Free Succession by Livi Michael Page B

old Betsy had grown a tooth back.
    Her nurse’s name was Elizabeth, but Margaret had always called her Betsy, to distinguish her from all the other Elizabeths in the household. And because it was all she could manage to say when she was very young. That or Bet-bet. In return, Betsy called her Little Peg, for there were almost as many Margarets in the household as Elizabeths. Her own mother was called Margaret, as was the queen.
    For as long as she could remember, Little Peg had slept between Betsy’s heavy breasts and rounded stomach. Before sleep, Betsy would let her play with the folds and creases of her face. Her tiny fingers pried into the dimples of her nurse’s cheeks and chin and even into her mouth, when she would pretend to bite. Betsy’s face was softly furred with downy lines and when she laughed she was like an infant, revealing crinkled gums. She had large eyes full of greenish lights and heavy eyebrows that seemed at odds with the wispy tendrils of her hair, the darkish strands on her upper lip.
    And she was full of stories, for her mother was a Cornishwoman, and it was a different world down there, she said, magical, disappearing at night. People told stories all night long to make the land come back each morning. And it was a different land each time, for nobody could tell the same story twice.
    If you cut your finger at the new moon you were bound for ever to the goblin king unless you turned round quickly three times and said your own name backwards. If you were using salt you had to throw some over your left shoulder, or the devil would appear.
    As she got older, Margaret would question her nurse or argue until Betsy would throw her arms up in mock horror, and call her Little Miss Plato, and tell her she was far too clever for her old nurse, now that she was being tutored by the Lady Alice.
    It was Betsy who had taken her on her first visit to the new household, where she had clung fiercely to her nurse or followed heraround like a tiny planet orbiting her sun. It was Betsy who had lost her that fateful day when her guardian had shown her the world in all its strangeness and colour, and Betsy whose footsteps had come pounding along the corridor to find her. Coming on them finally, breathless and distracted, she had sunk into a curtsy so low that she could not get up again, and the duke himself had helped her to her feet.
    And it was Betsy who told her that she must play nicely with her new brother – ‘like a good little girl’ – and let him win.
    Once he was breeched this was easy for him, because he could run about in his new trousers and she could only stumble after him in her long skirts. She could not climb trees or ford streams anywhere near as well as he. Also she was several months younger than he was, and small for her age, all of which made him well disposed towards her. Once, he had carried her across the stones in the stream like St Christopher, though she did not much like being carried and had clung to his neck for all she was worth, convinced he would drop her by accident or on purpose. She had worked out quite quickly, however, that he was not supposed to treat her ‘with any discourtesy’, and so she always made sure that if she was about to do anything to enrage him, such as winning at hide and seek, they were within earshot of his mother or his nurse.
    And if he annoyed her by insisting on winning at indoor games he would sometimes find that his carved geese or horsemen, or his finest marbles, would mysteriously disappear. His nurse said that if he didn’t leave them scattered around they would not be lost, but she would question the servants; in all probability they had simply been put away.
    And so they had: in Margaret’s room, in her private box.
    On this particular Sunday it was very cold, and they had to play inside. So John took out his castle and his carved wooden knights and horses and they each had a mounted knight which they pushed down a ramp until they collided