“Oh, I’m allowed to speak,” she explained. She didn’t want King Charles to get the wrong idea and think that she did nothing but complain. She really didn’t do that. Opal didn’t know why it all kept coming out like that today, but she wasn’t a whiner. “I’m encouraged to speak, actually. A lot. Just not in public. So I don’t embarrass the family.”
It seemed like a perfectly reasonable request to her, so she hadn’t questioned it at all. She knew that she wasn’t smart, and her husband was so kind and generous, she didn’t want to cause problems for him or his parents. Though, she was being a bit willful lately, wasn’t she?
Opal looked down then, as she admitted, “And I understand why the king has asked that of me. But I have not been very good lately. Because I haven’t really been talking at all, not even when I’m asked to. And I shouldn’t be disrespectful, I know that, but… I… I wonder sometimes if the only reason his parents let Henry marry me is because of my gift. That’s very selfish, though, isn’t it? I try not to be, but some days it is just hard to want to speak.”
Truthfully, there were some days when it was hard to manage to get up. Opal sometimes wondered what the point of it all was. When she lived with her mother and Fanny, she had to get up and coax the fire back to life, gather water from the well, begin breakfast, lay out the clothes for her sister and mother, help them dress, feed them breakfast, and then after the first meal of the day there were so many other chores that needed to be done. Now, all she had to do was get dressed and speak when told. And she had help getting dressed, whether she wanted it or not. She had no idea what to do with herself.