A Secret Alchemy by Emma Darwin

Author:Emma Darwin
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2008-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

Elysabeth—the 11th yr of the reign of King Edward the Fourth

To lie with Edward was to be Melusina again, private in the thick gold water of the fire-lit air.

It was very late by then, with no sound but the occasional cry of a waterman crossing to the far shore and the soft slap of the river below the casement. Edward rolled aside, and his warm hand slid from my breast to my waist and over my belly. He cupped my bush as gently as any alchemist with his first precious metal.

“What did I do without you in Bruges, my beautiful Ysa?” he said, and for all it was dim in our chamber, I knew that he smiled in his drowsiness.

“I was in even worse case, without my lord.”

“You kept my son safe, nonetheless.”

“He was my first care,” I said, of course, and my smile was real, at the thought of Ned’s fair head and pink fists that morning, bouncing and waving in his father’s arms. Edward’s eyes had been for his son, and so had mine. Yet I had wondered what he would think of me, his faithful wife. A year and a half in those gloomy little abbey chambers built not for us but for men who had abjured the world. It was sanctuary, sure enough, licensed by His Holiness himself. But some days it felt as if my eyes and brow were being carved by fear into the likeness of the gray stone that surrounded us. And then to be brought to bed in so bare a room, and the girls in the next chamber, so that I all but drowned in silent screaming.

“How was it, with Ned?” he asked suddenly. “Comfortless, my poor girl?”

My heart jumped at his knowing my thought. “No worse than Cecily” was all I said, however. “And worth twice as much pain for a prince.”

He kissed my brow. “When he is older, we will do as we thought to: give him your brother Antony as his governor, and send him where we most need royal authority—the Marches, perhaps. He could live at Ludlow…” He said no more, and I knew he was thinking again of his own youth, hunting and dancing and jousting with his brother Edmund among those round, dark-green Welsh hills. “He looks like Arthur, I think, as well as you.”

The thought of Arthur had never troubled me much, and not at all now that I, too, had given Edward a son. Arthur’s mother seemed content to live retired, and he was a pretty child who caused no trouble when he did lodge in the nursery with my children. But I would not have Edward think of him, even were it only to take his thoughts from his murdered brother, this night of all nights.

“He and Ned have their sire to thank for that. Ned’s hair is red as much as gold. And he is very forward. We had the swathing bands off before he was five months old. He had his first tooth by then, too.

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