The Queen’s Sorrow. Suzannah Dunn

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      That night, for the first time in a long time, he thought of Beatriz. She’d been his mother’s maid and she’d seemed to him, aged fifteen, to have been in the household for ever. But it had probably only been two or three years, and she was likely no older than he was. He’d never looked at her: that was the truth. Not like that. She was just there, his mother’s maid. Later, he puzzled how he’d missed that she was so extraordinary-looking with her pale face and amber eyes. Her hair – an abundance of tiny copper curls – he couldn’t have known about.

      One afternoon, while he was sitting in the garden, she approached him, coming up close as if curious. She bent to look into his eyes, and held the look. His worry was that he’d done something wrong and been discovered, because there was a knowingness to her expression. There was nothing for him to do but look back at her, and wait. He’d never before looked into her eyes – of course not – and he was intrigued by their colour. Not a colour that he’d ever seen in anyone else’s eyes, nor even imagined possible for eyes. Amber. Then she had her fingers in his hair, lifting it back off his forehead, away from his face, as if he had a fever. He was suddenly conscious of her laced-up bosom, so close. The easing of his hair from his scalp was causing him a physical stirring of the kind he’d felt before – no use pretending otherwise – but never in direct response to someone’s touch. But then she was gone, across the garden, back towards the house.

      He knew something. He was suddenly in possession of a knowledge, he felt sure, that was going to make all the difference to his life: a touch – the mere touch – of a woman was all that mattered, was reason enough to be alive.

      From now on, he hungered for her presence. That was all. He was sure she’d come to him again; he understood that was what she’d wanted him to know. And a couple of days later, she did come to him. In the garden, again. She stopped as if he’d called her to a halt, which he hadn’t. And gave him that same look, albeit from a distance. He was to come to her, then. Her stillness reminded him of childhood ‘catch’, the pause before the dash. His blood beat inside his ears, great giddying thwacks. When he reached her, he didn’t know what to do; he didn’t know what it was that he was supposed to do. Washed up, he was, there before her. Her face. The linen band of her cap, its edge proud beneath his fingertips; the tiniest drop down on to bare skin and along to the scarcely perceptible well of one temple. The rough silk of her eyebrows. Folds of her nose, one side and the other. Crest of her lips, its resistance. Then the lips themselves, the drag of them in the wake of his fingertip, his complete, so-slow circle. Her lips, their fingertip-breadth, as if made for this.

      They opened, those lips, just a little, just enough to catch his fingertip in her front teeth: the very lightest of bites, very smallest of threats. The serrated edges of her teeth and the unevenness of their set. And then her tongue, a burst of soft, wet warmth.

      He withdrew his fingertip, but only because he wanted to put his own tongue there against hers, just inside her lips. Her breath was hot, which he hadn’t anticipated, and musty. The tip of her tongue lifted his, and he was surprised by its strength.

      Fearing he was about to disgrace himself, he took his mouth from hers, but within a heartbeat he was prepared to take the risk and was back there. Suddenly, though, she pulled away, was on her way across the garden, and only then did he hear what she must have been listening for: footsteps. Into view came the kitchen boy with a handful of herbs. All Rafael could think was how he and Beatriz could continue. It was as urgent as if someone had stopped his breath.

      When he next encountered her in the garden, she did the stopping and looking but then moved off and he realised he was to follow her. She led him through the gate into the woods; and from then on, that was where they met. She’d take off her cap and shake free her wonderful hair. The cap was all she ever took off; he never saw her less than fully dressed. They’d lie down and kiss; she’d lie on him and he’d be all too aware of the pillow of her bosom. They lay pressed together, pushing against each other to get closer still. After a week or so of this, she did reach underneath herself to unlace him, but he assumed that she was merely making him more comfortable. She’d have known that he’d never dare do it himself in her company, so she was doing it for him, allowing it, tolerating his indecorous state.