precious oranges in a specially built hothouse. Each tree was planted in its own silver tub emblazoned with the fierce Bullen—I mean Boleyn! —bull crest, cooed over, and pampered like a royal infant, even serenaded with Spanish love songs and lullabies. The precious fruit they bore was kept in locked boxes in the larder to which only I, as lady of the house, had the key lest the servants pilfer themselves a rare and costly treat.
Thomas delighted in displaying the fruit elegantly arranged in gilt bowls, piled in pyramids punctuated with black cloves and orange blossoms, and serving our guests orange slices and orange water to wash their fingers or cleanse their palates between courses. Our cook was famous for preparing a bitter orange sauce for our meat, fowl, and fish. Marmalade made from the best bitter oranges of Seville always graced our table, and curls of orange peel crowned our otherwise bland custards, imbuing them with a lively touch of color and a hint of zesty citrus flavor, which our guests always pronounced “a heavenly delight!” Whenever he hosted hunting parties, Thomas would order our cook to fry orange slices to garnish the fresh kill or spear them raw and juicy to the roasting meat as it spun on a spit.
Every year the two of us, clad in orange from head to toe with accents of black and gold and embroidered or silken petaled snowy orange blossoms, presided over a ball to celebrate the precious yield from my husband’s orange trees and dazzled our guests with a menu of sumptuous dishes sauced, spiced, garnished, or flavored with oranges, with a massive orange cake rising out of the midst of it all, decked with candy orange blossoms and candied orange slices.
Around our feet as we posed, a fluffy little white dog, with a tail like a jaunty plume curling over the brim of a gentleman’s round velvet cap, yapped and pranced. It was all I could do not to kick it across the room and scream for the servants to take it away. Thomas had brought it home from Austria as a gift for me, not out of any genuine husbandly affection, mind you, but for outward show, to impress those who beheld me with my new pet, the breed being then quite uncommon to our English shores. It yapped and broke wind constantly, and whenever Thomas was about I could not wait for him to depart so I could banish that yapping, stinking snowball to the kennels.
Thomas tarried only long enough to approve the artist’s sketches, then left me to pose alone and rode back to London as the King had need of him. But I didn’t care; I was glad to see him go, and even gladder to know that the artist had a penchant for pregnant women, and we were of one mind about that beastly little dog. He dallied at Hever with me as long as he dared, creeping down the corridor to warm my bed at night and enlivening dull afternoons when I grew weary of posing and he of mixing his pigments and wielding his brushes. But he had other commissions awaiting him in London, and, all too soon, he had to go, and I was left alone with my mother-in-law and the servants again, screaming inside and sitting on my hands to keep from tearing the hair out of my scalp when Lady Margaret taught Prince Piddle Pants to ride “like a gallant knight” upon the back of that endlessly barking and farting ball of white fluff, and my ears were brutally assaulted for hours with the shrill cacophony of the chattering monkey, the yapping dog, and the witchy cackle and gleeful encouragement of my mad mother-in-law.
As the spring flowers bloomed so did the baby inside me, making me miserable with swollen feet and ankles, aching legs marred by sore protruding veins, and ugly blemishes and unsightly blotches upon the porcelain pale perfection of my complexion. My hair lost its luster. And every day I watched and wept as my formerly trim waist grew thick and stout and my formerly flat stomach even more grossly protuberant. I felt so ungainly and ugly; for the first time in my life, I wished I
Thomas delighted in displaying the fruit elegantly arranged in gilt bowls, piled in pyramids punctuated with black cloves and orange blossoms, and serving our guests orange slices and orange water to wash their fingers or cleanse their palates between courses. Our cook was famous for preparing a bitter orange sauce for our meat, fowl, and fish. Marmalade made from the best bitter oranges of Seville always graced our table, and curls of orange peel crowned our otherwise bland custards, imbuing them with a lively touch of color and a hint of zesty citrus flavor, which our guests always pronounced “a heavenly delight!” Whenever he hosted hunting parties, Thomas would order our cook to fry orange slices to garnish the fresh kill or spear them raw and juicy to the roasting meat as it spun on a spit.
Every year the two of us, clad in orange from head to toe with accents of black and gold and embroidered or silken petaled snowy orange blossoms, presided over a ball to celebrate the precious yield from my husband’s orange trees and dazzled our guests with a menu of sumptuous dishes sauced, spiced, garnished, or flavored with oranges, with a massive orange cake rising out of the midst of it all, decked with candy orange blossoms and candied orange slices.
Around our feet as we posed, a fluffy little white dog, with a tail like a jaunty plume curling over the brim of a gentleman’s round velvet cap, yapped and pranced. It was all I could do not to kick it across the room and scream for the servants to take it away. Thomas had brought it home from Austria as a gift for me, not out of any genuine husbandly affection, mind you, but for outward show, to impress those who beheld me with my new pet, the breed being then quite uncommon to our English shores. It yapped and broke wind constantly, and whenever Thomas was about I could not wait for him to depart so I could banish that yapping, stinking snowball to the kennels.
Thomas tarried only long enough to approve the artist’s sketches, then left me to pose alone and rode back to London as the King had need of him. But I didn’t care; I was glad to see him go, and even gladder to know that the artist had a penchant for pregnant women, and we were of one mind about that beastly little dog. He dallied at Hever with me as long as he dared, creeping down the corridor to warm my bed at night and enlivening dull afternoons when I grew weary of posing and he of mixing his pigments and wielding his brushes. But he had other commissions awaiting him in London, and, all too soon, he had to go, and I was left alone with my mother-in-law and the servants again, screaming inside and sitting on my hands to keep from tearing the hair out of my scalp when Lady Margaret taught Prince Piddle Pants to ride “like a gallant knight” upon the back of that endlessly barking and farting ball of white fluff, and my ears were brutally assaulted for hours with the shrill cacophony of the chattering monkey, the yapping dog, and the witchy cackle and gleeful encouragement of my mad mother-in-law.
As the spring flowers bloomed so did the baby inside me, making me miserable with swollen feet and ankles, aching legs marred by sore protruding veins, and ugly blemishes and unsightly blotches upon the porcelain pale perfection of my complexion. My hair lost its luster. And every day I watched and wept as my formerly trim waist grew thick and stout and my formerly flat stomach even more grossly protuberant. I felt so ungainly and ugly; for the first time in my life, I wished I
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