Deborah Harkness - Shadow of Night

“But it is French!” Mary said, aghast. “You cannot wear that!”

Embroidered satins, luscious velvets, sparkling silks interwoven with real gold and silver thread, and piles of diaphanous material of unknown purpose passed by my nose.

“This is too much, Mary. Whatever are you thinking?” I said, narrowly avoiding collision with still one more servant.

“No one goes into battle without proper armor,” Mary said with her characteristic blend of airiness and tartness. “And Her Majesty, may God preserve her, is a formidable opponent. You will require all the protection my wardrobe can afford.”

Together we picked through the options. How we were going to make the necessary alterations so that Mary’s clothes would fit me was a mystery, but I knew better than to inquire. I was Cinderella, and the birds of the forest and the fairies of the wood would be called upon if the Countess of Pembroke felt it necessary.

We finally settled on a black gown thickly embroidered with silver fl e u r s - d e - l i s and roses. It was a design from last year, Mary said, and lacked the large cartwheel-shaped skirts now in vogue. Elizabeth would be pleased by my frugal disregard for the whims of fashion.

“And silver and black are the queen’s colors. That’s why Walter is always wearing them,” Mary explained, smoothing the puffed sleeves.

But my favorite garment by far was the white satin petticoat that would be visible at the front of the divided skirts. It was embroidered, too, with mainly flora and fauna, accompanied by bits of classical architecture, scientific instruments, and female personifications of the arts and sciences. I recognized the same hand at work as that of the genius who’d created Mary’s shoes. I avoided touching the embroidery to make sure, not wanting Lady Alchemy to walk off the petticoat before I’d had the opportunity to wear it.

It took four women two hours to get me dressed. First I was laced into my clothes, which were padded and puffed to ridiculous proportions, with thick quilting and a wide farthingale that was just as unwieldy as I had imagined. My ruff was suitably large and ostentatious, though not, Mary assured me, as large as the queen’s would be. Mary clipped an ostrich fan to my waist. It hung down like a pendulum and swayed when I walked. With its feathery plumes and ruby- and pearl-studded handle, the accessory was easily worth ten times what my mousetrap cost, and I was glad that it was literally attached to me at the hip.

The subject of jewelry proved controversial. Mary had her coffer with her and pulled out one priceless item after another. But I insisted on wearing Ysabeau’s earrings rather than the ornate diamond drops that Mary suggested. They went surprisingly well with the rope of pearls Joan slung over my shoulder. To my horror, Mary dismembered the chain of broom blossoms that Philippe had given me for my wedding and pinned one of the floral links to the center of my bodice. She caught the pearls up with a red bow and tied it to the pin. After a long discussion, Mary and Françoise settled on a simple pearl choker to fill my open neckline. Annie affixed my gold arrow to my ruff with another jeweled pin, and Françoise dressed my hair so that it framed my face in a puffed-out heart shape. For the final touch, Mary settled a pearl-studded coif on the back of my head, covering the braided knots that Françoise piled there.

Matthew, who had been in an increasingly foul mood as the hour of doom approached, managed to smile and look suitably impressed.

“I feel like I’m in a stage costume,” I said ruefully.

“You look lovely—formidably so,” he assured me. He looked splendid, too, in his solid black velvet suit of clothes with tiny touches of white at the wrists and collar. And he was wearing my portrait miniature around his neck. The long chain was looped up on a button so that the moon faced outward and my image was close to his heart.

My first glimpse of Richmond Palace was the top of a creamy stone tower, the royal standard snapping in the breeze. More towers soon appeared, sparkling in the crisp winter air like those of a castle out of a fairy story. Then the vast sprawl of the palace complex came into view: the strange rectangular arcade to the southeast, the three-storied main building to the southwest, surrounded by a wide moat, and the walled orchard beyond. Behind the main building were still more towers and peaks, including a pair of buildings that reminded me of Eton College. An enormous crane rose up into the air beyond the orchard, and swarms of men unloaded boxes and parcels for the palace’s kitchens and storerooms. Baynard’s Castle, which had always seemed very grand to me, appeared in retrospect a slightly down-at-the-heels former royal residence.

The oarsmen directed the barge to a landing. Matthew ignored the stares and questions, preferring to let Pierre or Gallowglass respond for him. To the casual observer, Matthew looked slightly bored. But I was close enough to see him scanning the riverbank, alert and on guard.

I looked across the moat to the two-storied arcade. The ground floor’s arches were open to the air, but the upper floor was glazed with leaded windows. Eager faces peered out, hoping to catch a glimpse of the new arrivals and obtain a morsel of gossip. Matthew quickly put his bulk between the barge and the curious courtiers, obscuring me from easy view.

Liveried servants, each one bearing a sword or a pike, led us through a simple guard chamber and into the main part of the palace. The warren of ground-floor rooms was as hectic and bustling as any modern office building, with servants and court officers rushing to meet requests and obey orders. Matthew turned to the right; our guards politely blocked his way.

“She’ll not see you in private before you’ve been draped over tenterhooks in public,” Gallowglass muttered under his breath. Matthew swore.

We obediently followed our escorts to a grand staircase. It was thronged with people, and the clash of human, floral, and herbal scents was dizzying. Everybody was wearing perfume in an effort to ward off unpleasant odors, but I had to wonder if the result was worse. When the crowd spotted Matthew, there were whispers as the sea of people parted. He was taller than most and gave off the same brutal air as most of the other male aristocrats I’d met. The difference was that Matthew really was lethal—and on some level the warmbloods recognized it.

After passing through a series of three antechambers, each filled to bursting with padded, scented, and jeweled courtiers of both sexes and all ages, we finally arrived at a closed door. There we waited. The whispers around us rose to murmurs. A man shared a joke, and his companions tittered. Matthew’s jaw clenched.

“Why are we waiting?” I said, my voice pitched so that only Matthew and Gallowglass could hear.

“To amuse the queen—and to show the court that I am no more than a servant.”

When at last we were admitted to the royal presence, I was surprised to find that this room, too, was full of people. “Private” was a relative term in the court of Elizabeth. I searched for the queen, but she was nowhere in sight. Fearing that we were going to have to wait again, my heart sank.

“Why is it that for every year I grow older, Matthew Roydon seems to look two years younger?” said a surprisingly jovial voice from the direction of the fireplace. The most lavishly dressed, heavily scented, and thickly painted creatures in the room turned slightly to study us. Their movement revealed Elizabeth, the queen bee seated at the center of the hive. My heart skipped a beat. Here was a legend brought to life.

“I see no great change in you, Your Majesty,” Matthew said, inclining slightly at the waist. “ ‘Semper eadem ,’ as the saying goes.” The same words were painted in the banner under the royal crest that ornamented the fireplace. Always the same .