The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [79]
Philippa, more discreet in her way than Don Alfonso, did not relate that to Jane, or the hysterical laughter with which it was greeted. Or so said Sir Henry Sidney, who had been present, and who was interested in the Polish Ambassador for other reasons entirely. Learning this from Sir Henry much later, Philippa was momentarily puzzled. ‘How does the Polish Ambassador affect the affairs of the Muscovy Company?’
‘It’s the other way round,’ said Sir Henry. ‘Poland is Russia’s neighbour, you know, and one of her traditional enemies. The King of Poland is very anxious indeed that the Muscovy company should be forbidden to export any arms or military engines which could be used by the Russians against them.’
‘And will you agree?’ Philippa said. ‘Will Barnes and Gresham agree?’
‘The Privy Council will agree,’ Sidney said. ‘Or I think it extraordinarily likely. And loyal men that they are, how can England’s brave haberdashers scruple to follow?’
In the middle of June, the Queen’s pains began; the casements were shut, the doors barred, and her chambers locked against all save her doctors and women. The pains continued, but became intermittent. Jostled out by her superiors, Philippa did what she could, and tried to save Jane some of her unceasing duties, and sat in a corner and experienced grief, when she could do nothing else, for the middle-aged woman who lay rigid, praying aloud, behind the curtains of cloth-of-gold quilting, beneath the spangles and bone lace and crown of plumed feathers, and the flat counterpane, embroidered with roses in silk and gold twist, and the initials of Philip and Mary, intertwined.
She was asleep in her own room, exhausted, when Jane Dormer came to her in the morning, and kneeling by the low bed, touched her hand.
There was no need to speak. The question stood in Philippa’s brown, waking eyes, and meeting them, Jane shook her head. ‘The pains have gone, and the reason for them has shown itself. Not a birth, the doctors say, but the opposite. The Queen has restarted her courses.’
Philippa looked at Jane’s white face. ‘Not an imminent birth?’
‘They say not. If the Queen presses them, no doubt they will say less firmly that it is unlikely. If she argues enough, they may even announce that the Queen’s delivery has been a little deferred. But she is not pregnant. She is not pregnant, Philippa.’ She was wet-eyed: within a shadow of an explosive outbreak of tears.
Philippa put an arm round her shoulders. ‘Have you never suspected it? Think how simply such a thing happens. It begins with some unlucky accident of the flesh which this Queen is prone to, and because she needs and yearns for a pregnancy, she believes what the evidence tells her. She makes an ecstatic pronouncement in the joy at the Cardinal’s return, and the pregnancy is irrevocably dated. I’ve seen a girl fearful of childbirth listen to her body the way the Queen has done, all those months. It’s a curious music it plays, and if you study it long enough, you hear what you want.
‘All along the Queen has been pushed: by the nation’s eagerness, by the political need; by her own growing desire for her husband to stay at her side. Her household takes the steps for her: marks the weeks, prepares the nursery, makes the clothes; makes ready the celebrations, and she can hardly ignore them. She is part of it too: the miracle began within her; she cannot deny it. If she has doubts, their excitement reinfects her and she forgets them. Or, at times afraid, she may sometimes try to push it behind her; ignore the span slipping away until the reminders become quickly too many: until every eye is on her, and her food and her gait and her humour: until doctors are watching her day and night and false reports of the birth are flying already.…’
‘You mean,’ Jane said slowly, ‘that she has known all along she