The Never Queen

THE NEVER QUEEN

One Summer’s day, when the city was a smouldering inferno of superheated alleyways, scorching brickwork, blinding glass, wilting people, she fled, not to the burning wildfires of the country, the charred destruction of centuries-old woodland lost in minutes, but to the basement, the blessedly cool, dark, silent room that few knew and fewer visited. The light buzzed annoyingly, but she could live with that. The heat it gave off irritated her, but not enough to worry about. She wandered through the aisles, through ages of history piled and sorted, catalogued and detailed, preserved and conserved. Here the past met the present, was saved for the future. Countless rows, stacks, shelves, drawers, filled to overflowing with scrolls older than Methuselah, pale faded inks in spidery hand, cream and fawn and white parchments and vellums faded and mottled and strange unknown languages and symbols, all speaking to her in a cool, quiet room, while outside, the city burned.

Trailing fingers stroked the wrapped parchment scrolls of bygone years, drifting her further back in time, pausing at times to rest on loosely-rolled cloth covers. Here, the boundary divisions of a feudal lord’s estate were set down in perpetuity, there, a bitter dispute exposed for all to see between wronged victim and heartless bigamist, the claims and counter claims for cattle, or land or every situation where one man has accused and another defended and lawyers rub their hands, their bellies and bank balances growing proportionately.

On further, and back further, through the archives’ shelves and aisles reaching now to the early kings, through the Plantagenets: the Henrys and Edwards, back to Richard and John and the first of their line, Henry II… and before him, Stephen. Stephen, her cousin. Here the air was almost frozen in time, as still and silent as if she was the only person still in existence, the rest of the superheated, squabbling, fractious sprawl of society a distant memory, a minor inconvenience, like a fly swatted away from a page. And yet, even that was an illusion, of course. The air was moving, the temperature controlled, no flies, beetles, moths or other destructive forces allowed to intrude where she had dared to enter.

For a moment more she paused, fingers kissing the precious records of the past so that her skin trembled and fluttered and, drawing back hurriedly, she wiped long drag-marks down the sides of her pale-grey trousers. Now it was time to decide… time to indulge in the guilty pleasure that she could relive over the coming week, revisit each detail and nuance of language and savour the archaic phrases, the ancient script, glorying wordlessly in the colour and richness of the drawings. Time to decide.. She drew the roll, the one, special roll from the shelf, lifted it to breathe in the faintest scent of age and time, the parchment protected by its guard-cloth, maintained specially for her to read… for if not her, who? Who else would ever take the time to visit and read and absorb and love all this history?

Sinking to the chair at the reading table, she waited a moment longer in the pleasure of self-denial, leaning forward to study the dark-red welted clarity of the ancient seal, cut through in recent years to be studied and catalogued, archived and then stored, once more, back in its tomb. Its ribbon was the colour of arterial blood, shockingly bright, then faded, then bright, where superimposed layers had ceded to the light of countless years through the centuries. The knot dropped away and the parchment shifted slightly, as if affronted at the disturbance. Easing, coaxing, smoothing, she took long minutes to let the paper relax and loosen in its own time, until at last it could rest on the padded support, still curled and resisting, but now lit by the overhead lights, revealing her prize.

The language of the scribes and priests: Mediaeval Latin. The old words slipped from her tongue with practised familiarity, her half-whisper strengthening as her brain recognised the old patterns, the script not faded and spidery as she had expected, but firm, clear, immaculate precision in dark ink on the mottled cream page. The scribe had been good, well-learned. No painted illustrations – a twinge of disappointment, gone in moments as the words captivated her and led her back into the time she knew so well.

The roaring in her ears, the pounding of her heart; suddenly her spine was straighter, her head held high. She was back in her own time, her double life as a modern professor of history just a distant sham, gone like the morning dew in the summer heat of the furnace on the streets. No, this was her time. Once again she was Matilda, rightful queen of England, daughter of Henry I, and the parchment, written in secret by her spineless cousin Stephen, acknowledged the fact, swore allegiance to her, swore to uphold and defend her, as he had promised her father, the man who had raised him … Lies and deceit, of course – he betrayed her at the first chance, taking her place and forcing her into exile. On the other hand, he had saved her from the rebels who dared to threaten her. That was the trouble with Stephen – he was so incredibly nice, and affable, and weak – even when he had driven her out, and taken the throne, he couldn’t hold it. She had nearly beaten him, too. If her dear brother Robert hadn’t been captured, she would have had her throne back and Stephen out of the country before he knew what day it was. ..

Matilda read on, a faint smile just lifting the corners of her mouth as she remembered the priest and the lawyer speaking so seriously together as Stephen added his flourish to the signature, and the servant sliding obsequiously across the room to sand the wet ink and wait to collect the page. This is what she had needed at the time, the proof, that later ‘went missing’ at Stephen’s instigation. She had searched, of course – turned out all the rooms in the castle, but it could never be found. Now, centuries later, she had tracked it down. Why did he not burn it? Because he may have needed it one day, of course. Tactics… if she had finally overcome him, he could have produced it to save his skin, talked his way out of an impossible situation. He had never needed it, of course, but keeping it was just his back-up insurance. There was nothing she could do now, nothing to reclaim her crown, alter the course of history… but she had found it, and it was all she needed to resolve her endless quest, to close the circle. To bring her peace.

Not yet. Thoughts whirled and crashed through her head like the crazy traffic out on the streets. If only… Don’t go there, Matilda. You have what you came for. And almost instantly: Now What? What will you do with it? Carefully, precisely, both palms laid on the table, she pushed up from the chair, long red-gold hair falling in a tumble of curls to shield her face while she cleared her mind. Indecision nagged… announce it to the world, prove her skill, her academic detection and abilities? Or keep the discovery to herself, slide it back on the shelf and let another come across it by accident one day in the future? Who would recognise its importance? Or care? She could see it now: ‘Look what I’ve found… mmm, that’s interesting…Oh, well’ and they would pass on, disregarding. Maybe that was the only thing to do, when it came down to it. After all, nobody would believe the actual truth, not in this modern world of fact and dogmatic certainty. There was no room for anyone to accept things beyond the proof of their own eyes, and she had seen what happened to so-called eccentrics, claiming to be reincarnations of past lives. A padded cell was not where she fancied spending the rest of her life, or being a laughing stock, contacted by earnest cranks, sensationalist newspapers and doing a round of television shows to be set up for humiliation. Just for a moment she paused to wonder how many others there were in her situation… figures from the past, living in two worlds, unable to escape either one to live totally in the other.

Dragging in a shuddering breath, Matilda’s eyes closed and she emptied her mind of everything; no worrying, no over-thinking, nothing. Blankness. Gradually her breathing steadied, heart-rate slowed, calm returned. In the harshness of the buzzing overhead light she blinked herself back to modern life. The cool air raised goosebumps on her arms and she raised her head to let it slide over her throat and down her silver-grey shirt. Holding up both arms in supplication, she shivered as the air rustled the sleeves, drying the sweat that had formed on her body and completing her return. Carefully, mind clear and settled, she re-rolled the parchment and tied the ribbon, settling the seal halves together with a gentle pressure. It almost looked as it had done originally. A gentle, ironic smile twisted her lips, then was gone. That was then, this was now. She knew what to do.

Heading up to the archivist’s desk she gently laid the scroll on the expanse of polished oak, itself an antique work of art. Smiling at the young assistant, knowing she was new at her job and would not query a senior professor, she just said she was signing out this document for her research. Filling in the required paperwork she hesitated just for a moment when it came to signing her name. What the hell… why not?

The plain black biro was a poor replacement for the elegant quill that Stephen had used to sign the parchment, but it did the job. The ink was regular and unblotched, the letters even and legible. Boring, characterless. The assistant swung the ledger back round to herself and checked everything was in order, as she had been taught. Item, date, archive reference, signature…

Matilda Regina Royall.

For a passing moment the assistant wondered why she had signed her full name, but the thought was gone as soon as it formed. Shrugging mentally, she returned the ledger to its shelf. Smiling to herself, Matilda picked up her bag with the protective carton safely out of sight and squared her shoulders, pulling on sunglasses as she strode determinedly for the exit. The parchment was staying with her, its true owner. Outside, the burning heat pulsated and scorched and sucked the breath out of the hottest day of Summer.

Word Count: 1788