The Queen's Sorrow

by Suzannah Dunn

  Still nothing from her – then, ‘You believe it?’ This, too, was new: a challenge. He’d assumed it would be easy to bear this news, but there was something he wasn’t doing right. She was right to question it; he should have been better prepared. To come with such big news and not be able to back it up: he wasn’t doing right by her. Struggling to respond – what was English for ‘announcement’? – he cast around and had to settle for, ‘The queen says yes, and the doctors.’

  She challenged him further: ‘Has it been announced?’ She’d never before spoken to him like this, her eyes wide and unblinking, quite fierce. And there’d be no breaking into a smile, he sensed, when she’d had it confirmed. He was out of his depth: what was going on here? He hadn’t witnessed any reactions other than relief and happiness. Protestants would be concerned at the prospect of a Catholic heir, even though they had no need – this queen was famously tolerant – but Cecily wasn’t a Protestant; he’d seen her at Mass. Or was she a Protestant? But this reaction of hers felt personal, a very real wounding. Not a matter of doctrine. Why should news of another woman’s pregnancy so unsettle her?

  Has it been announced? – she’d made clear there must be no misunderstanding, demanding of him an unequivocal answer. Fair enough: it was important news, it should be got right. But he’d never seen this steeliness, before, in her. It thrilled him even as it distressed him, because only moments ago he’d been thinking he knew her, and now this, now this: more to know. He did as she required and answered her just as definitely as she’d asked: ‘Yes.’

  She took it. Didn’t answer back. Gave nothing back.

  ‘It’s good news?’ He cringed to hear how pathetic he sounded, how clueless, how wheedling. He needed her reassurance that he’d done something good in bringing her this news. He needed her to tell him what he’d done wrong. Instead, she pretended that nothing had happened. ‘Yes, good news.’ Her voice was higher than usual, striving to sound casual. ‘Very good news.’ Adding insult to injury, she threw up her hands and let them drop back with a slap in an expression of surprise. Pretending that it was the surprise that had unnerved her. She dismissed him with a tight little smile that didn’t reach her eyes. And then she turned to walk off. Just like that. Well, he wasn’t having it. He seemed to have offended her and he couldn’t make amends until he knew what was wrong. He had wanted so very much to be the bearer of good news. ‘Cecily,’ he protested, and he’d taken her arm before he realised. He couldn’t believe he’d done it, but then, because it was done, he didn’t let go. Might even have tightened his grip. She turned harder away. ‘Cecily.’ Nothing, though, from her; so, in desperation, he took her downturned, turned-away chin and raised it, turned her face to him. His heart was wild, he was unable to breathe. His touch to her chin was so light as to be almost no touch at all, but for all her reluctance she came with it. Still, though, that refusal to look at him – a very deliberate, furious turning away of her gaze – but he saw that her eyes were red and his heart clenched with the shock.

  ‘It’s good news,’ she said: a mere repetition, because she was trapped into it.

  Chastened, he released her, and only then did she look at him, composing herself and repeating, ‘good news,’ but only, he knew, to make clear that there was to be no discussion. It was then, though, that she touched his arm, just a dab of fingertips to his sleeve, in what he took to be reassurance – It’s not you, Rafael; it’s not your fault – and he, himself, veered towards tears, brimming with relief. Her turning from him now had no urgency; she went ahead into the house, to her tasks, leaving him still wondering what he’d done. Perhaps she was mourning her own missed opportunities in life; perhaps it was that.

  During the following weeks, her mood didn’t improve. There was a sadness about her. For a long time, though, this had been a sad country and perhaps she’d been like this for a long time and he’d not seen it, perhaps because he hadn’t watched her as closely as he now did. He feared she was ill but saw no signs. Maybe she’d been keener to hide her melancholy from him, before; but now, knowing him better, didn’t bother. Life must be hard for her, he reasoned, alone here in this house with her child. Widowed. Well, he knew all about widows: he was married to one.

  Six weeks at most, he’d been told. The first ship home, he’d been promised. Well, the first ship home had already set sail, more than a week early: the Duke of Medina-Celi’s, with all his men. Rafael’s problem was that he was no one’s man. But, he told the Spanish office, he was prepared to travel on anything, on any trade ship to anywhere in Spain. And now that the six weeks were up and they were still unable to give him word on the likelihood of the sundial being funded, he reckoned he was entitled to leave. They’d look into it, they kept telling him: this, from officials who couldn’t see beyond the man waiting next in line to complain.

  Cecily embroidered in the evenings without looking up, biting her lip, working at the stitching rather than taking pleasure in it. They’d never been able to converse much but there’d been an openness where now, he felt, she was closed to him. Once, even, she cried. He’d taken it to be the usual English sniffing until, with a jolt, he’d realised his mistake. At the time, he was sitting at the table, writing what he’d once again assumed to be his final letter home. He stared at the wet scratches of ink, wondering what to do. What to say. Anything would almost certainly embarrass her, but he couldn’t sit there ignoring her distress. He couldn’t bear it. A simple, Are you all right? would be knocked back, he guessed, with a mere, Yes, thanks. He managed, ‘Cecily? Something happens?’ Has something happened?

  Surprised into looking up, she thanked him for his concern with a quick, dutiful smile through obvious tears. ‘Oh, no, nothing. But thank you.’ Then she was back to her needlework and he was helpless, at a loss. Nothing for it but to turn his attention back to the letter in front of him. He’d still had no replies because Leonor was expecting him back any day. Don’t write, he’d been telling her, because I’ll be back soon. For a month, now, he’d been saying that.

  Most days, lately, if the rain looked to be holding off for long enough, he’d been out walking. Word was that the streets were safe since the breaking of the queen’s good news, and indeed he met no trouble, just glances from the curious. Walking helped him to feel less trapped. Odd, that he should feel free in the crammed lanes, jostled by shoppers, dodging beggars and pedlars of baked apples, sidestepping spit-roasts. Kept on his toes, he was, though, which was what he needed. Well-to-do streets ran alongside bad, and he never knew which he’d find until he made the turning – although he never made the same mistake twice of turning into Fleet Street, with its open sewer and hellish-looking prison. Some areas were charming: the cheese kiosks in Bread Street; the bookshops around St Paul’s. The cathedral itself, though, he avoided after his first visit. Hundreds of keen-eyed Londoners milling around in the nave, clearly conducting dubious business deals: no place for an onlooker. From the streets around St Paul’s, he would often head downhill to the river where he relished its lustre and the sudden, unexpected openness. The breeze working his eyes to a shine, he’d watch men in the distance riding the supple back of that body of water to make their living: garrulous boatmen, and stoical fishermen. In the shallows, sometimes, oxen quenched their thirst under the eye of their herdsman. And downstream was London Bridge: the span of arches, and towering, timber-intricate houses. Though he loved the look of it, he’d never dared go on to it, let alone across, knowing from Antonio that the south bank teemed with taverns and brothels. It was where the bear-baiting happened, too, and in August a bear had broken free and savaged a man.

  Late afternoon was when he did his walking: no later because dusk – and with it, curfew – was coming so much earlier. Despite the chill and the clouds rolling dense and dark like smoke, there was something in the autumn air of which he couldn’t get enough. He breathed it deep and tingled with it. A sharpness, at which his body tightened in anticipation. The season was turning; he’d never before experienced
a turn as hard and fast as this. The prospect of winter appalled him but his body was alive, animal-alive, to its coming.

  He got sick in October, and languished for two days with a bucket, lying in his bed watching half-hearted daylight drift around his room, and thirsting for fresh, sun-sparkled water. He missed Leonor. Even by her own admission she was a poor nurse, but that was what he longed for: the laughable incompetence of her nursing. Her good-natured failing. When he did get downstairs again, Cecily and Nicholas were nowhere to be seen and the men were fending for themselves in the kitchen, living on bread and cheese, until each of them in turn disappeared for a couple of days. When Cecily reappeared, she moved gingerly for a day or two and her eyes were shadowed. So she, too, had been ill, and probably her boy, also.

  He was back at the Spanish office as soon as he was able, to be told of a distinct possibility that he and Antonio would be setting sail within a fortnight. Details would be forthcoming in time. Progress indeed, and the two officials who broke the news seemed confident, even cheerful. His hopes soared.

  Around that time, the house filled with spiders. There was no season for them in Spain and, at home, they were rarely inside the house, but at the Kitsons’ it was as if they were answering a call. They seeped from nooks and crannies, and wherever he turned, it seemed, there was one crouching, beast-sized, on the wall. Sometimes they looked blind, stunned to detect themselves in the open; insensible and just as likely to dash forwards as away. Other times, he saw them as watchful and malign, biding their time, the exaggerated crook of their legs posing the threat of a sudden drop. He hated that they came from the dark. He hated their clambering across walls like taunting fingers, and their frantic prancing over folds of fabric. And their silence: give him the rowdiness of the mice in the roof, any day – at least he knew they were there. Spiders could be anywhere, and, at the Kitsons’, often were: on the back of his curtain, even, and once clinging inside his cloak.

  One evening, Cecily lifted some cloth from her basket and a black blotch dropped from it to skitter into the shadows of the fireplace. Recoiling, she and Rafael then shared a self-conscious laugh of relief. Poking nervously at the other fabrics, she said, ‘It’s lucky, you know, to find a spider in your wedding dress.’ Did she mean she’d found one in her wedding dress? Was he supposed to ask? He didn’t – didn’t dare – and then the moment had gone.

  Some evenings with Cecily were better than others, and some were almost as they’d previously been. One evening, unexpectedly, she spoke as she selected a thread: ‘Bear’s ear.’ She’d addressed no one in particular. Her son – practising tying knots – didn’t seem to register it, and Richard was asleep. Rafael queried, ‘Bear’s ear?’

  She was startled by his misunderstanding. ‘No, not from a bear’s ear,’ with an unsure laugh. She held up some silk floss, taut between her hands. ‘The colour: “bear’s ear”.’ So he laughed, now, too. She scrabbled in her linen pouch for another skein, drew it free and dangled it in the air: ‘Dove.’

  ‘Dove,’ he repeated, approvingly. He knew dove.

  That seemed to please her. One more, a pink: ‘Lady-blush.’

  ‘Lady …?’

  ‘Blush.’ She patted her cheeks, raised her eyebrows.

  Oh. He smiled. Blush.

  She put them back, then pointed into the pouch at another: ‘Pound-citron.’ She was matter-of-fact, now. Another: ‘Brazil.’ A last one: ‘Isabella-colour.’ Then, busying herself back with her embroidery: ‘My father was a wool merchant. We lived on a farm.’

  A wool merchant, a sheep farm. Big business. The annual shearing, and wool-winders descending, setting up camp while they cleaned the wool and packed it for bringing to London for grading and packing again for export. The year-round busyness of a farm, too, not just with the ploughing and sowing and harvesting, but the endless ditching and weeding and repairing. Back at the house – as at any manor house – the brewing and egg-collecting and cheese-making, candle-making and butchery. And there’d have been an office for the collection and collation of tithes and rents, and the keeping of accounts. Big money in English wool. How, then, had she ended up here? Hers was a valued and responsible role in the Kitson household, but all the same she was a servant.

  ‘Your father?’ she asked him.

  ‘Doctor.’

  She nodded in approval.

  ‘And one brother, a doctor.’ He refrained from saying the other two were priests.

  ‘But not you.’ She said it with a smile.

  ‘Not me.’ He returned the smile. She knew what he did for his work, but he worried that she didn’t fully understand why he wasn’t working here. He wondered if he should try explaining it again, but she was asking, ‘Your father …?’ Full of concern: asking if his father was alive.

  ‘No. But my mother, yes.’

  ‘Oh.’ Careful: sympathy for the death of his father, thankful that his mother was alive.

  ‘You?’ he dared.

  She lowered her eyes, shook her head. ‘Fifty-one.’

  He had to grasp the number itself before he could recall the English sickness of 1551, the closing of the ports in his country to ships from hers. ‘I’m very sorry,’ he said, and she glanced up from her work in acknowledgement of it. And then that seemed to be it, for the evening: no more was said.

  Later that night, Rafael recalled Francisco’s very first encounter with the notion of death: how his little boy’s reaction had shaken him. But people don’t want to die! – his outrage, his distress had been immediate and unequivocal. How had he known? He’d never been told, it’d never been discussed – he was three years old – but he knew.

  It was something everyone knew.

  Cecily’s countryside childhood came up again when, a few days later, they went blackberrying. Rafael was delighted to be asked along. Quite an occasion, this trip, to judge from her bustling preparations. The morning was glorious, the first in all the time since his arrival. Richard was to drive them. ‘Up to Shoreditch,’ Cecily said. Even Nicholas looked pleased at the prospect, but no one matched the dog’s excitement: he was first into the cart, and no one admonished him.

  Richard drove along Threadneedle Street, then Bishopsgate Street. From up in the cart, Rafael could occasionally see over walls into gardens. Many of the houses and other premises up this way had small gardens – some with simple sundials, which, for once, were of use – and even little orchards. Fruit trees, he glimpsed, and vines; other climbers, too, and rose-bushes, poppies and pinks, although none were in flower. Francisco went through a phase of picking flowers for Rafael, the smallest flowers he could find and a solitary bloom at a time. I’ve got you a flower – look! – I’ve got you a flower, Daddy. A solemn bestowing, a little drama: a gesture that he could make. Oh, thank you, Francisco, that’s lovely, that’s really lovely, thank you. For several months, the house was littered with those single, spindly stems and their tiny, wilted flower heads, and Rafael was forever having to judge when Francisco had lost interest in them so that they could be tidied away. He didn’t always get it right, this betrayal of his son.

  Where’s the flower I gave you, Daddy? Or, Hey! Who threw my flower away?

  Francisco came to suspect him, he was sure, or half-suspect him, incredulous though he must have been at his father’s disregard. He turned watchful; it was harder and harder for Rafael to manage to get rid of those flowers. By the time of Rafael’s departure, Francisco wasn’t looking at flowers; they held no interest for him. The stakes were higher, there was so much more he could do, his world was so much bigger and faster.

  Approaching Bishopsgate, they passed a site which looked as though it had been a religious institution. It was derelict – doors broken down and windows gaping, gates taken, roof tiles missing and timbers exposed – but some reconstruction had begun with two ladders propped against a wall and a pile of new bricks in one of the courtyards. Cecily caught his eye and read his mind: ‘No’ – shaking her head – ‘for rich people, a big house.’ An
d he understood this was no re-establishment of the religious order, but a residential conversion.

  Traffic through the Gate was heavy, not only with vehicles but a flock of geese being driven to market. Whether there had been anything on the Gate – bits of bodies, traitors’ bodies – he didn’t know, he’d avoided looking. Beyond the gatehouse, the roadside remained built up. One cluster of well-ordered buildings just outside the Gate seemed to cause particular interest, Cecily and Richard gazing at it. ‘Hospital,’ Cecily told Rafael when she realised he was watching her, and Richard tapped his head. ‘Bedlam,’ Cecily said. Rafael glimpsed a big stone sundial wedged out from a wall to make it direct-east: no need for the maker to have calculated the angle of declination.

  He saw none of the archery practice that he’d been told happened on the land outside the walls. Too built up, here, for that. Gradually, there were fewer buildings at the roadside. Cecily closed her eyes. Rafael loved to see her like this: relaxed, in sunshine. He loved to be riding along with her. Eventually they arrived at what had probably once been a village quite separate from London. ‘Shoreditch,’ Cecily announced.

  Flynn was first out, bounding from the cart and stretching himself on the warm ground to soak up the sunshine. Cecily showed Rafael the fruits to pick, the blackberries, and he was keen to do his best for her. There were thorns and he’d have to be wary, too, of nettles. He found the hedges themselves interesting, made of different kinds of vegetation. ‘Whitethorn,’ Cecily told him of the one that seemed to be the most common. He liked it that she wanted to tell him. When he looked closely, he saw that in some places the branches had been trained horizontally to give a sturdy weave. ‘Plashing,’ she called it. There were other fruits, too, less prevalent, as small as the blackberries but smooth, spherical and blue-black. He indicated them to Cecily: These? Should he pick these? ‘Blackthorn,’ she said of the bush, ‘Sloes,’ of the fruits, and shook her head: ‘November.’ The same – ‘November’ – for something more tree than bush which she called Bullace, and which, he saw, bore fruits with identical blue-black frosting but oval and bigger, like tiny plums. November: she’d held his gaze for a heartbeat when she’d said it, he felt. By November, he’d be gone.