The Queen's Sorrow

by Suzannah Dunn

  Tiredness always made Rafael hungry, and, after a night of trying and failing to sleep in the same room as Antonio, who snored, his tiredness was beyond anything that an afternoon rest could have improved. And, anyway, it hadn’t been much of a rest. The palace lunch had been so heavy that they’d been unable to face the river-journey immediately afterwards and instead they’d napped – or tried to – in the uncomfortably crowded room of friends that Antonio had made. Antonio had then suggested that they stay at the palace until the evening, skipping supper, making do with leftovers passed on from his new friends, but Rafael had insisted they both put in an appearance back at the house. He was going to have Antonio behave properly for once.

  He regretted this stand of his, though, as they paused in the doorway of the Hall at five o’clock. Inside, there were tens of people already sitting packed together, while others hurried to step over benches and slot themselves down at the long tables. Clearly everyone knew his or her place. Even dogs, he saw to his horror: four, he spotted, nosing among the diners and receiving the occasional indulgent pat. Beyond all this, up on its dais at the far end of the room, was the elaborately set high table, as yet unoccupied by the householder and his family and their guests.

  Where do we go? He sensed people staring, and no wonder: he and Antonio were conspicuous in their hesitancy. No overt hostility in the stares, he didn’t think, but nonetheless difficult to take. He couldn’t meet their eyes, there were too many of them; and even if he could have, then what? He had the distinct feeling that, if he smiled at them, they wouldn’t smile back. They didn’t want his smiles, they just wanted a good look at him: stranger, Spaniard.

  And then he spotted the steward in the same instant the steward spotted him, but any relief was dashed when he saw from the man’s fleetingly startled expression that he’d forgotten all about them. Even this supremely organised steward had no idea where they should go and – worse – was about to make quite a show of rectifying the situation. And here it came, the big smile and a scanning of the tables before ‘Ah!’ – raised eyebrows, raised forefinger – as if he’d known all along that it was there, indeed had reserved it, and had only momentarily lost sight of it: a place for them.

  As they made their way towards the bench, Rafael saw the servant-woman and her son in the glow from a west-facing window. She seemed at first to see him, but no: her gaze merely touched his face before moving onwards unchanged. She was whispering, he saw, to her son. No one in the room was talking, but she’d said something fast and low, a mere scrap of words. She mimicked inexpressiveness but there was tension in her face. No smile now. The little boy’s eyes were turned to hers. Rafael recognised that manner of hers, both distracted and emphatic: parental, again. She’d been making something clear: I told you …; or, Didn’t I ask you …

  Over the next few days, he found himself half-looking for her, because hers was one of the few faces he recognised in the household and the only one that didn’t seem flummoxed to see him. He’d find himself checking whether she was around, and feeling safer – more at home – if she was.

  In those initial few days, he was kept busy learning the ropes. First to learn was the journey to and from the palace, which proved easy enough. Then, at the palace, a place had to be found for him and Antonio to work. For this most basic of requirements to be taken seriously, he had to make various appointments with relevant personnel who would then turn out not to be the relevant personnel after all. In the meantime, they had to pass their time there in Hall with their fellow countrymen who were keeping themselves busy playing cards, making music and – those who could – writing home.

  His other priorities were how to send letters home and how to get his laundry done. The first was being organised, he discovered, by the Spanish office that had been set up at the palace, although of course he didn’t yet know how reliable they’d be. But the laundry remained a mystery. Having little English and even less confidence in it, he had to learn at the Kitsons’ by watching, and that was how, on the first evening, he’d discovered where jugs and bowls of clean water were to be had. Where this water came from, he didn’t know. There was no well in either the front courtyard or the rear; and although there was a very small walled garden adjoining the rear, south-west-facing courtyard, he hadn’t seen anyone bringing a bucket in from there. He passed two wells in the streets close to the house on his way to and from the river, and he decided these were the sources, although he’d not seen anyone struggling into the house with containers. He could now wash himself – and be shaved at the palace by a Spanish barber – but the problem was his shirts. Even if he could properly wash them in a little bowl, where would he then dry them? His – and Antonio’s – room was so tiny that they couldn’t even air the layers of clothes that were dampened every day by the rain, and Rafael was conscious of smelling like a wet dog.

  His supply of clean shirts dwindled: the need for fresh ones would soon be pressing. Despite increased vigilance, he saw no evidence in the house of any laundry. No hanging of it in the courtyards or from windows (and of course not, in this weather). Nor any sign of an actual laundry room: no wafts of steam, and none of those fragrances of hot liquid soap and boiled herbs. His searches – admittedly tentative, because he couldn’t go barging down private-looking corridors or open doors – led nowhere. And Antonio was no use: he referred cryptically to an arrangement at court, the implication being that it was a personal one. He’d charmed someone to take in his washing.

  Rafael could’ve made a stab at asking the steward if he’d known how to ask for him, but he hadn’t managed to catch his name and he didn’t know the English for ‘Steward’. And every dinnertime for several days running, to his dismay, the opportunity to waylay the man would somehow disappear. So, in the end, he was reduced to hanging around at the foot of his staircase or near the kitchen, looking lost and hopeful: hoping that someone would step in and fetch the man in charge. He hated having to do it, this wide-eyed helplessness. The staff were too busy to notice him, or that’s how they liked to appear. Busy or not, they were clearly reluctant to engage with him. And then, at last, after perhaps a half-hour of his hanging around, someone did fetch Mr Kitson’s secretary, who spoke Italian. As if Italian could substitute. They were bogged down in language difficulties immediately, but just as he was about to try to mime the washing of his shirt, the pale woman approached them. The woman who’d smiled at him and – thank God – here she was, doing it again, looking attentive and keen to help, unlike everyone else. Rafael said, ‘Madam, please,’ and then asked her in his own language even though there was no chance of the actual words being understood: Was there a laundry in the house? Then the inevitable mime: he plucked at his shirt, before vigorously rubbing his hands together.

  ‘Here? No.’

  She indicated that he should give his shirts to her. ‘To me.’ She was so pale: her eyes were transparent and her skin had the luminosity of stone or weathered bone.

  Whenever he saw her after that, she was carrying fabric and he wondered how he had ever missed it. She was no doubt a seamstress; she’d have been the obvious person to ask about laundry. Linen was what came to mind, now, whenever he saw her. Forget stone and bone. Linen: unfussy, durable, adaptable.

  Still nothing had happened at Whitehall to provide Rafael with office space, but at last he gained permission to visit the queen’s private garden in which he was to site the sundial. He had no need of Antonio for this, and left him engrossed in a card game.

  Doing as he’d been told, he entered from an orchard at the south, opening an unlocked door on to a vast gravelled courtyard. On his left, the eastern side, bordering the river, was the queen’s private residence. These garden-facing windows would catch any afternoon sunshine, but today the building was blank-eyed. At the far end, facing south, was a double-storeyed, ornately carved and gilded gallery, on which was mounted a direct-south dial. No one would be inside that gallery seeking shade on a day such as this. The centrepiece of the garden wa
s a white marble fountain: a portly, pouting sea-creature depicted mid-flex, craning skywards, its dribble clattering into the basin like heavy rain. Dark, less well-defined figures stood to attention here and there in other parts of the garden: topiary girls, full-skirted and small-headed. Wood-carved, pet-sized beasts postured on top of twisty-twirly poles: a green-and-gilded lion up on its hind legs, flourishing paws and fangs, and a long-muzzled, mordant-faced – which was to say English-looking – hound resting on its haunches. All very pretty, perhaps, but fussy. There were many raised beds – a bed of lilies, one of poppies, one of daisies – and areas of lavender bordered by rosemary, as well as similarly shaped areas of clipped grass. Nearer the fountain, the beds looked different. Curious, Rafael crunched across the gravel to them. The borders of these beds, too, were low-hedged, but contained more ankle-high hedging – two kinds to each bed – planted in a pattern to give the illusion of two strands intertwining, of being linked in a loose, elegant knot. He crouched and rubbed a piece of foliage to confirm: thyme. Thyme partnered with cotton lavender. Peppered around the knot to make up its background were low-growing, spiky pink flowers.

  He glimpsed one of the queen’s doors opening, and rose, ready for interrogation – Who was he? What was he doing? – but realised that he had no way of making himself understood. Why hadn’t he asked for a note in English to bring with him? The interloper was a solitary lady – absurdly richly dressed – and she hadn’t yet noticed him. Closing the door behind her, she came no further, leaning back instead against the wall and tipping her face as if to the sun. For a moment, he too stood still, but then decided he’d better get on as planned. He’d have a look, first, at that direct-south dial.

  His walking around the fountain alerted her to his presence, though, and she came towards him at a brisk pace – how she managed it in that dress, he didn’t know. She advanced with authority; no wariness in this approach to a strange man in the queen’s own garden. He braced himself. From her stature – tiny – he’d assumed she was not much more than a girl, but now he could see she was in early middle age, folds bracketing her mouth, a line between her eyebrows, and a dustiness to her pallor. He was surprised to have made the mistake, because she had none of the softness of a girl; her shoulders were sharp and movements abrupt. She was so English-looking: fireside-dry skin, ashen but flushed, as if it were scalded. The smallness of her colourless eyes was accentuated by their stare. Due to genuine short-sightedness, he judged the stare to be, rather than any attempt to intimidate him.

  She was all dress, parading what must’ve been years of other people’s close work, and all of it layered, furred, edged. She’d probably taken until this late in the day to get dressed. For all the effort, though, the result was disappointing. Curtains, was what came to Rafael’s mind. Not just the fabrics – splendid, yes, but sombre – but also the lack of shape. She was dressed in the old-fashioned, softer-lined English style – no Spanish farthingale – and on her thin frame the clothes were shapeless.

  She asked him something and, small though she was, her voice had no squeakiness to it; it was unexpectedly deep. And officious though her approach might have been, there was no unpleasantness in her manner. She’d sounded straightforward, no nonsense, which gave him some confidence. He greeted her and stated his name, hoping he wouldn’t have to say much more. Surprisingly, she came back at him in what he recognised as Aragonese: ‘You’re Spanish?’

  An English speaker of a Spanish language! He confirmed that he was indeed Spanish.

  ‘Welcome to England,’ she said in Aragonese, touchingly serious, which made him smile, although nothing similar came back from her. He wondered at her connection with Spain – she was so very English-looking, English-dressed, but her accent had been good and there’d been a naturalness in how she’d spoken. Not like an English person trying a few words of Spanish. Surely she did have some connection with Spain. She asked him something else but he didn’t grasp it – he couldn’t speak Aragonese. ‘Castilian?’ he asked her; he’d be able to converse in Castilian.

  She shook her head, regretful. ‘French?’

  No.

  ‘Latin?’

  He could read Latin but had never been able to speak it.

  In English, she said, ‘I speak French to my husband – he understands French – and he speaks Castilian to me, because I understand a little.’ She gave an exasperated roll of her eyes but, Rafael detected, she was proud of their complicated arrangement. She looked expectantly at him; he considered how best to convey what he was up to.

  ‘For the sun,’ he said in Castilian, gesturing – pointlessly – at the sky, then remembering the vertical dial on the gallery wall and indicating that instead. ‘For the queen, from the prince.’

  ‘Ah.’ Interest – approval – shone in her eyes.

  Then came an interruption: a second lady emerging from that same doorway. This lady was younger, prettier, altogether lighter, a breath of fresh air, and she was all a-bustle, giving the impression that she’d been following the first lady and failed to keep up: ‘Oh!’ – found you. She collected herself, exhaled hugely, a hand pressed to her breastbone to steady her heart, and then she dropped into a deep curtsey.

  Rafael understood at once. His own heart halted and restarted with a bang, his blood dropped away then beat back into his ears. Time had taken a wrong turning and was away before he could retrieve it and make good; he’d never, ever be able to make this good. He couldn’t believe what he’d done. He simply couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t have done it: no one could, no one, not even a child. Especially not a child: a child would have had an instinct. No one but he could have been so stupid. What exactly was it that he’d missed? He’d missed something clear and simple, he’d been busy thinking of something else, perhaps too busy translating. All he could think, now, was that, despite the finery, she’d seemed so ordinary. Her face was ordinary, and she spoke ordinarily. But, then, what did he know of how a queen would look and speak?

  What now? He had no idea, absolutely no idea how to save himself. Everything – courage, imagination – failed him and he stood there like, he felt, a small child. She’d known, hadn’t she: she’d known that he had no idea who she was, and she hadn’t enlightened him. How, though, really, could she have maintained her dignity while she enlightened him? She was talking cheerfully to the other woman, the new arrival – ‘Mrs Dormer’, she called her – indicating Rafael as she did so. Mrs Dormer’s eyes had a mischievous glint. She knew. So, it had been obvious. It was that bad. Even though she hadn’t been there, from the distant doorway she’d somehow guessed from his demeanour – presumably from his lack of deference – that he hadn’t known he was in the presence of the queen. He longed for her – for both of them – to go, and then perhaps there’d be the tiniest chance he could pretend to himself that it had never happened. He would never, ever tell anyone. Would they? He wasn’t sure of the merry-looking Mrs Dormer. It was a funny story, to her, and he sensed she liked a funny story. He’d have begged her then and there, if he’d known how. If she did tell, what kind of trouble would he get into? I’ll get sent home for this: it flashed across his mind, lifting his heart.

  Both women were waiting on him, now, politely interested. He did his utmost to look as if he were of service. Everything had changed: he was no longer a sundial-designer being waylaid by some woman, but a man being granted a personal audience by the queen of England. And he did what he should have done at the beginning: bowed fulsomely, abjectly, all the time horribly aware of the merry-looking lady witnessing it. Graciously, the queen was declining to acknowledge that anything had been amiss; she continued speaking, wishing him well with his work. She looked up into the sky and a note of apology came into her voice:‘… no sun here …’ she was saying. And then they headed back to the door, the queen leading the way at a jaunty pace.

  Watching her go, Rafael felt a pang. She’d seemed so pleased that he was Spanish, but what, until now, had Spain ever done for her? Her Span
ish mother had been set aside by the king in favour of a mistress, and she herself – an only child, twelve years old – had been taken from her, for ever kept from her and disinherited. And what had her uncle, the Spanish king, done? He’d expressed his concern and sympathy, his disgust and outrage, and he’d done so time and time again for years and years. But what had he actually done? And then, during her little half-brother’s reign, she’d been persecuted for her religion, prevented from practising it, harassed, hounded and vilified, and what had her uncle done? Expressed more concern and sympathy, more disgust and outrage. She and her mother were just women, after all; and it was just England, after all. He could never have gone to war for them.

  Watching her go, he found it hard to believe that she was the woman over whose accession to the throne, he’d heard, there’d been such jubilation: such jubilation, it was said, as had never before been seen in England. She’d spent most of her life shut away but then, when it mattered, the English people – making much of their sense of fair play – had rallied and championed the old king’s eldest daughter as rightful heir. Rafael had seen her as ordinary when she’d stood talking to him, but, also, he now saw, nothing could be further from the truth. Her bearing, as she walked away, was regal.

  Like an aunt, though, she’d seemed to him. A maiden aunt, spry and assiduously interested in him, with a no-nonsense voice and clothes of excellent quality but no flair. Somehow girlish but with no youthfulness. An eldest daughter, the dutiful one, no one’s favourite; well respected but not loved. No children of her own, and now past childbearing. But none of this, now, was the truth, he reminded himself. She was thirty-eight, he knew: just in time, was the hope. Hence the marriage. She was no longer a maiden aunt but a newlywed with a husband – her respectful nephew – who was eleven years her junior.