Free Betrayal in the Tudor Court by Darcey Bonnette Page B

of the Church in England.
    He prayed for continued change.
    Cecily affected genuine cheer in Brey’s gentle presence. With him there were no complications. The rest of the household had sunken into general decline, save Father Alec, who scrambled to uphold a façade of normalcy in the hopes of preserving some semblance of happiness. Cecily did the same. She steered Brey away from unhappy introspection with games and smiles. They rode, they composed little songs and plays together, they lay awake in the nursery, talking and conspiring about the next day’s adventures till the sun began to filter through the bay window. Together they visited Lady Grace in her apartments, always an experience Cecily approached with a measure of dread and hope—dread that she must see the poor woman in such estate, hope that it had somehow improved. It never did. Though Brey was brave when he saw his mother, he cried in Cecily’s arms afterwards. Cecily always let him. She would never tell him not to cry. If Lady Grace were her mother, she’d have cried, too.
    Lord Hal attempted to cheer them by taking them hawking and hunting. Cecily proved an archer unmatched in her abilities, earning admiration and praise by all. With Lord Hal the children also indulged in games of dice and cards. Brey challenged him to games of chess that the boy always won, while Cecily had the luck of beating Lord Hal at cards. Lord Hal, who made the effort to be in good cheer around the children, smiled and laughed. “Two little cheaters I’ve got!” he would exclaim at the close of each game he lost. He’d shake his finger at them. “I don’t know how, but wait till I have you figured out! Then we’ll see who emerges the victor!”
    Cecily and Brey exchanged a triumphant glance. They would never let Lord Hal win if they could help it.
    It went along like this, a little routine of emotional preservation and survival that the children had fallen into until the beginning of their early teens. And then one ordinary day, for a perfectly ordinary reason, everything changed.
    Cecily woke up with her courses.
    She knew what had happened. For weeks her tummy had been cramping, her back aching, and the two tiny swells that served as breasts hurt so much she could not even cross her arms. For a while she just lay there, contemplating her new status.
    She was something resembling a woman. It was an overwhelming thought. She did not feel altogether grown-up. She had imagined that when a woman began her menses she received some kind of epiphany, as though with the ability to bear children came the innate knowledge of how to be everything woman. She was disappointed. There were no divine awakenings; she was, in fact, quite uninspired, hungry, and irritable.
    Mirabella had been removed from the nursery years before for just this reason. This meant she, too, would be given her own chamber. Her nursery days were over. No more conspiring with Brey until the wee hours of the morning, no more behaving as the carefree child. Everything was going to change. She closed her eyes, squeezing back hot tears.
    At last she called for Nurse Matilda, who cleaned her up and gave her instructions on how to care for her new plight.
    “What’s happening?” Brey inquired upon hearing the commotion. “What’s going on? What’s wrong with Cecily?”
    “Nothing!” Cecily and Matilda shouted at once.
    The startled lad pouted and went back to bed.
    Cecily, now cleansed and uncomfortable, quit the nursery.
    She needed to be alone. She needed to think about womanhood.
    “You will have to wear the proper corset now,” Mirabella told her after Cecily imparted the unhappy news of her ascendance to Venus. They were in Mirabella’s chamber, which was as unlike the nursery as a pup to a mule. There was a prie-dieu, of course, and several portraits of the Blessed Virgin, one of her holding baby Jesus to her breast, all surrounded in a halo of golden light, another of her alone with a sparkling rose.