Dark Angels

by Karleen Koen

  “I’d like to post a soldier at the back entrance.”

  “Why would you like to do that?”

  “If he didn’t kill her, he won’t know she’s dead, and he might return.”

  “If I were Henri Ange and saw a soldier, I’d turn the other way and disappear.”

  “There’s a place a soldier could hide, a lodging that looks out on the back entrance. A man could be posted there, in disguise, on the doorstep like a beggar.”

  “The word of Neddie’s death is already in the streets, Captain. There’s a network in the streets. She knew everything that was happening at a certain, shall we say, lower level. I always found her useful, very useful. Deuce take it, I’m going to miss her.”

  “May I post the soldier?”

  “Permission granted, until her funeral. I think Ange is gone, flown away on his angel wings. It’s what a wise man would do.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “You have the coins?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. Now leave me. We’ll finish what needs to be done here.”

  Richard gone, Balmoral remained where he was. His colonels brought him letters and coins and jewels. He put them all in a saddlebag. When they’d cleaned the bedchamber of the items Balmoral asked, he sent one of them to do the same in the antechamber and the other for the body takers and walked into the bedchamber himself, closing the door. The body held an amazing amount of blood…who was it that talked about it, Robert Hooke at a lecture of the Royal Society? But hadn’t he seen it over and over on battlefields—heads blown off by cannon, limbs cut away by sword or, worse, hacked by pike. There were times he dreamed in red. He sat down in a handsome velvet armchair some distance from the body and the blood, closed his eyes. Thank God he was old and memories were weak, holding very little power anymore.

  Majew, the butler, knocked on the door and entered with the body takers. He stood beside Balmoral as the body was lifted into the winding sheet.

  “Her neck will be sewn, and I’ll put a lace cravat around it. No one will know. We’ll paste and powder and rouge and put a lace cap on her head, and she’ll be as beautiful as ever she was.”

  “How old was she, Majew?”

  “Thirty and five.”

  “Thirty and five.”

  “Shall you say good-bye? It will be too public later.”

  Balmoral nodded, and Majew motioned for the body takers to put their charge before Balmoral, sent them from the chamber, and shut the door, waiting to be summoned again. Balmoral bent down, put his hand on the stark white forehead, and closed his eyes to say a prayer. He said aloud the words he had never spoken before, not that Neddie had asked for them; being born on the wrong side of the blanket to a whore shortened a man’s ambitions, and Balmoral would have denied any claim as a matter of course. The man who had sired Neddie was so long dead, Balmoral could barely remember him.

  “Godspeed, grandson.” Beautiful grandson, whom I never wanted to know.

  He called out, and they took the body away. He spoke to Majew, who’d served him in the army. “Close for a month, find another location, paint the door red, and open back up. You’ll pay me a monthly stipend, as Neddie did, and I’ll see you aren’t closed.”

  “Very good, Your Grace.”

  He’d never made Neddie pay a stipend, but then Neddie was kin.

  CHAPTER 32

  Unaware of the drama that had been played out in one of the many brothels of his city, King Charles and his courtiers walked in St. James’s Park. Dorothy Brownwell dawdled at the far edge of the group.

  “Mrs. Brownwell, His Majesty asks for you,” said a page.

  Dorothy hurried to catch up with the king, who was walking briskly some distance ahead of her. Spaniels and hunting dogs immediately surrounded her as she approached His Majesty, as if Dorothy were a recalcitrant sheep. “Stop that,” King Charles commanded. He came right to the point. “Mademoiselle de Keroualle and Captain Saylor were caught in a compromising position last evening, I hear.”

  “Not too compromised, sir. No one was lying down.”

  “One does not have to lie down to accomplish much, Mrs. Brownwell, if you will forgive me for reminding you. Perhaps Mr. Brownwell was not imaginative.”

  “Her virtue is intact, sir.”

  “Excellent. I would not like Mademoiselle de Keroualle to be alone with Captain Saylor again. Is that clear?”

  “I will do my best.”

  “No more can be asked.”

  RICHARD SEARCHED FOR Alice. She wasn’t among the courtiers walking with the king in St. James’s Park, and she wasn’t in the maids of honor’s apartments, but Poll was there, shaking out gowns and letting them air on Alice’s bed. “With her dancing master for her lesson, sir,” Poll told him.

  They were practicing in the old theater space that the king’s troupe had used before the company of actors moved out of Whitehall and into a building in the city. A fiddler and a flutist were there, and Fletcher, the dancing master. Alice wore soft shoes that tied around the leg, shoes that actresses and opera dancers wore, and a short skirt that showed her ankles and calves. She was dancing across the stage and back in some kind of complicated step that required her to make a series of small leaps.

  “Again,” Fletcher demanded.

  How beautifully she moves, thought Richard, her legs and her arms as liquid as if they had no bones. An image of Neddie, blood dark, congealed, came into his head. He shook it away, took a deep breath, concentrated on Alice’s legs, slim and strong and beautifully shaped. She’s mad for dancing, Barbara had said. Fletcher made her do certain movements over and over again. Like a drill, thought Richard, as he watched Alice move backward on her toe tips at a command from Fletcher. The pool of blood was under Neddie’s head and halfway down the back of her body. The gash in her throat had looked like another mouth at first glance, a fish’s mouth…. He sat down abruptly on a bench, put the heels of his hands to his eyes to rub away the vision. Night terrors had come to him in Tangier, bringing him blood-filled dreams, demon’s dreams, and there was nothing he could do about them except endure until they passed. Neddie’s murder had unchained the dream dragons again. He could feel images waiting on the edge of his mind. He watched as, finished at last, breathless and perspiring, Alice sat on the edge of the stage and rubbed her neck and hair with cloths. Fletcher knelt beside her and felt the calf and bones of one leg. She might have been a horse he was examining.

  “You’re favoring the left side,” Fletcher told her.

  “I wasn’t.”

  “You dance like wisps of clouds, ethereal.” Richard moved out of the darkness.

  Fletcher lifted an eyebrow as Richard pulled himself up to sit by Alice on the stage. “Is this a tête-à-tête?”

  “Yes,” answered Richard sharply, and Fletcher moved away, pretending to busy himself with gathering music for the musicians.

  “Alice, do you think Henri Ange would kill someone with his bare hands?”

  “Who has died?”

  “A brothel keeper, her—his—throat slit.”

  “Poison is from a distance. One never has to see one’s victim die, never has to touch her.” But in her mind, she was remembering the circle of Henri Ange’s arms around her, his soft command, Say thank you, my dear Henri Ange, the terror that was suddenly there in her. “Madame suffered terribly.”

  “Balmoral thinks he may have left England.”

  “But that would be wonderful!”

  “Only if it were true.” In Richard’s mind, Neddie’s sightless eyes stared up at him. His body gave the slightest of shudders.

  Alice saw it. “Did you find the body?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve never seen a dead body.”

  “I pray you never have to, Alice. Good day.”

  She gazed after him, swinging her legs back and forth from the edge of the stage like a girl. Fletcher sat beside her. “So, the wind blows in that direction, does it?”

  “There
’s no wind, Fletcher, not even a breeze.”

  “He and Mistress Keroualle were caught in a compromising situation last night. It’s all over the court. His Majesty is not pleased.”

  Alice didn’t answer.

  “His Majesty has asked for a Christmas revel this year. Purcell, Dryden, and I are to do it. I wonder if this changes things….”

  “Why would it?”

  “Just whom do you imagine the revel is to highlight?”

  “Me.”

  “Guess again.”

  “Her Majesty.”

  “Please. I’ll have you both written in, of course, so that it won’t look as if we’ve herded gowned cattle onto the stage, but you are not the main attraction. So, tell me more about this soldier boy, who is obviously willing to risk disgrace for La Keroualle.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  Her bad temper told Fletcher far more than confession would have.

  IT WAS THE first Sunday in Advent. In churches throughout England, priests of the Church of England lit the first candle of the four in the Advent wreath. “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple,” they read from huge Bibles, whose gilt page edges glimmered as the light of candles caught the gold.

  HANDS WARM IN a fur muff, Alice walked from Whitehall, Poll and Poppy trailing behind, to have a Sunday supper with her father. A friend of her father’s, a Dutchman who visited London, met her in the hall, bowed over Alice’s hand.

  “One hears you have captured the admiration of His Grace the Duke of Balmoral,” he said.

  “Reports exaggerate.”

  “Daily walks in the Stone Gallery. I smell a courtship. If there is any way I may be of service, dear lady, you have only to call upon me. Good evening, Mistress Verney.” He placed his hat on his head and walked out the door Perryman held open.

  “Well, he was most kind,” Alice said to her father.

  “Rumors are thick about you and Balmoral. He likes to fancy himself up upon all court news. I hope you know what you’re doing. I’m not letting go of Mulgrave yet, in spite of your dallying. Sit down. Perryman will serve us.”

  “Perryman, was that you I saw the night of the Duchess of Cleveland’s disastrous supper, in a bad wig and worse mustache?”

  Her father began to laugh as Perryman answered, “No.”

  “And she fell out of her chair at the theater,” said Sir Thomas.

  “I thought the agreement was one trick to save me. Father, you’ll be caught.”

  “Not I! It’s this blasted servant of mine. I have no power over him, Alice. He is having far too much fun.”

  “Perryman, I warn you now that if you’re caught, my father will deny all knowledge and leave you to swing on the gibbet—and trust me, she will hang you.”

  “Which just means Perryman can’t be caught, if he knows what is good for him.”

  “Perryman,” Alice asked, “is it easy to move about Whitehall?”

  “No one pays any attention to servants.”

  “I hear Barbara made her misalliance aided and abetted by the queen,” said Sir Thomas.

  Alice was silent.

  “Terrible murder in London last week,” he went on. “Did you hear of it? A he-madam with his throat slit from ear to ear. Running a he-brothel. That young lieutenant you like—”

  “Captain, he’s a captain.”

  “—discovered it. Helping us keep the city decent. He’s making a name for himself, he is. His brother-in-law, Cranbourne, and I were talking of it the other day. You ought to buy him a regiment, Lord Cranbourne, I said.”

  “That would be wonderful.”

  “You like this Saylor?”

  “Very much. He is going to act as secretary to His Grace Balmoral and copy his memoirs.”

  “Balmoral has written memoirs?”

  “All about campaigning, Father. Very interesting.”

  “You’ve read them, have you?”

  “No.”

  Her father sipped the ruby-colored wine in one of a set of new Venetian glasses he’d just purchased. He was proud of the glasses and surprised Alice hadn’t mentioned them. She had an eye for things of beauty. He watched his daughter for a while. “You’ve taken this trick of Barbara’s hard, haven’t you.”

  “I don’t think we can ever be friends again.”

  “Is this Sidney such a rascal?”

  Here was a way to swipe at John, a clerk in the naval office. “He’s in Samuel Pepys’s pocket, and you know whom Pepys serves,” she said, even as another part of her said, Alice, don’t, leave it be.

  “The Earl of Sandwich, that devil.”

  Her father and the earl were old enemies.

  “Well, I’m sorry for Barbara that she’s made such a mistake, but her bed is made, and there’s no going back. In time you two may patch up your quarrel.”

  “Never.”

  “Never is a long time.” Sir Thomas wanted to change the mood. He never liked to encourage Alice in obstinacy, unless it served him. “Winter is upon us. I’m glad I’m not crossing the Channel this time of year like His Grace the Duke of Buckingham. I’m staying close to my fire, I am. He says he’s going over to haggle about Madame’s estate.”

  He is hurt not to be going with Buckingham to France this month, thought Alice, not to be a part of the entourage that will wine and dine in the Louvre Palace and meet with King Louis. She watched him in turn, the way he’d watched her. Would she soon be hearing complaints against the duke? And then there would be a break, and then her father would form a new alliance with another great man who had the king’s ear, serving as his lackey, directing the votes he could in the Commons, gossiping in the corridors of Whitehall, doing whatever he could with great enthusiasm and even greater hopes for a while. And then the hope would falter. It had happened with Lord Sandwich. It had happened with Lord Arlington. Always her father felt he wasn’t repaid enough for his loyalty. Am I like that? She was startled at the thought, and saddened. We’re a pair, thought Alice, staring into the ruby liquid in her glass.

  THAT EVENING AT Whitehall, the sound of barking, missing in the queen’s chambers for several days, made Alice lift her head.

  His favorite spaniels preceding him, King Charles walked into the queen’s withdrawing chamber. Everyone was playing cards, and all stood at the sight of him, but he waved everyone to be seated, nodded carelessly to the queen, then walked among the tables until he came to the one at which Renée was playing. He stood behind the Earl of Mulgrave’s chair, and at once, the young earl stood again and bowed.

  “I haven’t, er…the best of—but, er…she, er—I mean Mistress, er—”

  “Verney,” Alice said impatiently.

  “Verney, er…is your partner. She’ll carry, er…you.”

  “I’m experienced at getting out of scrapes on my own.”

  “Shall we reshuffle and start again?” Frances smiled up at the king, looking charming and sophisticated with ringlets beribboned and hanging over her ears.

  “I wish to go for a walk in the gallery. I’m bored with my gentlemen and crave the company of ladies. Mademoiselle de Keroualle, it would please me if you would accompany me, and Mistress Verney, and Her Grace.”

  All movement at the other tables ceased as the king left the chamber, Renée on his arm, Alice and Frances following, spaniels prancing ahead. Eyes moved to the queen, who played a card and did not betray by so much as a blink that she’d noticed whom he’d walked out with and that he had not acknowledged her.

  “Always lovely to see His Majesty,” she said, her eyes on the cards in her hand.

  “Was that sarcasm from our little Portuguese?” one lady-in-waiting whispered to another, and they laughed.

  In the Stone Gallery, King Charles and Renée sat in one of the deep window seats while Alice and Frances were seated in chairs farther away, near the fire. Alice glanced toward them. King Charles was talking to Renée most seriousl
y. The fact he had not singled out Renée since she and Richard had been reprimanded by Dorothy Brownwell had been missed by no one, least of all Renée. Will she go belly up, like one of his spaniels? wondered Alice.

  “She’s begun weeping,” Frances said.

  “He means to have her, doesn’t he? Would you be willing to aid in an elopement?” Elopements were scandalous, infuriating families, but Frances had eloped.

  “Whose?”

  “Captain Saylor would marry her in a heartbeat. We could help them elope.”

  Frances touched at dolphins carved in the wooden arm of her chair. “I think I’ll keep my distance. He’s really never forgiven me for mine. And if you value your position at court, you’d best leave her precisely where she is.”

  “So,” said King Charles, watching tears glide down Renée’s face but not making a move to stop them, “it does not seem fair I am not at least allowed the privileges of Captain Saylor.” There was no softness in his face or his tone. “You were partially unclothed. It would please me very much to see you partially unclothed.”

  “He earned it.”

  “What did you just say?”

  “He has been my dearest friend since we met; he has never offered me anything but honor. He has asked me to be his wife, offered me the protection of his name and estate. When I am with him, I feel at ease, and what is more, I feel treasured.”

  She’d surprised him. “I want that ease, that sweetness.” He spoke ruefully.

  My point, thought Renée.

  “Why didn’t you become his mistress?” Alice asked Frances. A log in the fire near them made a crumbling sound as it fell apart in a red glow.

  “I wanted to be a wife, no more, no less,” Frances answered.

  “Would you talk with Renée?”

  An expression passed over Frances’s face that Alice couldn’t read. “I’m certain she has enough advisers.”

  “But they want the king’s pleasure, not what is best for her.”

  “What is best for her, Alice?”

  “To be someone’s wife. You understand.”