The Queen's Sorrow (21 page)

Rainwater showered from eaves, and for once he saw the drenched buildings as impressively unbowed. The rain – heavy all day – had just stopped, and everything was slick and gleaming, even the mud and muck. Somehow that sheen was on him, too: he felt it rushing up to him with each of his inward breaths and he tingled with it. He was part of this shining, after-dark world. In on its secrets.

More watchmen had been appointed, Rafael knew, since the previous week’s riots, and indeed a pair stood at most corners, idling, only belatedly curious when he and Cecily
passed. She strode on and Rafael did the same, and each time they got away with it. And why should they be challenged? They were doing nothing. They were up to nothing. His stomach felt high, braced as if he were on the lip of something and stepping off, unsure of a landing.

At last, Cecily spoke, surprising him with her question: ‘Are there a lot of burnings in Spain?’ He didn’t know what he’d been expecting her to say, but not that. She hadn’t let up on her pace and the question came on a rush of hard, fast breaths. She might’ve been asking him the time of day. Matter-of-fact. Fact-finding.

‘Before I was born,’ he said. Not quite the truth. ‘
Most
, before I was born.’ Spain, she’d asked about. Nowhere else, no mention of elsewhere, of Spanish burnings nowadays in the empire, in the Low Countries. He couldn’t quite believe that she didn’t know about the persecution in those countries, but he wasn’t going to bring it up.

‘Did it work?’

The Inquisition? She’d got ahead of him by a step or two – he’d faltered – and turned to him, expectant. She was serious, he saw: did it work, yes or no? Put like that: ‘Yes.’ She gave him a terse nod: he’d confirmed her suspicion. Ostentatious obedience to the Church. He could have said,
Every second
man’s a priest. Take my brothers
.

She walked on. ‘Cecily,’ he called after her. ‘It’ll … stop.’ Soon, he meant. But saying so, he felt he was playing it down and betraying those who’d already suffered.

‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ she threw back.

‘Yes,’ he reasoned, hurrying after her. ‘This is England. In England …’
you don’t do this, you don’t burn people
.

‘I don’t know that this is England, really, any more, Rafael. It’s half Spain now.’ She stopped again, faced him. ‘We have a Spanish king.’

‘He is not king! He is not king.’ Then, with something like an exasperated laugh, ‘Believe me, Cecily, England is nothing like Spain.’

His turn, now, though: he wanted something explaining. ‘Cecily, listen –’ they’d resumed walking and he puffed to get his question voiced: ‘Is it true? – priests here have wives?’

‘Had.’

No more, though, from her. The air between them was crazed by their breath. He was considering what to ask and how to ask it when, ‘Rafael?’

Now it was coming: the explanation for their being on this walk. ‘I just needed you with me.’ Matter-of-fact, again. ‘Not in there –’ she flapped a hand in their wake and he took her to mean the Kitsons’ house. ‘I needed you with me, just for a little while. Just –’ she threw up both hands, glanced up into the black sky.
Here
.

‘And I am,’ he said, with feeling, ‘I am with you,’ and he marvelled at it: that here he was, in the dark, the desperate cold of this unforgiving city, his blood singing as he raced to keep up with this long-limbed Englishwoman.

She smiled at him, amused because he’d stated the obvious: here, indeed, he was. Her smile made it a mere statement of fact and he allowed it, smiling, too. But he decided to chance something: ‘You’re in trouble, aren’t you?’

‘No –’

‘No’ – fist to his chest – ‘in here.’ But that, of course, could be misinterpreted. ‘In
here
–’ fist to his forehead.

‘Troubled,’ she corrected. ‘Don’t try to make me talk about it.’ Not a plea but a warning, and he heeded it. She’d not denied what he’d dared to put to her, she’d not thrown it back at him, and that was enough, at least for now. He knew something about her – she was troubled. She’d let him know it. That much had changed. He had to say something, though, so he said, ‘I am your good friend.’ It didn’t sound right, though. There was something wrong with it, with having said it.

‘Good,’ though, she said, ‘good,’ but she said it absently – for the sake of form, he felt. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s go home,’ so they walked back up the hill and nothing more was said.

The more he considered it, it seemed stupid:
I am your good
friend
. It’d struck the wrong note. It wasn’t what he’d meant to say, although what that was – what he
had
wanted to say – he didn’t know. Not that it wasn’t true. If anything, it was too true. Obvious. Not worth saying. Of course he was her good friend. Why had he had to say it? To him, she’d said,
I needed
you here
. Direct and trusting. Why couldn’t he have been like that, in return? Instead, he’d been awkward, and not just because of the language barrier. And in being awkward, he felt, he’d let her down.

And then there they were, already back indoors, behind the closed door, and there was nothing for it but to say good-night. Bejewelled with chill – eyes and cheeks a-glow – she turned from him with a smile and was gone. He felt more awake than he’d felt in months, but this wakefulness wasn’t welcome, not at this time of night. A beer, he decided.

The warmth in the kitchen was a whole day deep and many of the staff had already bedded down in it. Others lolled on sacks at the fireplace, and among them was Antonio.
Rafael recoiled from Antonio’s amused look and resented his tracking of him – he could sense it – to the barrels.

Up in his room, in bed, he was unable to sleep. He felt Antonio’s gaze on him still, he couldn’t shake it off; it rattled him. There’d been times when Rafael could have – should have – looked at
him
like that.

Leonor had been Gil’s wife and she would always be his widow. She would always be that, first, before she was Rafael’s wife. But Rafael hadn’t seen it.

He didn’t ask her to marry him until after her year of mourning and then a few more months. An interval that was more than respectable. Not that being respectable had been his concern – he’d just had no idea how she was feeling. She gave no clues. She remained composed.

And anyway he didn’t know how to ask her. For a year and more, he went over and over it: how to tell her what he felt for her and to ask her to become his wife. He imagined various approaches, from the seemingly accidental – somehow letting it slip – to making a formal, written request for an interview. Her possible responses, too: he worked hard to imagine every possible variation. He kidded himself he was prepared.

One day, Leonor was bemoaning being a widow, disparaging her status. Rafael didn’t dare raise the question of marriage for fear of seeming to pity her, but he knew this was his moment. He just said, ‘Leonor, I love you.’ Amazed himself by saying it, as blunt as that. More than a year of pondering, of thinking through strategies, and that, in the end, was what happened: he
just said it. And that was how he said it, too: a statement of fact. No great declaration. If anything, it had sounded weary. Resigned. Which was a fair reflection of how he felt, after all that time. ‘Marry me,’ he then dared to ask, ‘please.’

She blushed, having been caught unawares, which wasn’t what he’d intended. She was wrong-footed, and she didn’t appreciate it. And he wasn’t keen on being the subject of her displeasure. It’d had to be done, though: that, now, was his conviction. He’d been right to do it. Recovering herself, she acted dismissive: a brief, humourless laugh – not unkind – and she said his name in reproach. But he wasn’t having that. Rafael
what
? He’d done nothing wrong in telling her how he felt. In putting it to her. It made him vulnerable, not her. Surely she could see that. ‘I’m serious,’ he told her, in the hope that this was helpful.

She raised her shoulders and turned away. There was something bleak in it: the stiffness, the turn, the distant gaze. She didn’t give him an answer; she said, ‘Give me time.’ So relieved was he that she hadn’t declined, he’d have given her anything she asked for. There would be no coming straight into his arms, but he’d known that would never happen. Only as they left the garden for the house did he wonder:
How much time?

After several weeks, he was wondering: How much more time? Eventually – three, four weeks later – he was forced into having to ask her, ‘Have you thought any more about my offer?’
Offer
. More like
plea
; he should’ve said
plea
.

She said, ‘You miss your friend.’

It took him a moment, but then he understood her to mean that he was grieving for Gil and looking to her to be his consolation. ‘No,’ he urged, ‘no,’ impassioned, ‘I’ve always –’

But he stopped in the face of her obvious alarm. He saw that it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. This was what she definitely didn’t want to hear. He spread his hands –
I’ve
said it; I’m sorry, but I’ve said it
– and allowed, ‘Of course I miss Gil.’ And he did, dizzyingly so, and all at once it came again, the disorientation, because Gil’s disappearance from their lives felt like an elaborate trick and for a heartbeat Leonor was part of it, she was privy to something that Rafael wasn’t.

The hitch of her eyebrows was a kind of shrug, as if to say,
Well, he’s not coming back
.

Yes, but where did that leave them?

And then, ‘Rafael?’ No more than a puff of impatience. ‘Why not,’ she said, and there was that tilt of her chin, the hardness of her mouth, her eyes alight with challenge. Of all the possible responses, this was the one he hadn’t anticipated, but it was utterly characteristic of her. It made it impossible for him to go to her, to hold her as he’d imagined he might. He nodded, a sharp little nod, an acknowledgement.

A done deal.

And his heart bled.

Oh, it had got better, over time. It had been all right. She’d thawed. Opened up to him. The first time her hand felt for his, gripped it – well, he couldn’t envisage a greater happiness. Only years later did he realise it had been nothing much to her, not anything like as much to her as it had been to him. For her, it was just a hand to grasp.

Two evenings after their walk, Rafael was delighted to find Cecily in the kitchen, at the fireside, her son resting back against her knees with his eyes closed and the dog lolling in turn closed-eyed against him. Gazing into the flames, Cecily was rolling something in the fingers of one hand. Seeing Rafael, she remembered herself, stopped, and revealed what it was: a pebble. ‘Harry’s.’ The kitchen boy’s.

‘Oh.’ Harry: the oddness, again, of him being gone. Rafael couldn’t quite believe that he wouldn’t be turning up again –
Hello, there!
– now that the drama of his death was done. ‘What is it?’

She shrugged. Nothing. A pebble. ‘It was in his pocket.’ She’d had the job of going through his clothes, his belongings. It was nothing much. Nothing at all, in fact: just a pebble. But it had been Harry’s. Rafael was glad she hadn’t thrown it away. She closed her hand over it again. Rafael sat down beside her and they looked together for a while into the fire.

Then she asked him, ‘What d’you think people do in Heaven?’ She was being mischievous, he saw, but was also waiting for an answer – to that extent, it was a real question.

Heaven
. He felt the familiar clench of terror:
it might’ve
already happened
.

‘Do?’ He’d never thought of it like that. If he ever got there, would he have to do anything? Seeing loved ones again was what Heaven was for, wasn’t it? Being back with those you loved. But quite what you then did, in their company, he didn’t know. He didn’t know, either, if he believed it. For her, though, he was happy to go along with it: ‘Why?’ He was curious, and amused: ‘What do
you
think people do?’

‘Music.’ She’d shrugged, but she’d spoken emphatically – it was something she’d thought about, something about which she’d had an idea. ‘Learn music,’ she said. ‘Practise.’ And presumably get very good indeed. Eternity was a lot of practising. Just how good could you get? He liked the idea, was tickled by it.