The Midnight Queen by Sylvia Izzo Hunter Read Free Book Online

She had begun to grow round, and had dark smudges under her eyes.
    â€œMama, why are you sad?” Sophie remembered asking one day. She had escaped from the nursery-maid again and found Mama weeping silently over her fancy-work: a tiny white bonnet, like the ones Amelia sewed for their dolls.
    Mama had smiled sadly and stroked Sophie’s hair. “You shall understand one day, dear heart,” she said, which meant—Sophie had known this much already—that no more answers would be forthcoming, however many questions she might ask.
    A few days before Beltane, the nursery-maid had brought Sophie and Amelia to see Mama in her bedroom, where Mrs. Wallis showed them, not a doll, but a tiny, pink-faced baby girl with wide-open slate-blue eyes. “This is your new sister, my dears,” she said, smiling.
    The servants exclaimed and cooed at the baby, but Sophie saw that Mama was weeping quietly.
    â€œThe gods withhold their gifts from me,” she muttered, as though to herself. “I was so certain, and yet it is another girl-child, the poor thing. He will be back again, and again, the brute, as long as he has no son . . .”
    Mrs. Wallis’s smile had vanished as Mama spoke, and Sophie had heard no more, for the nursery-maid was hurrying her and Amelia out of the room.
    *   *   *
    Sophie could not recall exactly when, or how, she had discovered herself to be her mother’s favourite child. But certainly by the age of seven, she had come to understand this truth and was beginning to grasp the unfairness of it. If Mama should love her better than Amelia, that was only just, since Amelia was Father’s favourite; but it was too bad of Mama (and Father, too) to spare no love for Joanna—who, besides, was not much more than a baby and could scarcely have done anything to deserve it.
    Sophie could not pretend that she had not adored her mother, but from the beginning of Joanna’s life she had also loved her small sister fiercely—and not only for the sake of Joanna’s answering devotion. Not that Joanna was difficult to love. All the servants, and Mrs. Wallis in particular, found her round, solemn face and disconcertingly astute questions rather endearing than not, and tended to spoil her, and even Amelia, in those days, had been, if not precisely doting, at any rate very fond of her. So it was not that Joanna lacked for love, exactly, and Mama had never been unkind to her; only . . . Joanna followed Mama with her wide grey eyes, candid and sad in her stoic little face, so happy to receive even an absent half smile, and Mama might have made her so happy with a kiss or a caress, or by admiring her adorably wobbly little dances—but Mama never had. Joanna had never
cried
, of course—Joanna was known even then for never crying.
    Sophie had said to Amelia one day, “When I am grown up, I shall have
six
children; and I shall love them all alike, and play with them as much as they wish, and never lose my temper or scold them.”
    â€œYou shall have to get a husband first,” replied Amelia, tossing her head. “It is a great pity that you are not pretty. Still, Papa will find someone to marry you, I suppose.”
    And Sophie had snorted derisively, and said, “I shall find someone myself, I thank you.”
    *   *   *
    Then Mama had died, when Sophie was eight and Joanna only four. Joanna had seemed to go on very much as before; she did not mope and weep as Amelia and Sophie did. But Sophie had much more dreadful nightmares now, and was often enough awake o’ nights to know that Joanna suffered likewise; she knew, if no one else did, that there was a hurt, bewildered child hidden behind that stoic façade. But she could find no opportunity to kiss and comfort Joanna, who would not, except in sleep, admit to feeling anything.
    Instead, taking advantage of the disorder into which Mama’s absence had