The Queen's Sorrow (12 page)

The door was closed behind them when he said, ‘For the queen, a baby.’ His first surprise was that she didn’t seem to have understood him – her expression unchanged – but then came a tilt of her head and she queried, ‘The queen?’ The second surprise was her tone, which was unlike any he’d ever
heard from her. Sharp. But he could appreciate that she’d find it hard to believe what he’d just said – it was unexpected news. His stomach prickled with panic, though, because now he had the job of persuading her that he spoke the truth, a job he hadn’t reckoned on. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed, but careful to echo her scepticism, ‘a baby,’ and shrugged expansively, inviting her to join him in his amazement but to accept it:
God
moves in mysterious ways
.

Still nothing from her – then, ‘You believe it?’ This, too, was new: a challenge. He’d assumed it would be easy to bear this news, but there was something he wasn’t doing right. She was right to question it; he should have been better prepared. To come with such big news and not be able to back it up: he wasn’t doing right by her. Struggling to respond – what was English for ‘announcement’? – he cast around and had to settle for, ‘The queen says yes, and the doctors.’

She challenged him further: ‘Has it been
announced
?’ She’d never before spoken to him like this, her eyes wide and unblinking, quite fierce. And there’d be no breaking into a smile, he sensed, when she’d had it confirmed. He was out of his depth: what was going on here? He hadn’t witnessed any reactions other than relief and happiness. Protestants would be concerned at the prospect of a Catholic heir, even though they had no need – this queen was famously tolerant – but Cecily wasn’t a Protestant; he’d seen her at Mass. Or was she a Protestant? But this reaction of hers felt personal, a very real wounding. Not a matter of doctrine. Why should news of another woman’s pregnancy so unsettle her?

Has it been announced?
– she’d made clear there must be no misunderstanding, demanding of him an unequivocal answer.
Fair enough: it was important news, it should be got right. But he’d never seen this steeliness, before, in her. It thrilled him even as it distressed him, because only moments ago he’d been thinking he knew her, and now this, now this: more to know. He did as she required and answered her just as definitely as she’d asked: ‘Yes.’

She took it. Didn’t answer back. Gave nothing back.

‘It’s good news?’ He cringed to hear how pathetic he sounded, how clueless, how wheedling. He needed her reassurance that he’d done something good in bringing her this news. He needed her to tell him what he’d done wrong. Instead, she pretended that nothing had happened. ‘Yes, good news.’ Her voice was higher than usual, striving to sound casual. ‘Very good news.’ Adding insult to injury, she threw up her hands and let them drop back with a slap in an expression of surprise. Pretending that it was the surprise that had unnerved her. She dismissed him with a tight little smile that didn’t reach her eyes. And then she turned to walk off. Just like that. Well, he wasn’t having it. He seemed to have offended her and he couldn’t make amends until he knew what was wrong. He had wanted so very much to be the bearer of good news. ‘Cecily,’ he protested, and he’d taken her arm before he realised. He couldn’t believe he’d done it, but then, because it was done, he didn’t let go. Might even have tightened his grip. She turned harder away. ‘
Cecily
.’ Nothing, though, from her; so, in desperation, he took her downturned, turned-away chin and raised it, turned her face to him. His heart was wild, he was unable to breathe. His touch to her chin was so light as to be almost no touch at all, but for all her reluctance she came with it. Still, though, that refusal to look at him – a very delib
erate, furious turning away of her gaze – but he saw that her eyes were red and his heart clenched with the shock.

‘It’s good news,’ she said: a mere repetition, because she was trapped into it.

Chastened, he released her, and only then did she look at him, composing herself and repeating, ‘good news,’ but only, he knew, to make clear that there was to be no discussion. It was then, though, that she touched his arm, just a dab of fingertips to his sleeve, in what he took to be reassurance –
It’s not you,
Rafael; it’s not your fault
– and he, himself, veered towards tears, brimming with relief. Her turning from him now had no urgency; she went ahead into the house, to her tasks, leaving him still wondering what he’d done. Perhaps she was mourning her own missed opportunities in life; perhaps it was that.

During the following weeks, her mood didn’t improve. There was a sadness about her. For a long time, though, this had been a sad country and perhaps she’d been like this for a long time and he’d not seen it, perhaps because he hadn’t watched her as closely as he now did. He feared she was ill but saw no signs. Maybe she’d been keener to hide her melancholy from him, before; but now, knowing him better, didn’t bother. Life must be hard for her, he reasoned, alone here in this house with her child. Widowed. Well, he knew all about widows: he was married to one.

Six weeks at most, he’d been told. The first ship home, he’d been promised. Well, the first ship home had already set sail, more than a week early: the Duke of Medina-Celi’s, with all
his men. Rafael’s problem was that he was no one’s man. But, he told the Spanish office, he was prepared to travel on anything, on any trade ship to anywhere in Spain. And now that the six weeks were up and they were still unable to give him word on the likelihood of the sundial being funded, he reckoned he was entitled to leave. They’d look into it, they kept telling him: this, from officials who couldn’t see beyond the man waiting next in line to complain.

Cecily embroidered in the evenings without looking up, biting her lip, working at the stitching rather than taking pleasure in it. They’d never been able to converse much but there’d been an openness where now, he felt, she was closed to him. Once, even, she cried. He’d taken it to be the usual English sniffing until, with a jolt, he’d realised his mistake. At the time, he was sitting at the table, writing what he’d once again assumed to be his final letter home. He stared at the wet scratches of ink, wondering what to do. What to say. Anything would almost certainly embarrass her, but he couldn’t sit there ignoring her distress. He couldn’t bear it. A simple,
Are you all
right?
would be knocked back, he guessed, with a mere,
Yes
,
thanks
. He managed, ‘Cecily? Something happens?’
Has something
happened?

Surprised into looking up, she thanked him for his concern with a quick, dutiful smile through obvious tears. ‘Oh, no, nothing. But thank you.’ Then she was back to her needlework and he was helpless, at a loss. Nothing for it but to turn his attention back to the letter in front of him. He’d still had no replies because Leonor was expecting him back any day. Don’t write, he’d been telling her, because I’ll be back soon. For a month, now, he’d been saying that.

Most days, lately, if the rain looked to be holding off for long enough, he’d been out walking. Word was that the streets were safe since the breaking of the queen’s good news, and indeed he met no trouble, just glances from the curious. Walking helped him to feel less trapped. Odd, that he should feel free in the crammed lanes, jostled by shoppers, dodging beggars and pedlars of baked apples, sidestepping spit-roasts. Kept on his toes, he was, though, which was what he needed. Well-to-do streets ran alongside bad, and he never knew which he’d find until he made the turning – although he never made the same mistake twice of turning into Fleet Street, with its open sewer and hellish-looking prison. Some areas were charming: the cheese kiosks in Bread Street; the bookshops around St Paul’s. The cathedral itself, though, he avoided after his first visit. Hundreds of keen-eyed Londoners milling around in the nave, clearly conducting dubious business deals: no place for an onlooker. From the streets around St Paul’s, he would often head downhill to the river where he relished its lustre and the sudden, unexpected openness. The breeze working his eyes to a shine, he’d watch men in the distance riding the supple back of that body of water to make their living: garrulous boatmen, and stoical fishermen. In the shallows, sometimes, oxen quenched their thirst under the eye of their herdsman. And downstream was London Bridge: the span of arches, and towering, timber-intricate houses. Though he loved the look of it, he’d never dared go on to it, let alone across, knowing from Antonio that the south bank teemed with taverns and brothels. It was where the bear-baiting happened, too, and in August a bear had broken free and savaged a man.

Late afternoon was when he did his walking: no later because dusk – and with it, curfew – was coming so much earlier. Despite the chill and the clouds rolling dense and dark like smoke, there was something in the autumn air of which he couldn’t get enough. He breathed it deep and tingled with it. A sharpness, at which his body tightened in anticipation. The season was turning; he’d never before experienced a turn as hard and fast as this. The prospect of winter appalled him but his body was alive, animal-alive, to its coming.

He got sick in October, and languished for two days with a bucket, lying in his bed watching half-hearted daylight drift around his room, and thirsting for fresh, sun-sparkled water. He missed Leonor. Even by her own admission she was a poor nurse, but that was what he longed for: the laughable incompetence of her nursing. Her good-natured failing. When he did get downstairs again, Cecily and Nicholas were nowhere to be seen and the men were fending for themselves in the kitchen, living on bread and cheese, until each of them in turn disappeared for a couple of days. When Cecily reappeared, she moved gingerly for a day or two and her eyes were shadowed. So she, too, had been ill, and probably her boy, also.

He was back at the Spanish office as soon as he was able, to be told of a distinct possibility that he and Antonio would be setting sail within a fortnight. Details would be forthcoming in time. Progress indeed, and the two officials who broke the news seemed confident, even cheerful. His hopes soared.

Around that time, the house filled with spiders. There was no season for them in Spain and, at home, they were rarely inside the house, but at the Kitsons’ it was as if they were answering a call. They seeped from nooks and crannies, and wherever he turned, it seemed, there was one crouching, beast-sized, on the wall. Sometimes they looked blind, stunned to detect themselves in the open; insensible and just as likely to dash forwards as away. Other times, he saw them as watchful and malign, biding their time, the exaggerated crook of their legs posing the threat of a sudden drop. He hated that they came from the dark. He hated their clambering across walls like taunting fingers, and their frantic prancing over folds of fabric. And their silence: give him the rowdiness of the mice in the roof, any day – at least he knew they were there. Spiders could be anywhere, and, at the Kitsons’, often were: on the back of his curtain, even, and once clinging inside his cloak.

One evening, Cecily lifted some cloth from her basket and a black blotch dropped from it to skitter into the shadows of the fireplace. Recoiling, she and Rafael then shared a self-conscious laugh of relief. Poking nervously at the other fabrics, she said, ‘It’s lucky, you know, to find a spider in your wedding dress.’ Did she mean she’d found one in her wedding dress? Was he supposed to ask? He didn’t – didn’t dare – and then the moment had gone.

Some evenings with Cecily were better than others, and some were almost as they’d previously been. One evening, unexpectedly, she spoke as she selected a thread: ‘Bear’s ear.’ She’d addressed no one in particular. Her son – practising tying knots – didn’t seem to register it, and Richard was asleep. Rafael queried, ‘Bear’s ear?’

She was startled by his misunderstanding. ‘No, not from a bear’s ear,’ with an unsure laugh. She held up some silk floss, taut between her hands. ‘The colour: “bear’s ear”.’ So he laughed, now, too. She scrabbled in her linen pouch for another skein, drew it free and dangled it in the air: ‘Dove.’

‘Dove,’ he repeated, approvingly. He knew
dove
.