The Noble Assassin. Christie Dickason

but my husband? Close your ears. Keep your eye on your destination, I tell myself.

      ‘I forbid you to go,’ he says. ‘This is another of your fancies. And certain to cost us dear, like all the rest.’ He bends to his bowl again.

      Eyes around the table suddenly grow intent on soup and the roasted duck from our ponds.

      That was not a request, I think. I was telling you what I mean to do.

      I have had many such silent conversations with him. The smell of the soup sickens me. I set down my spoon. I fold my napkin exactly on its creases and lay it on the table – once we could have afforded a waiting groom to take it from me. I stand up. ‘I pray you all, excuse me.’

      Stool and bench legs scrape on the stone floor as the others rise with me. Everyone but my husband.

      ‘Sit down!’ He speaks as if to one of his dogs. Even whores are granted the courtesy of ‘mistress’, and I am a countess.

      ‘Sir, I need air.’

      ‘Sit!’ he snaps again.

      I hear breaths drawn around the table and see glances exchanged. My thoughts cloud as if I had drunk too much wine, though we were making do with over-watered ale. My heart grows white hot and swells against the inside of my ribs, pounding as if I were at court, in costume, waiting to fling myself onto the table of a thousand eyes. I have the sensation that my bones shift subtly inside my skin.

      I catch the eye of my lady and the steward. I widen my own eyes.

      ‘If you will treat me as one of your dogs, sir, you must allow me out for a run.’

      Someone snorts. Agnes Hooper hides a smile. Followed by my husband’s astonished gaze, I leave the room. Calmly. I walk through the cold passages to a side door. Unhurried. I open the door and step outside.

      I run. My heeled shoes slip on patches of mud in the vegetable gardens. The long icy orchard grass turns to glass under my feet.

      I look back. No one follows me. I plunge deeper into the orchard, colliding with trees like a drunken dancer, cursing and wiping my nose on my lace cuff.

      A sow nosing for frozen windfall apples squeals and flees from my path, baggy teats swaying, followed by panicked, flap-eared scraps of piglet.

      No farther, or else my heart will explode. I fling myself back against a tree. My throat opens. A scream rises from my feet, swells, pours out and quivers the leaves above my head, a dark animal scream like the demon shriek of copulating foxes.

      I am drowning in ‘No!’

      I scream again, pounding my fists into the tree behind me.

      Everything gone! Fallen from chief lady-in-waiting at court to this! Tied down by my husband’s constant ‘No’. By poverty. The Queen, dead, and her court dispersed. My dear friend, Prince Henry, dead. My Elizabeth, married, gone, and now a fugitive . . . another exile.

      Stop! The voice in my head is firm, the necessary voice that had always before pulled me back from folly, just in time.

      I scream again.

      Stop! the reasonable voice repeats. Someone will hear you and come.

      The thought of anyone coming to force me back to the dining table is even more intolerable than the sudden storm inside me.

      My thick brocade skirt and winter petticoat, together with the padded sausage of my bum-roll tied around my waist, have rucked up in a lump behind my waist and hips. The rough grey, lichen-covered apple bark snags at my hair.

      I clamp down on the next scream and press my hands to my face to close out the world.

      Into the darkness float the faces of loss. My parents. My queen. Elizabeth. And my infant daughter, who had lived inside me, kicking at the inside of my belly, dancing at music, stirring when I laughed. At the sight of her, complete and perfect, a miraculous new person who met my eyes with puzzled astonishment, the milk had leapt into my breasts and flowed from my nipples.

      I had never suckled her. Even the sow could suckle her young. My daughter stayed with me for only two hours. I lost her. Like my son, my first babe, Edward’s precious heir who had lived one whole month. Long enough to be christened, at least. Losing my babes had cut out one of my vital organs and left me diminished, like a fatal illness from which I would never recover.

      I drop my hands and try to narrow my thoughts to the fan of brown grass near my left foot. But another lost face arrives there.

      John would have seen a metaphor in that dead grass, would have resurrected it with the miracle of his words, given it new, eternal life in verse and human comprehension. He would have made its little patch of mud here under an old apple tree as huge as the world of the soul.

      The rough grey tree bark tugs at my hair when I shake my head. Don’t think of him.

      Though still in this world, he is now dead to me, but his words are still alive and insinuating in my head. I have them trapped in ink shaped by the movement of his hand, locked into my chest of papers like hostages.

      I stare down, puzzled, at the blood on the sides of my fists.

      I am meant to be the wild, merry Countess of Bedford, who can be relied on to lead each new diversion, who lightens the heavy spirits of others. Who soars in witty debate. Her spirits are never seen to weigh her down. In my thirty-nine years of conscious life, I had met Melancholy more than once, but always in secret. I had refused to entertain it.

      Now, I feel too heavy to move. I could not even have kicked my horse over the edge of the snow bank. I bow my head, pulling my hair free. I lick the blood and flecks of bark from the side of my right hand, absently noting the tiny points of roughened skin that scrape against my tongue.

      From the age of thirteen, I have tried to be a dutiful wife. I knew what was required of me.

      After Edward had spent the modest fortune for which he had married me, losing his own money along with mine through his folly and bad judgement, I made over to him my own portion, which should have been mine alone, my protection, my safeguard. He had insisted. I was still, then, a dutiful wife. My portion was long gone.

      There is nothing he could do to me now to make me any unhappier than I am already. Except to lock me away like a madwoman or chain me to my bed.

      I imagine rising from the table again, but this time, I walk to the stables. I mount my horse, standing already saddled with a gold-embroidered, red velvet saddle-cloth. I turn his head south to London and kick him gently. It is spring. I wear a fine silk satin gown, deep blue, not frayed and not mended. The African ostrich plume on my hat curves down to tickle the lobe of my ear. I again wear my wedding diamonds, and the pearl eardrops I had worn when I first danced for the Queen.

      I hear the sow grunt in the distance. A woman’s shadow moves among the trees. I slide around the tree to buy a few more moments of freedom.

      ‘Madam?’ calls a tentative voice. Agnes Hooper, my chief lady.

      At least, my husband has not sent the watchman, or a man-at-arms to restrain me like a madwoman.

      Take care, warns the voice in my head. You’ve just behaved like a madwoman. Don’t risk being thought possessed. Don’t hand a naked blade to your enemy. Even Edward might be tempted to use it.

      I sigh and step from behind the tree.

      Back in the big house, I smile at my husband, nod pleasantly to the others at the table and sit down again as if nothing at all had happened. Reassured by my smiles, the diners unfreeze and begin to murmur and chew again. The surface of the afternoon closes over us though it remains a little uneasy. Only Agnes glances at me from time to time with a small frown of concern. With grim satisfaction, I note that I still have the power to bend the spirits of others and to shape the mood.

      Except that of my husband.

      Edward Russell, Third Earl of Bedford, is watching me over his dinner with an air of puzzled reproach. In public, as always, he endures