by Karleen Koen
AT WHITEHALL PALACE, Alice tied a last scarlet ribbon into Queen Catherine’s hair, curled to twisting ringlets everywhere. They both contemplated the queen’s image in the mirror. She wore a stiff, scarlet high stomacher out of which her chemise framed her shoulders with handmade lace. Her shirt was black velvet with satin stripes of red overlaid. It was very short, so that her ankles and shoes showed. And in her ears and around her neck hung Portuguese emeralds, mined in the Americas, part of her dowry, set in heavy gold. Her mouth was rouged vivid red, and Alice had taken great care with the rouging of her cheeks.
“Four,” said Queen Catherine.
“I think three.”
“Tyrant.”
Alice placed three gummed dark patches on her face, a coach and horses on her forehead, a star by her left eye, a heart by her bottom lip. With her mask on, only the heart would show. The mask was red. Queen Catherine was an apple vendor. She would carry a basket filled with the best of autumn’s last apple crop. On her black stockings, clearly and shockingly showing, were embroidered red apples. Her cloak was red velvet, lined with emerald green.
They were all going as street vendors, vendors of flowers and herbs. All of the maids of honor wore provocative short skirts high enough to show off their ankles, stockings, and shoes. On their stockings, the queen’s embroiderers had embroidered the flower or herb they were selling. For days beforehand, they’d debated among themselves as to the propriety of showing their ankles, the queen and Barbara holding out, feeling they were going too far. But somehow it had been resolved that they’d do it, and then Queen Catherine had fallen into the fun of it as if she had been its advocate all along. But that had been before the note arrived. It had been Alice’s idea that they perform as a surprise to the king. So they had called upon Fletcher to organize them, and they were going to enter singing and dancing—really it would be as if they were stage actresses, at least that is what they had secretly convinced themselves—and it was all going to be slightly shocking and therefore quite wonderful. The king would like the naughtiness of it. Each of them had a line to sing all by herself. It would end with the crowd of them dancing through costumed courtiers, offering flowers, herbs, apples, as favors to whomever they chose—another source of great excitement—and they would end by encircling the king and pouring whatever remained in their baskets into his hands. This last was the result of Alice’s having seen his sultan’s costume today.
None of the other ladies’ households, that of the Duchess of York or the Duchess of Monmouth, was doing anything other than dressing up—Edward and other court pages were their spies and told them so. It was all great fun, or would have been if the queen were not so dispirited.
“I want not to do this.” Queen Catherine dug her fingers into the fur of the little fox sleeping in her lap, and it yelped and stood up.
Alice knelt beside her. “You look wonderful, Your Majesty.”
“In here”—she touched her breast—“I am have such sad.”
“Shall we put it out that you are ill?”
The canaries in their cages and lovely little birds dabbed with different colors, from one of Portugal’s colonies, were singing in their cages. It was a last aria before dark. “And give more for talk to my enemies to do? No. Dress yourself. Mass, she is in half an hour.”
THE MAIDS OF honors’ adjoining bedchambers were a welter of black velvet shirts, embroidered stockings, high-heeled shoes, giggling young women, servants running here and there, curling tongs heating in the fireplace, secrets being whispered, earrings being screwed in, laughter everywhere. Big ewers as well as a few silver tubs of water and the damp rags showed that bathing had preceded the dressing.
“Our faces!” Luce squealed as Alice rushed past.
Poll poured boiling water into a tepid tub, and, fingers flying, Alice untied, unpinned, rolled down, stepped out of clothing to bathe. That done, she began to reassemble herself as fast as she could. In no time she sat on her bed, tying the garter that held up her beautifully embroidered stocking. Poll was at the fireplace, heating the tongs for her hair. Everyone else’s hair was curled and beribboned.
“Our cheeks…” Luce stood beside her bed.
There was a knock at the door. Gracen opened it enough to see who it was, talked in a low voice with Edward, then turned to tell them all, “The queen is ready to go to mass.”
“Tell her we need but a few moments more,” Barbara said.
Alice stood up in her one stocking. “Is the splash ready?” she asked Poll.
“Yes, but your hair—”
“Never mind it, Poll. We’ll pin it up one way or another. Bring the splash.”
At once they sorted themselves into line, Luce sitting first in a chair before the fire. Gracen brought candles and set them all along the mantel so the light would be better. Wishing to miss nothing, several of the servant girls gathered around Alice. Carefully, Poll began to measure out the gum benzoin, which had been mixed in spirits of wine and very lightly boiled.
“Fifteen drops apiece,” Alice reminded her.
“As if I didn’t know that like I know my own name.” Poll dropped the amount into a very small pewter bowl of water and stirred it once with a thin stirring stick made of bone. Alice dipped a paintbrush into the mix and dabbed at Luce’s cheeks. Gum benzoin drew blood to the surface and gave a girl blooming cheeks. It wasn’t rouge, so Alice—discovering the recipe in a household book of her aunt’s that had belonged to her grandmother—had convinced Barbara it was fine. If Alice and Barbara agreed, all obeyed.
Giggling and whispering had stopped now. This was serious business; a girl could look as though she had scarlet fever if it wasn’t done properly, and no one had the art of it like Alice, who needed silence for her work. It had been two years since she’d done this. Every one of them was different, some needing more, some needing less. Alice put on a glove dirtied with coal dust. Poll handed her the shaved piece of coal. Deftly, she touched under the lashes of Luce’s eyes. Again the effect had to be subtle. Kit, Barbara, Renée. Gracen. Alice touched lightly at a last cheekbone, under a last eye, and it was done.
“Go on to mass,” she told the others. “I’ll slip in once Poll has pinned up my hair.”
“I’ll stay and do your hair,” said Barbara.
“Everyone has her mask?”
“Don’t let your cloaks open.”
Like mothers, Barbara and Alice called out instructions.
In the silence left behind, Alice tied her other garter in its place at the top of her stocking, while Poll checked the temperature of the tongs with a wet finger. Alice sat, her mind calming as Barbara began to curl her ringlets.
“Her earrings, Poll.” Barbara screwed in the pearl drops they all wore—badges of their position. “The brush, Poll.”
A paint stroke here, there, and Alice’s cheeks bloomed.
“We’re done. Go and look at yourself in the mirror. The color becomes you.”
Alice stared at herself in the glass. She wasn’t pretty exactly, but she was—she tilted her head—very interesting. Cloaked and ready, Barbara came up behind her and draped Alice’s own cloak over her shoulders, smoothing out the material the way a mother would. Alice turned, and Barbara fastened the ties, pulled up Alice’s hood, then her own. They stared at each other and smiled.
“We’ll break hearts tonight,” Alice said. “Let’s find Edward and be on our way.”
They took each other’s hands, just as they’d done since they were twelve and learned they were best of friends, and began winding their way through halls and sets of chambers until they were walking through the gallery whose end was Holbein Gate.
They walked down the stairs that led to the park, pulling their cloaks close to them. Winter was in the chill. In the sky a sliver of moon was surrounded by haze. Edward took a torch dipped in pitch from its place. In another moment it was lighted, and he walked out into the night before them. He was their linkboy—young boys who carried lanterns or torches to light the night—for t
he walk across the park and to St. James’s Palace. Other courtiers and Londoners, too, strolled in the park, the lanterns of their linkboys bobbing like small stars fallen from the sky.
The queen’s chapel was across the park, in St. James’s Palace, built by old Henry VIII, he of the many wives. The chapel was beautiful, its grace and intimate elegance the legacy of a man named Inigo Jones, who had been fascinated with the great Renaissance architect Palladio. Its ceiling had set the fashion for honeycombs—deep frames of gilded wood set one after another in the ceiling, resembling the outside of a bee’s hive. Inside each shallow honeycomb was a painting. The king’s mother, French, Catholic, had worshipped here with her ladies and gentlemen.
They crept in, tiptoeing around statues of saints and memorials to the dead, to the queen’s pew. Candles shone from huge candle stands and from gilded chandeliers, saints held out marble hands to bless, carvings of angels smiled in forever faith, bunches of flowers scented the air like perfume. It was ornate and, in the evening, dark, mysterious, beautiful.
In a moment, Barbara was kneeling and saying the prayer, and although Alice knew it by heart, she didn’t say it. Her father’s words were ringing in her ears: Are you a Papist? Perhaps. She had been Papist while with Madame’s court, chanting the prayers. What if she had been? What did it all mean? Across the aisle was the Duchess of Cleveland, near her the Duke and Duchess of York. There were Lord and Lady Arlington, Sir Thomas Clifford, Lord Knollys, other ladies and gentlemen of the household. How many were here out of courtesy to the queen? How many were here out of a faith that was unfashionable, out of favor? It was said Papists caused the terrible plague of 1665, set the great fire that had burned London within a year. She glanced up into the gallery. There were John Sidney, the Earl of Rochester, and Lord Mulgrave. Mulgrave nodded shyly to her. Why were they here? To hear the prayers and chanting? To ogle the maids? To celebrate that which they did not admit openly?
Alice wanted to believe, yet it seemed to her God was capricious, cruel, a trickster who delighted in the trick. Was this how one fooled the trickster, by agreeing with Him that, yes, it was indeed a very good trick? How could one do that? She didn’t understand. Her history lesson taught her that King Henry IV had converted to Catholicism to rule France. My kingdom is worth a mass, he’d said. That she understood. Could her father not love her if she converted? Would he hate the Duke of York now if he knew of his conversion? Barbara said the bonfires were lighted tonight to aid souls out of purgatory; Rochester said Druids lit them in ancient ceremonies acknowledging life and death, and Christians took the ritual and made it theirs. Was not life purgatory enough?
Everyone was rising. Mass was over. She followed the others into the vestry, where plates of soul cakes rose in fragrant, bite-size piles. A soul cake, a soul cake, have mercy on all Christian souls for a soul cake. The Duke of York was murmuring names as he piled his plate high: “Mother, Father, Elizabeth, Mary, Henry, Minette…” His family gone. There were two cakes on the queen’s plate, no more, no less, for the babes conceived and ended. Alice turned her face away, went to stand with Luce and Kit, who were wild and giggling and eating cakes simply because they were there and dusted with sugar.
CHAPTER 23
In the upstairs viewing gallery in the banqueting hall of Whitehall Palace, Luce ran to Alice and Barbara. “There are four sultans, not one!”
“It’s true,” said Dorothy, waving a hand in the direction of the great banqueting hall below. At one end was a throne. Paintings by Rubens sat settled in dozens of ornately gilded ceiling frames. Massive cherubs lifted their arms in blessing in the corners. Their blessings didn’t always work—the king’s father had stepped out one of the evenly spaced windows to his scaffold and beheading. But tonight, no one was thinking of that. Laughter and conversation echoed up to the gallery.
Alice maneuvered through the musicians playing for the crowd below, leaned one hand on the balustrade, and looked over. Milling among the costumed courtiers were indeed four sultans, not one. It was impossible to miss the papier-mâché heads with their ornate cloth of gold turbans. And because the head was so big, the king’s height couldn’t be used to mark him, at least not looking down from this level.
Fletcher clapped his hands to capture the maids’ attention. “It’s a bother, but I’ve thought it all out. We do everything just as we’ve practiced, but at the end, stand before the audience in a row, like flowers in a garden, and sing the last verse. The queen will be your anchor. Wherever she is, fan out on each side of her—Wells, are you listening?” Of course, Luce wasn’t. “Where’s Verney? Someone go and fetch her at once. She hasn’t heard a word I’ve said.” Fletcher fanned himself impatiently. “I’m as warm as if it were summer. It’s nerves. Let me live through this moment. It’s like herding cats. We’d never get a play done if the actresses behaved so. Who’ll be blamed if it doesn’t go well, James Fletcher, that’s who, not Verney or Wells, who is, I note, still talking. Grant me patience! May we begin, Your Majesty?”
At her nod, he signaled the musicians, and they ended their music at a stanza, while Queen Catherine and the maids walked down a staircase. After a time, many fell silent, looking up at the gallery, where Fletcher stood, silently counting to let drama build and the queen’s party assemble themselves in their places near the throne.
He raised a hand, and a single flute began to play.
The great hollow center of the hall took the notes and flung them toward the matching sets of windows at the gallery level, where they echoed back to the courtiers standing below.
“Pippins, fine pippins to sell…” Queen Catherine sauntered forward from behind the throne, her beaded scarlet mask covering her eyes, her skirt swinging out with every step. People moved back, leaving her that actor’s delight, a natural entrance.
“The apple has no seeds,” said the Duchess of Cleveland, arrogant in her five children. People around her tittered. An audible hiss rose up to mingle with the flute. Queen Catherine froze. Suddenly a sultan was before her, holding out his hand for an apple, his eyes behind his mask encouraging, well-known to her. She took a deep breath and recovered her poise. He bowed and moved back, handed the apple to Cleveland with an ironic bow.
“Whatever am I to do with this?” she asked, recognizing the king.
“Reflect upon your bad deeds.”
“But, darling, they were done with you.”
“Here’s lady of the autumn, here’s mistress of fall,” Queen Catherine began to sing, her voice trembling, but then taking hold, strengthening, as she advanced to the center of the hall. “I live not alone, but sisters have many, come, my dear sweets, to sell all your wares, one and two and three, three for a penny, one, two and three, three for a penny.” At that moment, violins swelled out to join the flute, and from every corner of the room, the maids danced out, calling:
“Flower, buy a flower, sir.”
“Primrose, bundle a penny.”
“Daffodils.”
“Rosemary, remember rosemary.”
“Buy my fine myrtle and roses, my myrtles and stocks, my sweet-smelling balsams.”
They held out roses and sweet williams, daffodils and stock, made of silk by the seamstresses, tied to fresh herbs cut that afternoon from the kitchen gardens. Once in a semicircle around the queen, they waited until applause had died back, then began to sing an old poem Fletcher had set to music.
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil’s foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging,
And find what wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.
Alice stepped out in front of them, began to dance. She danced lightly, gracefully, to each of the four sultans and then to the queen. Alice and the queen leaped into the fast-moving steps of a Morris dance, centuries old, something mysterious and remin
iscent of ancient times in it. The maids around them sang.
If thou beest born to strange sight,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee.
Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear nowhere
Lives a woman true and fair.
Breathless, as applause rose, the queen and Alice stepped back into the semicircle of maids, and, music still playing, they all wove in and among costumed courtiers, handing out flowers, herbs, apples, as favors to end as they began, back in a semicircle. On the last long note, all of them dropped into the deepest of curtsies.
Applause rained on them.
All the sultans were clapping. Above in the gallery, Fletcher was clapping. Alice and her friends met one another’s eyes, their mouths smiling below their beaded masks. They’d done it, surpassed all the other maids, brought novelty—always a treasure at this court—and in the surpassing, gathered notoriety to themselves, to the queen. They were, for the moment, the most fashionable, the most envied. They’d be the most sought after tonight, and for a few days, the court would talk of them. It would pass, of course; but it did for now.
A wizard, carrying a staff crowned with laurel and crow’s feathers, stepped forward. It was the Duke of Monmouth.
“As Merlin of this fete, I implore all evil spirits of this night to depart and leave us in peace.”
“Now that will be confoundedly boring,” said Buckingham in a low tone, dressed as a playing card. The man beside him, also dressed as a card, smiled.