Free The Lady and the Poet by Maeve Haran

this a fine dress?’ Her pale eyes glinted like stone chips when the mason wields his chisel, and looked just as sharp.
    I watched in horror as the other ladies scrambled to their feet. It dawned on me that this was the gown the ladies had just described, the one that had so incensed Her Majesty with its finery. The Queen was wearing Lady Mary’s dress, and it exposed her stockings because she was six inches the taller!
    ‘Tell me, Mary Howard, how does your fine dress suit me? Since you dress like a Queen, tis meet that the Queen should have your dress. Is it too short for me, Mary, what think you?’ And then, not leaving the hapless Mary time to answer, she shouted furiously, ‘Well, Lady Mary, if it be too short for me, it be too fine for you, so none shall wear it.’
    At that the Queen turned on her jewelled heel and walked back into her bedchamber, with all the ladies save Mary in her wake.
    Mary turned towards the long window at the end of the room and I heard a sob escape her.
    I sat, fixed to my seat, not knowing what to do. There was still nosign of my aunt. The sobbing continued until, plucking up my courage, I laid my hand gently on her shoulder.
    ‘I should never have worn that stupid dress. Or listened to my lord Essex’s honeyed words. Except that he told me I looked so well in it. Sometimes I wonder if he does it just to taunt her, to show how great is his power over her.’ She turned towards me, her large eyes glistening with tears.
    It struck me that Lady Mary and I were of an age. Old enough, it seemed, to fuel a man like the Earl of Essex’s desire.
    ‘He is but a serpent sent to try me! And I have failed the test! My father bade me come to find a noble husband and instead I have lost a reputation!’ She seemed to see me properly for the first time. ‘You are young too, Mistress…?’
    ‘More. My name is Ann More.’
    ‘It is so hard because the Queen is old,’ she looked around in case her reputation might not be all she lost if she were heard, ‘yet she keeps about her so many men and women who are young. We are summoned to wait on her. And we wait. And wait. And sometimes our eyes stray where they should not.’
    ‘The Devil makes work for idle hands?’
    Mary Howard laughed at that. ‘And not just hands. The Queen does not want us to have a life, she wants all to herself. She is the Virgin Queen and she would have all her ladies be virgins too. Even the married ones! And everyone knows she will not talk of her succession, though she is well past sixty. It is why the young nobles are restless. The Queen seems to have reigned over us forever—and thank God that she does!’ she added nervously. ‘And yet they are wondering what will come after. The Earl of Essex perhaps?’
    I wondered if this girl were not so innocent as she appeared. Did she allow the Earl to court her because people whispered that he might one day be King, after Elizabeth had left her kingdom without an heir?
    Of a sudden I felt beyond my depth, as if some dangerous currents lapped at my feet. My aunt thought it such an honour, indeed the greatest honour, to wait at Court. And yet, to me the Court seemed, despite its richness, and its gilded splendour, to be a dangerous place, a quicksand where the safe banks were not clearly marked. TheQueen might not persecute her subjects for their beliefs with the fervour her sister had done, but it seemed there were other crimes just as punishable.
    To my relief my aunt appeared, walking quickly from the royal bedchamber, skirts swishing angrily, her lips pursed in annoyance. ‘Well, Ann, we have had a wasted journey. Due to that silly wench…’
    Mary Howard, who had been hiding her reddened eyes by looking out of the window, turned and raised her head proudly.
    ‘The Queen is in an evil temper and boxes the ears of sundry of her ladies. And only because they ask to bring her some soothing rose water from the still room. If I were you,’ she raised a stern eyebrow at the