Dark Angels

by Karleen Koen

  “Go on, Alice. I need some time to myself today.”

  Alice kissed her cheek, grabbed a shawl to cover her nightgown, and in another moment was outside, walking to the maids’ bedchamber.

  “A bath, Poll.” She was going to bathe and then go for a long ride, all the way into the little hamlet of Chelsea with Poppy. She was going to listen to birds and walk along the banks of the Thames and let the cold air chill her cheeks, waft away her sad thoughts, celebrate her little triumph, paled in the larger machinations of court.

  In another hour, she was dressed warmly, her boots on, in the kitchens coaxing a cook to give her bread and cheese and two bottles of ale. Then she was crossing courtyards, stopping to talk with this one or that as more good wishes came her way, then she was running up the stairs at Balmoral’s. He sat in a chair in his closet, his legs covered with a blanket. She paused on the doorstep. He’d never looked so wan, so frail. Some of her happiness faded. This was part of it. Not just honor and safety, but this. She put down her parcel of food and went to him, kneeling as she’d done in her happiness at St. James’s Park. “So, having to marry me sent you into a fit, did it?”

  He grimaced. “I fool myself, Alice, that I may have one taste, and one taste leads to this. I vow to you that I am not going to drink again.”

  His hands were trembling in his lap, but whether from this promise or from his last bout, Alice didn’t know and didn’t want to. She was happy simply to believe him. She laid her cheek on his covered knee. “I would be so glad of that.”

  “Where are you off to, with your jaunty feathered hat and your riding clothes?”

  “I thought to ride to Chelsea. I could wait. We could go together in a carriage.”

  “No. I cannot stir from this chair today, nor tomorrow. The jolting of a carriage would make my head, which is barely fastened on as it is, fall off.”

  She told him about Dorothy, about Lord Knollys and Gracen.

  “Well, I’m sorry for Mrs. Brownwell. Off with you, then. Be careful.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her, and a shudder rose in her at the feel of his lips on her cheek, but this, too, was a piece of it. “Shall I come to visit this evening?”

  “No. I’ll be worse.”

  Poppy had a horse for her, one from the queen’s stables, fresh and sassy and hard to manage. Hoisted into the saddle, she smiled as the horse turned a circle and reared slightly. A hand reached out and yanked her bridle. Alice stared down into the face of Colefax, once her near bridegroom, always Balmoral’s heir. So, she thought, here it is at last, what I dreamed. “Let loose my bridle.”

  “I want to speak with you.”

  “Later.”

  “Now.”

  “Speak, then.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going for a gallop in the country.”

  “That’s not what I refer to. What do you think you’re doing with this business of marrying my uncle?”

  “What piece is it you don’t understand, Cole?”

  “You’re doing this for spite, Alice.”

  She laughed, and the horse tried to rear. Colefax was yanked a few feet in the animal’s dancing anxiety, but he still held the reins. “I’m not going to allow it.”

  “You think you can stop it? How amusing. Do try. It will be fun to see.”

  She jerked on the reins, and the horse did rear, and Colefax stepped back to be out of the way of the hooves. It danced on hind legs, and Alice allowed it, soothing the animal with little clucking sounds, staying in the saddle. Poppy helped her settle the horse, pulled himself up into the saddle of the horse he was riding.

  “Are you finished?” Poppy said. He meant her conversation with Cole.

  “Quite finished,” she answered and galloped off, her groom following.

  She’d thought this moment with Cole would be more satisfying. It had always been in her daydreams. But it wasn’t. She didn’t marry Balmoral to hurt him anymore, and she didn’t know when that had changed.

  IT WAS EDWARD who told Richard about Dorothy Brownwell, describing the sobbing. Later in the guardroom, Richard saw her maidservant. “How is your mistress?”

  “A watering pot. If you break my heart like that”—she shook a finger at the guardsman who was her sweetheart—“I will stab you with a knife.” The guardsman pretended fear, and she slapped at him, and the movements were really rough-and-tumble kisses between them. “She had me dress her up in her finest gown. We curled her hair and rouged her cheeks. She’ll be over this in a fortnight.”

  That afternoon, Richard brought a basket of kittens, born in the stable a few weeks ago, to amuse the queen and her ladies. Cards were abandoned, embroidery circles dropped, as women grouped around the basket.

  “I thought I’d show them to Mrs. Brownwell, Your Majesty.” With the queen’s consent, Richard went down the stairs to the maids of honor’s apartments, and there was Alice, her cheeks pink with cold, looking very fetching in a jaunty hat with a feather, at Dorothy’s door, knocking.

  “Richard,” she said, seeing him, “there’s no answer. I don’t like it.”

  “Perhaps she has gone for a walk.”

  “Guard,” Alice called to a guardsman whose duty was to stand at attention down the corridor, “has Mrs. Brownwell left her chamber today?”

  “Not that I saw, ma’am.”

  Richard rattled the handle of the door, knocked loudly, then hit the door with his open hand. “Mrs. Brownwell, open the door!” He could hear movement on the other side, a chair being dragged, perhaps.

  “I don’t like this,” said Alice. He didn’t, either.

  “Mrs. Brownwell, it’s Captain Saylor, open the door!” He pounded the door with his fist. “Open at once! Her Majesty needs you!” He stepped back. “We’ve got to open this,” he told the guardsman, who had walked up the corridor to watch. They hit the door with their shoulders, and both fell back.

  “I think I’ve broken my shoulder,” said the guardsman.

  Alice ran down to the maids of honor’s bedchamber, took a key from a door’s inner side, returned. “The keys are likely the same.”

  Richard pushed the key into the keyhole; it turned easily, and the door swung open.

  “Sweet Jesus!” cried Alice.

  Dorothy hung suspended from a twisted sheet like a slaughtered animal.

  Richard heard an odd sound come from himself; behind him, he heard Alice begin to weep and the guardsman shout for help. He bolted across the chamber, clambered up the table, grabbing Dorothy’s legs, trying to hold her up, to loosen the grip of the sheeted noose around her neck.

  “We’ve got to cut her down. My God, man, cut her down! Reach into my scabbard and take my sword. Now! Someone hold the table steady; if we fall…Grab that chair. Stand on it…Saw it, keep sawing!…Sweet Mother of God!”

  He swore as he fell off the table with Dorothy in his arms as the blade cut through the last of the sheet. He fell so hard that the breath was knocked out of him. Someone screamed, a maid of honor standing in the doorway.

  “Get the queen’s physician now!” he heard Alice order.

  Pushing himself to his knees, he crawled over to Dorothy, pulled at the knot around her throat and managed to loosen it. He turned her over, pulled a knife from his belt, cut through the back of her gown, then through the laces of her corset. It seemed to him he heard her sigh. He slapped her face hard. “Breathe!” he shouted. “Breathe, damn you!”

  He grabbed her around the waist as if she were a giant doll, dragged her to standing, pulling in hard at her waist. He prayed the word breathe, over and over. She gasped, and then he felt her ribs expand under his arms, heard air drawn in, rasped out. He eased her to the ground.

  “Give her that shawl,” he ordered the guardsman. Her breasts were exposed. He’d half cut her gown off. “Stop screaming,” he said to Luce.

  He stepped back, caught himself on a chair, sat down in it. His heart was pounding so hard, he could hardly think over it. Dorot
hy sat in a chair, her hands at her throat. Luce remained hysterical; the queen was here, kneeling, trying to talk with Dorothy. He watched Alice shake Luce so fiercely the young woman became quiet out of surprise; then Alice walked out of sight into the hall.

  Mayhem reigned for a short time, but eventually the physician was there, and Richard carried Dorothy to the bed, laid her down as ordered, was glad someone else was taking over.

  “I want to die,” Dorothy whispered, the whites of her eyes red and strange from all the small blood vessels in them broken. “You should have let me die.”

  Richard left the chamber. Out in the hallway, he saw Alice sitting against the wall with Kit, and he was reminded of their death watch for Princesse Henriette. He hadn’t known her then. He’d thought her arrogant and rude. He still thought her arrogant. He knelt in front of her, pulled her face to his in a swift movement, and kissed her with everything that was raw and unsettled in him. When he finally took his mouth from hers, she gasped. “I’ll beg pardon later,” he told her.

  Alice watched him stride away.

  “Shut up,” she hissed to Kit’s surprised expression, and Kit quickly looked somewhere else. Alice put her head on her knees. The sight of Brownie hanging there, one shoe dropped to the table, was horrible. And in the horror were Balmoral’s trembling hands, his old man’s breath when he’d kissed her.

  She didn’t want to do that which she’d worked so hard to do.

  RICHARD WALKED THROUGH the hallways and corridors, not certain where he was going except outside of this rambling, cursed palace. Trees would soothe him. The sight of sky. Prayer brought him back to the same place each time, and now this incident confirmed what he already knew. He was going to resign from the king’s service. He was going to cross the sea and join the French army, become a soldier of fortune. His Grace the Duke of Balmoral knew Turenne, the great French general. Alice might wrangle a written introduction for him if he asked. Alice…

  He walked faster. He didn’t know when he’d started loving Alice. He didn’t know where Renée stopped and she began. All he did know was that two of the king’s personal guards had slit the nose of someone in the House of Commons for insulting His Majesty during a speech. Hired thugs, no different from Buckingham’s guard. Is that what they’d come to? A broken promise drove Dorothy Brownwell to hang herself from a rafter in her chamber, and death would likely be preferable to the gossip that would now swirl around her. Courtiers would be amused at her taking a betrayal in love so seriously. She’d end up a scene in someone’s next play. He’d nearly died from the poison Ange put on the sword blade. As he’d clawed his way up from death’s opaque embrace, he’d wondered what he clawed upward toward. Without Renée, he was bereft. And now there was this confusion with Alice…. The season of Lent loomed, of preparing the soul for the holy day of Easter, for death and the promise of resurrection. He felt he had a cross of ashes burned in his heart.

  Time to move on, to try his fortune elsewhere.

  He could live in this shifting place of betrayals within betrayals, of no loyalties honored, of the strong crushing the weak, no more. He preferred soldiering, where you knew who your enemies were before the battle began.

  A FEW DAYS later, Alice sat with Dorothy, trying to coax her to eat a bite of toast.

  “What are they saying of me?”

  “Nothing,” soothed Alice.

  Buckingham had staged a mock hanging of a fork last night at Renée’s—the dish ran away with the spoon, he’d explained. He courted Renée now, assiduous, flattering, helpful, the way he’d done Frances Stewart when she’d been favorite. Beware, Alice wanted to say, but she held her tongue, no longer certain she knew who Renée was. Dorothy had sewn the coins Knollys had sent her into the hem of the gown she’d worn to hang herself. Courtiers were calling them Knollys’s thirty pieces of silver. His stinginess, wits said, saved her life. If there’d been more coins, her neck would have snapped.

  A page knocked, opened the door, and announced the queen, who sailed in with Frances, Barbara, Caro, and her little fox in tow. Barbara had an armful of flowers; Caro rushed to give Dorothy a hug; the queen’s fox leapt upon the bed, circled, lay down as if he were home. Frances walked to the windows, pulled back the curtains. Dorothy began to cry again.

  Alice slipped away, went to the queen’s oratory to sit in the darkened, sacred quiet. First, she prayed for Dorothy with all her heart—she was ruined at court, she’d have to leave. Dread kept rising in her. She’d gone to bed with it on her shoulder, woke with it sitting on her chest. It took one misstep for a woman, one, and she fell into the abyss. How did one live life with no missteps? She wanted her mother, the mother she’d never had except in her imagination, to advise her, to tell her what to do. She wanted to crawl into that mother’s lap and rest for a while, make everything stop, hang suspended while she got her bearings.

  CARO AND BARBARA were sitting in the great window seat in the gallery. Alice had to pass them to gain the queen’s chambers. Taking a deep breath, she walked forward. “Here she c-comes,” Caro said. “Are you c-certain you wish to risk this?”

  “Yes.” Barbara stepped in front of Alice; Caro stayed in the window seat.

  “Alice, I want to tell you how happy I am for your news.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Caro and I were talking. We thought the three of us ought to put our heads together about Brownie.”

  “What about Brownie?”

  “Well, we were thinking that she’ll have to leave court, and that she might stay with one of us.”

  “She’ll stay with me. His Grace will see to it.” Alice was haughtier than she meant to be. Barbara reached out to touch her arm, and Alice stepped back. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Caro’s expression. Anger there. Contempt. She hates me now, thought Alice.

  “Alice, stop this.”

  “I have to wait upon Her Majesty.”

  She tried not to run, though once she was far enough down the corridor, she slipped into an open doorway and sat in a chair in a presence chamber. Did Caro hate her for marrying Balmoral? The look on her face shocked Alice. She pressed hands against her heart. It hurt so much more than she’d thought it would. When Caro had been begging for her forgiveness, it had felt good not to give it. Now that she didn’t ask it, she was stunned at what lay between them. Why didn’t she put down her pride? Why couldn’t she? Would she wait until the day Barbara hated her, too? The thought was so painful, tears came to her eyes. Once there’d been no one closer to her than these two. What happened? Her heart ached, a literal ache in her chest. She wasn’t sleeping well. Her temper was shortening. This, when she should be at her happiest. Why was she so stubborn? Why couldn’t she bend? Pride goes before destruction. A wisp of a sermon floated up. Pride was heavy, rocks sewn in her skirt, like Dorothy’s coins, dragging her down.

  Back in the corridor, Caro found a handkerchief and gave it to Barbara. “I told you it was f-foolish. Don’t weep, Barbara. It isn’t g-good for the child.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Spring Equinox

  Oh come, gentle spring…

  The door to the cell swung open. Four men carrying lanterns stepped inside.

  Startled, Ange rose from his chair, stepped back, but before he could speak, two guards he didn’t recognize threw him down and tied his hands together. Then they searched the cell, finding behind a loose stone in the wall the knives Ange had hidden, finding paper and pen and ink and the letters Buckingham had brought. Balmoral dismissed the guards. Only the large, burly man he’d entered with remained.

  “Wax candles. Portuguese oranges. Not quite what I had in mind.” Balmoral gestured to what was atop the table in the cell. “Kill him.” Balmoral sat in the chair Ange had vacated. The other man uncoiled knotted rope.

  Ange ran to the door, calling through the small grate, “Help me! Murder!”

  “But I’ve changed the guard, as you ought to have noticed,” said Balmoral. “They won’t be paying attention. S
trangle him, but don’t kill him. Finish it with the rope around his head. I want to see his eyes fall out onto the floor.” He smiled at Ange, his teeth yellowed. “It’s an old Inquisition trick I’m fond of. Your Miguel is Spanish, isn’t he? I do it for him.”

  Ange fell to his knees in front of him. “What do you want?”

  “Some of those coins the Duke of Buckingham has been paying you would do.”

  “I don’t have them.”

  Balmoral pulled letters out of his sleeve, enjoying the shock on Ange’s face. Whatever anyone else pays, His Grace the Duke of Balmoral pays higher—it was the litany of the underworld of the Tower. All guards knew it. Don’t send a letter on without making a copy, for Balmoral punished for betrayal, but he punished even harder for stupidity. Copy the letter, then send the original on its way. So many flies caught that way. “Yes. They go straight to Miguel, don’t they.” He tapped the letters with a finger. “Kill him.”

  “No—”

  Rope dropped around Ange’s neck and was tightened ruthlessly. Caught kneeling, Ange twisted, kicking, but the man was strong, and struggling made it worse. Ange gagged and kicked, but it was too late. At the moment he gave up, Balmoral said, “Enough.”

  Ange dropped like a stone to the floor. At a gesture from Balmoral, the burly man went to a bucket, took a dipper of water, dribbled it onto Ange’s face. After a time, Ange opened his eyes, began to gasp air the way a fish would. The man dragged him to sitting by pulling the rope around his neck.

  “Was there a secret treaty?”

  “Yes.”

  “Before the one Buckingham negotiated?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  Ange was silent. Balmoral respected that. Finally Ange answered, “Monsieur talked of it, was angry that he was not allowed any part of the negotiation. I could go to France and gather evidence for you.”

  “Go to France and gather evidence. I like that. Except I ask myself, Now, why would he come back? If I could detach your confounded head, or take out your heart, keep them alive, you might come back for those.”