The Lady of Misrule Read Online Free PDF

It was difficult enough to get the door shut on the pair of us and then there was the clock’s foliot of which to keep clear, the arcing of that arm one way then back again, as slow and steady in the semi-darkness as a sleeper’s breath.
    Old kneeling-cushions were heaped in there but even so I’d have Harry underneath me – better padded, he should be the one to suffer the flagstones – and no sooner was he down there than I’d be on top of him, ducking beneath the two hunks of stones that dangled on their chains, edging blindly downwards, and I’d be kissing him: kissing and kissing, my tongue circling his as if that were a way to wind myself open, because we didn’t have time to feel our way and I never found it much easier at the start than the first time. I wanted him sliding into me with ease; I wanted instantly the ease that I knew was coming, but at first it was a blundering, an ill-fit because this was new, for me: I was seventeen and this was all still new. I’d have to work my way down on to him and for a notch of one of those clock-wheels we’d be getting nowhere but then, before I knew it, my resistance was instead a grip, I’d have him in my grip and then we were laughing as much as we could with our mouths pressed together because there we were, and we were on our way.

    However much I’d needed my sleep and however swiftly it had come, I woke exhausted in the morning, having lain braced all night for the courtyard clock-strikes which were all too ready to extract another hour from the night’s dwindling store. But at least the bells did what they had to do and then, for a whole hour at a time, left me in peace – unlike sweet-breathing Jane, sleeping soundly beside me and only ever shifting, or so it seemed, precisely as I’d succeeded in nodding off. I’d rather she had snored: some proper disturbance to justify my grievance.
    When she rose, some time after the clock struck five, I played dead. If this was habitual for her, this early rising, then we’d have a problem, because I’d never been one for mornings. Rigid in my refusal to face the dawning day, nevertheless I must’ve drifted off because some time later there she was, beside the bed, regarding me with animal-like curiosity, as if about to extend a paw to worry at me.
    She asked, ‘Are you all right?’
    Doubtful that plain old tiredness would be sufficient excuse, I made a bit more of it: a headache, I told her, and itdid the trick: ‘Sleep it off,’ she advised, turning away, and clearly glad to be going.
    Well, good riddance. And anyway, what would I be doing if I did get up and follow her into the main room? She was more than capable of looking after herself and this was very much her world, even if she was now held prisoner in it. Me, I was all at sea, hunching beneath the coverlet to make the most of my precious time alone in that bed with only the odd sound from next door – an occasional off-carpet footfall, some object placed on the table – to ripple my half-sleep.
    Later, when I surfaced, my head was full of nothing-noises from home, of summertime early mornings at Shelley Place: a shutter let go too soon; a pail dropped on to cobbles; my mother sneezing extravagantly; and my father whistling for the dogs. An odd music that I hadn’t realised I’d ever heard, let alone could sing to myself in my sleep, but there it was, as familiar to me as the rhythmic nudge of blood in my temples. Then suddenly it was gone again and irretrievable.
    When eventually I went through to the main room, Jane was dressed, at the table with a book open in front of her and the fortification of several more to one side. The glance she gave me was ready and friendly enough but her focus lagged, reluctant to leave the page. She flapped a hand towards a tray. ‘Breakfast, if you’d like.’
    God, no, no breakfast, thank you: not at the best of times and