Raven Queen Read Free

head?”
    “Yes, yes, Ellie, I know, but I felt sorry for him. What is the point of saving him if he is to starve and steal again and be hanged a second time?”
    She ignored my question. “Don’t anger your father. He may let you off lightly.”
    I would have laughed at her words if my father had not bellowed for me at that moment from the library door.
    He was already holding the whip when I went in. I took a sharp breath. My father had often slapped and pinched, but he had never whipped me. People say how alike we look and it is true. His face is also slender and his skin is pale. But his mouth is softer than mine and for that reason he hides it under a long moustache.
    My mother was sitting next to him, her lips pressed tight. A ruff hid her neck, the latest fashion from London. Is this how parents greet their daughter when they return home? Any other mother or father would have kissed and petted me and asked me how my lessons went.
    I curtsied. “Good day, sir. Good day, madam. Welcome home.”
    Their faces hardened in the silence. I stared past them at the stag’s head on the wall. I had looked at it in death many times: its hacked neck grey with dust; its antlers laced with cobwebs. Here, in this room, the huntsman and its victim are forced to face each other every day.
    “Get on with it, Henry!” The anger in my mother’s voice astonished me.
    My father raised his whip and pulled my right hand towards him. I flinched as my skin split, sprinkling blood onto my cuff – royal blood, the cause of all my troubles.
    “I did not expect to return from London and find a newcomer living amongst us!” he snapped. “It is not for you to interfere in estate matters.”
    To my surprise, my father did not ask where Ned had come from. I wondered what he would say if he knew that he had been dangling from the nearest gallows. In spite of my fear, I enjoyed the thought.
    I hesitated. I had to ask, even if he whipped me again. “Will you let him stay, sir?”
    He sighed. “Yes, for now, and only because Thomas has asked. But stay away from this boy! He may take advantage of your kindness because you are a woman.” I must have smiled because he brought his fist down hard on the table. “You are the most difficult of my daughters, Jane,” he said quietly, as if he had said this many times to himself. “We do not like strangers here. How do we know he will not murder us in our beds?”
    “How does he know that we shall not murder him in his?” The words spilled out before I could stop them.
    My mother leaned forward. She is a large woman, my mother, and her chin doubles as she speaks. Unlike my father, who thinks only that I fear the physical pain, she knows my deepest fear. “Remember, Jane, there are worse punishments than the whip.” She paused and glanced at my father. He nodded. “We have been arranging your marriage in London. Then you will learn the meaning of obedience.”
    Her words made me tremble as she knew they would. Marriage was something that happened to other girls – something far off and frightening, like death. Something I dreaded.
    Who would they make me marry? William Parnell, as plain as a garden sparrow? Or one of the Dudley hawks? Dudley was the King’s Protector, the devil himself who had spawned five sons. Or…
    My father’s voice cut across my thoughts. “Dudley thinks you will suit Edward very well.”
    The King ? My head was throbbing now, as well as my palm. I had last seen him four years ago, so full of anger as he spoke to his advisors that he had plucked every feather from a falcon, and when I begged him to stop he had torn it apart. No, I could not marry such a man.
    The room tilted around me and I put my hand to my neck. Edward was Henry’s son and Henry’s wives had had a habit of dying. Like father, like son. If Edward could do that to a bird, what would he do to me? I stayed silent, afraid of what I might say.
    My mother continued, “And I pray every day that you will