his who were priests. He’d feel God’s presence sometimes when he was riding, or in the garden, or making calculations, and often when he glanced at his son. The feeling was always both awesome and intimate. It was a feeling he hadn’t yet had in England.
When he was young, he’d talked about that feeling with his friends and many of them had felt the same. The Spanish Church, though, would judge it heretical; so now, older and, he hoped, wiser, he was careful to keep it to himself. He, whose family, Jewish-looking, Jewish-named, had no room for error.
During one of his visits to the Kitsons’ local church, he’d glimpsed the pale woman. She’d had her eyes closed, as did many people – but they were dozing, he was sure, and she was biting her lip. He saw there was a vigilance about her.
Towards the end of the second week, Rafael was advised by an official in the Spanish office to abandon his project. The strain on the prince’s budget – two households to support, the one he’d brought with him and the one his bride had assembled for him – meant that there was no guarantee that Rafael would be paid, nor even that he’d be reimbursed for what he planned to spend soon on materials. ‘But you must’ve known,’ Rafael objected. The prince had been in England for a month. ‘You could’ve stopped me coming.’
‘Not me,’ the official replied with a shrug, ‘I didn’t know you were coming.’
Rafael had known that very few of his fellow countrymen were working. Duplication of any Englishman’s duties was to be avoided. In deciding this, Spanish officials had been trying to keep the peace. Sit tight, everyone had been told, and passage home will soon be arranged.
Rafael had no doubt that the problem in his particular case would be resolved in his favour. In the meantime, it cost him nothing to continue with his work, so he wandered in the direction of the queen’s garden. It was a raw morning, and he’d assumed no one would be there but, opening the door in the wall, he saw he was mistaken: she was there, the queen, at the fountain, accompanied by the mischievous-looking Mrs Dormer. His heart clenched, squeezing the breath from him, and he backtracked immediately. He’d claim, if questioned later, that he’d taken a wrong turning. To his dismay, though, she’d seen him, or – short-sighted – she’d seen someone, and was beckoning. A whole-arm beckoning, it was: enthusiastic, unequivocal. Yes, she was mistaking him for someone else. Wouldn’t her smirking companion put her right? He didn’t know what to do. There was no choice, though. He couldn’t disobey. He’d have to accept that he’d got himself into this – How? it was not like him to be incautious – and he’d have to see it through.
How, though, to approach her? He couldn’t just stride over there. How else, though, would he get to her? And where – while he was walking – should he look? Surely he shouldn’t stare into her face; but wouldn’t it be disrespectful to fail to meet her gaze? And crucially: when, exactly, where, should he bow? Now, in the doorway? Or when he was closer? Or both? And how much closer? And how many bows?
But there she was, gesturing with cheerful impatience. So, in the end, he just did it, putting his trust in her accepting him as a bumptious Spanish peasant, and walking over to join her. He stopped at what he hoped was a respectful distance and bowed deeply, but she was already speaking to him in English: ‘No sun, Mr Prado.’ She said it anxiously, with only the briefest, most reluctant of skyward glances. Hard to imagine what kind of harvest could come from a summer such as this. He wondered again: how did the people here survive? They’d be going hungry, next year, and they didn’t look in great shape – to say the least – even now.
Nor did she. Her small, watery eyes were pink-rimmed. It was said that she worked very hard. Rafael recalled hearing that she’d appointed a huge council of men – any English nobleman who had any claim, regardless of religious persuasion – and insisted on listening to each and every one of them, more than thirty, on each and every issue. If her extraordinary openness to him was anything to go by, he could believe it.
She said, ‘My husband is a good man.’ Good to have arranged the gift of the sundial, he took her to mean. She glanced at Mrs Dormer with something nearing a smile – a softening, a shyness – to which the lady responded with her own dazzler. Bashfully dipping her gaze, the queen repeated, ‘My husband,’ as if to listen to it, to hear it. To relish it. Rafael was surprised by such girlishness in a woman who’d been unmarried for almost forty years. He’d been assuming that this marriage of convenience was a personal inconvenience for her, just as it was for the prince. Word was that, when she’d come to the throne, she’d resisted her council’s suggestion that she should marry. Hardly surprising, given the fate of her unfortunate mother. Everyone in Spain knew that the prince had had to leave behind a mistress, his wife in all but name. Did the queen know? The prince’s job, now, was to be attentive to his new wife, and he’d be taking it seriously. Rafael didn’t envy him his duty. For all the queen’s openness, there was something off-putting about her. Not her looks, despite what everyone said; nothing so simple. It was perhaps her openness itself, he felt. An over-eagerness.
He wondered how – as heir to the throne – she’d got to such an age and not already been married. The prince was an old hand, he’d been married and widowed. Eleven years her junior, but already second time around for him. Then Rafael remembered that she hadn’t been heir: she’d been a disinherited heir, which was worse than no heir at all. A liability. Who’d have wanted her? How everything had changed for her in just one year. So much change so late in life. This once-sidelined spinster was now wife of the man who would one day be the most powerful in the world.
She was peering at him. ‘Do you have a wife, Mr Prado?’
Yes, he was glad to tell her. ‘Leonor.’ Her name came to him like a cry, which he forced down to be a lump in his throat. What would Leonor make of this? Being discussed by the queen of England. That’d be some gift to take back with him: The queen asked about you.
‘Children?’
‘One, Your Grace: a son, Francisco.’ If Francisco were present in person, he’d be frustrating his father’s efforts, clinging to his legs, refusing to look up.
‘Francisco,’ she echoed, appreciative. ‘And how old is he?’
Three, he told her.
‘He’s little.’ She sounded surprised, and asked, bluntly, ‘How old is your wife?’
Taken aback, the English word eluded him; he found himself raising his hands and doing four flashes of all his fingers.
‘Forty?’ She turned, chatting animatedly, to her companion. He felt he knew why his answer pleased her: Leonor had had her first baby in her late thirties, the queen’s own age. The queen, though, looked so much older; she could easily be ten years older than Leonor. She turned back to him, held him in that pale stare of hers. ‘I’m thirty-eight,’ she said. She placed her hands squarely on her belly and said, matter-of-fact, ‘Pray for me, Mr Prado.’ As queen, she could expect an entire population to be praying for her, but he understood that she was truly asking it of him and he was honoured. Then she and her companion were going before he realised, and he had to do his bowing in her wake.
Again, Rafael refrained from making mention of the queen in his letter home. He’d tell Leonor when he saw her. We spoke about you. He could see, in his mind’s eye, her habitual expression of humourful disdain, the scepticism with which she always faced him. He’d insist, No, really, and watch her making up her mind whether to believe him. That watchfulness of hers: that cautious, clever look. The tilt to her chin, and the hard little mouth with its crookedness so that it slipped whenever she spoke and more so when she smiled. Which made her smile seem partial, reflective, wry. She almost always looked amused, but Rafael couldn’t remember ever having heard her laugh aloud. When he’d first ever seen her, she’d been standing with her arms folded, and that’s how she almost always stood, how she seemed to be most comfortable