The Queen's Sorrow (27 page)

He followed the lady across a carpet so thick and soft that the sensation was of treading in warm mud. They were heading for a girl of twelve or thirteen who sat separately, alone on the floor, her back against the panelling, knees drawn up and arms around them. Puddled around her was lavish fabric, plum-dark, veined with gold. She was an intermediary,
perhaps, to be sent scampering ahead somewhere in the next stage of this strange mission.

Then he realised that he was looking at
her
. That was
her
down there, looking back up at him. Not pregnant, he saw in the same instant, and his heart slammed to a stop before it rushed at her to find her like this, enduring what was befalling her. He knelt in front of her, not because she was queen – indeed, he’d forgotten the necessary preliminaries, offered none of the requisite verbal flourishes, said nothing – and not as one should kneel to a queen, but lower still, sitting back on his heels as if to tend to a child. Her gaze was on his; stark. ‘How much longer?’ came from her, as a kind of growl.

She couldn’t be sitting here like this, knees up, if she were in the last stage of pregnancy. Or perhaps she could; perhaps she was just small. He didn’t dare take another look. Some women would be smaller than others in their pregnancies. She was asking him,
How much longer?
The question to which no one, it seemed, had an answer. But there was, he realised, something he could tell her: ‘My son was very, very late.’ He was shocked to hear himself say it, but also thrilled.

The tiniest spark of interest from her, with an understandable wariness. Carefully expressionless, she asked, ‘How late?’

‘Two months.’ For the first time ever, he was glad of it; he believed it or believed in its persuasiveness and loved it, and was grateful for it. He watched her wanting to believe him, and he understood. After all, he’d believed it once himself.

All the same, she checked, her tone properly incredulous: ‘Two months?’

‘Two months.’ Leonor’s pregnancy had lasted eleven months: that was the story. That was what he had been told.
He was repeating what everyone had been told and had seemed to believe. Repeated here, it had a purpose: to help her endure what she had to endure.

She entered into it, her tone hopeful: ‘And he was fine?’ But she knew he was.

Rafael confirmed what she knew: ‘My son was fine,’ and his insides tingled at the saying of it.
Fine
: the glorious inadequacy of the word. That was what had mattered, in the end: that Francisco had been fine. End of story. Happy ending.

Her eyes slid to one side, but unseeing: just to relinquish him and pursue her own thoughts. Then back to him. ‘Were you worried?’

He hoped she didn’t see him flinch. The question was genuine, he sensed, as always with her. She didn’t require him to say yes, to join her in her anxieties. Solidarity was of no interest to her. What mattered to her was the truth, and he could answer truthfully. ‘No.’ What he didn’t tell her was that he hadn’t been worried because he’d trusted in Leonor, and he’d been stupid to do that. Leonor hadn’t seemed worried, and he’d taken his cue from her. He’d trusted her. He’d had to. And, anyway, it was the story he was being told: late, late, late, later, a bit later, and later still. And so it had crept up on him: always late, which he’d never questioned. Not if late, but how late. He tried to remember how he’d explained it to himself, how he’d lived with it, and said to her, now: ‘God moves …’
in mysterious ways
. And, with a shrug, ‘Women …’ mysteries aplenty. ‘And dates …’ difficult. In Leonor’s case, though, there’d been the unmistakable physical manifestation of a pregnancy. And that wasn’t the case here.

But she took it, his story, with the faintest nod of acknowledgement. It was a good thing to have done, he told himself.
It was to help her. It was the only thing to be done. And that might have been how Leonor had felt, he supposed.
Leonor
, his heart called across more than a thousand miles and back four years. Four years ago, he should’ve been kneeling in front of her, looking her in the eye.
Leonor
, he could have begun. He should have taken the lead from where he was, outside the calamity into which she was locked. He should’ve done it then, when it was a lie laid over their lives and not yet stitched tight into it.

Because no pregnancy lasts eleven months.

Something was wrong, here, he knew. What he didn’t know was what, or how wrong. And there were so many other people who were better placed to know: attendants and midwives and physicians. People who undressed her, people who examined her. The people who’d know: it was their business to tell her, when they knew. And when that time came, whatever it was that they had to tell her, she’d be ready for them, he was certain of it. She’d hear them. This was a queen who relished the truth, for whom nothing mattered but the truth – who lived her life to pursue it – and had always shown mercy to those who admitted it. They wouldn’t be cheating her of the truth, surely, when she was in such dire need of it. They’d achieve nothing by it.

There was a relenting of her stare, an appeal – he felt – to him:
How bizarrely similar our lives
, it said, her look. He thought so, too, and – despite the circumstances – was glad of it.

‘My husband –’ she whispered, but there was no reticence; indeed, the hiss of the whisper gave it a fierceness ‘– he despairs.’

Rafael didn’t doubt it. Her husband and everyone else.

‘He’s been so patient.’ She needed that understood, and Rafael nodded. Understood, too, though, was an unspoken
but
. She hadn’t moved a muscle. Could there possibly be a live, full-term baby inside her? Would she be able to sit here like this, if there was? Surely the baby would be testing its strength, revelling in it, dragging her around in its wake.

‘He’s ready to leave,’ she whispered, ‘my husband. Whatever happens, now, he’ll go.’ The same level delivery. She said it in order to face it, he sensed, to hear it said aloud. The studied absence of inflection made him uneasy: the effort it must’ve taken her. And it gave no clue as to whether or how he should respond. And he, too, was ready to go. She could have been speaking about him:
traitor, deserter.
He sat frozen as she was, buttocks on his heels, hands on his thighs.

‘Ten weeks,’ she said, ‘ten weeks since I’ve seen him.’ And her eyes moved, just a little, as if seeing beyond him. She was seeing nothing, really, though, he felt.

Ten months: ten months since I’ve seen Francisco and Leonor.

‘I miss him.’ Again, no complaint; just the fact of the matter. ‘I write to him, every day. All day, I keep a letter going.’ Like a fire, he thought. ‘I know what people think’– she frowned – ‘there can’t be anything for me to say, being stuck in here. But there’s always something to say, isn’t there?’

He didn’t doubt that she always had something to say. He felt that he knew what she was going to say next. His lower lip was skewered beneath an incisor, he realised; he made himself let it go.

She had at last dropped her gaze, and spoke to her knees. ‘He doesn’t write to me.’ Carefully free of recrimination. ‘Not
unless there’s business to be dealt with. But men don’t, do they? Write. Find things to say.’ She corrected herself. ‘Most men.’

Then, looking up again: ‘He does ask me if I’m well. Whenever he writes, he asks if I’m well. And I am,’ she said, as if it had just occurred to her and surprised her but somehow didn’t particularly please her. ‘I am well.’

And she looked it, or didn’t look unwell. Rafael found himself taking a breath, as if he were about to speak; it seemed time for him to speak, although he had no idea what he’d say. But she was already saying, ‘I’m glad I never escaped to Spain. My brother’s men were plotting to have me killed, but I could’ve escaped to Spain. It was all planned. I dressed as a maid and went one night with Mrs Dormer to the boat. But I turned around. I had God’s work to do here.’ She sighed hugely, and closed her eyes. ‘Still do. It’s still all to do.’ More – much more – than she’d bargained for, he realised. Suddenly, her eyes opened, shining. ‘And I do it.’ Said like a pledge.

But she didn’t know what was being done on her behalf, in her name, while she was closeted in here. Rafael did know, and knew he should say so. The English people were shut away from their queen’s mercy. The Church was taking advantage of her incapacity, and losing her the respect and trust of her people.
Speak
, he willed himself.

But she was the one who was speaking, daring with round-eyed wonder: ‘Has God abandoned me?’

There was terror and dread in the question, but also sheer wonder at the notion of a Godless existence. All the rejections of her life, they’d been dealt with, lived through, endured, but this … The question had seemed to come unbidden. But it
was what was inside her, this dread, he saw. It was this with which she was living. It was her life.

He had no answer for her. There was nothing he could say to her, nothing anyone could say, and she knew it. And so they stared at each other – neither of them, he felt, daring even to breathe.

Then, ‘I do his work,’ she said again.

He did speak, he dared: ‘How hard, for you to know what to do.’

But she simply said, ‘I do what’s right, Mr Prado,’ and sounded calm, her previously widened eyes softened. She didn’t seem to have heard the doubt in his voice. He was confounded, said, ‘The burnings?’ Said it gently, and said no more. Did she even know there were burnings? Let alone of women who had babies at home.

‘Mr Prado.’ She said his name with feeling, as if she felt for him, for his ignorance. ‘My subjects have hard lives. They work hard – so hard – and for what?’ Her voice was so low that he could hardly hear, but the words were clearly enunciated. ‘There’s never enough food. And they’re cold, summers as well as winters. Sick, a lot of the time. In pain. And their children, Mr Prado: their children die. They have to watch their children die.’ He flinched but she held his gaze in hers.
Understand this
. ‘And there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m their queen, and there’s nothing I can do. I can hand over some coins – I do, Mr Prado, of course I do – and they’ll buy food and firewood, but I can’t feed everyone in England, I can’t keep everyone warm, and I can’t cure anyone’s sickness. All the coins in my kingdom won’t stop a baby from dying, if that baby is going to die.’

She waited for him to look back up at her. ‘What my people do have, in their lives, Mr Prado – if they’re lucky, and I dearly hope they are – is love. The love of their parents, spouse, friends, and – God willing – children. But they die, those parents, the spouse, the friends, a child. They go,’ she reminded him, gently. ‘But there’s someone else in every life, above and beyond all this, who doesn’t ever go, and that’s God. God’s love, Mr Prado,’ she urged, in her harsh whisper, ‘His infinite love. And when a life is over, that’s what’s there: the love of God. My people trust to that. They can go to God. God is the light in all this darkness, and at the end they’ll be reunited with their loved ones for all eternity in His presence.’ She paused; then, as if – regrettably – having to break something to him: ‘That’s what heretics take from people, Mr Prado: God. They take advantage of people’s innocence. Most of my subjects haven’t had the luxury of schooling, and heretics take advantage of that. They tell them they can ask questions and know the answers, which appeals to people with no learning. It’s a cynical play to their one weakness. Faith is not for questioning, Mr Prado,’ she appealed, barely audible. ‘That’s not what faith is. You question, and your faith is broken. Broken before you know it, and never, ever able to be mended. You break a person’s faith and you break them, you make them nothing. Heretics make nothing of people, Mr Prado – their lives, their loves, their hopes, what very little they ever had or could hope for – and they do it
just because they can
.’

He felt sick – hot, dizzy, unable to crouch for much longer.

‘The cruelty of it, Mr Prado,’ she hissed, aghast. ‘The callousness. The …’ she frowned, searching for a word ‘… disregard.’ Said as if it was the very worst that could ever
be said and, hearing her saying it like that, he knew it, too: there could be nothing worse than a person’s utter disregard for a fellow human being.

‘They must …
be gone
. Every last trace.’

He shifted, swallowed, and returned – a little – to himself. And it occurred to him: why, though, was it wrong to question Christ’s presence in the sacrament? How exactly did that turn other people from love? He tried: ‘Some of these people, though, they just –’

‘No,’ she was emphatic. ‘No. Not “just”. Never “just”.’ As if he were naïve.

It was she, though, who didn’t understand. She was so far removed, now, from her people. He had to try again: ‘But –’

‘There is no “but”.’ She spoke solemnly, as if reminding him. ‘We are all in danger. If faith unravels, then there is no faith and we’re all lost. We have to keep God with us, keep close to God. Faith is not for questioning,’ she repeated, and he knew these were her final words on it: ‘You question faith, and it’s broken, and it lets the darkness in.’