by Karleen Koen
“I shouldn’t have gone. It was my vanity. I’m sorry, Alice.”
“We have to go to Brownie.”
That was their pet name for the mother of the maids, the woman responsible for the safety and reputation of Queen Catherine’s maids of honor.
“No! No, Alice. Let’s just see if everyone is still asleep. If everyone is still asleep, no one has to know. Please, Alice. What will I tell her? I can’t think. You have to help me.”
Gracen had begun to cry again, and Alice could see she was on the edge of hysteria. She turned and began to walk up the stairs. After a moment, Gracen followed.
The door to Brownie’s chamber was ajar. Was an alarm already raised? Please not. Please let there be time to tell a suitable lie and get this over with. Alice put her head into the chamber. Brownie sat with one of the queen’s household, he who was master of the queen’s horse, an important position. Their heads were together, their expressions serious. Alice knocked at the door, stepped inside, wadding her mask, a telltale sign she had been up to no good, in her hand.
“Lord Knollys,” she said to the queen’s master of the horse. She walked forward, her eyes on Brownie. “Oh, Brownie, the most terrible thing has happened, and it is all my fault. Gracen and I were playing cards and sneaking wine, and we fell asleep. We just woke, and we’ve walked across the bailey with my groom, and Gracen is sobbing like a child, she is so afraid.” Alice looked behind her, pulled Gracen forward. She was indeed sobbing. “It’s all my fault, but Poll was with us the whole time, I swear it, and Poppy is waiting for me below, and I’m in trouble myself. I have to go, Brownie. Please don’t be too angry—” And then she was out the door, on its other side, shutting it, leaving Gracen to get through on her wits. She retied her mask, ran down the stairs to the Life Guard.
“Will you escort me back?” she asked. At the keep, she gave him a coin. “For your silence,” she said. “My friend and I have been foolish.” He winked. Alice walked up the great entrance stairs. There was a crowd milling, and the Dragon, her French keeper of the maids, shawl over a nightgown, was among them. Her groom, Poppy, appeared out of nowhere, and she and he exchanged a look. He nodded, as if to say, All right, then.
“Where have you been?” The Dragon breathed fire on her, furious to have been waked, even more furious not to have found her in her bed. She didn’t like Alice to begin with.
“With my father,” Alice said coldly. “My groom escorted me. Surely I have a right to visit my father.” She saw John Sidney standing against the wall and walked over to him. “Tell me.”
“Seven priests, the French ambassador, King Charles’s lord chamberlain, and the Duke of York are on the other side of that door,” he said. “Is she—”
“Fine.” Alice put out her hand to shake his. “Thank you, Mister Sidney. Where’s Lieutenant Saylor?”
“Inside with them.”
“And Edward?”
“There, too.”
The Dragon was bearing down on her. She followed the woman to where Princesse Henriette’s maids of honor were sleeping, listening to a lecture on how she must always let the Dragon know if she left the sleeping room, that if this was the way all young Englishwomen behaved, well, it was a pity and a sin, young women who misbehaved in France found themselves behind convent walls, yes, they did. Alice pulled off her clothes, dropped into bed beside Renée, who didn’t move, and closed her eyes. It seemed they hadn’t been closed a moment when her servant, Poll, shook her awake again.
“Your father says come at once.”
Groaning, Alice sat up. All around her in the dark chamber, young women were still sleeping. “Is it dawn?”
“I’ve no idea, miss. I just know he roused me from my bed and said fetch you.” Poll placed the candle and its holder on the floor. “Put this cloak around you, and here are shoes.”
“I’m so sleepy.”
“That’ll be two of us, miss.” Poll was sharp.
A single lantern sat on the floor of the stone hallway where a dark shadow detached itself from among the other shadows. It was Sir Thomas Verney.
“Here she is, sir,” said Poll.
Copper caught just a glimmer of lantern’s light as a coin went whirling in the air, and Poll caught it.
“Come along, poppet.”
Alice stumbled behind as her father took her down winding corner stairs.
“That mix from France are a bad lot,” he said, talking over his shoulder. “There was some sort of ugly mix-up in the chapel this night, some girl involved, a serving wench, we think. Nasty business. They are locked in their bedchambers now, but must leave first thing in the morning, banished to the ships, king’s order.” He stopped before a stout door set into a stone wall and knocked on it.
A servant in full livery—as if it were daylight and he waited upon His Majesty himself—opened it, and Alice walked into a chamber twice the size that she and half the maids of honor were packed into. Candles blazed on a table. In a far corner through an archway was a heavy dark bedstead, and Alice could see someone lying there, a white arm flung out from under the covers. His Grace the Duke of Buckingham, one of King Charles’s foremost friends and foremost councillors, sat in a chair. Sir Thomas pushed Alice forward, and blinking, she almost stumbled as she made a small curtsy. She found she couldn’t tear her eyes from the loose robe he wore, lapis-and-citron-shaded dragons twisted and curled into one another, breathing fire, the fire embroidered with shining gold-flecked threads.
“Well?” Buckingham drummed fingers impatiently on the table.
Not understanding, feeling stupid, Alice raised eyes to his face, well fed, showing its high living in certain lines and sags, in pouches under eyes that weren’t smiling. The servant came forward to offer wine on a silver tray, knelt on one knee, just as if Buckingham were royalty. Buckingham waved him away. His face rearranged itself into an expression of hauteur. “Have I waited up for nothing?”
Behind Alice, her father put his hands on her shoulders. “Tell him, pet.”
“What, Papa?” Surely he didn’t know about Gracen or her own part in everything?
“What you told me this morning of the princess.”
Alice bit her tongue on the word “now?” It was almost dawn. She’d slept only an hour or two. The two men with her hadn’t slept at all. She felt halting, exhausted, tongue-tied. “Relations between them are very bad, Your Grace.”
Buckingham made a dismissive sound. “I dislike abusing the ideals of one so young, but that’s the state of many marriages after a time, my dear.”
“Is it? Do you dismiss most of your wife’s servants, her ladies-in-waiting and maids of honor, her majordomo, her priest, the governess for her children? Do you then put in their place creatures who spy and gossip and make trouble, who are loyal to your creature?”
She had his attention. “Creature?”
“The Chevalier de Lorraine.” Monsieur’s lover.
“Banished last year, I thought. To…where was it, Tom?”
“Spain.”
“Italy,” Alice corrected. “Banished in body, not in thought and not in spirit. His letters arrive weekly by courier. Monsieur droops until he receives one, then storms about like a tyrant for days.”
Buckingham had placed his elbows on the arms of the chair, had brought his fingers together, was regarding her over the steeple he made of them. “What else?”
“Tantrums, furies, not allowing her to go to Versailles when all the court is there, when he himself is there. He tried to prevent this visit.”
“A husband’s prerogative.”
“He told her a soothsayer had read his fortune and prophesied that he was to have two wives. He wondered, as if he were musing on a horse race, when she might die. Her little daughter now tells anyone who asks that her mother loves her not. How would a child of those young years say such a thing, unless someone fed it to her with her broth at night?”
“The governess?”
“Who else? And there’s someone
new in the household who arrived a few weeks before we left. I’m told by one I trust that he comes from Italy, from the chevalier.” There it is, thought Alice, that’s when the mood in the household changed, became frightening, with the arrival of this man.
“Is he handsome?”
“Of course.”
“A pretty boy sent to solace Monsieur.”
“Or torment Madame.”
“Torment is a strong word, Mistress Verney.”
Alice hugged herself inside her cloak, lifted her chin, met his eyes. She was not going to take the word back. Why didn’t he offer a chair? She was trembling with fatigue.
“Go and wait by the door, girl.”
Her father and Buckingham kept their voices low so that she couldn’t hear them. She felt as foolish, as bothersome, as one of the princess’s little spaniels, while Buckingham and her father seemed great, powerful, hunting mastiffs. One bite, and the neck of anything they wished to kill was broken. Her father left Buckingham, took her hands.
“Poppy will see you back.”
He opened the door for her, and there was Poppy again, in the hallway, his face never showing that this wasn’t the first time he’d been up with her this night.
“This way, miss, you’re about to drop. Take my arm,” Poppy said to her.
I sounded the fool, she thought. Had she sounded hysterical? Was she hysterical? Husbands were the law over their wives. Not all husbands were kind. Did she imagine too much? Make things worse than they already were for the princess?
“Here you are, miss.”
Exhausted, ready to faint, Alice opened the door of the bedchamber. Dawn was just swimming upward over the horizon so that light began to break the darkness outside the high windows cut into the stone like an afterthought. She dropped her cloak, kicked off her shoes, dropped into the bed beside Renée.
So that was the great and noble George Villars, Duke of Buckingham, he whose father had been best friend to the king’s father, he who was reared in the nursery of the royals, he whose brother had died a boy on the battlefields for the king’s cause, old to her eyes, blurry eyed from his night of drinking, wearing ridiculous blue velvet slippers with silver fringe on their upper edge, the requisite red heels at their back, his mistress, a notorious countess, sleeping in his bed. He had killed her husband in a duel three years ago. Rumor said she’d held the horses and laughed when her husband fell. Rogues of court, wild animals like d’Effiat and his friends. Even being a princess did not protect, just as being a queen did not protect Queen Catherine. Marry well and wisely. It was the vow she and Caro and Ra had taken. A man who would not beat you. A man whose position would sustain you, even though he wandered. Caro had done it, even if it was over Alice’s own bones, and she was going to do it, by heaven, climb so high that she’d be at no one’s mercy, ever, and break Cole’s heart in the bargain.
She crashed head over heels into sleep.
CHAPTER 5
The next day, news of the black mass and exile to the ships was the talk of court: Who was the woman, had she been ravished, what was a black mass? But those involved shook their heads, gave no gossip to feed the curiosity. Richard was summoned to Princesse Henriette’s chamber in the afternoon. He smiled down at Renée, who’d been sent to keep him company in the hall while he waited to be allowed inside. “Too soon you’ll be gone from me. I’m going to write to you. Tell me I may write to you.”
There was a smile from her, but no answer.
“I’m going to write to your father, tell him my intentions. I’m going to come over to France to present myself to him.” He was on yet another day of determined, persistent wooing.
“What will you say when you present yourself to him?”
“I will say I love your daughter with all my heart and wish to make her my wife.”
Taking advantage of the empty hallway, he leaned forward slowly, giving her time to pull away, which she did not do. He put his mouth on hers, their first kiss, what he’d been working toward since the moment of seeing her. He let his mouth stay gentle, but he reeled with the feel of her lips, their taste, the scent of her hair, the desire he felt for her. “I will lay down my life for you,” he said, lifting his head, looking her straight in the eye. “I will make you proud of me.” There was strength, certainty, in his face, in his voice.
“I have no fortune.”
“Neither have I. We’ll make our fortune together.”
The door to Princesse Henriette’s chamber opened. Reluctantly, he released Renée’s hand, walked inside.
It was a large chamber, windows cut high in the stone walls so that sunlight gathered and fell in pools. Ladies-in-waiting sat in chairs in the sunlight, talking, embroidering, and their needles stilled as they watched Richard walk forward. In one of the pools sat Princesse Henriette, small spaniels in her lap and at her feet. In a corner of the chamber was a huge bed. Gold embroidered silk swirled down from a gilded crown, swirled around bedposts to land in a spill of silver fringe. Seed pearls picked out a pattern of crisscrosses which quilted the silk into a thicker material for the bed curtains. Lace, the most costly, so fine that it was called “stitches in the air,” hung down in festoons from the top of the bed frame. The coverlet was quilted out of the same gold silk, shiny and wondrous, as if all the precious metal in France had been melted down and poured to make it. A crown was embroidered in its center, and the same lace finished the edges. It was costly, delicate, as fragile as if fairies had crept in at night and woven it from moonlight. The bed coverings had been brought from France with the princess, as if there were nothing fine enough the English could manage.
Richard blinked his eyes at the finery on the bed. The cost of the coverings could dower his remaining unmarried sister. The princess smiled at Richard. Masses of chestnut curls were held with pearl pins over each ear. Her eyes were large, very round, very blue. She was twenty and five, had lived all her life in France, at the French court, having been sent to it as a babe as war tore apart her family and kingdom. She had married the brother of the king of France and so was the grandest princess in that kingdom, after the queen. “Leave us,” she said to her ladies. “Except for Verney and Keroualle.”
There was a murmur of talk, the sound of skirts swishing against the stone floor, heels tapping. All eyes were on Richard, not all of the glances friendly. Richard bent and put out his hand to a spaniel. The dog, pretty and cautious, blue bows tied over her ears, smelled it, put out a hesitant pink tongue, and licked his fingers.
“She likes you,” said Princesse Henriette. “You’re the hero of the hour.”
“Am I?” He answered her French with his own, and she smiled. His accent was perfect.
“You know you are. I wanted to thank you myself for what you did.”
“Any man would have done the same.”
“On the contrary, Lieutenant Saylor. Verney, if you please.”
Alice walked forward, put something into Princesse Henriette’s hand. She, in turn, held it out in her palm to Richard. It was a ring, a twisted gold band with an emerald held by tiny golden dragons. “It was my mother’s.”
“You honor me hugely. I must tell you there were others who did good deeds last night.”
“I’ve thanked them. Mister John Sidney, Edward Capelet, Trooper Thorton.”
Richard glanced at Alice, who frowned at him, which didn’t bother him in the slightest. “One more.”
“Who?”
“If it hadn’t been for Mistress Verney, we’d have known nothing. She’s the one who summoned me.”
“She did?”
“Yes. If anyone deserves this ring, it is she.”
Alice was silent, red coloring her cheeks.
“I will give her another reward. Thank you, Lieutenant.”
Dismissed, Richard bowed and backed out of the chamber. The gift was excessive, but he felt honored and touched to be noticed by this princess, who was famous in many kingdoms beyond her own. There was something charming but vulnerable
about her.
Princesse Henriette held out her hands to Alice, who took them and knelt at the princess’s feet.
“Why did you say nothing?”
“I didn’t wish my presence known.”
“Yes, you’re wise. They’d blame you, make you pay for it, wouldn’t they.”
“The Dragon found I wasn’t in my bed. I’ve told her I went to see my father.”
“And the woman?”
“Safe. Not hurt, except for pride.”
“How did you know what they did?”
“I paid Edward to spy on them.”
Princesse Henriette laughed. After a moment, Alice joined in.
“So, thanks to your spying, I am free for the remainder of the visit.”
“Might we not stay yet a while longer, at least until your birthday?” King Charles had already requested a few more days be added, and they had been granted. But Alice was greedy for more.
“Monsieur is furious with what we’ve already received. He calls me ungrateful.”
Alice was silent. Monsieur reached across the Channel to command them, to corral them, even now, to make the bars of the golden cage visible.
“What may I give you, Verney, to thank you?”
“Champion my suit with His Grace the Duke of Balmoral.”
“You know I do, but he’s ill. He’s not even here.”
“Talk to my father. Tell him you think it a suitable match.”
“You will be a splendid duchess. I will talk to your father. Is there nothing more?” When Alice shook her head, the princess reached up into the ringlets around her ear, slowly unscrewed huge pearl drops, set them in Alice’s hands.
“These are too fine, Highness—”
“Take them anyway. I’m so happy. Six days without his men spying on me. You’re a treasure, Verney. Is your friend Mistress Bragge as good as you?”
It had been arranged for months now that Barbara was going to return to France with Alice. “Better.”
“How wonderful for me. That’s all, Verney.”