LITMIR.BIZ

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the snow, feeling high as the sky from the syllabub, when Mrs. Ellen came out to tell us that our father required our presence in the library; we must come in at once and change out of our wet clothes and make ourselves presentable for him “like proper young ladies, a duke’s daughters, which is what you are, not silly peasant girls frolicking in the snow.” As she walked away, I was tempted to hurl a snowball at her back, but Jane already had her arm raised, a ball of snow cupped in her gloved hand, poised to let it fly when Kate and I sprang on her and wrestled her back down into the snow. Sometimes Jane made it devilishly hard to like her with her constant frowns and moody and preachy Protestant airs, but she was our sister, and we always loved her and did not want to see her bring another punishment upon herself. No one ever knew what our lady-mother might do in her efforts to discipline and mould and shape Jane into her idea of a perfect young lady. It was easy for her to frighten Kate and me into good behaviour—our lady-mother was more fearsome than any ogre or witch out of a fairy story—but with Jane it was a different story.

      For a time, our lady-mother had been keen on devising punishments to fit the crime—when Jane turned up her nose at eating a certain dish, our lady-mother would insist that she be served no other fare, and for each meal have that same exact plate set before her even after what was upon it had grown quite putrid. Another time, when Jane was a tiny girl about to have her first proper gown, a grown lady’s habiliments in miniature, replete with stays, layered petticoats, jewelled headdress, embroidered kirtle, and flowing sleeves with full, fur cuffs, and Jane had shown her willful side and rebelled against the gold and pearl embellished white velvet, clinging steadfast to her familiar old blue frock, our lady-mother made her go stark naked for a week, attending her lessons and sitting at the table thus, and even sewing in the parlour, and dancing in the Great Hall, while our lady-mother coolly explained to their guests why Jane was being punished in this manner, and slapping, pinching, yanking, and sharply rebuking Jane whenever she wept and tried to hide or cover herself, refusing even when she grovelled at her feet and begged to be allowed to put on the new dress to cover her shameful nakedness. By the time the punishment was finished, Jane hated the white and gold dress even more, but she consented to wear it, and when she dribbled gravy on the bodice, she wept in terror at what our lady-mother would do to her.

      Their quarrels over clothes lay dormant for a few years until Jane caught the fever of the Reformed Religion; only then would she dare reassert her disdain for ornate garb again, and by that time our lady-mother, sensing that Jane was incorrigible, and that thinking up suitable punishments for her was more trouble than it was worth, had long since contented herself with beatings and blows and fortnight long repasts of only salt fish, water, and boiled mutton bones that Jane licked and sucked ravenously as her belly grumbled and ached.

      Though I did not know it at the time, that summons to the library would change our lives forever. Nothing would ever be the same again. Yet I felt not even a twinge of fear or foreboding then; instead I was smiling, swishing my midnight blue velvet skirts and humming a lively air, as I watched Kate skip lightheartedly ahead of us with a song on her lips to first keep her promise to Cook and give her the pail, still half filled with our wonderful, delicious syllabub, for her and the rest of the kitchen servants to share, before skipping upstairs to change into her green velvet gown and sunny yellow, quilted, pearl-dotted satin petticoat and matching under-sleeves, the ones with the wide frills of golden point lace at the wrists that she was always fidgeting with, saying that she could not bear to have them cut off, they were so beautiful, but Lord how they made her wrists itch, like the Devil’s own seamstress had made them just to torment her.

      When we entered the library, Father laid down his quill and rose up from behind his desk. He was a tall, broad-shouldered, big-bellied man, handsome and rosy-cheeked with warm brown eyes, a luxuriant bushy auburn beard, and wild, ruddy hair that seemed ever wont to spring up in a riot of nervous panic, as though unsure of which way to run, it went every which way. That day he was dressed in the sedately elegant 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

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