The Queen's Sorrow by Suzannah Dunn

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 anold 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 placedher 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 although it didn’t look