"What I do and what I dream include thee, as the wine must taste of its own grapes."
Sonnets from the Portuguese: Sonnet VI, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Blood told. It told whom to wed and whom to kill, who ruled and who kneeled. It told Leonora’s betrothal at sixteen to King Marcus almost fifty. There was no telling it, no concession from her parents when she cried that she loved another, that she could never give herself to an old man, to anyone but Dante.
Blood told the nights of her babe’s birth. Nights, three in all. And when Arlo finally slipped into a sunrise the same rose-gold of his mother’s hair and his own scant down, blood told again. It was the river that carried him, the bed congealing around her, the gauntlets stained onto the physician.
Doctor Cromer whispered to Marcus, “A surfeit of blood, Your Majesty. They must be watched.” He shook his head over the undersized infant, the mouth a yawning grave, too weak to howl or nurse. “The Prince, most closely.”
“You fear for him?”
“It was your fear, I think. Once.”
Through her half-open eyelids, she saw Marcus blanch whiter than his beard and reach behind him for a chair. He fell into it. “She was inspected. And her father assured me there was no plague in his kin.”
Plague. She knew what he dreaded, not a disease of rats, but royalty. If there was any difference. When her brothers died before they could walk, her cousin after the slightest battle wound, gossip stirred that their noble blood was brewed too thin. Fast to spout and slow to stopper.
Cromer washed himself in a basin, hands to elbows, for the second time. “Women seldom display it. Except in particularcases. Especially—difficult deliveries.” He towelled dry, rubbing at the pink dye he retained. “But they may be carriers. Of more than the sons they bear. Hemophilia.”
“I know,” Marcus groaned. “Terrible name for it. Blood love. Why call it that when it’s a curse?”
“Take heart, your Majesty. And some wine.” Cromer snapped his fingers to a nearby servant, whose tray bore a jeweled goblet and a bottle corked upon the King’s birth, aging till his son’s. “There may be no curse here. If there are signs in future—other children—”
“If there are signs? There won’t be other children. There won’t be a future. Not for this wife! Do you hear, Madam?” He glared at Leonora. “If I come to rue his life, you’ll rue yours.”
She held out her arms to receive her son. She kissed his shrunk plum of forehead, and his lips began to move out and in, as if they tried to kiss her back.
The King drank deep.
“No doubt a fine vintage, Your Majesty.” Cromer hung in thirst. “Worth the wait?”
Arlo latched on to his mother.
The boy prune was still guzzling when the King tossed aside his empty goblet. “I don’t know yet.”
*
It was passing rare for a Queen to nurse her child, to keep him constantly as close as
Leonora did. But no other Queen had such need. Arlo’s fate would write hers. So she cushioned his cradle with a double layer of pillows, mixed his mash of food with her own hands, scooped him up when his toddling feet began to run.
Still, her ladies spied bruises on his legs where there had been no injury. “He must have
fallen,” Leonora insisted, though he was never alone and she blanketed floors to break any fall. It was harder to explain why a tiny needle in his new suit caused a scratch that bled pints.
Leonora staunched the flow with her gown pressed to his arm and threatened the tailors who left that weapon. She would tell the King it had been deliberate, a plot to mock Arlo—or worse, assassinate him—if they dared speak of it.
She seemed unaware that her hysteria guaranteed their spreading the tale. The Court owed no loyalty to a consort the King had spurned for fear of reproducing disaster.
His fears piled to certainty with each geyser of blood upon each infant tooth lost.
By Arlo’s seventh birthday, the King had happier certainty. He was yet capable of siring sons. His latest mistress would be delivered in weeks, and all he needed to legitimize that heir was to void the acting Queen and Prince.
There was precedent he could follow. Henry’s. For Ann Boleyn.
*
They crashed into each other like escaped prisoners. Starved. Frantic. Racing for home.
A seizure and gorging. Consummation—their first, at last—that consumed, scarcely tasting.
Only afterward could they breathe, stretch in their sun, trace their maps to a lingering feast. Savour every course. And sated—for the moment—they could quiet their matched heartbeats enough to hear more than their shouted names.
“You took a terrible chance.” Dante melted into her. His kisses were as much salt as sweet, like the tears on his naked skin, on hers, and the sea singing below their cypress-crowned hill.
“Aren’t you glad I did?”
“I—” It was impossible to answer no, entwined as they were. But yes meant— “He could have killed you. And for a lie.”
“You know it was? I never said—”
“I know you. You’re no sinner. And yet, I would have sworn you’d never lie. But you did. When you made that God-awful confession.”
Yes, she’d kneeled before the palace gates and confessed. Adultery. Fraud on the King. The identity—non-identity—of Arlo’s father, because there were too many contenders to single one out. None of them royal.
She wept so grievously that those gathered at His Majesty’s behest—armed with tomatoes and cabbages rotten enough for throwing—began to weep, as well. Vegetables swooned in their sacks.
Amid a riot of prayers, the King granted amnesty along with annulment. And her exile.
To this garden island wreathed in waves separating herfrom the past. Except for the best part of her past, that sailed to join her.
“Marcus warned me to learn from Ann Boleyn,” she said. “I did. But not just from her.
Another Anne. Of Cleeves. She survived. Because she didn’t fight against her removal. Arlo had to be removed, too. So he became a bastard. And I, a whore.”
“Never! How could you hang that libel around your neck?”
She laughed. “There are worse things that might have gone around my neck.”
“Nora!” His childhood name for her. “Don’t tease. I’d die if—”
“Hush, love.” She put her fingers to his lips, then her mouth there, sealing and opening
him at once. “It’s done. A bargain that suited Marcus and me both. To his people, he’s blameless, merciful. Practically a saint. Hah!” Not quite a laugh. “I’m guilty. But free. And I kept Arlo.”
“Does he know? That he really is the King’s son?”
“He knows what I’ve told him. He’s mine. Only mine.”
“Not only. I’ll be his father. I’ll find doctors to heal him—”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“But I do. We must make him well.”
“He’s perfectly well.”
“How? With his bleeding? The reason Marcus wanted rid of him—”
“Yes. The reason Doctor Cromer put in his ear.” She took a nibble of Dante’s earlobe. “I dropped hints to Cromer. And Marcus had already heard false rumours. But after Arlo was born, I had to show proof. Invent it.”
“Invent?” Dante stared. “What kind of proof?”
“Oh, all kinds. A wineskin of blood hid in my skirts. Spilled onto Arlo when he stubbed a toe, or after the scratch of a needle I placed in his clothing.”
“You placed—you—hid blood?” He frowned, puzzling the pieces. “Not Arlo’s?”
“No.”
“Then where—”
“The doctor often used bloodletting. For patients thought to have too much blood. I brought Cromer studies that said the deficient should drink it.”
“It sounds of vampires.”
“Perhaps. To the uneducated.”
“There are such studies?”
“Of course. I commissioned them. After that, Cromer gave me blood for Arlo. It was easy to set aside some for my—demonstrations. And I fed Arlo herbs. Feverfew and meadowsweet. Evening primrose. Everything I could find that thinned his blood. Whenever he lost teeth, his mouth ran with it. Naturally.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Aren’t you proud? I’m not the helpless fool I once was.”
His pause thudded. “What about other reports? That Arlo was bruised, had wounds that wouldn’t heal. Was that all playacting? Stage paint?”
“It couldn’t be.” She sighed. “He was too carefully examined. But my boy understood. The small—annoyances—he had to bear.”
“No!” He jerked backward, as though the rose he was sniffing bloomed into serpent. “He let you? Hurt him?”
“Hurt? I saved him from a vile father. To have the dearest one, instead.” She waited. “You realize I did it to be free? To come back to you. It was always you.”
Dante sweated beneath the day’s last light. The sunset flamed orange and pomegranate, mulled in the purple sea. He ached to steep there, cooling, dissolving into black.
On the horizon’s ashes, a green flash sparked. The lime of Leonora’s eyes . A wink, then gone.
It was a mariner’s omen. He couldn’t recall whether it foretold good or ill. Or simply taught: Never turn too soon from dusk. But that flash recalled her.
When he was ten, he vowed they would marry. At twenty, he promised God that he’d
do anything to have her back. A bargain. He could not renege now. And Arlo was safe. Surely. There would be no need for—annoyances—here. In this better prison.
“You say you’re free?” His tongue felt stiff and numb, making his voice a stranger. “Free to marry?”
“Yes. The Church approved our annulment.”
“I’ll ride tonight for a priest.”
“Not tonight.” She reached for him. “Stay. Tomorrow will do.”
“Tonight.” He remained stiff, too stiff to embrace her, his mouth too stiff to smile or kiss.
But the words he forced brought a smile to her face. “We’ll wed in the morning.”
He returned to her villa at dawn. He was well-spent from the roads travelled, his mind and body unclenched fists, unwilling to throw cabbages. He’d found the priest, and more. Dante’s hunger for her, spiking again. And in those stubborn pangs, he found—dredged—rationale enough to forgive. Leonora had broken on her own road to him. She’d suffered too much for sanity, or for judgment. But love would heal her. Would restore her to herself, and to him. He burned to begin.
He went to her chamber and saw Arlo curled into her on the bed. A few more steps revealed the boy awake, blinking at him with Leonora’s eyes while she lay sleeping. Even then, Dante didn’t see it until he was right beside them, close enough to touch the wet, to smell the iron, to spot the blade Arlo pinned through his mother’s breast.
Red poured.
Dante felt himself falling, jolting up a quick rise, and falling again. It seemed so like the pitch of sleep that he nearly said Thank God to know this was mere dream. But he couldn’t speak. He shook his head to wake.
Nothing. His hands moved apart from him. He watched them search Leonora’s gown, then the boy’s. Wineskin. There must be a wineskin hidden here, another masquerade of mother and son—
There was no wineskin. The knife was no fakery. She still slept. As Dante must.
He struggled to shout himself awake. He could barely manage a gasp, a gurgle like—hers. A cry choked through, the only cry left in him. “Nora!”
Arlo’s lips began to move out and in, out and in. He let go the knife and plunged his dripping thumb into his mouth.
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