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"Boleyn," said the queen, and spread her skirts and sat on the end of her bed, narrowly missing her feet, very forthright for a dream. "And how are you, my dear?"
"Very well, thank you, Majesty."
The boys laughed. "She only half believes in us, but she plays the game, doesn't she? They don't have queens now."
"How pretty she is," said the queen. "So was I."
"I'm not staying here," Bettine said. It seemed important in this web of illusions to have that clear.
"I don't really believe in you entirely. I'm dreaming this anyway."
"You're not, my dear, but there, there, believe what you like." The queen turned, looked back; the children had gone, and another was coming through, a handsome man in elegant brocade.
"Robert Devereaux," said A
"Who is he?" Bettine asked. "Is he the king?"
The man named Robert laughed gently and swept a bow; "I might have been," he said. "But things went wrong."
"Earl of Essex," said A
"You make me very nervous," she said. "If you were real I think you'd talk differently; something old. You're just like me."
Robert laughed. "But we aren't like the walls, Bettine. We do change. We listen and we learn and we watch all the passing time."
"Even the children," said A
"You died here."
"Indeed we did. And the same way."
"Murdered?" she asked with a shiver.
A
"You and Essex?"
"Ah, no," said Robert " Weweren't lovers, then."
"Only now," said A
"I'm the Mayor's girl," Bettine said. It was good to talk, to have even shadows to talk to. She sat forward, embracing her knees in her arms. Suddenly the tears began to flow, and she daubed at her eyes with the sheet, feeling a little silly to be talking to ectoplasms, which all the fashionable folk denied existed; and yet it helped. "We quarreled and he put me here."
"Oh dear," said A
"Indeed," said Lord Essex, patting A
"You died for love?"
"Politics," said A
She shook her head furiously. This dream of hers was not fa her control, and she tried to drag things her own way. "But it's a silly quarrel. And I don't die. They don't kill people here, they don't."
"They do," A
"Well," said Essex, "not axes, any more. They're much neater than they were."
"Go away," Bettine cried. "Go away, go away, go away."
"You'd do well to talk with us," said-A
"Don't think of love," said Essex. "It's not love, you know, that sends people here. It's only politics. I know that. And A
You don't sound like someone in love, Bettine."
She shrugged and looked down, expecting that they would be gone when she looked up. "There issomeone I love," she said in the faintest of whispers when she saw they were not gone. A
"What do youknow?" she cried. "You're nothing. I know people, believe me. And I know Richard."
"Good night, Bettine," A
"Good night," Essex said very softly and patiently, so that she did not seem to have ruffled either of them at all. And the children were back, who bowed with departing irony and faded. The lights brightened.
She flounced down among the bedclothes sulking at such depressing ideas and no small bit frightened, but not of the ghosts—of her situation. Of things they said. There was a chill in the air, and a whiff of dried old flowers and spices. . . the flowers, she thought, was A
"Bettine," said Richard's voice, stern and angry.
She sprang up out of the covers, went blank for a moment and then assumed one of her bedroom looks, pushed her thick masses of hair looser on her head, stood up with a sinuous twist of her body and looked into the camera, moue'd into a worried frown, a tremble, a look near tears.
"Richard. Richard, I was so afraid. Please." Keep him feeling superior, keep him feeling great and powerful, which was what she was forin the world, after all, and how she lived. She came and stood before the camera, leaned there. "I want out of here, Richard. I don't understand this place." Naivete always helped, helplessness; and it was, besides, truth. "The jailer was terrible." Jealousy, if she could provoke it. "Please, let me come back. I never meant to do anything wrong. . . what is it I've done, Richard?"
"Who was he?"
Her heart was beating very fast. Indignation now; set him off balance. "No one. I mean, it was just a small thing and he wasn't anyone in particular, and I never did anything like that before, Richard, but you left me alone and what's a girl to do, after all? Two weeks and you hadn't called me or talked to me—?"
"What's the name, Bettine? And where's the grade-fifty file? Where is it, Bettine?" She was the one off balance. She put a shaking hand to her lips, blinked, shook her head in real disorganization. "I don't know anything about the file." This wasn't it, this wasn't what it was supposed to be about. "Honestly, Richard, I don't know. What file? Is thatwhat this is? That you think I stole
something? Richard, I never, I never stole anything."
"Someone got into the office. Someone who didn't belong there, Bettine; and you have the key, and I do, and that's a pretty limited range, isn't it? My office. My private office. Who did that, Bettine?"
"I don't know," she wailed, and pushed her hair aside— the pretty gestures were lifelong-learned and automatic. "Richard, I've gotten caught in something I don't understand at all, I don't understand, I don't, and I never let anyone in there." (But Tom had gotten in there; hecould have, any time, since he was in the next office.) "Maybe the door. . . maybe I left it open and I shouldn't have, but, Richard, I don't even know what was in that file, I swear I don't"