The Kingdom of Little Wounds (6 page)

“Something’s wrong with that Negresse,” say one lady, but every body ignore me be cause no body want to look away from Sophia. I bite my lip hard so no laughing come out. And true, no thing funny for Princess Sophia, but what nurse can watch doctors with out a laugh?

Now come the sound of leaves that fall in autumn. This be silk and gold, rubbing it self as the ladies and men go to they knees.

The Queen and the King walk in. Their gray hair down they half-dressed backs, their feet in velvet shoes.

King Christian stand like a bullock stunned, that girl were his treasure.

Queen Isabel rush to the bed. She lose one shoe. “My baby!” she shout, and then she hold her breath. There be no more sound than the
drip-drip-driiiip
of Sophia in the basin, slowing down be cause the Princess all most gone.

The thick-necked guard leads the way. We pass through a series of rooms like my cell, rectangles empty but for drifts of whitewash that have flaked to their floors. White dust clings to my shoes, my skirts, my nostrils; I cough. Filtered through that dust, the air smells sour, and I think these must be the palace grain bins, depleted for the celebration that perhaps only now is quieting in the great hall and courtyards. I imagine lords and ladies tottering drunkenly off to bed, Swedish knights sleeping where they fall, hordes of the poor outside the gates gone ecstatic over the scraps and sauce-sloppy bread saved as what the nobles call their charity.

The guard pulls open a heavy door and lifts a tapestry flap behind it. I think,
Here is my fate.
I step inside, feeling each little jostle of movement in my bones.

Fate wears a handsome face, being a dark man with light eyes and white teeth, a neat beard, black curls, black velvet clothes, an elaborate sword hilt, and an enormous red ruby on his first finger. I know him. I have gazed after him before, across courtyards and corridors; all the palace girls have. He is the finest fellow at court, murky and brooding and as unapproachable as a prince. Handsome, that is, in his own way; on another man, his face might be too narrow, his nose too long, his eyes too hooded. But on him, perfection.

He is Nicolas Bullen af Bon. Steward of the Queen’s household for the last year or so, appointed as a favor (I believe) to someone in the ranks of the King’s household (it being tradition that each half of the royal couple keeps a separate staff); lord of lands on one of the western green islands and owner of a castle called Aftenslund; a great man known for his ambition to be greater.

He sits now at a table heaped with papers in the dim light of an oil candle. His teeth look as long and sharp as a wolf’s, and they gleam like the pearl in his ear.

I have never trusted anyone with bright white teeth.

“So,” he says, “here is a surprising turn of events. Who likes a surprise?”

I cannot speak. I keep my eyes down and make a curtsy. It is all I can think to do.

“I,” says Lord Nicolas, crumpling a page with one elbow, “never have favored surprises myself. I prefer a good plan.”

He dismisses the pouch-necked guard and the door latch
thonk
s as it falls in place. I imagine the guard waiting just beyond, ready to drag me off to some worse dungeon where I might be tortured. Lord Nicolas has only to raise his voice to make it so. He gestures toward me,
Come here,
and adds, “Look at me.”

There is some relief in receiving an order, as now I know what to do. I use the servants’ trick of focusing on his chin, so it seems I’m attentive but still properly deferential. I notice a single gleam of silver among the dark hairs there.

“I must admit that surprises create opportunities,” Lord Nicolas comments, as if continuing a conversation. His mouth has already settled back into the more smoothly pleasant expression it wears around the court. “But they also disturb the best-laid arrangements.”

He lights another candle from the first; its spreading glow makes the room both smaller and larger, a storehouse of riches. What is not gilded is made of finest amber or glass, and the walls are hung with bright pictures and tapestries. He has an entire bowl of sugar cherries and lemons to himself. My own sugar cherry is growing sticky, melting between my breasts.

In the light, I feel him gazing at me a long time, know he’s seeing the same things in my face that the nobles see in all of my station when they bother to look: pale, tall, with big strong bones for working and a wide brow for . . . not thinking, exactly, but remembering. Remembering their commands and our conquest, for while their blood bears the dark stamp of France, ours is said to belong to witches expelled from Norway in a long-ago time of pagans. We have a natural inclination to labor and a feel for the sea, since we lived long in those boats and (some say) mated with the mermaids who guided us to these islands of warm-water springs and floating yellow stone.

I may be a scrawny example now, but I carry the history as well as anyone else can manage.

All of this Lord Nicolas sees in me, and the pricked fingers and strained eyes that are a seamstress’s badges of office. I think he guesses everything about me, down to the smell of the lanolin I rub into my hands and the flavor of parts I keep hidden.

Lord Nicolas is handsome and powerful and knowing and rich. He could make a woman feel pleasured and safe. And that woman would be a fool.

“Ava Mariasdatter Bingen,” he says, and so he knows my name. “You have served in the Queen’s household for how long?”

“Almost a year, my lord. Health to your soul.” I keep my eyes on that single gray hair on his chin. “I sew her personal linens,” I add unnecessarily, for of course he already knows what matters. I can’t stop myself from chattering: “I’ve never worked on a dress before. I don’t know why the Countess chose me to repair the Queen’s bodice.” (The Countess, far paler even than the sturdy descendants of Norway.) “And such a thing as tonight has never happened with me. I haven’t even stuck a lady with a pin when attaching her ruff; I cannot explain it” — can’t blame Isabel for moving, can’t give any excuse but my own awkwardness —“but I assure you the injury was unintended . . .”

I don’t mention the missing spectacles, which would make me look careless.

He lifts a hand to stop me. “Women have been dismissed from royal service for less.”

I let my eyes flick upward again. Are we talking only of dismissal? But then, losing my position might be worse than being put to death; my family would be shamed once again, and I would lose my hope of independence. Who would hire a seamstress who’s stabbed the Queen? Only the same nonexistent person who would marry a virgin who miscarried on the church
plads.

I hear a ticking somewhere in the room; Nicolas Bullen must have a clock.

“My lord.” I squeeze the words around the lump in my throat. “I promise you — I meant no betrayal. That is, I have always worked to the Queen’s trust. I have never —” I almost wish he would torture me; I think my body might take the assault better than my emotions.

Nicolas Bullen’s hand silences me again. Long fingers for a man his size, I notice; they’d look even longer if he wore a smaller ring. I imagine that hand closing around my throat, squeezing the words back into my belly. I realize I am stretching my neck as if inviting him to do this. As if I deserve punishment.

Lord Nicolas smiles. His sharp teeth shine. He, too, sees an invitation in my gesture; he thinks I’m trying to tempt him. In this age of ruffs and high collars, bare necks are tempting spots. Anyway, I would never refuse — it would be unwise . . . He has such
power.

And so it is not surprising that I find myself on the floor of that little room, with Lord Nicolas’s courtly cloak spread around him to a pool of black velvet just beyond my russet skirts. Me on my knees, he on his haunches, and his fingers wormed in beneath my cap to my hair. The tines of his ring yank out a strand. We are kissing, after a fashion. His tongue licks at my tongue, and mine tries to respond without choking. Does he think this is pleasurable? Does he think I’ll melt at these brutal kisses? It feels as if he’s exploring me, trying to find the secret nooks inside my head. His perfume is so strong my nose burns. His fingertips plug my ears, so I hear nothing but the rush of my own heart, and I clench my ribs to make that tattling organ slow.

Meanwhile his breath — both sulfurous and sweet, he’s been chewing something like coriander — passes down into my lungs and out again through my nose, my mouth, into his nose and mouth. We are breathing together. I close my eyes, and for a moment I tell myself that it is the embrace of which young girls dream. With a nobleman. Perhaps this is all he wants from me; perhaps I can give myself to save myself. Perhaps it is only the memory of Jacob that prevents me from succumbing willingly . . .

Because I am myself and have learned fear from experience, the thought of salvation quickly turns to anxiety. Surely he expects more than a kiss. He is exacting a penance, after all; I am here because I pricked the Queen and made her bleed. No punishment stops with a kiss.

Yes, I am right. He takes my hand. I think I know what he wants, and I touch his chest, the slick prickles of gold embroidery. He shifts, and the chest is out of reach.

He stops the clumsy kissing to wrestle my hand inside his codpiece.

For a moment I recoil at the heat, the coarse hair. But Lord Nicolas shifts, deftly trapping my hand before it can leave his breeches. He clears his throat and licks his wicked white teeth and stares at me with expectation.

What I must do now is unmistakable. I will be lucky if this is all.

I hold my breath to trap all my courage inside. Then I work my way deeper into the codpiece.

I find that Lord Nicolas is considerably smaller than Jacob Lille, which seems strange; a lord should be grander in all things. He is also limp within all that stiff cloth — like a bird fallen from its nest into a patch of brambles, lost and in need of solace; or a dead herring on a bed of dried eel weed, waiting for salt.

I curl my fingers against it, then around.

Thus I commit a sin. A worse sin, the priests would say, than the ordinary conversation between man and woman, because the goal of this act is pleasure only, not procreation, and it wastes the seed. But in this age of Italian Fire, the nobility is known for substituting new actions for the eternal one. And I know the apron class prefers this, as it does not lead to a baby that will mean a life in the streets and, most likely, a speedy death.

I can’t help it, I am disgusted. Where once I thrilled to touch linens that would touch royal flesh, or reached out surreptitiously to brush a passing noble, now I want to scrub myself rather than continue what I’m doing. A gesture that echoes my night with Jacob — and that is why it upsets me. It is a betrayal of love. It is a duty of court. It is the act of a whore.

I try to imagine myself caught up in a fairy spell, with this another trial before a grand reward. I describe Lord Nicolas’s little bird to myself:
yeasty, sticky, soft,
like nothing else on this night of spun-sugar treats. I try to make it harmless.

As if responding to my unspoken words, the little bird flutters. It grows firmer.

And then I stop. I wrench my wrist from his clothes and pull vehemently away, though this might mean a blow across the face for me. I am much more afraid of what I’ve already felt.

I felt the softness of skin, yes. The sponginess of flesh not yet fully erect. And some lumps wiggling beneath that skin, like eggs, or insects burrowed deep.

My palms scrub at my skirt, trying to wipe all trace of him onto my clothes.

Lord Nicolas grabs both of my hands.

“Don’t be a goose,” he says. “There’s nothing for you to fear
there.
” When I shudder, he unlaces his codpiece, pushes himself into the light, and makes me watch while he counts off: “Emerald,” flicking one of those lumps. “Turquoise. Ruby.” Flick, flick. “Pearl, and another turquoise, and another . . .” Under his own fingers, naming jewels, he grows harder than my touch managed to make him.

Am I to believe that Lord Nicolas uses his manhood as a purse? The nobility are always doing mysterious things, but this defies any kind of sense. “Sir — why?”

He takes his hands away, gazes down as if he can see jewels on the outside, as if they adorn a gorgeous golden scepter. He thinks himself very fine, indeed. “A courtier should carry wealth on his person as a sign of his position. And in case called upon to, say, ransom a captured king or save a fair lady from ravishment.”

He sounds so pleased that I think he might be telling the truth, that this is his logic and these are the contents of his manhood. Why not believe?

I put my fingers there again. I am a practical girl, after all, and a curious one; my father is a scholar in his way. I feel what I think must be the scars of stitches, tiny darts in skin that had to stretch to accommodate these foreign lumps. I bend close and think I see them, these scars.

It’s dizzying to contemplate. A king’s ransom in jewels, hidden in the same organ with which he piddles out an evening’s worth of water and wine. And I am holding all that wealth in my hand.