Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1: The Constant Princess, The Other Boleyn Girl, The Boleyn Inheritance. Philippa GregoryЧитать онлайн книгу.
sympathy in his voice and I brush my hand against my face.
‘I have lost a baby,’ I say shortly. ‘A daughter. My physician says that she was one of twins, and that there is another child still inside me, that there will be another birth.’
‘So why send for me?’
‘I want to know for sure,’ I say. ‘If there is another child I will have to go into confinement, the whole world will watch me. I want to know that the baby is alive inside me now, that it is a boy, that he will be born.’
‘Why should you doubt your own physician’s opinion?’
I turn from his inquiring, honest gaze. ‘I don’t know,’ I say evasively.
‘Infanta, I think you do know.’
‘How can I know?’
‘With a woman’s sense.’
‘I have it not.’
He smiles at my stubbornness. ‘Well, then, woman without any feelings, what do you think with your clever mind, since you have decided to deny what your body tells you?’
‘How can I know what I should think?’ I ask. ‘My mother is dead. My greatest friend in England…’ I break off before I can say the name of Arthur. ‘I have no-one to confide in. One midwife says one thing, one says another. The physician is sure…but he wants to be sure. The king rewards him only for good news. How can I know the truth?’
‘I should think you do know, despite yourself,’ he insists gently. ‘Your body will tell you. I suppose your courses have not returned?’
‘No, I have bled,’ I admit unwillingly. ‘Last week.’
‘With pain?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your breasts are tender?’
‘They were.’
‘Are they fuller than usual?’
‘No.’
‘You can feel the child? He moves inside you?’
‘I can’t feel anything since I lost the girl.’
‘You are in pain now?’
‘Not any more. I feel…’
‘Yes?’
‘Nothing. I feel nothing.’
He says nothing, he sits quietly, he breathes so softly it is like sitting with a quietly sleeping black cat. He looks at Maria. ‘May I touch her?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘She is the queen. Nobody can touch her.’
He shrugs his shoulders. ‘She is a woman like any other. She wants a child like any woman. Why should I not touch her belly as I would touch any woman?’
‘She is the queen,’ she repeats. ‘She cannot be touched. She has an anointed body.’
He smiles as if the holy truth is amusing. ‘Well, I hope someone has touched her, or there cannot be a child at all,’ he remarks.
‘Her husband. An anointed king,’ Maria says shortly. ‘And take care of how you speak. These are sacred matters.’
‘If I may not examine her, then I shall have to say only what I think from looking at her. If she cannot bear examination then she will have to make do with guesswork.’ He turns to me. ‘If you were an ordinary woman and not a queen, I would take your hands in mine now.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it is a hard word I have to tell you.’
Slowly, I stretch out my hands with the priceless rings on my fingers. He takes them gently, his dark hands as soft as the touch of a child. His dark eyes look into mine without fear, his face is tender, moved. ‘If you are bleeding then it is most likely that your womb is empty,’ he says. ‘There is no child there. If your breasts are not full then they are not filling with milk, your body is not preparing to feed a child. If you do not feel a child move inside you in the sixth month, then either the child is dead, or there is no child there. If you feel nothing then that is most probably because there is nothing to feel.’
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