Free Raven Queen by Pauline Francis

and walks away. I run after her, shouting. I do not care if anybody hears me. “Go on, tell them! Have me sent away. I do not care. Tell them!”
    She turns for a moment, her face serene. “I shall pray for you, Ned.”
    “I can pray for myself.” I glance back at Thomas, already pale in death. “He was a good man. So will he go to your heaven or mine?”
    She does not answer. I watch her walk from the last sunlight into the trees and she is suddenly lost in the shadows, taken from me in that moment, turning my world cold.

 

    “Perhaps it is for the best,” Doctor Aylmer said.
    I whirled round to face him. “For the best ? How could it be for the best?”
    “Do not tell me that you did not suspect. You are clever, Jane. You must have known. That is why you did not ask him.”
    I picked up my Bible. “I swear that I did not.” I looked closely at him. “ You knew! You have both deceived me,” I shouted. “He should have told me! You should have told me!”
    At that moment, I became my mother. My lips thinned and turned down at the corners. I slapped Doctor Aylmer’s cheek. He did not react, so I slapped him again, harder. Finger marks flushed his skin. Then I threw myself into his arms, sobbing. “I am sorry, I am sorry. That is what my parents have done to me. Violence breeds violence.”
    “You are upset, that is all.” He sat me down because I was trembling. “Be calm, Jane. It was not for me to tell you. It was between you and Ned.”
    “How can there be anything between us now? He is a Catholic and I am a Protestant.”
    “Does it matter?”
    I blushed and shook my head, ashamed.
    “I have told you many times, Jane. You must not judge people by the way they pray to God.”
    “I liked being with him.” I smiled to myself as I remembered. “And now I cannot be.”
    “Ask God to forgive you,” Doctor Aylmer said. I knew that he was disappointed with me and that hurt almost as much. As he turned to go, he stopped and said, “It is never too late.”
    It was cold in the chapel. They had taken Thomas’s body there and all evening a procession of people had come to pay their respects – everybody except Ned. Two small candles lit the coffin, now closed and covered with aconites, primroses and snowdrops.
    I knelt to pray. What if we reformed thinkers are wrong? What if the bread and wine are the flesh and blood of Christ?
    The door creaked and the candles flickered, but I did not turn round, even when footsteps approached the coffin, until the hairs on my neck prickled and I knew that Ned was there. He was placing ivy on the coffin, ivy for eternal life.
    “Forgive me, Jane!” he said.
    I turned to look at him. “The Bible says that the truth sets us free,” I said, “but it is wrong. The truth teases and betrays.” Revulsion filled me. “The lips that have touched mine are stained, tainted with Jesus’ blood. Go away, and never speak to me again.”
    But he came closer. “It is still not too late, Jane. Remember what I said that day in—”
    “You fool!” I shouted. “It is even more impossible than it was then.”
    “Why?” he said. “I will give up the priesthood for you. What will you give up to be with me?” He paused. “You could start by giving up your intolerance.”
    “I cannot help it, Ned. I have tried.”
    “Then try harder.” He took hold of my hand, turned over the palm and kissed it. “Do you love me?”
    I nodded. “But I do not love your faith.”
    “You do not need to. Come with me, Jane. Do not forget the life you want…the freedom…we can go…”
    My father pounced like a wild animal. How long had he been listening? He came so close that I could smell the ale on his breath, see the morsels of meat between his teeth. He squeezed the skin of my arm between his finger and thumb, faintly, then harder so that my skin stained red. “Go back to the house, Jane,” he said, his face mottled with anger. “Tell Mistress Ellen not to let you leave your