The Queen's Sorrow Read Online Free Page A

too would hide it, wouldn’t they, so there’d be no knowing. He hadn’t anticipated feeling like this. He’d often been away from home – sometimes for a couple of weeks – and had never enjoyed it, but nothing had prepared him for this. And because he hadn’t anticipated it, he felt tripped up, tricked by it, taken unawares and thereby enslaved by it. He couldn’t see how he’d get from under it, or how he was going to cope, to continue, from day to day. Common sense told him that he would, that it would lessen, but he didn’t believe it. This homesickness was going to hunt him down.
    He missed his little Francisco – God, how he missed him – and in six weeks there’d be so much more to miss, because he was growing so fast. A head taller at a time, he seemed. Rafael felt that his son’s head came up to his chest now, even though he knew it couldn’t be so – but that’s where he felt the lack of him, that’s where the hollowness was. That little head. Rafael longed to cup the back of it as he had when Franciscowas a baby; take the weight of it, enjoy the fit and solidness of it in one hand. His little boy’s hair, too: his silly blond hair , as Rafael thought affectionately of it. He longed to touch it, to relish its abundance. Not much of it was there when he was newborn, most of it had grown since – which Rafael found almost comical, and touching: all that busy, vigorous but gloriously oblivious growing that Francisco had done for himself.
    What if something happened to Francisco while he was away? This was what had got a hold on him, these last two weeks. This was what was haunting him: the fear that he’d never see his son again. That he’d already seen him for the last time. A fever, a fall. An act of negligence by a servant, or cruelty from a stranger. An abscess deep in an ear, the poison leaking deeper. A cat scratch going bad, a loose cart wheel, a rotten branch, a misfooting on the riverbank, a kick from a horse … Anything or nothing, really: it could be nothing that would do it, in the end. It happens .
    He longed to ask Leonor, How do you live with this fear? In thirteen days, he seemed to have forgotten how to do it.
    But Francisco was so full of life, he was crammed with it and, if he were with him now, he wouldn’t be sitting around like this. Snap out of it , Rafael urged himself. Stop this. For his sake. Because what kind of a father are you to him, to sit here like this, foretelling his death?
    And it was at that moment that he saw the child. The door had been left ajar by Antonio and in the gap was a small face, a child, a boy of perhaps four or five years old. Huge blue eyes, serious expression. From behind him came a reprimand, ‘Nicholas!’ to which he reacted immediately, scarpering. Thevoice had been pitched to reach not only the child but also Rafael. And now, pitched even higher, for him alone, came a word he understood: ‘Sorry!’ The tone was cheerful, confident of acceptance, but no less heartfelt for it. He was across the tiny room in two steps. He couldn’t just stay sitting there in silence: he should accept the apology. And make clear that he hadn’t minded. On the contrary, any distraction was welcome, even a mute child.
    Below on the stairs was a woman – a servant, judging from her simple linen dress and blue apron. She was poised to descend further, coifed head bowed and nape exposed. She was neither very young nor old. She was very pale. A plain, pale woman. Not plain in a bad way, though. Tall, long-boned and broad-browed: that’s what he noticed about her. That, and how she touched the child. Over one arm was looped some fine fabric – clothing, probably, for repair – and her free hand was on the little lad’s shoulder, ostensibly directing him down on to the step in front of her but, Rafael felt, less a shepherding than an excuse for contact. He recognised the quality of that touch. Parental.
    She looked up, saw Rafael, gave a surprised,