The Queen's Sorrow (9 page)

He could see some of her hair, even though he wasn’t looking. It reflected light – but whether it was golden or silvery, he didn’t see. Women’s caps here were placed back to reveal middle partings and hair sleek to the head. In Spain, there was never a glimpse of hair: just foreheads, high and bare. Leonor wouldn’t sketch well, even if he dared try. Spanish women were generally soft-faced and doe-eyed, but Leonor had a sharp face with small, slate-coloured eyes, and her mouth was hard, thin-lipped, slipped sideways. He adored that cussed little mouth, a glimpse of it never failed to give a kick to his heart. The memory of it, even. Her hair was plain brown and her complexion sallow, which suggested she was delicate when in fact she was anything but. A trick, that. She was no classic beauty, but still Rafael was captivated by her.

That night, for the first time in a long time, he thought of Beatriz. She’d been his mother’s maid and she’d seemed to him, aged fifteen, to have been in the household for ever. But it had probably only been two or three years, and she was likely no older than he was. He’d never looked at her: that was the truth. Not like that. She was just there, his mother’s maid. Later, he puzzled how he’d missed that she was so extraordinary-looking with her pale face and amber eyes. Her hair – an abundance of tiny copper curls – he couldn’t have known about.

One afternoon, while he was sitting in the garden, she approached him, coming up close as if curious. She bent to look into his eyes, and held the look. His worry was that he’d done something wrong and been discovered, because there was a knowingness to her expression. There was nothing for him to do but look back at her, and wait. He’d never before looked into her eyes – of course not – and he was intrigued by their colour. Not a colour that he’d ever seen in anyone else’s eyes, nor even imagined possible for eyes.
Amber
. Then she had her fingers in his hair, lifting it back off his forehead, away from his face, as if he had a fever. He was suddenly conscious of her laced-up bosom, so close. The easing of his hair from his scalp was causing him a physical stirring of the kind he’d felt before – no use pretending otherwise – but never in direct response to someone’s touch. But then she was gone, across the garden, back towards the house.

He knew something. He was suddenly in possession of a knowledge, he felt sure, that was going to make all the difference to his life: a touch – the mere touch – of a woman was all that mattered, was reason enough to be alive.

From now on, he hungered for her presence. That was all. He was sure she’d come to him again; he understood that was what she’d wanted him to know. And a couple of days later, she did come to him. In the garden, again. She stopped as if he’d called her to a halt, which he hadn’t. And gave him that same look, albeit from a distance. He was to come to her, then. Her stillness reminded him of childhood ‘catch’, the pause before the dash. His blood beat inside his ears, great giddying thwacks. When he reached her, he didn’t know what to do; he didn’t know what it was that he was supposed to do.
Washed up, he was, there before her.
Her face
. The linen band of her cap, its edge proud beneath his fingertips; the tiniest drop down on to bare skin and along to the scarcely perceptible well of one temple. The rough silk of her eyebrows. Folds of her nose, one side and the other. Crest of her lips, its resistance. Then the lips themselves, the drag of them in the wake of his fingertip, his complete, so-slow circle.
Her lips
, their fingertip-breadth, as if made for this.

They opened, those lips, just a little, just enough to catch his fingertip in her front teeth: the very lightest of bites, very smallest of threats. The serrated edges of her teeth and the unevenness of their set. And then her tongue, a burst of soft, wet warmth.

He withdrew his fingertip, but only because he wanted to put his own tongue there against hers, just inside her lips. Her breath was hot, which he hadn’t anticipated, and musty. The tip of her tongue lifted his, and he was surprised by its strength.

Fearing he was about to disgrace himself, he took his mouth from hers, but within a heartbeat he was prepared to take the risk and was back there. Suddenly, though, she pulled away, was on her way across the garden, and only then did he hear what she must have been listening for: footsteps. Into view came the kitchen boy with a handful of herbs. All Rafael could think was how he and Beatriz could continue. It was as urgent as if someone had stopped his breath.

When he next encountered her in the garden, she did the stopping and looking but then moved off and he realised he was to follow her. She led him through the gate into the woods; and from then on, that was where they met. She’d take
off her cap and shake free her wonderful hair. The cap was all she ever took off; he never saw her less than fully dressed. They’d lie down and kiss; she’d lie on him and he’d be all too aware of the pillow of her bosom. They lay pressed together, pushing against each other to get closer still. After a week or so of this, she did reach underneath herself to unlace him, but he assumed that she was merely making him more comfortable. She’d have known that he’d never dare do it himself in her company, so she was doing it for him, allowing it, tolerating his indecorous state.

It never occurred to him that she might do anything else to relieve him. That was for him to do, later, alone. One day, though, during the kissing and after the unlacing, when she was sprawled on top of him and pushing downwards, there was some give and he realised he’d gone a little way inside her, somehow. Both hardness and softness, was the sensation. His initial reaction was that something had gone wrong, but then – almost instantly – that, no, something had gone right. She was already settling herself down on him; he was already a little further inside.

It became what they did. He lived to do it. And whenever they did it, he thrilled to their perfect fit, relishing it. After a while, she’d gasp and tighten her grip on his shoulder. The first time she’d done this, he feared he’d hurt her, and he stopped moving, but she pressed down harder, pressed him to follow her and he got the idea, which in turn brought on his own response.

This moving of theirs was always done as if accidental, incidental to their kissing. He played along in creating that impression, but alone, in his dreams, he did nothing else: no
kissing, even; just this moving, and more of it, ever faster. Afterwards, he’d feel that this might in some sense be a betrayal of her, to think of her like this; but he didn’t particularly care. He certainly didn’t care when he was doing it. If he could’ve got away with binding her to his bedposts, he would’ve done so. He only took care not to hurt or distress her so that she wouldn’t stop doing it with him.

Looking back, as an adult, he was able to acknowledge this, appalled though he was. To understand it, almost, even: a fifteen-year-old boy. Given the chance, Francisco would probably be the same, and Rafael didn’t think there was much he’d be able to do about it.

Beatriz never so much as addressed him during this time: they never spoke. They never had. In that respect, nothing changed.

He had no idea, at the time or since, as to whether she’d had liaisons with his brothers, all or any of them. She might’ve had. Gut instinct said no – his pious brothers? – but, then, it would, wouldn’t it. And the pious ones are probably the worst. In retrospect, he suspected she wasn’t a virgin. He wouldn’t have known it at the time – he knew nothing, at the time.

How long did it go on? He hadn’t kept track; it was something that was happening, it was his life. Months, anyway. And then one day, his mother, with Beatriz at her side, informed the family that her maid would be leaving the household in three days’ time to go home to her village and get married. She knew, she said, that everyone would wish to join her in offering their congratulations – and so they did, amid expressions of regret at the impending departure. And Beatriz
nodded and smiled her own shy thanks for the congratulations and the regrets.
Married?
There’d been no talk of marriage. But, then, of course, there’d been no talk at all. So, Rafael accepted it. It was something servants sometimes did.

There was something he’d no longer be doing, though, and the prospect was dire. He tried to get to see Beatriz, but she seemed always to be in his mother’s company. He waited in vain in the woods and then suffered more vigils in the garden. But the three days passed and there he was, standing with the rest of the household to wave her goodbye. And she didn’t look at him. And if there was ever mention of her again, he never heard it. But, then, why would he? Servant-talk was for women. Only twenty-four years later and more than a thousand miles away, feeling uneasy and contrite, did he find himself wondering about her departure, about what she’d been going to and why.

Some evenings, Antonio deigned to come back to the Kitsons and then everything there was different, there was conversation. Lively conversation. Between him and Cecily. She often found him funny: she did a lot of laughing and, to Rafael, her laughter sounded genuine.

He made no attempt to listen – catching no more than the odd, uninteresting word, such as
you, the house, London, in
Spain
– but watched Cecily sitting straight, concentrating on sifting comprehensible words from Antonio’s accent. She’d often respond, and sometimes ask questions; but despite engaging with Antonio in these conversations more than she
ever did with Rafael, she gave less of herself, he felt, than in their own stilted exchanges. Her hands, for instance: Rafael noticed how for him they were always moving, raised and given up to the effort to show him what she meant, whereas for Antonio they stayed in her lap.

And Antonio was useless with her son. Rafael suspected he was useless with children in general – he was the type, he’d see them as competition for attention. It was hard to imagine how that could be so in this particular case, but anyway Antonio made no attempt to include the boy, not so much as an occasional glance. Rafael often made the effort to smile, fat lot of good though it did him.

It was after an evening – and a night – of Antonio that Rafael decided to ask Cecily for help. He felt able to ask for it, now, for his final week or so, especially as the Kitsons weren’t going to be around: ‘It’s possible …? Antonio, me: two rooms?’

She frowned to indicate that she was thinking, then gestured for him to follow her. They went to the main staircase and up the stairs, along the gallery to more stairs – different from those to his old room – and along another, narrower gallery to yet more stairs. No sign of life anywhere, of course: everyone gone. Everything gone: patches on walls where paintings or hangings had been, and scuff marks where there’d been benches or chests. The child had come with them, but didn’t run ahead as Francisco would have done. Francisco wouldn’t have cared that he didn’t know where they were going. Indeed, that would be it, the game of it: running ahead with an ever-increasing anticipation of being called back. This child, though, skulked in their wake, the fingertips of one
hand – Rafael could hear – trailing along the walls. Ahead, Cecily was both dissolving into the dusk and shining in it.

She stopped at a closed door and she took a key from her belt to unlock it, opened it, stood back to reveal the room. A good size, was Rafael’s first impression. Big bed and two oak chests. North-east facing, though, again, to his disappointment. Cecily was saying something quickly, indicating the bed, her hands raised and then falling. Bed hangings, he assumed, of which there was a notable absence, but her tone was cheerful and he guessed she was saying that she could find some. He was keen to accept the offer and to show his gratitude. There was no question: this room would do fine, hangings or no hangings, and even north-east facing. What mattered, frankly, was that Antonio wouldn’t be in it.

Having enjoyed success with this request, Rafael decided he should tackle the lack of something else that would make the remainder of his stay more bearable: fresh drinking water. Beer and ale failed to quench his thirst, particularly when he had a cold – and he’d had a cold more or less ever since he’d arrived. Drinking from the conduits in the streets, or the wells, or the supplies delivered to the house by water-carriers: all these, he knew, were emphatically advised against. He longed for the well at home in the courtyard, the delving of its bucket into the chilly, drenched folds in the deep-down rock; longed to hear the song of the crank and the applause of stray droplets on the tiles. If there was a safe source of fresh water anywhere in or near London, even if it was at a price – and he felt he’d pay any price, he’d find a way to pay any price – then surely Cecily, as housekeeper, would know. But when he did ask, the evening after his success with the room, she
was horrified at the suggestion and at pains, as far as he understood it, to persuade him that he should never be tempted.