Raven Queen

by Pauline Francis

  He lifts a strawberry and she takes it from him with her mouth, spattering red juice onto her neck, and little Mary claps. Mistress Ellen hands her a spoon.

  As I walk on to Doctor Aylmer, jealous feelings, which I do not like and am not used to, rage inside me.

  “You have not told her yet?” he whispers.

  I shake my head.

  “Do it soon, Ned. And stop drinking! Your face is already flushed.”

  Dusk comes at last, dampening our skin with its dew. Flaming torches edge the grass. Catherine wheels spin on the trees and I watch their glitter until I grow dizzy and have to look away. People sprawl everywhere, singing, drinking and laughing.

  Jane has drunk wine, too. I watch her lean towards John Ulmis. “I pass my days in this earthly prison as if I were dead,” she shouts, “while you and Doctor Bullinger and all the other reformers live!”

  Has she forgotten me already?

  Her father catches hold of her arm across the table, digging his fingers into her flesh. “You have grown wilder these last weeks,” he roars. He lets her go and laughs. “It is time she was married, is it not, Master Ulmis? A husband will tame her. Jane is destined for the King! What do you think of that?”

  Yes, I shall tell her tonight, while wine loosens both our tongues.

  A cartwheel stuffed with straw sits at the top of a slope above the park. A symbol of the sun, Thomas tells me. Lady Jane will light the straw and we will push the wheel. If the flames are still burning when it reaches the bottom of the slope, it will be a fine harvest. If they have burned out, it will be a poor one.

  Jack is watching with Alice and Daniel and Will. Opposite us stand Jane and her sisters. She smiles at me as Thomas hands her the flaming torch. The hay flares and we all let go. The wheel gathers speed, showering sparks into the darkening sky. Suddenly, Jack lets out a deafening cry, “Burn! Burn! Catholic, burn!” Thomas warns them to stop, but the others take up the cry, even Alice. “Burn! Burn! Catholic, burn!” They are all baying for blood as they run behind the wheel, prodding the hay with sticks, laughing and screaming their insults.

  Jane orders them to stop and I look at her, grateful; but for a moment, as the flames reflect in her eyes, I see a look of delight pass across her face.

  Alice screams. The flames have caught her skirt. Jack throws ale over her and she jumps to her feet laughing. I see her later, dancing, her face still blackened by the smoke and I wonder how she can laugh so easily after being licked by the flames of death.

  I long for quiet. I make my way to the walled garden. Moths whirr around me as I walk, whitening the air. Jane is sitting by the fountain, silhouetted against the sky, birds roosting in the trees around her.

  When she calls to me, my anger spills out, strengthening my voice. “Does Master Ulmis tell you that he reports everything back to Bullinger? Oh yes! They flatter you because they hope that you’ll marry the King.” I do not know what I am saying. I do not even know if it is the truth, but I have to say it. I have to punish her. “Then they’ll have influence over him through you. What better way to benefit their Protestant cause?”

  The birds fly in fright from the tree and their shadows flit across her face. “No!” she cries. “That is not true! He writes to me because he wishes to instruct me. He thinks that my mind is worth improving.”

  To my shame, I throw back my head and laugh. “You are his way to the King of England. Why else would he waste his time with you? Ask him! I dare you!”

  She is crying as she runs from me. And the sun cools for me long before the end of that day.

  I did not mean to forget about Ned. I do not take to people easily. I usually keep myself aloof because I have worked out that life is simpler that way. I could not forgive him for what he had said. His words had hurt me far more than the whip because they had sown the seeds of doubt in my mind.

  Should I ask Doctor Bullinger if it was true? Of all men, he must respect my female body.

  For the first time in my life, I did not know what to do.

  “He was jealous, that is all,” Ellie said. “For all your learning, you are such an innocent child.”

  I stayed away from the forest. My head ached and I sat by the window of the summer parlour. The oak trees in front of the house were bursting with life. I watched the raven leaning into the wind, his feathers ruffling, soaring over the treetops. Then he swooped to feed, hiding behind the leaves to peck out insects until he was fat and full.

  There is light and shadow in life as there is in the forest, I thought.

  I finished reading Utopia. I learned of rich landowners who had put hedges and fences around the common land so that the poor people could no longer graze their cattle there or grow crops. Men were forced to live by begging or stealing and when they were hanged for it, their wives and children starved under the very hedgerows that had forced them into poverty.

  “Your head is aching because you wear too many pearls in your hair,” Doctor Aylmer said.

  “I only have a few,” I replied.

  “You do not need any at all. God has given you beautiful hair.” He picked up his Bible and opened it at a well-worn page. “The Gospel according to St. Peter,” he said. “Book Three. Verse Twenty-two. ‘Your beauty should not come from outward adornment such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewellery and fine clothes,’” he read. “‘Instead it should be that of your inner self, the duty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.’” His voice brightened. “Why do you not ask Doctor Bullinger’s advice?”

  I understood his rebuke. I had not written to him since Midsummer Day. The seeds had taken root. And, at the same time, I became awkward in John Ulmis’s company and I was glad when he left for Oxford at the beginning of August.

  I went no further than the walled garden. One morning, I returned through the laundry yard. Alice had put out the ruffs to dry. They perched stiff and headless on their wooden poles. She came to the doorway, her face disappointed when she saw me. As she curtsied, a linen petticoat fluttered on the washing rope and Alice stifled a giggle. I lifted it. Jack stood there. Everything about him was dirty: his hair, his skin, his teeth, his clothes. He was as dirty as Ned had been at the gallows, but Jack did not speak Latin in a gentleman’s voice. I was ashamed of my thoughts, and shame made my voice shrill like a child’s.

  “Why are you not working, Jack?” I asked. “I shall tell my father.”

  He bowed. “I am working, my lady. I have come to collect the dead mice from the kitchen traps.”

  “That is a pity.”

  He smiled at Alice and walked away. Her eyes never left him.

  I hate Jack. He sets the bird snares. He shoots the forest creatures. He has blood on his hands.

  “Take down that petticoat and wash it again,” I said. I heard my mother’s voice in mine as I spoke.

  Do not let him snare you, Alice.

  I pray that she will come to me, since I cannot go to her.

  Sometimes I sit by the stream for so long that Thomas scolds me and threatens to find another woodman. Sometimes, on my day of rest, I wait from dawn until dusk on Beacon Hill.

  August brings days and nights so sultry that I cannot sleep above the bakehouse. So I sleep on the hill, watching the moon. People say that it is dangerous to sleep in the moonlight. It will make you blind. But it is not that thought that keeps my eyes open. It is the beauty of the moon. Its craters and crevices like the face of an old friend.

  One morning, as I scramble down the hill, I shiver and look up. Jane is coming towards me, the pearls in her headdress gleaming. She tramples the dying foxgloves in her haste. She does not even glance at the rising sun. I run towards her, catching her around the waist so fast that she stumbles and we start to roll down the hill. She stiffens and clings to me.

  “Let yourself go limp,” I whisper.

  We roll on as if for ever, laughing, until we stop with a jolt that takes away our breath. Her hair has escaped and it hides her face.
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  “I am sorry,” she begins. “I should not have...”

  I am holding her before she finishes, stroking her hair and asking her to forgive me.

  The best days of my life began. The sun blazed every day and a dry dust coated the countryside. The corn grew taller than me and when the breeze bowed its ripening heads, they showed rosy poppies.

  We met under the rock by the stream, talking in its cool green, dangling our feet in the water.

  Ned kissed my hand. “Come away with me, Jane. I can take you to the life you want. To Zurich. To Heinrich Bullinger. Wherever you wish.”

  “Oh, Ned, I cannot imagine such a life! How would we live?”

  He ignored my question. “We would be together, that is all that matters. We could live a life of Christian perfection. Let me take you.” His voice became urgent. “Come with me, Jane. Please.”

  I sighed. “Whatever I do, my father will have me hunted down. It would never be possible.”

  As I walked home, I sometimes imagined that Ned was really a prince sent to live in the forest by his family to test me, like beauty and the beast...and my father would give his blessing, and...

  Then I stopped and laughed at myself. Ned was no beast – and I was certainly no beauty.

  One Sunday, the chapel was heady with the scent of lilies and boughs of lavender. It intoxicated me more than the communion wine. My blood flowed warm. I felt truly alive.

  Harvest dust filled the air, greying the sun, and already the ravens were squabbling over the stubble in the fields. I wanted the cool green of the forest.

  The path I followed was deep with bracken and ferns and cow parsley. Dragonflies buzzed low, hovering for insects.

  The sound of laughter stopped me. Then the rustle of petticoats. I stopped and listened, listened to the sound that skin makes when it comes together. I wanted to know. I peeped through the cow parsley. I could see very little, only that Alice and Jack were lying together as one person, grunting and gasping, their skins gleaming.

  So this is what men and women do.

  I crept away. And when I reached the path again, I ran, remembering Ned’s skin against mine when we had rolled down Beacon Hill, growing warm at the thought.

  Ned taught me to swim. He turned his back as I shed my clothes down to my silk shift, and went into the water. He held my hands as I kicked, and promised not to let me go. Then, when I was tired, he took me to the bank and I stood on the stones, shaking off the water. Did he peep as I put on my dress?

  Alice swims in the stream with Jack. That is what my sister had sneered. I should not have done it. Ned sensed that I was unhappy.

  “It is not wrong to have fun, Jane. I used to swim with my friends in the river. It was part of summer.”

  “But you were not a princess!” I said.

  He was not angry.

  “And there is gossip about Jack and Alice. What if somebody sees us as they saw them?”

  “Nobody saw them,” he said. “Jack boasted about it whenever he could. I shall not.”

  We sat and watched the squirrels darting up the tree trunks, searching for acorns, and glimpsed wood mice scuttling through the leaves. The birds were silent because Thomas was already at work. Ned picked up his axe. “The oak trees once complained to the gods that as soon as they grew tall, the axe chopped off their heads. The gods laughed and said that they had no right to complain since they had produced the wood for the handle.”

  I met Mary long before I reached the edge of the forest. Her eyes gleamed with satisfaction as she tried to run from me. I ran after her, caught her and shook her hard.

  “You deformed demon!” I cried. “If you say one word...to anybody...if ever I am Queen, I shall...” I put my hands around her neck. “I shall chop off your head.”

  A taste of winter came suddenly for the harvest thanksgiving, whitening the newly ploughed soil. The smell of wet earth clinging to the roots of cabbages and carrots, mingled with the sharp scent of apples, pears and plums. A huge loaf of milk-glazed bread decorated the altar. If it turned into Christ’s body – as the Catholic Church believed – he would be a giant.

  A flash of gold brought the wine chalice closer. What if the wine I am about to drink really is Christ’s blood? I cannot drink blood. That is the act of a cannibal.

  My mother dug her elbows into my ribs and I let the wine smear my lips.

  The scorching sun cools to the shifting colours of autumn and they glint red-gold like Jane’s hair.

  When the wind blows cold and the hunt begins, Jane takes me further into the forest where it is dark and wild. It is the deepest part of Charnwood where even the hunt does not go because the undergrowth is too dense. I look up at the trees with an experienced eye: elms, larches, spruces, all so crowded that no light reaches the ground. Dank smells rise from the forest floor.

  It is desolate.

  We come to a roofless ruin, its walls held together by ivy and bindweed. “This is Ulverscroft Priory,” Jane tells me. “The last prioress to live here was called Agnes. She ran away to marry the man she loved and came here when he died. As you can see, it was destroyed. The new faith does not need such places,” she finished.

  I swallow my anger. I knew that it had happened everywhere in England – it had happened in Lincoln: Henry the Eighth closed down all the monasteries and priories as he turned away from the Roman Catholic faith. Monks and nuns became beggars at the roadside.

  Inside the ruins, there are remains of tiles on the floor and in a wooden chest a hooded grey cloak and silver candlesticks still holding their candles. I tie branches to make a roof and nail back the hanging door and block up the window gaps with stones.

  We light the candles. Jane leans against me and we make shadow shapes on the wall with our hands: a bird, a butterfly, a scurrying cloud. Then she picks up the candle and watches the flames flicker.

  I lean towards her, whispering, “Plato says that the shadows in the cave are…” But Jane is not listening. A look of delight passes across her face, like the midsummer night when she lit the wheel on the hill, when Jack shouted…

  I snatch the candle from her.

  “They burnt some poor fool once, in Leicester,” she is murmuring. “He smacked too much of the old faith. They said his friend was allowed to hang gunpowder around his neck, to hasten his death. But it was damp. Then his family piled on more faggots, but they were also damp. It had been a wet spring. So he burnt slowly.”

  My voice shakes. “It is barbaric. You have never talked of such things before. You cannot bear to see even a butterfly die. Where do these thoughts come from?”

  “A butterfly is different, Ned. It can do no wrong.”

  “And me? Did I deserve to hang that day? You did not stop to ask!”

  “They were not burning you. I knew it had nothing to do with your faith.”

  I put my fingers across her lips. “Do not talk of such things.”

  She falls silent and relaxes against me. And when the candles gut, it is time to leave. We walk together to the foot of Beacon Hill. Then we go our separate ways.

  The mists thicken every day, damp and smoke scented. And this darkness takes us deeper into ourselves.

  This is our world.

  Jane likes to run her fingers along my good hand, until one day she strokes the scarred one. “Why did you leave your home?”

  I toss back my hair. “I have no answers! I am in a muddle and I do not know what I want. It suits me very well to be here. That is all I can tell you.”

  “What happened to your hand?”

  I do not answer and she does not ask me again. “My head is always in a muddle, too,” she says. “That is the nature of youth, Ellie says. She says she would not wish to be young again for all the honey in the beehive.” She sighs. “I wish I were like Catherine. She is only two years younger than me and already she knows her place in the world.”

  She tells me that she will go to London for Christmastide. Jealousy stabs my heart.

  �
�Will the King be there?” I ask.

  “Yes,” Jane replies. “Usually he moves to Greenwich Palace for the festivities, but he is too unwell to travel.” She glances at me. “And too unwell to marry me.”

  We walk back arm in arm to the edge of the forest, slowly, lingeringly, not wanting our time together to end.

  Imagine every castle you have ever heard about in fairy tales. Turrets and towers and battlements that reach for the sky, gilded and gaudy with painted animals. Walls with chequered squares of chalk and stones like a great chessboard.

  This was Whitehall Palace.

  King Edward’s winter home and his seat of government. Conceived by his father, King Henry. Here he and Anne Boleyn had dreamed of a son. Here Anne Boleyn had been arrested and taken to the Tower.

  I had never seen it at Christmastide. It rose by the River Thames, frosted by a light snow, sparkling in the flaming torchlight.

  The ceiling of my bedchamber was sky blue and golden. It soothed me like the forest. Beautiful objects lay everywhere: medals and maps; boxes, some of painted leather, some of carved ivory layered with cool pearls; tortoiseshell combs and diamond-studded brushes.

  The city of London rose in the distance, silhouetted against the winter’s lemon light. I glimpsed the outline of church spires and the high steeple of St. Paul’s Cathedral. That night, I lay listening to the sounds of the river for a long time: oars creaking, ferrymen calling. And the splashing of the water made me think of Ned by the stream.

  There must have been at least three hundred of us in the Great Hall that Christmastide Eve. Suddenly, silence fell and everybody turned towards the gallery. A thin boy stood there, wearing a doublet of blue velvet.

  King Edward.

  My eyes were drawn to his hands gripping the edge of the balcony – long and white and tapering like candles. Men on either side held him upright.

  I was so shocked by his frail body and his gaunt face that I forgot to curtsy. I stood gaping.

  “Curtsy to your King.” It was Dudley, nudging me sharply from behind.