A Constant Heart, page 33
“I am the cause of all of your troubles.”
“Who told you that?”
“Lady de Winter, and she said—”
“She is a serpent.”
“But she is right!”
“About what is she right?”
“About my being the cause of all of your troubles. Since the first day the Queen laid eyes on me, I have done nothing but degrade you in her eyes.”
“You have done nothing but love me with a constant heart.”
“But what has that love done for you? Nothing.”
“It has done everything! It has comforted me and sustained me; it has made me whole.”
“But I embarrassed you at court. I was banished. And you were disgraced.”
“And it has all been made right. We will go to Polonia and we will start our lives anew. Together.”
“But then you will have to leave Holleystone behind. If you would just let me leave, go back to King’s Lynn, then you could return to court, you could resume your position, and you would not have to leave Holleystone.”
“And how could I remain at Holleystone without you? You are its heart. You are its soul. ’Tis only with you in it that it means anything at all.”
“But if you go, you leave court . . . you leave the country. You leave the Queen. You give up everything.”
“Not everything. Do you not remember? ‘To you alone I give Love’s astrolabe / That in your sailing you might find the same—’ ”
“ ‘Gale winds that blew my soul to you to save / Might in return give you to me to claim.’ But you never wrote that.”
“I would have if I had known of this end from the beginning. And I would sail to the ends of the earth to find you. But do not make me do it. Claim me now. Love me.”
“I do. I love you. I will ever love you.”
“And I, you.” He pulled me close and kissed me. “Now, please, may we go to Polonia? There is a cell in the Tower waiting for me if we miss the last ship to the Continent.”
And so we rode to Dover together, our past behind us, our future before us, and not without a little fear. For in the wilds of the East, who knew what we might find? But greater than our fears were our hopes. And our dreams. God was for us, how could we doubt that? With constant hearts we had chosen love, and He had perhaps not rewarded us, but He had rescued us. He had set our feet on a new path. An honorable path. And with our love now fixed between us, we would let nothing separate us again.
A NOTE TO THE READER
Marget, Lytham, and Lady de Winter never lived, but their experiences were all too real and occurred all too often during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Lead poisoning was not uncommon when court women began to follow their Queen in fashion. Queen Elizabeth I used lead paint foundation and mercury sulphide rouge to hide the ravages of smallpox and disguise the advance of age. Noblewomen happily followed her example. Ceruse, or lead paint, was the Renaissance’s answer to wrinkles and aging. We now know that it only caused premature aging of the skin and sped women along the route toward death. Queen Elizabeth I died on March 24, 1603, from blood poisoning. Some suspect the poisoning was due to lead.
The first symptoms of lead poisoning were only cosmetic. The paint dissolved hair follicles and then loosened the teeth. Continued use of the paint led to the rapid aging of skin, to which the answer was simply to coat the ceruse on in thicker layers. It was inside the body, however, where lead poisoning left its most insidious marks. Early on, the user would begin to have trouble with speech and recall and would manifest the symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome. Later, the women would experience tingling in their hands and feet, lethargy, and irritability, along with miscarriages, premature births, or stillbirths. With long-term use came difficulty in concentration, general fatigue, tremors, abdominal pain, headaches, vomiting, and weight loss. Eventually the women might experience paralysis, severe abdominal cramps, seizure, coma, and death.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe many thanks and much gratitude to the people who encouraged me as I wrote this book: to Beth Jusino, who gently nudged me forward; to Dave and Sarah Long, who graciously offered me both time and space; to Lanna Dickinson, Narelle Mollet, Trudy Mitchell, and Maureen Lang, whose enthusiasm for these pages sparked my own; to Linda Derrick, who prayed; to Ginger Garrett for sharing the dream; and especially, and always, to Tony.
Siri Mitchell, A Constant Heart
