The Queen's Sorrow (31 page)

Her reply was a half-laugh, which failed to reassure him.

He pressed: ‘Do you?’ He didn’t want to scare her off, but he had to have her know.

‘Yes, I know,’ and she sounded amused even as she was sad. He heard the sadness and of course he understood. It didn’t do, to love someone who was married to someone else and was soon to be more than a thousand miles away.

They were stuck together; there was an unseemly sound as they moved to re-settle themselves, which brought to her lips
– on his – a smile, which teased one from his. He was on top of her, now, and he dipped to kiss her neck and down it, along to a shoulder. Raised on one elbow, he drew back to look at her breasts, laid his lips on and around one nipple and then the other.

She struggled a little to free an arm, a hand; she shifted their weight and reached down, took hold of him. And so she was moving them on; Rafael couldn’t quite believe it. He felt light-headed, felt a release of tension that he could only have dreamt of at the same time as its predictable, almost unbearable intensification. Beneath him, her hips shuffled; she was positioning him. He intended to check –
You’re sure?
– but his English wasn’t there and instead he simply asked, ‘Yes?’

‘Oh yes,’ she replied, humourfully.

In response – in recognition and thanks – he kissed her. But he was thinking: What about the risk of pregnancy? Wasn’t she worried? She didn’t seem to be.

She was closed against him.

If he just stayed there, she’d let him in; he’d melt into her. ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered, ‘I won’t hurt you.’ He’d said it in his own language, but he sensed she’d understood and there was the slightest give. With her guidance, he began to find his way inside her; her hand still there as if to keep him hard, as if there were any danger of him not being so. And then he was inside her and they were both moving. It was like waking, for him: he wasn’t quite there yet. Even though the sensation was exquisite, it remained slightly
over there
– he felt he was chasing it, not quite able to catch it, hold it. But then he did wake to it and was utterly in the moment: there was nothing else.

He took one of her hands, pressed it back and open beneath his, his fingers between hers.
I could die now, this would
be enough; I ask no more than this
.

She said something – but more to herself than to him – and he didn’t catch it. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have understood. Or perhaps he would have, in a way. At that, he smiled mid-kiss and in response so did she, and somehow that was funny – two joined smiles – so his smile got bigger and then so did hers, which was funnier still. She wouldn’t understand him, either: he could say whatever he wanted to say and she’d make of it what she would but wouldn’t be far wrong. He longed to be deeper, higher, more fully inside her. More precisely – bizarrely, that was the word that came to him. It was impossible, though: there was no room to move; they were jammed up against each other. She was insistent, pushing for more, pushing against him, and her breathing was changing. He had to have her kissing him when she came, when he came.
Don’t turn away, don’t breathe, don’t come up for
air; be joined to me
.

Afterwards, they lay there, still joined, for a time; time, now, to relish it, to dissolve into the sensation of skin on skin. He told himself he should be ready for her regrets and recriminations, that he should ready himself for them, although he had no idea how.

I should never have done that, Rafael. We should never have done
that
.

The misgivings were there for him, too, hovering, and later he’d square up to them, he’d come to some understanding with them, but not now, not just now. For now, they had to leave him alone.

But no: he pulled away from her a little, so she’d know he was looking at her, posing a question,
You all right?
It was a risk: he was giving her the detachment she’d need to turn from him and explain it away, apologise for it –
Well, that was
a mistake, wasn’t it?
– and go. What she did, though, was sigh – a clear indication that she, too, didn’t want to face any of that – and she rubbed his back and shoulder blades to reassure him that they were in this together, that she was with him on this. That was all he’d wanted and, avoiding the wet patch, they settled down to sleep.

But not quite. Because there was something bothering him. Did he dare ask her? ‘Cecily?’

She tensed. She was ready for it, so he might as well ask. He said into the darkness, ‘What’s your real name?’

She remained just as tense and didn’t answer. He regretted that he’d overstepped the mark, deeply regretted it. He’d come this far and then – just to satisfy his own curiosity – had asked too much of her. How reassuring, then, a minute later, was her touch of a fingertip to his back, and he let it soothe him. A long, sinuous stroke of her fingertip, then again – shorter, this time, more definite – and then a mere dab of it, but by then he understood: this was no reassurance, this was a message. She was writing her name.

S-i-c-

He lay there listening to her fingertip mute on his skin and then, when she’d finished, he said it: ‘Sicilia.’

She left some time before dawn; he was too sleepy to manage more than the faintest acknowledgement of her going. In the morning, he woke alone but to the memory of her, the warmth and scent still there to be luxuriated in.
It had
happened
: finally, it had happened. And she’d wrung every last pleasure from their encounter. Whatever else she might be feeling now, her enthusiasm had been unmistakable, was undeniable. How – why – before this, in his life, had he settled for so little? Had he not known there was such pleasure to be had? Not simply physical. No, he hadn’t known. Well, now he did, and he could never unknow it. He was hooked. When she’d ground herself against him, it’d seemed to him that she knew him for who he was and that until then, he himself hadn’t known. He felt he’d met his match, although he hadn’t known he’d been missing one.

It wasn’t as if Leonor would mind, would care, if she knew. Not really. Why would she care? She’d probably be pleased. Relieved to be free of him. He was sorry he’d burdened her; it must have been hard for her, he saw now. Him and Leonor: not meant to be, however much he’d wanted it. She’d known that, but he’d refused to see it. He felt sorry, too, that she didn’t have in her life what he’d just experienced. She’d probably experienced it with Gil. As for Cecily’s husband: well, he’d given up on her, hadn’t he. Hadn’t wanted to, but, in effect, that was what he’d done.

Rafael was at her mercy. He’d do his very best by her, but if she chose to turn away from him, he’d have to accept it. Perhaps even now, across the house, she was recoiling, blaming him for it having gone too far when he – not distressed, as she’d been – should’ve been the one to stop it. But worse, far worse than anything she could say or do to him, was the fact that, just as this had happened, he was going to have to go. Could be by the end of the week. There’d be more than a thousand miles between them.
How could this be happening?
It
couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t happen. He had no idea – not an inkling – how he could endure it.

But he couldn’t live here in London. He wouldn’t want to. Well, he could. People did. People survived it: married and raised children, ran their businesses. He could ask the queen for permission to stay. But he couldn’t stay, because of Francisco.

What he wanted was to be left, somehow, to love Cecily. The two of them in a room: that’s all. Put like that, it didn’t seem much to ask.

He was standing at his window, looking over London roofs. Down there somewhere was the man who’d been Cecily’s husband and still considered himself as such. That man knew nothing of what had happened in Rafael’s room. For him, this morning was, presumably, the same as any other, which was to say it was lonely. Perhaps he was thinking of Cecily. Of her absence. Rafael presumed to know something of what he might be thinking and feeling; but for that man, Rafael didn’t even exist.
She’s gone from you
: sympathetic though Rafael was, he felt the man should know. He willed the message across the rooftops to find him.
She’s been gone from you for a long time
. Regretful though it was, he should face it. Rafael didn’t envy him those fraught, early-hours meetings with Cecily; the thought of them made him almost grateful for how little Leonor usually said.

There was a knock on his door, the door was opening and in the doorway stood Antonio. Antonio and
the lip:
the lip simultaneously demanding attention and demanding that he avert his gaze. The split was still open, the blood in it barely congealed, and for a single breath Rafael felt the tenderness
of it as if it were his own. If it was any consolation to Antonio, he’d have seen Rafael blanch. He showed no recognition of it. ‘Listen, Rafael: there’s been a …’ – he blinked, a kind of rapid frown – ‘a battle. Outside the palace. My friend Alonso has been injured and he isn’t likely to survive.’

Rafael floundered:
battle?
Someone not survive?

‘A messenger just came. Six dead, lots injured, it’s being kept quiet, what with …’ He didn’t bother to finish.
What
with everything
.

‘Yes,’ said Rafael, at a loss for words, his blood whirling inside him. No wonder Antonio wasn’t bothered about the lip.

‘He’s a good friend,’ Antonio said, ‘He’s been a good, good friend to me, and I have to’ – a shrug – ‘sit with him.’

‘Yes,’ said Rafael, his pulse noisy in his head. ‘Yes, but –’
How will you get there?
The streets, the river, the palace steps and passageways: all harbouring potential danger.

‘Well, I won’t try to come back, I don’t think.’ Just the one journey. ‘I mean, not until –’

– until the baby is born dead or alive, until the situation is resolved
one way or another and we’re released and on our way
.

‘No.’

‘I’ll just stay there.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Rafael offered, suddenly convinced of it. This called for solidarity. ‘It’ll be safer.’

Antonio’s response was a pointed, amused look which Rafael took a moment to read: his company, recently, hadn’t exactly done Antonio any favours, had it? He cringed. ‘I’m sorry.’ He’d said it before he realised, and was glad he’d said it.

Antonio looked as if he were going to say something but then settled for something else: ‘I’ll be fine on my own,’ he said, ‘but thank you, Rafael.’ And then he’d turned and was gone.

Rafael hadn’t seen Cecily, that first morning, when he’d gone for the water for his wash. He’d seen her that lunchtime, though: she was smiling at him as he came into Hall, and his heart shimmered. And with that smile, it began: her coming to his room, most nights, and sometimes in the days, sometimes once but on several occasions only to say hello and start back downstairs again as soon as she’d arrived, which didn’t matter because all that mattered was that she’d come. He lived for her coming to his door, suspended himself between those knocks of hers at his door. That was what he did – all he did – now: listened for her footsteps. Oh, he sketched and designed, but then there she was and those sketches and designs were nothing, just scribbles and doodles, and all the time he’d spent alone had dissolved into nothing. And they’d be kissing before she was properly through his door and laughing at their own fervour and subterfuge, at their own sheer delight and the ridiculousness of it, two grown people.

The nights she didn’t come, he drifted in the shallows of sleep and didn’t give up on her, not until the household’s day could be heard to be under way. He never knew, those nights, if she’d gone to the priest, her ex-husband. And later, when he could have asked, he didn’t. He tried not to even think about it. Tried to accept that she had her own reasons for staying
away. She couldn’t – he knew – come every single night, leaving Nicholas and chancing her way through the house. For her part, she never explained her absences, never even referred to them. She let it be: and so, then, did he.

Not that they didn’t talk. For two people with so much that couldn’t be talked about, they did a lot of talking. They pondered their very different upbringings and their brief shared past.

And when you said
…

That time you
…

And together, they made a story of it: their story, the story of them. Nothing about their predicament, though: never that. Because what new or illuminating could be said about that?

Did others talk about them? Did people know what was going on between them? Rafael didn’t care, because what could they do about it? And even if people did know, did they care? They had a more serious preoccupation, but about which, likewise, there was nothing new to say: the queen’s predicament, the country’s predicament. There was the possibility that there’d be trouble for anyone who even mentioned it, and who needed more trouble? There was more than enough of it about already, and no one could risk it hitting home.

The waiting for an announcement from the palace went on and on: for days after Cecily came first to his room, then a week and into a second week. It probably had no purpose, now: there was little likelihood of good news, this late on.