Crossing Over

by Anna Kendall

But that drunken remark, which I did not understand, silenced a few of the courtiers, and all of the servants. The servants’ faces twisted with disgust, or fear, and then immediately stiffened again. No one, not even the kitchen steward, knew what we should do. The fiddling and dancing and laughter and shouting went on.

  “Give Hal some more ale!”

  “Give him a kitchen wench!”

  “Ale! Ale!”

  “The queen!”

  Instantly the musicians stopped playing. Courtiers and servants alike sank to their knees. Silence descended like hard rain, and the old queen came into the hall.

  She was alone, save for her personal guard of two Blues. Queen Eleanor, sixty years old, had ruled for forty-one years, since the death of her mother in a hunting accident. She wore a gown of pale blue silk embroidered with darker blue at the hem. The gown, like her simple silver crown, was austere and quiet and expensive. Her face was deeply lined, her hair white as an egret’s wing. But she stood straight and tall, and power emanated from her like steady heat.

  No one moved or spoke.

  When the old queen did so, it was in a low voice that carried into every corner of the hall, into every apprehensive ear. Her gaze swept over the courtiers. “None of you belongs here.”

  I realized then that I was still standing, frozen beside the vegetable crates. I tried to sink to the floor without calling attention to myself.

  The queen’s voice rang out imperiously. “Caroline.”

  The rustle of skirts moving forward; this lady had not knelt. She removed her mask of green feathers over cloth of gold. “Yes.”

  So this was the young queen!

  Her mother said, “You especially do not belong here.”

  “This is my palace. And this is my merriment, before my brother must leave us.”

  Queen Caroline, thirty-seven years old, was beautiful. Also dangerous, in some way I could feel but not understand. Her body curved lusciously under a tight green bodice, but so did many others among the ladies. The difference lay in her eyes, black with silver glints, as if something shining were submerged in dark water. The difference lay in the set of her white shoulders, the thrust of her lovely breasts, the very intricacy of her coiffure, black as her eyes, braided and puffed and set with jewels in contrast to the old queen’s smooth white hair.

  The two women stared at each other. I could see both their faces clearly. The old monarch stared at her daughter. Although neither queen grimaced, hatred crackled between them. And neither lowered her chin nor blinked.

  Queen Eleanor said icily, “A strange merriment, to terrorize the kitchen servants on the eve of your brother’s wedding.”

  “It is my choice,” the young queen said, “and mine to make.”

  “It is not. Rupert!”

  The prince unmasked and came forward. He wore green, not blue, perhaps to go unnoticed among Queen Caroline’s household. But even I knew that to wear his older sister’s colors and not his mother’s was a deadly insult. He looked just as handsome as when I had seen him chase Lady Cecilia, all those long months ago. He stood, sullen, beside his sister, one hand upon her shoulder.

  The old queen said, “Rupert, return to your bride, who awaits you upstairs. Your manners are deplorable.”

  “Yes, mother,” he muttered. This was not the imperious prince who kissed ladies-in-waiting. This was a pouting boy, ordered by his mother to behave or else take the consequences. What consequences? I could not imagine.

  Prince Rupert skulked from the hall, followed by the old queen and her Blues. When they had gone, Queen Caroline said to the silent company, “Unmask.”

  Everyone obeyed, but still no one spoke, not even those who were most drunk. They had seen their young queen reprimanded in front of her court and the palace servants. No one dared say anything until she had spoken.

  Queen Caroline’s black eyes glittered. But she did not flinch. In a strong clear voice she said, “My mother has never been able to recognize merriment—just think what a gloomy time my father must have had while getting me upon her!” And she laughed.

  The court, too, exploded into bawdy laughter. She had disarmed the old queen’s haughtiness, somehow turning Queen Eleanor into a comically prissy old woman. Courtiers guffawed and chattered. The young queen stood amid them, smiling. She was not far from me, and despite myself I looked for her famed sixth finger. Yes, it was there on her left hand, not a whole finger but just the stump of one, held bent inward to hide it as much as possible, and it seemed as if—

  Among the unmasked throng I glimpsed Lady Cecilia.

  The sight of her struck me like a blow. I stood, took a step toward her. My arm was caught from below and Maggie pulled me back down to my knees. “What are you doing? She has not given us leave to rise!”

  Where had Maggie come from? She must have worked her way, on her knees, through the kneeling servants and over to my vegetable crates. But this thought, and Maggie’s presence, only flitted across my mind, which was turned to mush by the sight of Lady Cecilia.

  She, too, wore green, soft silk billowing into stiffer, elaborately embroidered skirts. Her shining brown hair was braided and puffed as elaborately as Queen Caroline’s, and her bodice cut as low. A fancy mask of green-dyed feathers dangled from one little hand. But whereas the queen looked mature, luscious as a ripe pear, Cecilia was a little green berry. Her slim waist and small breasts started my heart thumping. Her face somber, she leaned against a courtier, a good-looking youth whom I instantly hated. Her eyes swept across me without recognition.

  But in all the milling nobility, another pair of eyes found mine. Queen Caroline moved across the kitchen floor and stood before me. “Rise,” she said.

  Confused motion among the servants on their knees—were they all supposed to rise, or just me? A few staggered to their feet, the rest did not. The queen ignored them all.

  “Boy, why are you yellow?”

  My throat would not produce sounds.

  “Yellow is the color of the Princess Isabelle. You are of my household, not hers. So why are your face and hands yellow?”

  “I . . . I . . .”

  “Are you trying to insult me, boy, by wearing the color of another royal?”

  “No, Your Grace!”

  “Then are you a fool?”

  “I . . . I work in the laundry! We dyed the cloths for—”

  “I think you must be a fool. And so you will be my fool.” She beckoned to a courtier, who sprang to her side. “Robin, bring this fool to my rooms at midnight.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” he said, but he did not look pleased.

  “You will find him in the laundry,” she said. Clapping her hands, she cried, “Come, let us go now to the dancing! Servants, you may rise, and we thank you for your hospitality. The steward shall give you all Amelian wine to toast my brother’s marriage!”

  A ragged cheer went up from the younger servants. Amelian wine was the rarest and choicest of vintages, and very expensive. The queen’s court swept from the hall.

  Maggie said, “Oh, Roger, why does she want you?”

  I was too stunned to answer. Only one thought raged in my dazed mind: Maybe Lady Cecilia would be there, too, in the queen’s rooms, at midnight.

  12

  “WHERE IS THE QUEEN’S new fool?” a voice said loudly in the darkness of the apprentice chamber. Boys woke and cursed—until they saw who stood in the doorway, lamp raised high. Then some clambered out of bed and dropped to one knee, although there is nothing sillier than a bow made in a nightshirt. Others pretended to be still asleep. A murmur ran through the room, low as wind in grass and just as hard to locate: Lord Robert, the queen’s favorite, Lord Robert . . .

  I scrambled from my pallet, still in my one suit of clothes; I had not put on the nightshirt that Joan Campford had made for me from a worn bedsheet. But I had it rolled beside me, along with my change of small clothes, my wooden comb, and a little knife for shaving: all that I owned in the world. I didn’t know what to expect
from this night, and after I saw Lord Robert, I knew even less. Why had he come himself instead of sending a page? At least he had known to look for me in the apprentices’ chamber and not the laundry as the queen had told him.

  “I’m here, my lord!” I called, and the high, squeaky voice did not sound like my own.

  “Then come with me.” He sounded impatient, and yet there was a note of amusement, too. I didn’t see anything amusing. I trailed after him, my little bundle in my hand, and the others watched me go.

  By the torchlight in the courtyard, I could see him better. After the queen and her courtiers had left the kitchen, Maggie had told me about Lord Robert Hopewell. In her shock over my summoning, her coolness had vanished. Lord Robert was perhaps forty, tall and well built. He had courted Queen Caroline when they were both young, but she had chosen instead another lord, far less strong, less handsome, less intelligent, as consort. Maggie had not said why, although from the way she pursed her lips, I imagined that she had a theory. Maggie always had theories. The queen’s consort had given her two sons, and then a daughter to rule after her, Princess Stephanie, now three years old. Shortly after the heir’s birth, the consort had died of the sweating sickness. I had the impression from Maggie that nobody much missed him. But this, too, was not spoken aloud. Since then, Lord Robert had again become the queen’s favorite.

  He led me from the servants’ portion of the sprawling palace through courtyards I remembered from my visit, so many months ago, to Emma Cartwright. Wide, quiet courtyards, their trees and barely budded bushes now white in the cold moonlight, ringed with buildings of painted gray stone. Then buildings faced with smooth, white marble. Finally, buildings faced with mosaics of pearl and quartz, with small fountains playing among them. On this trip, however, there were no people. And we went farther than the quarters of the ladies-in-waiting—was Lady Cecilia in there, fast asleep under Emma Cartwright’s stern guardianship?

  We went all the way to the courtyard of the young queen.

  It was magnificent: bright with torchlight, tiled with green mosaics, set about with gilded branches of red berries in tall, exquisite green urns. Soldiers dressed in green tunics stood guard. They flung open doors for Lord Robert and we passed through a large, dark room empty save for benches against the wall. Then another large room, also dark, but this one furnished and hung with tapestries. Finally a much smaller room where candles and fire burned brightly, and the queen sat alone at a heavily carved table set with wine and cakes.

  She still wore her masquing gown, low cut and sumptuous. Her white breasts gleamed in the firelight. But she had taken down her hair, and it fell in rich dark coils around her face and shoulders.

  “I have brought him,” Lord Robert said. “Although I still don’t believe any of it.”

  “Thank you, Robin,” the queen said. I dropped clumsily to one knee. “Rise,” she said. “Are you frightened, boy?”

  “Of course he’s frightened,” Lord Robert said, grinning. “For one thing, he’s dyed yellow. No man can be at ease when dyed yellow.”

  “But he can’t help that,” she said sweetly. This midnight she was all sweetness, a different woman from the one I had seen crackling with hatred for her regal mother. “He must do whatever work the laundresses demand of him. Is that right, Roger? ”

  “Y-yes, Your Grace.” She knew my name.

  “But you have no reason to be nervous here. No one will hurt you.”

  How many times had I heard that sentence from Hartah, always followed by “if you do as I say”? But she had no need to utter the rest of the sentence aloud. She was a queen. Everyone did as she said.

  “Well, since he is here, give him some wine,” Lord Robert said, pouring himself a goblet.

  “No, not yet,” she said. “Roger, how old are you?”

  “Fourteen, Your Grace.”

  “Just a little older than my oldest son,” Queen Caroline said. “Percy is eleven. Can you read, Roger?”

  “No, Your Grace.”

  “And where is your family?”

  “All dead, Your Grace.”

  “Like the crew of the Frances Ormund.”

  I almost staggered and fell, held upright only by my hand on the corner of the table. She knew. Somehow she knew about the wreck . . . and what else?

  “You talk in your sleep,” she said gently, but her eyes raked my face. “And I have people who report to me everything that happens in my palace. Did you know that, Roger?”

  “N-no, Your Grace.” I had guessed that she had spies, but not that they would report on lowly laundresses. Maggie? Joan? No, it would have been one of the other apprentices, whose sleep I had disturbed night after night. What else had I said? Lord Robert lounged in a chair, his expression somewhere between disapproval and amusement.

  “Ordinarily, of course, I would not find it interesting that a laundress—even a boy laundress—called out the name of a ship foundered by wreckers. It was a public event, after all, and word spreads. But you have called out other things, too, Roger. ‘Soulvine Moor.’ ‘Hygryll.’ ‘Lord Digby.’”

  Lord Robert looked up sharply from his wine. The amusement disappeared.

  “What do you know of Lord Digby, Roger?”

  Old Mrs. Humphries, sitting under a tree by a river in the country of the Dead, prattling of her childhood. I said desperately, “Your Grace, I know only that he once rode through the village of Stonegreen and gave a gold coin to a child.”

  Robin said, “Bruce Digby never gave anything to anyone.”

  “Lord William Digby!” In my agitation I scarcely knew what I said. All sweetness had vanished from the queen’s face. She had so many faces, this queen; she was changeable as weather. Now neither firelight nor candlelight brought warmth to her chill marble.

  She said, “The grandfather? And how could you know that, Roger? He died long before you were born.”

  “The child told me! When she was an old lady! It was a family story!”

  “And is Soulvine Moor, too, a family story?”

  I could only gaze at her in despair.

  “I think, Roger, that it was not Lord William Digby whose name you called out, but that of Lord Bruce. And—”

  “No, no, it was not! ”

  “You dare to interrupt me? And I think that calling out ‘Soulvine Moor’ and ‘Frances Ormund’ was not by happenchance, either. Nor was calling out ‘my lady Frahyll.’”

  I remembered Lady Frahyll. Another talkative old woman, another country faire with Hartah’s booth. But that town had boasted a manor house, and the lord’s mother had recently died. A harmless, babbling old dame, too old and too dead to preserve the distinctions of rank. She had told me happily about the people of the countryside, and I had saved myself a beating from Hartah.

  “Frahyll is not a common name,” the queen said. “It bears the tortured syllables of southern names, names from the Unclaimed Lands or even from Soulvine Moor. Names like ‘Hygryll.’ Like ‘Hartah.’ You call out ‘Hartah’ often, Roger. Is he, too, dead?”

  I was mute with terror.

  “Roger, can you cross over to the country of the Dead?”

  Lord Robert said impatiently, “That is impossible. I have told you and told you, Caro—crossing over is a superstition. A belief among the ignorant country folk, who still believe that spitting at frogs at midnight causes thunderstorms.”

  The queen ignored him. Her gaze, black flecked with submerged silver, never left mine. Terror held me mute. She could torture me, burn me for a witch. . . .

  “Think carefully, Roger, before you answer me. I will have the truth, and there are ways of obtaining it. They are not pleasant ways. I don’t want to have to use them on you but—”

  “For sweet sake, Caro, he’s just a boy!”

  “—but I will if necessary. I am not a cruel woman, Roger. I am a woman who wants to rule my country well. Who faces obstacles to my rule, obstacles you cannot begin to imagine. Who will do whatever is necessary to rule well, for the grea
ter good and for the sake of my daughter, who must rule after me. Do you understand me?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Then I will ask you one more time. Answer truthfully, and answer with full awareness of the consequences. You are not stupid. I can see that you are not stupid. Roger, can you cross over to the country of the Dead?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Show me.”

  “Caro—” Lord Robert began.

  “Show me now. Here.”

  I said wildly, “I must have . . .” I couldn’t say it, but I had to say it. “I must have pain. I can do it myself.”

  “Then do so.”

  I laid my little bundle on the polished table and unwrapped it. Lord Robert, now looking elaborately bored, smiled condescendingly at the plain nightshirt made from a bedsheet. I took my shaving knife and plunged it into my thigh. Pain burned along my nerves. Even as I made the necessary effort of will, I heard the queen cry out as my body toppled, and dimly I felt Lord Robert, cat-fast, catch me as I fell.

  Darkness—

  Cold—

  Dirt in my mouth—

  Worms in my eyes—

  Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—

  For the first time in half a year, I crossed over.

  The palace was gone. Only the river remained, wide and calm as in the land of the living, but the ring of jagged western mountains had vanished; they must be farther away here. Everything had stretched out. The island was so huge I could not see across it, and trees dotted the vast plain on the opposite bank, where there had been farms and fields. Trees and groves and ponds and the Dead.

  There were many more of them than there had been in the countryside, but the huge plain didn’t seem crowded. Perhaps—and it wasn’t the first time I’d had this idea—the very earth expanded to accept however many died. More of the Dead were well-dressed than in the villages where Hartah had set up his booth. Silk gowns, burnished armor, old-fashioned farthingales, brocade cloaks and doublets, all alongside strange white robes or crudely stitched clothing of leather and fur. People had lived by this river for a very long time.