The Fallen Queen by Emily Purdy

again, and I tumbled down beside her, reaching out to pull Jane down so that we lay like three May flowers blooming in a row, and finally even Jane had to smile. And then she began to laugh along with us.
    “Good-bye, Miss Glum and Serious!” Kate crowed and turned to plant a smacking kiss on our sister’s laughter-flushed cheek.
    It was thus we lay, wet, red-faced, and giggling uncontrollably in the snow, feeling high as the sky from the syllabub, when Mrs. Ellen came out to tell us that our father required our presence in the library; we must come in at once and change out of our wet clothes and make ourselves presentable for him “like proper young ladies, a duke’s daughters, which is what you are, not silly peasant girls frolicking in the snow.” As she walked away, I was tempted to hurl a snowball at her back, but Jane already had her arm raised, a ball of snow cupped in her gloved hand, poised to let it fly when Kate and I sprang on her and wrestled her back down into the snow. Sometimes Jane made it devilishly hard to like her with her constant frowns and moody and preachy Protestant airs, but she was our sister, and we
always
loved her and did not want to see her bring another punishment upon herself. No one ever knew what our lady-mother might do in her efforts to discipline and mould and shape Jane into her idea of a perfect young lady. It was easy for her to frighten Kate and me into good behaviour—our lady-mother was more fearsome than any ogre or witch out of a fairy story—but with Jane it was a different story.
    For a time, our lady-mother had been keen on devising punishments to fit the crime—when Jane turned up her nose at eating a certain dish, our lady-mother would insist that she be served no other fare, and for each meal have that same exact plate set before her even after what was upon it had grown quite putrid. Another time, when Jane was a tiny girl about to have her first proper gown, a grown lady’s habiliments in miniature, replete with stays, layered petticoats, jewelled headdress, embroidered kirtle, and flowing sleeves with full, fur cuffs, and Jane had shown her willful side and rebelled against the gold and pearl embellished white velvet, clinging steadfast to her familiar old blue frock, our lady-mother made her go stark naked for a week, attending her lessons and sitting at the table thus, and even sewing in the parlour, and dancing in the Great Hall, while our lady-mother coolly explained to their guests why Jane was being punished in this manner, and slapping, pinching, yanking, and sharply rebuking Jane whenever she wept and tried to hide or cover herself, refusing even when she grovelled at her feet and begged to be allowed to put on the new dress to cover her shameful nakedness. By the time the punishment was finished, Jane hated the white and gold dress even more, but she consented to wear it, and when she dribbled gravy on the bodice, she wept in terror at what our lady-mother would do to her.
    Their quarrels over clothes lay dormant for a few years until Jane caught the fever of the Reformed Religion; only then would she dare reassert her disdain for ornate garb again, and by that time our lady-mother, sensing that Jane was incorrigible, and that thinking up suitable punishments for her was more trouble than it was worth, had long since contented herself with beatings and blows and fortnight long repasts of only salt fish, water, and boiled mutton bones that Jane licked and sucked ravenously as her belly grumbled and ached.
    Though I did not know it at the time, that summons to the library would change our lives forever. Nothing would ever be the same again. Yet I felt not even a twinge of fear or foreboding then; instead I was smiling, swishing my midnight blue velvet skirts and humming a lively air, as I watched Kate skip lightheartedly ahead of us with a song on her lips to first keep her promise to Cook and give her the pail, still half filled with our wonderful,