sarah eve kelly

A longer teaser this week, from the work-in-progress. You can find other teasers for this work here and here. As usual, comments and lambasts are welcomed.

This week Elizabeth, our heroine, has just gotten married, and is on the threshold of a new life. But on her wedding night, she’s having a bout of insomnia.

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No, the snoring - these hours of sleeplessness - are far more painful than anything he did when he was awake. The snoring is more than sound, I find: it is an insult; it is calculated, I am sure, to make me suffer. Something about it stings me like toothache, like panic. Every time he draws breath, my ribcage closes tighter.

I shall have to find a way to command a second chamber. My parents sleep apart. How uncommon can it be? Now I try to remember remedies, remember what has made me sleepy in the past. Warm wine? Perhaps some warm wine. I climb out of bed quietly - though I do not know why I make this effort not to wake him - and take up my dressing gown and my candle, which I can still light from the dying fire. In the next room, surely, there will be wine.

But in the next room, I find that I am not alone. The fire is lit, and two candles too. A woman is asleep in a chair next to the fire, long, messy, red curls framing a face I cannot see. I know she is sleeping not only because her head is tipped forward, but because I can hear her breathing: a gentler sound than my husband’s, but a snore for all that. The door has opened and closed soundlessly, and I move on bare tiptoe across the cold wooden floor towards the sideboard, where the wine is, and where I can see this woman properly.

It is Lettice. I hold my breath and listen to her, and in listening I am at peace, drowsy even, despite my heart bounding in my chest.

The wine. I came for the wine. I set my candle on the sideboard and reach for the silver flagon. But my hands are shaking; it clashes against the goblet. The sound is not a loud one, but it rises above the crackle of the fire, above her breathing, above mine, and she wakes.

‘Madam!’ she cries, and although the act of her moving to her feet puts her in command, I see her making infinitesimal adjustments, compensations for my having seen her like this: she arranges her hair; she smoothes her dressing gown; she runs her hands across her face. ‘I thought you asleep,’ she says.

I have returned to the act of pouring the wine, although it is a hollow remedy, now, as I look at her. Still I bring the goblet to my lips in a bid to save myself talking. ‘I could not sleep,’ I say, after a moment.

We met yesterday, Lettice and I, but I feel years older, years younger.

She is fully awake now. ‘Can I bring you some lavender oil?’ she asks. Lavender oil. I would have no idea what to do with lavender oil. ‘It is to help you sleep,’ she says. ‘It works very well for the Queen, who’ - she pauses - ‘has great cares, and finds herself unable to sleep. Sometimes.’ She looks at me. ‘It was the Queen sent me,’ she says. ‘To ensure you passed a comfortable night.’

‘That was very kind of her,’ I manage. ‘And if lavender oil is good enough for her Majesty, I am sure it will help me very much.’

Lettice disappears through yet another door I had not noticed, and it seems no time at all before she returns with a bottle in her hand. ‘Sit,’ she says, and I am relieved that she is speaking with her old authority.

‘Relax your head.’ I tip my head against the back of the chair, and would be looking up if I dared open my eyes. I feel her fingers running through my hair, straightening it, pulling it back. ‘Can you smell it?’ she asks, and at once I can: she is wafting her hand underneath my nose. I nod. ‘Good,’ she says. ‘The therapy is in the smell.’ But then her fingers are at my temples, rubbing in warm circles, first forward, then back, and the therapy is there: it is in her hands. ‘You feel the pressure?’ she asks, and her breath - the smell of sleep - is on my face. ‘Just that pressure, in circles, front and back.’

‘Yes,’ I murmur.

‘Good,’ she says. ‘You’ll have to learn this. The Queen needs all her ladies to be able to help her sleep.’

And now her breath is gone; she feels far away. This is a lesson, and she is my tutor. But I will not think on that tonight. I keep my eyes closed.

When I wake, my neck hurts. Lettice has returned to her chair, and is looking at me. I feel blurry, contented. ‘You will be able to sleep now,’ she says, and I smile at her. She does not smile back. ‘Return to your husband,’ she says, and all at once I am wide awake again, as surely as if she had thrown water in my face. We are silent, and I listen: I can hear the snores in the next room. I look at Lettice; she looks blankly back.

‘Where do you sleep?’ I ask.

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