Emily Purdy - The Fallen Queen

My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?

—Matthew 27:46

If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

—Oscar Wilde

While I Lived, Yours.

—The inscription engraved inside the ring Katherine Grey sent her husband from her deathbed

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page The Fallen Queen EMILY PURDY

Epigraph My God, why hast Thou forsaken me? —Matthew 27:46 If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life. —Oscar Wilde While I Lived, Yours. —The inscription engraved inside the ring Katherine Grey sent her husband from her deathbed

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Postscript

Further Reading

Questions for Discussion

Author’s Note

Books by Emily Purdy

Copyright

About the Publisher

October 31, 1577

A small house in the parish of

St. Botolph’s-Without-Aldgate, London

What a splendid study in contradictions I am! Inside as well as out. A grown woman, wizened and white-haired, old before her time, trapped in a stunted, child-sized body, with a soul dark and stormy lit by flashes of brilliance, just like the sodden black velvet night outside my window, where the lightning flits, flashes, and flies, like a swift silver needle over the sky’s dark bodice, there again, then gone, in and out under a fluttering veil of frosty rain, and the thunder rumbles, grumbles, and booms just like a master tailor bellowing at his seamstresses to sew faster, faster, the gown must be finished in time. Though sage sits burning in a copper bowl upon my windowsill, an old custom to keep the ghosts away upon this night when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is said to shimmer gossamer-thin, moth-eaten and frayed with holes and gaps through which any spirit might seep or creep, and all the sane and sensible folk of London have shuttered their windows tight, I alone amongst my neighbours have boldly thrown the casements wide in welcome to all those I have loved and lost. The sage says, “Stay away!” but the open windows, like my heart, cry out, “Come in!” My mind conjures up a picture of Kate lovingly, indulgently, laughing at me, coppery ringlets shimmering and bobbing as she shakes her head, the stormy blue jewels of her eyes sparkling with glee, an amused smile traipsing merrily across her pink lips like a troupe of happy-go-lucky strolling players, as she bends to kiss my cheek and hug me tight, and, with mirth and a pinch of exasperation, in mock seriousness teasingly intones, “Mary, Mary, so contrary!” I can still smell her cinnamon rose perfume, as strong as if she were still holding me. And oh how I wish she were! I miss my pert, vivacious sister, so saucy and sweet, a lovely, lively girl; a contradiction herself like a cream-filled pastry with a spicy red pepper hidden inside, a girl with a song always in her heart who danced through life as though she wore a pair of enchanted slippers … before love weighed her down and made her so terribly sad that in the end she died of it.

Tears fill my eyes at this vivid vision of Kate, so real, achingly real, I can almost reach out and touch her, yet—another contradiction!—it almost makes me want to laugh, to throw back my head and cackle like a madwoman at my old, foolish self. And why should I not? After the life I’ve led, the sights I’ve seen, the secrets I’ve kept, the dangerous confidences that have been whispered into my ears, and the love I’ve had wrenched right out of my arms, consigned to the grave with my heart thudding down after like an anchor landing on the coffin lid, the memories that keep me wide awake in my bed at night, I think I’ve earned the right to squat down on my haunches and howl at the moon and give my neighbours cause to call me “Mad Mary” instead of “Crouchback Mary,” “Crook-Spine Mary,” “Devil-Damned and Twisted Mary,” “Milady Gargoyle,” or “The Goblin Lady.” A mind, and heart, can only take so much, and once broken, nothing is ever as strong as it was before; the mended seams are always vulnerable and weak. And it doesn’t really matter what they call me; I’ve heard all the names before. I’ve been hearing them since I was old enough to understand words.

The nursery maids spoke of me in fearful whispers as “the changeling” and “the goblin child,” and speculated that God had sent me to curse the Greys for their overweening pride and grandiose ambitions. But none of that matters now; I learned early that I had to be practical and discreet in order to survive, that I would only waste my life if I spent it weeping for what could never be, and that even though the darkness of the shadows may be frightening, sometimes it’s safer there, especially for someone little and strange like me.

By now I’ve become accustomed and numb, or at least indifferent, to it all. I cannot even imagine my life without the whispers, stares, gasps of horror, laughter, jests, and insults, fast-turned backs and swiveled heads, and pointing fingers, and the children who run alongside me and mock my wobble-waddle walk. The threats that if they don’t obey their parents and eat their porridge, learn their hornbook, clean their teeth, or say their prayers at night they will grow up to look like me has rendered many an unruly child the model of docility and impeccable obedience. And I’ve heard the stories describing how, whilst carrying me, my mother was frightened by a monkey that climbed in through her open window as she lay sleeping one stormy night and burrowed beneath her bedclothes for warmth, and when she turned in her sleep, inadvertently startling the little beast, it bit her; some stories even crudely name the privy part into which it sank its teeth, prematurely bringing on her protracted and hellish labour and my deformity.

Of course it isn’t true, as anyone who ever knew my lady-mother can readily attest. If a monkey had ever dared such a presumption, Frances Grey would have sat up and dealt him such a slap his eyes would have been forever crossed and he would have flown clear across the room and smashed into the wall and probably left half his brains there. But it makes a good story, and that’s what people like. And mayhap I should be flattered; such stories are like little gifts of immortality, truth or lies; as long as the tales are told, the people they are about never really die. Though ’tis sad to be remembered as a figure of fun or fright, one of Mother Nature’s mistakes.

Stubby, lumpy, and crooked, I stand no taller than a child of five, the age at which I stopped growing. Mangled but alive, I endure a life of pain, with a hunched and twisted spine that pushes my right shoulder higher than the left, a constant grinding ache in my back, hips, and knees, as though each joint possesses a full mouth of blackened, rotten teeth, and the limp seems to worsen every year. If I were to lift my skirts and roll down my stockings, I would see the veins bulging from my aching legs like a swarm of blue and purple snakes, swollen and pulsing with pain that I must take a syrup of poppies to subdue. Now I walk with a cane, a regal little staff crowned with a luminous orb of moonstone my husband made for me, knowing I would someday have need of it when he might not be there to carry me. Though it wasn’t always so. I used to be right sprightly in my youth and even danced on my wedding night.