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There’s an old game you can play with apples, one Anne can never remember playing because as a princess her apples were always peeled and cored and sliced for her, but one she’s heard about nevertheless. About taking a knife and an apple and peeling, peeling, peeling; then throwing the peel over your shoulder to show the initial of your true love.
“We used to do it with stems,” Constance says. “You recite the alphabet while you twist the stem; whatever letter is snaps on, that’s your true love’s initial.”
Constance has a little gold knife in her hands while she talks; an already peeled apple is in her hands, and she’s slicing the white flesh underneath into neat slivers. She does it capably, confidently; Anne pictures her before she became a royal companion, mistress of her kitchen, quiet and strong. Her hands are soft, unworked, now; but they haven’t forgotten how to do this, and Anne reaches out to take one of them, press her lips to its knuckles.
It’s just them and the Dauphin on this picnic, spread out on silk beneath the trees in the palace gardens, and Constance laughs, flushes, at Anne’s touch. She lets the knife fall onto the plate beside the neatly sliced apple, as Anne turns Constance’s hand over, sucks juice from her fingertips.
“Whose initial did you get?” Anne asks.
“Funny thing,” Constance replies easily; “it only twisted once. Snapped immediately.”
It takes Anne a moment; then she leans forward, kisses her.