by Karleen Koen
“Do you think you can buy me?”
“God’s blood, if we’re bargaining, I hope your price is low. My damned House of Commons is like a withered widow courted because coins are under her mattress, and she fears losing a one of them. I bring them my needs, the needs of my navy, of my household. They examine the books, call together committees to question my servants, and still they hesitate to grant what is necessary. Cousin Louis says to his dog Colbert, I’ll build this and I’ll have that, and Colbert says, Yes, sire, and makes a tax, and that’s the end of that. I have to wrangle and lie like a merchant for every pence! And then they complain because the Hollanders are before us in trade, when they won’t give money to buy a plank to make the ships that will protect our trading vessels!”
She smiled, pleased that he was stirred, that her words had somehow moved him away from melancholia.
He sat up. “You’ve managed to chase away the blackness. I’m ready to duel with my Commons.” He kissed her with a smack, then bit her shoulder. “Saylor didn’t speak to you tonight. What have you done to him?”
Now it was her turn to sigh, to turn her face away so he wouldn’t see it.
“Don’t tell me he doesn’t love you anymore. A fool can see he does.”
“I don’t please him.”
“You won’t give me up, and Saylor’s angry?”
Still she didn’t look at him.
He was touched by that, by her feeling for Richard, which she did not hide. When she gave herself to him, it would mean something. There would be genuine feeling behind it, a heart with the body. He was willing to wait. The foreplay of bedding was so beguilingly delicious. She touched at her eyes. Tears. He didn’t feel like staying long to comfort them, if truth be told. Nell had popped into his head, Nell, who wouldn’t hold him off, who would meet him kiss for kiss and touch for touch and then some. Pert breasts, trim legs, slender hips. What had Rochester said the other evening, a whore in the hand is worth a virgin in the bush?
“It’s your heart I have designs on. Never forget that.” The smile she gave him was sparkling. “If you want to keep that maidenhead of yours another moment, you’d best kiss me good night and toddle off to bed.”
Outside, his guard following, knowing better than to ask questions, he whistled in the dark. Andrew Marvell was as obstreperous and obstructive in the House of Commons as Thomas Verney, but nonetheless a fair poet. He whistled a Marvell song Renée had been playing earlier, the words singing in his head: “‘Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport while we may.’”
Just what he intended to do.
ALICE HAD GONE not to bed, but rather to Dorothy’s chambers.
“There’s been no letter.” Dorothy poured more wine and added some to Alice’s goblet. “At first, I thought nothing of it. But as the days have passed, I’ve counted back. It’s been over three weeks since he’s written me.”
“The end was likely so difficult that he couldn’t bring himself to write of it.”
“We have always written each other when distance has separated us. Always. The thoughts I’ve begun to have weigh so heavy, Alice. Perhaps he no longer loves me. What will I do?”
There was an edge in her voice that made Alice turn the goblet in her hands nervously. “The first thing you will do is be sensible. You don’t know anything. It’s all your imagination—”
“It’s not. I am connected to him here.” Dorothy touched her heart. “Something’s changed. I feel it.”
“We’ll write Gracen. We’ll write to Gracen and ask her to look around, see if there is some woman sniffing about him. And if there is, we’ll command Gracen to hold her off while we put you in a coach, with one of His Majesty’s hounds, to chase the wench into the woods!”
Her humor failed. “I can’t live without him. He’s my life, he’s my heart. I need him.” Dorothy was collapsing, hysterics close. Alice took away her goblet, and Dorothy grabbed her hands and held on to them, tears spouting.
Appalled, and frightened, too, Alice tried to soothe her. “It’s nothing. It’s your imagination. Oh, Brownie, don’t weep when you don’t know what is happening, when it’s only your thoughts.”
“I can’t help it. I want him here now. I want him in my bed. I want to be his wife. I deserve to be his wife. I’ve waited so long. Why doesn’t he write to me? Is he trying to drive me mad?”
She had her arms around Alice, was crying into Alice’s waist. Alice pulled herself free. “Brownie, you have to stop. You have to get command of yourself.”
“I can’t. Oh, don’t leave me, Alice, don’t go. I can’t be alone. Please. I’ll be good.” And she wiped at her face, took deep, trembling breaths. “Look, I’m stopping. See. I’m going to climb into bed, and you’re going to put away the wine and stay with me until I go to sleep, and then blow out my candle.”
“I’ll sleep beside you, Brownie.” Alice almost couldn’t bear the cry of gratitude that came from her words. “I’m too tired to go to my own bed. Here, help me unpin.”
She blew out the candles, her last sight Brownie’s swollen and slack face. In the bed, she stayed carefully on her side, not wanting to touch Brownie and feeling ashamed of that, listening as she tried to cry quietly, tried not to bother Alice. After a long time, Alice said, “There has to be a proper period of mourning, remember that.”
Silence answered her. She must have fallen asleep, thought Alice. Thank God.
She threw back the sheets, fumbled with flint and tinder, managed to light a candle. She set the candle in the fireplace, sat in Brownie’s rocking chair, and rocked herself back and forth, her nerves feeling frayed, loose, dangerous. Was this true love? This need? This pain. It frightened her to her soul.
Richard. Richard. Richard.
THE THIRD DAY, and no word from Balmoral. Alice looked at herself in the mirror, touched at smudges under her eyes. This evening she would send a note to her father to accept Mulgrave’s offer. She stared back at herself, straightened her shoulders, then marched to Queen Catherine’s antechambers to begin her day, leaving Dorothy shaking awake Kit and Luce. Renée and Frances were already sorting sheets and blankets, but Lady Arlington sipped slowly at her morning ale and sighed. She was there because it was her duty, little more. She would not lift a finger. Queen Catherine inspected clothing, several of her bedchamber women with her, their needles ready to sew and repair what she indicated was necessary. Alice took a mug of hot tea from a servant.
“How many children?” Queen Catherine asked her. The queen was determined to help the Daniells, of whom Jerusalem Saylor had spoken.
“I believe four boys and eight girls.”
“And the babe, we mustn’t forget the coming babe.”
“Is it really necessary to welcome another fatherless child into the world?” Lady Arlington asked. The question was rhetorical, something said to pass the time, but Queen Catherine rounded on her in fury.
“All God’s children we are! You retire, Lady Arlington. I am no need of your services today!”
Everyone was silent. Queen Catherine never spoke harshly to her ladies, and this lady was wife to the king’s most trusted councillor.
Injured pride in every movement, Lady Arlington curtsied and, like a great ship, sailed slowly and with regal dignity out of the chamber.
“And you, also!” Queen Catherine spoke directly to Renée. “I am no need of your services, either!”
Renée stood with a blanket in her hand, frozen.
“Say nothing. Leave immediately,” whispered Frances, who was nearest to her.
Renée curtsied. When she was gone, all that wasn’t said seemed to fill the chamber, but no one dared to speak.
“There.” Queen Catherine was false, bright. “Our work we have do in peace.”
Dorothy herded in a sleepy, pouting Kit and Luce, while Queen Catherine parceled out clothing that needed mending, and everyone set
tled down to work, dying to talk about what had happened, not daring to. Frances and Alice sat in a window seat, their needles flying.
Frances spoke quietly, not wanting to draw the queen’s attention. “I’m sad, Alice. For five years, I was reason for the queen’s grief. It was so alluring to be the king’s love, I could think of little else. He must allot Renée her own chambers, as he did with me. It’s too difficult for everyone otherwise—Oh, dear God, there’s His Majesty. Look at his face. Renée has been crying on his shoulder.”
“I’d speak with you, madam wife.” King Charles’s face was stern.
“Speak,” snapped Queen Catherine.
“Before all your women?” He was grim.
“Whyever not? Who in this court does not know—”
“Have your women leave the chamber at once!”
Women jabbed needles into cloth to mark their places and exited in a swishing cascade of skirts. Alice and Frances left a crack in the door they exited and stationed themselves at it.
“You were rude to Mademoiselle de Keroualle!” Alice and Frances heard King Charles say.
“Is that what she tells? Tattle, tattle.”
“She told me nothing except that you’d asked her to leave your presence! She was weeping as if her heart would break.”
“Her heart? No heart have I?”
“I have never been faithful to you, Catherine! What on earth makes you think I would begin now?”
Alice shivered.
“Here is what I suggest. Accept my amours with good grace, as you have so kindly done in the past, and I welcome your presence in my life! Continue this behavior, and I will put it publicly to the bishops to see whether I have cause for divorce and have you sent back to Portugal, where you may spend your days in prayer in a convent! That won’t be amusing, will it, Catherine? You won’t be the queen of England there; you’ll simply be a woman who has chosen sanctimonious piousness over a very grand and exalted position, a position you have always occupied with grace! I have ordered chambers to be prepared for Mademoiselle de Keroualle! She won’t attend you, since that seems to be what you desire, but she remains a maid of honor until I say otherwise! Are we clear in this matter, my dear?”
At the cracked door, both Alice and Frances were crying.
“I don’t like discord around me,” King Charles was saying, his voice softer. His anger had passed, but not his sternness. “You know that, Catherine. You are my queen. No one can take that from you. I don’t desire to.” The unspoken implication was that it could, of course, be taken away. “When Mademoiselle de Keroualle gives her first reception, I’m going to expect you to attend it on my arm. Do you think you can do that, my dear?”
They heard no response from the queen.
“I won’t demand your presence at public dining for a while or impose myself upon you in the evenings for a time. I am going to allow you to get command of yourself, to remember your position and the courtesy and grace expected of that position, the courtesy I have extended you, my dear, when I assure you I have been urged to do otherwise. Good day, Catherine.”
Frances closed the crack of the door very, very quietly, but she remained against it, weeping as if it were her to whom King Charles had spoken. It might have been, thought Alice, pulling out a handkerchief with which to wipe her eyes. If she’d been mistress, it might have been. Will Mulgrave be unfaithful to me? thought Alice. And will I care? On the other side of the door, Queen Catherine must be weeping. Does she weep from pride or from love? What is the difference between the two? It seemed to her, feeling the wildness in her own heart, her aunt was correct: A wise woman didn’t allow love to cloud the issue of marriage.
SHE WAS WALKING in the privy garden with Dorothy and Kit and Luce when Edward came to tell her Perryman waited in the Stone Gallery. Alice felt dizzy for a moment, and her stomach twisted tighter into its knot. It was here.
In the Stone Gallery, Perryman bowed. “A boat is waiting at the stairs. Your father asks that you join him.”
“I’ll be there presently.” Edward brought a cloak, and she began a hunt she couldn’t stop herself from making. Richard wasn’t in the queen’s guardroom.
Drilling, a palace page told Edward, who found her and told her. She walked outside, across the cobbles of courtyards, into the melee in the street before the banqueting hall, through the sedan chairs and carriages there to the tilt yard on the other side. But he wasn’t there. She walked down the alley between buildings that opened to St. James’s Park. There he was. She sighed and leaned on a fence railing to watch him. He didn’t see her; he was focused on his men, calling out orders, sending them this way and that, instilling the discipline he so believed in. Walter was walking Pharaoh up and down in the distance. So. There’d be a gallop later. She watched him for a long time, cataloging the different things about him she loved, his seriousness, the way the sun glinted in his hair, the lean, clean strength of his body. She was saying, deep inside herself, good-bye.
CHAPTER 37
Perryman helped her into a boat. The riverman moved them away from the stairs and into the river’s current, his oars slipping in and out of the water expertly. She turned to her father’s servant. “So, Perryman, any tricks lately?”
“I have no idea as to what you refer, ma’am.”
“Oh, one heard of a fountain in Cleveland’s gardens going awry, a metal fish spraying her just at the moment she walked by.”
“Poor workmanship, I would say. There are no true craftsmen left these days.”
“How does my father?”
“Very well, ma’am. He was saying the other day he doesn’t see enough of you.”
“I’ve been scheming, Perryman.”
“That’s what he said.”
“He did, did he? Do you know all our secrets?”
“I would hope not, ma’am.”
“Do you always have an answer for every question?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Has Louisa Saylor been to visit my father again, I mean, since Lady Saylor was here?” Jerusalem Saylor and her daughters had been several times to her father’s while Richard’s mother was in London nursing him.
“I wouldn’t know, ma’am.”
Alice fiddled with a frogged toggle on her cloak. It would be too bad if Monmouth ruined Louisa’s reputation. Perhaps she’d put her mind to it and find Louisa a good match. She walked through her father’s riverside garden and onto his terrace. Smiling, he waited at the opened doors of the house. She walked into his arms, and he hugged her tight, picked her up, and swung her around and around. “You’ve done it, by Jesus!” he said. “My clever, clever gal, you’ve done it!”
They walked arm in arm into the great hall of the house. A servant took Alice’s cloak as her father’s pride and amazement poured over her. “I’m beside myself, don’t know up from down—Balmoral, of all people! I’ll tell you truly, Alice, I didn’t think you could manage it—”
“He’s been to call? Tell me, Father.”
“Called upon me yesterday afternoon—Perryman, bring us champagne! Very proper, very stiff. I offered him wine, but he’d have none of it. I’m here to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage, he told me, straight off, no beating about the bush. You could have knocked me over with a feather, I swear it, Alice. I never thought you’d bring him to heel. We moved straight to the business of terms, settled without a harsh word between us, as easy as pie. The next thing I know, he is bowing to me—bowing to me, Alice!—and telling me he hoped he and I would not be strangers to each other, that his door was always open to me. You’ve saved my life, that you have. I haven’t told you, but I’m at the end of it with Buckingham. I’ve been fretting myself to pieces, and now, well, there’s just no telling what may happen next….”
“The terms?”
“Most generous. You’ll have your own pin money, both from him and from me. One of his properties will become yours entirely and not be entailed to his current heir. Your mother’s property of Bent
woodes will be a part of your dowry, but go only to children of your body, not Balmoral’s heir, should there be no children between the two of you. The deed to this house and several others will be put in your name, mine for my lifetime, but yours afterward, and again, entailed only to heirs of your body, so that you may remarry and provide something handsome for children even with Balmoral dead.”
“It is more than generous, from both of you.”
He rubbed his hands together, crowing in triumph. “My daughter is to be a duchess! I can afford generosity! And I’ll tell you, we talked of what might happen if he should die before the marriage ceremony. He brought it up, not I. You’re to have the property he gives you as his duchess. Handsomely done, I must say. Handsome. He’s fond of you, Alice, more than fond.”
She sagged suddenly, but he didn’t notice. He was accepting the champagne Perryman brought, the liquid glinting in his rare Venetian glasses. “To the Duchess of Balmoral. Long may she reign.”
Alice clinked her glass to his. “Long may she reign.”
CHAPTER 38
A guard unlocked the chains around Henri Ange’s legs and hands. Free, Ange walked straight to a window through which the sun shone. Layers of thick stone made up the towers and prison cells of the Tower of London. Ange held his face up to the light. His hair and eyebrows were growing back. The man awaiting him in this chamber had just arranged that he be shaved again. Balmoral would have had him with a beard to his knees, like an animal. Aren’t you an animal? Balmoral had asked.
The Duke of Buckingham, masked, watched Ange carefully, as he did every time he visited.
“I want a cell like this,” said Ange. They always began this way.
“It can’t be done.”
“I want the liberty to walk along the walls several times a day.”
“That might be arranged. Once a day.”
“Arrange it.”