Suzannah Dunn - The Queen’s Sorrow

As they made their way towards the bench, Rafael saw the servant-woman and her son in the glow from a west-facing window. She seemed at first to see him, but no: her gaze merely touched his face before moving onwards unchanged. She was whispering, he saw, to her son. No one in the room was talking, but she’d said something fast and low, a mere scrap of words. She mimicked inexpressiveness but there was tension in her face. No smile now. The little boy’s eyes were turned to hers. Rafael recognised that manner of hers, both distracted and emphatic: parental, again. She’d been making something clear: I told you …; or, Didn’t I ask you …

Over the next few days, he found himself half-looking for her, because hers was one of the few faces he recognised in the household and the only one that didn’t seem flummoxed to see him. He’d find himself checking whether she was around, and feeling safer – more at home – if she was.

In those initial few days, he was kept busy learning the ropes. First to learn was the journey to and from the palace, which proved easy enough. Then, at the palace, a place had to be found for him and Antonio to work. For this most basic of requirements to be taken seriously, he had to make various appointments with relevant personnel who would then turn out not to be the relevant personnel after all. In the meantime, they had to pass their time there in Hall with their fellow countrymen who were keeping themselves busy playing cards, making music and – those who could – writing home.

His other priorities were how to send letters home and how to get his laundry done. The first was being organised, he discovered, by the Spanish office that had been set up at the palace, although of course he didn’t yet know how reliable they’d be. But the laundry remained a mystery. Having little English and even less confidence in it, he had to learn at the Kitsons’ by watching, and that was how, on the first evening, he’d discovered where jugs and bowls of clean water were to be had. Where this water came from, he didn’t know. There was no well in either the front courtyard or the rear; and although there was a very small walled garden adjoining the rear, south-west-facing courtyard, he hadn’t seen anyone bringing a bucket in from there. He passed two wells in the streets close to the house on his way to and from the river, and he decided these were the sources, although he’d not seen anyone struggling into the house with containers. He could now wash himself – and be shaved at the palace by a Spanish barber – but the problem was his shirts. Even if he could properly wash them in a little bowl, where would he then dry them? His – and Antonio’s – room was so tiny that they couldn’t even air the layers of clothes that were dampened every day by the rain, and Rafael was conscious of smelling like a wet dog.

His supply of clean shirts dwindled: the need for fresh ones would soon be pressing. Despite increased vigilance, he saw no evidence in the house of any laundry. No hanging of it in the courtyards or from windows (and of course not, in this weather). Nor any sign of an actual laundry room: no wafts of steam, and none of those fragrances of hot liquid soap and boiled herbs. His searches – admittedly tentative, because he couldn’t go barging down private-looking corridors or open doors – led nowhere. And Antonio was no use: he referred cryptically to an arrangement at court, the implication being that it was a personal one. He’d charmed someone to take in his washing.

Rafael could’ve made a stab at asking the steward if he’d known how to ask for him, but he hadn’t managed to catch his name and he didn’t know the English for ‘Steward’. And every dinnertime for several days running, to his dismay, the opportunity to waylay the man would somehow disappear. So, in the end, he was reduced to hanging around at the foot of his staircase or near the kitchen, looking lost and hopeful: hoping that someone would step in and fetch the man in charge. He hated having to do it, this wide-eyed helplessness. The staff were too busy to notice him, or that’s how they liked to appear. Busy or not, they were clearly reluctant to engage with him. And then, at last, after perhaps a half-hour of his hanging around, someone did fetch Mr Kitson’s secretary, who spoke Italian. As if Italian could substitute. They were bogged down in language difficulties immediately, but just as he was about to try to mime the washing of his shirt, the pale woman approached them. The woman who’d smiled at him and – thank God – here she was, doing it again, looking attentive and keen to help, unlike everyone else. Rafael said, ‘Madam, please,’ and then asked her in his own language even though there was no chance of the actual words being understood: Was there a laundry in the house? Then the inevitable mime: he plucked at his shirt, before vigorously rubbing his hands together.

‘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.