All The Queen's Ladies [NaNoWriMo Project]

Alice

Frantic knocking at the door wakes her, a few nights later. This time she is in her own rooms, but with no less panic; this time, in fact, it is worse, because she is alone. She is sleeping in a bed rather than on a pallet and the bed is empty, the space around her cold. She misses the warmth of another person next to her. With no other company she thinks she may be hallucinating, that the knocking is something from a dream so telling that it has fled her mind the moment she opened her eyes, until it comes again, insistent. If there is a crisis, she thinks sleepily, they can manage without her. If they lost the war, it will still be lost in the morning. If she has lost a husband or a brother - please, let her not have lost either of them - then she wants another few hours of sleep before her world is jerked underneath her. She wants some time to pretend to be normal, and steel herself for the blow.

But then, Cerys may need her.

Another barrage of knocking drives away the last vestiges of sleep and this time she recognises it; the patterns tell it to be Alice. She knows all the waiting-women by knock and footstep and laughter. Lady Marr would have woken all the palace by now. Carlotte even in a hurry is light and apologetic. Lady Elsbet, before she went home for her lying in, rhythmic, like a dance. Alice's knock is like her, quick and sharp. That it is her at the door is no surprise. She is good for sending messages, for breaching those small gaps that arise between women, for carrying gifts and apologies and summons. This is almost certainly a summoning, at this time of night. Her candle is still melting into its dish.

"Just a minute," she calls, reaching for a floor-length cloak and fumbling blearily with the fastenings. If the world is to come down, she will not let anybody say she did not bear it strongly.

"Branwen?" Alice's voice is muffled, as if she is pressing her face to the door. "Branwen, it's me."

"What's happened?"

"Nothing. That is to say. The queen is well, and there is no news...I need to talk to you. Can I come in?"

She pads across the room and opens the door; no sooner is there a crack of space than Alice flies in, in a silk nightshift, loose strands of hair chasing behind her, like some frantic nymph in a story-book. She is uncombed and unwashed and shivering, though as she gets closer she spots that this may not only be for the cold. Her face is red, not the glow of exertion but blotchy and dull, her cheeks shiny. She casts around, then spots her as if for the first time and grabs at her sleeves.

"Branwen." She's crying. It's almost impossible to hear what she's saying, so she forces her into a chair and gives her a cup of water, which she drinks until her words can be understood. The cup chatters against her teeth; she puts it down and presses her hand to her mouth. "Branwen, Branwen, I need your help. Please. I cannot tell a soul, but I need...I need..."

Whatever she needs, it is distressing her too much. She collapses into sobs. Nothing delicate or girlish about these, they are great hiccuping things that threaten to disturb her hood. It is already tilted at an angle that, were she less dishevelled, would look rakish. Snakes of hair coil over her shoulders. Her night-shift has the Wagstaffe spear embroidered up the sleeves in wonky, awkward stitches, probably her own doing, and with the hood and her hair not even trying to stay pinned back, the effect is odd. It looks like she has tried to dress herself, then changed her mind part-way through.

"What's the matter?" she asks gently.

"I need your help. You're the only person I can trust to, the only person who I think can actually help me. Who will actually help me. Not just give me pitying words and laugh behind my back." She is vehement.

It must be Thom, Branwen thinks, in which case she is entirely the wrong person for this; she thinks the girl's infatuation ridiculous, and Sir Thomas to be, if not a black knight, then at least a grubby grey one. She has no patience with it all. "What about Cerys?" she asks. Alice shakes her head. No, no, she can't disturb the queen, and anyway she is not so close to her as she, Branwen, is. "Carlotte, then."