by Karleen Koen
“No Frenchmen.”
“It’s said now that he may not speak in French, may speak like you and me.”
ALICE ENTERED THE oratory quietly. Barbara was still kneeling at the altar rail of solid silver, her fingers flying over her beads. Alice sat on a bench. Barbara finished her last prayer, crossed herself, and sat by Alice, leaned her head on Alice’s shoulder.
“What is it, Ra? I’m to sup with the Duchess of Cleveland this evening, if you can believe it. At my father’s command. Some kind of silly Guy Fawkes supper.”
“There will likely be gunpowder under your chair.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“Alice, how long have we been friends?”
“Since you came to court.”
“And you love me.”
“With all my heart.”
Barbara raised her head from Alice’s shoulder, shifted so that she could see Alice’s face. “I’m going to marry John Sidney.”
A storm was there in Alice’s suddenly drawn brows, but Barbara felt strangely at peace. “I want your blessing.”
“And if I don’t give it?”
“I’ll marry him anyway.”
“Sweet Jesus, I could get you anyone if you’d let me! With your beauty and my father’s interest, you could have your pick. Don’t do this, Ra!”
“It’s too late.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m with child.”
“Ra!”
“I want your blessing.”
Alice stood, stepped back. “I can’t give it. We promised each other better than this. You said you were never marrying, and then I come back from France and you’re hanging all over him! There are a dozen better matches you might make if you must. You deserve better than him! I want to kill him and slap you!”
“It wasn’t his doing, Alice. I wanted it as much as he.”
Alice put her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to hear.”
“It isn’t so simple when you truly love someone. It’s so sweet, the flesh is honey, like fire—Oh, Alice, you felt something like it for Cole. You talked to me of it, how hard it was to stay chaste, how close you came to yielding. I understand now. I didn’t then, but I do now. I love him so. I want this, more than anything. I want to be his, completely, to be one in the eyes of God. And he wants it, also.”
“You don’t have to marry. Father will send us to France. We can live there while you grow the baby, and then—”
“I’m to abandon it? Is that what you’d have me do?”
“No, no, of course not, but—”
“I’m marrying John Sidney. I want your presence at—”
“No.”
Alice took another step back. Barbara reached to take her hand, but Alice snatched it away. “I have to tell you something, Alice—”
“I don’t want to hear another thing from you. You’re a fool, Barbara Bragge. Stupider even than Winifred. Acting like a whore! Throwing yourself away! A fool, a fool, a fool!” Alice picked up her skirts and ran from the oratory, not knowing where she was going. She had to be alone.
She felt murderous. All her plans, all her hopes, knocked to pieces. She knew how it should be. Not Barbara. She was the clever one. Not Barbara. Never Barbara.
Somehow she was on the first floor in Dorothy Brownwell’s chamber, moving swiftly past a surprised servant, moving to the little chamber that was Dorothy’s closet. She tried to open a window there. She must have air. She banged on it, then somehow had the sense to push, and it hinged open. She drew in drafts of the cold air, breathing in and out. Such stupidity on Barbara’s part! There wasn’t a happy marriage. She’d never seen one. There was lust to begin with, perhaps, but it cooled, particularly for the men. It always cooled. It was the fashion, and no one could be behind fashion. A woman had to choose with care, think of the time when she’d be bearing his children, think of the life she must build for herself. There had to be a handsome allowance, perhaps something only of hers. There had to be a title, or the promise of a title, else why do it? Why endure a man’s boredom and cruelty, indifference and selfishness? Ra was one of the loveliest young women at court. She could have married on her beauty alone. She beat her fist on the stone ledge. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! In three years there would be three babies and not enough coin, and John Sidney would be pinching and ogling any woman who took his eye, just to add some spice to their humdrum life. It wasn’t what she’d planned at all. She didn’t want Barbara to leave her—
The shock of that thought stopped her.
She leaned her face against the metal of the window. There was such a hard knot in her heart. She didn’t want Barbara to love anyone better than her. That was the truth of it.
Her friend, her sister, her keeper of secrets, moving on, leaving her behind. She’d desired Cole, but she’d never truly loved him. What was love? Blindness, nothing but momentary stupidity. She couldn’t see what Barbara saw.
And she hated her for that, for seeing what she couldn’t and for leaving her behind.
AT DUSK, HER father was waiting outside the Duchess of Cleveland’s house in the neighborhood of Westminster, to the east of Whitehall. On the meadows and hills in the distance, bonfires were burning. They burned in Hyde Park, in the hamlets of Marylebone and Chelsea. For Guy Fawkes. In London itself, bonfires burned in the streets, and people danced around effigies of the pope. The great fire that had burned nearly four hundred acres of London had started with far less, and London wasn’t rebuilt from it yet.
“You’re late, Alice. His Majesty has already arrived.” Sir Thomas waved Poppy toward the back where the servants would be, took her by the arm as if he would shake her. She pulled away from him.
“Don’t trifle with me, Father.”
He looked her up and down. “What’s brought on this pretty little mood?”
“Nothing. What am I doing here?”
“You are accompanying your father, who is creating a truce with the Duchess of Cleveland so that you are not ruined. You will behave yourself.”
Alice made a sound.
“You are not to show that dreadful temper of yours tonight, or I swear I’ll do as your aunt asks and send you to live with her.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was most perturbed by some behavior of yours on All Hallows’ and has made a formal call on me to say that you are not being supervised properly as a maid of honor, and that if you wish to make a respectable marriage and not disgrace the family, you need to live with her.”
“Ha.”
“My sentiments exactly, but she called upon the queen to say the same thing.”
“She didn’t. How stupid. Everyone is so stupid.”
“Alice—”
“Leave me alone.”
They walked silently up the stairs to the duchess’s presence chamber. She thought she saw her father’s new footman, Perryman, lurking down a hallway, a bad wig upon his head and a false mustache under his nose, like some actor in the king’s troupe of players.
“Is that Perryman?”
“Where?”
She pointed.
“No.”
And then they were in the presence chamber, and because she was late, she went and made a deep curtsy to His Majesty, who was jovial, his attention upon Renée, who was also there. Then she had to go to the Duchess of Cleveland, who didn’t reply to any of her apologies, and then she had to greet the other guests, the actor Charles Hart, and the actress Peg Hughes, and the Earl of Rochester, and Lord Mulgrave, who smiled shyly as he bowed over the hand she held out—what her father had been saying to him, sweet Jesus only knew—and finally, thank goodness, there was Frances, the Duchess of Richmond, and Prince Rupert. And everything was drinking wine and silly, light banter. King Charles had done the same thing with Frances, courted her under Cleveland’s nose, with Cleveland’s permission. Now it was happening with Renée. What perversity underlay that?
“—Buckingham is writing another play.”
“—Sedley has the pox.”
“Will the Commons be friend or foe this spring—”
“The Hollanders are grown overbearing. There will have to be another war—”
“—she’s his latest mistress.”
It took Alice a moment to gather they were talking of the actress Peg Hughes and that her protector was Prince Rupert. It will be an actress next for my father, she thought. It’s become the fashion. And part of her was glad, because that would stop Louisa Saylor, and part of her was tired of lust’s latest fashion. At one point, a fly was somehow in the chamber and buzzing around, and then its presence began a rowdy, wine-driven game—people were tossing pillows and swatting at it, Renée laughing at the antics, and Alice watched it all dully, smiling mechanically and thinking what great fools everyone was.
After supper, Prince Rupert tapped her on the shoulder, and she slipped away with him even though it was cold, too cold, on the balcony upon which they stood. Bonfires were bright on the horizon. She and Rupert shared puffs of the long-stemmed pipe while he philosophized to her, of which she listened only to snatches.
“—it’s a jumble, it is. There was never enough coin to begin with—”
“—the king and Parliament can’t subsist together. Too at loggerheads—”
“—Buckingham has put a wedge between His Majesty and York. It breaks my heart—”
“—reduce expenditures of the household, but how, I ask you—”
Alice puffed the pipe, exhaled smoke slowly, until Prince Rupert urged her to come back inside before they were missed. Their sweet, an apple pie the size of a small table, was sitting in a place of honor, the duchess’s majordomo beginning to cut into it. Alice sat near her father, who was arguing with Rochester over whether to go to war against Holland or France, which of the pair was the most natural enemy of the kingdom, when a shriek cut through festivity. Mice were crawling out of the pie!
The shriek had been made by the majordomo, who began to slap at them with his knife, but this made the pie fall over onto the floor, and in the falling more mice were released, and they were darting everywhere. Renée screamed as a mouse tried to scamper up her gown. King Charles picked her up in his arms. Rochester and Mulgrave and Sir Thomas were stamping their feet as mice skittered everywhere, and then Alice was scrambling to climb up a chair, screaming, shrill and hysterical, adding to the pandemonium.
“They’re gone, they’re gone!” Prince Rupert was trying to coax her down, but she couldn’t stop screaming.
Her father reached up and slapped her, and she collapsed sobbing into his arms.
“Deathly afraid of them. Bitten when she was a child,” she dimly heard him say.
And then a solitary mouse crept out from the overturned dish and stood on hind legs, sniffing the air. Alice screamed again; her father turned her head away and hugged her tight.
The Duchess of Cleveland, who was standing on a chair, looked across the chamber over the mound of broken pie and dish and crumbs and met King Charles’s eyes. Biting his lip not to laugh, he held a whimpering Renée in his arms, looking like a bridegroom about to cross a threshold.
“Never let it be said,” Cleveland called to him, “that I provide you a dull evening.” And then she let out a laugh, earthy and full, part of her inherent allure, and then everyone was laughing, as the lone mouse stayed where it was, frozen with fear; but Alice still sobbed into her father’s shoulder, and he patted her head and said between gasps of laughter himself, “There, poppet, there…”
“Do you remember the mice at the Louvre during Louis’s Fronde?” Prince Rupert said to the king. The Fronde was civil war the French king had endured as a child.
“I could have played tennis with the largest every morning,” said King Charles.
“I made them serve on ship with me,” said Prince Rupert. “They became pirates, and no one has seen them since.” Prince Rupert had served as a privateer during the exile, going out to sea to capture prize ships for the king.
“Were you very poor, sire?” Renée asked King Charles.
“Poor as…well, you have to forgive me the obvious, a church mouse, dear.”
AN HOUR LATER, back at Whitehall, King Charles ordered Alice away. She walked to the door.
“Please stay,” Renée called, and so Alice sat in a chair in a corner of the antechamber. I don’t want to do this, she thought. I don’t want to see him make love to her. King Charles led Renée to the fireplace, pulled forward a footstool that she might sit on it, sat down on the floor before her.
“I liked holding you in my arms tonight,” he said in French. “I liked being able to sup with you. When you’re mine, I’ll expect a handsome supper every night, but no mice.”
“Where will I serve you this handsome supper? Here?”
“In your handsome apartments in Whitehall. They shall be built to your desires. Say the word, and I’ll order them begun.”
She was silent, staring past him into the fire. King Charles reached into his pocket, pulled out pearl eardrops, huge, magnificent, and put them in her hand and folded her fingers about them. “From Surinam, made especially for beautiful maidens a king loves. May I?” He began to unscrew the earring in her ear very carefully. His hands did not fumble, were certain, warm where he touched her. When the second earring was in, he turned her to face him. “Perfect. You need only a necklace and bracelet to match.”
He reached into another pocket and pulled out a long strand of huge pearls and a bracelet with a diamond clasp. Alice could see the glitter of the diamonds from where she sat. Kneeling, he dropped the necklace over Renée’s head and pulled back her curls behind it. He took her wrist and fastened the bracelet. All his movements were deliberate and easy. He sat back on his heels, pummeled a nearby pillow to fatness, dropped it, and stretched out on the floor with the pillow under his head. He pulled off his thick, dark periwig and bunched it up under his head to join the pillow.
“I cannot accept these,” said Renée.
“Of course not. I just wanted to see how they’d look on a beautiful woman. Wear them simply to please me. Do you know what this Guy Fawkes of ours is about?” He began to talk about the time of his grandfather and the plot to blow up the Parliament and all in it. “I can understand their impulse,” he said, smiling, shadows playing over his face.
Alice pulled her legs up into the chair, settled herself like a cat, and closed her eyes wearily. She dozed, dreamed she was back at Madame’s, and it was evening and snowing, and they were all around the fireplace. Do eat this poison for me, Madame said to her, holding out a baby, and Alice opened her eyes. King Charles and Renée kissed. He knelt before her, his hands on her bare shoulders, her face turned up to his, her throat long and white, her hands at her sides passive, their mouths locked together. He raised his head, and the fire outlined her profile and his. Renée didn’t move, and it seemed to Alice she was in a kind of swoon. He gave a laugh, sharp with joy, and Renée started. He stood, held out his hand to her to raise her up.
“You made me immortal with a kiss. Little witch, you have my heart.” He picked up his wig and hat with feathers curling the brim. “I’m happy,” he said to the hat. “We could be happy, witch,” he said to Renée. “Don’t you desire happiness? Ah, our duenna wakes.” His long face was alive and laughing, his mood vibrant. Alice loved him best when he was like this. “You make a poor duenna, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Sleep well, sweet maidens.”
“You let him kiss you,” Alice accused once he was gone.
“I couldn’t stop it. And it was only one kiss.”
“You were kissing back.”
“He’s very good at it.” Renée touched the great fat pearls hanging from her neck. “Where shall I put these?”
“I have a jewel box. We can lock them there.” In the silence of the maids’ bedchamber, they unlocked Alice’s jewel box, placed everything there. “You have a decent dowry just with these,” Alice said.
“But I must give t
hem back.”
“I doubt it. He’s very generous to the women he fancies. Oh, I’m so tired. Good night.”
“Good night. And thank you for staying with me.”
“Next time I won’t fall asleep.”
Barbara wasn’t in their bed. Alice put her feet to the hot brick Poll had covered in flannel and placed in the bed and bunched quilts about her neck as Poll pulled the bed hangings shut. Where was she? With him. Alice knew it. How could she? She was ruining herself. She tossed and turned and pounded her pillow as if it were Barbara’s face. Sleep touched her, surprising her with its swift arrival. In her mind she saw the king and Renée kissing again, their mouths melded, his hands gripping her white shoulders, Renée’s eager stillness. She remembered Cole’s kisses, feverish, hot, drugging her with pleasure. Give me a kiss, and to that kiss a score; then to that twenty, add a hundred more….
She would never have that with Balmoral.
PRINCE RUPERT MET King Charles as he walked up the stairs to his bedchamber. Life Guards with the king saluted Prince Rupert.
“There’s a fire in London,” said Prince Rupert.
The king stopped smiling.
“I sent a troop out to reconnoiter, Saylor’s in charge of them. Might as well make the lad earn his captain’s pay. And keep him from discovering your poaching.”
“Balmoral agreed?”
“He was not in a condition to make a decision.”
“Ah.”
“The poaching went well, I trust?”
“Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies. Tennis in the morrow?”
“It’s nearly dawn.”
“Good, you’ll be all the more easily beaten.”
CHAPTER 28
Walter was on the rooftop with the others, watching the fire. It was cold, but they didn’t care. They would do anything to leave the warren of rooms that bound their lives. “Do you remember when all of London was burning?” asked Hugh, a reed-slim young man much in demand.
“Yes,” answered Walter. He’d lost his family in that fire, when London as he knew it turned into an inferno. And since then his life had been here.