The King’s Daughter. Christie Dickason

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       My father, a smallish man, moved his mouth as if chewing and scratched his neck. He didn’t trouble himself to reply. He knows that his wits are quicker than those of most men. And he’s the king, so he can play the fool if he wants to.

       ‘Of course, there’s no harm if the wife is taller than her husband,’ de Bouillon added quickly.

       My mother is taller than my father.

       My father still said nothing. He was behaving well, for him.

       I rested my hands on the shelf of my farthingale and looked at the floor. The white ostrich plumes of my fan trembled in my fist. I felt a secret meaning in the duke’s words, which I did not yet grasp. I saw secret understanding gleam in other male eyes.

       I know that I would be married even if I had tiny eyes like a badger and the stumpy legs of those German hounds they send down the badger’s hole—which I don’t. I am the First Daughter of England. Whoever marries me marries England. ‘Handsome’ has nothing to do with it.

       The Dauphin of France, the most likely of my possible husbands according to my old nurse Mrs Hay, is a sulky, big-nosed boy not handsome enough for any purpose that I can think of. And yet his mother means to arrange a good marriage for him, in spite of his nose and absence of chin, like a trout—although I wrong the trout, which is a beautiful creature, all polished pewter-brown and speckled silver with the flush of dawn lining its gills. Also, its wits are sharper than his from what I hear. And its temper is less haughty, irritable and melancholy.

       Handsome enough for what, then? I glanced up.

       The duke’s eyes were now unlacing me, searching under the pearl-crusted silk for the swelling curves of my breasts. They lifted up my petticoats. They rested on my mouth. They dug through the layers of silk and linen looking for my most secret parts.

       ‘His highness will be pleased,’ he said.

       He didn’t care that I could read his eyes. With a private smile, he nodded to himself. She will do, said his eyes. With her amber hair and blue eyes, which are much larger than those of a badger, and long legs under those petticoats. She will do very well.

       For…

       The cold edge of understanding slid into my heart. My thoughts scattered. I struggled for breath like a fish cast-up on the rocks. But I could no longer blind myself to what I hadn’t wanted to see.

       I’m no looby. Of course I’ve known. I listen to gossip. I have observed dogs locked together and the noisy, terrifying breeding of horses. I can draw conclusions. But I never thought it might happen to me. To my flesh and skin and heart beat, to this thing that lives behind my eyes and breathes and fears and is me. Here is what I saw slithering through the duke’s eyes and let myself understand at last:

       I am no more than a greyhound bitch or a mare to be bred. Marriage is not mere exile and strangeness. Marriage means that I must serve my country with my body. On my wedding night, Spain, or France or some German state—as our father chooses—like a dog or stallion, will push its designated cock into my private parts to plant an infant treaty.

       Into that prim, closed mussel shell with its new amber fur, mysterious even to me. Closed like a book, even to me. Closed like a peach. Closed like a dark eye, still blind.

       That is what I am for. How will I bear it?

      PART ONE The Dangerous Daughter

       To make women learned and foxes tame has the same effect—to make them more cunning.

      James I & VI

       2

      5 NOVEMBER 1605—Combe Abbey, Warwickshire

      It was my fault, but the sun had to share the blame. Because of the sun, I had escaped alone. It had been a wet November in England. To judge by the purple-edged clouds hanging just above the horizon, the rain would return before nightfall. But just then, bright sunlight spilled down through holes torn in a bruised cloudy sky.

      Like contented hens, my three ladies had spread out their feathers on the river bank and settled in the patches of sun. Tipsy with unexpected sunlight and greedy for more, they agreed that I could come to no harm here on my guardian’s quiet estate.

      ‘I won’t go far,’ I promised. ‘Just a little way along the forest track across the ford.’

      I was learning. When I was younger, perhaps six years old, I could never grasp why I should always seem to do as I was told. Then I learned. When people trust you, they watch you less.

      My greyhound Trey splashed across the river Smite beside me as I balanced from stone to stone. Then he raced off after a squirrel and now barked furiously in the distance. My favourite toy spaniel, Belle, with her little short legs, had stayed behind on the riverbank.

      Under cover of the forest canopy, I stopped to look back. No one had followed me.

      Around me, the sun poked wavering holes through the wind-stirred trees and scattered spots of light across the ground like golden coins. I set off along a twisting leafy tunnel, through occasional pools of sunlight, to discover what adventure lay around the mysterious bend ahead of me. Under my leather riding boots the crumbly leaf mould of the forest track was sharp-smelling and black from rain in the night.

      I stopped in a clearing, took off my hat and held up my face and hands to the rare, wonderful heat. A day like this tempted me against my better judgement to fall in love with England after all.

      Something struck my hair lightly and slid down my chest—a yellow oak leaf, so bright and smooth that it seemedprecious and mysteriously purposeful. I picked it off my bodice and held it up to the sun. It was so perfect that it made me want to cry. I tucked it, smooth and cool, into my bodice to press later in a book.

      The voices and laughter of my attendants arrived only faintly on the wind from the far side of the river. I picked up a piece of fallen branch and threw it as far as I could. I listened to the satisfying crash. I wanted to shout with joy.

      Unwatched, unattended. A miracle of freedom.

      I spread my legs wide. Happily, I emptied my bladder like a mare under the cone of my skirts, felt the steamy warmth and smelled the friendly barnyard odour from my own body.

      Ever since my family came south, I had lived in a cage of eyes. Scotland had been far more free. In Edinburgh, while we waited to travel down to London, I rode almost every day with my older brother Henry, one of his hawks on his wrist. Accompanied only by a single groom and my greyhounds, Trey, Deuce, Quattro and Quince, we escaped together up onto the crags above the city under a sky of bright luminous grey. There, we stood side-by-side looking down on Edinburgh from the Cat Nick, a rocky point higher than the castle where our father had been born, higher even than the gulls. СКАЧАТЬ