Read by Lin Sagovsky (third story in podcast, here) NB Content warning for miscarriage & child loss
'What's this now?' the doctor asks her lady-in-waiting as he leaves the bedchamber, 'number nine lost?'
Her lady-in-waiting confirms he's correct and closes the door after him, leaving her mistress alone. A rare occurrence. Alone and alone, the Queen thinks, and doesn't smile.
She should call them both back in she knows, reprimand them for the insult, for daring to discuss her. But she does not, she's just so tired and asserting her authority would do nothing. You can be God's anointed and still out of His favour, a Queen and less fortunate than the lowest serving girl. Queen Anne and nothing. No screaming, no prayers to the Almighty will change this.
Instead, she turns her face to the wall, welcoming the pain that comes as she moves; because it drives home to her that the little thing, her would-be-loved (no, it is loved), the latest loss, is not quite gone.
She tells herself (sometimes, when she can bear to) that the other eight are with her too, that they return to her. She says, when she can't be heard, they will be with her always. But more and more she finds it hard to believe in her own reassurances, this statement of their continuation in her heart.
She talks to them now, not for the first time, her hands joined in front of her but not in prayer. She can't bring herself to speak with the latest lost one, not yet, not until she has named it, like she named the others. Once it has a name it can join its departed brothers and sisters, in their afterlife, fully gone. But until then it, the baby, she, can stay here a little, still with her for a while.
They are all together, the eight previous, when she speaks to them like this; because that's how she imagines them in heaven, together, waiting for her. The thought comforts her sometimes. Other times it makes the empty palace rooms, with their gilt and gold, seem more empty.
I like your hair like that, she tells Elizabeth, mine was curly too when I was younger. Is that right, George? You found a beetle in your room? Was it interesting? You must take it to a gardener, they will know what to do with beetles.
Always small conversations, always domestic, about their small triumphs and small disasters. She doesn't speak to them, this empty choir of the future, about how she misses them and that they do not suffice, could not suffice, against reality. No, how could she admit this to them, insubstantial though they are?
She unfolds her hands. What would this one be called, she says, not out loud (after all, who might be listening?), what would her name be? Alexandra perhaps? Is that name allowed, she wonders. Of course she would have had to ask, to discuss, a name with her advisers. For a Queen the business of naming your children is not for you alone. Not that, in the circumstances, that has ever mattered.
She remembers visiting, where …? Some seaside town maybe. There was the taste of salt in the air certainly. And it was a fine day, so people had come out to see her carriage pass, cheer their good Queen for what she had done, or they imagined she had done, to improve each hope-filled life.
(Yes, it was by the sea, she thinks. She recalls a stony beach, stretching into the distance, and waves coming in ceaselessly, washing everything away.)
Each face she saw, each woman's face, she studied so she could know whether its owner had lost a baby, or many babies, as she had. She imagines (no, she knows!), you can read in people's features, in how they are changed, penciled by premature death, who has lost a child and who has not. She knows you can seek out and confirm loss because she can see it in her own face. It has been hardened by grief and everyone who sees her, and she must see everyone, knows what she has let slip through her. Over time the grief settles on your face, like it settles in your heart, in your brain, your stomach. It never leaves.
Back then she had imagined stopping the carriage and bringing with her all those in whom she had seen loss. Having them, some young, some old, there with her and asking, 'How did you survive?' or just 'Can we talk about them?' But, of course, she did not, because that is a thing Queens cannot do.
Henry, have you been learning your letters? You must work hard you know, the pressures on a Prince are manifold. Georgina, why the tears? Oh, you ripped your dress? That's not the end of the world. Come here and I can hold you in my arms, wipe those tears away.
She eases herself up, placing her feet gently on the polished wooden floors so she won't be heard, so nobody will think to come in. I would have wanted them to dance, she thinks, dance well. Perhaps I could have taught them myself? But again, that is not a thing a Queen can do (but she is Queen, so could she not have changed that?). Outside the window the gardens are turning green once more. It is spring.
Yes, a minuet to begin, she says to herself. That's a simple dance, one two, one two, they can be partnered with each other, four girls, four boys.
(But then what would Alexandra do? Sit and watch, or swap in from time to time, replacing an older sister?).
She starts to dance (again, soft steps, soft) her feet bare, graceful, placed first here and then there, eyes watching your partner. You see children, it is not so hard and you look so proper and beautiful in motion. She is aware some people might cry but she does not. How can a Queen cry? If a Queen cries surely the nation will fall. Her parents taught her not to cry, she would have taught her children this same stolidity (or perhaps she would not).
Her dance turns her around the room in gliding curves. Alexandra would have been a fine dancer, she decides, and as she does so she becomes aware of the latest loss drifting further away.
There was a woman once, a lady-in-waiting, many years ago who had been with child, then without. They had never spoken of it. Perhaps she could ask for that woman to be brought back to her. She could apologise (although a Queen does not apologise) and ask for a lesson in how she proceeded with her life. No, she cannot do that, they would say the Queen is going mad and a Queen cannot be mad.
She kneels and holds her arms out wide (if people were to see their Queen like this … she thinks). One by one the children would come, to be held and comforted.
Will you have fine dreams tonight William? On a white horse with your sword. Why downcast Catherine? But don't be worried, you will see me on the morrow.
What would her council say to this? Not the fusty group of old men who tell her how to run a Kingdom (her Kingdom! Of it, she knows more than they). Her illusioned council instead, those grey-faced women near the sea, her former lady, those who understand the form of loss and the passage through it. Would they say to let go her conversations with the dead, forget her children, throw away the loss? She suspects not.
There is a knocking at the door. She stands and smooths down her dress. It is dark green as if she were some maiden living in the woods (a better life, she wonders, then pushes that thought away).
'Come!' she calls and a man enters.
A voice from the back of her skull hatefully suggests maybe it's the doctor once more, to tell her he made a mistake. But no, it's one of her advisers, white beard, no hair on his head, no grief carved into his being.
'Yes?' she asks him.
He looks at the floor, does not look at her. Would it shock him, she thinks, if I were to scream of it, if I were to scratch my face in his presence?
'Out with it!' she snaps. She has a reputation for rudeness, she knows. Yet who can blame her? And people expect a little rudeness in their royalty she thinks, to care for others' problems is not for a Queen.
There are affairs of state, he tells her, Your Majesty is needed. Underneath his formal words she can hear a reproach: you have had your time for grief, he seems to say, further indulgence is not for one enthroned.
She looks back over her shoulder for a moment, then back to him.
Yes, she tells him, I will be there. Lead on. I will leave this room behind.
(c) JJ Surtees, 2023
JJ Surtees has published a couple of previous stories, including in Idle Ink magazine and Fictive Dream. He likes seals and is currently writing something about the Highgate Vampire.
Apart from her voicework in various media, Lin Sagovsky (left) helps non-actors become better communicators, on Zoom and in person. She also acts in theatre, film, TV – and has recently been playing a barrister in a corporate theatre-based training programme for railway track workers. They’re terrified …
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