The Kingdom of Little Wounds (19 page)

And she is adventurous. Rather than letting herself stay cooped up in this crypt like a chicken, she drifts out after the monks and tours their monastery: dorters, cells, kitchens, so much the same that she could be back in the old palace nursery, if it weren’t for the men flogging themselves and washing out their hair shirts.

So why not visit the old nursery? The whole palace, in fact? See her mother, learn about her own death?

Sophia slides herself like a letter under a drafty door and suddenly is outside, in open air, as she can remember being only a handful of times in her life. It is cool, but she’s been feeling feverish and she likes the sensation.

Even in the deep blue twilight, she sees clearly as in a summer’s noon. There’s the palace crouching at the bay’s end, that great red sea dragon with its coppery hackles raised, its mouth gaping open to suck in and swallow the unwary. And the city beyond, a sprawling red-and-brown mass with here and there a glint of canal, a spire from a church, a chimney that pokes up so high she can make out its individual curl of smoke.

Sophia has never been out in Skyggehavn itself, only so far as the cathedral. But how to get there? She studies the green waters lapping busily at the base of the monks’ island. She puts a foot into the water and sees it disappear; the water will melt her away. Will the famous mermaids help her cross?

She waits; she has no idea how long. As a child, Sophia was fretful, but as a ghost she has an endless store of patience.

And slowly, gradually, the wind picks up; the waves get infinitesimally more vigorous, and the stones of the monastery whistle. Sophia feels her skirts filling with clean, blowy wind. She holds them spread out in her hands as far as she can, and just like that, the wind sweeps up under them and behind, and it starts pushing her across the last stretch of water that separates her from everything that intrigues her: the palace, the city, Maman, Papa, her sisters. It is only a matter of time before she arrives.

Or so go some of the stories that are now told in the palace.

At last, fortune smiles in my direction — I have a lover! Not simply one who pumps me for pleasure and information, but a man who thinks of our life together. One who is not so nobly born as to be out of my reach, but then again not so humble that I won’t feel it elevation to make a life with him. He knows my rank and still speaks softly, respectfully.

He also quotes poetry.

“‘With what plant, or by what root, with which unguent or liqueur, could I succor a heart-wound that creeps bone to bone without cure?’” he asks, in that tone that indicates this is one educated man who is quoting another. “Pierre Ronsard,” he adds, and then proceeds to explain the hidden artistic meaning till I want to weep. I would rather have a declaration plain and simple; I haven’t listened to poetry since Jacob Lille.

But still, a suitor! A benefactor and a blessing. Arthur Grammaticus, the King’s historian, has chosen me. I like him, and I am eager to fall in love — if cautious about tipping all the way into it.

I cannot help but make comparisons. Jacob was — is — much handsomer than this scholar, who is nearly thirty years old and balding under his hat. And Jacob taught me to be wary of love in all its forms, especially poetic ones.

After that first dreadful night, I seemed to see Grammaticus everywhere — certainly everywhere a royal was doing something. And his own small army, young men armed with tablets and styluses — someone is always recording events. To my surprise, he acknowledged me; he smiled and nodded. I smiled too. It was a gentle beginning to a sedate courtship; none of the excitement and passion of my first meeting with Jacob, but rather a kindness that hinted at comfort to come.

We meet in his paneled chamber or some stony corner of the courtyards. We embrace. His lips are soft, and over and over he presses them to my brows, my cheeks, my neck. My own lips.

His kisses coax the stories of my past, even my growing-up years. With just a few questions, I tell him about my mother’s sweetness and my four mischievous brothers; how all of them died, one by one, during the Great Sickness when I was six. I describe the room we shared by Glasvand Kanal, in the house with the spectacled stone head; the feverish way the light jittered over the walls when we were too weak to close the shutters; and how when they’d been taken to a faraway green graveyard and only Father and I were left, that room became my bedchamber alone, and the light made me wake morning after morning to the memory of sweats and nausea and purges. I tell him about needle school and learning the stitches — satin, chain, couching, crosses, knots — and the hat I embroidered to help Father impress the King’s astrologer.

“The constellations of the zodiac, with Cassiopeia, arranged to predict fortune for one born in Scorpio,” I say.

“I’ve seen Stellarius wear it.” Grammaticus nods approval. “It is fine work.” He pats my fingers and assures me that soon I might hold a needle again. Soon — that means when Grammaticus has an audience with the King, who is more interested these days in reading the stars (through my father’s device) than hearing the chronicles of his court that Grammaticus is compiling.

Grammaticus confides that he is composing more than one such tome. There are histories both official and unofficial — one of the court decrees and displays, and one of secrets that he keeps for himself; for as he says, secrets shape events even more than what is widely known. It is for this history of secrets and private lives that he wants my stories.

He is right about the importance of secrets. Of course I say nothing about my time with Lord Nicolas. And even as I hope to fall in love again, I hold my tongue about Jacob Lille. If he has other informants, Grammaticus probably knows that tale already and wants to hear one that hasn’t already wound its way into the district mortar. Or, if I am very lucky, he doesn’t know about Jacob at all, only about my liaison with Lord Nicolas: the story that I gave him, but not the rest of it, our unusual graspings and spendings. He doesn’t seem to mind this part of my life. I think it intrigues him. He and Nicolas were nearly children together, on the green island where Nicolas’s father had his lands. Nicolas was just enough older that when it was proposed that the two boys study together, as they were at the same stage in mathematics and languages, Nicolas refused to take lessons with him out of pride.

“Tell me about it,” I say breathlessly, exhausted with my own talk and with a hammering in my heart. Grammaticus may know secrets about Nicolas that
I
can use. “Tell me about your island.” I still have not seen a forest or even a large plain of grasses or a grave, only the kitchen gardens of the city.

So I find out who he is: Born to a gentleman of sorts, an estate holder married to the daughter of the old King’s chamberlain, Arthur Rantzen (as he was known then) had a happy childhood. His family owned two good horses and enough money to educate their only son, who was marked out for scholarship from birth. He distinguished himself at the university of Sorö, which he finished at age seventeen (my age now!), then came to Skyggehavn to be the tutor of assorted merchants’ sons and wards. His parents died somewhere along this way: his mother after childbirth, his father of apoplexy. They left debts; young Arthur was penniless.

He remembers the Great Sickness of 1561 as a time of opportunity, when he roamed the streets in his flapping black robe, writing of the various ways in which townspeople were stricken, recording their lives and deaths and the heroic prayers spoken in the chapels and cathedral. He liked the common people, respected their fears and lauded their courage. He thought a record of their thoughts would be of interest, perhaps a useful tool in governing them. So when the wave of Sickness receded, he used all his coins to bribe a guard to let him through the gates and into the presence of King Christian IV. He presented the aging King with his account and was shortly named court historian. It is a position that the current Christian has been happy to preserve and amplify, until Grammaticus achieved the distinction of a Latin name and the office of tutor to the Crown Prince (on those rare occasions when the Prince is well enough to be drilled in verbs and numbers). He has surpassed any of his family in education or influence; he believes he has even surpassed Nicolas in knowledge of the court.

I don’t dare ask what he knows about Nicolas himself — another orphan (as rumor says) from that green island, the one who has recently been given the post of State Secretary. There’s a bad taste in my throat when Arthur speaks of him. I ask instead for more about himself.

“But my life I know,” he says modestly. “Let me have more of yours.” He is ravenous for stories.

So I begin again. After months of loneliness, it is as if the episodes of my life are a hot spring; he moves one rock and lets them burst to join the flood of stories within him.

Also, he makes me wax ever more metaphoric, even though for once I’m not telling tales of witches and princesses.

“Do you wring these secrets from everyone?” I tease. “Will you use them for your chronicles?”

He says gravely, “I may,” then takes my hand in his. The ink stains bleed from his fingers to mine, and I almost believe that somehow my thoughts and memories — mine, not those I observe among the courtiers or cobble together from gossip — will find their way into history.

Nicolas, meanwhile, seems to have given up his interest in me. My one tale of Countess Elinor has satisfied him — or else disgusted him; he does not send for me. Perhaps he doesn’t need to, if he hears Grammaticus’s reports. Or perhaps he fears what I might learn about him. He is in constant company of the King.

This should make me cautious with my suitor. It does.

At the end of each careful account, when my tongue is tired, Arthur strokes it with his tongue, presses my ribs to his ribs. But neither of us attempts to take our caresses further. We are both cautious in this way as well.

I imagine a conversation on the subject:
Why don’t you make love to me as other men do?
I ask, and he answers,
I would very much like to do so.
He kisses me, and when I still hold back from passion, he asks,
Does your heart live elsewhere?
I think wistfully of Jacob Lille but hold my tongue, for don’t I want — so badly — a new man, one who will not vanish? And I think it is a matter of time, then, for Grammaticus to keep courting me with poetry and metaphor, until I begin to like and trust it; and to allow himself a degree’s further liberty at each meeting; until my heart expands to embrace him and my body follows, and we belong irredeemably to each other. Why not?

But this conversation does not take place. Grammaticus seems content to love me through my life’s story and not its fleshy cushion.

Eventually I do ask, one evening in the courtyard, “Why don’t you press for more?” and he answers, “Not till we can plan to marry.”

I wonder if this is his version of a proposal. I feel a little sick. Glad, of course, but . . . Jacob. “How can we plan that?”

Grammaticus does not look at me, rubbing instead at the ink stains on his fingers. “We might plan it if I ask the King. He has to grant permission before any officer of the court is married.”

“I thought that was required only for lords.”

“And intimate functionaries. It would be a grave offense if I betrothed myself without asking His Majesty first, even if the bride brought me as much glory as you will.” He takes an obvious pride in the thought of this potential offense, in being considered important enough to commit it. At the same time, I wonder how I’m supposed to reflect well on any man, and I worry that Nicolas has spoken to him. I am on the point of asking if he believes the reports that Nicolas killed the rest of the Bullens when Grammaticus adds, “I have to earn the right to a wife.”

“Well,” I say, “how can you earn it?” I think I’m more curious now than emotional; I want to know how the court works for men in his position. “What does the King want from you in particular?”

“From us,” Grammaticus corrects, with an ink-smudgy tap on the point of my nose. “He wants good reports. Useful information. We must help him order his kingdom, from servants to seneschals. Make ourselves as indispensable to him as we are to each other.” He hesitates, then says shyly, “You are precisely the wife I should have at court.”

My practical part thinks his ambitions are too high — I can’t imagine becoming indispensable to royalty, unless it is by means of information about Lord Nicolas that the man himself would suppress. But I urge my more feeling side to take control, and I promise to do as my lover suggests. I allow myself to hope for that kind of power; it’s the only way I’ll replace the memories of Jacob Lille’s spidery bed with those of another.

“Well, then,” I say, “it’s back to the nursery for me. I’ll let you know what the children eat for dinner and how many of them vomit it back up.”

“Yes.” He nods earnestly. “Please do that.”

Because she brought me to this man, who gives me the shimmery hint of a happy ending, I feel generous toward Midi Sorte. Perhaps I can look past her tongue to the woman inside. She seems quite nearly my age but must have seen far more in her life than I have. I think I might be her friend; she has no more friends than I do, meaning that each of us has just one and he’s in common.