Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [46]
I saw her again, running to Emma Cartwright the day I had arrived at court, hiding in her room from Prince Rupert. I had thought then that her hiding was genuine, when I didn’t yet know her. Cecilia lived for admiration, for being petted, for love. She had been teasing him, as she teased me, as she teased every man at court. But Prince Rupert had bedded her, and the other ladies knew. (“Cecilia, there are other things in life besides dancing.” “I think she knows that!” and “Green wood burns hotter than yellow”—the prince had favored green to please his sister.) Emma Cartwright had left court shortly after I arrived—dismissed because she knew too much? Did the good Mistress Cartwright know that Prince Rupert carried the crawls, and that he had undoubtedly carried them to his new bride? That knowledge might have canceled his wedding to Princess Isabelle, might have endangered The Queendom’s political alliance with the bride’s rich realm. No wonder Cecilia had been nearly hysterical. The crawls from a prince, with a royal marriage hanging in the balance and the danger of wrath from two queens.
It was that moment, in the dark of a cold spring night, that for the first time I understood what life at court truly was. I had been a fool; I was a fool still. But now I knew. Nothing was as it seemed. Everything was for sale, and everything was judged by how it affected the web of power.
My new knowledge turned me careful. I extinguished my lantern. In the dark I fumbled toward a flower bed, took Mother Chilton’s little cloth bag from my pocket, and buried it. It was an easy matter to rearrange ornamental green stones to disguise the freshly turned earth.
After a long time standing there, thinking, while my toes grew stiff and the hairs in my nose froze, I moved on. I passed the guards with a jest and made my way through the deserted presence chamber to my alcove. I drew back the curtain.
And there, waiting for me in the darkness, stood the queen.
“Where have you been, Roger?” she said.
15
“WHERE HAVE YOU been, Roger?” the queen repeated when I did not—could not—speak.
With the kitchen lantern at the end of my suddenly slack and terrified arm, I could scarcely see her face, only the gleam of light on the green satin of her gown. “I . . . I went to the kitchen . . . I was hungry!”
“So you told the guards. And what else? No, wait, not here. Follow me.”
I stumbled after her, wondering if I was to be led to some dungeon, to some instruments of torture that would . . . But the queen led me through the outer chamber to her privy chamber, the room where I’d had my first audience with her. The door to her bedchamber was closed, as ever. In the privy chamber Lord Robert sat beside a bright fire, with a goblet of wine before him on the ornately carved table.
The queen closed the door and leaned back against it. Her face was kindly, her eyes warm. She smiled at me. “Now, Roger, tell me where you have been and whom you have spoken to. And leave no detail out.”
How much did she know? I had to protect Maggie, protect Cecilia. . . . Why protect Cecilia? Because I loved her still. And I could no more deliver her to the hands of the queen than I could a butterfly to the pin that would fix it, squirming, on a board.
“I was hungry,” I said. “I went to the kitchen to get something to eat. I have a friend there, a kitchen maid, and . . . and we lay together. In the courtyard where the barges bring vegetables to the palace.”
The queen stood so that she could see both me and Lord Robert. From the corner of my eye, I saw him give a tiny nod. So he already knew where I’d been, and with whom. Her web of spies—or his—must extend itself even farther than I had guessed. If one of those spies had overheard Maggie and me—
The queen studied me, still with that kindly smile on her beautiful, ruthless face. Finally she said, “I believe you. You have grown taller and fuller since you entered my service, Roger, and I can