The Queen's Sorrow (18 page)

She’d remembered his name: Rafael was stunned. Very well, he told her, despite not actually having a clue, and thanked her profusely for asking. He’d have liked to have repaid her interest with some news, but he had none, the fact of which – coming afresh – giddied him.

Francisco had once asked him, with genuine interest, ‘How will I die, d’you think, Daddy?’ adding, ‘I think I’ll fall under the wheels of a cart,’ and when Rafael had said he’d ensure it didn’t happen, Francisco’s response was, ‘You won’t be there.’

The queen’s bulbous little eyes were turned to him and he became aware that he was biting his lip, hard, as if to hold on to something. Self-conscious, he released it.

She asked, ‘Why are you still in England?’

He didn’t really know and, even if he did, he probably couldn’t have told her, because there was a lump in his throat. He was supposed to be reassuring her, he reminded himself, not unburdening his own fears. But she’d asked. He took his chances with an expansive shrug. Was it permissible to shrug at a queen? Well, he did, at this one. She didn’t flinch. ‘He should’ve sent you home.’ Her irritation was audible. She was
voicing disappointment in her husband more than she was sympathising with Rafael, but it was better than nothing. ‘Yes,’ Rafael said, and, again, ‘Yes,’ in the hope that she would not let it drop. His wild hope was that she’d say,
I’ll tell him to
send you home
.

She turned back to the desolate vista. ‘
He
wants to go.’ A gust slammed into the garden; branches flailed. ‘Not to Spain but to France. To war.’ She sighed hugely. ‘There’s no need for war with France. There really is no need. Talk is what’s needed. Not war.’ She said again, ‘He wants to go,’ then let it drop with a weary, ‘but you know all that.’

Rafael cringed because he did know, he couldn’t help but know. Everyone knew, and she knew they knew. He pitied her the lack of a private life. It was bad enough even for him, in the small household of his own family. Here, though, he had nothing but a private life. Here in England, no one knew or cared anything about him, and he didn’t like that any better.

Then she broached it: ‘Was your wife well, during her pregnancy?’ She peered at him: keen for the truth, he felt, rather than empty reassurances. The truth was, he didn’t really know. As far as he’d been aware, she’d sometimes felt well and sometimes hadn’t. On the whole, though, he supposed, she’d kept well. Yes, he told the queen. She’d made complaints – aches and pains, plenty of them – but there’d been nothing drastically wrong, he tried to explain, or nothing of which he’d been told and nothing which had had any consequence. He didn’t say that she’d kept herself to herself during her pregnancy and he’d assumed that was how it was with women. He’d never known what she was thinking and there’d been times when he’d been grateful for that.

The queen said, ‘I’m finding it very hard.’

Mrs Dormer was wrong: this wasn’t for him to hear. This was for women to hear, those women up there in her room. He said he was sorry to hear it.

‘The tiredness.’ She was aghast. ‘I am so tired. More tired than I’ve ever been, and I can’t do anything, I can’t think, but there’s so much to do, so much to have to think about.’

He said, truthfully, ‘My wife was very tired.’

She sighed. ‘The winter doesn’t help.’

Well, no. They stood looking at the dead garden with dismay. In that, united.

Then she looked around at him. ‘I’m happy,’ she insisted, staring at him as if to stare him down; ‘I am happy,’ her words so at odds with her expression that, despite everything, he could have laughed. ‘I’m scared, though. And I shouldn’t be. I should have faith in God.’ She corrected herself: ‘I do, but’ – incredulous – ‘I’m still scared.’

Nodding, he shuffled; his feet were freezing. He didn’t find it extraordinary in the least that she or anyone should have faith in God but still be scared. Leonor had never voiced her fears to him, but he was quite sure she’d have had them. He certainly had, on her behalf, and he was about to say something of this to the queen but she hadn’t let up.

‘I’ve been frightened before, Mr Prado – I’ve lived much of my life afraid – but I’ve had faith in God and’– anguished, she unclasped her hands, splayed them, re-clasped them – ‘it’s been enough. But now …’ She shivered, shuddered. ‘You know, Mr Prado,’ her gaze scouring his, ‘I’d worried that I’d lose God a little if I loved a man. I’d have less love to give Him, I’d be distracted. But it’s not so, is it? It’s the opposite. I
have more love for God.’ She relinquished him, looked away. ‘I don’t know that I did love God, before. Not love. Worship, yes, of course. But
love
? Well, now I do, and so now, for the first time, I’m terrified of losing him.’

He felt for her. It was all he could do, standing there.

She said, ‘I’m finding it hard to be a wife as well as a queen.’

He didn’t doubt it.

‘He wants me to make him king.’

Him: the prince. Rafael knew, of course. Everyone knew. A perfectly reasonable expectation, was the Spanish view.

‘But I can’t do it.’ She glanced at him. ‘I mean, I really can’t. Council –’ She flapped a hand, perhaps to demonstrate Council’s dismissive attitude, perhaps to convey her despair. ‘And the English people …’ She shrugged, accepting, resigned: ‘And they’re my people; I serve them. But my husband doesn’t understand, and he refuses to listen to me,’ she said, plaintively. ‘For so long I wanted to be queen, to be able to step up and do the job, but now sometimes I’d just like to be a wife.’ She turned to him with the softening that was, for her, close to a smile. ‘Having a baby is a lot to do, isn’t it, Mr Prado.’ She laid both hands on her stomach. ‘Keeping the two of us alive, getting him grown, getting him born. A lot for me to do at thirty-eight, when I’ve never been strong. But he trusts me absolutely, doesn’t he?’ Gravely, she added, ‘This is the only time I’ll have him all to myself. He doesn’t know how important he is, dozing in here. Important to everyone else, I mean. Of course he’s important to
me
– he knows that. But to everyone else: little prince.’ She took a breath, decisively. ‘You’re very good to me, Mr Prado.’ And turned to the stairs, talking over her shoulder: ‘I have confessors, and ladies,
officials, doctors,’ and reminded herself, ‘I have a husband.’ At that – at having to remind herself – she almost smiled. ‘And of course I have him –’ a hand again to her stomach. ‘But …’ She didn’t finish; just stepped ahead of him, leading him up the steps.

He wondered what it was that she felt he’d done for her. He’d done nothing. He was supposed to have reassured her, but he’d failed.

At the door, she paused and turned to him. ‘You know, Mr Prado,’ she said, fixing him with her watery stare, ‘if there’s ever anything I can do for you in return, you must come to me. Promise me you’ll come to me.’

She’d arranged for him to be given refreshments before his journey back into the city. As he was escorted from the room, and then from the guarded hallway, he’d intended to say that he’d prefer to be going. He was desperate to get away with what he recalled of his time with the queen, hold it intact and cherish it. Hanging around at the palace would be to risk it settling, sinking and draining from him. But somehow it hadn’t happened, this polite refusal, and then there he was, sitting at the end of a long table at the back of the Hall. A platter of thinly sliced meats came, served with a spoonful of a jelly made from some hedgerow fruit, and linen-wrapped bread – white bread – and even a glass of sack, Spanish sack. He had to remind himself to savour it, though, thinking instead of the queen, of her standing there beside him, small but steadfast in that freezing cave of a porch. Beleaguered by frailties, fears, and enemies. He wished he could have done more for her than just listen. He finished what he’d been given and took the platter, linen and glass to the buttery hatch.

Making his way back to the riverside steps, he tried to see himself through the eyes of the various Englishmen who glanced at him. They didn’t know where he’d been, and they’d never be able to guess. He, himself, even, didn’t quite believe it. Had he really stood there, a man from Spain – from a
converso
family, at that – with the queen of England, with her confiding in him? He loved her for it – for having taken him there to her side, and for having been so open with him. She’d shown him, when he’d ceased to believe it, that anything was possible.

For once, and despite the sleet, he didn’t cower resentfully on the wherry but was keen to take it all in: London, crowding down to the river as if to get in on something it might otherwise miss. The red, regular brickwork and the unflinching gaze of so many big, unshuttered windows. And over the jostling rooftops, an endless exhalation of spires: London throwing its head back, devil-may-care. How strange to think of that anxious, humourless, dowdy woman trying to rule this brash, cynical city. For the first time, he saw what there was to admire about London. Gliding through snowflakes, he found himself listening as hard as he was looking. He was opening himself absolutely to the city, trying to love it, to be moved by it – but he knew it would never quite happen. This was a city that kept him at arm’s length.

Going back into the house, lit up by the chill and rattling from the crowds, he almost bumped into Cecily. Drowsy with household warmth, she was wrapped in her cloak with her
basket on one arm and, at her side, the child. There they stood, one coming in and the other going out: at sixes and sevens. He took two steps back, involuntarily. He hadn’t been expecting to come across her, not so soon, although he’d only just been thinking of her. And now here she was, facing him with that big-eyed, enquiring look. She wanted to know where he’d been; she was expecting to be told, and he wanted to tell her, but how could he? Where would he start? He would tell her, but such a tale wasn’t for a mere threshold exchange. He’d been standing in a dripping porch, listening to the genuine fears of the troubled queen of England and there wasn’t any way that he could tell it that would make it believable. She’d think him a liar, a fantasist, or she’d think he was making fun of her.

‘Going out?’ he asked her, which was stupid of him because it was so clearly the case.

‘Buttons,’ she said in explanation, with a quick, flat smile: no real smile at all. ‘You were called to the palace?’

‘Yes.’ He busied himself removing his cloak. ‘Nothing. Just work.’

‘Work?’ Polite, but nonetheless making him uneasy.

He turned the attention back to her: ‘Urgent, these buttons?’

She shrugged it off.

‘Because it’s snowing.’

‘So I see.’ She indicated the dusting on his cloak.

He asked her, ‘Can I …’ …
go for you
? Seeing as he was wet already.

‘Buttons?’ she laughed, derisively: what would he know about buttons?

Helpless, he tried again, ‘But it’s snowing.’

‘I know it’s snowing, Rafael.’ Impatience, now. ‘I’ve been snowed on before.’ Then she asked, ‘Are you going home?’ and his heart contracted. She – like him, earlier – had assumed the summons was something to do with his going home. But it was how she’d asked that got hold of his heart: the appeal in it.

‘No,’ he told her. Just like that, nothing more. She’d asked and he’d told her – that was all that had happened – but somehow in that one brief exchange they’d become coconspirators. He’d known it was what she’d wanted to hear, and that he’d wanted to tell her what she’d wanted to hear. He was desperate to go home – but he’d also liked telling her that he was staying.

She couldn’t say ‘Good’ but he saw her thinking it and hating herself for thinking it. She turned to her son – ‘Come on’ – and, to Rafael’s relief and his despair, the door closed behind her.

Although in need of a fireside and a warm drink, he went to his room. Standing at the window, he gazed at the obliterating snow. His hands were shaking; he held them to stop it. What had happened down there in the hallway? Nothing: a silliness, a madness. A madness that comes from being cooped up, far from home, for too long. He’d just imagined it. They were close, he and Cecily: that was all. They’d miss each other when he was gone, and there was no harm in that.

That evening, lining up to go into Hall for supper, Antonio confided that some people were claiming the queen wasn’t pregnant.

Rafael regarded him uncomprehendingly.

‘Not really pregnant.’

‘She
is
,’ Rafael refuted.

Antonio looked amused. ‘How would you know?’

And Rafael half-laughed because, yes, how ridiculous he must have sounded. ‘In my opinion, she is.’

Understandably, Antonio looked unimpressed. ‘There are people who are saying she isn’t.’

‘Well, they don’t know, do they? Why would she be saying she is, if she isn’t? It’s not something she can get away with, in the end, is it?’

‘Could be a mistake,’ Antonio explained. ‘Women make mistakes.’

‘Anyway,’ said Rafael, as they lingered at the back of the queue to prolong the conversation, ‘what people? Who is it that’s saying this?’

‘People in London. The French Ambassador.’

‘Well, the French Ambassador would say that. He’ll say anything to discredit the queen.’ England and France were all but at war. The French favoured the Protestant half-sister.

Antonio allowed it: ‘I suppose he would.’

As he ate, Rafael thought how those people – whoever they were – hadn’t stood next to the queen; they hadn’t experienced the new-found weightiness to her presence. She was a woman who believed herself to be carrying a baby. And she was a woman of so much self-doubt that she wouldn’t have announced it, he felt, unless she was absolutely sure.

After supper, Rafael went to the kitchen to sit in the warmth and write to Leonor. He wrote how much he missed her, and how much he needed word from her.
Don’t protect
me
, he wanted to say. Even if what she had to tell him was bad, he needed to know. But to say it would seem to invite it.

He wondered how it was for her, seeing the black marks on the page while Pedro deciphered them for her. Did they sit together in the main family room? Or did she go to his office, stand beside his desk?

Cecily knew what he was doing, she could see from where she was sitting. Their earlier exchange by the door had made him wary of her although there was no need to be because she seemed entirely normal with him, and so his wariness felt faintly shameful. She was playing cards with Antonio. Seeing Rafael writing, Antonio was making much of giving him a wide berth; Rafael detected Antonio’s derision. As if he were thinking,
I don’t know why you bother
.

In the morning, Cecily stopped him – ‘Rafael?’ – and her manner was the same as by the door on the previous evening: the hush, the directness, an appeal. In spite of himself, he thrilled to it, his heart high, hanging on her next words. But it was about the sick kitchen boy, Harry: he was being moved to the tiny, unoccupied room opposite Rafael’s. And so she was warning him: there would be comings and goings, was what she said, but he knew that she meant there would be noises and odours. And he knew why the poor lad was being moved: he was dying. He was being taken to the peace and quiet at the top of the house to die. Until now, he’d been in the kitchen, in a makeshift corner of his own – propped up on cushions – to benefit from the warmth, distractions and company, and have an eye kept on him. He’d been visited a couple of times by the Kitsons’ physician and,
on those occasions, removed to another room to be bled, but he’d always later returned.

Rafael knew from Cecily that the illness had been going on for months, perhaps six months, perhaps longer. He’d been complaining of tiredness, dizziness, weakness, and the cooks had been going easy on him, gradually excusing him his duties. There was never any fever nor a cough, so no one was worried for themselves. In November, he’d been brought to London with the household; he couldn’t have been left at the country house. Rafael had asked Cecily, at the time, why couldn’t he have gone home, to his own people, and Cecily had explained that he’d be better cared for in the Kitson household. His own home would be desperate, she said; it’s warm, here, she said. Although Rafael took care not to be caught looking, he’d seen when he re-emerged after his own illness that the boy’s deterioration over Christmas had been drastic. He was cadaverous and if Rafael hadn’t known who he was – there on those cushions – he’d not have recognised him. That wasted figure was of indeterminate age; there was nothing of boyhood about him any more.

For Rafael, the prospect of his own son’s death, even in old age, seemed a travesty. Indeed, old age itself, for Francisco: absurd, outrageous. Ageing in the face of such vibrancy and perfection was ridiculous.

Rafael hated to see the remorselessness of the kitchen boy’s decline. If God had to take him, why not just take him? Why did it have to be so hard, his going? And now he was no longer manageable in the kitchen; the illness was beginning to get messy. ‘Who’ll look after him?’ Rafael asked Cecily. She would, she said.

And so Harry did his dying upstairs while downstairs the pace was unaltered, kitchens were serviced and people were catered for. Cecily was occupied for a couple of weeks. Rafael was constantly aware of her presence in the room across from his. He longed to see her. Sometimes he glimpsed her on the stairs with a bundle of bedding, and sometimes he braved calling through the door to ask her if there was anything she or Harry needed. Thanking him, mostly she said no. A couple of times, he left outside the door whatever she’d requested. Once, when the door was ajar, he glimpsed enough to know that she was stroking the boy’s head, smoothing back what little hair he had left. His head was too far back, his chin in the air: he sounded as if he were snoring, but the sounds he made were nothing so robust and carefree as snores.

And once, Rafael saw the eldest Kitson girl was coming up the stairs to take over. Faced with him, she stopped in her tracks, clearly nervous at having been seen. No doubt this was something she shouldn’t have been doing. Rafael smiled sadly to reassure her, retreating back into his own room to let her pass. Whenever free of her nursing duties, Cecily must have been going to her own room. Rafael was always hoping to come across her in the kitchen, but never did.

Nicholas, though, he saw plenty of. The boy was often sitting on the top step, outside the two rooms, playing with something – nothing much, the buttons again or a chalk and slate (on which, Rafael noted, he could write N-i-c) or pegs, which he lined up and to which – Rafael was sure – he muttered under his breath. After several days of having to step past him, feeling awkward, Rafael dared to squat down and ask, ‘What do you have there?’ Pegs, in a line. Nothing,
though, from Nicholas, but that frown. ‘Well, looks good, whatever it is,’ Rafael said, in his own language, trying to stay sounding cheerful as he gave up and continued on his way.

The following day, Nicholas had the chalk and slate and Rafael said, ‘You can write! Your name.’ He pointed in turn to the N-i-c. ‘That’s very, very good, Nicholas.’ But the boy wiped it away with his sleeve.

Two days later, Rafael felt compelled to crouch beside him again and, in an attempt to find a shared interest, said, ‘You had a king in England – many, many years –’
back
, for which he waved a hand, ‘a thousand years. A very, very good king: Arthur.’ He had to say the name in his own language; he didn’t know it in English. ‘Did you know?’

The boy had paused in his playing.

‘But before he was king, he was just a boy. Not a prince, just a boy. Like you. Lived with his daddy and his big brother, and what he wants, he dreams … to be a knight.’ ‘Knight’said in his own language, but the emphasis – he hoped – conveying the grandeur. Rafael couldn’t remember exactly what the fascination with knights had been when he was this lad’s age, but he remembered that he and his best friend Gil had had it. He cast around, hoping to make the word ‘knight’ make sense for Nicholas: ‘Ride a horse … have adventures …’ and he realised he knew the word in English, ‘
tournaments
’. And, ‘Be very good. Fight bad. Fight for good. Help people.’ A pause, so that the boy might indicate if he understood. Nothing. But he hadn’t resumed his playing. He just might be listening, Rafael dared to hope.

So, he continued: ‘But, oh, it is a bad time in England, a bad, bad time for a long, long time. No king. Lots of men …
fighting. War. Years and years.
This
man,
that
man’ – despite the restricted space, Rafael managed to enact some sword-strokes – ‘and England is tired, everyone is so, so, so tired. England is nothing, now. But there is someone who can help: Merlin.’ Again, the name had to be in his own language. ‘He is a …’ how to say ‘sorcerer’? ‘He makes magic. And he knows who is good for England; he knows who can be king. He knows he comes soon, the new king. Merlin puts a –’ again, Rafael had to enact ‘sword’, swish an imaginary sword around, making the swishing sounds, ‘in a stone, a big, big stone –’