Maid of the King's Court by Lucy Worsley

Author:Lucy Worsley [Worsley, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7636-9202-5
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2017-10-18T04:00:00+00:00

Darkness had fallen hours ago, and the gleaming tiles of the palace cloister were icy beneath my slippers. At intervals, the glowing coals of the braziers illuminated the watchful faces of the guards. Yet the tall Yeomen of the Guard waved us through doorway after doorway. For once I was among the chosen few, expected and welcomed. It felt good.

A few days after the marriage and the masque, I was enjoying the chance to pay a visit of my own to the very heart of all the controversy: the queen’s bedchamber.

The Countess of Malpas had asked for my assistance in undressing our mistress. I scurried along a respectful half pace behind her. It was always a bit of a struggle to keep up with the countess. She could move her little legs so fast and yet so smoothly that it looked as if she ran on wheels.

“I commend you, Mistress Camperdowne,” she said over her shoulder as we went along, “for your attentiveness to the queen. It has not gone unnoticed.”

And so I glowed a little with self-satisfaction as we entered the queen’s fire-lit bedchamber and made our curtseys. I had indeed held myself apart from the courtiers who joked about the queen’s strange German headgear and her guttural voice when she tried to speak English.

We were to prepare our mistress for bed, and the countess began to unlace the stiff carapace of the queen’s gown. She always wore black and other dark colours, despite her young age, finely made of course but oddly sombre. The unlacing took quite some time. As usual with the taciturn Queen Anne, silence fell.

“Madam, we hope you may soon be bringing the English court a son!” said the countess brightly and with what sounded to me like rather a desperate lunge at a topic for conversation.

“Ach, so says the king,” she replied, looking down at her hands as she sat patiently, the countess unstitching her back. It was like the shedding of the skin of a caterpillar, and fine billows of the queen’s voluminous white shift came gradually into view as the countess’s hands worked.

“Well, he comes to you every night to do the work of a husband, does he not?” the countess said, in an encouraging tone.

Now Anne looked up with a little smile. Only when she gave her rare and gentle smile did her face remind me of the image Master Holbein had made. There had been great scandal whispered round the court at the trick his picture had played upon us all, for truly the queen was not beautiful. Or maybe we thought this because we only ever saw her frowning or glum.

“Indeed!” she said with a quiet air of triumph. “Every night he come, he kiss me, he say ‘Good night, sweetheart,’ and he sleep just here!” She nodded at the enormous carved bed in the centre of the room.

“Your Majesty, there must be more done than that if you are to bring us a boy!” said the countess, in a voice that sounded slightly shocked.

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