Free The Fallen Queen by Emily Purdy

our lady-mother’s. But that was Jane, true to her own self and no other, tactless in treading over others’ feelings, heedless of whom she might hurt, even if in the end it would turn out to be herself that her insolence and insults injured most.
    The whole visit passed in this manner, with Jane turning a cold back upon our royal cousin, snubbing and rebuffing her every act of warmth and kindness, disdaining her generosity, greeting with hostility and contempt her every attempt to befriend her. When Cousin Mary sat down to sew with us and tell us stories of the saints’ lives, Jane would often claim a sudden upset stomach, an urgent need for the privy, sometimes even daring to loudly break wind to interrupt Cousin Mary’s stories, a rude punctuation on some saint’s work of wonder, before making her excuses and hastily leaving.
    Another time, when Cousin Mary offered to teach us some exquisite embroidery stitches, Jane retorted that her skill would be better spent on plain straight stitches to make simple garments to clothe the poor. And when Cousin Mary introduced us to her confessor, Jane rudely turned her back on him and any other priest she encountered throughout our stay.
    Every day she made a point of emptying her chamber pot from the window, onto the statue of the Virgin Mary in the rose garden below. And when Cousin Mary invited us to play cards, Jane stood up and preached a heated little sermon on the evils of gambling and swept the cards into the fire, denouncing them as the Devil’s tools for ensnaring souls. When Kate admired a pink pearl rosary and Cousin Mary gave it to her, Jane promptly snatched it, breaking the strand and cutting Kate’s hand so that it bled all over her new dress and gave her double the cause to weep. And, after that first night when Cousin Mary so lovingly dressed us, Jane refused to wear any of the finery our royal cousin had given her or any of the beautiful gowns our lady-mother had insisted that Mrs. Ellen pack either.
    Throughout the Yuletide celebrations that marked the Twelve Days of Christmas and New Year’s Day, when gifts were exchanged, Jane appeared constantly in severe, unadorned black velvet, and each time made a point of standing near Cousin Mary with a frown on her face and contempt in her eyes to show up the difference between “the plain, godly garb that best becomes a Protestant maiden and our sour, old maid spinster cousin’s gaudy, overdecorated Papist fripperies.” No matter how sharply our lady-mother scolded or how hard the pinches and slaps, Jane would not draw a veil over her contempt for our Catholic cousin.
    Cousin Mary stoically endured it all and did her best to ignore my sister’s insults and ingratitude, trying hard every time not to let the hurt show, smiling and behaving as though Jane’s conduct were flawless in every respect, sweet as sugar instead of hostile as a hornet, but she would never forget it, and we would not be invited to visit her again nor would she ever again grace us with her presence at Bradgate.
    In March, after we had returned to Bradgate, Thomas Seymour, his handsome rogue’s smile long gone, laid his head upon the block and died, hoping to the last that his brother would send a messenger galloping up with a reprieve; even if it meant spending the rest of his life in prison, that was preferable to death. When our lady-mother, in her spice- and sweat-scented riding habit, swept in amongst a bevy of spotted hunting hounds, barking and howling with laughter as though she were one of them in human form, and repeated what Elizabeth had said when word of her paramour’s death was brought to her—“Today died a man of much wit but very little judgment”—Jane forced herself to stay still and show no emotion, to pull the needle through the cloth and go on with her embroidery as though nothing were wrong, when all she wanted to do was cry.
    “For all her Tudor fire,” Jane said later when we were alone and it was safe for