Ladies in Waiting

by Laura L. Sullivan

  He was only a breath away, and she stood imprisoned by his proximity. All those days of intimate caress, the tender touch of nurse and patient . . . Yet now, though the very hairs on her arms rose up and yearned, she could not bring herself to sway forward those scant few inches and touch him again. Behind her, the queen’s eyes bored into her back.

  Charles looked at Catherine, but it was Zabby’s arm he grabbed roughly as he barked, “I am your king!” He glared for a moment, letting the unsaid volumes recite themselves, then shook off Zabby’s arm as if it had been clinging to his fingers and not the other way round. He was gone with a clap-tap of heels on the black and white tiled floor.

  Chapter 5

  The Three Elizabeths

  ZABBY WAS IN BED when Beth and Eliza tumbled in, stripbodices. ping off their slippers and pulling their busks from bodices.

  “Oh, you’re here?” Eliza said archly. “Thought you’d be on the gibbet by now. That or made a duchess, though even Castlemaine’s just a countess after all her service to the Crown. Still, even she couldn’t keep His Majesty abed for two weeks straight. Nunquam satis, indeed!” She scattered pearl-tipped pins on the dressing table and pulled her dark hair out of its topknot, digging her fingers into the sides of her scalp and shaking vigorously.

  “I didn’t . . .” Zabby began, but broke off. What was the use of violating her oath to Charles? She was planning to leave in the morning, as soon as she could get word to Godmother Cavendish to fetch her.

  Beth sank down on the bed they were to share. “I don’t think it’s true,” she said softly.

  “And why not?” Eliza asked. “She’s an odd-looking thing, but Gemini, look at Anne Hyde, and she caught herself a royal highness. No offense, sweetheart—you’re pretty enough, but you don’t look like you belong at court. I can’t quite put my thumb on it, but you don’t.” She snapped her fingers. “I’ve got it after all! You walk like you’ve real legs under your skirts.”

  Zabby laughed. “Don’t you have legs under there?”

  Eliza lay back beside Beth and crossed one leg over the other so her skirts fell above her knees. “Bless me, there they are. But then, I’m a peasant, and peasants all have legs. Ladies like our little countess here usually act like they float on rarefied air. Till the skirts come off and the legs wrap around someone, that is. On our backs we’re all peasants—countess and commoner alike.”

  Beth blushed scarlet, but stubbornly persisted in her point. “I don’t care what they say. I don’t think she’s the king’s lover.”

  Eliza snorted. “Good for her if she is, I say. He’s a handsome devil, and the king, after all. It’ll be hot for a while, but Her Majesty will forgive all the king’s rannigals in time—just hold out.”

  Zabby rolled over to Beth. “Why don’t you think I’m his mistress?”

  Beth answered in a whisper. “I’ve lived here at court. I’ve seen . . . my mother has shown me . . . what the mistresses are like. You’re no one’s mistress—I can see it in your eyes.”

  “And you know all there is of love and lovers?” Eliza asked archly.

  Beth had fed on love, the idea of love, for as long as she could remember. Ever since she was a little girl she’d dreamed of it, and felt it for the first time at age ten, when she became enamored of a gallant neighbor boy, Harry Ransley. Though that budding love had been cruelly crushed, she clung to its memory, and the boy, now long gone, grew to man’s estate in her imaginings. She looked for him everywhere. One day, she was certain, Harry would light upon her, reach out his hand, and say, “I have found you, my love.” And then her struggle would be over. She would be safe in the shelter of his heart.

  “I know what love should be,” Beth said. “And my mother has, in one way and another, taught me all that it should not. No, our Zabby is not the king’s lover.” She paused and examined her new friend more critically. “Or if you are, you’re ashamed of it, and I’ve never yet seen one of the king’s mistresses ashamed.”

  I’m ashamed, Zabby thought, because with his wife in the room behind me, all I could think about was bathing Charles in his bed.

  “Well, I, for one, don’t care,” Eliza said. “I’m here to find a husband myself, so my father informs me, as is our Beth, as are you, I suppose, and the king’s not going to marry any of us, so who he quiffs is of no importance beyond a jest. Now I think on it, any jest is of the greatest importance. Come, we are all oddments here at court—I can tell that already. Lovely little Beth with her mad mother and noble blood back to Adam; you, whore and not whore from some barbarian land, they say; and me with a lineage of dirt and more money than the king. Let us be friends, shall we?” She shuffled herself until she was between them, then took their hands. “Lord, look at those bruises. His Majesty has a mighty strong grip. No matter, they’ll fade, and from what they say he’s softest to the women he’s wronged, so long as they’re soft to him. Now listen, are we friends? I don’t want a bedmate who’ll stab me in the back and whisper poison over my corpse.”

  Zabby had never had a female friend, and was pleased—if rather astonished—at Eliza’s free, bawdy talk. It had the same flavor as her lively, intellectual conversations with Papa, though the ingredients were vastly different. And she took to Beth immediately, first for her mousekin softness, and also because she’d defended Zabby against gossip. (Though I could have been his lover, a small voice whispered. Why couldn’t I have?)

  “Well,” Zabby said, “I’ll be gone by the morrow, but in the meantime I’m your friend.”

  “I too, both of you,” Beth said, immeasurably relieved. She’d dreaded being teased and put upon by the sophisticated maids of honor, the ones with money and real family to back them, with the confidence to hold their own at court. But these two were different. With them, and the kind queen, she might at least be peaceful, a short jaunt away from happiness. Now she felt like a kitten curled up beside two large and friendly dogs: warm and safe.

  “But I don’t think friendship can be only for the meantime,” Beth went on, gentle and earnest. “If we’re friends now, truly friends, we’ll stay friends. If we don’t, we never were in the first place.”

  Zabby nodded. “Papa says that certain things, the pure elements, aren’t mutable.”

  “By your reasoning, Beth, sweetheart, we won’t know if we were ever friends till we’re not friends anymore.”

  “Proof by contraries,” Zabby said.

  “I’m no philosopher,” Eliza said, “but let us set out our properties now so we don’t have to test ’em later. We’re the gods of our own beliefs, so if we create a friendship true, then true it will be, and if not, we’re blasphemers against ourselves. Say, that would do for the stage. I’ll write it down come morning. What do you say to an oath, Beth, and Zabby, was it? What an outlandish name!”

  “Elizabeth, really.”

  “Od’s bodikins, three Elizabeths in one bed. A fop’s fantasy! Well, that seals it for me. One Elizabeth for all Elizabeths. Stand or fall together, eh?”

  Zabby smiled. It was foolishness, all of it, but Eliza’s enthusiastic prattle was soothing, and she was sleepy, so she clasped their hands tighter and with them swore a giggling oath of eternal friendship. Released, she rolled to her side, almost asleep. Beth’s breathing was like the Barbados breeze, and Eliza’s gentle snores like waves grinding on the shore.

  The lowliest rose the earliest. Several hours before dawn, scullery maids rubbed the sleep from their eyes, their bodies set like clockwork at the start of their careers by sound beatings meted out for any laziness. They coaxed the banked kitchen hearths into life, then woke the next on the hierarchy, who might get an extra few minutes of sleep, but in exchange had to empty all the servants’ chamber pots. This accomplished, they awoke their betters, who in turn awoke theirs, until sometime around daybreak the palace hummed with stirrings of the unseen, unacknowledged underlings who made life pleasant for those above them.

  Eventually, the series of human alarms came to wake the gent
eel servants, ladies’ maids and waiting women who were privileged to empty the chamber pots of the nobility. One of these slipped into the bedroom of the three Elizabeths, and opened the shutters just loudly enough to make the bed heave with the simultaneous shifting of a dozen limbs.

  “Good morning, ladies,” the spry elderly woman said briskly. “Tea, like Her Majesty takes, or good English ale?” Tea was vastly expensive, but a portion of Catherine’s dowry had been paid in leaf—when cash was desperately needed—and for the nonce it was plentiful and, despite the queen’s lowly position, fashionable.

  Eliza demanded ale straight away, while Beth made a polite noise of demur. “Tea, I warrant? It’ll put some color into you, dearie, if I may be so bold. I’m Prue. Prudence Honor Goodfellow, and I’ll be serving you lasses, or ladies, or whatever you are.”

  “I’ve a maid of my own,” Eliza said. “She’ll be here directly.”

  “That fumble-fingered bumpkin who calls herself Whore-tense? I met her in the kitchen, with her theatrical airs. Rely on her and you’ll be poisoned or clapped or pilloried within a fortnight. She don’t know the court as I do.” She sidled up to the girls and gave them a broad wink. “Treat me right, missies, and I’ll see you never come to harm. We servants, we hear all, and tell all too, for a consideration.” A swollen-knuckled hand presented itself, and waited.

  Finally Eliza reached for an embroidered pocket tossed carelessly on the floor. She pulled out two shining shillings, clinked them together like castanets, and dropped them into Prue’s palm. “See you keep your end of the bargain, Mother.”

  Prue cackled and put a tray of white bread and perfect ivory butter balls on a small table near the window. “Silver always stimulates my memory,” she said. “Though gold, they say, is a sovereign cure for absentmindedness.” The hand snuck out again.

  Eliza laughed. “I’ll give you a sovereign when you give us something useful, you old gossip. My father’s a merchant, and he taught me never to pay before I handle the goods.”

  “Humph!” Prue said. “Merchants’ daughters attending the queen! I never thought I’d live to see the day. Ah, well, two shillings is more than that other lot of maids of honor gave me, so maybe times have changed for the better. Which one of you’s the Wodewose girl?”

  Zabby untangled her feet from her night shift and presented herself.

  “Got a wee bit of a thing for you. You’ve gone far for your age. There’s another maid of honor setting her cap at Buckingham already, but most work their way up through the foppery before they aim for the king. Officially it’s from Chiffinch,” she added, tapping her nose with one gnarled forefinger. “Ta!”

  The three girls crowded together on the bed as if the present were meant for all of them. The wrapping alone was an impressive gift, a rare and costly piece of silk, soft as eiderdown, marked with a swirling pattern of churning sea and a pitifully small boat full of slanting-eyed sailors about to be swamped by a prodigious wave. Something small and dense nestled in the center. Zabby unwrapped it carefully, thinking, If it is a jewel, I’ll return it. I’ll pardon him, but forgiveness must be bestowed, not bought.

  It was not a jewel but a seashell, a finger long and three thick, intricately whorled, polished to a high sheen.

  “Oh, how pretty!” Beth said, clapping her hands together. “Look at the stripes—they’re just the same hue as your eyes.”

  “And what a shine,” Eliza said, claiming it and turning it toward the light. “Some poor underling worked many an hour to bring out that gleam.”

  “No, I don’t think so.” Zabby reached out and stroked her own gift in Eliza’s hand. “There’s a snail in Barbados, the olive, that keeps its mantle wrapped around its shell all its life. The shell never gets marked or scuffed. This shell came from the Pacific, I’m sure, but I warrant it did the same.”

  “Nature’s an odd thing,” Eliza said. “Fancy having armor to protect you, then putting your soft, tender parts out to cover it, all for the sake of vanity!”

  “I have to give it back,” Zabby said, taking it and savoring its cool solidity in her palm for a second before resolutely slipping it, and the silk cloth, under her pillow. “I can’t accept presents from the king. What will people think?”

  “Just what they think now. It’s lovely and rare, and he wants you to have it. Don’t give the king offense. Even if he is Charles to you.”

  “Oh! I shouldn’t have done that. It just slipped out. After all those days in bed it seemed . . .” She clapped a hand to her mouth and Eliza burst into a guffaw. Even Beth giggled. “I didn’t! I swear!”

  “Whatever you say, sweetheart!” Eliza said, smiling smugly.

  Hortense came in and helped them dress, offering (no doubt with the incentive of a healthy tip from her mistress) her assistance to all three ladies. Zabby blushed as she was laced into her gown, recalling her first attempt at sophisticated dress. As it happened the merchant had deceived Papa—that copper gown was several years out of fashion, and observant Zabby was already—against her will—gaining the keen perception that told her what was à la mode. The court’s magnified eye could distinguish subtle differences in the dye of a plume, the height of a heel, the width of point, and summarily condemn or envy the wearer at a glance. It expected conformity but sometimes embraced bold novelty, and had she worn her backwards gown with enough zest, the trend might have been picked up by all the countesses within a week.

  Still, Zabby felt ridiculous wearing a garment she needed an assistant to don. She drew the line at her coiffure, waving off Hortense’s nimble fingers and twisting her long pale hair into its usual low knot, secured with a coral comb.

  “I’ll be writing a message to my godmother when I return,” she said. “She’s in town, so she’ll probably be able to send a coach for me before afternoon. If I don’t see you again . . .”

  “Don’t go,” Beth said wistfully. After a short time in service she was passionately partisan for the queen, and admired the way Zabby had sprung to her defense, defying the king himself. “We took an oath of friendship.”

  “Right,” Eliza said, “and now we must put it to scientific test. How can we do that in the absence of one of our elemental parts?”

  Zabby wavered. “I don’t think the queen will let me stay.”

  “She’ll have to, if the king orders it. You and Castlemaine both.”

  “I wouldn’t want to stay if I’m lumped with her.”

  “Why not ask the king to tell Her Majesty the truth?” Beth suggested.

  “Though whatever innocent thing can keep a man closeted with a wench for two weeks and more is beyond my comprehension,” said Eliza.

  “Mostly we spoke of science and philosophy.”

  “A clever tongue, then,” Eliza replied, nudging Beth, who pretended not to understand. “No matter—we don’t want to know, though he ought to tell her, if there’s truly no harm in it. Hang me for a liar, though, we do want to know. Tell us, Zabby, or ask Charles if you may.”

  “Is he Charles to you now, too?”

  “Ah, well, my poor simple mind can only parrot what it hears. Go, and do whatever you must to stay. I’ve not had such a merry time in all my days as I have since you came.”

  Beth patted Zabby’s hand to add her own encouragement, and Zabby, still undecided, put the shell in her pocket and went in search of the king.

  Chapter 6

  The Royal Seed

  HE WAS NOT AN EASY MAN to find. At midday he would have one of his onerous public dinners, where any common man who managed to shove his way into the audience gallery could gawk at his masticating monarch. Mercifully, it was less crowded at Hampton than at the principal royal residence, Whitehall, in the heart of London, where the crowd sometimes got so bumptious that it had to be bribed with whole roast haunches and elaborate spun sugar confections, while Charles made a great show of eating nothing at all, retiring after the exhibition to dine with Castlemaine or in the privacy of his clock closet. It was one of his most unpleas
ant duties, a tradition he couldn’t quite shake.

  But now, at his leisure early in the morning, he could be anywhere. A discreet query of a servant lowly enough that she could be guaranteed not to laugh in Zabby’s face revealed the king had risen betimes. Not that I could have gone to his bedroom, Zabby thought. Now he might be at the tennis courts, or sporting with the spaniels that followed him from palace to palace, or, for all she knew, in Castlemaine’s arms. Zabby’s jaw felt suddenly sore, and she realized she was gritting her teeth at the notion.

  She wandered for a time, all but lost in the hallways, until she came upon a black and tan pup with a petulant face and silken ears trailing the ground, scrabbling at a recessed doorway. Accustomed to indulging animals’ whims, she opened the door and peered after the dog as it leaped and frisked toward a tall figure in black with silver braid, hunched over an instrument of some kind.

  “I told you not to let the dogs in,” Charles said, shoving the fawning creature aside affectionately with his square-toed shoe without turning around. “At least I’ve no chemicals for him to upset today. Come in, George, come in, and shut the door behind you so we shan’t be bothered by any more simpering morts. I can’t stand ladies in my elaboratory. Their panting and giggling fogs the lenses.”

  Zabby edged inside and closed the door, standing where she could see him in profile, his wide, full mouth curved in a smile at whatever he was examining.

  Oh, he is handsome, she thought, though he wasn’t by the standards of the time, which called for pallor and fair hair, small, neat bodies, gray eyes, and fine lips on men and women both. Charles wasn’t like any of the other men she’d seen so far at court. He towered over the tallest, standing six feet, three inches, a physical peculiarity that made escaping capture in the hunted days of his youth especially difficult. His features were large, his long black hair his own, not a periwig, just beginning to gray.