The Sixth Wife by Suzannah Dunn Page B

me, murmuring along with my blood.

Sixteen
    The next day, I didn’t – as I’d expected – sleep in, but woke in good time. I didn’t get up, though, before savouring my surroundings. That’s what the room demanded, glimmering beyond my bedposts, and I gave myself up to it. First, the ceiling: deep blue and lush with fat, gilded, sharp-pointed stars. If only the real sky were like that, rather than ruffled with cloud and smeared with chill, silvery dust. Then the walls: tapestries in which the thread was so rich and new that it gleamed, changing hue if I moved my head.The scenes were biblical but the scene-stealers were their gardens, trees resplendent with sun-rich fruits: oranges, lemons, pomegranates. Not for this room the usual English grassy hills and grey castles, the pale horses and feeble deer. And this was just a guest room.
    I took my time in getting ready. There was no rush; I had nothing in particular to do that day, or any day I was here,being free of the responsibilities of running my own household. Bella took several gowns from their buckram bags before I made my choice. Sleeves, too: we had time to try pair after pair.Then, when I was as ready as I’d ever be, and had learned that Kate was still in her rooms, that’s where I headed.
    At Kate’s bedroom door, I could hear voices, but not the respectful murmuring of servants or attendant ladies. It was busy in there. Something was going on.
    Kate was dressed, but lying on her bed. Queen of this house. Beside her bed were those who could have been said to be her jesters: Elizabeth,Thomas and Mrs Ashley. No sign of Jane Grey. Elizabeth was sitting on a chair; Thomas was positioned behind her, plaiting her hair under Mrs Ashley’s supervision and making a spectacle of his incompetence, feigning helplessness. Mrs Ashley was responding heartily to his little show: laughing, flushed, fingertips to her breastbone. Across the room, a cluster of attending ladies – Marcella, Agnes, Frankie – were agog and giggling. Quite an audience Thomas had. Elizabeth, though, held herself still, as required. She was good at it. A regal bearing, definitely: that long neck, the held-high chin.
    Mrs Ashley was squealing, ‘What are you doing?
    Thomas hissed, ‘But this is what you’re telling me to do!’
    Elizabeth chimed in,‘Oh,Thomas!’Trying to be scathing, raising her glimmering, sketchy eyebrows.
    Thomas protested, ‘You’ve been doing this all your lives, you women.’
    Elizabeth gave in to impatience and raised a hand to the back of her head, feeling her way.
    ‘Uh-uh!’Thomas again. ‘Stay still . Have a little faith. I’m nearly there. Don’t meddle .’
    Elizabeth dropped the hand back into her lap. ‘Meddle,’ she repeated, mock-disdainful.
    ‘We have to get you respectable,’ he murmured, the show now of concentration. ‘This’ – he scooped up a heavy skein of her hair – ‘has a life of its own. It’s not to be trusted.’ Then, ‘Why do you women make life so difficult for yourselves?’
    Elizabeth smirked, ‘You just said it was easy for us.’
    ‘For you, yes , practised as you all are. But it’s all so complicated. Well, isn’t it?’
    Mrs Ashley trilled, ‘Oh, Thomas…’
    ‘I do try . At least I try . D’you want to try shaving me? Hmm?’
    Elizabeth’s eyes glinted, her mouth twitched. ‘I have a fairly steady hand.’
    Kate had been smiling that warm, full smile at me: Come over here , it said. She patted the bed, and I perched. She looked at Thomas, Elizabeth and Mrs Ashley, and then back to me, the look wry, knowing, amused.
    ‘Yes,’ I agreed, because I had to, was being asked to. Agreed to what precisely, though, I didn’t know. I hated it, being sucked into Thomas and Elizabeth’s audience just because I happened to be there. Hated having to watch – and, worse, applaud – a grown man behaving like a schoolboy. What had happened to the interestingly straightforward man I’d been talking with in the