Raven Queen (2 page)

A few miles along the highway, where the trees began to thicken, he asked to be put down and part of me was glad because the stench seeping from his clothes sickened me; but I was surprised that his voice was soft, like a gentleman’s.

He bowed and thanked me and turned to set off, tall and proud, his eyes looking towards the trees already reddening in the sunset.

I could not bear to see him leave.

“Where will you go?” I called out.

He stopped and shrugged his shoulders.

“Can you use an axe?” I asked. Ellie mouthed NO at me and shook her head.

Ned rubbed the palm of his right hand and I saw that it was scarred silver. “I think so,” he said. “It cannot be difficult.”

Ellie rode up alongside me. She has been my nurse since my birth fourteen years ago and is never afraid to tell me when I am wrong. “I’m used to your stray birds and butterflies,” she whispered, “but you’ve never brought back a stray boy before. What will your father say?”

“He is in London!” I whispered back. Then aloud, “I can find you work as a woodman, Ned. Come with us. It is not far.”

He nodded.

He walked the rest of the way and we did not speak again until we passed through the gates of Bradgate Hall. My heart sank when they closed behind me, trapping me in a loneliness so deep that I wanted to cry out.

Visitors usually gasp with pleasure when they first arrive. It is thought to be one of the finest houses in Leicestershire; but Ned gazed past its red brick towers, past its gardens soon to be brimming with fruit and blossom, past the stream which fed water pipes to the kitchen – to the darkening trees beyond.

“I like a forest best at dusk when birds cloud the sky,” he said suddenly.

I glanced down at him. And now that he was standing closer to me, I no longer saw his tangled hair and grimy skin – only the smile that lit up his face.

Who
was
he?

I did not ask her to save me. I did not want to be saved. And she certainly would have left me dangling there if she had known how I prayed to my God.

I cannot stop looking at her, perched high on her horse, her slender face alive with flashing eyes. Her hair is glorious, streaming out behind her, red-gold.

I told her my name, but I dare not ask hers.

“Jane,” her companion says. “She is Lady Jane Grey and she is usually shy with strangers. I wonder what has loosened her tongue today!”

“A stranger who wets himself with fear,” I reply. “That is enough to loosen anybody’s tongue.” My cheeks redden with shame at my choice of words, but she roars with laughter.

I tremble as I walk beside them. I am entering the gates of the Greys – one of the most powerful Protestant families in England.

Statue smashers and blasphemers
. My father’s words echo in my head. That’s what he used to call those of the new faith. He could not bring himself to use the word Protestant. Statue smashers because they hate painted statues. Blasphemers because they refuse to accept that the bread and wine change into Christ’s body and blood during Mass.

I shall be safe. Who would look for me in such a place? I need not stay long. Yes, it will suit me to stay.

I share a room above the bakehouse – which lies between the kitchen and the walled garden – with Jack, one of the gamekeepers. He is only a year older than me but his arms are muscular, his back broad. He calls me “boy”, although I have turned sixteen and grown tall since I left Lincoln. But although I have grown tall on the outside, I know that inside anger and fear have stunted me.

Jack lets me sleep where the wall is warmed by the oven below. And he shows me the creatures he has snared in the forest, dangling them proudly in front of me.

How will I have the strength to cut and chop? My body is bony after living rough for so long. Thomas, the head woodman, scratches his head in thought as he looks me up and down. Then he gives me an axe. As I take it, its blade pulls me towards the ground and when I aim at the wood, I miss, wrenching every muscle. Pain darts through the scar on my palm. Then I try again. It is a better blow although it jars my body.

Thomas’s axe flashes next to me like a flame as he shows me what to do. “A forest is ne’er fully grown,” he says. “Its heads are allus being lopped. It’s allus stunted by death.”

I nod, straining to understand his dialect.

“I don’t stand still, Ned,” he laughs, “or they’ll chop me down.”

If he does take me on I shall have my work cut out, I know that. I have never done any physical labour.

“Come on, lad, put your back into it!” Thomas’s voice is impatient. “There’s many a lad round ’ere would be glad of the job.”

I try harder. Sweat stains my shirt and every muscle strains as I struggle to find the rhythm. But when it comes at last, I cannot imagine any other way of working. The swish of the blade and the sway of my body empty my head of all thoughts, and the sap scents my skin with a perfume that the stream does not wash away.

Gnarled hands shake mine in welcome. “Aye, lad, I’ll take thee. I’m glad to have an extra pair of hands. Springtime’s busy. Prunin’ and choppin’ and repairin’ the damage from t’winter storms.”

That evening, I sit on the doorstep of the bakehouse, catching the last light to read. Jack watches me, irritated by my silence. “I could teach you to read,” I say gently, “then you could—”

His rough cheeks redden. “I could
what
? I don’t need no books to set snares. I don’t need no books to shoot. What good is books to me?”

“You could read the Bible now it’s written in English,” I reply. “Don’t you want a better life, Jack?”

“There ain’t no better life for me.” He laughs in my face then. “Or for you.”

And he cools towards me.

The forest calms me. It is called Charnwood and it is the biggest forest in Leicestershire. A hill rises in the west – Beacon Hill, Thomas tells me – and from the top, on a clear day, you can see Lincoln Cathedral. But I do not hear anything else that Thomas says then. I can only see our house in my mind, clinging to the hillside above the river. I can even smell its damp stone.

It is the most beautiful spring I have ever seen. Bluebells push through the earth and every leaf is unfolding bright green, and light flashes through them onto the forest floor.

One morning, when showers grey the skies and soak the wood, Jack trudges past to check his snares and I call out good day as I raise my axe. He stops to watch. I can see him from the corner of my eye, nudging Thomas’s elbow and smiling. Rain drips down the handle of the axe, and down my nose into my mouth. I hesitate too long. The handle is slippery and I miss the branch, losing my axe and toppling full length into the mud. I taste its dankness on my lips.

I cannot find my footing, but Jack walks on, shoulders shaking as he laughs, and it is Thomas who pulls me out. I should laugh, I know. It would be better for me. But I cannot.

“Thee ’as to learn to take a joke, lad,” Thomas says.

My heart races. “Jack has taken against me lately. I thought he would be a good friend.”

Thomas pats the tree in front of us, one of the biggest oaks in that part of the forest. “This is my friend,” he says. “A tree’ll never let thee down.”

As servants, we fare well. Ale and meat in the kitchen at first light, cheese and bread warm from the oven to take to work, and sometimes an apple, and, at last light, more bread and ale. I have never tasted ale before, although I do not admit to this and I grow to like its bitter cool.

My body fills out in the first few days and my arms strengthen, and soon I am the sixteen year old I would have been had I still been at home.

She always dresses plainly, dark silks with little embroidery, except at the cuffs, and the same rope of pearls around her neck. She always comes to the forest before breakfast, to the secret places where the huntsmen never ride, to fern-filled hollows close to the stream and perhaps to other places I do not yet know. She is kind and beautiful.

And I cannot stop thinking about her.

What am I doing here? One snap of their fingers and I could be back in Lincoln prison. I have darted and dodged in the shadows for many months now and I have been lucky at Bradgate Hall. Nobody has asked where I am from or where I am going.

But these new feelings, the ones I have for Jane, frighten me.

They might make me careless.

There is a place where the water widens and falls frothing over the rocks into a deep pool. Sometimes, when we stop to eat and Thomas falls asleep, or at morning light, I go and read by the water and think of Jane. Then I am truly in heaven.

For the first time in months, I feel my whole body relax. Only the scar on my right palm itches. And, as the evenings grow lighter and longer, I sit outside cleaning my axe with an oily rag, running my fingers along its curved steel, until it shines like the moon. Then I stare at my reflection in the last light. My eyes still hold their wary look.

The priesthood should be your passion, they say, not a Protestant.

I tiptoed through the great hall. Last night’s fire flickered in the grate, giving enough light to cast my shadow on the wall. The oak dresser loomed, its silver plate catching the early morning light.

I was on my way to the forest.

Before I reached the outside door, I stopped to look at a portrait on the wall. It is not a good painting like the one by Hans Holbein, but it is a good likeness, my mother says. The face of my mother’s uncle, Henry the Eighth, looked down at me. Except for his beard, it could have been her: broad face, broad lips, broad neck. In my head, I thanked him as I did every day for steering England away from the Catholic Church.

As I put out my hand to open the door, my sister Catherine came clattering down the staircase. She is two years younger than me, and her skin is like cream – not one sunspot dapples its surface. And there is no Tudor red in her hair. It is as brown and gleaming as a new chestnut. Mary clung to her nightdress. Poor little Mary, as twisted as a young willow from the day of her birth.

“Father wants to see you,” Catherine said.

“Why?” My heart thudded.

“Perhaps it’s something to do with Ned.” She giggled and made kissing noises in my face.

“May your tongue split!” I shouted, reaching up to slap her. She stepped back and Mary hid behind her, pulling a face at me.

“Stop this noise!” Ellie had appeared at the kitchen door. “The servants can hear you! Why are you squabbling?”

None of us replied.

Ellie shooed my sisters away. Then she came back to me, frowning. “Why has your father sent for you? I warned you, Jane! Didn’t you see me shake my head?”

“Yes, yes, Ellie, I know, but I felt sorry for him. What is the point of saving him if he is to starve and steal again and be hanged a second time?”

She ignored my question. “Don’t anger your father. He may let you off lightly.”

I would have laughed at her words if my father had not bellowed for me at that moment from the library door.

He was already holding the whip when I went in. I took a sharp breath. My father had often slapped and pinched, but he had never whipped me. People say how alike we look and it is true. His face is also slender and his skin is pale. But his mouth is softer than mine and for that reason he hides it under a long moustache.

My mother was sitting next to him, her lips pressed tight. A ruff hid her neck, the latest fashion from London. Is this how parents greet their daughter when they return home? Any other mother or father would have kissed and petted me and asked me how my lessons went.

I curtsied. “Good day, sir. Good day, madam. Welcome home.”

Their faces hardened in the silence. I stared past them at the stag’s head on the wall. I had looked at it in death many times: its hacked neck grey with dust; its antlers laced with cobwebs. Here, in this room, the huntsman and its victim are forced to face each other every day.

“Get on with it, Henry!” The anger in my mother’s voice astonished me.

My father raised his whip and pulled my right hand towards him. I flinched as my skin split, sprinkling blood onto my cuff – royal blood, the cause of all my troubles.