After days of sulking and spiteful comments Elizabeth tells Margaret Douglas that she must stay in her rooms at court and see no one, and after a week of this cold treatment she signs a warrant for her arrest. Lady Margaret will not be kept, this time, in a beautiful house in comfort, but instead takes the short voyage by barge to the Tower of London. She is guilty of nothing more than the crime of having a handsome son who went to Scotland and now refuses to return. There is no charge laid against her, there cannot be: she has committed no treason or crime. They are imprisoning her in the Tower only to frighten her boy to run back to his mother. They are holding her as a bait for her son.
But it does not work. Elizabeth’s family is made of sterner stuff than she ever calculates. My sister, parted from her husband and her son, will not call one a blackguard and the other a bastard. Margaret Douglas, imprisoned in the Tower, will not order her boy home to be imprisoned with her. She sets up her little household in the Tower and waits for good news from Scotland. Surely, the Queen of Scots will not allow her future mother-in-law to be imprisoned; surely, the ambassadors of France and Spain will not allow Elizabeth to persecute a renowned papist? Margaret Douglas, a tougher old warhorse than her sensitive husband and butterfly son, settles down to outlast Elizabeth’s persecution.
The queen and all her court are invited to one of the greatest weddings of the year: the marriage of Henry Knollys, the son of Catherine Carey, Elizabeth’s cousin and first lady of her bedchamber. She is a great friend of my stepgrandmother, Catherine Brandon, since they are both staunch Protestant believers and fled to Europe rather than live under Queen Mary. They came back at the same time to Elizabeth’s court and were welcomed by her with open arms. Of course, because of their religion, they idolize my sister Jane, and I always feel myself to be a smaller inferior version of the great Protestant martyr. But despite this preference, I count them as my friends, especially my stepgrandmother, Catherine Brandon, the Duchess of Suffolk.
Now Catherine Carey’s son Henry is to marry the famously rich Margaret Cave at Durham House, and Elizabeth has insisted for weeks that we parade her best gowns before her, so that she may choose the richest, hoping to outshine the bride and everyone else.
Elizabeth’s passion for Mary Queen of Scots has turned to a hatred, quietly stoked by William Cecil, who points out that Mary can now never be heir to the throne of England: she has proven herself disobedient, she has proven herself unreliable and she has turned up her pretty nose at Robert Dudley.
The pretty youth Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, ordered home to England, denies his former devotion to Elizabeth and defies her, refusing to return. Elizabeth is beside herself at the disobedience, the disloyalty, and—above all, in my opinion—the infuriating preference. The young man prefers the genuine love of a beautiful queen of twenty-two, to the relentless demanding vanity of her cousin of thirty-one. There is no surprise in this to anyone but Elizabeth. In her rage, Elizabeth swears that the title of heir will never go to the papist queen, that her papist cousin Margaret Douglas is now her enemy, and her husband and son are worse than traitors.
I hold up one set of heavily embroidered sleeves and then another. She likes neither of them. I set them down and hold up another pair. This could take all day. The royal wardrobe is filled with ornate gowns, sleeves and kirtles. Elizabeth orders new every season, and nothing is ever thrown away. Every gown is powdered and stuffed with lavender heads and hung in a bag of linen to prevent moth. She could consider hundreds in her determination to mar the happiness of a bride on her wedding day. Dressing is easier for her ladies: we are to wear either black or white. Only the queen is to blaze in color among us, only she is to be admired.
But I do not care what gown is chosen, nor what I am commanded to wear, for I am not going to be there. The wedding day of Henry Knollys and Margaret Cave is going to be my wedding day, too, and I am more sure of my happiness than I am of theirs. I am marrying a man whom I know and love and trust; their marriage is arranged by their parents and licensed by the queen, who would not permit it if she thought there was any passion or love to be had. All admiration must come to her, not to any other woman.
Finally, the queen makes her choice of sleeves and it is the turn of another lady to open the jewel boxes so that she can select her necklaces, her chains, her earrings, and her brooches. Only when everything is laid out and compared one with another, only when we all agree that she will be the richest, the best-dressed, the most beautiful woman present, do we start to prepare her for dressing.
Her thinning hair is carefully brushed and tied up on the top of her head in a scrawny bun. Mary Ratcliffe, the maid of honor with the steadiest hand, comes forward with a pot of fresh-mixed ceruse, and Elizabeth sits still, closes her eyes, as Mary paints the white lead and vinegar from her plucked forehead to her nipples in painstaking gentle strokes. It is a long process. The queen’s neck, back, and shoulders have to be painted too; the gown she has chosen is low cut, and there can be no ugly smallpox scars showing through the glowing white.
When the queen’s cheeks are dry, Thomasina stands up on a stool and dusts rouge on the hollow cheeks, and paints carmine on the narrow lips. My aunt Bess comes forward with a brown crayon and draws in two arched eyebrows.
“Lord! What I do for beauty!” the queen exclaims, and we all laugh with her, as if this were amusing and reasonable, and not an absurd daily chore for us.
With immense care, Bess St. Loe pulls the great red wig over Elizabeth’s graying hair, as Elizabeth holds it at the front of her head, and then looks into her mirror to approve the effect.
She throws off her dressing gown and sits on her chair, naked but for her richly embroidered smock, one foot extended for her silk stockings.
Dorothy Stafford bends and carefully rolls them up to Elizabeth’s knees and ties the garter.
“Do you know what fortune Margaret Cave will bring the family?” Elizabeth asks her.
“Lady Catherine told me that she is to inherit all her father’s land at Kingsbury, Warwickshire,” Dorothy replies.
Elizabeth makes a little grimace as if she thinks what she would have done, if she had been an heiress like that, instead of a bastard set aside for the true heir. Behind the painted smile, her face is sour.
The queen stands as her ladies press the bodice to her belly, and then go behind her and start to thread the laces through the holes, pulling them tightly. The queen grips on the post of the bed to brace against them. “Tighter,” she says. “None of you pull as well as Kat.”
Elizabeth’s former governess Kat Ashley is absent from her duties for once. She has taken to her bed complaining of shortness of breath and fatigue. Elizabeth visits her every morning, but really misses her only when her laces are pulled. Only Kat will heave at them so that Elizabeth’s stomacher lies completely flat on her empty barren belly.
Dorothy Stafford holds out the farthingale for Elizabeth to step into it, and pulls it up over her slim hips and ties it at her waist and then settles a satin roll on top. “Are you comfortable, Your Majesty?” she asks, and Elizabeth makes a face as if to say that she is suffering for the benefit of England.
I step forward, proffering the chosen sleeves as Elizabeth steps into the kirtle. While one of the ladies ties the kirtle behind, I lift up the sleeves and Elizabeth puts one arm through, and then another. Then she laughs, as she always does, and says, “Lady Bess, you tie my sleeves on. Lady Mary will never reach.”
I smile as if I have not heard this a hundred times before, and Aunt Bess ties the sleeves to the bodice as Dorothy helps the queen into the gown itself.