He walked into the dining room, prepared to find a lavish supper full of servants and silverware and food befitting a queen, but what he saw utterly surprised him.
Two place settings, two candles, and a platter holding a small roasted duck, surrounded by root vegetables and garnishes, as well as a small bowl of fruit. And the Queen of England sitting at the end of the table.
He looked wary. “Your Majesty,” G said.
“My lord,” she said, nodding her head.
“Where is everybody?”
“Who?”
“Your . . . court? Your ladies? Your servants?”
She shrugged. “Being queen comes with several advantages, one of which is that if I order everyone out of the dining room, they obey.”
“Even my father?” G said.
Jane winced at the mention of his father, but she recovered quickly and replaced the wince with a blank expression. “Even him. You should’ve seen the look on his face, but yes, even him.”
G’s father was obviously a tense subject between them, but right now, everything seemed to be a tense subject between them. G grabbed a flask of wine from the end of the room and two goblets, even though he was pretty sure only one would be used. He sat himself down at his place on her right-hand side. He filled his goblet, raised the flask toward her in a questioning gesture (she declined of course), and then he set the flask on his right, out of reach of the queen. She did not object.
If anything, tonight he would prove he could handle his own goblet. He would be king of his cup.
They served themselves from the dishes before them, and then G steered their conversation to safe topics. They discussed her day of navigating her queenly duties, and his day of navigating the northeastern hills. Her day of picking out the color of her ladies’ brocades, and his day of picking hay out of his teeth with his tongue.
She said his father was at her side all day long and she was quite annoyed with his ever-presence, and she would be glad he was to be gone from the castle the following day.
“My father is going somewhere?” G said. Great. They were back on the subject of his father.
“Yes. I thought you knew. Oh, no, of course you wouldn’t, because he received the message while you were in your . . . four-legged state. He was called away urgently to the countryside. He wouldn’t say why, so I assumed it was a personal matter.” She brought a hand to her lips. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I should’ve been concerned that the matter might be of import to you as well, since you are Dudley’s son.”
She said it as if blood ties to the man directly spoke to his own character. G fought the urge to engage in the territory they’d already covered and raised a hand. “My lady, I am sure everything is fine with my father.” And the truth was, G wasn’t worried about any sort of family emergency. He could only think that the urgent business calling his father away had more to do with the same business that had occupied the entirety of his father’s mind for the past several years: the business of controlling the throne.
G guessed this latest message had to do with the hunt for Mary. And if his father was personally answering the call, it meant things were not going well.
“Gifford? Are you all right?” Jane asked.
“To be sure,” G answered, shaking away the thought. Several times, he’d considered telling Jane about what he’d overheard the night of her coronation, but he thought better about it. She had been so distressed about becoming queen in the first place, and if she were to know Mary didn’t accept her as sovereign . . .
No, he would hold back the rampant speculation and wait until his father returned with actual news. Although if she found out he’d withheld information, she would have a real reason to not trust him.
“I am merely concerned with our . . . I mean . . . your first decree as sovereign ruler.”
“Oh. Right. I’ve been contemplating that today, while I was reading in the book Drafting Decrees, the Ancient Language of Binding Arbitration.” She reached under the table and pulled up a messy stack of parchments, many covered with her handwriting, phrases scrawled, words crossed out. “I’ve been practicing how I could phrase it, so that I don’t mention E?ians directly, or Verities for that matter, but so that it covers them and also covers other people who might be unfairly. . .” Her voice trailed off as she looked at G.
She had used the word I, not we. (He’d wanted the Jane and Gifford We, not the Royal We, which she still refused to use.) This was definitely the Queen of England, and not his lady, sitting at the head of the table. G leaned back and poured himself another cup of wine.
“Am I boring you?” Jane said.
“No,” G responded, “but that’s only because I stopped listening ages ago.”
“Ah,” Jane said.