The Fallen Queen by Emily Purdy Read Free Book Online Page A

and give all the devotion a girl is expected to give her husband and children to the Reformed Faith instead.
    Our lady-mother had worn out her arm and painfully pulled a muscle trying to horsewhip such “nonsense” out of Jane and had to have the doctor in to poultice and bind it. She was angry as a baited bear for a week afterward since her injury forced her to stay home and forgo the pleasure of several hunting parties. And without her restraining presence, Father had gained several pounds at the picnics and banquets that attended these events and had to have most of his clothes let out.
    When our lady-mother heard that he had devoured the entire antlered head of a marzipan stag at the banquet following a royal hunt, she nearly screamed the house down and yanked several of his hunting trophies, his treasured collection of heads and antlers, from the wall and hurled them downstairs. Poor Father only narrowly avoided being impaled by the magnificent antlers of the king stag he had slain at Bradgate. And whenever our father came home, cheeks ruddy from riding hard in the bracing wind, the blood of the kill staining his hunting clothes, in a high good humour ready to boast of his prowess, our lady-mother would send a goblet of wine or a platter of food flying at his head and sulk all the more because she had missed all the fun, the thrill of being in the lead herself, the knife clutched in her hand, seeing the blade glinting in the sun, the scent of blood hovering like perfume in the air accompanied by the music of buzzing flies as she closed in for the kill, and woe to Jane, the cause of her missing her favourite pastime, if she happened to cross our lady-mother’s path at such a time.
    That day at Chelsea, the Lord Admiral had found Jane curled up in a window seat, extra petticoats beneath her plain grey gown cushioning her still tender buttocks and thighs, with an apple in her hand and a book open on her lap, brow furrowed intently beneath the plain grey crescent of her French hood as she pored over the pages, lips moving as she translated the ancient Greek of Plato’s
Phaedo
.
    “A pox upon Plato, it’s too lovely a day, and you’re too lovely a maid to squander on a musty old Greek!” he exclaimed, causing Jane to almost jump out of her skin as he snatched the book and flung it away, giving Mrs. Ellen quite a fright. The poor lady had fallen into a doze over her sewing and suddenly awakened to find her headdress knocked askew by a black-bound volume of ancient philosophy that had come flying at her like a bat.
    “Come out and walk with me, Jane!” the Lord Admiral insisted. And, before she could demur, he already had hold of her hand and was pulling her out into the sunshine, even as she stumbled over her hems and glanced back helplessly and shrugged her shoulders at poor Mrs. Ellen.
    When Mrs. Ellen regained her senses and ran after them, protesting that the Lady Jane must first put on a hat, to protect her complexion as she was prone to freckling, the Lord Admiral took the straw hat she held and sent it sailing across the rose garden where the breeze took it up and landed it upon the river, declaring that he loved freckles, and blushes too, as they lent character to faces that would otherwise be as pale and boring as marble statues, and that for every new freckle the Lady Jane acquired from their little walk he would give her, and Mrs. Ellen too—he paused to flash the nurse a saucy wink—three kisses. And that was the end of that. He gave Jane’s hand a tug and set off along the garden path at a brisk pace, and Mrs. Ellen was left standing there alone, gaping after them, wringing her hands, feeling quite flustered, and wondering whether she should feel charmed by the Lord Admiral or insulted and go straight inside and complain to the Dowager Queen. The Lord Admiral tended to have that effect upon people.
    He led Jane out, beyond the garden, into the Great Park, where a blanket was spread beneath the broad