A Lady Raised High by Laurien Gardner

Author:Laurien Gardner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2006-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

THUS it was that I stood in the queen’s chamber the day after New Year’s and married Jack Carlisle.

The queen had given me a fine New Year’s present, as she had all her ladies, a palfrey of my own with the saddle to go with it. I longed to leap onto this lovely horse and finely tooled furniture and ride far away as fast as I could.

I got married instead.

Anne had dressed me in a kirtle of yellow satin with an overrobe of cloth of gold. Intricate embroidery covered my sleeves and the kirtle, and my hair hung in a honey-brown wave down my back. Mary Howard, now the Duchess of Richmond, and Margaret Douglas had brushed my hair into a shimmering wave and pinned a hood to my head. They had enjoyed themselves dressing me, while I’d stood numbly in the midst of them.

Anne herself clasped a jeweled necklace about my throat. She kissed my cheek, her lips warm. “You are lovely, Frances. May you and your husband have as much happiness in your marriage as I know with mine.”

Anne had begun to believe herself with child again. Her midwives reserved judgment, but she was ill in the mornings and had missed her courses, and would not be swayed in this opinion. She considered herself destined to bear the king’s son.

To emphasize this, she had given Henry as a New Year’s gift a gold and bejeweled fountain. Around the base of this fountain three maidens hovered, water streaming from their nipples. I found it an odd gift to give a man, but Mistress Marshall explained that it was a symbol of fertility.

I clung to Anne after she straightened my jewelry. “Will you still love me?”

“My dear, cleaving yourself to a husband is not the end of things. Nothing will change. You will still wait upon me, and he upon the king. You are old enough to share his bed, and you will, that is the only difference.”

“It is a great difference,” I mumbled.

She laughed, as did the other married ladies, and they began to give me ribald advice.

“If you hold your legs tightly, it does not hurt so much,” Mary Carey said.

“Not even with a king?” Margaret Douglas remarked, pretending innocence.

Mary shot her a venomous look. “Guard your tongue, my lady.”

“Margaret,” Anne chided. I could not decide whether Anne was angry at her for mentioning the fact that Mary had been the king’s mistress, or because Margaret meant to hurt Mary. Margaret fell silent but looked pleased with herself.

Mistress Marshall said, “With most men, it is so quick, you scarce know it happened at all.”

The married women whooped. I did not know what to make of this.

“Be happy if your husband notices you at all,” Jane Rochford, George’s wife, said sourly. A few ladies shot her looks of sympathy.

“Sir John Carlisle is a handsome man,” Anne said. “You are lucky in that. Thank God for it.”

“As handsome as Northumberland?” Margaret Douglas murmured. I stared at her in horror, hoping Anne hadn’t heard.

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