Ladies in Waiting

by Laura L. Sullivan

  “Come look at this one,” he called, beckoning, with his eyes still downward. “I had the devil of a time getting them alive. Not that collecting them wasn’t diverting, but a man can only manage so much, and I believe something bad happened to Onan, though I can’t recall what. Here, lean in and take my spot. Careful not to singe your hair on the oil lamp. They’re still wiggling, though I’ve found they perish in a very few minutes under the heat of the lens.” He shifted his body to the side, creating a space for her. She slid beside him, her hair catching in the stubble of his cheek, and at this near-touch Zabby felt a great void open within her breast, as if her heart had disintegrated.

  “Od’s fish!” Charles gasped, stumbling back. “I thought you were George.” George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, had been orphaned near the same time as Charles, and the lads had been reared together. Now, though they were boon companions, George’s fractious ways and constant plotting made him a thorn in Charles’s side. The court gossips often wondered if the day would come when the king would have no choice but to send his best friend to the Tyburn gallows.

  “No,” she whispered, staring up at him wide-eyed, suddenly a little afraid. “I’m only me.”

  He took her arm gently and turned it over, placing his fingers on the livid marks they’d made the night before. “I’m sorry for this,” he said. She thought he might say more, but he only let his fingers rest there, as if today’s gentleness might heal yesterday’s violence. His skin was very warm, and she could feel the beat of his pulse against her inner arm, just out of synchrony with hers. Then the rhythm was broken entirely when her heart raced recklessly away, beating so fast she thought she might faint.

  She held his eyes a moment, and felt, for the first time in her life, a strange sort of power, like a sorcerer’s in an old tale, as if she need only raise her hand to work a terrible magic and bend him to her will.

  Lady Castlemaine must feel this way all the time, she thought, and the distaste of that comparison was so great that she laid the power aside and pulled away from him, allowing the warring tug of science to have a momentary victory over emotion.

  “What’s that you’re observing in your microscope?” she asked. When she’d bent down she’d had a tantalizing glimpse of something wriggling, slightly out of focus.

  “It is . . . well . . . ah . . . ahem . . . that is to say . . . what do you think it is?”

  Zabby bent over the instrument, adjusting the screw slightly until the creatures came into focus. Most moved listlessly, but occasionally one would give a great thrash of its whiplike tail and propel itself out of sight.

  “They resemble tadpoles, though with very odd tails.” She withdrew, blinked to freshen her eyes, and glanced at the sample. “But of course no tadpole could be this small.” She bent to the microscope again. “Some sort of animalcule? There is motion, so it must be animal life. This is much more powerful than ours at home, though of course we have only a single lens. My godmother would love to see this—whatever it is.”

  Thinking about his collection method, Charles doubted it.

  “What is it, then?”

  It was hard to tell with his swarthy complexion, but Zabby believed he was blushing.

  “They are . . . that is . . .” He seemed torn between mortification and mirth. “They are homunculi.”

  A court lady would have giggled, blushed, or made a licentious jest, or more likely not known the word at all. Zabby simply cocked her head and said, “Papa and I looked at pond and sea creatures, and at the beasts that live betwixt the teeth. I had thought to look at homunculi, but couldn’t see how to harvest a sample.” She looked into the microscope again, and Charles was free to grin.

  “Oh, but they’re dying, the poor wee things! Can you save them?”

  “They always perish quickly.”

  “Indeed? And this sample, is this all you produced?” With every molecule of her being she willed herself not to dwell on exactly how they were produced.

  Charles steeled himself not to laugh and said, “A bit more. A dram, perhaps.”

  “That would mean thousands, many thousands, of homunculi regularly wasted. Do you know, I don’t believe what they say about each homunculus being a perfect human in miniature. They certainly don’t look it, but beyond that, can you imagine any system, natural or divine, that would sacrifice so many countless creatures? They cannot be complete unto themselves. I don’t think they become human until they are in combination with a feminine counterpart. Yet Swammerdam speaks of the ovum as containing homunculi too. Perhaps . . .”

  “Blight me, sweetheart, how you stare!” She was gazing up at him earnestly with her large, too widely spaced, pale-lashed amber eyes. “What a marvel to see the whites of a woman’s orbits. D’you know, the ladies here think it a sin to raise their lids above half-mast. They all look like sleepy Chinamen. But you open your eyes like a blind man newly cured. I wonder, do you see more than they?”

  She smiled, losing her train of inquiry. “I don’t know if I see more, but I’m always looking.” She gazed at Charles as though she would devour him. She felt she could look at him forever, the sole object of her studies both physical and philosophical.

  “You kept me alive in more ways than one during my confinement,” Charles said. “Without your lively mind I should have perished of boredom. Do you always speak so bluntly and fearlessly?”

  “What’s there to fear from words and ideas?” she asked.

  Charles’s face suddenly darkened. “Cromwell and a few others had an idea, and it spread like gangrene and sent a king, my father, to the block. Ideas can make action.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “No matter, sweetheart. Your ideas are pure, from a desire simply to know. How could your pretty little delvings into the inner cogs of the universe harm anyone? I don’t mean to quell you in the least.” He smiled winningly and took her hand with his easygoing familiarity. “In fact, if you ever stop speculating, I’ll banish you from my court entirely.”

  “Oh, Your Majesty, that’s what I came to tell you.” She pressed her lips together into a fine line, as if she could trap the painful words inside her, then forced them open with a long sigh. “I’m leaving court anyway. And you must take this back.” She thrust her hand into her skirt and pulled out the seashell.

  “Does it not please you? The traveler I bought it from said they are rare even on their natal shores.”

  “I’ve never seen anything more lovely.”

  “I thought you’d appreciate a curiosity more than a jewel, but if you’d prefer a pretty ring . . .”

  “Your Majesty, I cannot accept presents from you. Don’t you know what they’re saying about me? They all believe I’m your mistress.”

  “And what of that? Let them gossip. The mistress of a king is as good as the wife of any man.”

  “But it isn’t true!” It could be true, a demon voice whispered in her ear.

  “Better that than let the world know I almost died.”

  “I don’t see that at all. They would think you all the more heroic for having lived.”

  “No, sweetheart, plague is a pestilence of the poor, a disease of dirt and vermin. I will not allow anyone to know that I contracted it.”

  “No one would find fault. They know a king is only human.”

  “If they know that, they must be taught to forget!” he said harshly. “When I was your age, I was hunted through the countryside like a stag. I lived on the charity of people who scorned me. I, a king, cheated at cards to buy my next meal. Now that I’m back in my rightful place, nothing—nothing, Zabby—will remove me from it by the slightest measure. Not the opinion of the blasted people, not my own wife. I am king, Zabby. That means I rule, without question!” He sighed, his vehemence deflated. “Oh, sweetheart, they come at me from every side. Parliament like carrion crows plucking more of my flesh each day. Catherine defying me before the world.”

  Zabby hung her head. “And I too, Your Majesty, defying
you. Forgive me.”

  “‘Your Majesty’?” he asked. “What of ‘Charles’?”

  “Please pardon me for that, too. I had no right.”

  “Well . . . perhaps not in public, or quite so loudly. But it sounds well on your tongue. In private, please call me Charles.”

  She only nodded, thinking she would almost certainly never see him after this day, unless she joined the gawking crowds at the public dinners. It’s the most I could be to him anyway, she thought, I or any other woman. One of many.

  “And you will stay. I order you to stay. Come, help me feel like a king again. Let there be one person who obeys me.” He took her chin in his hand.

  This is foolishness, she told herself. What, desire a man not only married but with a stable of mistresses? Love the king?

  She astonished herself at the word, barely whispered inside her. It is not love, she told herself plainly. It is the natural fealty one feels for one’s monarch, coupled, no doubt, with that animal lust which is as evident in humans as in beasts. The bitch in heat claws the door of her kennel from the inside just as fiercely as the dog from the outside. There is nothing odd in a girl of marriageable age admiring a virile man. He is intelligent and charming, looks well enough, understands sciences natural and physical.

  He reminded Zabby of her father.

  She clung to that. Yes, I miss my father, and Charles is the closest surrogate. I enjoy his company, no more. I am fond of him, she told herself. I do not love him. Love is a question of logic as much as passion, and no equation can ever prove that I love Charles.

  A small, delighted part of her taunted, If you do not love him, then there’s no harm in staying.

  “I cannot stay,” she insisted. “I came to England to study with my godmother. I plan to assist her in her natural examination, improve upon the clarity of lenses, increase my alchemical knowledge . . .”

  Charles grinned. A gambling man, he always knew when he had won long before his opponents. He understood how to trap her now.

  “If you stay, you may have free access to my elaboratory. No one else has that privilege, not even Buckingham. You should see my collection at Whitehall. Lenses much finer than these, blown beakers, every chemical on the sphere, tumors and grotesques preserved in spirits, fresh criminal cadavers to dissect.”

  How could Zabby resist such an offer? She tried, and failed. For the elaboratory, she told herself. And for Beth and Eliza. Certainly not for Charles.

  “I’ll only stay if you tell the queen the truth. I can’t serve her if she believes me to be your mistress. I won’t.” She stubbornly lifted the chin Charles still held in his hand.

  “Very well, if you’ll do one little thing for me in return.”

  “Of course. Anything.”

  “Swear it first.”

  “You are my king. I must obey.”

  He laughed. “Only now you realize it?” He leaned a fraction closer and she drew a breath, half afraid, half eager to know what he might command her. For if indeed it was a kingly command, she’d certainly be justified in yielding.

  “Convince my wife to allow Lady Castlemaine to serve as a lady of the bedchamber.”

  She did her best to refuse. It was a deal with the devil, but when the devil was a charming King Charles, she couldn’t resist. Charles in turn agreed to tell Catherine the truth immediately, and even said that Zabby could tell Beth and Eliza what really happened in those weeks in Dover.

  “Are you certain you can trust to their discretion? How well do you know them?”

  “Not well, though I trust them. We shared a bed for the night.”

  He chuckled. “Quite well, then. When a woman shares my bed for an hour she rises believing she knows me perfectly.

  “And you’ll keep this, won’t you, sweetheart?” he asked, fumbling in her skirts to slip the seashell back in the pocket that hung against her legs. “Just a little lover’s gift.” He laughed and strode out before she could throw herself either into his arms or out the window. She thought, wildly, that those were her only two choices. Love the king, Zabby? You are mad.

  Instead she bent her head and devoted herself to examining his faintly stirring, stymied progeny.

  “I forgive you, my child, I forgive you,” Catherine murmured to Zabby, who knelt at the queen’s bedside. Zabby took a breath to explain that, as she had done no wrong in the first place, there was nothing to forgive, but she was slowly learning that logic had little place at court. If the queen wanted to forgive her for other people’s insinuations, she must be indulged.

  “Of course you are not the sort of creature to tempt a husband away from his vow, you good child.”

  Again, it was on the tip of Zabby’s tongue to ask, Why not I as well as another? She thought of that moment of power, when she knew, even if Charles did not, that she could take advantage of their easy familiarity, of his gratitude, of his natural tendency to fall into any arms that were appealing and convenient, and seduce him, if only for a time. But I want more than that, she thought. I already have more than that from Charles. To love him as Castlemaine and those others love him would be trivial beside the bond we already share. He is friend and fellow scientist, not that lesser thing, a lover.

  She looked into Catherine’s relieved face, and was ashamed.

  “His Majesty has made a request of me,” she said stiffly, “and though I feel it is not my place to speak of this, I must obey any of the king’s wishes as if they were decrees from on high.” She might as well set the precedent for Catherine to follow.

  Zabby came on the heels of the Lord Chancellor, who had also been given the unpleasant task of trying to persuade the queen. Catherine lay in bed, exhausted from another outpouring of rage and tears, and she didn’t have the strength left to fight even Zabby’s gentle words. Perhaps the fact that they came directly from a woman, one as alien in her own way to court as Catherine was, helped. The Chancellor could not understand a woman’s heart, and any sympathy they might have had was further diluted by a translator.

  “In my way, Your Majesty, I believe I know your husband better than you. I nursed him, I heard the delirious ravings of his inmost heart. I sat by his side day in, day out. We were as intimate as . . .” The queen bristled. “As master and servant. You know there’s no one who knows a person so well as his meanest servant. I emptied his privy pot, Your Majesty. No need to be jealous of that, I promise you!”

  To Zabby’s relief, Catherine laughed.

  “This I know above all things: the king’s defining character is loyalty to those who have used him well. He never forgets a kindness, however slight. It would be a sin beyond forgiveness to let someone who has helped him, unselfishly, come to any harm. Do you know, there’s an old pig farmer’s widow who gave him an apple tart when he was fleeing Cromwell’s armies. She didn’t know who he was. He hadn’t eaten in two days. She has a pension of three hundred pounds a year now. To you, to me, Lady Castlemaine is a strumpet. To the king, she is a woman of whom he took advantage, estranged from her husband, ruined. If he rewards the pig farmer’s widow, would you have him cast out a lady he has wronged?”

  “Let him pension her, then. I wouldn’t have the pigman’s widow in my bedroom, and I won’t have her!”

  “A pigman’s widow isn’t a lady,” Zabby said gently. “The Countess of Castlemaine is cousin to the Duke of Buckingham, and wife of one of the king’s staunchest supporters while in exile.”

  “I don’t care who the harlot is related to!” Catherine said, her voice threatening more hysteria. “I am the queen. I won’t be treated so.”

  Zabby changed tactics. “There is one unassailable argument, Your Majesty. He is our king. King by divine right.”

  Catherine bit her lower lip with her protruding tooth.

  “His authority was taken from him by robbery and murder, for fifteen years. Do you know how it feels to him now, to see someone defy that authority, someone who should support him above all others? You took a vow too, Your Majesty.”r />
  That bolt struck to Catherine’s heart, and Zabby pressed home.

  “He loves you deeply. Do as he asks.”

  “He does not love me,” Catherine insisted. “He cannot love me if he . . .”

  Zabby almost wished the queen would hold her ground. Perhaps she would win, in the end, and Charles would give up Castlemaine and his other more casual mistresses. If I can’t have him . . . but she had promised Charles, and she too believed in loyalty. She clenched her fist unseen against her skirts, then pulled something from her pocket.

  “He does love you, Your Majesty. He gave me this to give you.” She fumbled for some convincing falderal as she handed Catherine her precious seashell. “He said that like the shell, you are a natural miracle, a small, fragile object of perfection.” She saw the queen’s eyes moisten. “He said your . . . soul . . . was like the whorls of the shell.” Zabby didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, but the queen seemed to like it. “And the creamy whiteness at the lip reminded him of your . . . bosom.” They both blushed at this. “He thought you’d appreciate a curiosity more than a jewel,” she concluded. When she parroted the king’s words she had to dig her nails into her palms so physical pain could beat back the pain in her heart.

  Catherine clutched the delicate shell to a breast that heaved with grateful sobs. She longed for a reason to forgive her husband.

  I give up his gift, Zabby thought, and I give up all those childish thoughts of loving him. He belongs to the queen.

  It was a gradual but inexorable thawing. Charles was kind enough to keep Lady Castlemaine out of sight for a few days, and she didn’t immediately assume her new duties as lady of the bedchamber. Then, one night, the two women sat on opposite sides of the hall during a court masque, and Catherine didn’t have a fit. A few days later Castlemaine drifted nonchalantly into the queen’s apartments to seek out her aunt, Lady Suffolk, though she left in a hurry. Before long the king danced openly with his mistress in full sight of Catherine, and the queen merely chatted with her attendants and pretended not to notice.