The Queen of Subtleties Read online

  I sat back. ‘Well, I imagine my parish priest will be rather surprised to hear that.’

  ‘I imagine your parish priest has had quite a few surprises, lately.’ Then he said, ‘You know the moral of this tale, don’t you. Stop thinking of the dead and start thinking of the state of your own soul.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ I said, eventually. ‘There was no one to pray for me, anyway.’

  ‘Nor me.’ Nor Hettie, we were probably both thinking.

  Mark said to me, yesterday, ‘You’re down in the dumps.’

  ‘It shows?’

  ‘It does.’ A steady look from beneath that unruly black hair. Concerned.

  Back to my criss-crossing, slicing bite-sized diamonds from a big square of marchepane between two layers of hard blue sugar. ‘I was being sarcastic, Mark. I imagine it does show.’ I didn’t feel like apologizing. ‘Sometimes I just am. Down in the dumps.’ If that’s what he wants to call it.

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  He picked up one of my diamonds, turned it around: white gold inside baby blue.

  ‘Are your hands clean?’ The king is so particular about cleanliness. His tasters don’t just taste, they also look. I didn’t want them seeing fingerprints.

  He returned the kissing comfit to the others. Perfect fingers, I noticed. ‘And, anyway,’ I said, ‘aren’t you?’

  Those so-blue, black-fringed eyes. ‘Aren’t I…?’

  ‘Down in the dumps, sometimes.’

  This seemed to amuse him: he tried to hold back a smile, failed. ‘Not lately.’ He looked away. ‘Lucy? What is it about today that’s so bad?’

  If it’s a bad day, reverse your apron: that’s what the Nevilles’ cooks used to say. ‘Nothing. Today’s no different from any other day. To be honest with you, perhaps that’s it. Summer progress gets me down. Especially when it’s in the pouring rain. I’m tired.’ But how could I be tired, having done so little? Bone-tired, then. I want to go home, basically. And I don’t know where home is. Or the problem is that I do, I do know, and it’s nowhere. ‘I’m old.’

  That surprised me: my thinking it, let alone my saying it and to him.

  But he wasn’t having any of it: ‘What are you, thirty or something?’

  ‘-six, actually.’

  ‘Oh! You’re the same age as the queen.’ As if this were some kind of triumph. Thirty-six had meant nothing, to him. Him, male, and young. Good. I probably could have said one hundred and six. Or sixteen. ‘And no one’d think of her as “old”,’ he said, ‘would they.’

  Well, I would. That’s one comfort, though: there’s no way I look like her, a dark woman who’s lost her lustre.

  ‘She’s a woman at the height of her powers,’ he said.

  Not her childbearing ones, though.

  I asked him his age. Twenty-seven, was the answer. Just a year or two older than Richard.

  ‘But I’ve never felt young,’ he said. ‘Never been young, really. I don’t know that it’s possible to be young—properly young; young at heart—when you grow up at court.’

  And I wondered how he’d done it: lived his life at court and remained so true to himself. Grown up in the cut and thrust of court, among the preening men of the Privy Chamber, to be someone who slips by with a shine of black hair and a shadowy glance that is, in fact, on the contrary, should it ever be met, sky-blue. I remembered asking him about George Boleyn. ‘Bestial’ was the word Richard had used, once, for the Boleyn brother, and followed it with, Lock up your daughters, sons, livestock! Mark had decided on ‘lively’. ‘And I suspect,’ he said, ‘that he finds me a bit…well, contemplative, I suppose.’

  That’s what I was thinking—him, contemplative—when he said, with some passion, ‘Lucy, listen: I hate it that you’re down.’

  I was touched by that, and suddenly it was me who couldn’t help smiling. ‘Well, I’ll have to make sure that I’m not,’ I said, ‘won’t I.’

  When he’d gone, I worked on my rose, sitting quietly in a corner of the kitchen as if doing nothing much at all. Mixing a little of my rose-sugar with gum and shaping a petal. Just one petal. It took me three attempts before the tip was delicate enough to turn translucent near a candle. And holding that petal up to the flame, I realized something: it’s Mark’s. This rose is for Mark.

  Did it begin, my making this rose for him, when he took a rose-petal from me on one of his first visits? Or did it begin back at the very beginning, with his coming into the confectionery for the very first time?

  His coming wide-eyed into my kitchen has re-opened my own eyes. And soon, he’ll see this rose of mine. A sugar rose made of almost no sugar at all. A sugar rose made mostly of rose. Soon, it’ll rest in the palm of his hand.

  November nastiness, outside. Half-inside, too: gusts down the chimney. And me, cosy in bed but sleepless. It’s been a strange day. This morning, a secret I was keeping for someone turned out to be no secret at all. But this afternoon, another seemed to come my way. And this one is mine.

  It was Richard who relieved me of the burden of the first. At the time, he was sitting dwarfed by sugar-cast walnuts, a mound of cinnamon-coloured sugar half-shells. ‘Well,’ he sighed, and stated the obvious: ‘these all need sticking together.’

  ‘Each with one of those inside.’ I indicated a sheaf of papers.

  He took the top one, peered at the inky scratches.

  Poems, I told him. Waiting to be folded up, I hinted.

  ‘For inside our walnut shells? Poems?’ He looked at me, wide-eyed. ‘Whose idea was that?’

  ‘Mine.’

  ‘Yours?’

  ‘Yes? And?’ What d’you think?

  He looked at the poem in his hand, as if the answer were written there. ‘Well, yes,’ he said, eventually. ‘It’s good. It’s a good idea.’ Then came something of a laugh: ‘What’s wrong with comfits, all of a sudden?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong with comfits.’ A sugar-coated seed inside each of our sugar-cast shells: the usual filling. ‘I just fancied a change. But you think it’s a stupid idea.’

  ‘No,’ he insisted; although he still seemed, to me, to be somewhat at a loss. ‘No. I think it’s a good idea. I suppose it’s just, well, why didn’t you tell me?’

  I didn’t know how to answer that. ‘I am telling you.’ Anyway, ‘You probably weren’t here. And it was nothing; it was just an idea I had.’ Yes, and, ‘It’s not as if I’ve never had an idea before, is it.’

  His hands raised: whoa.

  He had me worried, though. ‘They do like poetry, don’t they?’

  ‘Oh, they do, they do. Don’t get me wrong: it’s definitely a good idea.’ He looked down at the poems and up, again. ‘You wrote these?’

  My turn to laugh, and properly. ‘Well, of course not.’

  He was unamused. ‘Well, I don’t know, do I. I come into the kitchen and there’s a pile of poems. I mean, you made these, didn’t you?’ The shells.

  Oh, did I make those! Two whole days of work. Two days when Richard decided it was imperative that he begin work on our subtlety of Greenwich Palace. ‘Yes, but I do make sugar walnuts; I don’t write poems.’ Or write at all. As he well knows.

  ‘Well, who did?’

  ‘Don’t know. I asked our dear ol’ Master of Revels if he could get me some. Away he went, and came back with those.’

  Richard was sifting. ‘Well, he obviously whipped up some enthusiasm. There are loads.’

  ‘Hence…’ I nodded towards the shells; the two days’ worth of shells.

  ‘D’you think the king wrote some of them?’

  ‘The king?’

  ‘He does take himself quite seriously as a poet.’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  I knew about the music, Mark told me that the king writes songs: not bad, was his verdict; not bad at all, really.

  ‘Mind you,’ Richard added, ‘she doesn’t.’

  She.

  ‘Haven’t you
heard?’ he asks.

  Oh, no, here we go. I gave him a look, the look: how, exactly, would I have heard, and why would I want to?

  But of course he ignored me. ‘Oh, there was trouble, the other day; big trouble.’ Said, of course, with relish. ‘She was reading some of his poetry aloud. I don’t know,’ he raised our sheaf of poems, ‘maybe some of these.’

  My heart faltered: already, this wasn’t sounding good, and I didn’t want to be even faintly implicated.

  ‘Reading his poems in a funny voice. Probably with her hand on her heart: that kind of thing. You can imagine.’

  Yes, unfortunately.

  ‘And they were all laughing: Billy Brereton, Franky Weston, all of them, loving it. But he was there, too: the king! She was actually doing all this—’ he slowed down, for emphasis, ‘—in front of him. And of course he took it badly. I mean, come on, he’s the very last person to take a joke against himself, isn’t he: everyone knows that. So it was Glad-you-think-it’s-funny, and then he stormed off.’ Richard sat back, peculiarly satisfied. ‘Not that it seemed to bother her in the least. In fact, it just made her worse, Silvester said. She started on his dancing, if you please. Criticizing his dancing. Even though everyone was quite embarrassed by now.’

  I said, in spite of myself, ‘She can’t be well.’

  ‘Oh, on the contrary, she’s on form. Gale in her tail. She used to argue with him, all the time, in front of everyone, and he absolutely hated that, and now she’s taken it further, to ridiculing him. Which is probably what she always wanted to do, and now she’s big enough and bold enough to do it.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s not the behaviour of a happy woman.’ This embarrassing, foolhardy behaviour.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Richard raised his eyebrows, ‘but when has she ever been happy?’

  Perhaps there had always been a kind of madness in her, for her to have done what she did: destroy the queen. And here it is, again, but more so; so much so that it’s turned against her. She’s destroying another queen: but, this time, it’s herself.

  ‘Silvester says she really has it in for the king, at the moment; she’s really pushing her luck. The other week, she told Sir Henry, in front of everyone, how much better dressed he is than the king. Not a good idea. The king wasn’t there, but I’m not sure that’s not worse, because it’ll get back to him; and you know how that’ll look, it having been said behind his back. She was all over Sir Henry: how he’s so elegant. How he’s so unlike the king, she said; who, she said, looks like he’s stuffed.’ Richard barked a laugh. ‘Which is true, isn’t it; he is getting that way, isn’t he.’

  ‘Richard…’

  ‘And yesterday, when the king was telling some anecdote, at dinner, she did an enormous yawn—right before his punchline; impeccable timing—and announced she was off to bed! Wouldn’t you love to be able to do that?’

  I was unconvinced. ‘Yes, but is she able to do that?’

  He gave me a level look. ‘Depends, doesn’t it. On how lucky she is.’ Then he said, ‘Lucy?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’re coming up to Christmas—’

  ‘We’re seven weeks away—’

  ‘And you’re making gingerbread? Again?’

  ‘And lemon succade. I made some lemon succade, earlier.’ There were lemons, they needed doing: peeling, and the peel boiling with sugar. It’s not all sugar castles, not all the time, however close we are to Christmas: other jobs always need doing. And I’m glad: sweetened lemons, a concoction both so sweet and so sharp; the sharpness untouched, holding the sweetness intact.

  Richard said, ‘We have twelve days of feasts, coming up. Twelve days of subtleties. Why all the gingerbread?’

  What could I say? ‘It’s warming.’

  ‘Yeah, and it helps with queasiness,’ he said. ‘The queen’s pregnant.’

  ‘Richard.’

  ‘How long did you think you could go without telling me?’

  ‘I haven’t told you.’

  He laughed.

  ‘It’s a secret,’ I protested. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ he said, as if explaining to a small child, ‘it isn’t.’

  ‘It’s been announced?’

  ‘No, it hasn’t.’

  I knew because Dr Butts had been to see me. Mrs Cornwallis? I’m Dr Butts, the queen’s physician. I was wondering: might I have a discreet word? He’d asked me if I knew of any spices to help with nausea. Ginger, I told him. He seemed happy to take my word for it. That’s excellent. Let’s just say, then, that the queen would greatly appreciate more ginger in her diet for the next couple of months. And then he went away, just as suddenly as he’d arrived, but with a wink and a forefinger to his lips.

  ‘How do people know?’ I asked Richard.

  ‘Everyone knows everything, around here, don’t they? Up there, they do; back there. Small world, back there. If the queen’s laid up, a lot of people have to loll around with her. If the queen’s sick, someone’s going to have to clear up after her. And then there’s the gingerbread…’ I must have squirmed, because he chivied, ‘Oh, come on! Your gingerbread wasn’t the giveaway. She’s hardly one for secrecy, is she; hardly one for keeping her mouth shut. Certainly not where this is concerned. There’s a lot of patting of her stomach. She’s very pleased with herself. After all, this has been a while coming.’

  ‘Telling people so early, though,’ I said. ‘Anything could happen.’ Or not happen.

  He considered this. ‘Yes, but something she’s never lacked is confidence.’

  Thirty-six, she is. My age. Come to think of it, my own stepmother was around that age—this age—when she had the boys. It’s possible. It’s perfectly possible. When I was young—a child—I assumed I’d have children. Mine were to be two or three girls—chatterboxes—and a son; that’s how I saw it, saw them. Girls, and baby brother. The girls, creamy-skinned and sloe-eyed, nobody’s fools; the boy, one of those fiercely grave little blonds, standing his ground. It’s obvious to me, these days, that I was seeing a reflection of my own family, my own upbringing; a reflection of my dark-eyed chatterbox sisters and blond baby brothers. How unoriginal of me. Or perhaps I was simply very happy with what I had. Towards the end of my childhood, I remember, the daydream changed: the buttoned-down face of my sleeping newborn, the funny bluish bridge of his or her nose, and the downy temples.

  One summer’s evening, last year, Richard and I were sitting on a step outside somewhere—the back of some big house, I don’t remember which; someone’s big house—while Joseph was elsewhere with Kit, Stephen and Hettie, unpacking our provisions. The air had a jellied look to it. Richard said, ‘Whatever happened to you?’

  I gathered my gaze from the landscape. He was staring at me, but somehow seemed not to see me. ‘What?’

  This brought him to his senses. Hugging his knees, he looked away.

  ‘No, really: what?’

  He didn’t speak again for a moment; he was obviously trying to find the words. ‘Well…why aren’t you…married?’

  ‘Richard!’ Wasn’t it personal or impertinent or something, to ask? He didn’t back down, though, or even apologize, and I ended up answering him: ‘I don’t know. It just never happened.’

  ‘Not even…a little?’ He wasn’t smirking, but frowning, serious.

  ‘Richard…’ I sounded a warning; but, again, gave in: ‘Not in the least.’ Then I tried to explain, as best I could: ‘I’ve always been…working.’

  Nothing from him, before a laugh of disbelief. ‘You,’ he said, and looped a strand of my hair behind my ear. ‘How can you not be married?’

  ‘Whereas you,’ I said, ‘you’ll marry, won’t you.’

  ‘Oh, Lux,’ he said, his smile dreamy, ‘you’re a gem.’

  ‘Why?’ I grinned. ‘Because I have faith?’

  When Mark turned up, this afternoon, he was very quiet, and it was probably for something to say that I asked him, ‘Is it true that everyone knows about the queen?’ Even as I spo
ke, I couldn’t quite believe I was saying it. What on earth would I say if the response was, Knows what?

  But Richard is a reliable source, and, sure enough, Mark didn’t miss a beat: ‘That she’s expecting?’

  My hands, palms upwards: Everyone knows, obviously.

  There was no response, from him; no glimmer. Which was unusual. None of those serious little smiles.

  I was cornered into saying, ‘Well, what d’you think of that, then?’

  He nodded. ‘It’s good.’ Emphatically. Seriously. ‘It’s good, for her, isn’t it.’

  There was a small silence in which neither of us said it: Crucial. To lighten the mood, I found myself asking him if he ever thinks about the children he’ll have. Will they be very musical, I wondered aloud for him.

  He made a polite attempt at a smile, buried in a downwards gaze. ‘I won’t be having any children.’

  ‘You won’t? Why won’t you?’

  His unconvincing smile seemed stuck. He couldn’t or didn’t want to answer. Eventually he said, ‘Oh, I don’t know. I mean: who’d have me?’ and although he was smiling, he wasn’t joking: that was obvious.

  ‘Mark, who wouldn’t?’ I couldn’t have him thinking like that; as his friend, I couldn’t have him thinking like that. Lovely-looking Mark, the kindest man I’ve ever met, gloriously talented. Then, of course, I felt embarrassed—me, gushing—so I added, ‘All those nice young girls!’

  His smile vanished into a cross-sounding sigh. ‘You’re right.’ Although it sounded like agreement or an apology, it didn’t look like either: his unblinking gaze was defiant. ‘That’s how it is, here, isn’t it. That’s exactly how it is, for all the men, here: a game; nice young girls, one after the other. But, you know, Lucy, not for me: I don’t want “those nice young girls”. It’s just not like that, for me. Not any more; I’m not like that, not now.’

  I was looking back into those wide, deep blue eyes. Just looking, not thinking. My heart went out to him: really, it did; a flare against my ribs. ‘Well,’ I dared, ‘that’s good, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’ His gaze still held me, but now there was something of a plea in it.

  ‘Well, yes,’ I said. To my surprise, I was smiling in the face of his anguish; nearly laughing. Not at him, of course. Just at everything. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘It is.’