by Susann Cokal
We do n’t look to the men, though they sit here for listening too.
The girl scream again, and this time her nurses know. We have hear every kind of scream from Lunedie babies, and this the terror kind, from a girl grown too old for screams but told just press the hands together like saints in church, and moan if you must but not too loud.
We the nurses, we start to pull our skirts up ready to run inside that room, but the ladies do n’t say to go. Countess Elinor, that once was my lady, make a back ward sigh in her skinny nose, and she do n’t need to look around to make us keep our places. She push her bosom up.
“Duke Magnus is the King of Sweden’s brother.”
We wait.
But Magnus him self throw open the door, so hard it hit old Duchess Margrethe in the shoulder where she sitting. “Help!” he shout, as a woman in a fire. “Help in here!”
Then Countess Elinor will not stop us any more, we all go in. The Countesses and Duchess Margrethe and Lady Drin and Baroness Reventlow and Bridget Belskat, then all we nurses from pale Annas and Marias to including me. We know this Duke’s story, we know he fall in love with some thing in the water and jumped him self fifty feets to meet her. We fear for our Sophia, what a mad man might do to her.
Fears ever justify.
Our girl is lying half off the bed, stiff like a board, with eyes staring at the bed drape. One side curtain come pulled down and puddling on the floor. All the candles blowing wild, like there been a wind, and some gone out.
We gape a minute. This be some thing never seen before.
Then she not stiff any more, she curling on her self like a snail, and her mouth foam like a snail too, once it poison with salt. This when she scream again and again, till she straighten out once more with that glass-eye look above her.
“She was asleep,” say this Duke Magnus of Östergötland. His beard is neat and greasy, so I do n’t know to trust him. He must fixed it before calling us. Madness may be on him again.
We pull back the sheets, and there am some blood but not much. A little girl can ’t sleep just after That, I know this to be true here as any where else.
“Too much wine,” say that Magnus. He rubbing his arm in his night shirt, he have an itch like may be she scratch him. “She kept drinking till she went to sleep, and then this. I had some too,” he adds, as if he worry for it now.
The Countess Elinor send some boy to fetch the Queen and King. She step her self to the bed and try to put a hand to Sophia’s forehead, but the girl curl up again. Countess Elinor snatch her hand away like it be burned.
“Something’s wrong,” she say, and it is so obvious I want to laugh. Not for meanness but from what a lady call her nerves. But I press my hands like saints, and I put on that face of sorrow that every one wear for the Morbus, and I watch the ladies watching Sophia and waiting for the Queen.
Ladies think a Queen know best all ways, better than her three doctors and all they powders. Even this incomplete Queen. May be they are correct, not for me to say.
The Princess curl and straighten, curl and straighten, making messy in the bedclothes and pulling down the other curtains. She do n’t fall from bed, though, stay just on the edge and some time pokering off it as if she going to float up to heaven with all the fire in her body. Her whole face flaming red now and her night dress wet in sweat, with the skirt rode up to show some shadow on her leg that might be blood, might be vanished all ready.
She scream again. And there come a thumping at the door.
Ladies wave apart, and three doctors walk in, black robes and flat hats and assisters with bowls and things in jars. They all gape too, while the Princess throw back and forth and scatter foam from her mouth.
“Do you see those sores?” ask Doctor Candenzius, the chief of them. He come close and poke the Princess neck with a stick. “A plague necklace” he call the wounds, though I never seen a necklace from the Lunedie Morbus.
The second doctor, Venslov, the old one, say, “That is not the typical presentation.” The third doctor agree, it is not what they expect. They gape some more.
No body say poison out loud. But ladies look at the floor and maids look at each other, all communicate in that perfect-quiet way of this place.
“Do something,” Countess Elinor say to those doctors.
“We must wait for Queen Isabel,” say a young lady.
The Countess cross arms below her bosoms, push them high as they will go, and look down her nose with one eye. This what she do when she most vexed with some body. She say sharp to the doctors, “Don’t wait.”
More screaming from that bed. I want to slide up and pat the Princess on her brow, but she all ready too far gone. Her necklace (so they call it) bursts, and the blood go shining out like the fountain of wine at her wedding feast. The ladies scream and Countess Elinor breathe in again. Even the doctors pale now, and they can ’t but watch.
After Sophia spray her bed with blood, she fall back to her pillow with eyes wide. Not screaming any more.
There come howling, though, from rooms around, those where the other princesses and their brother sleep with some maids and grooms and nurses. The children heard they sister and know they have the same Morbus she do. They howl so loud, it seem seven going to die instead of just one.
“See to them,” the Countess say, still more sharp, with bosoms at her chin, and some ladies leave for that.
I do n’t. I hold a shiny bowl, though I do n’t know how I come to got it. The youngest doctor unpack little knifes and glass bubbles from a wooden box. His hands tremble and one glass thing break. A drop of mercury fall to the floor and divide in to a thousand little mirror-balls, they roll about and bounce off shoes and reflect what sit inside each lady’s skirt. No matter, he want theriac instead. It be what they think best against a poison, though it be made with poison it self. Vipers.
I do n’t see Duke Magnus any more, but he is not so tall and there be many around the bed now. And I am one of them. The young doctor push me to it so I hold my bowl under Sophia’s elbow, where the blood flows now from a new cut.
“It ’s black,” say Candenzius, but then old Venslov bring his candle close and the blood look like ordinary blood.
“Ah,” say Candenzius. He make another cut below the first, then tug my basin to make sure it catch Sophia’s stream. I all most laugh again, though the moment be most awful. The bed so soaked in blood now I taste it in my throat, like a child that linger round a market on butcher day and lick the blocks. But he want to be sure none of it from his cutting go to waste.
“Something’s wrong with that Negresse,” say one lady, but every body ignore me be cause no body want to look away from Sophia. I bite my lip hard so no laughing come out. And true, no thing funny for Princess Sophia, but what nurse can watch doctors with out a laugh?
Now come the sound of leaves that fall in autumn. This be silk and gold, rubbing it self as the ladies and men go to they knees.
The Queen and the King walk in. Their gray hair down they half-dressed backs, their feet in velvet shoes.
King Christian stand like a bullock stunned, that girl were his treasure.
Queen Isabel rush to the bed. She lose one shoe. “My baby!” she shout, and then she hold her breath. There be no more sound than the drip-drip-driiiip of Sophia in the basin, slowing down be cause the Princess all most gone.
The thick-necked guard leads the way. We pass through a series of rooms like my cell, rectangles empty but for drifts of whitewash that have flaked to their floors. White dust clings to my shoes, my skirts, my nostrils; I cough. Filtered through that dust, the air smells sour, and I think these must be the palace grain bins, depleted for the celebration that perhaps only now is quieting in the great hall and courtyards. I imagine lords and ladies tottering drunkenly off to bed, Swedish knights sleeping where they fall, hordes of the poor outside the gates gone ecstatic over the scraps and sauce-sloppy bread saved as what the nobles call their charity.
The guard pulls open
a heavy door and lifts a tapestry flap behind it. I think, Here is my fate. I step inside, feeling each little jostle of movement in my bones.
Fate wears a handsome face, being a dark man with light eyes and white teeth, a neat beard, black curls, black velvet clothes, an elaborate sword hilt, and an enormous red ruby on his first finger. I know him. I have gazed after him before, across courtyards and corridors; all the palace girls have. He is the finest fellow at court, murky and brooding and as unapproachable as a prince. Handsome, that is, in his own way; on another man, his face might be too narrow, his nose too long, his eyes too hooded. But on him, perfection.
He is Nicolas Bullen af Bon. Steward of the Queen’s household for the last year or so, appointed as a favor (I believe) to someone in the ranks of the King’s household (it being tradition that each half of the royal couple keeps a separate staff); lord of lands on one of the western green islands and owner of a castle called Aftenslund; a great man known for his ambition to be greater.
He sits now at a table heaped with papers in the dim light of an oil candle. His teeth look as long and sharp as a wolf’s, and they gleam like the pearl in his ear.
I have never trusted anyone with bright white teeth.
“So,” he says, “here is a surprising turn of events. Who likes a surprise?”
I cannot speak. I keep my eyes down and make a curtsy. It is all I can think to do.
“I,” says Lord Nicolas, crumpling a page with one elbow, “never have favored surprises myself. I prefer a good plan.”
He dismisses the pouch-necked guard and the door latch thonks as it falls in place. I imagine the guard waiting just beyond, ready to drag me off to some worse dungeon where I might be tortured. Lord Nicolas has only to raise his voice to make it so. He gestures toward me, Come here, and adds, “Look at me.”
There is some relief in receiving an order, as now I know what to do. I use the servants’ trick of focusing on his chin, so it seems I’m attentive but still properly deferential. I notice a single gleam of silver among the dark hairs there.
“I must admit that surprises create opportunities,” Lord Nicolas comments, as if continuing a conversation. His mouth has already settled back into the more smoothly pleasant expression it wears around the court. “But they also disturb the best-laid arrangements.”
He lights another candle from the first; its spreading glow makes the room both smaller and larger, a storehouse of riches. What is not gilded is made of finest amber or glass, and the walls are hung with bright pictures and tapestries. He has an entire bowl of sugar cherries and lemons to himself. My own sugar cherry is growing sticky, melting between my breasts.
In the light, I feel him gazing at me a long time, know he’s seeing the same things in my face that the nobles see in all of my station when they bother to look: pale, tall, with big strong bones for working and a wide brow for . . . not thinking, exactly, but remembering. Remembering their commands and our conquest, for while their blood bears the dark stamp of France, ours is said to belong to witches expelled from Norway in a long-ago time of pagans. We have a natural inclination to labor and a feel for the sea, since we lived long in those boats and (some say) mated with the mermaids who guided us to these islands of warm-water springs and floating yellow stone.
I may be a scrawny example now, but I carry the history as well as anyone else can manage.
All of this Lord Nicolas sees in me, and the pricked fingers and strained eyes that are a seamstress’s badges of office. I think he guesses everything about me, down to the smell of the lanolin I rub into my hands and the flavor of parts I keep hidden.
Lord Nicolas is handsome and powerful and knowing and rich. He could make a woman feel pleasured and safe. And that woman would be a fool.
“Ava Mariasdatter Bingen,” he says, and so he knows my name. “You have served in the Queen’s household for how long?”
“Almost a year, my lord. Health to your soul.” I keep my eyes on that single gray hair on his chin. “I sew her personal linens,” I add unnecessarily, for of course he already knows what matters. I can’t stop myself from chattering: “I’ve never worked on a dress before. I don’t know why the Countess chose me to repair the Queen’s bodice.” (The Countess, far paler even than the sturdy descendants of Norway.) “And such a thing as tonight has never happened with me. I haven’t even stuck a lady with a pin when attaching her ruff; I cannot explain it” — can’t blame Isabel for moving, can’t give any excuse but my own awkwardness —“but I assure you the injury was unintended . . .”
I don’t mention the missing spectacles, which would make me look careless.
He lifts a hand to stop me. “Women have been dismissed from royal service for less.”
I let my eyes flick upward again. Are we talking only of dismissal? But then, losing my position might be worse than being put to death; my family would be shamed once again, and I would lose my hope of independence. Who would hire a seamstress who’s stabbed the Queen? Only the same nonexistent person who would marry a virgin who miscarried on the church plads.
I hear a ticking somewhere in the room; Nicolas Bullen must have a clock.
“My lord.” I squeeze the words around the lump in my throat. “I promise you — I meant no betrayal. That is, I have always worked to the Queen’s trust. I have never —” I almost wish he would torture me; I think my body might take the assault better than my emotions.
Nicolas Bullen’s hand silences me again. Long fingers for a man his size, I notice; they’d look even longer if he wore a smaller ring. I imagine that hand closing around my throat, squeezing the words back into my belly. I realize I am stretching my neck as if inviting him to do this. As if I deserve punishment.
Lord Nicolas smiles. His sharp teeth shine. He, too, sees an invitation in my gesture; he thinks I’m trying to tempt him. In this age of ruffs and high collars, bare necks are tempting spots. Anyway, I would never refuse — it would be unwise . . . He has such power.
And so it is not surprising that I find myself on the floor of that little room, with Lord Nicolas’s courtly cloak spread around him to a pool of black velvet just beyond my russet skirts. Me on my knees, he on his haunches, and his fingers wormed in beneath my cap to my hair. The tines of his ring yank out a strand. We are kissing, after a fashion. His tongue licks at my tongue, and mine tries to respond without choking. Does he think this is pleasurable? Does he think I’ll melt at these brutal kisses? It feels as if he’s exploring me, trying to find the secret nooks inside my head. His perfume is so strong my nose burns. His fingertips plug my ears, so I hear nothing but the rush of my own heart, and I clench my ribs to make that tattling organ slow.
Meanwhile his breath — both sulfurous and sweet, he’s been chewing something like coriander — passes down into my lungs and out again through my nose, my mouth, into his nose and mouth. We are breathing together. I close my eyes, and for a moment I tell myself that it is the embrace of which young girls dream. With a nobleman. Perhaps this is all he wants from me; perhaps I can give myself to save myself. Perhaps it is only the memory of Jacob that prevents me from succumbing willingly . . .
Because I am myself and have learned fear from experience, the thought of salvation quickly turns to anxiety. Surely he expects more than a kiss. He is exacting a penance, after all; I am here because I pricked the Queen and made her bleed. No punishment stops with a kiss.
Yes, I am right. He takes my hand. I think I know what he wants, and I touch his chest, the slick prickles of gold embroidery. He shifts, and the chest is out of reach.
He stops the clumsy kissing to wrestle my hand inside his codpiece.
For a moment I recoil at the heat, the coarse hair. But Lord Nicolas shifts, deftly trapping my hand before it can leave his breeches. He clears his throat and licks his wicked white teeth and stares at me with expectation.
What I must do now is unmistakable. I will be lucky if this is all.
I hold my breath to trap all my courage inside. T
hen I work my way deeper into the codpiece.
I find that Lord Nicolas is considerably smaller than Jacob Lille, which seems strange; a lord should be grander in all things. He is also limp within all that stiff cloth — like a bird fallen from its nest into a patch of brambles, lost and in need of solace; or a dead herring on a bed of dried eel weed, waiting for salt.
I curl my fingers against it, then around.
Thus I commit a sin. A worse sin, the priests would say, than the ordinary conversation between man and woman, because the goal of this act is pleasure only, not procreation, and it wastes the seed. But in this age of Italian Fire, the nobility is known for substituting new actions for the eternal one. And I know the apron class prefers this, as it does not lead to a baby that will mean a life in the streets and, most likely, a speedy death.
I can’t help it, I am disgusted. Where once I thrilled to touch linens that would touch royal flesh, or reached out surreptitiously to brush a passing noble, now I want to scrub myself rather than continue what I’m doing. A gesture that echoes my night with Jacob — and that is why it upsets me. It is a betrayal of love. It is a duty of court. It is the act of a whore.
I try to imagine myself caught up in a fairy spell, with this another trial before a grand reward. I describe Lord Nicolas’s little bird to myself: yeasty, sticky, soft, like nothing else on this night of spun-sugar treats. I try to make it harmless.
As if responding to my unspoken words, the little bird flutters. It grows firmer.
And then I stop. I wrench my wrist from his clothes and pull vehemently away, though this might mean a blow across the face for me. I am much more afraid of what I’ve already felt.
I felt the softness of skin, yes. The sponginess of flesh not yet fully erect. And some lumps wiggling beneath that skin, like eggs, or insects burrowed deep.
