Crossing Over (11 page)

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Authors: Anna Kendall

BOOK: Crossing Over
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By now, I wished the royal couple in the country of the Dead.
But this madness would go on only two days more. Tomorrow was the wedding, and the next day Princess Isabelle would take her new consort back to her own queendom. The laundresses gossiped that the princess’s mother was dying, and very soon Princess Isabelle would be Queen Isabelle. It was a good alliance for Prince Rupert, even if his bride was a full six years older than he. Meanwhile, tonight was a great masque, which had required that endless bolts of cloth not only be ironed but also that they be dyed yellow, the color of the princess’s court. That had proved a messy business. My hands, face, hair were streaked with yellow. Even my feet had ended up bright yellow.
The servants’ kitchen was frantic with dinner preparations. Maggie, her fair hair greasy and falling around a face smudged with flour, scowled at me. “Roger! Why are you here?”
“I’m starving.”
“Why are you
yellow
?”
“Dye.”
“Why are you swaying like that?”
“I’m exhausted.”
“We’re all exhausted.” But her tone softened, sounding almost as she had in the days before I had mentioned Soulvine Moor and so lost her prickly friendship. She snatched a meat pie from a table and thrust it at me. “Here. Don’t tell—these are for Her Plainness’s table.”
“Is the princess very plain, then?”
“I didn’t say that—no, I
didn’t
. Now go away, can’t you see we have enough people here already?”
It looked like half the palace was here; the rushing, shouting cooks and maids and serving men were packed as thick as chickens in a crate, and just as agitated. It reminded me of my own brief glimpse of the city outside the palace walls, in the summer. How long ago that seemed.
I gobbled my pie, too tired to savor the exquisite taste, and fell asleep in a corner piled with empty crates smelling of vegetables.
Music woke me. I leapt to my feet and for a long moment I thought I must be dreaming. This did not happen in servants’ halls!
Lords and ladies streamed into the hall, accompanied by their musicians. All save the musicians were masked, their faces covered with fantastic devisings of feathers, silver, jewels, cloth of gold, beads, and fur. Laughing, calling, dancing, staggering—they were clearly drunk. The few servants sitting at tables, eating dishes left over from dinner—what time was it? How long had I slept?—leapt to their feet and then sank into curtsies and bows.
“So this is where that vile tart came from!” someone screamed. More calls, derision, laughter. Their bright silks and velvets and satins filled the hall with green. All green—this was the young queen’s household, then. A courtier seized one of the serving maids and swung her, terrified, into a dance to fiddle and flute.
“Have you never seen a kitchen before, Hal?”
“Hal sees only bedchambers!”
“I have never seen a kitchen. I thought food grew . . . grew . . .” The man turned aside, tore off his mask, and vomited over a table piled high with fresh bread.
“Ugh!”
“Put him in one of those crates!”
“Put him in the stew pot!”
But that drunken remark, which I did not understand, silenced a few of the courtiers, and all of the servants. The servants’ faces twisted with disgust, or fear, and then immediately stiffened again. No one, not even the kitchen steward, knew what we should do. The fiddling and dancing and laughter and shouting went on.
“Give Hal some more ale!”
“Give him a kitchen wench!”
“Ale! Ale!”
“The queen!”
Instantly the musicians stopped playing. Courtiers and servants alike sank to their knees. Silence descended like hard rain, and the old queen came into the hall.
She was alone, save for her personal guard of two Blues. Queen Eleanor, sixty years old, had ruled for forty-one years, since the death of her mother in a hunting accident. She wore a gown of pale blue silk embroidered with darker blue at the hem. The gown, like her simple silver crown, was austere and quiet and expensive. Her face was deeply lined, her hair white as an egret’s wing. But she stood straight and tall, and power emanated from her like steady heat.
No one moved or spoke.
When the old queen did so, it was in a low voice that carried into every corner of the hall, into every apprehensive ear. Her gaze swept over the courtiers. “None of you belongs here.”
I realized then that I was still standing, frozen beside the vegetable crates. I tried to sink to the floor without calling attention to myself.
The queen’s voice rang out imperiously. “Caroline.”
The rustle of skirts moving forward; this lady had not knelt. She removed her mask of green feathers over cloth of gold. “Yes.”
So this was the young queen!
Her mother said, “You especially do not belong here.”
“This is my palace. And this is my merriment, before my brother must leave us.”
Queen Caroline, thirty-seven years old, was beautiful. Also dangerous, in some way I could feel but not understand. Her body curved lusciously under a tight green bodice, but so did many others among the ladies. The difference lay in her eyes, black with silver glints, as if something shining were submerged in dark water. The difference lay in the set of her white shoulders, the thrust of her lovely breasts, the very intricacy of her coiffure, black as her eyes, braided and puffed and set with jewels in contrast to the old queen’s smooth white hair.
The two women stared at each other. I could see both their faces clearly. The old monarch stared at her daughter. Although neither queen grimaced, hatred crackled between them. And neither lowered her chin nor blinked.
Queen Eleanor said icily, “A strange merriment, to terrorize the kitchen servants on the eve of your brother’s wedding.”
“It is my choice,” the young queen said, “and mine to make.”
“It is not. Rupert!”
The prince unmasked and came forward. He wore green, not blue, perhaps to go unnoticed among Queen Caroline’s household. But even I knew that to wear his older sister’s colors and not his mother’s was a deadly insult. He looked just as handsome as when I had seen him chase Lady Cecilia, all those long months ago. He stood, sullen, beside his sister, one hand upon her shoulder.
The old queen said, “Rupert, return to your bride, who awaits you upstairs. Your manners are deplorable.”
“Yes, mother,” he muttered. This was not the imperious prince who kissed ladies-in-waiting. This was a pouting boy, ordered by his mother to behave or else take the consequences. What consequences? I could not imagine.
Prince Rupert skulked from the hall, followed by the old queen and her Blues. When they had gone, Queen Caroline said to the silent company, “Unmask.”
Everyone obeyed, but still no one spoke, not even those who were most drunk. They had seen their young queen reprimanded in front of her court and the palace servants. No one dared say anything until she had spoken.
Queen Caroline’s black eyes glittered. But she did not flinch. In a strong clear voice she said, “My mother has never been able to recognize merriment—just think what a gloomy time my father must have had while getting me upon her!” And she laughed.
The court, too, exploded into bawdy laughter. She had disarmed the old queen’s haughtiness, somehow turning Queen Eleanor into a comically prissy old woman. Courtiers guffawed and chattered. The young queen stood amid them, smiling. She was not far from me, and despite myself I looked for her famed sixth finger. Yes, it was there on her left hand, not a whole finger but just the stump of one, held bent inward to hide it as much as possible, and it seemed as if—
Among the unmasked throng I glimpsed Lady Cecilia.
The sight of her struck me like a blow. I stood, took a step toward her. My arm was caught from below and Maggie pulled me back down to my knees. “What are you
doing
? She has not given us leave to rise!”
Where had Maggie come from? She must have worked her way, on her knees, through the kneeling servants and over to my vegetable crates. But this thought, and Maggie’s presence, only flitted across my mind, which was turned to mush by the sight of Lady Cecilia.
She, too, wore green, soft silk billowing into stiffer, elaborately embroidered skirts. Her shining brown hair was braided and puffed as elaborately as Queen Caroline’s, and her bodice cut as low. A fancy mask of green-dyed feathers dangled from one little hand. But whereas the queen looked mature, luscious as a ripe pear, Cecilia was a little green berry. Her slim waist and small breasts started my heart thumping. Her face somber, she leaned against a courtier, a good-looking youth whom I instantly hated. Her eyes swept across me without recognition.
But in all the milling nobility, another pair of eyes found mine. Queen Caroline moved across the kitchen floor and stood before me. “Rise,” she said.
Confused motion among the servants on their knees—were they all supposed to rise, or just me? A few staggered to their feet, the rest did not. The queen ignored them all.
“Boy, why are you yellow?”
My throat would not produce sounds.
“Yellow is the color of the Princess Isabelle. You are of my household, not hers. So why are your face and hands yellow?”
“I . . . I . . .”
“Are you trying to insult me, boy, by wearing the color of another royal?”
“No, Your Grace!”
“Then are you a fool?”
“I . . . I work in the laundry! We dyed the cloths for—”
“I think you must be a fool. And so you will be my fool.” She beckoned to a courtier, who sprang to her side. “Robin, bring this fool to my rooms at midnight.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” he said, but he did not look pleased.
“You will find him in the laundry,” she said. Clapping her hands, she cried, “Come, let us go now to the dancing! Servants, you may rise, and we thank you for your hospitality. The steward shall give you all Amelian wine to toast my brother’s marriage!”
A ragged cheer went up from the younger servants. Amelian wine was the rarest and choicest of vintages, and very expensive. The queen’s court swept from the hall.
Maggie said, “Oh, Roger, why does she want you?”
I was too stunned to answer. Only one thought raged in my dazed mind: Maybe Lady Cecilia would be there, too, in the queen’s rooms, at midnight.
12
 
“WHERE IS THE QUEEN’S
new fool?” a voice said loudly in the darkness of the apprentice chamber. Boys woke and cursed—until they saw who stood in the doorway, lamp raised high. Then some clambered out of bed and dropped to one knee, although there is nothing sillier than a bow made in a nightshirt. Others pretended to be still asleep. A murmur ran through the room, low as wind in grass and just as hard to locate:
Lord Robert, the queen’s favorite, Lord Robert . . .
I scrambled from my pallet, still in my one suit of clothes; I had not put on the nightshirt that Joan Campford had made for me from a worn bedsheet. But I had it rolled beside me, along with my change of small clothes, my wooden comb, and a little knife for shaving: all that I owned in the world. I didn’t know what to expect from this night, and after I saw Lord Robert, I knew even less. Why had he come himself instead of sending a page? At least he had known to look for me in the apprentices’ chamber and not the laundry as the queen had told him.
“I’m here, my lord!” I called, and the high, squeaky voice did not sound like my own.
“Then come with me.” He sounded impatient, and yet there was a note of amusement, too. I didn’t see anything amusing. I trailed after him, my little bundle in my hand, and the others watched me go.
By the torchlight in the courtyard, I could see him better. After the queen and her courtiers had left the kitchen, Maggie had told me about Lord Robert Hopewell. In her shock over my summoning, her coolness had vanished. Lord Robert was perhaps forty, tall and well built. He had courted Queen Caroline when they were both young, but she had chosen instead another lord, far less strong, less handsome, less intelligent, as consort. Maggie had not said why, although from the way she pursed her lips, I imagined that she had a theory. Maggie always had theories. The queen’s consort had given her two sons, and then a daughter to rule after her, Princess Stephanie, now three years old. Shortly after the heir’s birth, the consort had died of the sweating sickness. I had the impression from Maggie that nobody much missed him. But this, too, was not spoken aloud. Since then, Lord Robert had again become the queen’s favorite.
He led me from the servants’ portion of the sprawling palace through courtyards I remembered from my visit, so many months ago, to Emma Cartwright. Wide, quiet courtyards, their trees and barely budded bushes now white in the cold moonlight, ringed with buildings of painted gray stone. Then buildings faced with smooth, white marble. Finally, buildings faced with mosaics of pearl and quartz, with small fountains playing among them. On this trip, however, there were no people. And we went farther than the quarters of the ladies-in-waiting—was Lady Cecilia in there, fast asleep under Emma Cartwright’s stern guardianship?

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