Uncrowned Queen

Chapter 28

Edward arrived on a Thursday morning with a leather case and the particular bearing of a man who has completed something.

Not a man who wishes to be congratulated for completing it. Not a man who requires acknowledgement, or absolution, or any of the things people generally require when they present one with evidence of their own better nature — the warm reception, the grateful expression, the sense that the effort has been noticed and approved.

He arrived without any of that quality of waiting. Simply a man who has done a thing that required doing, and has brought the result.

I watched him cross the room. He moved differently than he had a year ago — less of the practiced ease, the polished social grace that had once seemed so natural and now struck me, at the distance of hindsight, as rather carefully maintained. What remained was quieter. Something that might, given sufficient time and sufficiently better decisions, become genuine.

He set the case on my desk without preamble.

"The original physician's records," he said. "Unrevised. With the relevant dates clearly indicated." He set his hands briefly on the case, then withdrew them — a small motion, the motion of a man relinquishing something. "There is also a corroborating statement from the former apprentice, who was present at the initial examination. The dates are unambiguous."

I opened the case. I examined the contents with the attention they merited, which was considerable. He had been thorough — more thorough than the situation strictly required, which told me rather more about the effort he had made than the documents themselves did.

"This is comprehensive," I said.

"I wanted to be certain." He looked at the desk rather than at me, in the manner of a man who is not entirely certain of his reception and is giving himself room to manoeuvre. "That there was nothing left out."

"There is not," I said, leafing through the final pages. "This is complete."

A pause. He still did not look up.

"Edward."

He looked up. Something in his expression was braced — the faint preparedness of a man who has learned not to expect warmth from this particular direction and has adjusted his expectations accordingly.

"Thank you," I said. With the warmth the occasion warranted — not the warmth of forgiveness, which was a different currency and one I had not decided to circulate, but the specific warmth of genuine acknowledgement. He had done a thing worth doing. He had done it at some cost to himself, and had arrived asking for nothing.

His expression adjusted. Not relief, exactly. Something quieter. "I hope it is useful," he said.

"It will be," I said. "Rather considerably."

He nodded once, with the brief economy of a man who has said the thing he came to say and has no interest in extending the scene further. He stood, and moved toward the door — unhurried, without the polished social ease I had once catalogued as characteristic, and which I now understood had been, in part, a performance.

What remained was not a performance.

I watched him go with the settled feeling of a chapter that has found its final sentence, and does not require a postscript.

The case stayed. The documents were entered into the crown records that same afternoon.

What followed was paperwork.

Paperwork is not, as a general rule, regarded as a satisfying instrument of anything in particular. It lacks drama. It produces no confrontations, no visible moments of reckoning in which justice is seen to be delivered and received and generally acknowledged by all parties present.

What it produces instead is a series of mornings.

The morning on which Victoria's solicitor writes to inform her that a certain stipend, which she had considered a permanent arrangement, is no longer operative. The morning on which a second letter arrives, regarding a different arrangement, with the same conclusion.

Then a third morning, a fourth — each one quiet, formal, final, the correspondence of a crown conducting its administrative obligations with the bland efficiency of an institution that has considerable experience with the removal of protections that were never meant to be permanent.

I signed each document with the composed attention of a woman who understands that this is the form justice takes when it is done properly, and that done properly is considerably more effective than done loudly.

Victoria called on me one final time at the end of the month.

She arrived at the palace with the bearing of a woman who has prepared for a confrontation — the particular quality of someone who has rehearsed several versions of a scene and has arrived ready to perform whichever one the occasion demands.

Mr. Holt received her. Tea was arranged. She was shown to the waiting room with every courtesy.

I was, as Mr. Holt conveyed to her with the apologetic efficiency of a man delivering an inconvenient fact, entirely occupied with correspondence this afternoon.

Victoria thanked him. With perfect grace — she always thanked people with perfect grace; it was one of her more reliable qualities. She waited for approximately twenty minutes. Then she thanked Mr. Holt again, and left, and did not call again.

The confrontation she had spent the better part of a year equipping herself for simply never arrived.

I found that this — the specific absence of a scene — was rather more satisfying than any scene could have been.

That evening, Damian and I sat in the small study off the east corridor with Ashworth's judicial submissions, which had proliferated in the preceding week with the characteristic thoroughness of a man who considers comprehensive coverage a professional virtue.

I was reading. He was annotating.

After some time, I stood, moved to his side of the desk, and read over his shoulder without particular ceremony or announcement, in the manner of a person who has decided that the geographical arrangement of the furniture is not presently relevant to what she needs to see.

He did not remark upon this.

I read for a moment. "There is an error," I said, pointing. "Third paragraph. The precedent cited dates from the wrong instrument — it should be the 1791 amendment, not the primary act."

He looked at where I was pointing. He looked at his notes. He corrected the notation without comment.

I returned to my chair.

We continued.

The fire burned. The submissions were reviewed. Occasionally one of us said something and the other responded, in the easy manner of two people who have sufficient mutual understanding that conversation can begin at any point without requiring preparation.

At some point, I became aware that I had been in this room for rather a long time and had found it, throughout, entirely comfortable — without effort, without the low-level management that social occasions generally required, without the particular discipline of a woman maintaining the appropriate distance from a colleague she was not in any sense maintaining the appropriate distance from.

This told me something.

Comfort, I had understood historically, as the absence of difficulty — the relief of a situation resolved, a problem managed, a requirement discharged. The room that is comfortable after the crisis has passed.

This was not that variety.

This was the specific comfort of a room that is comfortable because of what it contains. Because of the particular quality of the person sitting across the desk, making notes in his careful hand, entirely present and entirely at ease in the manner of a man who is exactly where he intends to be.

Damian looked up briefly, not at me but at the document he had just annotated, and made a small additional mark in the margin, and returned to the next page.

I watched this without turning away.

I regarded the full inventory of the information — the room, the fire, the familiar composure of the man across the desk, and the specific quality of not wanting to be anywhere other than precisely here — with the honest attention it deserved.

I found, examining it from several angles with the rigour it warranted, that I did not object to any of it.

Not remotely.