Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [55]
Queen Caroline’s ladies watched, wide-eyed and pale, from the left of the throne, her courtiers from the right. One by one, the old queen’s advisors came before her in the huge empty space, knelt, and removed their blue robes. Each said, “I swear fealty to Queen Caroline, and to her alone, unto death.” Then each, shivering with cold, was handed a new robe of green to put on over his undertunic. There were not very many advisors. Those who had refused the oath must have been imprisoned. By tomorrow, I guessed, they would be dead.
At a gesture from the queen, Lord Robert mounted the dais and knelt. She smiled at him, but her face was very pale, and only I overheard the words she whispered to him. “The army?”
“No,” he said.
Her face did not change, by what effort of will I could only imagine. Lord Robert resumed his place and the procession of advisors continued.
“I swear fealty to Queen Caroline, and to her alone, unto death.”
No loyalty from the Blue army. I realized what that meant. The word the captain had spoken—poisoner—was what the army believed of Queen Caroline. The Blues did not see her as the natural successor to Eleanor; they saw her as the unnatural murderer of their queen. And they would fight to avenge that murder. The Greens had been able to secure the palace only because the main part of the old queen’s army was housed outside the city. The great gates to both the island and the palace had been shut and bolted and archers set on the ramparts. No one could either enter or leave.
We were at war, and under siege.
The procession seemed endless. After the advisors came Queen Eleanor’s ladies and courtiers. These, too, were far fewer than I guessed they had once been. Some seemed to choke on their words. Then the physicians, musicians, stewards, couriers, pages. The boys, some as young as eight, knelt before the queen, who wore on her head only a simple circlet of gold. Tomorrow the safe would be broken open through hours of patient labor and the Crown of Glory claimed, but tonight the oaths went forward without it. Loyalty, like the palace itself, was being secured. And perhaps as precariously.
“I swear fealty to Queen Caroline, and to her alone, unto death.”
The serving men, the ladies’ maids, the gardeners. How long could the Green guard hold the capital against the entire Blue army? But for tonight the queen sat on the throne and heard everyone in the palace promise to die with her if necessary.
“I swear fealty to Queen Caroline, and to her alone, unto death.”
Last came the cooks, the laundresses, the seamstresses, the stable boys and grooms, the kitchen maids, all kneeling in batches to swear. I saw Joan Campford, her rough red hands swollen with winter chilblains. And later it was Maggie, who sank to her knees with a grace and dignity that might almost have matched the queen’s own. She did not glance at me. I wondered about her brother Richard, soldier of the Blues, but I could tell nothing from Maggie’s face.
“I swear fealty to Queen Caroline, and to her alone, unto death.”
And then it was over, and nearly midnight. The queen’s court moved their possessions into the rooms beside the throne room, the rooms that had been the old queen’s. Everything was bustle and confusion. I found Cecilia in tears as she followed the harassed steward to her new chambers.
“Oh, Roger,