The Queen's Sorrow by Suzannah Dunn

Author:Suzannah Dunn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

For once, and despite the sleet, he didn’t cower resentfully on the wherry but was keen to take it all in: London, crowding down to the river as if to get in on something it might otherwise miss. The red, regular brickwork and the unflinching gaze of so many big, unshuttered windows. And over the jostling rooftops, an endless exhalation of spires: London throwing its head back, devil-may-care. How strange to think of that anxious, humourless, dowdy woman trying to rule this brash, cynical city. For the first time, he saw what there was to admire about London. Gliding through snowflakes, he found himself listening as hard as he was looking. He was opening himself absolutely to the city, trying to love it, to be moved by it – but he knew it would never quite happen. This was a city that kept him at arm’s length.

Going back into the house, lit up by the chill and rattling from the crowds, he almost bumped into Cecily. Drowsy with household warmth, she was wrapped in her cloak with her basket on one arm and, at her side, the child. There they stood, one coming in and the other going out: at sixes and sevens. He took two steps back, involuntarily. He hadn’t been expecting to come across her, not so soon, although he’d only just been thinking of her. And now here she was, facing him with that big-eyed, enquiring look. She wanted to know where he’d been; she was expecting to be told, and he wanted to tell her, but how could he? Where would he start? He would tell her, but such a tale wasn’t for a mere threshold exchange. He’d been standing in a dripping porch, listening to the genuine fears of the troubled queen of England and there wasn’t any way that he could tell it that would make it believable. She’d think him a liar, a fantasist, or she’d think he was making fun of her.

‘Going out?’ he asked her, which was stupid of him because it was so clearly the case.

‘Buttons,’ she said in explanation, with a quick, flat smile: no real smile at all. ‘You were called to the palace?’

‘Yes.’ He busied himself removing his cloak. ‘Nothing. Just work.’

‘Work?’ Polite, but nonetheless making him uneasy.

He turned the attention back to her: ‘Urgent, these buttons?’

She shrugged it off.

‘Because it’s snowing.’

‘So I see.’ She indicated the dusting on his cloak.

He asked her, ‘Can I …’ … go for you? Seeing as he was wet already.

‘Buttons?’ she laughed, derisively: what would he know about buttons?

Helpless, he tried again, ‘But it’s snowing.’

‘I know it’s snowing, Rafael.’ Impatience, now. ‘I’ve been snowed on before.’ Then she asked, ‘Are you going home?’ and his heart contracted. She – like him, earlier – had assumed the summons was something to do with his going home. But it was how she’d asked that got hold of his heart: the appeal in it.

‘No,’ he told her. Just like that, nothing more. She’d asked

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