The Kingdom of Little Wounds (11 page)

King Christian stands, with mouth downturned, and unsheathes his sword. His wife’s pale lips already tremble. Duke Magnus looks up with interest at last. Christian imagines that, somewhere down-table (as appropriate to his rank as a plain lord), Nicolas Bullen watches too.

The ceremonial sword plunges into the pie, releasing a spill of gray-and-brown innards. It is a clean cut; Christian has done well.

Nonetheless, the diners burst into tears. Such is the custom; at last it is time for noise. The trumpets play an ugly note. The Queen falls into a faint, to dream that it is she who has died, in a bubble of silver joy, instead of her daughter.

Once more, Christian brushes away the sense of dark-winged doom. Looking afar for the glow of Nicolas’s ruby ring, he sits so his servants may distribute the pie. He is rewarded, or so he believes, with a red pulse down-table, heartbeat quick, heartlike in hue.

Christian’s tears flow the more richly.

L
ATE at night, the King calls his councillors and favorites to his inner chamber, with its plainer furnishings and more intimate setting, its nook inside the fireplace for hiding in case of invasion. Nicolas Bullen is among these men.

Nicolas.
He dares to speak although new to the gathering.

“Your Majesty, it was a magnificent ceremony,” he says, a black feather bobbing in his hat. “Your daughter has twice united the kingdom — first with her marriage, then with this day.”

Christian smiles, weak with pleasure, as he is each time he hears that voice.

The others wish they had Nicolas’s gift of tongue. They embroider the pretty idea:
The Perished Lily will forever bloom . . . The Virgin Wife will bear much fruit . . .
The flower will become the seed . . . The seed will . . . will . . .

Nicolas listens with an amused smile on his red lips, but he does not contribute again. The black feather blows softly in the current of the others’ speech.

Christian stops the words with a sudden gesture. “Enough! Are you trying to bury the girl again?”

The favorites lower their eyes and bow. Their words have tangled them up in one another. Now they resolve both to hate Nicolas and to curry his favor, since he clearly has the King’s.

Christian secretly wishes for silence but wonders aloud what has become of the search for Sophia’s poisoner. He reminds himself to be severe and awe inspiring; he turns to Sir Georg Oline, his State Secretary and commander of an army of spies. “Have you found any . . . any culprits?”

Sir Georg hesitates, and the favorites tense. Who will be blamed? A Lutheran? One of the country’s few Jews? Or perhaps some cousin with a tenuous but plausible claim to succession — someone who should be removed for the health of the court anyway?

Sir Georg attempts to be sly and to show his erudition and industry at the same time. “There may be more than one assassin at work, Your Majesty. If there is one poisoner, there must also be conspirators. A hive of bees with fatal honey, as it were. We will smoke out them all.”

The others nod (Nicolas’s feather!), although several suspect the Secretary is merely trying to make himself important. He may have his eye on a lordship; he may want to become a baron or a count.

Now every individual’s activities come in for examination: failure to sink all the way to the floor in a curtsy, presentation of a bill for what should have been a gift, unaccountable minutes spent traveling between banquet table and privy stool. Names are put forth, blown on, rubbed up, tossed into the air. Some are among the most prominent at court, others so obscure that the King has to be reminded who they are. “Your second cousin, now in Lithuania,” “A count of Norway,” or “The third wife of your great-uncle, just returned from the green islands.”

Christian mulls the possibilities, bats them back at his advisers, lets them fall. He is a cat bored with an everlasting tangle of yarn, exhausted with suppressing his true emotions. Grief, longing, grief again. He would like nothing so much as to sleep, though sleep comes hard in the growing season of light, and the clock that Lord Nicolas just gave him (with the newly innovated second hand that cuts time into ever-smaller portions) shows two in the morning. He thinks of mad Duke Magnus, his onetime son-in-law, galloping through the forest with an arrow aimed at a wide-eyed stag. Christian’s belly and bowels ache with his old sickness.

Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.
Talk, talk, talk.

“Enough!” he cries at last.

Pushing all his energy into limbs that have cramped from too much sitting, Christian stands. “Arrest all of them,” he says. “All within reach. We’ll sort out guilt later.”

Sir Georg’s jaw sags. Not even the wildest ambition could have foreseen such a command or would want truly to follow it. He looks around the chamber as if to beg for help, but no one will look up from the floor — no one except Lord Nicolas, who gazes at a dark window, and the ever-present historian, whose only purpose at court is to record, never to act, and who usually isn’t seen at all. This tall, bony person meets Sir Georg’s eyes for just a moment, notes the anxious wrinkles around them and the contracted pupils at center, and returns to his tablet.

“Your Majesty,” Sir Georg begins, “would some not find it prudent —”

But Christian is done with discussion; he stands. His attention is caught once again by that black feather. “Nicolas,” he says haphazardly, “have my barge prepared. I will go out to Saint Peter’s to pray among the tombs.”

That island monastery floating in the bay is one of few places a king might find true peace. “And, Nicolas, you will accompany me.” This much, surely, Christian can allow himself. They will pray together on their knees.

Lord Nicolas smiles. “As you command, Your Majesty.”

I have been disappointed to discover that the life of a court — dazzling as it is with jewels, soft with velvet, gleaming with gold wires — is so often ugly. Among the apron wearers, especially, there is a hunger that cannot be satisfied in the kitchens and dining halls.

The palace teaches us all to want more than we can ever have. A little wealth, a bit of luxury, some measure of happiness such as the poets describe in their sonnets or the actors in their plays. We do foolish things to satisfy a fraction of our desire: We pilfer a sweetmeat here, a scrap of silk there — I once took a piece as big as my hand, to stroke at night while trying to fall asleep; it in turn was stolen from me the next night. We have relations with nobles who offer little more than the fleeting feel of a jewel beneath the hand or a case of Italian Fire. We labor till we lose our eyesight in fine work, our fingers in rough.

When my father told me, “You must do your best,” all of these facts were contained in his simple words.

My next interview with Lord Nicolas takes place in the afternoon. I give him my obedience in the same manner as before, kneeling by the desk in the casemates where food and miscreants are stored and marveling again at how much wealth I can hold in my hand: a lord and his jewels, a king’s ransom. Enough to buy a house and shop in some nice district or to start a new life in a foreign land.

I force my mind to focus on the order in which he identified his jewels: emerald, turquoise, ruby, pearl, turquoise . . . thrilling to me, and some compensation for the act I reluctantly perform; but to him, guardians against disease and poison. I know that amber is believed to cure almost every illness, from a cold to the pains of teething; rubies are for strength and help the wearer avoid resentment when caring for others. Emeralds attract love. Pearls bring good luck or bad, depending on how willing the oyster was to give up his treasure.

I count the bumps with my fingers, trying to think what good each one might bring me — that emerald might draw Jacob back or grant me some other love; that pearl might forgive and bestow something wonderful . . . But if we all make our own luck, as my mother used to insist, I will need to please Nicolas in some other way. My wrist is growing tired.

I do wish that, like a story’s noble seducer, he might think to offer me some wine, or perhaps a lump of cake to remove the bitter taste that being with him leaves in my mouth. A little coin to add to my future. Of course, such a thing would make me a true whore rather than a member of the angel army.

So I keep at my task. Imagining what wonders lie beneath his thready scars and how they might make the refrain to a melancholy song (
O! for she was a dutiful girl . . . Ruby, turquoise, emerald, and pearl . . .
), I use my fingertips to tickle each jewel in the order that my mind rehearses it.

But Nicolas stops me, slapping my hand away. “Enough. Your skills are not up to the task tonight.”

I draw back as if he’s stung me. The little bird pecks hard.

“Alors.”
Nicolas tucks himself into his breeches. He is in a poor temper. “On to our true business. Ava Mariasdatter, what news do you have for me today?”

“I . . .” Hesitate. I can’t tell him that the one rumor I have uncovered is about Nicolas himself, or rather his family. He once had a father and mother, as we all have done, and an older brother as well; but they died suddenly (some say waylaid by bandits, others a hunting accident) when Nicolas was sixteen. It was one of those surprises of which Nicolas says he is not fond — though there are a few who hint that these deaths were no surprise to him.

“You have nothing?” he barks.

“I have planted seeds,” I say humbly. “But it is difficult in my new position. The needlewomen are no longer my friends, and the nursemaids haven’t accepted me yet.”

“Excuses.”

“Yes, my lord, but —”

“But nothing. Come back here. I will show you what use a woman is if she can’t accomplish a subtle task.”

Dutifully I reach out my hand, thinking I am sure of what he wants now.

But I am wrong. He puts his fingers inside my cap and wraps them in my braids; he pulls my head into his lap and orders me to untie his breeches again. He wants my mouth.

He tells me what to do; it is humiliating. Which may be why he finds it exciting — my mouth on him, my tongue swirling around each jeweled boss as he tells me how to do it. I think even a prostitute would be reluctant. And he is harsh: not content with my hesitant movements, he begins to thrust himself at me, toward my throat, where he might choke me.

I am hot with the shame of corruption. I sweat, and I taste salt on him as well. Breath comes difficult.

Jacob Lille, Jacob Lille. Who smelled so sweetly of piney amber. For whom my heart still pines, the only man I ever kissed because I chose to, not because it was forced on me.

It is as if Lord Nicolas reads my thoughts and revels in them. He holds my hair tighter, thrusts himself deeper, faster. And then he grunts. He pulls himself out and spends over my fingers, ropes of seed that could sew up my future if he decided to loop them between my legs and give me a baby. At last I understand that he’s avoiding any chance I would manage this; once again, he gives me his handkerchief to wipe with, then throws it behind him to be burned. He won’t risk a bastard, not by me.

My whole body trembles; all of me would weep if I wasn’t sure it would get me further punishment.

“Good,” he says, adjusting himself so all fits as it should. “Now you know. Next time you will have information for me.” To prove he hasn’t forgotten my real purpose. And that he’ll use me this way again if I need bringing into line.

My knees crack as I struggle to my feet. “I promise.”

“Good girl,” he says, “or at least, going to be good.”

C
HRISTIAN V has established himself as a dutiful husband, yes. He has always treated conversation with his wife as the grave and vital matter that it is — but relations with Isabel cannot always be foremost in Christian’s mind (no more than the idea of relations with Nicolas, which creep into his thoughts unbidden).

Affairs of state are particularly thick just now: peace so recently achieved but an alliance broken with Sophia’s death, negotiations for a new whaling treaty with Scotland (now dominated by Calvinists, of whom Isabel disapproves), and a poisoner still to identify . . . if there even was a poisoner; Sir Georg has been vague on the matter, saying that the usual forms of questioning have yielded dubious results.

Privately, mulling it over in bed and at prayer and most of all upon his close-stool — where he relieves those crippling gastric pains while attended by the State Secretary, Sir Georg — Christian has come to the conviction that his daughter died of mere
Morbus.
In the wake of her death, all the children are suffering even more intensely than before. But he will not set the prisoners free, not yet, for it is good for the people to see the gestures of justice. All of his advisers agree.

And so on to think of other things kingly. More pleasant. The new observatorium, for example, which will offer an exciting prospect on the moon and stars . . . Abed, Christian lies in the darkness and imagines the sky. He imagines it so much and so hard that he almost drives away the unbidden picture of Nicolas’s face, his fingers, the pomander and the handkerchief and the feather and the ring . . . Nicolas, with white teeth shining — like stars, Christian reminds himself to think.
Like stars.
He launches himself upward into a fantastical night sky while around him the attendants snore on their pallets.