The White Queen Read Online Free PDF Page B

dangerous mix of temper and
     lust, and then he masters himself, raises his hands in the gesture of surrender, and
     steps back. “You win,” he says. “You win, madam. And you may keep the dagger as a
     spoil of victory. Here—” He unbuckles the scabbard and throws it down. “Take the damned
     scabbard too, why don’t you?”
    The precious stones and the enameled gold sparklein the twilight. Never taking my eyes from him, I kneel and pick it up.
    “I shall walk with you to your home,” he says. “I shall see you safely to your door.”
    I shake my head. “No. I can’t be seen with you. No one must know that we have met
     in secret. I would be shamed.”
    For a moment I think he will argue, but he bows his head. “You walk ahead then,” he
     says. “And I will follow behind you like a page, like your servant, until I see you
     safe to your gate. You can revel in your triumph in having me follow you like a dog.
     Since you treat me like a fool, I shall serve you like a fool; and you can enjoy it.”
    There is no speaking against his anger, so I nod and I turn to walk before him, as
     he said I should. We walk in silence. I can hear the rustle of his cloak behind me.
     When we get to the end of the wood and we can be seen from the house, I pause and
     turn to him. “I will be safe from here,” I say. “I must beg you to forgive me for
     my folly.”
    “I must beg you to forgive me for my force,” he says stiffly. “I am, perhaps, too
     accustomed to getting my own way. But I must say, I have never been refused at the
     point of a knife before. My own knife at that.”
    I turn it round and offer him the hilt. “Will you have it back, Your Grace?”
    He shakes his head. “Keep it to remember me by. It will be my only gift to you. A
     farewell gift.”
    “Will I not see you again?”
    “Never,” he says simply, and bowing slightly walks away.
    “Your Grace!” I call, and he turns and pauses.
    “I would not part with you on bad terms,” I say feebly. “I hope that you can forgive
     me.”
    “You have made a fool of me,” he says, his voice icy. “You may congratulate yourself
     on being the first woman to do that. But you will be the last. And you will never
     make a fool of me again.”
    I sink down into a curtsey, and I hear him turn and the swish of his cape on the bushes
     on either side of the path. I wait till I cannot hear him at all, and then I rise
     up to go home.
    There is a part of me, young woman that I am, that wants to run inside and fling myself
     on my bed and cry myself to sleep. But I don’t do that. I am not one of my sisters,
     who laugh easily and cry easily. They are girls to whom things happen, and they take
     it hard. But I bear myself as more than a silly girl. I am the daughter of a water
     goddess. I am a woman with water in her veins and power in her breeding. I am a woman
     who makes things happen, and I am not defeated yet. I am not defeated by a boy with
     a newly won crown, and no man will ever walk away from me certain that he won’t walk
     back.
    So I don’t go home just yet. I take the path to the footbridge over the river to where
     the ash tree is girdled with my mother’s thread, and I take another loop in the thread
     and tie it tightly, and only then do I walk home, brooding in the thin moonlight.
     
    Then I wait. Every evening for twenty-two evenings I walk down to the river and pull in the thread
     like a patient fisherwoman. One day I feel it snag, and the line goes tight as the
     object on the end, whatever it is, is freed from the reeds at the water’s edge. I
     tug gently, as if I were reeling in a catch, and then I feel the line go slack and
     there is a little splash as something small but heavy falls deeper, rolls over in
     the current, and then lies still among the pebbles on the streambed.
    I walk home. My mother is waiting for me by the carp lake, gazing down at her own
     reflection inverted in the water, silver in the grayness of the dusk.