The Queen's Sorrow

by Suzannah Dunn

  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 whe
n 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.

  She did seem to gauge his desperation, though, because she very kindly fetched him an earthenware jug and beaker from which she mimed taking a sip and enacted being taken aback: sharp, she was telling him with the backwards jerk of her head, her lips pursed, eyes big with blinks. Then a slow smile: the drinking of this sharp liquid, she was showing, was ultimately pleasurable. Refreshing, she was saying. Thanking her, he accepted the jug and beaker. ‘What is it?’ he asked, although he wasn’t sure that he’d understand her reply.

  Something apple, she said.

  He’d half-understood. ‘Apple?’

  She raised her hand – Wait – and disappeared for a few minutes before there came again the rasps of her skirt. Rafael recognised that sound from whenever she was busy around the house. Never footsteps: the soft soles of her shoes were muted on the flagstones. She appeared with something in the palm of her hand: a small, apple-like fruit; like an apple, but much smaller. Something apple, she insisted, but it was no word that he recognised. He sipped the juice. Her mimed recoil had been accurate, although she was right about it being refreshing. Sour, was what it was, and he could imagine that some people could develop a taste for it. She was watching him closely, so he made much of his approval.

  He also craved olives: the rub of their flesh on his tongue, the challenge of their bitterness. Word among his fellow countrymen was that they could be had, in England, and had been spotted on top tables. His further enquiries, though, were countered with shrugs and mention of markets. He didn’t know the whereabouts of the nearest market – he was still barely deviating from the one route to and from the river. One day later that same week, he asked Cecily: ‘Is it possible?’ and showed her a handful of coins to establish that the forthcoming request wouldn’t impose on her housekeeping budget (because who knew how expensive they’d be): ‘Olives?’ He’d taken care to learn the word. He’d had to: it bore no relation to the word in his own language. Nevertheless, disappointingly, a fair few attempts were needed before she understood him. She tilted her head to one side and then the other in her efforts to catch it. When she did, though, she was enthused, forgetting herself and chatting on at him without regard for his incomprehension, which amused him. He heard market. Then she made as if to push his hand away: she’d buy them. No, no, no, he insisted. What’s more: ‘Can I go?’ he asked her, meaning, Can I come? but only knowing go. ‘With you?’ He’d surprised himself by asking, but suddenly he’d quite fancied a little expedition in the relative safety of her company, and he could shop for presents to take home for Leonor and Francisco.

  So, that’s how they came to be at the door together, one morning in September, both in their near-black cloaks: the bruise-hued, affordable version of black. His was short, Spanish-style; she was attaching little metal hooks to the hem of hers, presumably to keep it above the mud. Baskets were mustered at their feet. She had tried but failed to persuade her son to stay home. That’s what Rafael had heard, as he’d come down the stairs: her tone low, emphatic, but then fractured, as if she were struggling – physically – to extricate herself, and at the same time a cry from the child of protest or desperation. When Rafael reached the foot of the stairs, the child was there and dressed for coming with them; and Cecily looked shame-faced. Defeated.

  Rafael was reminded of Francisco’s latest tactic for protest. It had been a relatively new ruse – of perhaps a couple of weeks – when he’d left. He wondered if Francisco was still doing it: the declaration, I’ll never be your friend! And a declaration was definitely what it was: haughty; quite a performance. No wheedling, no anger, but, on the contrary, calculated, calibrated: Francisco throwing down the gauntlet, albeit with a flash of humour in his eyes. And indeed, in all but the most trying of situations Rafael had – secretly – found it funny, although the source of humour wasn’t those knowing eyes but the mouth. The pout of extraordinary proportions, imitated from who knows where and executed without finesse.

  He enjoyed walking with them, but it wasn’t for long. At the end of the lane they turned right and ahead, in the distance, was the market. The Chepe, she called it. Cheapside. The sun was cloud-covered behind them, casting no shadow. He was glad he hadn’t braved the trip alone. They were drawn into the crowds, a queue shuffling along the boards over the mud. Passing them were those with better boots or no boots at all to lose, braving the muck, and those on horseback or horse-drawn, their horses tetchy. Stepping surefooted around and through all this were traders bearing trays of wares. And thieves, too, Rafael knew: they’d be around. Cecily had her son by the hand, and Rafael marvelled at their balance. But although Nicholas was doing well, a little boy could only be so adept and Cecily was visibly tense, guiding and supporting him, her basket banging her hip.

  There were butchers’ and fishmongers’ stalls, which had Rafael reeling, alongside enticing bakers’ stalls. Cecily favoured a particular baker, buying two loaves. There was a spice stall at which Rafael would’ve lingered if he’d had the chance. Next to it, no less pungent but less pleasant, were rounds of cheese and small blocks of butter. In some of the blocks were flecks of leaves, perhaps herbs. Cecily stopped and they endured some buffeting from the ongoing crowd until they established a footing and she could request one of the blocks, free of leaves. Salted butter, Rafael suspected: he’d only had salted butter in England and, despite rarely having butter at home in Spain, was missing fresh. Cecily bought no cheese, which didn’t bother Rafael. He found cows’ milk cheese bland, compared to the sheeps’ or goats’ cheese that he ate at home.

  Then came sacks of grains to step around, and barrels of wine, malmsey and sack from Spain; then crates of apples and buckets of flowers and herbs placed to catch the eye of Londoners with no gardens of their own. A potions stall was proving popular, causing a bottleneck. Further on came stalls of cloth and carpets. Leather, too, and rolls of ribbon, coils of rope. Rafael glimpsed a small table devoted to quills, and glanced away from one that bristled with birch rods. A girl edged past him with a tray on which were rolling a lot of tiny bells, presumably for hawks. Then he spotted a little boy – around the same age as Nicholas – with a gingerbread man: a well-dressed boy, being led by one hand, and, in his free hand was his prize, at which he gazed, captivated. Rafael wondered how anyone – however new to the world, however small and unknowing – could be in thrall to such a clumsy depiction of a figure: head, pair of eyes, arms, legs. Yet it did the trick, always did, never failed. Who hadn’t once been vulnerable to the charm of a gingerbread man?

  Nicholas, too, had spotted the boy and his gingerbread man, and Rafael was struck by the hunger in his stare. Not so much a physical hunger as a yearning to be bestowed upon. To be granted something special – and a frippery, no less – for himself and himself alone: for the decisions as to what to eat (head, first, or legs?) and when (all now, or save some for later?) to be all his own.

  But there was Cecily’s tightening of her grip on her son, too, Rafael noted: her making clear that there’d be no dalliance with any gingerbread man on this busy, provision-buying trip. No time for it, nor money, probably, either. And there was more than that, Rafael guessed: the concern that if she gave in on this one occasion, Nicholas would expect her to do so in future. As a parent, Rafael understood. Of course he did. What took him completely by surprise was that his heart went out to that surly little boy.

  And he had the freedom of not being Nicholas’s parent: he could enjoy that freedom. Moreover, he was a visitor, a guest, so he should bestow. It all made sense. This was something he could do. He halted Nicholas with a hand on his shoulder; and, as he’d intended, Cecily sensed the sudden resistance and faltered, too. Turning from them, he pressed his way to the nearby confectionary stall where, while being served, he kept his talk to a minimum – a mumbled thank you – and the baker, busy, didn’t look twice.
So, he’d managed that, and now there remained only Cecily’s possible disapproval to face. If she did disapprove, he’d understand – and apologise – but he’d beg for her understanding in turn: See his little face, Cecily, and Let me, just this once.

  If she was disapproving when he returned, she had the grace not to make anything of it, giving him only that anxious, reproachful look which said, You shouldn’t have, but which he took to be no more than dutiful. She was careful to enthuse for Nicholas, ‘Look at that! Isn’t that lovely!’ but then prompted him, ‘What do you say?’

  Rafael hadn’t foreseen that. Should have, perhaps, but hadn’t.

  ‘Say thank you.’

  Rafael was conscious of his smile dying on his face, his heart scrabbling in his throat. This – Nicholas under duress to speak to him – wasn’t what he wanted. It wasn’t why he’d bought him the gingerbread man, although no doubt this was how Nicholas would now see it. Rafael shook his head, but Cecily wasn’t looking.

  ‘Say thank you to Mr Prado.’

  The boy looked up from the gingerbread man and, wide-eyed, regarded Rafael. He looked trapped. His mother was losing her patience. ‘Nicholas!’

  ‘Please, no,’ Rafael implored Cecily, but it sounded like nothing, just a politeness. Was she trying to make a point? Rafael didn’t think so. Her manner was blithe, suggesting that she was accustomed to conversation from her son and had forgotten or never noticed – was it possible? – that he didn’t talk to Rafael or even in his presence.