The Kingdom of Little Wounds (36 page)

I am a gift again, and for the second time to Isabel. She asked for me particular. Christina-Beatte said yes, take her, the Queen Apparent be too grand to need a nursey any way. I hope at least that Gorma cry about this, some body ought to mourn my years beside the cradle.

It is ten days since the last King die and Isabel were locked again inside her chamber. The place be all white as a sugar-treat. The Queen be whited too, as if she made of snow that fall in this place, or of lime, or of mandrake.

Now she has me sleep upon her floor and clean between her legs and fetch her drinks and a pudding made of blood that she dictate the recipe to me. She do not think it strange that I can write, or that I add some herbs from what I learned with poison-auntie, or that I do not speak.

“A vow of silence,” explain Isabel to her ladies, may be to her self as well. “This dear woman is very holy. Which is why I will trust no one else to touch me in this private way.”

And so I touch her, every way she wishes it. Her bed be the new cradle that I rock, and she the baby with demands just some what more ornate than others’. I know she be not strong enough to order any torment, may be she cannot endure her own as the baby in her belly kicks the hurt in to her brain. I keep her out of pain so much I can.

One day she call me Elinor.

When she does, this all most cause no shock. I think may be she wishing, may be she simply more mad than before. No body know for certain how mad she is, she ’ve been most strange since the King die. She have asked for Countess Elinor so much, may be she convince her self that Elinor have come be cause she be wanted. Elinor with a vow of silence, Elinor all most a nun. That Countess of torment!

And when she say
Elinor,
she smile some creases to her face and call me to her side.

“You have been so good to me in this illness,” she say, while hold my hand in hers that wear Nicolas’ ruby. “From now forward, you must share my bed.”

This be a great honor in the court, even the real Elinor did not sleep beside the Queen.

The ladies bob they knees and murmur
Countess.
This be the maddest thing of all, but I play the part of madness too. When I hear the word, I hoist my bosom to my chin like Countess did. I be Elinor reborn from pain.

I wonder could I be mad too, if I have caught delusion like a
Morbus
from the Queen. I am treated different. Differently from different, I am Elinor. Strange even to my self.

I get new clothes. They use to be the Queen her self’s and she has the ware house to open so they can be found. This is much more than one red silk skirt, finer and so many of it. Her seamstresses remake seams for I am short, and the dyers dye the garments black as most every other noble’s at this court. The clothing make my skin more dark. A shiny skirt, a bodice tight upon my belly that still carry a visitor inside. No apron. A hat like ladies wear, with black wings and a white veil that float behind. Slippers and pattens that
clack-clack
on the floor and make me tip.

When I wear so much, Nicolas who visit every day looks so as if he do not remember the time he were in me. He acts that I am the lady who should wear these clothes. I ask inside what this can mean, he all ways have some meaning.

May be he mad him self, I have all ways thought since he first come see the Countess in her chamber, for who could lie with such a woman and be sane? He come each day or two to discuss governing, and she lets him have his way in matters. While I fetch her pudding and a spoon to feed her with, she explain she must take care for her self, that she have wore out from seeing to others.

Nicolas bend to her hand and say that she is wise. He turn and say to me the Queen must have what ever she want to swallow or to touch. “For she knows best in what’s regarding her.”

I wonder what I know. I wonder if the lump in me will know its father. I wonder who that father be.

When Nicolas is here, the lump do not move, even though it have reached the age of start to shimmer. It stay just a lump. He were only in behind any way, but I have heard of babies made as such. My aunties told me, my father did it.

Poison-auntie say a baby made with love be impossible to chase away. Out of all the men, I did love Arthur, so I might quicken for him and not the others.

But the lump do not move for Arthur, either. It just sit inside while all the rest of me sinks low and try not to be seen.

Yes, Arthur once my lover follow the Count Nicolas every where. He will not look at me; he will not bow or greet me. I wonder will history write that Elinor Parfis did return from prison as a dark nursey with a big belly.

History! By Arthur Rantzen Grammaticus.

Now I write receipts, now I have ideas. I too have paper and some goosey pens, and all the ink I wish for. So some times I write these pages when the others sleep, and I hide them in my skirts. And another day I write commands for Isabel’s pudding, with clove to make blood strong.

That same time I write a draught I will not give her. A recipe from poison-auntie, some thing to end the matter up of who be father to the lump in me and when will it quicken. I think this must be reason for my mad change in to a pretend Countess, it is the one power ever granted me.

Here is what I need:

tansy

pennyroyal

catnip

rue

worm fern

hellebore

savory

sage

There would be more if I could know the names that they wear here. And if I found some ants that be not dead with winter, I would crush and mix them too, with the whiskers of a large cat. Instead I grind these plants in oils and waters as they require.

The air around goes bitter, I blow it at the fire.

“What are you doing, my dear?” ask the Queen in her bed. “I’d like for you to read to me.”

I hoist my bosom. I bring her wine and she ask no more for reading. She sleep like a chicken full of egg, she cluck but will not open eyes. She does not wish to wake now if not for her physicians.

I write for beakers and a brazier, and they come to me.

Finally I steep my pastes in water from a clean well, make it simmer to a sauce that clings to spoons and knifes I dip in it. I fear the portions, worry that the leaves be too dry for strength, that I should add more or less of some things. I make my best deductions.

Do the ladies shush that I ’m a witch? No, they think I follow Isabel’s command. Or may be they hope I do some evil, may be it ’s why I be here.

On the eve before the King is tombed, Candenzius come to see the Queen again. Count Nicolas have sent him, to check the progress of the heir inside. She yields to his big fingers, she holds my hand and that of Reventlow, squeeze till pain in us is dull and constant. She seem content.

“It will be a fine boy,” she says, though not suppose to speak. She mad enough think she is physician in full now and ready to judge her own condition. “He’ll save the Lunedie succession and the realm. You must assure the Count of this.”

On they side of sheets, Venslov and Candenzius wipe their hands. Young Dé do a wiggle. As if they did not hear, they confer about her urine and taste it for the salts and sweets.

The ladies of the corners sing the high headache songs the Queen likes at these times.

Before those three wise men go, Candenzius lead me to a corner where he bow, call me Countess, and slip in to my hand a jar of dull red paste he say I am to rub upon the Queen each night from this one forward. On her belly and her privacy.

“While the others sleep,” he say, and look as if he wish they be sleeping now. The ladies fuss on Isabel, they pretend they do not see us. “In secrecy. For the good of us all.”

I push hands together as in church, hide the red jar between. What more can I do? For I know there be no
good
with in this jar. It is not guaiac, it is not theriac, it is poison.

Candenzius is Nicolas’ creature now and have turn against Queen Isabel. He mean for me to kill the heir inside Isabel if not in fact her self. For I think this must be why Nicolas have allowed me to live these days as Elinor — if I refuse to do as this man say, I will be punish worse than the real Countess. More pain, more pain, more pain than ever I have thought.

And then that history will be writ done.

Death crawling through the womb, a terrible path. But terrible for me instead if I do n’t shove Isabel down it.

So that night, while all the others sleep, I gulp the drink that I have made and also fill my cleft with what the doctor gave to me. I take care that Isabel do not taste the brews or even smell them, what happen to her belly will be no done thing of mine. I will not poison her, though what I do now most like to mean death for me as well as the lump.

I drop the jars in to the jakes, they will fall in to canals and wash they selves from harm.

As I walk back full at both my ends and in between, I hope for death, to both my lump and my person. For there be no purpose in to stay alive if I am told to kill a Lunedie, and no purpose if I keep the size in my own belly.

So am I elevate to Countess just to die.

W
HEN Isabel first hears the cannons boom across the bay, her heart rattles like a clam in its shell.

It is the morning of her husband’s funeral. The cannons mean that Christian’s barge has reached the isle of Saint Peter’s and he is about to be entombed among his ancestors. There to decay in lush velvet darkness.

For as long as she can remember (fourteen days now), Isabel has been sitting in her white-draped bedchamber,
La Reine Blanche
by candlelight, lately trying to embroider something pretty for the baby. This is the sort of task she’s given in these days of confinement, a way to whittle off the few hours in which she doesn’t doze. She uses silver threads, couching them with silk on linen. But she has no talent for it, not anymore; her eyes are weak and her hands shake. She runs a needle through a bit of thick skin on a fingertip, and it sticks there without drawing blood.

Despite the smoky heat of hearth and braziers, Isabel feels cold. She wonders if she’s wet her chair.

Or perhaps she misses her husband. That could be possible. It is often sad when people die.

The cannons fire again. The windowpanes rattle and a picture crashes to the floor behind the white linen draping.

This time Isabel feels the rumble deep in her belly. Suddenly, for the first time in weeks, she is sick. It splatters the front of her white mourning gown and ruins the bit of nothing she was making for the heir.

A few of the ladies stir sleepily. The room is stenchful, and Isabel knows that something must be wrong; this is not her usual vomitus.

“Where is my Elinor?”

Morning.

I wake from pain. More pain than ever I could dream, though I were asleep for it.

I thought that I would die by now, but my belly’s hard beneath my hand and though I soaked my skirts it were n’t with blood, just every else liquid that might soak a skirt instead. And I still breathe.

The ladies finally now are wakened, for there come a crash of cannons on the bay that shake the room. They yawn and blink and sniff, it is disgusting what I ’ve done.

“The fire’s gone out,” say Baroness Reventlow, she never were much clever.

“How long were we asleep?” ask Lady Drin.

The Queen say, “Where is my Elinor? Someone must wipe me clean.”

I try to go, it be my instinct to obey. But I ’m a snail who can ’t escape his curl.

We forgot Isabel in a chair, or may be she heave her self there over night. She has a needle and a scrap in her hand, a candle at her side. She may have sewed all night. I see that even from my nook I ’ve soiled her gown, that fleece that wrap the thing that she is brooding. But they all think she wear her own sickness and that I be merely so asleep as they have been.

How can she be sick when I took her poison for myself?

“Countess,” say Lady Drin to me, and in a way that make me real, “will you not help the Dowager Queen as she asks?”

I curl the tighter, close my eyes. I am not Elinor, I am no nursey in this moment. I cannot stand. But Isabel calls again.

“Here, Elinor, come to me.” She throw her embroidery to the floor, it fall plop at my shoulder. “And you others, leave us. Elinor will care for me.”

My stomach clench and I try to not groan, but it escape me. No thing more do escape, though, be cause I am dry now inside. I try to rise, for if I am to live there be no other way to do so than in the service of the Queen and who command her.

I cannot rise.

So surprise, I do not tend to her, it is she who do for me. When all the rest have gone with sleep-blink eyes, she shove up from her chair, she have to twist to free of its arms, and come to pant above me.

“Elinor,” she say, all tender as to her own children, “how you are suffering. Get into bed and I will make you a posset.”

So suddenly, I feel the Lump inside me move. It turns as if it recognize at last the one who made it.