by Anna Kendall
“Yes, my lady,” I said. She was smiling, her skin warmed from the sun, her hair still damp from a bath. Never had I seen her look more beautiful. Hysteria shone in her green eyes like fever. My stomach rumbled.
“Now we must have music! Music and dancing!”
The others took up the cry: Music! Dancing! Music! Only recently had the queen given permission for dancing to occur when she was not present. The ladies and courtiers were young, alive, oblivious to whatever the queen may have been doing all day, although they would leap to her service the second she required them. Although were they really so oblivious, so heedless and carefree as they seemed? All of them—everyone at court—were such skilled actors. Except me.
Musicians were sent for. Under cover of all the bustle, Cecilia said to me, “Roger?”
I said, “It is buried under the tree in the fish-fountain courtyard, on the side of the tree facing the fountain. Organize a game of hide-and-seek or hide-the-coin, and you can easily retrieve it. Drink it all at once, eat nothing for a day, and lie”—my voice faltered—“with no one for a week.”
“Oh, I thank you so—”
“Was it Prince Rupert?”
She stiffened beside me, then rose and flounced off, her satin skirts swishing. But a moment later she was back. Lips so close to my ear that I could smell the scented soap on her damp hair, she whispered, “Don’t think less of me, I could not bear it,” and again she was gone.
My chest contracted in on itself, held, had to be forced to breathe again. Why should Lady Cecilia care what I, the queen’s fool, thought of her?
I watched her move through the slow, sedate figures of the court dance, her restless charm confined to one step forward, two back, a slight dip of the head. Wrong, wrong. The wrong dance for her, the wrong man, the wrong contrast between these courtiers’ gaiety and the ominous absence of the queen.
Just as darkness fell, the door to the privy chamber opened and the queen stepped out. Instantly dancers and musicians fell into deep curtsies. The queen gazed at them bleakly. She wore a gown of such deep green it looked almost black, and the dark color turned her skin chalky white. It made her look older, unlike the woman who had questioned me at midnight, let alone the one who had roistered with her court in the kitchens on the day she had found me there. It occurred to me now that never since had I seen her join her courtiers with that same abandon.
Had she come to the kitchen that night only for me?
“Roger?” she said now. “Come, fool.”
I rose and moved among the kneeling courtiers, toward the privy chamber.
“Resume dancing, then,” Queen Caroline said, smiled at them all, and closed the door. She turned to me. “It occurred to me that you must have eaten nothing, Roger, since yesterday. Sit, eat.”
There it was again: kindness in the woman who had threatened me with torture, remembrance of the small amid whatever great concerns consumed her. Lord Robert sat at the other end of the table, now covered with a green-embroidered dinner cloth that hung to the floor, his face as bleak as hers. His fingers curled loosely around the stem of a wine goblet. When he raised the goblet to drink, the green stones of his rings flashed in the firelight.
I loaded a plate—it was a royal order, after all—with meat and fruit and bread and cheese, and devoured it all. I drank two goblets of wine. The queen and Lord Robert talked only of trivial things: the change in the weather, the shoe that his horse had thrown, Lady Margaret’s cold, a favorite hunting dog about to whelp. The fire burned low, throwing the room into shadow. After my heavy meal and heavier thoughts, I felt sleepy. When I slumped low in my chair on the far side of the table, the queen said, “Roger, you may go now and—”
The door was flung open with the force of a gale and soldiers burst in.
Blue soldiers, not the queen’s Green guard. Their sleeves above the armor were blue, the ribbons on their helmet blue, the arms on their shields . . . their short swords were drawn. Before I knew I was even going to move, I had slid down in the chair and slithered under the table, where the long cloth hid me.
Lord Robert leapt up, his hand going to his sword. But then a woman’s voice rang out.
“Caroline.”
I knew that icy voice, although I had heard it only once. The old queen. The door slammed shut. Beneath the edge of the cloth I could see the hem of her blue gown, the heavy boots of her soldiers. I felt Lord Robert hesitate. Then he went around the table, between the two queens, and knelt. “Your Highness,” he said, giving her not the title of a reigning monarch but of a royal family member.
She ignored him. “Caroline, what have you done?”
“I have done nothing.” As much ice as in her mother’s voice, and much more rage.
“I think you have,” Queen Eleanor said. “Your couriers come and go from the harbor at Carlyle Bay, and other strange couriers ride in from the west. And your lover here”—it was impossible to convey the contempt in those three words—“ has called upon the lord high admiral himself.”
Queen Caroline said, “I would know what happens in my queendom.”
“My queendom, Caroline. You are not fit to hold it, and could not hold it if you had it.”
“I was crowned well over a year ago!”
“A sham without my presence, and without the Crown of Glory, and you know it. I would give you The Queendom if I thought you could hold it, but you cannot.”
“Because you have turned the army against me. You know I could rule, but you want to keep all power for yourself!”
“And so I shall, for the good of The Queendom. I will not see it descend to civil war. And you will keep your fingers—all eleven of them—off my navy. Do I make myself understood?”
The young queen said levelly, “Mother, are you planning to send both the new navy and the army to attack Benilles? To take The Queendom into war?”
Dead silence.
I had heard of Benilles—where? Then it came to me: Bat’s voice in the country of the Dead, about the Frances Ormund: “Gold from Benilles and cloth from ... I forget where.” Had Captain James Conyers’s cargo included information, as well? So perhaps it had not been by mere chance that the old queen’s Blues had interrupted Hartah’s wreckers. The soldiers had been waiting in that desolate place, for something that did not happen because my uncle’s wreckers foundered the ship and Captain Conyers drowned.
Queen Eleanor said, “Caroline, if you interfere in matters that do not concern you, you will regret it.”
“If you plunge The Queendom into a war we cannot win, you will regret it.”
I wondered, cowering under my table, which of the two women had the greater capacity for hatred.
The old queen said, “Keep to your music, daughter, and your wild young court, and your powerless lover. As of tonight, you will receive no visitors except these. I will have guards at the doors of your presence chamber. Since it was not enough to restrict you to the palace, I will also restrict those you may see. I have spoken.”
A swish of the blue gown as she turned, a slam of the door behind her soldiers.
The young queen said, “I will—”
“Hush, Caro,” Lord Robert said, in a tone that would have silenced an earthquake. “The first thing you will do is dismiss your fool before he hears even more than he has. Roger, go.”
I crawled out from under the table, just as I had done so many times in Hartah’s faire booth. And, like those times, I held information I did not want. But I made a rapid decision. “Your Grace ...”
“I said go!” Lord Robert thundered.
“Your Grace, I know something more of Captain Conyers and the Frances Ormund and Benilles. I learned it from a sailor of the crew and from the captain’s widow.”
She stared at me, white-faced, her mouth still twisted with anger at her mother. I knelt before her and told her that Bat had said “somebody important” had been on board the ship, someone “with medals on his chest.” Mistress Conyers had mentioned passenger money fr
om a nobleman, suggesting a sum large enough to make a difference to her husband’s fortunes. And Queen Eleanor’s soldiers, a large number of them, had already been gathered in this remote corner of The Queendom.
When I finished, she said, “Roger.”
“Your Grace?”
“Rise and look at me.” Lord Robert watched us closely from across the room.
“Do you realize you have just confessed to participating in a deliberate wreck?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“And that such a crime is punishable by hanging?”
“Yes, Your Grace.” I saw the yellow-haired youth choking in the noose, kicking the air.
“Then why have you told me?”
“Because I thought you might wish to know. Because it might . . . might be useful to you to know. And you are my queen.”
She was silent. Her black eyes, with their glints of submerged silver, searched mine. Lord Robert said dryly, “And because he knows you value his ‘gift’ too highly to kill him, and may in the future remember his willingness to aid you.”
“That, too,” I said, and the queen smiled.
“You did well to tell me,” she said. “I won’t forget it. Roger, say nothing of what you heard tonight.”
“I will not, Your Grace.”
“You may go.”
In the outer chamber, I was immediately besieged by courtiers and ladies. “What happened in there, fool? What did the old queen say to Her Grace?”
What? What? What? The word echoed in my head, as if from a drum instead of being whispered from a dozen eager throats. They were like a bunch of ravens, feeding on carrion.
I said, “Her mother told Queen Caroline that the expenses of her household were too high.”
Lord Thomas said, “The fool is lying.”
Then Lady Cecilia cried, “Oh, look, the moon has risen full! Let’s all play a game of hide-the-coin among the courtyards! Such fun! Come, all of you, I shall go out and hide the coin first!”
She caught Lord Thomas by one hand, Lady Sarah by the other, and it was true that the moon had risen full. Its light shone through the window, lying silver on her bright face and on the hard, polished stone floor.
16
A WEEK LATER, I sat at the queen’s feet in the presence chamber, listening to the few petitioners who came to her and not to her mother. They were all peasants or farmers, allowed in because the Blue guards posted just beyond the door didn’t think they were worth keeping out. A peasant’s stolen cow, a farmer’s field in dispute. One of the queen’s advisors had fallen asleep, his beard stirring with his light snores.
In the courtyard beyond, someone screamed. Not a woman, a man.
The queen’s own guards leapt in front of the dais, shielding it. But no Blues were attacking; the ones stationed at the door looked as startled as everyone else. Another scream—a woman this time—and a shout. Then running outside, people rushing and calling, and the captain of the Green guard ran into the presence chamber and up to the queen, not even kneeling.
“Are you unharmed, Your Grace?”
“Yes, Captain, I am. What has happened?” She looked toward the door.
More Greens marched into the room and took up posts around the queen. The Blues at the open door looked at each other, clearly mystified and without orders, their hands on their swords.
“I asked you—what has happened?”
The captain knelt then, just as yet more Greens closed the doors to the presence chamber, shutting the Blue guards without, and barred it. The captain said, “Your Grace, Queen Eleanor has . . . The queen is dead. Long live the queen!”
“Dead?”
“Yes, Your Grace.” He did not raise his eyes but I, crouched on the bottom step of the throne and looking up, could see them. I saw no fear—he was a captain of the guards—but I saw doubt. Much terrible doubt.
“Did she—”
“Just now, Your Grace. She was with her advisors and she slumped to the floor and—the physicians are with her now. She—I—” He looked for certainty, and found it in duty. “There is unrest in the palace, Your Grace.”
The queen said sharply, “My children?”
“I have already secured the nursery; the princess and her brother are safe. But you must stay here until my men have secured the entire palace. Your privy chamber would be better yet.”
For the first time I realized why the privy chamber, and presumably the bedchamber beyond, had no windows.
“I will go to my privy chamber,” the queen said, “but only to dress. And as soon as possible, Captain, I will go to the throne room. Clear and secure that first. And if you can spare the men, have them bring to me my ladies of the bedchamber and Lord Robert Hopewell.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Roger, come with me.”
She swept from the presence chamber, leaving behind her the grim-faced guard and the peasants still on their knees. One of them, his back to me, whispered something to his friend. In her privy chamber the queen told me only, “It is not safe for you out there,” before vanishing into her bedchamber and closing the door.
I didn’t know what to do. I went cold, then hot, then cold again. There was no wine. I sat at the carved table, and then on the floor. I poked the fire, which did not need poking. I could not settle, could not think.
No. That is not true. I could think, but only of one word, the word the peasant had whispered to his friend—had dared to whisper there, in the queen’s own presence chamber.
Poison.
The queen is dead, long live the queen!
“I will do whatever I must to protect my queendom.” She had said that to me.
The queen is dead, long live—
Finally the door was flung open and Lord Robert entered, at the same time that the queen emerged from her bedchamber. I fell to my knees. She had changed without aid from her ladies, who were . . . what? Delayed? In hiding? Slaughtered by the Blues? Cecilia—
“Caro,” Lord Robert choked out.
She did not answer. She looked magnificent, dressed in a gown I had not seen before. It was so embroidered with green jewels that the green velvet underneath could scarcely be seen. Her full skirts swept the floor and lengthened to a train behind. Long lace-and-satin sleeves fell almost to her fingertips, hiding the bud of the extra finger. She wore an emerald necklace and earrings and her rich black hair hung loose down her back, her bare head ostentatiously awaiting a crown.
Lord Robert ignored all that. He grabbed her hands, causing the sleeves to fall back over her white arms.
“Caro . . . sweet palace of the heavens, Caro . . . what have you done?”
Poison, the peasant had said.
“Please escort me to the throne room, Lord Robert,” she said, and at her tone he jerked and then—finally, belatedly—knelt.
“The queen is dead,” he said in a voice as rigid as Queen Eleanor’s, “long live the queen.”
“Roger, you will stay here,” she said. “I will need you later. Bar the door and open it to none but myself or Lord Robert. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Open the door, Lord Robert.”
He did, and he trailed her out, and now I could hear the great bells in the tower begin to toll, as slow and stately as the court dances required by the old queen, sending the news to The Queendom of death, and change, and triumph.
I didn’t know how much time I had.
If the Green soldiers could not secure the palace, would the queen return to her privy chamber or wait in her presence chamber? Might she bring her ladies in here for safety, if guards brought them to her? Most important of all, how long had the old queen been dead?
If I was going to do this at all, it must be now. Before I could change my mind, I seized a carving knife from the table and jabbed at my arm. Pain sprang along my nerves, making me drop the knife. I willed myself to cross over.
This time I was close by the river, almost in the water. A large group o
f soldiers sat together on the grass, all dressed in the same leather armor and crude sandals, as if they had died together. Like the rest of the Dead, they bore no injuries or maiming. The whole group ignored me. From their old-fashioned garb I guessed that they had been there a long time. For all I knew, they might be there forever.
The western mountains had disappeared altogether, as if the valley now stretched larger than in my previous visit, and the river seemed even wider and slower. I was still on the island, however. Running along its banks, in and out of groves of trees, I searched for the old queen. Circles of the Dead, more Dead lying on the grass or gazing at rocks—where was she?
I found her wading ashore from the river, sputtering and angry. Water dripped from her blue silk gown and from her crown, the simple silver circlet she favored on her white hair. Even wet, Queen Eleanor had a terrifying dignity. Even furious. Even dead.
I dropped to one knee. “Your Grace!”
“Who are you? Where am I?” And then, a moment later, “I am dead.”
No use lying, not to this woman. “Yes, Your Grace.”
“And you are . . . you are my daughter’s fool! With the stupid yellow dye on your face!”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“What happened, boy? Are you dead, too?”
I thought quickly. “Yes, Your Grace.”
“And this is the country of the Dead.” She turned thoughtful, then, and I saw it begin: the contemplative remoteness of the Dead. In a few moments I might not be able to reach her at all.
Desperately I said, “Were you poisoned, Your Grace?”
That caught her attention. “What?”
“Were you poisoned by your daughter, Queen Caroline? Did any messenger visit you last night or this morning, was there any strange person in your chambers, did anything happen that might have been poisoning? ” I did not know what I was looking for.
“Caroline,” she said vaguely, as if trying to remember the name. It was happening, right before my eyes. She was detaching from the living. She was no longer subject to those loves, those hatreds, those ties.
“Your daughter, the new queen! Who may have poisoned you and now has your queendom! Your Grace!”
