The Queen's Sorrow (6 page)

The following evening, the woman did the same and this time he was ready to thank her. The evening after that, too, and the one after that. But the next one, he thanked her as usual and said, ‘It’s good, now,’ and, smiling, raised his hand –
Enough, thank you
– which she must have understood because that was the last of it.

He still felt rotten for much of the time, because of indigestion. There was so much meat in England and so little else. Meat, even on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and even in the court of this Catholic queen. Clearly she was bringing back only some of the Catholic ways. The Kitson family went to Mass, but everybody did now that the queen required it. There was no other evidence of their Catholicism. Rafael
didn’t know if he knew much about Protestantism. He knew that a Protestant priest would speak in English, not Latin, which he found hard to imagine: it didn’t seem, to him, to be a language for wonders. And Protestants believed they could talk to God, he knew: offer up their every hope and grievance and He’d hear them, He’d listen to them. They debated the contents of the Bible, too, as if it were up for debate and by anyone.

Rafael had been going with the Kitson household to Mass at St Bartholomew’s on the corner, but he missed a few days when he had his cold and, afterwards, didn’t resume. He realised that if anyone marked his absence, they’d assume he was attending Spanish Masses at the palace. Likewise, his fellow countrymen, if they considered it at all, would assume that he was going to Mass with the Kitsons. At home, for years, his attendance at church had been the bare minimum. Church distracted him from God – that was how he felt – and perhaps this was because of the gloom of the buildings when – he was sure of it – God was in light. He didn’t know how his brothers could bear it, that gloom, the two brothers of his who were priests. He’d feel God’s presence sometimes when he was riding, or in the garden, or making calculations, and often when he glanced at his son. The feeling was always both awesome and intimate. It was a feeling he hadn’t yet had in England.

When he was young, he’d talked about that feeling with his friends and many of them had felt the same. The Spanish Church, though, would judge it heretical; so now, older and, he hoped, wiser, he was careful to keep it to himself. He, whose family, Jewish-looking, Jewish-named, had no room for error.

During one of his visits to the Kitsons’ local church, he’d glimpsed the pale woman. She’d had her eyes closed, as did many people – but they were dozing, he was sure, and she was biting her lip. He saw there was a vigilance about her.

Towards the end of the second week, Rafael was advised by an official in the Spanish office to abandon his project. The strain on the prince’s budget – two households to support, the one he’d brought with him and the one his bride had assembled for him – meant that there was no guarantee that Rafael would be paid, nor even that he’d be reimbursed for what he planned to spend soon on materials. ‘But you must’ve known,’ Rafael objected. The prince had been in England for a month. ‘You could’ve stopped me coming.’

‘Not
me
,’ the official replied with a shrug, ‘
I
didn’t know you were coming.’

Rafael had known that very few of his fellow countrymen were working. Duplication of any Englishman’s duties was to be avoided. In deciding this, Spanish officials had been trying to keep the peace. Sit tight, everyone had been told, and passage home will soon be arranged.

Rafael had no doubt that the problem in his particular case would be resolved in his favour. In the meantime, it cost him nothing to continue with his work, so he wandered in the direction of the queen’s garden. It was a raw morning, and he’d assumed no one would be there but, opening the door in the wall, he saw he was mistaken:
she
was there, the queen, at the fountain, accompanied by the mischievous-looking Mrs
Dormer. His heart clenched, squeezing the breath from him, and he backtracked immediately. He’d claim, if questioned later, that he’d taken a wrong turning. To his dismay, though, she’d seen him, or – short-sighted – she’d seen
someone
, and was beckoning. A whole-arm beckoning, it was: enthusiastic, unequivocal. Yes, she was mistaking him for someone else. Wouldn’t her smirking companion put her right? He didn’t know what to do. There was no choice, though. He couldn’t disobey. He’d have to accept that he’d got himself into this –
How
? it was not like him to be incautious – and he’d have to see it through.

How, though, to approach her? He couldn’t just stride over there. How else, though, would he get to her? And where – while he was walking – should he look? Surely he shouldn’t stare into her face; but wouldn’t it be disrespectful to fail to meet her gaze? And crucially: when, exactly,
where
, should he bow? Now, in the doorway? Or when he was closer? Or both? And how much closer? And how many bows?

But there she was, gesturing with cheerful impatience. So, in the end, he just did it, putting his trust in her accepting him as a bumptious Spanish peasant, and walking over to join her. He stopped at what he hoped was a respectful distance and bowed deeply, but she was already speaking to him in English: ‘No sun, Mr Prado.’ She said it anxiously, with only the briefest, most reluctant of skyward glances. Hard to imagine what kind of harvest could come from a summer such as this. He wondered again: how did the people here survive? They’d be going hungry, next year, and they didn’t look in great shape – to say the least – even now.

Nor did she. Her small, watery eyes were pink-rimmed. It was said that she worked very hard. Rafael recalled hearing that she’d appointed a huge council of men – any English nobleman who had any claim, regardless of religious persuasion – and insisted on listening to each and every one of them, more than thirty, on each and every issue. If her extraordinary openness to him was anything to go by, he could believe it.

She said, ‘My husband is a good man.’ Good to have arranged the gift of the sundial, he took her to mean. She glanced at Mrs Dormer with something nearing a smile – a softening, a shyness – to which the lady responded with her own dazzler. Bashfully dipping her gaze, the queen repeated, ‘My husband,’ as if to listen to it, to hear it. To relish it. Rafael was surprised by such girlishness in a woman who’d been unmarried for almost forty years. He’d been assuming that this marriage of convenience was a personal inconvenience for her, just as it was for the prince. Word was that, when she’d come to the throne, she’d resisted her council’s suggestion that she should marry. Hardly surprising, given the fate of her unfortunate mother. Everyone in Spain knew that the prince had had to leave behind a mistress, his wife in all but name. Did the queen know? The prince’s job, now, was to be attentive to his new wife, and he’d be taking it seriously. Rafael didn’t envy him his duty. For all the queen’s openness, there was something off-putting about her. Not her looks, despite what everyone said; nothing so simple. It was perhaps her openness itself, he felt. An over-eagerness.

He wondered how – as heir to the throne – she’d got to such an age and not already been married. The prince was an
old hand, he’d been married and widowed. Eleven years her junior, but already second time around for him. Then Rafael remembered that she hadn’t been heir: she’d been a disinherited heir, which was worse than no heir at all. A liability. Who’d have wanted her? How everything had changed for her in just one year. So much change so late in life. This once-sidelined spinster was now wife of the man who would one day be the most powerful in the world.

She was peering at him. ‘Do you have a wife, Mr Prado?’

Yes, he was glad to tell her. ‘Leonor.’ Her name came to him like a cry, which he forced down to be a lump in his throat. What would Leonor make of this? Being discussed by the queen of England. That’d be some gift to take back with him:
The queen asked about you
.

‘Children?’

‘One, Your Grace: a son, Francisco.’ If Francisco were present in person, he’d be frustrating his father’s efforts, clinging to his legs, refusing to look up.

‘Francisco,’ she echoed, appreciative. ‘And how old is he?’

Three, he told her.

‘He’s little.’ She sounded surprised, and asked, bluntly, ‘How old is your wife?’

Taken aback, the English word eluded him; he found himself raising his hands and doing four flashes of all his fingers.

‘Forty?’ She turned, chatting animatedly, to her companion. He felt he knew why his answer pleased her: Leonor had had her first baby in her late thirties, the queen’s own age. The queen, though, looked so much older; she could easily be ten years older than Leonor. She turned back to him, held him in that pale stare of hers. ‘I’m thirty-eight,’ she said. She placed
her hands squarely on her belly and said, matter-of-fact, ‘Pray for me, Mr Prado.’ As queen, she could expect an entire population to be praying for her, but he understood that she was truly asking it of him and he was honoured. Then she and her companion were going before he realised, and he had to do his bowing in her wake.

Again, Rafael refrained from making mention of the queen in his letter home. He’d tell Leonor when he saw her.
We spoke
about you
. He could see, in his mind’s eye, her habitual expression of humourful disdain, the scepticism with which she always faced him. He’d insist,
No, really
, and watch her making up her mind whether to believe him. That watchfulness of hers: that cautious, clever look. The tilt to her chin, and the hard little mouth with its crookedness so that it slipped whenever she spoke and more so when she smiled. Which made her smile seem partial, reflective, wry. She almost always looked amused, but Rafael couldn’t remember ever having heard her laugh aloud. When he’d first ever seen her, she’d been standing with her arms folded, and that’s how she almost always stood, how she seemed to be most comfortable although it didn’t look comfortable to Rafael. She held herself separately, seemed to be appraising – a look to which he hadn’t warmed, at first – but he’d learned in time that this wasn’t so. On the contrary: more than anyone else he knew, she suspended judgement.

She’d arrived in Rafael’s life as the bride of his boyhood best friend. Gil, a doctor’s son and a doctor himself, now, had
gone away to study and returned home with a bride. So far, so predictable. But with her tightly folded arms and half-smile, she wasn’t the kind of woman Rafael had expected Gil to bring home; Gil, who asked little of life except that he be in the thick of it, offering a helping hand. Rafael didn’t know what to make of her. The women in his family simultaneously indulged him and brushed him off, as they did with all men. Leonor, though, took the trouble to talk with him. Well, sometimes. Her talk was of nothing much, for much of the time, but that was what made it special. The women in his family talked to him to organise him, cajole him, or set him right: they had aims in their dealings with him. Leonor meandered, passing the time of day, her gaze idling on his, her slate-hued irises sometimes blue, sometimes green, grey, even almost amber. Occasionally, she’d speak more seriously – religion, politics – and say things that, in Rafael’s experience, most people didn’t dare say, but never provocatively, never carelessly. Always properly cautious, she was. But then she’d seem to be gone from him for perhaps as long as several weeks at a stretch, even though in fact she was there, around, arms folded and gaze unflinching.

If she didn’t suit Gil, Rafael often wondered who’d suit her: who would he have imagined her with, if he hadn’t known she was married to Gil? Someone older, he felt, someone reserved. He wondered what she and Gil saw in each other. Something, though, that was for certain, because once, years into their marriage, he spotted them kissing in the grove behind their house. Slipping away unseen, he nursed his shock, because it wasn’t what he’d have expected of them.

He’d fallen in love with Leonor. When? For a while, the question preoccupied him, he felt he owed it to his helpless, hopeless loving to be able to account for it. And then he accepted that he’d been searching for an excuse: she’d always been her, he’d always been him, and thus he’d always loved her, even when he hadn’t quite liked her, even when he hadn’t been quite sure of her.