Brandy Purdy by The Queen's Rivals Page B

daughter, with royal Tudor blood flowing through your veins, if you had been let to live, that would be you down there, puffing out your cheeks and boggling your eyes, cavorting and playing the fool for pennies and crusts from a nobleman’s table! Never forget that, daughter! Only my blood saves you from being a fool in motley, no better than a performing monkey, and worse because you’re no dumb animal and have the wit to understand what is said of you and feel the hurt of it!”
    I understood at once. After that, though I never lost my joy in dancing, it became my secret. I never dared let any but my sisters and, many years later, the husband I thought I never would have, see me dance. When the dressmaker came the next day and unfurled her lengths of vivid, jewel-hued silks, I remembered the rainbow patchwork of the fool’s motley the dancing dwarves had worn and burst into tears, fearing that my lady-mother had changed her mind and, as a punishment for my deformity and the shame it brought my family, had decided to clothe me thus and send me away to join their troupe. How I screamed and bawled in my terror, so incoherent with fear that I could not make its cause clearly understood. And though Kate and Jane were quick to comfort and shush me, before our lady-mother came storming in, and Hetty made excuses for me—“For the life of me, I do not know what has gotten into the child! She is usually so quiet and sweet. I am with her every day and night and I can assure you . . .”—I ever afterward, though my heart craved and cried out for bright colors, chose to clothe myself in darker, more somber, and subdued shades, the better to blend into the shadows and hide, lest I ever be mistaken by my bright, festive attire for a jester, some nobleman or lady’s pet fool, instead of the Duke of Suffolk’s youngest daughter, and someone hurl a penny at my feet and command, “Dance, dwarf, dance!”
    Perhaps that was why I loved dressmaking so, especially for my beautiful Kate, and Jane when she let me. With Kate I could let my fancy fly free and unfettered and deck her peaches and cream and red gold, stormy-blue-eyed beauty with all the bright colors I longed to wear but didn’t dare. For Kate I could stitch gold and green together, like the diamond-shaped panes in a window, and trim it with a double layer of green silk and gold tinsel fringe, to create the kind of gown I, with my dwarf’s body, didn’t dare wear. No one would ever mistake my beautiful Kate for a fool; they would only applaud her dazzling beauty. Kate was my living doll and I loved to dress her. And when she wore the dresses I made, I, vicariously, went out with her, and in those moments I was in the world and of the world, beautiful and brilliant, zesty as a pepper pot but sweet as cream, not hiding shy and nervous in the shadows. In those ruffles and frills, embroideries, cunningly cut bodices, and gracefully draped skirts, I was, through my glorious Kate, the center of attention, adored and admired.
    When Jane pulled back, refusing to dance with us and complaining of the cold, Kate gaily insisted it was spring, glorious spring, the merry month of May, and began singing a rollicking May Day tune full of true love and new flowers, blue skies and bird song, kicking up her heels, as high as she could, seemingly light as air, even in her heavy boots and snow-sodden hems. That was my lively, lovely Kate; she brought sunshine to even the grayest winter day. When I looked at her I could well imagine her in a billowing white gown, with a wreath of May flowers and silk ribbon streamers on her unbound hair, dancing on the warm green grass in her bare feet. I laughed and sang along with her while Jane frowned and shook her head and pronounced decisively, “too much wine in the syllabub!” But Kate just threw back her head and laughed as she spun round and round before, at the end of her song, she flung wide her limbs and fell, flopping back in the snow again, and