The Queen's Sorrow Page 15

  He recalled the nick of a flame to his hand and the reflex, the yanking back to safety. If there was no escape, would the burning – in time – cease to hurt? Wouldn’t sensation be burned away into numbness? He was desperate to believe it, but it was not what he’d heard. And, anyway, there wasn’t just the burning; there was the smoke, that scalding smoke and the smell of it: suffocating on the smoke of your own burning body. He made himself think of it because a person who didn’t think of it was capable of lighting such a fire.

  He didn’t go back to the Kitsons’. He went instead to the river. It was flotsam-pocked, the swans slit-eyed and sour-beaked. News of the burning didn’t seem to have reached there, yet: there was none of the confusion he’d encountered in the streets closer to the cathedral. The beggars were serene by comparison. Men loaded and unloaded boats, verbal exchanges limited to the necessary. Other boatmen lolled, conversing as they waited for custom. Rafael envied them their all-too-temporary ignorance of what was taking place within walking distance.

  What had that man done, to be burned for it? Heresy. Couldn’t bishops have argued with him, instead? Why burn him? He was being burned for having the wrong ideas, evil ideas, for denying God, for saying black’s white and for keeping on saying it, because what if everyone said it? It would bring the whole world down. Rafael knew it all – heretics were evil, they aimed for chaos and darkness and there was no place in the world for them; but he couldn’t stop seeing those hands reaching for that man, those little hands, and he couldn’t reconcile it. Would that man really have wanted chaos and darkness for those children of his?

  And that man himself was someone’s son. Perhaps thirty years ago, he’d been someone’s baby and that someone had got up at night, into the raw cold, night after night, month after month, to feed him. And then, later on, on other nights, that someone had sometimes swallowed down hunger so that the child could eat. That someone might have walked in stocking feet, boots sold, so that the apothecary could be paid. And prayed to God to be taken in the child’s place. In better times, that someone would have daydreamed of the life awaiting the boy. Would have told him stories of his ancestry and his past, of London and England and of other places both far away and imaginary.

  And that child had grown into a man who, only the other day, might have kissed his wife in passing for just a little too long, the kiss widening into a smile. A man who, just last week, might have looked at his child’s shoulder turned away in sleep and marvelled again at the loveliness of it, small enough and smooth enough to roll in the palm of his hand. A man who, a mere couple of months ago, might’ve filched a sole blackberry, guiltily and gleefully, from the household’s bowlful.

  And all for this.

  Where were the man’s children, now? Why had the woman taken them there? But she’d had to, he realised. If she hadn’t, they’d not have said goodbye.

  Rafael remembered a night when he and Leonor were woken by Francisco crying. The little lad had wet the bed, which he only rarely did. Leonor was quicker out of bed and got to Francisco’s bedside first, but he was deeply distressed and she struggled to change him. He was crying, ‘No, no, no,’ and wrenching himself away from her, obstructing her efforts. Despite her best intentions, her temper, Rafael saw, was fraying. Then Francisco was crying, ‘I need to –’ then something undecipherable. ‘I need to – I need to –’

  And Leonor was asking him, ‘Need to what? Need to what, Francisco?’ and continuing, ‘Come on, now, please, darling: let me do this and then we can all go back to sleep, yes? Come on, now, let’s get you dry. Let Mummy do this.’

  Rafael was chipping in: ‘Yes, come on, Francisco, let Mummy do this.’

  Suddenly Francisco’s last word was clear: Mummy.

  Leonor said, ‘Yes: Mummy.’

  And then he managed it, got clear – even through the sobs – what he’d been trying to tell them: ‘I need to find my mummy.’

  Leonor reeled, looked up at Rafael and back to her son. ‘I am your mummy, Francisco.’ And to Rafael: ‘He doesn’t know it’s me!’

  ‘He’s asleep,’ said Rafael, realising. ‘He’s not properly awake.’

  Leonor said, ‘Oh Jesus, Rafael, he doesn’t know it’s me,’ and, frantic, ‘I’m here, Francisco, it’s me, I’m here.’

  Just as stunned, Rafael could only say again: ‘He’s asleep, he’s not quite awake.’

  Leonor was incredulous: ‘But –’

  Yes: the candle was burning and they’d been talking to him for some minutes and he’d seemed to have been talking to them – well, crying at them – in reply … How could he not be awake?

  Leonor was continuing, ‘It’s me, darling, I’m here,’ but Francisco suddenly got it and accepted it, stopped his sobbing; he was back in a peaceful sleep.

  There’d been something horrifying about it: Francisco sitting there square on the bed, with busyness all around him, yet utterly bereft. He’d been so lost, and, for those few minutes, whatever his parents said or did for him, he was beyond being found. Rafael had never forgotten it, but he didn’t understand at first why the memory had come to him on the day of the burning. And then he realised: it would be those children, some nights, crying desperately like that, in grief and terror, needing to find their daddy, except they’d be wide awake and there’d be no comfort for them. He’d be gone. No grave, even, to visit.

  The atmosphere at the Kitsons’, that evening, was radically altered, distinctly subdued, and Rafael guessed it was due to news of the burning. Cecily kept herself blank, looking through him if she ever looked his way so that although he was desperate to go to her, he didn’t dare. Her son fared little better, her glances at him perfunctory as she performed various maternal duties such as cutting up his food.

  Antonio had – as ever – been talkative on the way into supper: ‘You heard? – they burned a priest today.’

  ‘Priest?’ A second burning?

  ‘Near St Paul’s. Burned him. Heretic. Married, with children.’

  That was the man he’d seen, then. And Antonio would believe – and repeat – anything. ‘If the man was married,’ Rafael was scathing, ‘then he was no priest, was he.’

  ‘Married priest,’ insisted Antonio. ‘They could get married, here. Can’t now. Have to renounce them, now, their wife and kids. Deny them, or something, and never see them again. Do a penance. I don’t know, do I.’ They were taking their places at the table, so he rushed to add, ‘But whatever it was he was supposed to do, he didn’t, so they burned him.’ They were sitting, now, so it was too late for Rafael to respond, for which he was glad. Whatever he’d have said would have done no justice to the enormity of it.

  That night, in his room, he pondered it: a married priest. A priest with responsibilities to a wife and children before his flock. In Spain, plenty of priests did have children, and everyone knew it. They were known as ‘nephews’ and ‘nieces’. Priests were supposed to be above the distractions of family life, free from the complications, the mess. But the queen herself had told him that her love for God had grown because of her love for her husband.

  Two days later, a bishop was burned. He was married, he had children. The burning took almost an hour, Antonio informed Rafael.

  Rafael was aghast: ‘You were there?’

  Antonio rolled his eyes. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you? I’d have been hauled up there by that crowd and thrown on there, too. This is all down to us – didn’t you know? That’s what they think. The prince can get his chaplain to preach against it, but it’s still our fault. It’s what we do, isn’t it, burning heretics, and now their queen’s married a Spaniard. So, she’s one of us. That’s what they think. There wasn’t any burning before she married.’ He paused. ‘No wonder they never burned people, what with this weather. The wood’s damp and the wind sends the flames one way then –’ Antonio waved an arm, away. ‘Half-burned, he was, that bishop – legs gone – but then the flames were off –’

  ‘Antonio.’ He didn’t want to hear it.<
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  Antonio shrugged. ‘But he took it all,’ he finished, admiringly, ‘preaching forgiveness and giving his view of it all for close to an hour – God, do the English ever shut up? – until his throat was burnt out.’

  The burning had been at Smithfield, just the other side of the city wall. Rafael feared that he could have unknowingly breathed in the smoke.

  The bishop had been silenced, but London hadn’t. Later that evening, there was a riot, and it even reached St Bartholomew’s Lane. Rafael heard it before he saw it: heard a buzzing and, intrigued, opened his window. Crowd-noise, it was, trouble, all at once louder and nearer. He drew back as it splintered into the lane: two men running; then three, the two running and stopping, turning while the other one scooped something from the ground – a stone? – and chucked it. They were shouting at the closed doors, blaring their indignation. More people came as if thrown into the lane but landing – just – on their feet. Perhaps seven of them, nine or ten. Women, Rafael saw. Behind them came horses, instantly among and ahead of them, wheeling back around to scatter them, their riders thrashing at them. Someone was screaming. Rafael pressed his back against the wall. Somewhere close, glass smashed. The Kitsons’ house? Were they now one window down? Were they under attack?

  The trouble moved off as suddenly as it had come. When he was confident it wouldn’t be returning, Rafael went down to the kitchen. A Kitson window had indeed been smashed: word was, one of the children’s bedrooms. Various men had gone to board it up, he gathered. Even so, the kitchen was packed: everyone there, reeling and commiserating. Everyone except Cecily.

  ‘Stupid fucking bitch,’ Rafael heard a man remark, his companion adding, ‘Wicked stupid fucking bitch.’ When the first man said, ‘With any luck, she’ll die having the kid,’ Rafael realised they were talking about their queen. How sickening to talk like that of any woman, let alone that they should be blaming their queen when she’d have had nothing to do with the bishop’s burning. It was easy for the English people to blame her – they didn’t really like her. Oh, they’d liked the idea of her – the rightful heir, the underdog; they made much of that – but they didn’t like her, intensely Catholic and dowdy. The bishop’s burning would have been the doing of the ecclesiastical courts: the Church’s doing. The queen wouldn’t burn people, Rafael knew, and certainly not the fathers of children.

  The officials had called his bluff: the two weeks were up and they hadn’t arranged transport for him, although they were talking of a ship due to leave in ten days’ time. Reluctant though he’d been to do it, Rafael had written home to Pedro to explain the situation – an impossible task in itself – and to ask about the possibility of a loan. If he didn’t hear back beforehand, he’d send two copies of the letter during the following three or four weeks, just in case, just to make sure.

  Cecily continued to keep herself to herself. Once, when they passed each other in the kitchen, she said an expressionless, ‘Hello, Rafael,’ even-toned and low-pitched, but he was convinced he caught a trace of something in it: challenge or dismissal, or even contempt. She didn’t pause, which put him in his place. Nicholas scampered after her and, albeit uninvited, took his place at her side. Which, after all, however bad his mother’s mood, was still his place.

  Rafael missed her. He missed those evenings, back at the beginning, when they’d sat in companionable silence. Watching her with a needle and thread, hands raised into the light, cuffs slipped a little down her wrists. He yearned for those evenings and sometimes he felt he was wishing for the whole world, and sometimes nothing much at all.

  The Kitsons were still in London because the winter was so hard, the journey daunting. They’d stay, now, until the royal baby was born in May, and – all being well – then partake of London’s celebrations. Rafael had still heard nothing from home. There’d been time enough, now, to hear back from her. Why the silence? He had no news of his own to tell. He didn’t mention the burnings.

  For a couple of weeks there were no more burnings and it was then, during that lull, that Cecily knocked on his door one evening and said, ‘Come for a walk, Rafael.’ He was so taken aback that he found himself unable to muster even the simplest response. His heart beat at him; his blood took flight; he placed a hand on the doorframe to steady himself. She, by contrast, was the very picture of calm. She’d spoken warmly enough, but it’d been no mere suggestion or request. It was so unlikely that he wondered briefly if it had been code. Was he in trouble? She mistook his lack of response for reticence in the face of the curfew – or that was how she decided to take it – because she added, ‘It’s quiet out there; there’ll be no problem.’ Then, ‘And Nicholas is asleep. Alys is there, if he wakes.’

  Rafael didn’t know who Alys was, and didn’t ask. Spinning his cloak on to his shoulders, he glimpsed Cecily eyeing the lining. She saw him, and smiled – the lining I made for you – and he smiled, too.

  Not until they were outside and off down the lane at quite a pace did he ask her where they were going, hoping her reply would reveal the reason for the escapade.

  ‘Nowhere,’ was all she said.

  In the absence of anything more enlightening, he liked the sound of that. Nowhere sounded good to him. Suddenly this lane, which he’d been going up and down for almost eight long months, was nowhere he knew. He might never have been here before and might never come again. There would be just this one time, with Cecily. Letting her lead the way, he took no note at all of where they were. Their breath scythed through the tangle of woodsmoke and river-air. Side by side, in step, their footfalls could have been one person’s. She’d tell him in her own time what they were doing; he was in no rush, now, to know. He liked not having to know.

  Rainwater showered from eaves, and for once he saw the drenched buildings as impressively unbowed. The rain – heavy all day – had just stopped, and everything was slick and gleaming, even the mud and muck. Somehow that sheen was on him, too: he felt it rushing up to him with each of his inward breaths and he tingled with it. He was part of this shining, after-dark world. In on its secrets.

  More watchmen had been appointed, Rafael knew, since the previous week’s riots, and indeed a pair stood at most corners, idling, only belatedly curious when he and Cecily passed. She strode on and Rafael did the same, and each time they got away with it. And why should they be challenged? They were doing nothing. They were up to nothing. His stomach felt high, braced as if he were on the lip of something and stepping off, unsure of a landing.

  At last, Cecily spoke, surprising him with her question: ‘Are there a lot of burnings in Spain?’ He didn’t know what he’d been expecting her to say, but not that. She hadn’t let up on her pace and the question came on a rush of hard, fast breaths. She might’ve been asking him the time of day. Matter-of-fact. Fact-finding.

  ‘Before I was born,’ he said. Not quite the truth. ‘Most, before I was born.’ Spain, she’d asked about. Nowhere else, no mention of elsewhere, of Spanish burnings nowadays in the empire, in the Low Countries. He couldn’t quite believe that she didn’t know about the persecution in those countries, but he wasn’t going to bring it up.

  ‘Did it work?’

  The Inquisition? She’d got ahead of him by a step or two – he’d faltered – and turned to him, expectant. She was serious, he saw: did it work, yes or no? Put like that: ‘Yes.’ She gave him a terse nod: he’d confirmed her suspicion. Ostentatious obedience to the Church. He could have said, Every second man’s a priest. Take my brothers.

  She walked on. ‘Cecily,’ he called after her. ‘It’ll … stop.’ Soon, he meant. But saying so, he felt he was playing it down and betraying those who’d already suffered.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ she threw back.

  ‘Yes,’ he reasoned, hurrying after her. ‘This is England. In England …’ you don’t do this, you don’t burn people.

  ‘I don’t know that this is England, really, any more, Rafael. It’s half Spain now.’ She stopped again, faced him. ‘We ha
ve a Spanish king.’

  ‘He is not king! He is not king.’ Then, with something like an exasperated laugh, ‘Believe me, Cecily, England is nothing like Spain.’

  His turn, now, though: he wanted something explaining. ‘Cecily, listen –’ they’d resumed walking and he puffed to get his question voiced: ‘Is it true? – priests here have wives?’

  ‘Had.’

  No more, though, from her. The air between them was crazed by their breath. He was considering what to ask and how to ask it when, ‘Rafael?’

  Now it was coming: the explanation for their being on this walk. ‘I just needed you with me.’ Matter-of-fact, again. ‘Not in there –’ she flapped a hand in their wake and he took her to mean the Kitsons’ house. ‘I needed you with me, just for a little while. Just –’ she threw up both hands, glanced up into the black sky. Here.

  ‘And I am,’ he said, with feeling, ‘I am with you,’ and he marvelled at it: that here he was, in the dark, the desperate cold of this unforgiving city, his blood singing as he raced to keep up with this long-limbed Englishwoman.

  She smiled at him, amused because he’d stated the obvious: here, indeed, he was. Her smile made it a mere statement of fact and he allowed it, smiling, too. But he decided to chance something: ‘You’re in trouble, aren’t you?’

  ‘No –’

  ‘No’ – fist to his chest – ‘in here.’ But that, of course, could be misinterpreted. ‘In here –’ fist to his forehead.