Raven Queen Page 2

  “May your tongue split!” I shouted, reaching up to slap her. She stepped back and Mary hid behind her, pulling a face at me.

  “Stop this noise!” Ellie had appeared at the kitchen door. “The servants can hear you! Why are you squabbling?”

  None of us replied.

  Ellie shooed my sisters away. Then she came back to me, frowning. “Why has your father sent for you? I warned you, Jane! Didn’t you see me shake my head?”

  “Yes, yes, Ellie, I know, but I felt sorry for him. What is the point of saving him if he is to starve and steal again and be hanged a second time?”

  She ignored my question. “Don’t anger your father. He may let you off lightly.”

  I would have laughed at her words if my father had not bellowed for me at that moment from the library door.

  He was already holding the whip when I went in. I took a sharp breath. My father had often slapped and pinched, but he had never whipped me. People say how alike we look and it is true. His face is also slender and his skin is pale. But his mouth is softer than mine and for that reason he hides it under a long moustache.

  My mother was sitting next to him, her lips pressed tight. A ruff hid her neck, the latest fashion from London. Is this how parents greet their daughter when they return home? Any other mother or father would have kissed and petted me and asked me how my lessons went.

  I curtsied. “Good day, sir. Good day, madam. Welcome home.”

  Their faces hardened in the silence. I stared past them at the stag’s head on the wall. I had looked at it in death many times: its hacked neck grey with dust; its antlers laced with cobwebs. Here, in this room, the huntsman and its victim are forced to face each other every day.

  “Get on with it, Henry!” The anger in my mother’s voice astonished me.

  My father raised his whip and pulled my right hand towards him. I flinched as my skin split, sprinkling blood onto my cuff – royal blood, the cause of all my troubles.

  “I did not expect to return from London and find a newcomer living amongst us!” he snapped. “It is not for you to interfere in estate matters.”

  To my surprise, my father did not ask where Ned had come from. I wondered what he would say if he knew that he had been dangling from the nearest gallows. In spite of my fear, I enjoyed the thought.

  I hesitated. I had to ask, even if he whipped me again. “Will you let him stay, sir?”

  He sighed. “Yes, for now, and only because Thomas has asked. But stay away from this boy! He may take advantage of your kindness because you are a woman.” I must have smiled because he brought his fist down hard on the table. “You are the most difficult of my daughters, Jane,” he said quietly, as if he had said this many times to himself. “We do not like strangers here. How do we know he will not murder us in our beds?”

  “How does he know that we shall not murder him in his?” The words spilled out before I could stop them.

  My mother leaned forward. She is a large woman, my mother, and her chin doubles as she speaks. Unlike my father, who thinks only that I fear the physical pain, she knows my deepest fear. “Remember, Jane, there are worse punishments than the whip.” She paused and glanced at my father. He nodded. “We have been arranging your marriage in London. Then you will learn the meaning of obedience.”

  Her words made me tremble as she knew they would. Marriage was something that happened to other girls – something far off and frightening, like death. Something I dreaded.

  Who would they make me marry? William Parnell, as plain as a garden sparrow? Or one of the Dudley hawks? Dudley was the King’s Protector, the devil himself who had spawned five sons. Or…

  My father’s voice cut across my thoughts. “Dudley thinks you will suit Edward very well.”

  The King? My head was throbbing now, as well as my palm. I had last seen him four years ago, so full of anger as he spoke to his advisors that he had plucked every feather from a falcon, and when I begged him to stop he had torn it apart. No, I could not marry such a man.

  The room tilted around me and I put my hand to my neck. Edward was Henry’s son and Henry’s wives had had a habit of dying. Like father, like son. If Edward could do that to a bird, what would he do to me? I stayed silent, afraid of what I might say.

  My mother continued, “And I pray every day that you will become a woman soon. You will only marry when you can bear a child.” My cheeks reddened. “Now kneel for your blessing.”

  As I knelt, the thought came to me: how can the man that blesses me in the name of God marry me to such a man as Edward?

  I stumbled from the room. “I shall not marry the King!” I muttered to myself. “I shall not marry anybody. I want to be free to choose my own life.”

  Somebody caught hold of my arm and placed a finger across my lips. It was Ellie, fear shadowing her face. “Hush!” she whispered. “You know that in this house such words are treason.”

  Who am I?

  A bright sky encloses me and a sharp wind scents the air with hawthorn blossom. It is Sunday, my day of rest, and I have climbed Beacon Hill, knee-deep in honeysuckles and enchanter’s nightshade. Below me lie river valleys and forests, and at last I see what I have come for: on the north horizon – faint, but clear – the spire of Lincoln Cathedral.

  Not only do I imagine our house, but I hear my father’s voice as he urges me to study: “When Edward dies,” he used to say, “and it is rumoured that he will die young, his sister Mary will sit on the throne of England. It will be a glorious day, my son! A Catholic monarch again! Until then we must keep our heads down.”

  My father aged daily as Protestantism crept up on us like the sea, eroding the old faith like the face of a cliff. Everything, everyone that was dear to him was slowly swept away: his brother, a Catholic priest, gone to exile in France; the old Common Prayer book replaced by a new one encouraging the congregation to take part in the church service, and – the worst thing of all – no longer was the bread and wine thought to transform into Christ’s flesh and blood during Mass.

  Our daily life became more and more difficult. My father taught Latin and Greek to the choirboys at Lincoln Cathedral, only a stone’s throw from our house on the hill below. One day, when I was about ten years old, he was dismissed. The new faith asked for Mass to be sung in English. My father took in private pupils. We sacked all the servants except one and we washed in cold water in winter so that we need not light a fire.

  The house fell into disrepair around us, but this was nothing compared to the ruin of our faith.

  “Enough is enough!” my father wept one day. And from then on, we attended an illegal Catholic Mass held deep inside such a forest as this, two hours’ walk from Lincoln. We would set off at dawn, every Sunday, whatever the weather, with the Proctors, our neighbours. That was the only time I ever thought about the boy king on the throne telling us what we could and could not do. “How can such a young boy have all that power?” I used to ask my father, but he explained patiently that it was the men around him who had all the power.

  Dark thoughts fill my mind. At the beginning of last winter, all of us at that Mass were arrested. There was no trial. They took us straight to Lincoln Castle, which then served as the city’s prison.

  Next to us were three Catholic monks chained to a pillar. We prayed to God all day to save them, but they died of starvation and were thrown into a communal grave without the last rites.

  As the days passed, it was not the dirt or the disease or the damp that was the worst thing. It was one of our gaolers. He was a runt of a man with a twitch in his right eye, too skinny to lay a whip or a hand on us. Words were his weapon.

  My heart lurches.

  He terrified us with stories of a black dog, whose ghost roamed the prison. He said its teeth were as long as a man’s arm and as sharp as his razor. He said it would come looking for us at night. Mistress Proctor prayed as her husband lay in the straw like a pig in its own filth, howling and roaring with fear. Sarah Proctor thought only of escap
ing.

  Plump little Sarah Proctor! Who would have thought it? To my shame, I laughed at her. But she had made up her mind. With a nail taken from her shoe, she scratched away the mortar around one of the stones. I watched her, my mind dulled by fear of the black dog. After a week, she begged me to help her as her arms thinned.

  We worked together as soon as the last light had gone. I listened for the roaring dog but he never came and I grew braver. During the days, my father sat against the loosened stone, his body weakening with fever.

  Sarah took her chance one November night when the guards were drunk and snoring. Everybody helped to lift out the stone, but nobody wanted to go with her – not even her parents. We were all too afraid.

  She wriggled through easily, thin enough now.

  “Go with her, Ned!” My father’s whisper was urgent. “Go to your uncle. It is your chance.” I refused.

  He groaned. “It makes no difference whether you are here. There is nothing more you can do for me, except pray. I shall live or die whether you are here or not. Go, Ned. Please!”

  I did not follow Sarah then. But my father was dead by morning and there was no doubt that he had willed it to force me. We propped up his dead body in front of that stone until I left that night. I stood briefly in the empty street, glancing at the rooftops of Lincoln below. Then I went home long enough only to pick up my father’s crucifix, his rosary, a Bible and a book written by Plato. I ran towards the city walls overlooking the river where I had swum with my friends on sunlit days.

  As I headed south, I kept turning back to glance at the cathedral spire. And on the day I could no longer see it, the bond was broken. Like a child set free from its mother, I quickened my pace.

  One more glance at the silhouetted spire and I set off down the hill.

  Who am I?

  A boy who is falling in love.

  And falling in love with a girl who is – if I am not mistaken from the look in her eyes – as much at the mercy of the world as I am.

  My life was organized for me into a strict routine: rise at five, prayers, breakfast, lessons, dinner, music lessons, supper, prayers and bed at nine. To the many visitors who came to the house, my life must have seemed happy. But nothing could quell the fear inside me, not even Ellie’s herbs. I was trapped – and as I struggled like a bird inside my trap, fear consumed me: fear of becoming a woman, fear of my parents, fear of the hunt, fear of marrying.

  There was little time for leisure, except a short daily walk in the deer park and sometimes to the edge of the forest. Ellie would not go any further. “I know it’s silly,” she would say, “but I feel as if the dark side of our nature’s in there, the part that we all fear.”

  “She is afraid of the wolves,” my tutor, Doctor Aylmer, would tease. “I shall take you, Jane.”

  We went on my last birthday, when I was fourteen, a day of autumn winds and climbing clouds. As we entered the forest, Doctor Aylmer slowed to catch his breath and I walked on, drawn by the beauty of the trees. They huddled close above me, trapping me in a loneliness so deep that I was afraid.

  Where was I?

  I closed my eyes, but the forest noises still made my heart thud: branches creaking, leaves rustling, birds calling. I forced myself to peep through half-closed eyes. A light filled the forest, soft and shimmering and I looked up, searching for the source, but the sun was not shining. And when I put out my hand, it had no warmth.

  Then just as quickly, the light dimmed. But my heart had filled with joy.

  I found my way back to Doctor Aylmer easily. “I have seen God,” I blurted out, afraid that he would laugh. “I have always believed in Him, but as a child who believes in magic and mystery. Now I truly believe.”

  He lifted my right hand and kissed it. “We each have to find the light in our own way,” he said.

  I often went to the forest after that day. And although I never saw the light again, I always felt God there, strong and protecting.

  The schoolroom is on the first floor of the right tower, overlooking the walled garden below, and the forest beyond.

  It is the warmest and brightest room in the house, full of tables cluttered with books and writing paper, pots of ink and quills. Doctor Aylmer’s desk stands on a small platform and in front of him is his pride and joy – a copy of the first globe made by a German map-maker almost seventy years ago.

  Doctor Aylmer never scolded me. Catherine said that he liked me because he and I were both small, but I said it was because I learnt quickly.

  One morning, not long after Ned had come to Bradgate Hall, Doctor Aylmer picked up a book lying beside the globe and handed it to me. Its golden title gleamed: UTOPIA. I was puzzled. “What does it mean?”

  “You are not concentrating,” he replied. “Remember the Greek words I have taught you. Ou is the Greek for...?”

  “For no,” I replied, “and topos means place. No place.”

  “Thomas More, the man who wrote it, means no place that exists on earth – not yet.”

  “But he was a Catholic!” I protested. “He refused to accept King Henry’s divorce. Why should I read a book by a man who was beheaded as a traitor...a man who...?”

  I stopped myself, shocked by my anger.

  Doctor Aylmer was looking at me, eyebrows raised. “Do not let religion blind you in this way, Jane. This book was written long before those events.” His eyes twinkled. “In fact, it was written in the year before your mother was born. 1516.”

  I laughed. He knew how much I wanted to know my mother’s age.

  “Utopia is a place where women are equal to men.” He looked at me carefully. “And where people can believe in whatever religion they choose.”

  “If it is no place which exists on earth, does that mean heaven?” I asked.

  He shook his head and spun the globe. “Utopia is an imaginary place – a beautiful island off the coast of the New World...about here. It is what we hope America will be.”

  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.”