Читать книгу The Boleyn Inheritance - Philippa Gregory - Страница 29

I am to help the queen to dress for her wedding and I have to get up extremely early to get everything ready, I would rather not get up early, but it is nice to be singled out from the other girls who sleep so late and so lazy. Really it’s very bad of them to lie in bed so late when some of us are up and working for Lady Anne. Truly, everyone but me is completely idle.

I lay out her dress as she is washing in her closet. Catherine Carey helps me spread out the skirt and the underskirts on the closed chest as Mary Norris goes for her jewels. The skirt is enormous, like a great fat spinning top, I would rather die than marry in a dress like this; the greatest beauty in the world could not help but look like a pudding, waddling out to be eaten. It is hardly worth being queen if you have to go around like a tent, I think. The cloth is extremely fine – cloth of gold – and it is heavy with the most wonderful pearls, and she has a coronet to wear. Mary has put it out before the mirror and if no-one else was here I would try it on, but already, though it is so early, there are half a dozen of us, servants and maids and ladies in waiting, and so I have to give it a little polish and leave it alone. It is very finely wrought, she brought it from Cleves with her and she told me that the spiky bits are supposed to be rosemary, which her own sister wore as a fresh herb in her hair at her wedding. I say it looks like a crown of thorns and her lady secretary gives me a sharp look and doesn’t translate my remark. Just as well, really.

She will wear her hair loose and when she comes out of the bathroom she sits before her silver looking-glass, and Catherine brushes her hair with long, smooth strokes, like you would a horse’s tail. She is fair-haired, to be just to her she is quite golden-haired, and wrapped in a bath sheet and glowing from her wash, she looks well this morning. She is a little pale, but she smiles at all of us, and she seems happy enough. If I were her I would be dancing for joy to be Queen of England. But I suppose she is not the dancing sort.

Off she goes for the wedding and we all fall in behind her in strict order of importance, which means that I am so far back it is hardly worth my while being there, nobody will be able to see me, even though I am wearing my new gown that is trimmed with silver thread, the most costly thing I have ever owned. It is a very pale grey-blue, and suits my eyes. I never looked better; but it is not my wedding and nobody pays any attention to me at all.