Dark Angels

by Karleen Koen

  “I have letters. I know not what they are,” whispered the servant in Spanish to Ange, who held out his hand, took them, gave them to Balmoral.

  “Search every inch of that vessel,” ordered Balmoral, who went to stand in the shade of a tree, reading through the letters. Ange remained where he was, tethered to the trooper. The servant sat at his feet, as still as stone, whimpering every once in a while, but Ange kicked him each time he did so. When the yacht had been searched and nothing else found, Balmoral walked over, gestured, and a trooper unlocked the chains from around Ange’s feet, but his wrist was still tethered to the trooper. Balmoral considered Ange. He didn’t wish to set him free, but Richard had failed to bring the casket. “A deuce of a way to spend my Palm Sunday,” he snapped. “You have one month to bring me proof of the treaty. If I haven’t heard from you in precisely thirty days, your sweetheart dies. Slowly.”

  “You’ll have your proof.”

  “What about this one, Your Grace?” A trooper nudged with his boot at the servant, still sitting at Ange’s feet. The servant began to weep.

  “For pity’s sake, let me have him to help me sail the yacht, or I’ll never make shore. And I could use a coin or two while you’re at it.”

  Balmoral tossed two coins at Ange, turned on his heel, walked to his carriage. The coachman flicked the reins; the carriage lumbered away, followed by mounted troopers, the body of Miguel lying across a saddle. The last trooper left unlocked himself from Ange’s wrist, eyed Ange and the cowering servant for a long moment as if he might just kill them anyway, then went to his horse, tossed the key toward them, and rode away.

  “The key,” Ange said.

  Wiping his eyes with the tail of his shirt, the servant ran to find it, knelt before Ange, and unlocked the chains around his legs. Ange knelt, too, held out his hands, took the other man’s hands in his. “I thought he meant to kill me,” Ange said. “You were so brave, my darling.”

  “Our poor Pedrito. What will happen?”

  “He will die in the Tower of London, but you and I won’t.”

  “All your coins. It killed me to bring all your coins.”

  “So, did you?”

  “No.”

  “And that is why I love you.” Once in the yacht, Ange opened the sail and turned the tiller so it caught a gust of wind.

  “France is that way,” said Miguel.

  “I know,” said Ange. “I’m not finished.”

  CHAPTER 45

  It was Maundy Thursday. Everyone was at the banqueting house watching the king and queen and their attendants wash the feet of the poor. Ange, a full curling nobleman’s periwig on his head, a respectable coat and breeches on his body, walked into Balmoral’s front hall. He was up the stairs before a servant appeared in the hall to answer the bell that opening the door made ring. Balmoral’s bedchamber was simple to find. Ange went straight to the closet beyond it, shutting the door behind him quietly. He worked with concentration, opening cabinets and drawers, every sense open to sounds that would warn him of an approach. When he saw the sherry in its crystal decanter, he smiled. It was just as Buckingham had described, once upon a time long ago and far away. Pulling on gloves to take a folded paper from a pocket, he then poured its bit of grainy powder into the decanter, and shook it gently.

  “For you, Alice,” he said aloud.

  Quick as a flash, doors and drawers were closed again and he was crossing the bedchamber, walking down the stairs and out the front door. It took only moments for the coat and wig to be gone, his hair loosed, his sleeves rolled up. He might have been any servant at the palace. He walked into the mews, asked a stable boy where Captain Saylor’s horse was kept. The great dark head appeared over its stall door when he whistled.

  “I’ve something for you,” Ange said. He opened a gloved palm, and the horse sniffed, then snorted at the smell of sugar. He licked it all, licked even the glove, while Ange whispered to him and told him how handsome he was. He gave him the glove to chew, and the horse did so. For you, Richard, he thought. He heard footsteps, stepped back into shadow. A half-grown boy walked forward, put out his hand, pulled the chewed glove from the horse’s mouth.

  “What are you eating, Pharaoh?” Walter dropped the glove, kissed the long front of the horse’s nose.

  Ange recognized him. Madame Neddie’s. Staring at him in the Whitehall kitchen. Part of the crowd who’d watched his duel with Richard. This one would be for Henri Ange. He stepped forward, as quiet as nothing. But Pharaoh whinnied, pulling his head from the boy’s embrace, and in that moment the boy saw him, and in one lithe turning movement, even as Ange’s hands grazed him, he ran from the dark of the stalls toward the light of the street, as if he knew this would be the race of his life.

  ALICE SAT ON the hillock. Before her spread a view of daffodils, a field of them, their trumpets belled out and fragrant. In the summer, said Lady Saylor, the hillock is covered with bluebells, a carpet of the sweetest blue you’ve ever seen. Letters from her father and from Balmoral sat in her lap, unopened. A box had come from London, inside it the gown in which she’d marry Balmoral, the gown she and her aunt had created. The seamstress would come to her from London to finish it. Poll had lifted it reverently from its paper, but Alice wouldn’t look at it. She’d gone away, here to the hillock. If she tried to think, her head ached, so she didn’t think. But soon she was going to have to.

  IT WAS GOOD Friday. Alice held a kitten—yours if you wish it, said Richard’s mother—exhausted from her afternoon of watching flowers arranged in the church for Easter, exhausted from the service and prayers of this evening, exhausted from her thoughts, which circled one another relentlessly. Richard appeared at the far end of the arbor where she sat with his mother.

  “My dear boy,” exclaimed Jerusalem, who held Nan’s baby in her lap.

  Richard remained half-in, half-out of sun, shadows made by the arbor’s vines playing across his face. He slapped his riding gloves in one hand. Jerusalem’s eyes narrowed. She stood up, the baby in her arms. “Is something wrong? Louisa or Elizabeth?”

  Alice put down the kitten. Like Jerusalem, she suddenly knew he bore bad news. She stood up in a hesitant movement. Her strength was very small.

  “Louisa,” said Richard, “I’ve brought her home. You’ll need to see to her. She isn’t happy with me.” He walked forward, and both women could see his jaw was held so tightly that the bones of it were showing against skin. The chickens come home to roost, thought Alice. Now I’ve hurt Louisa, too.

  “Is she ill?” asked Jerusalem.

  “No. My horse—” He stopped, unable to go on.

  “Pharaoh? Not Pharaoh?” said Jerusalem.

  “Dead.”

  Alice began to weep. She sat back down, face in her hands.

  “She’s weeping for more than Pharaoh,” Jerusalem said. “Oh, Richard, I’m that sorry. I’ll go see to your sister.” She touched her hand to his shoulder but walked out of the arbor, back to the kitchen to give the baby to her mother. Interesting, she thought, that he should ride all this way to tell me, only it is not me he comes to tell. Now why has he brought Louisa home? Into her mind came the vision of her daughter the last time she’d been in London whenever the Duke of Monmouth was near, and she suddenly knew.

  “Annie,” she said to Susannah’s granddaughter, sitting dark and glowering on a stool because she must have disobeyed Susannah, “guess who’s come to see us.”

  In the arbor, Richard knelt before Alice. “Don’t weep,” he said. His throat was tight. He’d cried like a boy at the sight of Pharaoh. He took a hand from her face, began to kiss it, unable to help himself.

  “You mustn’t touch me,” Alice said.

  He walked away.

  SUPPER WAS QUIET, strained. Louisa refused to eat with them. A tiny moth came in to play with the flame at one of the candles, and Jerusalem kept waving it away, looking from Richard to Alice and back again. Alice looked weary and drank more wine than Jerusalem had seen her do since arriving at
Tamworth. Richard played with the food on his plate, gave short answers to any questions Jerusalem asked.

  “How did he die?”

  “He just stopped breathing.”

  “Have you your letter to Turenne?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve resigned, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was anything said of it?”

  “Yes.”

  “For example?”

  “I don’t wish to speak of it.”

  “Nan Daniell wants a word about Walter. Will you take the time to speak with her?”

  “Walter’s gone.”

  “Gone? Where?”

  “We don’t know. Effriam thinks he’s run away.”

  “But why would he run away?”

  “I don’t know, Mother.”

  Jerusalem threw her napkin on the table. “Why don’t you both go out and look at the stars? Alice, take your shawl.” She walked over to her flute, began to play it.

  Out on the terrace, Alice and Richard were silent. Stars were bright, spattering the sky. I can’t breathe, thought Alice. It was because of him.

  “I’m leaving the army, Alice. I’m going to France.”

  “I think that’s likely a good thing, Richard.”

  “What if I loved you, too?” he said.

  She couldn’t answer. Dreams, as far as she could see, did not come true. She felt desperate, weak. “If you touch me, Richard, I’m lost. Please don’t.”

  In answer, he put his hand up to cup the back of her neck, entangling his fingers in her hair, and like the moth at the candle, she stepped into his arms, and his mouth was on hers, not in friendship, but in deliberation and desire and something else, and she was lost, everything she’d felt and seen and grieved and loved welling up in her. She could not have enough of him, his mouth, his taste, his tongue, his body against hers. She ran her hands along the sleek bones of his face, the strong muscles of his neck. She would die for him. She was his to do with whatever he pleased. She was fire and light and love from head to foot. When he lifted his mouth from hers, she had to bunch his coat in her hands and hang on to him not to fall. He put her head against his heart, and she could hear it pounding. I will go anywhere with you, she was thinking, and then lovelier verses floated into her mind, tamping down some of her heat, painting it with something sacred, which was part of her love, also, Wither thou goest, I will go. Jerusalem read the Bible to the household at night, the verses echoing in Alice’s mind when she closed her eyes to sleep.

  “I could lie with you right now, here, with your mother in the other chamber,” she whispered.

  “And in the morning?”

  “I would rise and tell Balmoral.”

  He stepped back, and the distance between them loomed huge. “Why?”

  “I owe him truth. And there’s more truth to be told. I asked Monmouth to flirt with your sister. Whatever’s happened, I’m a piece of it.”

  He stepped even farther back from her. “What a meddling fool you are, Alice.”

  “Yes.”

  The sound of the flute ceased.

  “Children,” called Jerusalem, “time to come inside.”

  ALICE STOOD AT the window staring at stars long after Poll was faintly snoring. What if he loved her, too, he’d said. She hadn’t a shred of pride to separate her from him. Pride. What a meddling fool you are, Alice. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool, Richard’s mother read. She adored him; she was besotted. Except that she’d hurt his sister. Except that she owed Balmoral her honor. Oh, Barbara, you said it was so sweet. Here was why Caro betrayed—she could so easily betray Balmoral. Richard had only to walk through that door, and she would lie down wherever he wished and open herself to him, meet him kiss for kiss, touch for touch, wild, wanton, feverish, not think of consequences, a slave to this desire she felt for him. There was such longing in her heart, such sadness. What was there to do? Step back from Balmoral? At this late stage? How could she? How could she not? Clever Alice, no longer clever. Would you be a soldier’s wife, follow the drum for him? Yes and yes again. Would you live as nobody, hidden away on a farm? No and no again. Would Balmoral ruin Richard if she should marry him? Yes, it was likely. Would Richard forgive her the mischief with Louisa? Who knew? She could scarcely forgive herself. The kitten mewed, leaped down from her bed, came to threaten and fight the tail of her nightgown. The headache was here, growing on each side of her head. “Stop it, Dulcinea.” Alice lay down on the floor, pressing her forehead to the cool of the floor, as the kitten leaped and tried to kill her dark and riotous curls.

  AT MIDNIGHT, THE little owl flew once over the stable and then back to the wood. Richard led the saddled horse out of the stall.

  “Did you mean to leave without saying good-bye?” His mother stood in the door of the stable, a lantern in her hand.

  Richard walked his saddled horse toward his mother and out into night that promised morning.

  His mother touched the nose of the horse he’d chosen. “There’s a yearling of Pharaoh’s that Winston Ashford has. I could buy him back. You didn’t tell me how he died.”

  “I don’t know. Effriam came to find me, and when I got to the stables, he was down, gone.” He put his arm around her, looked into the pale oval of her face. “I’m not coming back, Mother.”

  “To France?” Tomorrow was Easter. She bit her lips to stop the words, Stay for Easter.

  “Yes. I leave trouble behind me. His Grace the Duke of Balmoral is unhappy over a failure of mine, angry that I’ve resigned. He called me a fool, and—” He stopped. He wouldn’t mention Renée’s tears, her begging him not to leave. I’ve ruined you, she had cried, and of course, her unhappiness meant King Charles could not be a happy man at the moment. He wouldn’t mention mortgaging Tamworth for every pence, of buying into Prince Rupert’s Hudson Bay Company. It was enough he had brought Louisa home, her fighting him every step of the way.

  “Do you love her?”

  “Who?”

  “The French one.”

  “Yes, I love her.”

  “And this one?”

  “Her too.”

  “You’ve food?” It was one of the ways she had known he was leaving, the cook coming to her late and telling how he’d packed food for the young baron, a stable boy telling her he’d asked for a horse to be saddled, Annie saying he’d put a miniature portrait of his father in his saddlebag.

  “Yes.”

  “Let me get some coins from the strongbox.”

  “I just want to be on the road, away from here. I have no letter for Alice. I sat up half the night trying to write one, but there was nothing I could think to say.” He spoke jerkily, holding emotion in check. “Will you say good-bye for me, tell her that I—tell her that she will always have my deepest regard, tell her I forgive everything? Make sure you say that word—everything. It’s important. Will you bless me?”

  He knelt before her in the dark, the horse, her reins dangling, waiting for him a few feet away. Jerusalem put her hand on Richard’s head, closed her eyes, feeling all the things she would not say to this man whose body encased the boy she had loved, the boy who looked back at her often even now when she met his eyes, but who had transferred his heart’s allegiance elsewhere, as was fitting, even though she did not entirely like it. So his father had done once upon a time. In her mind, she hugged the boy to her, seeing all his eagerness for life, all his sweet innocence, enclosed forever in a man’s body and a man’s needs and a man’s ambitions. She spoke prayers for him, putting him in God’s care. Nothing was ours to keep forever. So it had been. So it would always be.

  After he’d ridden away, she walked along the side of the house to the kitchen. Cook was up, and to her gladness, so was the baby. She took her from a sleepy, weeping Nan, who wept because Walter was gone and had sent her no good-bye.

  “Oh, ma’am, you mustn’t bother yourself with us,” Nan said.

 
“But I want to.” This child-mother had no idea how precious it was to have a baby in the household again. She sat in a rocking chair near the window and began to play cat’s cradle with the child’s hands. “Annie,” she cooed. “My sweet little girl.” All the little heartbreaks, thought Jerusalem. Louisa, upstairs, cried and raged hers. Alice and Richard tried the opiate of duty, Nan simple tears.

  “Bah,” said a voice from the corner. It was Tamworth’s other Annie, up because Richard had left. Doubtless she’d witnessed the farewell, lurking somewhere as was her way. “I don’t like her having my name.”

  “What shall we call her, then?”

  “Stupid.”

  Later, Poll came to tell her that Alice was ill with the headache again. Jerusalem went into her stillroom, mixed St. John’s wort with safflower while Poll held the baby for her. Cook brought some warmed wine, and Jerusalem mixed the herbs into it, thinking all the while about love and its many circles.

  IN THE MORNING, Alice glared at Poll. “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s true. He left late in the night, Nan Daniell says. Good riddance, I say, what with your eyes glowing like candles whenever you see him. I want to call you ‘Your Grace,’ not Mrs. Nobody.”

  “Get out.” Alice threw a pillow. “Out!” She didn’t weep. Some things went too deep for weeping. She didn’t go to Easter service that day. There was no Jerusalem and no Louisa at supper that night, just Alice. She sat in the opened windows of one of the house’s bays, looking out into the twilight. He did not leave a letter. Better that way. He did what he had to do, and so would she. It would have been so sweet to have a letter, but she would have been a fool over it, treasuring it. Jerusalem found her in the arbor that night, sitting on a twig bench in the dark, and held up the lantern. “Poll is fretted about where you are.”