Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [36]
“You must keep the yellow dye on your face,” Queen Caroline said. “It makes you different from other fools. And it’s a splendid joke on that stiff-necked prig my brother was forced to marry. Yellow—the color of her court!”
Her brother, Prince Rupert, and his plain bride had left court the day after the wedding. None of us would likely see them for several years.
“Your Grace,” I said desperately, “I haven’t wit enough to be a fool!” A fool must stay close to the queen, making sharp and funny comments on the personalities and doings of members of the court. I knew none of the members of the court. I could not make sharp and funny comments. I would fail.
“Of course you have wit enough to be a fool.”
“I do not! Could I . . . could I be a page?” A page’s duties I thought I could manage.
“Pages are highborn, like my Alroy. They are also ten years old. No, you must be my fool.”
“I am not funny enough to—”
“Then become funny,” she said sharply. “I need a reason to keep you close by, a reason that no one will question.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
I stayed in my alcove, sleeping off my laundress exhaustion, until the day after the wedding. Then, for the first time, and dressed in my new clothes, I accompanied the queen as she received in her presence chamber. I took the place she indicated, to the left and below the queen’s tall chair on its raised dais. Sitting at her feet.
“Listen to everything,” she whispered to me. “Learn, so that you will better know who to approach and what to ask when I send you to cross over.”
“It doesn’t happen like that, I can’t—” But she didn’t want to hear it. She waved her hand and the guards threw open the great doors.
I was terrified. Be funny.
The presence chamber was the first room of the queen’s suite, the largest and barest room, furnished with only her throne upon a dais and benches along the walls. Next came the outer chamber, where she was attended by her ladies. This, too, was of a good size, richly furnished with tables, chairs, space for dancing and the presentation of the masques that the court so loved. Then the privy chamber, where I had crossed over for her, with its heavily carved table and green hearth rug. Last was the queen’s bedchamber, which I would, of course, never see. The presence chamber was where her public events took place, because the palace’s real throne room was still in the control of the old queen. To my dazzled eyes, the presence chamber was intimidating enough—what must the throne room be like?
Queen Caroline’s advisors entered, a procession of three old men tottering behind Lord Robert. Women, who create life, must rule. But men, who defend life, must advise. Thus is the balance of the world preserved. The queen’s green-clad advisors each bowed before her and then stood to the left and right of the throne. None of them so much as glanced at me, crouching at the foot of the steps to the dais in my yellow face dye and green-and-yellow velvets. I was just another piece of furniture, like the steps themselves, but less useful.
The queen said, “Let the petitioners come.”
There were not many. I thought that the wedding feast, the masques and dances, had tired everyone so that their business with the queen must have been postponed. Later, I learned that I was wrong. The petitioners were all in the palace throne room with the old queen.
Where the power resided.
Queen Caroline’s lips tightened. She barely opened them to say to the first man, “Why do you come before me?”
“Your Grace, I am in land dispute with my neighbor, Mistress Susannah Carville.”
“And what is the dispute?”
“We each claim the fields on the right bank of the River Ratten.”
I blurted out, “All lands are the queen’s, except when they are rotten!”
There was total silence. Then the petitioner said, “The right bank is, of course, Your Grace’s as well! But the use of it is in dispute between Mistress Carville and me.”
“Continue,” the queen said. She shot me a disgusted glance. I had not