I have been completely wanton with Alonso…
I ought to be ashamed of myself…
But I am not.
I wonder what that means?
Melody decided not to re-do her lipstick.
The mood she was in she was likely to paint her whole face!
“Oh, God,” she groaned anew.
She fixed her lover in her almond-eyed gaze.
“This isn’t real, Alonso. No matter how I, you, either of us would like to go on like this forever, we can’t. It just won’t work.”
The man smiled a rueful smile and leaned over to kiss her forehead and rest, for a moment, his right hand on her nether regions.
God in Heaven, I love it when he does that!
“Oh, fuck… What if I inadvertently swear or blaspheme in front of the Queen?”
“You won’t.”
“But I might!”
It was too ridiculous: this whole ‘audience thing’ was freaking her out in the way that being on the run for her life from the Inquisition and being shot at, had not!
Perhaps, she rationalised, it was just getting out of the car after the ninety-mile drive from Lisbon to be confronted by the magnificence of the Ducal Palace of Vila Viçosa?
“Why is the Queen of Spain living so close to the border, Alonso?” The question popped up in her head, like interrogatives often used to in her previous life as a detective.
“Two reasons,” the man shrugged. “To be close to the children she has lost, and,” a sad pursing of the lips, “to send a message to her enemies in Madrid that she has no fear of them.”
Melody knew very little of the real story of Queen Sophie’s escape from the mob besieging Aranjuez Palace outside Madrid, as it happened, on the same night that she and Henrietta had been spirited out of Chinchón, minutes ahead of the Inquisition.
Alonso had confided to her that Don Rafael, the faithful family arms man who had saved the women’s lives that night, had been killed in the course of a second, failed attempt to rescue other members of the Queen’s court from Toledo, where they had sought sanctuary and been, in the way of things in a civil war, betrayed by countrymen they had mistaken for friends.
Melody had known Alonso must have wept many, many tears for his father’s old retainer, and down the years, his own good and true friend and mentor. It was but one more cruel cut to bear. One way and another they had all passed through a dreadful vale of tears in recent weeks…
Melody had expected a regiment of footmen in full ceremonial livery, terrifyingly elegant, and a gaggle of intimidating ladies in waiting.
Instead, a small middle-aged woman with bird-like eyes and pecking mannerisms as she spoke, materialised before the couple and addressed Alonso as if Melody was not there.
“You may present your lady to Her Majesty, Don Alonso.” The trio walked several steps, their feet ringing dully on the marble floor. “You will be received in the Orangery.”
Much to Melody’s surprise the woman she had come to see rose to her feet and smoothed down her stylish, grey calf-length dress as her visitors entered her presence in what seemed like a very plush greenhouse attached to the side of the palace.
Queen Sophie was about Melody’s own height, and age. Her hair was raven black to her shoulders, she was slim, poised and her blue-grey eyes seemed oddly, amused.
She was not alone.
Both the royal princesses were present.
The nine-year-old Infanta Katherine, and her younger sister, seven-year-old Infanta Margarete gazed curiously at the newcomers with their wide, Hapsburg-Bourbon eyes. Both princesses were dressed as any proud, upper-class middle class mother in New England might dress their daughters, in a style Melody would have called, if pressed, expensively but not in a fussy way which was liable to stop an adventurous young girl climbing a tree or wanting to engage in the normal rough and tumble.
Melody felt a twinge of pain to think that both the royal princes, Alphonse and Charles, aged respectively sixteen and twelve, were with their father, presumably locked away in the Escorial Palace thirty miles from Madrid, where, it was said, the streets were still littered with decomposing bodies.
Just to send a message to any surviving rebels.
Alonso had said it would be alright to bow; Melody was terrified that if she attempted to curtsy, she might, in her agony of nervousness, fall flat on her face.
‘Prostration is not necessary in this enlightened age,’ he had reassured her, smiling wryly.
So, she bowed. And was astonished when the Queen of Spain held out her hand to be, very timidly, shaken by her visitor.
Melody tried hard not to grin like a gargoyle.
“Perhaps,” the Queen suggested to Alonso, in English. “If you might give me a few minutes alone with Miss Danson, Your Grace?”
“Of course, Your Majesty,” Melody’s escort assented, with a naturalness which suggested to her that this request had been anticipated in advance.
Melody’s confusion, now peaking, turned her introduction to the two princesses into a blur.
In a moment the youngsters were dismissed.
“Remember not to stray from the gardens!” Their mother called after them in Castilian.
Melody was starting to calm down, and to take in her surroundings. There was a small circular, probably wrought iron, table nearby, with several wicker chairs. A bottle of Champagne and half-a-dozen glasses were neatly arranged.
“My daughters had hoped they would be allowed to sip wine every day now that we are no longer in Spain,” the Queen observed ruefully.
Melody’s heart rate had slowed to a regular, pedestrian pace.
She and the Queen were wearing dresses of a similar style, although Melody’s was a peach-tinted red contrasting with her host’s grey.
“I first tasted wine when I lived in Spain with my parents, Your Majesty,” Melody volunteered in Castilian, rather blurting the words because she was still nowhere near as in control of herself as she thought she was.
The Queen of Spain in Exile smiled, seemingly touched that her guest would volunteer to speak in her native language, as if it was a courtesy she had not expected and was therefore, doubly appreciated for the respect the gesture implied.
“Yes, Alonso reminded me that your parents are Thomas Ransom and Violetta Daingnton; I recollect being fortunate enough to have been present at several of their virtuoso house concerts as a girl.” Queen Sophie made no move to return to her seat.
Melody tried not to flinch under the other woman’s intently sympathetic scrutiny.
“It must have been quite a challenge growing up with two such perfectionists as parents?”
“Yes and no,” Melody shrugged, unsure how to respond. Honesty was probably best: “They taught me the importance of intellectual rigour without ever,” she paused, “holding it against me that I did not want to live the lives that they had lived.” She smiled, tight-lipped. “Well, that they still live, actually. They have a big house, miles from anywhere in the wilds of Vermont…”