Christie Dickason - The King’s Daughter

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Christie Dickason - The King’s Daughter» — ознакомительный отрывок электронной книги совершенно бесплатно, а после прочтения отрывка купить полную версию. В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Жанр: unrecognised, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

The King’s Daughter: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «The King’s Daughter»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

Superb historical novel of the Jacobean court, in which Princess Elizabeth strives to avoid becoming her father’s pawn in the royal marriage marketThe court of James I is a volatile place, with factions led by warring cousins Robert Cecil and Francis Bacon. Europe is seething with conflict between Protestants and Catholics. James sees himself as a grand peacemaker – and what better way to make his mark than to use his children in marriage negotiations?Into this court come Henry, Prince of Wales, and his sister Elizabeth. Their louche father is so distrusted that soon they are far more popular than he is: an impossibly dangerous position. Then Elizabeth is introduced to Frederick of Bohemia, Elector Palatine. He’s shy but they understand one another. She decides he will be her husband – but her parents change their minds. Brutally denied Henry’s support, how can Elizabeth forge her own future?At once a love story, a tale of international politics and a tremendous evocation of England at a time of great change, this is a landmark novel to thrill all lovers of fine historical fiction.

The King’s Daughter — читать онлайн ознакомительный отрывок

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «The King’s Daughter», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

‘What charming children!’ he boomed. Hardly pausing, he pinched my cheek. Then the burly, ugly man was gone, one arm thrown across my father’s somewhat lower shoulders. My father had not seemed even to see me. With a wild look over his shoulder, Henry followed them.

Baby Charles was removed by his nurse. Dismissed as a ‘charming child’, the First Daughter of England skulked back to her dusty temporary lodgings and waited crossly in the smell of damp plaster and rotting water weed from the river under her window.

I would be summoned soon, I told myself. I had not come all this way nor had all those new clothes made just to have my cheek pinched in passing.

I ate dinner alone with Anne in my lodgings, trying not to drop crumbs or make grease spots on the copper-coloured silk of my taffeta gown. It had taken me more than an hour to be dressed. I dared not change in case I was suddenly called. If I were to be called.

After eating, I leaned on the windowsill and counted wherries on the river. I watched the sun set over the marshes. Then I had to ask my maid to brush the pink plaster dust from my gown. Briefly, I played my lute, then put it back in its case again.

‘I don’t know why we troubled to come to London!’ I said.

‘But I would never have had this gown otherwise.’ Anne smoothed a blue silk flounce.

I need not have feared this visit, after all. The king had forgotten me.

Or he was slighting me. Teaching me yet again how little he valued me, and how easily I could be thrown aside. I listened to the faint sounds of music. Somewhere, other people were dancing. I had never seen courtiers dancing all together. I had never danced with anyone but Anne. I wanted to dance, here at court. I wondered what would happen if I were to present myself uninvited.

I rehearsed what I would say. Imagined the general amazement. My own dignity, as I walked fearlessly towards the king, head held high…

When my window began to grow opaque with darkness, I was at last summoned to the Great Presence Chamber. I gathered around me what was left of the first Daughter of England and set off.

I stopped just inside the door to stare like a gawk. I inhaled sharply and almost choked on the brew of civet, cinnamon, sandalwood, rose water and sweat. There were too many people jammed together even for such a vast space, all of them giving off a shimmering heat of urgency and importance. The air was thick with their voices and the rustling of silks and fine wools, the faint rasping of crusted gold and silver embroidery against jewelled buttons. Somewhere in the crowd, a lute and drum fought to be heard.

‘Wait here, your grace,’ whispered the page, who had accompanied me.

I looked about me.

In Scotland, even in the palaces, our ceilings were often built low to conserve the heat in the long, fierce, damp winters. We did not try to emulate God’s own space between mountains, above the sea. Here at Whitehall, the roof was so high that it vanished into the shadows above the torches, making me feel as small as an ant. At the far end of this hall, my father sat raised above his courtiers as if on an altar, with my uncle beside him holding a glass of wine.

Even while he spoke to my uncle, the king’s bright jackdaw eyes leapt and darted, searching for something of interest, pretending not to see me waiting at the door. His fingers explored the arm of his chair, his sleeves, his buttons. Dark and heavy against the surrounding finery, he wore one of his plain quilted velvet doublets, as if scorning the extravagant efforts of the courtiers to deck themselves for him.

The jackdaw eyes chose to see me. Though his doublet was plain, I saw the flash of unfamiliar gems on his fingers when he lifted his hand to summon me. When he angled his head, a white sun flared just above the brim of his hat.

I moved towards him, half-terrified, half-enraged. I kept my eyes down, not from modesty but from fear of having my thoughts and senses overwhelmed.

Life in Scotland had been all polished wood and leather, and the comfortable smells of wood smoke, dogs, damp, mice and horses. Even at Holyrood, everyone had lived bundled together, separated only by invisible lines of the respect owed to my parents. I had not altogether lied to Anne. My mother ate with her ladies, and then with Henry and me when we were there, in a cosy closet off her bed chamber. My father’s nobles leaned their elbows on the same table as he did. The king of Scotland was the chief among the other clan chiefs. He did not sit apart on an altar like an image of God.

I advanced through a parting sea of courtiers, feeling the stares hammer at me. Voices grew sibilant with ‘she’ and ‘princess’ and my name, ‘Elizabeth’. I heard a murmur, ‘…one of the Scottish brats.’

A lock of twisting red-gold hair had escaped from its pins. I would have blown it out of my eyes but refused to give that mocking English voice further reason to laugh at my uncouth Scottish behaviour.

Musk and candle smoke caught at the back of my throat. A miasma of sweat and oil of roses swirled around my head.

‘She…’ ‘She…’ hissed the sea.

The curve of my skirt met the line of my father’s altar plinth. The air was sickly sweet with wine vapours. I looked up. A young man sat on the dais at my father’s feet, with his arm draped over the king’s right knee.

Tonight, unlike the fearsome man who had brushed aside the wall-hanging in Coventry, my father overflowed with satisfaction and drunken arrogance. He seemed to tremble on the edge of bad behaviour, like a child overwrought by too many fine gifts.

‘Here’s my little Bessie!’ he shouted. ‘My country mouse has ventured out of her hole at last!’

A red flush began to climb my chest. I curtsied faultlessly.

‘Would she not make any father proud?’ he demanded at large. The rings on his fingers flashed. A knife blade of light from the diamond on his hat sliced across my vision. Another gust of wine fumes reached me on his breath.

Burning with humiliation, I put on my chilliest face and let the crudely exacted compliments rain down on me.

‘Is she not a pearl beyond price, monsewer?’ My father leaned forward and aimed this question past Wee Bobby Cecil, squarely between the eyes of a French-dressed envoy standing in the front rank of attending courtiers and foreign visitors.

The sight of the Secretary of State made my heart thump with guilty memories of Coventry.

‘No longer a child, after all!’ said my uncle, looking me up and down. ‘Not in the least.’

‘Come up here and sit by me, Bessie!’ The king waved a flashing hand. ‘Fetch the lassie a stool!’ he shouted. ‘Come on, Bessie! Don’t be shy. Come up and give your father a kiss!’ His voice hardened. ‘It may be your only chance to look down from up here! Come make the most of it!’

I climbed the steps and kissed him without recoiling from the wine fumes. I sat and held the glass of wine he forced into my hands, over the head of the young man lounging between us.

Straight-backed, I pretended to ignore the stares, so many eyes on me at the same time. A quick sideways glance met the considering hazel gaze of a dark-haired, narrow-jawed man with a thin mouth pulled down by discontent—Sir Francis Bacon, last seen nodding and smiling among the dignitaries on the scaffold in Paul’s Churchyard. I looked away and met the eyes of the young man at my father’s feet. Enemies everywhere.

Henry, the next king of England, should have been sitting with his father and uncle, in place of that smirking stranger. Henry who was not there at all.

I snatched a look at the ‘monsewer’ who had been challenged by my father. He was now studying me, his head tilted to the man beside him. Then he leaned to the other side and murmured to Cecil.

Читать дальше
Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «The King’s Daughter»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «The King’s Daughter» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.


Отзывы о книге «The King’s Daughter»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «The King’s Daughter» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.

x