Mistress of Mourning by Karen Harper Read Free Book Online Page A

walls from closing in. But when I began to carve the first face, that of the princess Elizabeth, I became lost in the shaping and smoothing. As I worked, sometimes he watched me; other times he hunkered under the array of candles that gave me good light, and wrote letters, to whom I knew not, mayhap his lady love. His presence there—our physical closeness—felt both reassuring and awkward.
    As though he were the tavern keeper of Westminster, Nick disappeared only to bring us both food and drink or to leave me if I needed to use the chamber pot in the corner ofthe room. We spoke briefly as we ate, but he took that time to go out and tell the queen how things were progressing, so I was soon back to work.
    Her Majesty came in but once, for Nick said she was busy being apprised of the final preparations for the entry of her future daughter-in-law to London for the royal wedding. “Oh, yes, you have the shape of the head there,” Her Majesty told me with a tremulous smile. She was beautifully gowned and bejeweled, so did she dress that way every day? “Nick will have the kettle and coal fire for you to melt wax on the morrow. And I have not forgotten that you shall have your glimpse of my younger children, so that you can copy noses and chins. I know I am asking a great deal of you when you begin to carve my brothers, of whom I have no portrait to show you, have no remembrance of them to share.…”
    Her words drifted off; her clear gaze misted over under her furrowed brow. Suddenly she was not here, but in some distant memory or imagining, until she shook her head and stroked the cheek of her deceased daughter that I had carved, however yet roughly hewn and uncolored.
    “I shall see you are paid each week, and I do understand you have another life and your own child, your Arthur,” she said.
    “Yes, Your Majesty—about that. When my family and fellow chandlers discover I am to be sent for on many days, I fear they will ferret out to where, and the false tale of Nick and his wife having lost a child will be found out. May I not say you admired the angel candle and are asking that I carve wedding gift candles for the Spanish bride’s household—flowers, birds, and such?”
    “Yes, perhaps a better idea, and the fact that it is a royal request will help protect you too. Tell them you are carving the roses of York and Lancaster and the pomegranate of Spain, for it is Catherine of Aragon’s emblem and the symbol of fertility. New princes and princesses for the nursery soon, I pray,” she added with a glance again at the blocks of wax. “Nicholas, you take good care of her for me,” she threw over her shoulder as she departed as quickly and quietly as she had come.
    “I shall, Your Grace,” he said, though we were then alone, momentarily frozen in a bow and curtsy that seemed, suddenly, only for each other.
    I soon had the dressing-down I had been dreading. I had delighted Arthur, Maud, and Gil with my story of carving candles at the palace, but Christopher came storming in at the shop’s usual closing time that afternoon. I was on edge already. My back and neck hurt from reaching and bending, and my right hand was numb from handling knives, spoons, and spatulas. Indeed, I hated myself for lying to my son and kin, although the truth would have been even more remarkable than my fabrication. And if gossip flew about that the queen was yet tormented for the loss of her brothers, who had more right to the throne than the last and present king, I could be completely undone. Yet I managed to walk calmly around the counter to put it between Christopher and me and leaned against it to steady my knees.
    He dared to lock the shop door behind him. He was red in the face, as if he had run miles. “By the rood, a little bird tells me you were not here when our artist
Signor
Firenzecame by to set up the time for your first sitting!” Facing me across the counter, from his left hand he took the large ruby ring he had offered me