Read Online The Queen's Dollmaker by Christine Trent - Free Book Online Page A

status. At least she had her boys—dear Nathaniel!—to comfort her.
    Nathaniel Ashby resembled his father in shape, but was his mother in temperament. And as he desired nothing more than the top position in his mother’s affections, his own vitriolic disposition was most frequently turned onto his twin, Nicholas. Nathaniel would devise plots to get Nicholas, a quiet and pensive boy, into trouble and undeserved beatings by his mother and schoolmaster. His latest scheme involved the capture and hiding of a snake and his brother’s schoolbooks in a stack of folded bed linens. That stupid ass of a new maid, Béatrice, found them, and the shrieking and braying that commenced would have been enough to waken the entire block. Nathaniel was able to truthfully report to his mother that the books were clearly Nicholas’s, and Nicholas did obviously spend quite a bit of time wandering down to the laundry. And so once again Nicholas received a beating and was sent to bed without supper, no questions asked. Sometimes Nathaniel felt a twinge of guilt, particularly when Nicholas would turn his large, quiet eyes toward him, unblinking yet knowing in his thin pale face; but he was always able to push the feeling aside as soon as his mother popped a sweetmeat in his mouth.
    Nicholas should have been his mother’s favorite, since he was most likely of the Ashby males to eventually recover the family fortune, but instead he was largely ignored. He realized his brother’s intent toward him, and even at some level understood it, but the continual torment forced him to recede into himself, to walk hallways quietly and unnoticed, to speak only when spoken to directly. Nicholas would spend hours alone with books, or sitting outside under the trees, contemplating leaves and earth and sky. A passerby would say to himself, “Now there’s a fine and serious boy!”
    The arrival of Claudette and Béatrice was of interest to Nicholas. Their French accents and mannerisms were unlike anything he had seen before in his quiet existence. They carried themselves in a way that the other servants did not, and they even seemed to take some small notice of him. He took to following them around, quietly of course, sometimes creeping up to doorways without announcing himself and watching them work. He had to be careful, though, that Nathaniel did not catch him.
    Of the two servants—or ladies, as Nicholas thought of them—Béatrice was evolving as his favorite. She exuded a fragile nature, and was in such contrast to his mother that he was inescapably drawn to her, like the hummingbird to the flower, beating his wings with a childish desperation. Of Marguerite he paid no mind. She was just a little girl, immaterial and unworthy of his adoration.
    Béatrice, instinctively recognizing the boy’s awkwardness, would invite him to talk with her sometimes while she was washing, or folding, or mending.
    “What subjects do you learn in school, Monsieur Nicholas?” she asked once in her improving English, on her knees shaking her dripping, reddened hands over the wash bucket.
    Blushing furiously he replied, “Oh, just grammar and sums. And history.”
    “And just what history did you learn today?”
    “We are memorizing the names of all the English kings and queens, the greatest monarchs ever to rule in the world.”
    “Ah, yes, I suppose that may be construed to be so. Did you know that your Queen Elizabeth once made sport of France’s Duc d’Anjou, pretending she would marry him, but never doing so? All to maintain friendly relations between England and France.”
    “She did? We have not learned that. At least, not yet.”
    Béatrice picked up another bundle of clothing and began sorting it. “So I suppose that if the greatest queen of England thought she should be friendly with the French, then we must be friends as well, oui?” With a wink, she turned around to find the soap, massaging her raw hands together discreetly out of his