The Queen's Sorrow

by Suzannah Dunn

  I can at least have this: nothing though it is, I can have this. He’d come to her door in the hope of quelling his pain, quietening its clamour, but the feeling he had was of something being worked beneath his skin, shocking and to be endured. He was lodged here on this tiny landing and she was behind that door, in her room, in her life with her child, in the room that was her home. He’d had a life, before all this, a life that had been his and, yes, it’d had its problems and imperfections, but he’d lived in it; it’d gone on, day by day, year by year, a life of his own with a life of its own. But now, for the past nine months, it hadn’t; it’d stopped, and he had no idea if it was still waiting for him.

  He pictured Francisco asleep, how during his first year he used to sleep on his back with his arms thrown above his head, as if in protest. At about a year old, he was able to turn himself over, and he’d fold his knees up beneath him. He’d be kneeling, prostrate, in his sleep, and although he was folded up, this new position of his shared something with the earlier, open one: a fierceness of intent. Latterly, he’d slept as anyone else would: on his side, at the ready for waking.

  ‘When you’re dead,’ he’d asked Rafael, ‘can you move your arms?’ He simply couldn’t grasp the notion of lifelessness.

  ‘When we’re dead,’ he’d said, ‘can we be buried next to each other? Because then we can cuddle.’

  Rafael knew he wouldn’t need to shift for quite a while – the household was at least an hour away from its very first stirrings. He gave himself up to the silence which rose around him and hissed in his ears. Only a little later, though, came the chirping of shoe-leather on flagstones below him, and then the scuff of it on wood, on a stair. He scrambled up a few steps, around the corner, and stopped. The person was heading up the stairs. The person was Cecily: that was the pitch and rhythm of her footfalls. His own breathing seemed noisier than her tread; his heart, panicked, was throwing punches at him and thwacking blood into his ears. He was shaking so much that standing was hard, but a crouch would risk a crack from his knees. Half-standing, hands on knees, his noisy breathing was amplified, thundering back up at him.

  Her door opened, then closed, and the silence down there washed in as if never displaced. He, too, stayed exactly where he was, didn’t dare move a muscle, didn’t dare even straighten. And there he remained, waiting for her to settle, to sleep. And beginning to make sense of what he’d heard.

  He’d been outside her room for some time – and she’d been wearing her boots. Night-chill drifted up the stairwell like smoke. She’d been outdoors. She’d come back from somewhere in the small hours, the very smallest hours. So: an assignation. It had to be. Got you: a victory of a kind. He should try to savour it. You thought I’d never know, didn’t you, but he’d laid her secret bare. Perhaps not quite so much a fool.

  Someone else.

  But of course, he’d known, really. Hadn’t he? Of course he had. He’d known, all along, but hadn’t wanted to face it. And now there it was, facing him, staring him down. Behind him lay the year he’d spent in Cecily’s company, now shadowed. If he so much as turned around, he knew, he’d be going back through it, conversation by conversation, even smile by smile, to trace that shifting shadow.

  He was still breathing hard, the air turning to nothing inside him as if he were ruining it by the act of breathing. Eventually, he relented and sat down, breathed a little easier, at an utter loss. Now what? Bed, he supposed. There was nothing else for it.

  Back in bed, he gave himself a talking-to. So, Cecily had someone, and so what? He had no claim on her. Nothing could ever have happened between them. What business was it of his how she spent her nights? Couldn’t he be adult about this? She was a free woman, free to do as she wished. And he should be happy for her.

  He’d imagined a misunderstanding between them, but in fact she’d had no expectations of him. He could simply walk away from her and go home.

  He wondered about the man whose bed, somewhere across the city, was warmed and scented by Cecily. He wondered if she loved him and how long it’d been going on.

  Dawn deepened into day. He got up and got through it. At mealtimes, he didn’t so much as glance at Cecily, although her presence persisted like a thumbprint. Night dawdled but finally began sighing into the house around nine and he took it up on its desultory offer, headed for bed. He was desperate for sleep but it played with him and at first light he realised he was lying there listening for Cecily and her surreptitious return. If he was right about what she was up to, she’d be doing it again. Her return to her room had sounded well practised.

  He lay there hearing nothing. He’d have to be closer to her room. He got up and dressed, not keen to risk discovery at large in the early hours in his nightgown. He’d be better prepared for discovery, fully clothed. He listened hard for her ahead or behind him, taking up position in a stairwell opposite hers.

  Once there, though, he woke to the futility of what he was doing and its shamefulness. What on earth did he hope to learn? He couldn’t bear to imagine her expression of horror and loathing if she came across him. But he’d come here and he was trapped now, for fear of bumping into her on his return. So he stayed in the stairwell, cold and cramped and frightened, until what he judged to be close to five: beyond the time she’d risk a return, but just before anyone else in the household was around. Back in his room, he threw himself into sleep, only surfacing after midday.

  The following night, he slept through, relieved to find himself delivered straight from sleep into a fully fledged morning. The night after that, he was unable to stop himself resuming his watch and felt cheated when he discovered nothing. The next night, sleep kept him in its grip until morning and then only reluctantly relinquished him, dogging him all day. The next two, he was awake before four and going about the grim business of surveillance, and it was on the second of these that he witnessed her return again.

  Later that day, Nicholas tried his luck at Rafael’s door. It was just as it had been, almost a year ago: the boy peering into his room. But Cecily’s reprimand – ‘Nicholas!’ – from the foot of the stairwell was very different, this time, in tone. She sounded aggrieved. Her son was placing her in an awkward position. Nicholas withdrew from the doorway, and Rafael could’ve left it at that, but he didn’t; he went and looked down the stairs, and there they were, Cecily shepherding him away, just as she’d done that first time. No smile, though, from her, this time, and its absence hurled itself at him. He stood his ground; the two of them staring at each other, at a loss not just for words but even how to look at each other. Then she sighed – genuine, he felt, the sigh was, the sadness and exasperation of it – and offered an explanation for her son’s intrusion: ‘You were his good friend.’ Carefully expressionless except for the faint emphasis on ‘good friend’: a quotation, a reminder: I am your good friend.

  She was right, of course. He and Nicholas had built an odd little relationship of sorts, but lately Rafael hadn’t been around for him. I’ll hurt the ones you love. And regardless of what Nicholas felt about that, his mother would be furious. Certainly Rafael would be, if he were in her position. But for now she was withholding that anger, withholding everything, in fact; just staring at him.

  She was right, but also it wasn’t the whole truth. Neither of them was saying what needed to be said and – again – she was going to walk away. Someone had to say something, and it didn’t look as if it’d be her. So, he made the move: opened his mouth and began to speak even though he didn’t know how to say it. What came out was, ‘There is someone you love,’ and it sounded odd even to him.

  Unsurprisingly, she didn’t understand; she frowned, perplexed.

  ‘At night.’ He had to push on, to try to make himself understood. ‘There is someone you go to at night.’

  The child looked up at her, and Rafael experienced a twinge of guilt.

  Realisation came like focus into Cecily’s eyes. She didn’t deny it but whispered, amazed, ‘You’re a spy.’

&n
bsp; He had to translate before it hit him. How could she think that of him? ‘No –’

  ‘You’re a spy!’

  ‘No!’ He’d had to shout her down, despite the risk of scaring the child. ‘I was awake,’ he insisted, ‘and you come back …’ He stopped, repeated it even though he knew it was a peculiar phrase: ‘There is someone you love.’

  ‘No.’ So, here came the denials, tight-lipped. ‘No, that’s not it.’

  But he could see the truth of it on her face. ‘It is it.’ Why deny it? ‘Cecily,’ he appealed, ‘don’t lie to me.’

  She opened her mouth to deny it again – he could see the denial in the making – so he said again, much louder, ‘Don’t lie to me!’

  And at that very moment, to Rafael’s utter horror, Antonio sauntered past Cecily. What the fuck was he doing there? A deliberate saunter, it was. Even allowing for any self-consciousness, any awkwardness he might be feeling, it was outrageous, accompanied by a champion smirk. Rafael suspected he’d been on his way to badger him about something and had stumbled upon the situation – but he could’ve retreated, couldn’t he? Why saunter past?

  Both Rafael and Cecily bit back on any more words as they watched him go; he took his time going and every footstep put the two of them firmly in their place. When she judged him to be sufficiently far away to be unable to overhear, Cecily looked up the stairs again and Rafael saw that she had something to say. He saw it coming but he could never have anticipated what it was. She delivered it as if it were a reminder: ‘There is someone you love, Rafael: your wife.’

  And with that, and before he could find an answer, she was gone.

  Perhaps only five minutes later, Rafael heard Antonio’s footsteps on the stairs. He couldn’t believe he had the audacity, and he didn’t respond to the knock on the door. He wouldn’t have answered to anyone; he was in no fit state, his heart floundering. Antonio, though, let himself in and came in saying, appreciatively, ‘That was some row you were having with Cecily.’

  Rafael got up and crossed the room to show him the door. ‘You know nothing of what was going on between Mrs Tanner and me.’ Antonio laughed at that, disputing it with a look and saying, ‘Oh, but I think I do.’

  And before either of them knew it, Rafael had hit him, and Antonio was reeling, bowing, cupping his face. Oh, Jesus. What had he done? Jesus, Jesus, had he injured him? Antonio straightened up and Rafael was swamped by panic and disbelief that he’d got himself into this position, because now there was going to be a fight and he had no idea how to fight. For want of knowing what else to do, he stood there to take it, whatever it was that was coming. But to his surprise, nothing came. Nothing from Antonio but a look of utter contempt: that was all he was doing, and – Rafael understood – all he was going to do. Hit me, Rafael found himself pleading silently. Don’t look at me like that. But he did, he kept on looking at him like that until he turned and left.

  Francisco had finally been born eleven days before Rafael’s own birthday, and it was this proximity of his son’s birthday to his own that had eventually tipped him off. Not, though, until his own birthday had come around. For eleven days, the first eleven days of Francisco’s life, Rafael was oblivious. When his own birthday came around, the fact of it was acknowledged – Your birthday! – but otherwise it made little mark in a household reeling from a birth. Quite properly so, Rafael felt. He was glad to let it go. Birthdays in his household, from now on, were going to be for someone else. That afternoon, though, in his son’s nursery, he reflected briefly on how different his life had been a year ago, and that was when he realised: his last birthday had been the last time he and Leonor had had sex. He’d known it’d been a long time ago – of course he had – but only now, sitting there beside his sleeping son, did he realise exactly how long. Until that moment, it’d been so long that he’d lost track; it’d been as long, he’d assumed, as a pregnancy. But it was in fact a year ago. Over eleven and a half months before Francisco was born.

  Francisco’s nursemaid was across the room and Rafael was terrified she’d see his realisation. So physical was it, to him, the jolt, that it seemed entirely possible she would’ve heard it falling into place. Perhaps she already knew. Perhaps everyone knew. Did everyone know? He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t known.

  He could have cried, to feel so exposed. A cry for someone to make it go away. His mother, even. That was how desperate and helpless he was.

  He understood nothing: that, too, was how he felt. How had it happened? When, why, with whom? Had Leonor been waiting for him to put it all together? Had he been slow? Would he ever have realised, had it not been for his birthday? A long time, was all it would ever have been. And even though she knew the truth of the situation, perhaps she herself didn’t remember this exact date. It’d been his birthday, after all. Perhaps, then, she hadn’t expected him to realise.

  But even if it were possible, that it was never to be spoken of, would she one day throw it at him? One day, she would. And then it could never be unsaid and their world would be different and, with a mere handful of words, he would no longer be Francisco’s father. Francisco would no longer be his son.

  Her lie had already gone on for so long. It was made of so many moments in which she’d actively upheld it: all those moments, and each one of them a betrayal, and so many more to come. He was in awe at the depth and breadth of her betrayal; he couldn’t begin to fathom it. He felt surprised, too; he’d never considered her duplicitous, nor interested enough in sex to take a risk. Well, he knew nothing, did he. That was clear.

  He knew that she’d lied and was continuing to lie, but, really, that was all he knew and that was nothing. Because he didn’t know who.

  But he did know. Because there’d recently been another anniversary: that of Antonio’s arrival in the household as his stonemason. Antonio had seemed like a good idea, at the time. He’d come highly recommended for his masonry, and it was clear in no time that those recommendations were more than justified. But it wasn’t just with his work that he’d made an impression. He’d burst upon the household of women: a strong, good-looking man in his early twenties, young enough to be made a pet of, yet also all man. Rafael had been dismayed to see it: a man who adored to be adored; and they did, those women, as if to order, in the early days.

  All except Leonor, of course, who could be trusted never to be in thrall to a man so full of himself. Antonio steered clear of her in those early days. She made him uneasy, Rafael knew. Antonio wouldn’t be one for difficult women. Rafael suspected that he’d never had to win a woman over and hadn’t learned how.

  What was odd, though, was that they had gone on to form a kind of friendship, Leonor and Antonio, within a few weeks. Or an alliance, perhaps. Rafael had been aware of it, though he hadn’t credited it with any importance. He’d come across them together, sometimes, and when she looked away from Antonio, her gaze would alight on Rafael but not take him in. So different from her habitual look of appraisal. Absorbed, she was. Elsewhere. She and Antonio were outsiders together in the household – she still saw herself as such, Rafael knew. Antonio, too, seemed different when he was with her. None of his usual ebullience. An impression was all it was: that was Rafael’s suspicion. But, still, different, which implied she was singled out. And she’d have responded to that, Rafael knew. In her eyes, Antonio was true with her alone, and she’d have liked that. Of course she would have. Anyone would.

  Rafael had scoured his memory but there’d been no one else around the household at that time. He’d never wavered, from those first moments in the nursery, in his suspicion of Antonio.

  And from then onwards, he’d watched them intently on the few occasions they were in each other’s company, but he detected nothing. Leonor was by now – he was sure – treating Antonio with the faint contempt with which she treated her husband. Whatever it had been, it was over.

  He wondered, even, if it’d been wholly consensual. He didn’t like to consider it, but the fact was that he could imagine i
t of Antonio: a bit of pressure, keeping up the pressure, taking it a bit too far. Thinking this, he felt keenly for Leonor.

  Perhaps Antonio himself didn’t know. He might not have known that Leonor wasn’t also sleeping with her husband; he’d only have known if she’d told him. And even if she had, she could well have retracted it later, lied to him: Oh, well, yes, actually, there were a couple of times. Casting enough doubt to free them both.

  But if Antonio did know, he must think Rafael either stupid or spineless. Rafael didn’t know which was worse. Did Antonio know? When he’d heard of Francisco’s birth, he’d gone through the motions, offered congratulations, but he was no more effusive than anyone else. By that time, he was keeping his distance from the household. In all this time in England, he’d never once asked after Leonor and Francisco.

  And as for Leonor: she was good at it. She really did appear to believe it: that there was nothing amiss and Rafael was the father of her son. Did she believe it? Had she somehow persuaded herself of it? Sometimes he doubted himself: perhaps there was a time, just the once, that he’d overlooked, or when he was half-asleep. But there hadn’t: he knew it. He was certain.

  In the nursery that day, as he faced the truth, he was staring at Francisco but not really watching him; he was thinking too hard. But then the baby had turned his head a little to search for him; the eyes intent, albeit barely able to see, the mouth pursed with the effort. This was a serious endeavour. That strangely humourless little face. The blind faith of the tiny boy: looking for the man he was learning was his father, expecting him to be there; expecting that if only he could turn his head, his father would be there for him to see. It was unthinkable not to honour that faith. Why should Francisco suffer for this? That was Rafael’s decision, then and there: he must not suffer for it.

  In company, Rafael had found himself making much of his adoration of the little boy: a challenge to Leonor and whoever else might know. Ruin this, if you dare. Alone with Francisco, he didn’t need to make a show of it; it was genuine and, if anything, more intense.