LITMIR.BIZ

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“He is his mother’s favourite and was christened with her maiden name—Guildford. It’s rather different, don’t you think?” he babbled on. “I mean when so many boys are named Henry, Edward, Robert, William, John, and Thomas, it stands out as wonderfully unique, don’t you think?”

      “Guildford Dudley!” We three sisters raised an incredulous chorus and clung together for comfort. I saw loathing and contempt in Jane’s eyes, while Kate’s and mine mirrored the pity we each felt for our scholarly sister to be wedded and bedded by such a conceited fool, a gilt-haired youth who made the proud peacocks that strutted across the royal gardens look dowdy and meek as sparrows in comparison. Jane was fluent in Latin, Greek, and French, and was currently studying Hebrew to enhance her understanding of the Scriptures; she devoured the works of Cicero, Ovid, Plutarch, Livy, Juvenal, Demosthenes, Justin the Martyr, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, and the New Testament written in Greek as other girls her age did chivalric romances and the rollicking, ribald tales of Boccaccio and Chaucer; she had even recently acquired a Latin translation of the Jewish Talmud. And now she was betrothed to a boy who thought books were merely decorative. Poor Jane!

      Everyone knew that Guildford Dudley was vainer than any girl. His own family called him their gilded lily and their golden gillyflower and catered to his every whim, shamelessly pampering and indulging their petulant and decadent darling in every way imaginable. And he was such a fool, though he himself, and his adoring mother, who put him on a pedestal like a gilt idol, thought his brains as brilliant as his beauty. Everyone knew that all the Dudleys’ servants were dark-haired, to make Guildford’s own golden head shine all the brighter; Guildford, who washed his hair twice a week with a mixture of lemon juice and chamomile, was known to throw fierce tantrums if any boy with fair hair dared to stand within twenty paces of him. He was the only boy I ever knew who slept with his head in curl rags every night and insisted his hairdresser, standing ready to attend him, be the first person he saw when he opened his eyes each morning. That was Guildford Dudley—Jane’s betrothed. Oh my poor, poor sister!

      “I Will Not.” One moment Jane was speaking, enunciating each word with hard, ironclad clarity, the next her skull was striking the floor and her feet flying up as our lady-mother felled her with one swift blow from her fist.

      “You will,” our lady-mother said with icy calmness.

      Jane raised her throbbing head from the floor and locked eyes with our lady-mother. “I will not,” she repeated. “I will not marry Guildford Dudley.”

      There was an ominous quietness, wrapping us all like a shroud. We all knew what was about to happen; it had happened so many times before it would have been accounted a miracle if it hadn’t. Jane would be taken upstairs to the Long Gallery outside our rooms, where we had always gathered by the fire and played on cold or rainy days. She would be stripped to her shift and made to wait, kneeling like a penitent, before a hard wooden bench. Then we would hear the determined tread of our lady-mother’s leather-booted footsteps, the jingle-jangle of her spurs, and the slap of her riding crop against her palm as she approached. A few words would be exchanged, though to no profit, as Jane would not apologize for whatever offence she had committed. Then our lady-mother would point her whip at the bench and Jane would lift off her shift and position herself over it with her bare back and buttocks fully exposed to the merciless cascade of blows that were about to descend. She would bite her lips until they bled and silent tears would drip down onto the floor as she choked back her sobs and refused to cry out. She would not give our lady-mother the satisfaction of hearing her plead for mercy.

      “To the Long Gallery,” our lady-mother said, and briskly strode out without a backward glance.

      “Oh, Jane!” we cried, huddling close around our sister, as if our love alone could protect her, but she brushed away our arms and walked stoically out after our lady-mother with her head held high and proud, just like a Christian martyr about to be thrown to the lions. There were times when I thought Jane actually relished the role, the sympathy her suffering stirred, and how it made her brilliance shine all the brighter, like a perfect diamond in a dull setting.

      Father returned to munching his marzipan with a nervous vengeance, crying out once when he accidentally bit his own finger, and Kate and I stood helplessly holding hands staring worriedly after Jane, wincing inwardly at each imagined lash of the whip upon her vulnerable flesh.

      In one day we had gone from being three little girls, a trio of sisters playing in the snow, growing drunk and giddy on syllabub, to three maids about to be married.

      Later, when Jane lay upon her stomach, Kate and I knelt on the bed beside her, frowning over the blood-crusted slashes and livid red welts blooming like a riot of red roses all over her back, bottom, and thighs already crisscrossed with several silvery white scars from previous beatings. We cleansed them gently with a cloth dipped in a mixture of yarrow and comfrey followed by a comforting balm of lavender, which Kate also dabbed onto Jane’s temples after she kissed them.

      Finally I asked, “Why did you resist? You knew what would happen if you did, that you would be beaten, and in the end it would change nothing, nothing at all except you would be lying here like this.” I brandished an angry hand over her wounded back, buttocks, and thighs. “None of us has the right to choose whom we will marry. We can only accept and try to make the best of it.”

      Jane didn’t answer me. She lay there silent as a stone. Perhaps she was mulling it over in her mind, searching for an answer, or mayhap she was contemplating a day when the sorrowful tale of how Lady Jane Grey was beaten into submission and forced to marry a fool would be spread far and wide amongst Europe’s most distinguished scholars. The laments that would be expressed when it became known that their bright star, the Reformed Faith’s brightest candle, had been forced to douse her light and put away her books and accept a woman’s lot of marriage and, eventually, motherhood. “What a waste that such a mind should be trapped in a woman’s body!” they would say.

      Though I never dared broach the subject with Jane, and perhaps my thinking is coloured by what came after, I often suspected that though she despised the stories of the Catholic saints, and the suffering that made them martyrs, she secretly used them as her own personal embroidery pattern, envisioning a similar fate for herself. She never bit her tongue and humbly bowed her head and suffered in silence like most chastised and punished children did, nor did she ever school herself to adopt meek ways and avoid further beatings; instead she seemed to provoke and invite them. There were so many times when Jane could have saved herself, but she didn’t. And afterward she always found a way—a sympathetic ear with a gossipy tongue—to tell the world. Jane felt her story must be told; she craved sympathy the way a drunkard does wine and praise as a glutton dreams of devouring a royal banquet.

      “And at least Guildford Dudley is handsome, even if he is a fool,” Kate added, “so it might not be so bad. Perhaps he will be kind? And failing that, he is always good for a laugh.” She giggled. “I once saw him in a shop in London; he bought a grey velvet cloak lined in pale blue silk and fringed and embroidered with silver flowers—it was a very beautiful cloak—because he had just the cat to wear it with. See, Jane?” She prodded her gently when the ghost of a smile twitched at Jane’s lips. “You will always have a husband who will make you smile! And it could be far worse; poor Mary is stuck with Lord Wilton, and he has a face that gives little children nightmares.” Kate made a sour face and shuddered.

      All of a sudden I began to shake and shiver, and then the tears came, uncontrollably, though I did not wish to appear babyish before my sisters, especially after I had just been scolding Jane for resisting what could not be changed, but I could not help it.

      “Mary, what is it?” Kate turned to me. “I am sorry for what I said about Lord Wilton, truly I am. I did not mean to make you cry. Oh please don’t cry, or I will cry too!” And even as she spoke, tears began to trickle down my sister’s lovely face.

      “It’s not that!” I blurted. “It’s just … you are both going to leave me! In only a few weeks … I shall lose you both!”

      “Oh, Mary!” Kate threw her arms about me, and Jane levered up her sore body and crawled over

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