by Anna Kendall
I went inside.
An open fire burned in a brazier in the center of the tent, sending its smoke through a hole in the roof and its light flickering on canvas walls. Dozens of poles stood against the walls, their butts jammed into the bare earth, and each pole dripped objects tied with string to big nails. Bottles, plants, feathers, hides, bits of wood, bulging cloth bags of all sizes, things I could not name. Besides the poles, there was room for only the brazier, a pallet of straw and blankets, and a table with a single chair. On the chair sat not the crone I’d expected but a woman neither young nor old, fat nor thin, pretty nor ugly. She wore a gray dress and gray cap. No one would ever glance at her twice; in fact, I had the sensation that I was not really seeing her at all. And yet she was solid enough, sitting there in her unadorned chair, her face pale in the dim light.
“What do you want?” she said, not unkindly.
“I’m looking for Mother Chilton.”
“I am Mother Chilton.”
“You?”
A faint smile. “Me. What are you after, lad? Unmask.”
“I cannot.” And then, inanely, “I’m sorry.”
She stood and moved close to me. Now the fire was behind her and her face in shadow. With one firm hand she turned my chin to the fire and stared through the blanket holes and into my eyes. Her own eyes were colorless, an even light gleam that seemed to reflect all light, keeping none. Her breath drew in sharply. “Who are you?”
“I told you, I cannot—”
“Do you come from Soulvine Moor?”
The question completely undid me. Soulvine Moor, which Maggie had chided me for even mentioning? Soulvine Moor, where my mother had died? I gasped, “What . . . what of Soulvine Moor?”
“Are they ready, then?”
“Ready for what? Mistress, I come for . . . for a milady posset! ”
A long moment, and then she laughed, forced and bitter. “I see. A milady posset.” Her hand dropped from my chin and she moved away. “Get out!”
“I can pay!” Desperately I fumbled in my pockets until I found the gold piece. I held it out to her.
“A milady posset,” she repeated. “And I asked you—well, why not. All right. Sometimes none of us know where we are. Or who. Sit there.”
I did, afraid to disobey. She moved briskly about the tent, taking things from bags, putting vials and bowls upon the table. Her body shielded whatever she was doing. Presently there was a crisp odor, like apples combined with something else, and she handed me a vial stoppered with wax.
“Have her drink this all at once, then eat nothing for a day. She will feel no sickness. And I don’t have to tell you, do I, that she should lie with no one for at least a week?”
My ears grew warm. My lady Cecilia did not lie with men; she had proudly refused to play the court’s bed-wagering game. Mother Chilton gazed at me with amusement and handed me the vial. But there was speculation in her amusement, and I got out as fast as I could.
Maggie let me back in by the kitchen-barge door and locked it behind her.
“Did you get what you needed?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I suppose. Roger—be careful. These are strange times.”
She seemed less angry at me than before, less impatient. She was glad I was back safe, which made a little warm fire in my heart. I risked questions. “How are they strange times, Maggie?”
“Wouldn’t you know better than I? I only know what I hear of gossip, or am told by my brother, the soldier with the Blues. You’re the one beside the queen.”
I said slowly, “I sit at her feet. I make jokes about matters I don’t understand. I hope desperately that my joke will fit its subject, at least a little. And that it will be funny, at least a little. I dye my face yellow. I make inane movements like dancing backward and pretending to fall down. And all the while I’m afraid that I will do something wrong, something that will displease the queen. Always I’m afraid, Maggie. Sometimes I wish I were back here, carrying water in the laundry, sleeping under the trestle table.”
She took my hand. Hers was warm, rough with work. “We are the same age, and yet sometimes I think I am much older than you.”
She would not think that if she had known the things I had seen and done. The wreck of the Frances Ormund, the knife sliding into Hartah’s flesh . . . I had not trusted Maggie with my past, however much I trusted her in the present. I said, “I need to know as much as I can learn in order to merely survive, and yet I know nothing. You hear more in the kitchen, from the servants who wait at table and the bargemen who come from outside, than I do among the courtiers. They must guard their tongues around the queen, and I am always around the queen. So please please tell me—how are these strange times?”
“The two rival courts in the palace cannot go on forever,” Maggie said, her voice low. “There are whispers . . . well, there always were. But my brother tells me that the rumors grow more intense, both in the army and in the villages. The old rumors.”
I remembered Cat Starling’s flat words: The queen is a whore. “Why do the rumors grow more intense now? Because of Lord Robert? ”
“No. Well, maybe a little. Consort Will was much beloved, you know. He was so generous to the poor, and he traveled all about the countryside, listening to people. I was not yet working at court when he died, but I remember villagers whispering that the queen had him poisoned.”
“Poisoned? Her own husband? I don’t believe it. He was no threat to her rule.” I realized all at once that we were talking treason. If anyone overheard . . . But we were two young servants in a cold and deserted kitchen courtyard, beside a pile of vegetable crates and slop buckets, and there was no one else around.
“Some say,” Maggie continued, “that she had already taken up again with Lord Robert, and so wished her husband gone.”
“Why does she not marry Lord Robert now?”
Maggie shrugged. “Perhaps she does not wish to share power, not even with a consort. Some say she waits for a better alliance through marriage, a foreign prince, after the old queen dies. Some say—” Maggie raised the lantern, looked fearfully around, and put her mouth close to my ear. “Some say she is a witch.”
All at once pieces fell into place in my mind, like tumblers clicking into a lock. The queen’s readiness to believe that I could cross over, in the face of Lord Robert’s amused disbelief. Maggie’s horror that time in the kitchen when I asked where Soulvine Moor lay. Mistress Conyers, telling me to avoid the notice of the queen . . . But I knew that there were no witches. I alone knew this with certainty. I had crossed over to the country of the Dead, had talked to the Dead, had even talked to old women burned as witches. They had not been that. But common people believed in witches, and were terrified of them, and an army was made of common soldiers. No one was more superstitious than a soldier—I had seen it again and again at faires. And I knew all too well that a statement need have very little truth in it to be believed.
I said slowly, “Agents of the old queen have put about rumors that Queen Caroline is a witch. Haven’t they? Among the army, and in the countryside. Queen Eleanor has fanned the flames of gossip and fear against her own daughter, in order to keep her crown.”
“How should I know?” Maggie whispered. “But the army is as close to the old queen as feathers on a chicken.”
Now I understood why Queen Caroline had so few petitioners. Such hatred and maneuvering between mother and child! My own mother in her lavender gown, so tender and caring in the few memories I had of her . . .
“Maggie, what’s on Soulvine Moor?”
But, despite all she had already said, there were places Maggie would not go. She stared at me mutely, and all at once I realized that the hand holding mine had turned icy and her teeth chattered.
“You’re freezing! I’m sorry, come back into the kitchen. I cannot thank you enough for all your help.” I led her back inside. “Just one thing more—what is a milady posset?”
Maggie stopped just befor
e the closed door to the kitchen. She flung my hand back at me and screeched, all at once careless of listeners, “A milady posset? Is that what you went to Mother Chilton for? A milady posset?”
“I—”
“For whom? Look at me when I speak to you—for whom?”
“I can’t say.”
“I’ll bet you can’t! And to think I trusted you—that I even thought—a milady posset! You’re a filthy animal!”
“Maggie, don’t—”
“Don’t tell me what to do! And get out of my sight! A milady posset!”
She flung open the door and darted through to the kitchen, slamming it behind us. Before she could run off, I grabbed her by the shoulder. “What is it for? What?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know! Who was she, some whore brought in for you, that you stupidly believed was clean and now take pity on? Were you the only one who had her? And to think I helped you!” Maggie tore herself free of my grasp and ran out of the kitchen, leaving her bread half kneaded on the table.
And I understood.
Lady Cecilia had the crawls. She had bedded with someone, and he had given it to her. Men could carry the disease but did not fall ill of it. Women did. Untreated, the crawls could even make it impossible for women to ever bear children. Bawdy jests overheard at country faires had told me that girls greatly feared the crawls, which turned them red and itching in their . . .
Cecilia. My shining lady.
Who was he?
In the larder I changed back to my court clothing. I stole a kitchen lantern, lit it, and made my way back through the labyrinth of courtyards, scarcely seeing them. Anger and hatred burned in me. For him, who had taken her. For her, who had played me for the fool I was. All the while I adored her, worshipped her, would have given my life for one kiss from her, Cecilia had been lying with one of the courtiers, perhaps allowing herself to be won in a game like Lady Jane. . . .
No. The truth came to me so suddenly that I stopped cold beside a winter-empty planting bed, my feet as rooted to the ground as the tree whose bare branches arched above. It was not some random Lord Tom or Sir Harry. If it had been, Cecilia would have done whatever the other ladies did in such circumstances. It had been someone she could not admit to. It had been the prince.
I saw her again, running to Emma Cartwright the day I had arrived at court, hiding in her room from Prince Rupert. I had thought then that her hiding was genuine, when I didn’t yet know her. Cecilia lived for admiration, for being petted, for love. She had been teasing him, as she teased me, as she teased every man at court. But Prince Rupert had bedded her, and the other ladies knew. (“Cecilia, there are other things in life besides dancing.” “I think she knows that!” and “Green wood burns hotter than yellow”—the prince had favored green to please his sister.) Emma Cartwright had left court shortly after I arrived—dismissed because she knew too much? Did the good Mistress Cartwright know that Prince Rupert carried the crawls, and that he had undoubtedly carried them to his new bride? That knowledge might have canceled his wedding to Princess Isabelle, might have endangered The Queendom’s political alliance with the bride’s rich realm. No wonder Cecilia had been nearly hysterical. The crawls from a prince, with a royal marriage hanging in the balance and the danger of wrath from two queens.
It was that moment, in the dark of a cold spring night, that for the first time I understood what life at court truly was. I had been a fool; I was a fool still. But now I knew. Nothing was as it seemed. Everything was for sale, and everything was judged by how it affected the web of power.
My new knowledge turned me careful. I extinguished my lantern. In the dark I fumbled toward a flower bed, took Mother Chilton’s little cloth bag from my pocket, and buried it. It was an easy matter to rearrange ornamental green stones to disguise the freshly turned earth.
After a long time standing there, thinking, while my toes grew stiff and the hairs in my nose froze, I moved on. I passed the guards with a jest and made my way through the deserted presence chamber to my alcove. I drew back the curtain.
And there, waiting for me in the darkness, stood the queen.
“Where have you been, Roger?” she said.
15
“WHERE HAVE YOU been, Roger?” the queen repeated when I did not—could not—speak.
With the kitchen lantern at the end of my suddenly slack and terrified arm, I could scarcely see her face, only the gleam of light on the green satin of her gown. “I . . . I went to the kitchen . . . I was hungry!”
“So you told the guards. And what else? No, wait, not here. Follow me.”
I stumbled after her, wondering if I was to be led to some dungeon, to some instruments of torture that would . . . But the queen led me through the outer chamber to her privy chamber, the room where I’d had my first audience with her. The door to her bedchamber was closed, as ever. In the privy chamber Lord Robert sat beside a bright fire, with a goblet of wine before him on the ornately carved table.
The queen closed the door and leaned back against it. Her face was kindly, her eyes warm. She smiled at me. “Now, Roger, tell me where you have been and whom you have spoken to. And leave no detail out.”
How much did she know? I had to protect Maggie, protect Cecilia. . . . Why protect Cecilia? Because I loved her still. And I could no more deliver her to the hands of the queen than I could a butterfly to the pin that would fix it, squirming, on a board.
“I was hungry,” I said. “I went to the kitchen to get something to eat. I have a friend there, a kitchen maid, and . . . and we lay together. In the courtyard where the barges bring vegetables to the palace.”
The queen stood so that she could see both me and Lord Robert. From the corner of my eye, I saw him give a tiny nod. So he already knew where I’d been, and with whom. Her web of spies—or his—must extend itself even farther than I had guessed. If one of those spies had overheard Maggie and me—
The queen studied me, still with that kindly smile on her beautiful, ruthless face. Finally she said, “I believe you. You have grown taller and fuller since you entered my service, Roger, and I can believe you would lie with a maid. Nonetheless, after I retire, Lord Robert will search you to make sure you carry no messages to anyone. And you will not leave my rooms again without permission, do you understand?”
“Yes, Your Grace.” Relief flooded me, so strong that for a shameful moment I thought I might cry.
All at once the queen came toward me, took both my hands in hers. She stared deeply into my eyes, her voice low and soft. “In the coming days I will need you, Roger. No one else can do for me what you can, and your gift makes you a treasure beyond price. The Queendom is in grave danger. I am determined to protect it, and to someday hand the realm intact to my daughter. I will do whatever I must to protect my realm. Do you believe that?”
And I did. Her dark eyes so earnestly searching mine . . . The queen was beautiful, but I knew I was not responding to her beauty. Cecilia filled all that part of my mind. The queen was a skilled actress, but I didn’t think she was play-acting about this. She was genuinely concerned about the future of The Queendom she was not being allowed to rule, and she would do whatever was necessary to protect it. She would flay me alive if that would help. She would even do the same to Lord Robert, if she had to. . . . Did he know that?
In one night, my mind had traveled over too far a distance. I was bewildered, frightened, weary. The world was not as I had thought it.
“Yes, Your Grace,” I said. “I believe you care for The Queendom.”
She dropped my hands. “Good. Robin, give him some wine, search him, and send him to bed. This is a tired lad.”
Lord Robert rose. The queen walked toward her bedchamber, but in the doorway she turned and looked back over her shoulder at me. “Your kitchen maid—was this your first time?”
“Yes,” I said, and she smiled at me roguishly and shut the door.
Lord Robert’s search was swift, not gentle, and very thorough. Somewhere durin
g its course, I realized that he—a lord of The Queendom, the queen’s advisor and lover—was afraid of me, because of what the queen had called “my gift.” She was not afraid, but he was.
No, the world was not as I had thought it.
Lord Robert found nothing in my clothing, on my person. “Go to bed,” he said roughly, “and don’t ever do this again.”
The next afternoon Cecilia came with the queen’s other ladies to the outer chamber. Queen Caroline had spent the morning closeted in her inner chamber with Lord Robert and a series of couriers, all of whom looked as if they had ridden hard to arrive at the palace. Some of their clothing looked strange, and no one knew where they had come from. She sent word early that her ladies need not attend her and so they had not. Nor did I, and I spent the whole long morning alone in the vast presence chamber or the deserted outer chamber, staring out the open window at the courtyard. Sometime during the night the cold had finally released its grasp, and it was spring. But the soft air and sweet scents didn’t move me.
Not even hunger moved me. I didn’t dare go to the kitchen for anything to eat—not after the queen’s warning—and nothing was brought to me, so my stomach clenched and growled. Breakfast and dinner were carried in to the queen. The smells of roasted meat and steaming soup filled my mouth with hopeless water.
I made myself a vow, during those long hours at the window. I had been uninterested in the larger life at court for too long; I would be so no longer. If I could not choose my fate, I could at least meet it with less ignorant eyes. I would observe, I would ask questions, I would learn.
Finally when the afternoon was nearly gone and the shadows were long in the courtyard, the ladies-in-waiting and their courtiers burst into the outer chamber in a great flock, chattering and tired and happy. “We rode as far as the mountains, Fool!” Cecilia called cheerfully to me. “A wonderful ride!”