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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“ Y ou bastard!”

“Cassia, if you would but allow me a moment to explain ...”

“Explain!? How dare you, my lord? How dare you marry me without my knowledge? This cannot be legal. I did not consent to this. Conscious or not, I never consented to this. No, this cannot at all be legal!”

Rolfe came forward in his chair. “I feel I must inform you that you did indeed consent to this marriage. In fact, I assure you that you did. There was only one word required of you to indicate your consent to this marriage and, delirious or not, you did speak it. Before me, the cleric, and before a number of witnesses, you did speak your consent.”

Cassia could remember nothing, nothing at all, except that voice, the voice that had spoken to her so softly, calling to her, begging her to fight, pleading with her to live, that voice that had given her the strength and the will to survive.

Rolfe’s voice.

Cassia dropped her head into her hands. How could this be happening? She closed her eyes.

“It must have been obvious to you when I regained consciousness that I had no recollection of this,” Cassia said, standing now, so furious with him and so forlorn.

“When did you plan to tell me the truth, my lord? On our anniversary perhaps? When I became betrothed to another man? Would you have come forward only then to protest the banns and prevent me from committing bigamy?”

Rolfe rose from his chair and came to stand before her.

His voice was measured in effort to calm her.

“Cassia, listen to me. I wanted to wait to tell you all this until you had fully recovered. And then, when you had recovered, well, the time was just never right. Believe me when I say I tried several times, but the words just never sounded appropriate. How do you tell someone that you are now their husband?”

She glared at him. “I imagine it would be most difficult.”

“You’re bloody right it is. If it matters at all, I have had every intention of telling you. I just never meant for you to hear it from me like this. I know you most probably despise the sight of me right now, but someday, perhaps, you will understand why I did this.”

Cassia crossed her arms over her chest, her eyes sparking with anger. “And pray tell, why precisely did you do this to me, Lord Ravenscroft?”

She made it sound as if he’d caused her a vile injury, an injury, Rolfe had to admit, he had given, for he had known even before he’d done it, that she had never wanted to wed. Anyone.

He was just preparing to tell her his reasons, his honorable and truly just reasons for having married her without her knowledge, or so she’d put it, when the Kulhaven butler, Crandall, made an appearance at the door.

“Excuse me, my lord and my lady. A messenger from Whitehall Palace just brought this to the door for Lady Cassia. He seemed most agitated and said it was rather urgent.”

Cassia glanced at Rolfe, then took the letter and quickly opened it.

My Dearest Cassia, I write to you with a despairing heart, knowing I must inform you of the ever-failing health of my wife, your dear friend, Catherine.

You alone showed her the most kindness when she arrived on England’s shores as my wife when others treated her with nothing but contempt and disdain.

I realize that by asking you what I am about to ask may be putting you at considerable risk, having recently learned that your life has been placed in jeopardy, but I beseech you to please come and be at her side for her time with us is growing spare.

I know she would want you to be with her to the end.

Yours, Charles Rex.

Cassia’s voice trembled as she handed the letter to Rolfe. “I must go to Whitehall now. Catherine is dying.”

They were at the gates of the palace within the hour.

Cassia wasted no time in rushing straight to the queen’s private apartments. Two uniformed sentries were standing guard outside the closed double doors, rapiers crossed. When Cassia attempted to pass, they stepped in front of her, refusing to allow her entry.

“Let me by, please. I must see the queen.”

“His Majesty the king gave us strict orders that no one save himself was to pass through these doors.”

Cassia tried to reached past one of the guards to grasp the door handle. “I do not care what your orders are. You will let me inside.”

Just then the door fell open and King Charles himself stood framed in the shadowed doorway.

But he wasn’t the king that everyone knew for his laughing eyes and mischievous grin.

This king was nearly unrecognizable. He’d removed his customary dark curled wig, revealing a head with hair shortly cropped.

His face was haggard. He wore only a plain suit with a shirt underneath.

Gone was the always cheerful light that seemed ever to fill his dark eyes.

Now that light was clouded with despair.

“Step aside,” he said, his voice rough with dread. “You will allow Lady Cassia to proceed inside.”

The guards both stepped aside.

Cassia rushed through the doorway, leaving Rolfe and the king behind her.

Before she even reached the doorway to Catherine’s apartments, she was overcome by the smell, an odious odor, that filled the room. The windows were tightly closed as if death had already come to take its innocent victim. The room was hot, stiflingly so, the smell of sickness overpowering.

Cassia pulled her handkerchief from her gown pocket and pressed it against her nose as she continued on to the doorway that led to the queen’s inner bedchamber.

She nearly fainted at the first sight of Catherine.

The queen lay on her back in the middle of her large bed, looking twice as small and weak as she ever had before.

Her hair, the dark curls that had hung around her child-like face and down her back, that had been the very essence of her innocent beauty, had been shorn to the scalp.

A tight-fitting linen cap now covered it.

Her face and arms, the only parts of her visible from beneath the heavy mound of bed coverings, were overspread with red, angry-looking blotches.

The pale skin beneath had taken on the appearance of translucency.

Only a few candles burned in the room, and the drapery was drawn closed over the windows.

It was frighteningly dark, shadows from the candlelight lurking on the walls.

At the foot of the bed near the queen’s feet lay the fetid bodies of several pigeons, slain days before, a medieval medical practice that was believed to remove the evils of disease from the air. It only served to add to the overpowering stench that filled the room.

Cassia drew nearer, she could see that the sheets were stained with sweat and urine and waste. She tried to swallow to keep herself from gagging. Her stomach lurched.

Catherine’s ever faithful waiting woman, the Countess da Penalvo, who had accompanied her from Lisbon and who spoke not a word of English, was sitting at the far side of the bed, wailing in broken Portuguese.

A rosary was clutched in her hands. Beside her knelt a priest, a short and heavily-jowled man clothed from head to toe entirely in black woolen.

He was praying. At the foot of the bed, near to the pigeon carcasses, stood the court physician, preparing the leeches to bleed the queen.

“You will stop!”

The countess ceased her wailing, her red-rimmed eyes peering in alarm at Cassia. The priest’s prayers fell silent. The physician looked up in surprise.

“You will not bleed her again. The queen needs what little blood you seem to have left her to survive. Now, please leave.”

The physician protested. “But, we must remove the sickly blood ...”

“You will kill her if you continue to bleed her.”

Cassia had to raise her voice to be heard for, since the start of the confrontation, the countess had resumed her chanting, wailing in Portuguese even louder.

The priest began another litany, making the sign of the cross.

On the bed, Catherine quietly moaned as if the din was crashing through her brain.

It was all too much for Cassia to bear.

“Get out, all of you!”

At this, the countess’s wailing only seemed to rise.

The physician began to argue all the more, holding out one of the slimy leeches with a pair of metal pincers that looked as if they had never been washed, not once.

Despite her protests, he was preparing to place the blood-sucking creature on Catherine’s delicate pale skin.

Cassia moved in front of him, ready to do whatever it took to prevent any further bloodletting.

“Please step away, my lady. It is for the good of the queen.”

“If you had half a mind, you would know what you are preparing to do will bring more harm to the queen than good.”

The king came forward from the shadows then, stepping into the chaos.

“Your Majesty,” sputtered the physician, “this crazed woman will not allow me to minister to Her Majesty!”

The countess’s wailing rose to a crescendo.

The priest began burning frankincense in a golden chalice, sweeping it through the air in a wide arc, sending a spiral of smoke throughout the room, adding to the heaviness of the odors that clashed around them.

He prayed aloud, chanting, trying to be heard above the din. “May the Lord have mercy...”

The physician stepped forward, intent on his course of action. “Your Majesty, I must bleed the queen...”

“Enough!”

At the king’s deafening shout, everyone in the room silenced. Charles looked over to Cassia who remained close to the queen’s side. She just stared at him, beseeching him with her eyes. After a moment, he turned to face the physician.