The Queen's Bastard

Chapter 1 Belinda Primrose 15 March 1565 Brittany, North of Gallin "It cannot be found out." She knew the words as if they'd come down to her through the blood, in the first moments of awareness. There was darkness, red-tinged and warm, a battlefield of sound filling it: explosions and grumbles that came so steadily they were comforting rather than cause for alarm. There were voices, both low, but one more distant than the other. The first voice, closer, tickled through her to the very centre of her being, becoming a part of her that could never be cut away. It was that voice that carried fear into her, intense and sharp: "It cannot be found out." In the first moments of cold, with the air screaming all around her, she heard the voice again, high and distorted. She grasped with tiny fingers at a blurred, weary face that retreated before her wide, tearless gaze. She was pressed against a different warmth, scratchy and soft and scented. She would come to know the scent as chypre, and associate it with safety for the rest of her life. She was enclosed in strong arms, the world shifting perspective dizzily as she was taken from the first, the last, glimpse she would have of her mother for twelve years. Behind her, from the breadth of a man's chest, the less familiar voice echoed the words that seemed to define her, even at mere minutes of age: "It cannot be found out." Then he spoke again with more clarity, the certainty and strength of love colouring his words with richness: "I know. It will not be found out, my lady. Have faith. I'll return by dawn, and by the ninth bell you must be dressed for court. You must be seen well, or their hearts will fail. Attend her." The last words were spoken to someone else, somewhere else; a murmur of reply in a deep voice came, and then the woman spoke again: "Yes. Go. Go, Robert. And be seen with a woman in the small hours of the morning." Weariness is left behind by command. "There are too many who see you dance attendance on us already. We demand they find nothing of import. We shall be furious with you when we learn of your dalliances. Now go!" A single image, burned into a newly made memory: slender shoulders, a proud straight spine. Linens clutched over milk-heavy breasts and wrinkling over a still-swollen belly, contracting with afterbirth labors. Thin grey eyes, a high forehead, and a proud chin, lifted in expectation. Titian hair worn loose, bloody curls against translucent skin. Enormous hands enveloped Belinda's head, turning her away from her mother, into the warmth of her father's body. Belinda Primrose 8 February 1577 Aulun, isolated by the sea Memory, from what others said, did not stretch so far back. The dream came often, sharp enough to take her breath on waking, but no one remembered the moment of her birth, not with clarity; not at all. It was only a dream, nothing more. Belinda crawled from her bed, pulling a duvet, down-filled and heavy, with her: the keep fires were long since banked for the night, the comparative heat of the winter day left behind. Her first steps were warm, onto a tapestry rug that told the story of hunting a white deer. The next steps were icy, nimbly taken on tiptoe before she scrambled into the velvet-cushioned window seat. The duvet hissed across unheated stone as she hauled it up. Frost spread across the windows, spiked fingers growing up from the lead lining between the sheets of thin, undistorted glass. Belinda pressed a fingertip against the thickening frost, melting through to the cold glass below. Water beaded and spilled over the lead, a glistening black line picked out by the half-moon's light. She put her finger in her mouth and pulled the duvet farther up, hunching and squirming her shoulders until the warm comforter slid between her back and the chilly stone waMurphy, C. E. is the author of 'The Queen's Bastard' with ISBN 9780345494641 and ISBN 0345494644.