‘Here? No.’
She indicated that he should give his shirts to her. ‘To me.’ She was so pale: her eyes were transparent and her skin had the luminosity of stone or weathered bone.
Whenever he saw her after that, she was carrying fabric and he wondered how he had ever missed it. She was no doubt a seamstress; she’d have been the obvious person to ask about laundry. Linen was what came to mind, now, whenever he saw her. Forget stone and bone. Linen: unfussy, durable, adaptable.
Still nothing had happened at Whitehall to provide Rafael with office space, but at last he gained permission to visit the queen’s private garden in which he was to site the sundial. He had no need of Antonio for this, and left him engrossed in a card game.
Doing as he’d been told, he entered from an orchard at the south, opening an unlocked door on to a vast gravelled courtyard. On his left, the eastern side, bordering the river, was the queen’s private residence. These garden-facing windows would catch any afternoon sunshine, but today the building was blank-eyed. At the far end, facing south, was a double-storeyed, ornately carved and gilded gallery, on which was mounted a direct-south dial. No one would be inside that gallery seeking shade on a day such as this. The centrepiece of the garden was a white marble fountain: a portly, pouting sea-creature depicted mid-flex, craning skywards, its dribble clattering into the basin like heavy rain. Dark, less well-defined figures stood to attention here and there in other parts of the garden: topiary girls, full-skirted and small-headed. Wood-carved, pet-sized beasts postured on top of twisty-twirly poles: a green-and-gilded lion up on its hind legs, flourishing paws and fangs, and a long-muzzled, mordant-faced – which was to say English-looking – hound resting on its haunches. All very pretty, perhaps, but fussy. There were many raised beds – a bed of lilies, one of poppies, one of daisies – and areas of lavender bordered by rosemary, as well as similarly shaped areas of clipped grass. Nearer the fountain, the beds looked different. Curious, Rafael crunched across the gravel to them. The borders of these beds, too, were low-hedged, but contained more ankle-high hedging – two kinds to each bed – planted in a pattern to give the illusion of two strands intertwining, of being linked in a loose, elegant knot. He crouched and rubbed a piece of foliage to confirm: thyme. Thyme partnered with cotton lavender. Peppered around the knot to make up its background were low-growing, spiky pink flowers.
He glimpsed one of the queen’s doors opening, and rose, ready for interrogation – Who was he? What was he doing? – but realised that he had no way of making himself understood. Why hadn’t he asked for a note in English to bring with him? The interloper was a solitary lady – absurdly richly dressed – and she hadn’t yet noticed him. Closing the door behind her, she came no further, leaning back instead against the wall and tipping her face as if to the sun. For a moment, he too stood still, but then decided he’d better get on as planned. He’d have a look, first, at that direct-south dial.
His walking around the fountain alerted her to his presence, though, and she came towards him at a brisk pace – how she managed it in that dress, he didn’t know. She advanced with authority; no wariness in this approach to a strange man in the queen’s own garden. He braced himself. From her stature – tiny – he’d assumed she was not much more than a girl, but now he could see she was in early middle age, folds bracketing her mouth, a line between her eyebrows, and a dustiness to her pallor. He was surprised to have made the mistake, because she had none of the softness of a girl; her shoulders were sharp and movements abrupt. She was so English-looking: fireside-dry skin, ashen but flushed, as if it were scalded. The smallness of her colourless eyes was accentuated by their stare. Due to genuine short-sightedness, he judged the stare to be, rather than any attempt to intimidate him.
She was all dress, parading what must’ve been years of other people’s close work, and all of it layered, furred, edged. She’d probably taken until this late in the day to get dressed. For all the effort, though, the result was disappointing. Curtains, was what came to Rafael’s mind. Not just the fabrics – splendid, yes, but sombre – but also the lack of shape. She was dressed in the old-fashioned, softer-lined English style – no Spanish farthingale – and on her thin frame the clothes were shapeless.
She asked him something and, small though she was, her voice had no squeakiness to it; it was unexpectedly deep. And officious though her approach might have been, there was no unpleasantness in her manner. She’d sounded straightforward, no nonsense, which gave him some confidence. He greeted her and stated his name, hoping he wouldn’t have to say much more. Surprisingly, she came back at him in what he recognised as Aragonese: ‘You’re Spanish?’
An English speaker of a Spanish language! He confirmed that he was indeed Spanish.
‘Welcome to England,’ she said in Aragonese, touchingly serious, which made him smile, although nothing similar came back from her. He wondered at her connection with Spain – she was so very English-looking, English-dressed, but her accent had been good and there’d been a naturalness in how she’d spoken. Not like an English person trying a few words of Spanish. Surely she did have some connection with Spain. She asked him something else but he didn’t grasp it – he couldn’t speak Aragonese. ‘Castilian?’ he asked her; he’d be able to converse in Castilian.
She shook her head, regretful. ‘French?’
No.
‘Latin?’
He could read Latin but had never been able to speak it.
In English, she said, ‘I speak French to my husband – he understands French – and he speaks Castilian to me, because I understand a little.’ She gave an exasperated roll of her eyes but, Rafael detected, she was proud of their complicated arrangement. She looked expectantly at him; he considered how best to convey what he was up to.
‘For the sun,’ he said in Castilian, gesturing – pointlessly – at the sky, then remembering the vertical dial on the gallery wall and indicating that instead. ‘For the queen, from the prince.’
‘Ah.’ Interest – approval – shone in her eyes.
Then came an interruption: a second lady emerging from that same doorway. This lady was younger, prettier, altogether lighter, a breath of fresh air, and she was all a-bustle, giving the impression that she’d been following the first lady and failed to keep up: ‘Oh!’ – found you. She collected herself, exhaled hugely, a hand pressed to her breastbone to steady her heart, and then she dropped into a deep curtsey.
Rafael understood at once. His own heart halted and restarted with a bang, his blood dropped away then beat back into his ears. Time had taken a wrong turning and was away before he could retrieve it and make good; he’d never, ever be able to make this good. He couldn’t believe what he’d done. He simply couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t have done it: no one could, no one, not even a child. Especially not a child: a child would have had an instinct. No one but he could have been so stupid. What exactly was it that he’d missed? He’d