The Winter Queen. Amanda McCabe

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СКАЧАТЬ parted the curtains of the litter, peering out at the passing landscape. Her parents’ desperation to send her away was so great that they had launched her out into the world as soon as the Queen’s letter had arrived, in the very midst of winter. The world beyond the narrow, frost-rutted roadway was one of bare, skeleton-like trees stretching bony branches towards a steel-gray sky. Thankfully, it was not snowing now, but drifts of white lay along the roadside in lumpy banks.

      A sharp wind whistled through the bare trees, bitterly chilling. Rosamund’s escorts—armed guards on horseback, and her maid Jane in the baggage cart—huddled silently in their cloaks. She had not heard a single word since they had stopped at an inn last night, and likely all would be silent until they at last made it to London.

      London. It seemed an impossible goal. The palace at Whitehall, with its warm fireplaces, was surely just a dream, as the cozy inn had been. The only reality was this jolting, jarring road, the mud, the never-ending cold that bit through her fur-lined cloak and woollen gown as if they were tissue.

      Rosamund felt the hollow sadness of loneliness as she stared out at the bleak day. She had lost her parents and home, lost Richard and the love she had thought they shared. She had no one, and was faced with making a new life for herself in a place she knew so little of. A place where she could not fail, for fear she would never be allowed home again.

      She drew in a deep breath of the frosty air, feeling its bracing cold stiffen her shoulders and bear her up. She was a Ramsay, and Ramsays did not fail! They had survived the vicissitudes of five Tudor monarchs thus far, and had escaped unscathed from them all, with a title and fine estate to show for it. Surely she, Rosamund, could make her way through the Queen’s Court without getting herself into more trouble?

      Perhaps Richard would soon come to her rescue, prove his love to her. They just needed a plan to persuade her parents he was a worthy match.

      Rosamund leaned slightly out of the litter, peering back at the cart rumbling along behind her. Jane sat perched among the trunks and cases, and she looked distinctly grey and queasy. It had been hours since they had left the inn, and Rosamund herself felt stiff and sore, even tucked up among the fur robes and cushions. Feeling suddenly wretched and selfish, she gestured to the captain of the guard that they should stop for a moment.

      Jane hurried over to help her alight. ‘Oh, my lady!’ she gasped, fussing with Rosamund’s white-wool cloak and gloves. ‘You look frozen through. This is not a fit time for humans to be out and about, and no doubt about it!’

      ‘It is quite all right, Jane,’ Rosamund said soothingly. ‘We will soon be in London, and surely no one can keep a warmer household or finer table than the Queen? Just think of it—roaring fires. Roasted meats, wine and sweets. Clean bedclothes and thick curtains.’

      Jane sighed. ‘If we only live to see it all, my lady. Winter is a terrible thing indeed. I don’t remember ever seeing a colder one.’

      Rosamund left the maid straightening the litter’s cushions and headed into the thick growth of trees at the side of the road. She told Jane she needed to use the necessary, but in truth she really needed a moment alone, a moment of quiet, to stand on solid ground and be away from the constant sway of the hated litter.

      She almost regretted venturing away from the road, as her boots sank into the slushy snow-drifts and slid across frozen puddles. The trees were bare and grey, but so closely grown she soon could not see her party at all. The branches seemed to close around her like the magical thicket of a fairy tale, a new and strange world where she was alone in truth. And there were no valiant knights to ride to her rescue.

      Rosamund eased back her hood, shaking her silvery-blonde hair free of its knitted caul. It fell in a heavy mantle over her shoulders, blown by the cold wind. She turned her face up to the sky, to the swirling grey clouds. Soon enough, the crowds and clamour of London would shut out this blessed silence. She would surely not even be able to hear her own thoughts there, let alone the shriek of the wind, the rattle of the naked branches.

      The laughter.

      The laughter? Rosamund frowned, listening intently. Had she stepped into a story indeed, a tale of fairies and forest sprites? Aye, there it was again, the unmistakable sound of laughter and voices. Human voices too, not fairies or the whine of the winter wind. Still feeling under an enchanted spell, she followed the trail of that merry, enticing sound.

      She emerged from the woods into a clearing, suddenly facing a scene from another world, another life. There was a frozen pond, a rough circle of shimmering, silver ice. On its banks crackled a bonfire, snapping red-gold flames that sent plumes of fragrant smoke into the sky and reached enticing tendrils of heat toward Rosamund’s chilled cheeks.

      There were people, four of them, gathered around the fire—two men and two ladies, clad in rich velvets and furs. They laughed and chattered in the glow of the fire, sipping goblets of wine and roasting skewers of meat in the flames. And out in the very centre of that frozen pond was another man, gliding in lazy, looping circles.

      Rosamund stared in utter astonishment as he twirled in a graceful, powerful arc, his lean body, sheathed only in a black, velvet doublet and leather breeches, spinning faster and faster. He was a dark blur on that shining ice, swifter than any human eye could follow. As she watched, mesmerised, his spin slowed until he stood perfectly still, a winter god on the ice.

      The day too grew still; the cold, blowing wind and scudding clouds held suspended around that one man.

      ‘Anton!’ one of the ladies called, clapping her gloved hands. ‘That was astounding.’

      The man on the ice gave an elaborate bow before launching himself into a backward spin, a lazy meander towards the shore.

      ‘Aye, Anton is astounding,’ the other man, the one by the fire, said. His voice was heavy with some Slavic accent. ‘An astounding peacock who must show off his gaudy feathers for the ladies.’

      The skater—Anton?—laughed as he reached the snowy banks. He sat down on a fallen log to unstrap his skates, an inky-dark lock of hair falling over his brow.

      ‘I believe I detect a note of envy, Johan,’ he said, his deep voice edged with the lilting music of that same strange, northern accent. He was not even out of breath after his great feats on the ice.

      Johan snorted derisively. ‘Envy of your monkeyish antics on skates? I should say not!’

      ‘Oh, I am quite sure Anton is adroit at far more than skating,’ one of the ladies cooed. She filled a goblet with wine and took it over to Anton, her fine velvet skirts swaying. She was tall and strikingly lovely, with dark-red hair against the white of the snow. ‘Is that not so?’

      ‘In Stockholm a gentleman never contradicts a lady, Lady Essex,’ he said, rising from the log to take her proffered goblet, smiling at her over its gilded rim.

      ‘What else do they do in Stockholm?’ she asked, a flirtatious note in her voice.

      Anton laughed, his head tipped back to drink deeply of the wine. As he turned towards her, Rosamund had a clear view of him and she had to admit he was handsome indeed. Not quite a peacock—he was too plainly dressed for that, and he wore no jewels but a single pearl-drop in one ear. And not the same as Richard, who had a blond, ruddy, muscular Englishness. But undeniably, exotically, handsome.

      He was on the tall side, and whipcord lean, no doubt from all that spinning on the ice. His hair was black as a raven’s wing, falling around his face and over the high collar of his СКАЧАТЬ