She lifted her goblet with a dismissing gesture, the subject closed.
The abashed Count Feria returned to London to confide to his beloved Jane his forebodings about Elizabeth’s accession. The true faith, he predicted, was doomed in England.
He and Jane later retreated to Spain to live in exile with other English Catholics—Jane, from all I heard, was happy married to her Spanish count, who later became a duke. I wished her well.
Not long after Feria’s visit, I was awakened very early in the morning by a commotion in Hatfield’s courtyard. The house had filled with so many guests that they now overflowed to the outbuildings. The servants were already stirring at dawn, rushing to build fires and ready meals for the many who resided here.
The noise came from more than the usual bustle of servants. I scrambled from my bed and pattered to the window to peer out. James pulled on his nightshirt as he joined me.
A rider had charged through the gates and was pelting hard for the main doors. I felt a ripple move through the house, beginning with the rider and flowing all the way to the attics. I snatched up a wrap and ran downstairs, sliding into Elizabeth’s chamber before anyone else could reach her door.
“Who is it?” Elizabeth asked me from her bed.
“A rider.” My mouth was dry, my words a croak. “I could not see who.”
But we guessed.
Elizabeth tore back her covers and wrenched herself out of bed. “Help me,” she commanded.
I assisted her into a dressing gown to cover her night rail and smoothed her hair into some semblance of order. Only when she was satisfied that she appeared calm and tidy did she let me open the door.
Elizabeth glided regally into her outer chamber, nodding to the crowd of her gentlemen and ladies who’d hastened there as they bowed or curtsied.
The man they stood aside to admit was not the messenger we’d expected. Elizabeth had told Sir Nicholas Throckmorton to come to her when Mary had at last died, but the young man who entered was not Throckmorton.
The youth bowed low and thrust something at Elizabeth. Her face changed as she took it.
I saw what lay on her palm—a plain, unadorned ring, the betrothal ring Mary had worn on her finger since the day Philip had placed it there. She would have parted with it only at her death.
Elizabeth fell to her knees. I ran to assist her, but she waved me away, tears flowing down her cheeks, though she smiled as hard as she could.
“This is the doing of the Lord,” she said, her voice clear. “And it is marvelous in our eyes.”
Part III
Queen
The First Years: 1558 - 1560
Chapter 26
The difference between being seamstress to a princess and seamstress to the queen was that, from the instant Elizabeth received the ring in her chamber, I had not a moment to call my own.
By the end of November in 1558, we’d already made a progress to London, Elizabeth in robes of purple velvet that I and my assistants had hastily sewn for her. We stayed for a week at the Tower, in far more sumptuous apartments than during our imprisonment, then moved to Somerset House.
All this while I was expected to pore over the fabrics, trims, and jewels to bedeck the queen during her everyday audiences and make a start on the coronation gowns.
Mary and her Spanish husband were gone, Elizabeth was queen, and England heaved a collective sigh of relief. A pretty, young, and very English queen was ascending to the throne, and the dark days were over. The people, tired of winter, longed for spring.
Elizabeth’s councilors and courtiers moved into in place within days of the official news that Mary had died. William Cecil was busily making myriad plans in his new position as secretary to the queen.
Aunt Kat joined us happily in London and received Elizabeth’s fond embraces. Elizabeth instantly made Aunt Kat First Lady of the Bedchamber—an honor that surprised everyone but me.
Robert Dudley became her Master of Horse, Uncle John the Master of the Jewel House at the Tower. To James Colby Elizabeth gave a captaincy in her personal guard and promised a knighthood and a baronetcy at her coronation. I became First Seamstress to the queen.
Being First Seamstress meant that though I longed to be near my husband, we perforce saw very little of each other. We had but a few stolen moments whenever we met in a passageway, and a few words before we fell, exhausted, into our bed at night—and that only when Elizabeth allowed me to sleep elsewhere than her chamber.
The coronation was foremost in our minds, and I spent every minute of the day consulting about Elizabeth’s clothes, picking through the sumptuous fabrics presented to her, drawing designs, bullying my assistants to sew faster, and taking up a needle myself when it became clear that we’d never finish in time.
