sarah eve kelly

My first teaser in ages, and given I have only a moment it’s slightly longer than I would have wanted. This is from the work in progress, and here we find Elizabeth, our heroine, sent home to her parents to recover from illness. Comments and lambasts welcome as always.

I am in London today so I won’t be able to get to others’ teasers, but I’ll do it as soon as I can. Happy Tuesday!

&&&

After a week a letter arrives from Lettice. Her script alone speaks volumes, while the uninspired words say little enough. It is obvious to me that she has had a good education, everything done properly. Her italic is very similar to the Queen’s, though not nearly so expert, but she cannot write in a straight line, and the spaces between the words tell me that she was distracted from writing more than once.

Althorp
Northamptonshire

Elizabeth,

The court is very boring without you. You got ill just in time to avoid meeting W, that’s how clever you are. Robert and Penelope are terrible scamps and I could fetch a great price for them at market. The Queen is very well and asks after you, as if I know. It is tiresome, but she is the Queen. He - you know who I mean - is always with her, but I catch him watching me more often now. I have to be careful because W is here now too. I hope not for long. We are moving to Hampton later in the spring and I will send the children back where they belong, with their blasted governess. W will be gone, and the children, and it will be just me again. You will like Hampton. It is very new and not falling to pieces like Greenwich. Why we stay here when there are new palaces like Hampton I will never know. Sleep up and come back.

Yours &c.

L. Essex

It might be a child’s letter for all of its fitful stops and starts. It is just enough of a cipher to be confusing to me, but not - I imagine - nearly enough of one to stop her getting into trouble should anyone except me happen to read it.

I cannot help noticing that she does not ask how I am, if I am well again. I cannot help hurting from it.

She is terribly cavalier about the Queen, Lettice is. I put the letter on the fire before Isabel can ask what it is. ‘W’, I suppose, is Walter, her husband. And ‘he’ can be no one but the Earl of Leicester. It never occurred to me, talking to Lettice at court, that she might have plans, real plans, to seduce Leicester, who is, in every practical sense, the Queen’s property. I tell Isabel that I miss the court, but in truth I want to return to stop Lettice in these plans. I was only at Greenwich three months and I understood that Leicester is not to be touched by any woman - by any man, by any spear or crossbow or real responsibility. The Queen is terrified for his safety and will not even allow him north to negotiate the fate of the Scots Queen.

For that she sends more hardy, more expendable fellows like my husband and her cousin Hunsdon.

All the same seeing the writing, hearing her voice behind it, makes my heart lurch for Lettice, and makes some small part of me hate Leicester for being the subject of her scheming. Is she truly in love with him? Or does she hate the Queen and want to take something from her? It must have been difficult for a beautiful young girl to grow up in the shadow of such a formidable woman, the savior of English Protestants, who gets the attention of every eligible man in Europe when Lettice was married too young, far too young, to a man she despises.

For she does seem to despise him. She has never told me why, but then I have never spoken to her of George, not really. And if I did, what would I say? There is nothing truly objectionable about George. He treats me kindly, if indifferently, when I’m not shouting at him. That, I think, is what is infuriating about him: that if asked why I do not like him, I could not answer. Not without sounding an ungrateful shrew. It makes me dislike him more. It makes me hope that he does not check on me, does not write or call in while I am ill after having lost his child. That, at least, would be something I could point to.

And so I rumble through Althorp, no secret letters to send, no scheming, no escaping to the meadow. If it weren’t for Isabel’s stories about King Henry’s court - and they are few, for she seems uncomfortable and sad when I ask her - I would go mad. The sun comes stronger and I help my father in the garden, cutting away the dead leaves in the topiary. He seems happy to have me at home, for all that he wanted a titled daughter, a daughter at court. He chatters to me of this and that. I am careful not to bring up the subject of Edmund to him, but when his name slips out Father is less angry than I thought. In this short time, he seems to have softened. Perhaps I was the last thing standing between him and running a great empty house, with only my mother for company. He is kinder now.

Perhaps, too, my condition has made him kinder. I cannot be sure of that. I am a young woman who could not carry a child. ‘You were new to the court,’ Isabel says, ‘and new to your marriage. You did not know to take care of yourself,’ she says. ‘There will be other children.’

Other children. Again I think of Lettice. Terrible scamps and I could fetch a great price for them at market. But Lettice is teaching me, in so many ways, that I have a bigger heart than I had once imagined. Here at Althorp I see my anxious mother, my gruff father, both big-hearted and loving in their ways. I see Charlie and his mother, devoted to one another. All of them devoted to me, and I wanted none of it. Edmund wanted to marry me, and I wanted none of it. I was shipped to George for marriage, and I could not love him either, and so I supposed myself cold-hearted, small-hearted. But Lettice is so much more open and plain about it; she cares nothing that I know her contempt for her husband, her exasperation with her children. Her indifference to the Queen.

And what I feel for Lettice, too: the drop in my belly when she enters a room, when she writes me a mediocre letter. My fear that she will find herself in trouble. These multitudes who have been so kind to me could not tease this concern from me. They - my parents, and Charlie, and Edmund, and George - made me think only of myself. But Lettice, flawed, selfish - she has made me care for something outside of myself. It is an unfriendly feeling, and an unwelcome one.

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5. teaser thursday: isabel tells a story