A Queen from the North: A Royal Roses Book

by Erin McRae

  “Long live the King,” Amelia said and kissed his hand.

  When she straightened, there was a flicker of something in Arthur’s face that Amelia couldn’t read.

  “Lady Amelia.” His voice was nearly a whisper.

  Amelia thought he tightened his fingers around hers ever so slightly before she stepped back.

  “We will speak of this later,” Arthur said, and then he was gone.

  Chapter 20

  WEDDING JOY TURNS TO FUNERAL MOURNING

  29 August

  Year 1 of the Reign of King Gregory I

  I was supposed to spend this week attending to last-minute wedding details. Instead, I’m dealing with last-minute funeral details.

  I haven’t seen Arthur in days, except in passing if I’m needed to be in the background when he appears in public. There was a whole day’s worth of meetings about that. Half the staff finds the idea of a would-be Yorkish princess unseemly. Half the country is frightened and angry that the old King is dead. The other half is frightened of what’s going to happen to them now that the political situation is more unstable than ever.

  My heart is with the north, but I can’t blame the south for their anger. The King was ill and they weren’t told. Now the world they knew has been turned upside down. Parliament is demanding an investigation. Of what and who, I am not sure anyone knows.

  The raven that flew to York was returned to the Tower weeks ago, but now all the ravens have been caged to keep them from escaping. Just in case.

  *

  As was expected of them, Amelia’s parents, along with the rest of the peerage, came down to London to express their appropriate public grief. Even Nick was going to join them at Westminster Abbey to pay his respects.

  Only over the strenuous objections of the Palace was she allowed to meet them for dinner at Charlie and Joe’s house the night before the public viewing. In the end she was only able to go because Arthur interceded on her behalf after she agreed that they would keep the drapes closed and avoid any boisterous activities that neighbors could comment on.

  Conversation around the dinner table was stilted. It was plain her family wanted to discuss the immediate political situation plus what it meant for Amelia’s future, but no one seemed to know how to bring it up. Edward was there as ever to protect her, but it was plain no one trusted him as he sat on alert by the front door. Amelia was miserable.

  Eventually she dropped her fork with a loud clatter onto her plate. She wondered bitterly if the sound was too boisterous for the Palace. From the looks her family gave her, she felt sure it must be.

  “Go on,” she goaded. “Say it. Any of you. Whatever it is. That I don’t know what I’m doing it or should quit while I’m ahead.”

  Nick looked up from where he’d been sawing his roast into bits, his eyes sparkling with interest. “Don’t think you’re ahead at all,” he mumbled.

  “Thank you,” Amelia said with disgust. Was that really the most courage she was going to see from her family? “Anyone else?”

  Charlie raised his hands in a placating gesture. Amelia turned on him.

  “Don’t you,” she hissed. “Always so reasonable. Always so London with your crisp little vowels.”

  “Amelia,” Lady Kirkham scolded her daughter.

  “Mother,” Amelia shot back in the same tone. “For the love of God and country won’t one of you just ask me if I poisoned him already and get it over with!”

  “All right, that’s enough.” Jo pushed back from the table and grabbed Amelia by the elbow to hoist her out of the chair. “The radicals are going to go have a chat in the kitchen. You lot try to be normal.”

  “She was at the bee charity.” Edward’s voice, calm, collected, and sad — and as northern as Amelia’s own — came from his seat by the door.

  Everyone turned to look at him.

  “Our late king and Lady Amelia were very fond of each other. And she was at the bee charity that day. Things are plenty bad, Amelia, without you needing to make them worse.”

  “Oh my God.” Amelia’s mother stood and pressed her hand to her breast as if she might faint, the very picture of a horrified doyenne in a regency novel. “He’s going to report your outburst to the Palace.”

  Nick snickered. Charlie remained frozen.

  Amelia felt Jo’s hand tighten on her arm, and wisely so; she’d never felt so furious at the woman who had mostly hired other people to raise her.

  “I’ll do no such thing.” Edward also rose to his feet. “I was born and raised in Gunnerside, as northern and maybe as Roman as any of you. Amelia’s my queen, and I serve her, maybe not in a palace of our choosing, but in one of hers.”

  “Well, that’s the most treasonous thing anyone’s said all day,” Jo remarked before finally hauling Amelia off to the kitchen as she had promised.

  Jo moved to the stove to start putting away leftovers. “Are you all right?”

  “Not really,” Amelia said. “I know no one expected this to happen. But now that it has, I didn’t expect to feel this utterly alone.”

  “That’s all well and good, but you can’t go saying what you said —”

  “I really was at the bee charity.”

  “Be that as it may.” Jo set a pan in the sink with a clatter. “Trying to hurt yourself before Lancaster hurts you is just doing their dirty work for them. If you must lose your temper, you can’t lose it like that.”

  “I know, I’m sorry,” Amelia said. She’d let Jo down. And Edward too. She felt less bad about her sharp words for her brother — although she knew he was, like any of them, doing the best he could with an odd hand in strange times.

  “Thank you,” Jo said, “but it’s not the apology any of us need. This is politics, Amelia, now more than ever. And you must be politic to survive it.”

  “I don’t know how. They’ve done so much to try to teach me how to be a princess — and it’s all been peculiar. Having a monarchy is at least half mad if it’s like this —”

  Jo interrupted her. “You do know I’m not really allergic to horses?”

  “Pardon?” Amelia asked, startled by the non sequitur.

  “You know how Charlie always attends the races and weekends at Gatcombe and all the other things we’re expected at, and I never go?”

  “Oh. Yes?”

  “I’m not allergic to horses.”

  “I don’t understand.” Amelia frowned in confusion, unsure of what, if anything, this had to do with the maelstrom of royal mourning they’d all been caught in.

  “What I’m allergic to,” Jo said slowly, “is the south and their racist inbred faces. If I can keep my family alive and well and happy — despite what people think of me here — and still do everything I can for my home, you can stop acting like your grand scheme to give us a queen again is some terrible thing that’s happened to you.”

  Amelia nodded slowly, more than a little ashamed.

  “I’m not saying what you’ve chosen for yourself is easy or wrong. But you did choose, all on your own. Even if no one expected this turn of events quite so soon,” Jo said. “You have an opportunity no other woman in your generation will have. Be sad if you need to. But you can't be afraid.”

  “I'm trying.”

  “Try harder. You carry all of us with you whether we like it or not.”

  *

  As Amelia readied herself quietly to depart her brother’s house, Edward stood near, silent and watchful.

  “You shouldn’t have said what you said,” Amelia told him quietly.

  “And you shouldn’t have said what you said. But the facts remain. You were at the bee charity, and you are who I serve.”

  Amelia nodded and took Edward’s hands in hers. For the first time she understood perhaps why Arthur had refused to let her swear fealty to him the night his father died. There was a burden, a shock, to being presented with that sort of unearned love and service. Any sane person would refuse it, but to do so was — she knew too well — also unkind.

&n
bsp; “I understand. Thank you. Shall we go to Westminster Abbey tonight then? It seems I have more courage for my duty than I knew.”

  *

  While she had first been informed that it would be acceptable for her to pay her respects to the dead King during the family-only hours on the first night of the lying in state, Amelia had discovered she was incapable of making herself go. No one in the royal family had truly invited her, and Arthur had not asked for her support. No one, she had reasoned, could call her usurper if she didn’t claim to be family she wasn’t yet.

  But Amelia had put off this act for too long. Jo’s words tonight — and Edward’s — made that clear to her now. She must follow protocol, and invent it when it was absent, if she was to be seen as worthy for the task that now lay before her. It might not be enough — for her or Arthur or York or even the whole of Unified Kingdom. But if she had been sincere in any of this, she had to try.

  This late at night the public wasn’t allowed inside the abbey, but the strange collective grief of the nation was not something that slept. Outside there was the loud murmur of black-dressed crowds and news trucks against the ambient rumble of the London night. She watched from the car as two police officers drove off a souvenir seller with some violence.

  Inside the abbey, time had paused. Candles flickered in the darkness as Henry’s people gathered to pay him their respects. Standing vigil around the casket were four members of the royal family: Arthur; two royal cousins, and George. She was dressed in a smart black trouser suit, her hair pulled back severely. Her parade rest was as perfect as the others. Amelia wondered at George’s strange freedoms. Who allowed her them? How had George bargained? And why?

  Amelia slipped into a pew a few rows from the front. She would walk by the casket, bow her head, and offer some approximation of a prayer, but she wasn’t about to do it while her fiancé was standing vigil. She glanced around the abbey, because looking at Arthur — the King, she reminded herself — was disconcerting; he felt so far away and not hers at all. But then, he never had been.

  The abbey’s columns soared to the ceiling, lost in darkness. It was not as large as the Minster in York, and it felt colder. Though perhaps that was just the dark. To Amelia’s right, across the aisle and several pews closer to the front was Helen, Duchess of Water Eaton. Amelia was surprised to find her there. Though perhaps she shouldn’t have been, considering the duchess’s past relationship with Arthur.

  Amelia couldn’t help but admire her profile in much the same way she had always admired Arthur’s. Helen was what a queen looked like, proud features and exceptional posture. This was not a woman who ever had to watch her feet when she descended a staircase. Amelia didn’t understand how she could feel so different from Helen when she knew they must have been raised much the same. She also didn’t understand why Arthur hadn’t chosen her. Her poise was effortless, and her accent and blood were London and the south through and through.

  Maybe, Amelia thought almost viciously, she couldn’t have children. But her sharpness wasn’t meant for Helen, so much as herself, too convenient, too useful to be remembered in these terrible days. If anything, Helen was perhaps as much a victim of circumstance as herself.

  After twenty minutes the guard changed. Four soldiers appeared to replace the four royals, and Arthur and his relatives vanished down the side aisle and through a door that closed silently behind them. With Arthur off the scene, now seemed the best moment for Amelia to pay her respects. But just as she was about to stand, he strode back out of the door with George hot on his heels.

  “I’m not going to argue with you about this over my father’s dead body,” he said. He spoke softly, but the space was nearly empty except for a dead man and his guards. His words carried. Amelia thought he sounded darkly amused, but that didn’t change the degree to which he looked as if he was running away from George.

  “Is it because you think I’m a girl or because you think I’m a child?” George said. She didn’t sound like either. “Or is it because I’m a witch?”

  “It’s because all of this is already irregular enough.” Arthur softened.

  “I’m still the heir to the throne. After my mother.”

  “That’s very nice, George. I’m still the King. Witchcraft isn't real —”

  “They caged the ravens. To protect you. You know it is!”

  Arthur let George’s feelings about the supernatural pass without comment. “And your mother will have my head if I let you spend the night in a creepy old abbey standing guard over your grandfather’s casket, so if you could please let it —”

  “Arthur.”

  Amelia’s head turned as Helen stood and called to him. He went easily, smiling through his general grief and his very specific frustration with George. George, for her part, rolled her eyes like the teenager she was and stormed back up the aisle, muttering about those that did not heed omens. Amelia watched as Arthur kissed each of Helen’s cheeks in greeting and then leaned his face against hers. They weren’t of a height, but they were much closer than he and Amelia.

  After a long moment they broke apart and Arthur slipped down the aisle and through the side door again. Amelia, finally, stood to walk to the bier to pay her own respects. Henry had been a real man she had known and would miss in her own life, not just that of the country. But it was hard to remember the man who had been so kind and warm to her in the face of the almost unearthly majesty of the casket surrounded by candles and draped with his royal standard.

  For the first time, Amelia fully understood what it would be like, to be a part of Britain’s history in the way that she would. It wasn’t just about absurd charity events or even the dangerous ongoing struggle between north and south. It was this — the cold, echoing abbey, the guard standing silent and mournful, the hymns that would be sung. Someday Arthur would lie here on a bier like this one, and someday Amelia would be laid to rest beside him. Because being a part of history meant to one day depart from it and let the next generation carry on.

  She stood with her head bowed for a long time; she only became aware of how much time had passed when her body gave an involuntary shiver in the chill. She turned down the aisle, moving as quietly as she could in her heels. She was ready to leave this cold, dark place.

  Before she emerged from the abbey, a shadowy figure stepped out from behind a pillar. Amelia nearly jumped out of her skin.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Arthur’s voice said as the shadow resolved itself into the shape of her fiancé.

  “It’s all right.” Now was not the time for teasing, or pointing out that lurking in the dark was not a good way to keep from startling people.

  “Thank you for coming,” Arthur said. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”

  Amelia, cold, unable to see very well in the shadows, and now spooked by the entire evening, wanted nothing more than to go to Arthur and let him wrap her up in his warm still-very-much-alive arms. But she had no idea how he would react — were Arthur and she allies struggling with this sudden turn of events or had the King’s death put them at now insurmountable odds? Amelia didn’t know, but she couldn’t bear to be pushed away, not tonight.

  “Of course I came.” Her duty done, it was time to leave. “Goodnight,” she said and slipped away from him through the doors to where her car was waiting to take her back to Buckingham.

  *

  The funeral passed like a dream. A heavily scripted, organized, and well-documented dream. Instead of walking down the aisle at Westminster Abbey on her father’s arm, Amelia walked beside Arthur, in black instead of white, holding no flowers and not touching him. Hymns were solemn instead of joyous, and of all the tears shed that day, in the abbey and across the country, none of them were happy.

  Amelia expected to feel some sort of relief when it was all over. But after she and Arthur returned to Buckingham Palace, Arthur disappeared into his rooms. The now-Queen Mother Cecile retired into her solitude. George and Hyacinth went back to Kensington
Palace with Matthew and Rose. And Amelia, for the first time in a week, was left entirely alone.

  There was nothing to do: No meetings scheduled, no public appearances demanding her presence. She undressed slowly. Tonight was supposed to be her wedding night. As she laid aside her clothes she couldn’t help but be painfully aware of her own flesh. Not as something inherently sexual, but as something inherently alive.

  She went to bed naked, perhaps in deference to the night this now wasn’t. But she couldn’t sleep. The bed was too big, too cold, and too empty. After hours of tossing and turning she couldn’t stand it anymore. She might not be able to escape her life and her choices, but she could at least escape her bedroom for a little while. What was a castle for if not haunting its halls?

  She didn’t bother getting fully dressed, throwing on a nightgown instead. No one would be up at this hour, and, if they were, they would hardly dare bother her. In the name of royal propriety, she pulled on a dressing gown on as well and stepped out into the hallway.

  The palace was entirely different at night. By now Amelia had seen these corridors and galleries both bustling with people and empty, but now, after the events and emotion of the day, it felt like the moon. Cold, foreign, and remote, with silver light streaming in from the outside.

  When she saw the figure standing by a window she almost turned back, but then the person turned at the sound of her footsteps. It was Arthur. Neither of them said anything, and for a long moment they just stood and looked at each other.

  The King was dressed in the uniform trousers he’d worn at the funeral, though not his jacket. His shirt collar was unbuttoned and his cufflinks were missing. Amelia wrapped her arms around herself and wished she’d worn proper clothing.

  “Are you cold?” Arthur asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” he said.

  “I’ve hardly had a chance to call you anything at all.” She took a cautious step toward him and, when he didn’t retreat, another.