Raven Queen (4 page)

I sighed. Knowledge is power, I thought. Doctor Aylmer has taught me that. But in spite of all my learning, the world in which I live is a dark and dangerous one.

“Will I ever go to such a place?” I asked.

He did not reply and the golden letters dimmed in front of me.

Suddenly, I was afraid again.

The stream trickles between the twisted roots of old oaks, narrowing between granite rocks until it widens into a pool.

It is my favourite place.

I went there on the first warm morning of spring, about a week after my beating. I needed its calm. I thought the sky had fallen to the ground where bluebells showed under the trees. They sprang from the blood of Norman soldiers slain in battle, Doctor Aylmer said. Raindrops from last night’s storm still clung to them, splashing my velvet shoes, dampening my dress. A long way off, sounds that I hated carried through the trees: hunting hounds baying and hawks squawking as they scanned the sky.

The stream was fast and furious after the rain and I heard the echo of its fall before I reached it. The wind scattered drops of water onto my face and I licked my lips, tasting the wild watercress.

A mist hung over the pool, shafted by sunlight, which reached the rocks and took my eye to the water’s edge.

Somebody was bathing there. I stared.

It was Ned.

I had never seen a naked person before, neither man nor woman. I closed my eyes but it was too late. I had already seen Ned’s curling body hair and that part of him that made him a man dangling like a winter catkin.

As he climbed from the pool, I caught sight of his back and buttocks. His skin was criss-crossed with raised scars.

Scarred back, scarred hand. What had happened to him?

I waited until Ned had dressed himself before I came out from the trees. He was sitting on the rocks, reading. Now his face looked like an angel’s in the pale light, his silver hair curling around a skin that had hardly been roughened by a razor.

I dropped a pebble into the pool and when he glanced up, I straightened my headdress and smoothed my skirts, conscious of his eyes on me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

He stood up and bowed. “Jack does not like to see me read.”

I looked away then. I did not know what else to say to him. I do not know any boys of my age and my closest male relation in age is the King of England. I heard my mother’s voice in my head:
You must only converse with men of royal rank, Jane. To all other men, you give orders.
But it was too late – I had to know what he was reading. So I asked him as he slipped the book into his pocket.

“The body is only the place where our soul is held,”
he said in Latin.
“The body is a cage and the soul is like a bird inside it, trying to escape and fly home. When the body dies, the soul is released from its prison and goes on living.”

“Plato,” I whispered. Tears filled my eyes at the beauty of the words. A desire to tease took hold of me – it would hide my emotion. “Why was he nicknamed Plato?” I asked.

“Because his forehead was big and round like a plate!”

“Who was his best friend?”

“Socrates, with the big bulging eyes!” He laughed as he spoke. “He was the wisest man in Greece just because he knew that he did not know everything. He loved trees. He walked every day in the oak forests around Athens.”

“
My
eyes bulge,” I said, although I did not know why.

“No, they are beautiful,” he replied.

I turned my head away, biting my lip, confused. I knew that I was plain. My mother’s eyes told me every day. She tried hard for her sake, not for mine: the latest ruff from London to hide my scrawny neck, heavy dresses to thicken my body, thick-soled shoes to give me height.
She
had never told me how beautiful my eyes were.

“You look afraid,” he said. “I saw it in your eyes that first day.”

“Do not say such stupid things.” I wish I had not spoken so sharply.

He stood behind me and we looked down at our reflections in the water. “Look! Your forehead is furrowed and your eyes are frightened. Why?”

“My father and mother are always angry with me,” I replied. “They bellow and bluster like the north wind over every little thing.”

“
My
father never raised his voice in anger,” he said. “And if I was angry, he always put a hand on my shoulder to quieten me. ‘Begin again, Edward,’ he used to say. ‘Words spoken in anger have no power.’”

“Then you have a wise father,” I said, softening my voice. I looked at him, puzzled as I had been that first day.

Who are you? I thought.

Later, I stared at my reflection in my looking glass.

Your eyes are beautiful.

I blushed as I remembered.
Were
they? I leaned forward to look more closely. Did I look any different? Inside, I felt as if my heart was unfreezing, spreading a warmth through my body.

There are five of us crammed in the cart and Thomas driving the horse: myself, Jack, two gamekeepers – Daniel and Will – and a girl of about my age who giggles and holds a bunch of buttercups under my chin. “Do you like butter?” she asks, and I laugh because it is the thing I missed most on the highway.

Her name is Alice and she is from the next village, she tells me. Bradgate Hall is the furthest she has ever travelled. She is a new laundry maid. “Her Ladyship wants all the washing out to dry before breakfast.” She holds out her hands to me. “Look at my skin, it’s split already. I never knew life would be this hard.” She looks straight at me. “I want to get married. Get away from all this drudgery.”

Her smile deepens, crinkling the corner of her eyes. They are bright blue and they hold me in their gaze. They are not as beautiful as Jane’s, but I enjoy pressing against her as the cart jolts, enjoy the scent of soap on her skin.

Jack pulls her roughly towards him.

It is strange to be out on the highway again. The last time I came this way, I was with Jane. I close my eyes as we pass the gallows.

The alehouse is called
The Maid in the Moon
and it stands just beyond the crossroads. It is the first I have entered, although I do not admit it. A girl sets jugs of ale in front of us and the talk begins: of the coming summer, of the King and how he is making life difficult for the woodmen.

“His Lordship wants to cut down some of the wood to make way for cornfields,” Thomas begins, “but if he does, he has to leave twelve trees standing in every acre.”

Daniel yawns and looks across the table at Jack. Jack thumps the table. “God’s teeth, Tom!” he shouts. “I did not come here to talk about trees!” He thumps the table again. “Nay, I did not. What I want to know is this – is our young King saving himself for the Lady Jane?”

“Hush, Jack!” Alice says. “You’ll get us all sacked.”

Jack glances at me. “Our innocent Lady Jane,” he says.

“What do you mean?” They all stop drinking and gape at each other in surprise at the sound of my voice.

Jack grins. “I mean, Master Ned without a family name, that by this time next year, our sweet little Lady Jane’ll be the Queen of England.” He circles his fingers around his neck, “and she’ll chop off all us heads if we don’t behave!”

A shiver runs through me and I want to be sick. In the back of my mind, I know that Jane’s father will arrange a good marriage for her. That is the custom. I have stopped myself thinking about it. But the King of England!

The thought takes my breath away.

Jack sneers as he grabs my sleeve. “Where have you sprung from, pretty boy? You speak soft like a gentleman. You read when everybody else is at sport. You’re more scarred than a fox’s face. Who are you? A spy?”

The others, all except Thomas and Alice, pick up their ale and thump the table. “Who are you?” they chant. “Who are you?” Their faces blur in front of me, swaying and sweating. Panic rises in my throat. Jack puts up his fists. “Let’s see if we can beat the answer out of you.”

They drag me outside. Thomas cannot stop them. I stagger in the dark, but the cold air sobers me, puts me back on my guard.

I do not enjoy fighting, although if I have to do it, I will. My uncle taught me, for my father was too gentle a man and I had never known the rough and tumble of brothers. I was shocked at the time. “But you are a priest!” I protested. “You should turn the other cheek.”

“I only fight to defend myself, Ned,” he replied.

I let him teach me and now I am glad. Because I am fair-skinned and fair-haired, boys who do not know me assume that I cannot fight.

Jack is brimming with anger.

I stand still as my uncle has taught me, watching Jack jump and dance around me, fists in the air, trying to make me go after him and when he finally comes close, I can tell by his heavy breathing that he is already tiring. My first punch catches him on the nose as I intend and he howls with surprise at the sight of blood on his shirt.

He lashes out at my ducking head, so hard that he falls over. It is all over in minutes: Jack squirming on the flagstones and Alice running to see what happened and Daniel telling him it’s his own fault and slapping me on the back.

There is little talk on the way back. Alice and Thomas sing, and the others lie asleep at our feet. Birds are still flitting through the trees looking for their last supper, calling to each other before they find a spot to sleep.

I watch a slice of moon behind the trees. If I had known that Jane was to marry the King, would I...? Vomit rises in my throat and I lean over the side of the cart and let it splatter into the wind.

Ned was in my thoughts as soon as I woke up and this alarmed me because I was used to thinking only of God at such times. He had not come to the pool that morning and disappointment made me bad-tempered.

When I came back, Catherine was sitting in my bedchamber window stitching her sampler. “I know something about Ned and Alice,” she whispered, watching my face carefully.

“Who is Alice?”

“The new laundry maid.”

She took out a ball of thread. I did not ask her what she knew and she was bursting with impatience to tell me. “Alice likes Ned!” she said at last. “But she swims in the stream with Jack.”

“Is that all? What a lot of fuss about nothing!” My cheeks burned. “You must not listen to gossip, Cate.”

“It’s not gossip. Alice told me herself. I’ve just seen her.”

“You should not have been talking about such things with her.”

She ignored the disapproving look on my face and asked me if I knew how oranges grew, and when I did not reply she said that the female was pollinated by the male, just like people, but people did not need bees to help them. She stopped to bite off a piece of thread. “Do you not want to be alone with a man, Jane?” she asked. “Do you not want a man to touch you?”

I shook my head. “Your thoughts are wicked!” I moved away from her and sat in the chair at the foot of my bed.

“My thoughts are natural,” she replied. “That’s what a man and a woman are meant to do.”

“Where have you learned such things?”

“My body has taught me. We’re not animals, Jane. We’re meant to please each other.” She giggled. “Do you think Ned has such urges? Alice says that all men do.”

Was she taunting me?

My heart tightened. I did not answer, but opened my book. I tried to read but a memory flashed in front of me. Five years ago, my parents had sent me to live with the King’s uncle, Thomas Seymour, in London. I was to learn obedience. The King’s sister, the Lady Elizabeth, also lived there. One morning, as I was walking past Elizabeth’s bedchamber, I had glimpsed Seymour in his nightshirt and slippers, smiling stupidly, his face red. The Lady Elizabeth was jumping on the bed, her breasts bouncing, and he leaned over and pulled her down by her ankles. Then his hand slipped inside her nightgown, tickling and slapping her bare flesh until I had to look away.

Catherine was stitching again as she spoke. “I can’t wait to be married. I shall have my own house. I’ll have gold everywhere, like this thread. Golden dresses...” She giggled. “...and golden curtains hanging around our marriage bed.”

Her stupidity irritated me. “You will not be allowed to have a marriage bed for many years. You are too young for childbearing.”