The Winter Queen

‘Of course, Your Grace,’ Anne said, curtsying.

‘And Lady Rosamund,’ Queen Elizabeth said, turning her bright, dark gaze onto Rosamund. ‘I hope you have come to my Court prepared to dance as well?’

‘Yes, Your Grace,’ Rosamund answered, echoing Anne with a curtsy. ‘I very much enjoy dancing.’

‘Then I hope you will be Master Macintosh’s partner. He has already proven to be quite light on his feet.’

A tall, broad-shouldered man with a mane of red hair and a close-trimmed red beard bowed to her and held out his arm.

Rosamund let him lead her into the forming dance-set, feeling confident for the first time since setting foot in Whitehall. Her dance lessons in preparation for coming to Court had been the one bright spot amid the quarrels with her parents, the tears over leaving Richard. For those moments of spinning, leaping and turning, she had been lost in the music and the movement, leaving herself entirely behind.

Her instructor had told her she had a natural gift for the dance—unlike conversation with people she did not know well! That often left her sadly tongue-tied. But dancing seldom required talk, witty or otherwise.

The dance, though, had not yet begun, and could not until the Queen took her place to head the figures. Her Grace was still strolling around the room, matching up couples who seemed reluctant to dance. Rosamund stood facing Master Macintosh, carefully smoothing her sleeves and trying to smile.

‘Lady Rosamund Ramsay,’ he said affably, as if he sensed her shyness. But there was something in his eyes she did not quite care for. ‘Ramsay is a Scottish name too, I think?’

‘Perhaps it was, many years ago,’ Rosamund answered. ‘My great-grandfather had an estate along the borders.’ From which he had liked to conduct raids against his Scots neighbours, for which the Queen’s grandfather had rewarded him with a more felicitous estate in the south and an earldom. But that did not seem a good thing to mention in polite converse with a Scotsman!

‘Practically my countrywoman, then,’ he said.

‘I fear I have never seen Scotland. This is as far as I have ever been from home.’

‘Ah, so you are new to Court. I was sure I would remember such a pretty face if we had met before.’

Rosamund laughed. ‘You are very kind, Master Macintosh.’

‘Nay, I only speak the truth. It’s a Scots failing—we have little talent for courtly double-speak. You are quite the prettiest lady in this room, Lady Rosamund, and I must speak honestly.’

Rosamund laughed again, eyeing his fine saffron-and-black garments and the jewelled thistle pinned at the high collar of his doublet. The thistle, of course, signified his service to the Queen of Scots—a lady most gifted in ‘courtly double-speak’, from what Rosamund heard tell. ‘You certainly would not be a disgrace to any court, Master Macintosh. Not even one as fine I hear as Queen Mary keeps at Edinburgh.’

He laughed too. ‘Ah, now, Lady Rosamund, I see you learn flattery already. Queen Mary does indeed keep a merry Court, and we’re all proud to serve her interests here.’

Interests such as matrimony? Rosamund noticed that Robert Dudley stood in the shadows with his friends, a dark, sombre figure despite his bright-scarlet doublet. He did not join the dance, though Rosamund had heard before that he was always Queen Elizabeth’s favourite partner. He certainly did not look the eager prospective bridegroom, to either queen.

‘Is she as beautiful as they say, your Queen Mary?’ she asked.

Master Macintosh’s gaze narrowed. ‘Aye, she’s bonny as they come.’

Rosamund glanced at Queen Elizabeth, who fairly glowed with an inner fire and energy, with a bright laughter as she swept towards the dance floor with Master Vernerson. ‘As beautiful as Queen Elizabeth?’

‘Ah, now, you will have to judge that for yourself, Lady Rosamund. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’

‘Will I have that chance? Is Queen Mary coming here on a state visit soon?’

‘She has long been eager to meet her cousin Queen Elizabeth, but I know of no such plans at present. Perhaps Lord Leicester will let you study Queen Mary’s portrait, which hangs in his apartments. Then you must tell me which you find fairer.’

Rosamund had no time to answer, for the musicians started up a lively galliard, and the Queen launched off the hopping patterns of the dance. Rosamund had no idea what she could have said anyway. She had no desire to be in the midst of complex doings of queens and their courtiers. She liked her quiet country-life.

Even being at Court for a mere few hours was making the world look strange, as if the old, comfortable, familiar patterns were cracking and peeling away slowly, bit by bit. She could see glimpses of new colours, new shapes, but they were not yet clear.

She took Macintosh’s hand and turned around him in a quick, skipping step, spinning lightly before they circled the next couple. In her conversation with him, she had forgotten to look for Anton Gustavson, to see where he was in the chamber. But as she hopped about for the next figure of the dance she was suddenly face to face with him.

He did not dance, just stood alongside the dance floor, his arms crossed over his chest as he watched their merriment. A small, unreadable smile touched his lips, and his eyes were dark as onyx in the flickering half-light.

Rosamund found she longed to run up to him, to demand to know what he was thinking, what he saw when he looked out over their gathering. When he looked at her.

As if he guessed something of her thoughts, he gave her a low, courtly bow.

She spun away, back into the centre of the dance, as they all spun faster and faster. That sense she had of shifting, of breaking, only increased as the chamber melted into a blur around her, a whirl of colour and light. When she at last slowed, swaying dizzily in the final steps of the pattern, Anton had vanished.

As the music ended Rosamund curtsied to Master Macintosh’s bow. ‘Are you quite certain you have never been to Court before, Lady Rosamund?’ he asked laughingly, taking her hand to lead her back to the other maids.

‘Oh yes,’ Rosamund answered. ‘I am certain I would remember such a long journey!’

‘You dance as if you had been here a decade,’ he said. His voice lowered to a whisper. ‘Better even than your queen, my lady, though you must never tell I said so!’

With one more bow, he departed, leaving Rosamund standing with Anne Percy.

‘Did you enjoy your dance with the Scotsman, Rosamund?’ Anne asked.

‘Yes, indeed,’ Rosamund said.

‘That is good. I wouldn’t be too friendly with him, though.’

‘Why is that, Anne?’

‘They say he has been meeting often of late with Lady Lennox, Margaret Stewart.’

‘The Queen’s cousin?’

‘Aye, the very one.’ Anne gestured with her fan towards a stout, pale-faced lady clad in heavy black satin. She stood near the fireplace, watching the merry proceedings with a rather sour look on her face. ‘She cares not for the Queen’s scheme to marry Leicester to Queen Mary, and it is said that some of the Scots party agree with her.’

Rosamund eyed the dour woman suspiciously. ‘Whose marital cause would they advance instead?’

‘Why, that of Lady Lennox’s own son, Lord Darnley, of course. I don’t see his Lordship here tonight. He must be off chasing the maidservants—or the manservants—as his mood strikes him,’ Anne said.

‘I vow I will never remember who is who here,’ Rosamund muttered. ‘Or who is against who!’

Anne laughed. ‘Oh, you will remember soon enough! They will all make sure you do.’

They could say no more, for Queen Elizabeth was hurrying towards them, the Austrians and Swedes with her. They looked like nothing so much as an eager flotilla drifting in the wake of a magnificent flagship.

Rosamund and Anne curtsied, and as Rosamund rose to her feet she found Anton Gustavson watching her again. He no longer smiled, and yet she had the distinct sense he was still strangely amused.

By her? she wondered. By the whole glittering scene? Or by some secret jest none could share?

How she wished he was a book, a text of Latin or Greek she could translate, if she only worked diligently enough. Books always revealed their mysteries, given time. But she feared the depths of Anton Gustavson would be too much for her to plumb.