Free The Lady of Misrule by Suzannah Dunn

he’s no danger,’ she’d said airily, when I’d raised it.
    We were getting ready for bed at the time: she sitting on the bed and me kneeling up behind her, combing her hair. Her ivory comb was carved with four figures and once, spotting me looking at them, she’d said, ‘Paris,’ which had me ask who she knew in France and she’d had to explain that Paris was a man judging which of three goddesses was the fairest; and when I’d asked whom he’d chosen, all she’d said was ‘The wrong one.’
    Now she was saying, ‘My father’s no threat to anyone. Full of talk, that’s all. And all of it about himself.’
    She raised a hand to signal I’d done enough combing, and we scrambled to swap places.
    â€˜To his mind,’ she said, ‘he’s a thinker, but he’s easily impressed and the Lady Mary knows it.’
    Lady Mary, not ‘the Queen’, but that was an oversight, surely, a slip of the tongue. I said that she too would soon go free, because if her father – an instigator – was already pardoned, then it couldn’t be much longer before that privilege was extended to her. Not that I particularly relished the prospect, although of course I didn’t mention that. Whenever she went free, so would I, but I didn’t feel quite ready to go. Sometimes – times like these – I quite liked being here in the Tower. Or perhaps it was that I quite liked not being at home.
    Jane said knowingly, and not without satisfaction, ‘Oh, I don’t think she’ll be quite so forgiving of me.’
    I turned to object, but was stilled by her touch to my head. She said, ‘We didn’t part, last, on good terms,’ then told me how, when she and her family had last stayed with the Queen, back when she was still Lady Mary, she’d gone into the chapel with one of the household’s ladies in search of her little sister, and the lady had genuflected to the reserved sacrament. Jane said, ‘I asked her why she did that and she said, “Because our Lord is there.” So I said, “Where?” Inside the reserved sacrament, she meant, on the altar. “Because I don’t see him.’” The combing ceased, and fabrics rustled as she slid down from the bed. “‘ I see something the baker made.” And of course she went and told Lady Mary, who was –’ shepaused to indicate the next words weren’t her own ‘–“very disappointed” in me.’
    Exasperated, I said, ‘And that surprised you?’
    After all, the Queen had lived for years in fear of her life for exactly that belief.
    Inspecting her stockings for holes, Jane was sharp in return: ‘No, it didn’t surprise me. But it needed saying.’
    â€˜Did it?’ I almost laughed. ‘Did it, though?’ What difference had she hoped it would make? Had she thought the Lady Mary might suddenly see the error of her ways? Oh, how silly of me! Because now that you mention it …
    She said, ‘It’s the truth.’
    Which only exasperated me further. ‘Well, maybe it is and maybe it isn’t’ – because who could ever know the truth about bread and bodies? – ‘but you can’t go around saying it to the Queen.’
    She didn’t shift, not an iota, just sent it straight back at me, ‘It’s the truth,’ and I saw it was pointless for me to persist.
    Later, lying in that bed, trying to sleep, I pondered how I didn’t believe half of what I was told. At least half. And did most people, really? Just stories, surely, so much of it. But did I rub anyone’s nose in it? No, I kept it to myself. As did most people. Because that was the price of peace. Smile and nod. Each to his or her own. I would never dream of trying to ruin anything for anyone else. But then again, perhaps the smiling and nodding was truer of me than of most people. I was