robsart Dudley
Stanfield Hall, near Wymondham, in Norfolk and Syderstone Manor in Norfolk September 1550–May 1553
Nearly three years crept slowly past, like a snail on a