Ladies in Waiting

by Laura L. Sullivan

  “Why the deception?” Eliza asked.

  “The people don’t know what they need a king for,” she said, echoing what Charles had explained to her during their procession plans. “He’s the voice against the mob, and even when the people think they are the mob, they need protection from their worse selves. But they don’t know that. What they think they need, even if they can’t put it into words, is a glittering show. Like the Roman circuses. They kept the public quiet for generations. The king’s like an actor: if he doesn’t give them a spectacle, they’ll hiss him off the stage.”

  “You make the public sound mighty shallow,” Eliza said.

  Zabby shrugged. “They are.”

  “And is all the public one person?”

  “In all ways that matter.” She looked at Charles, head held high, smiling at grocers’ wives waving their handkerchiefs and tossing roses into the Thames. He looked so sure of himself, but she knew how he feared the crowd. No, not feared. Hated. They had allowed his father to be killed. They might love him now, but to him they were traitors to a man, groveling curs that might turn to bite their master’s hand.

  Their progress was agonizingly slow. No water could be seen between the boats. Oars snarled and hulls ground together. Once a daring thief snatched a watch on one bank, then hopped from boat to boat across the river and disappeared on the far bank. Another man claimed a reluctant bride in a similar fashion—she said she wouldn’t have him until he walked across the Thames dryshod, and so lost her liberty that day. Many boats carried musicians, but there was no concord, and a dozen clashing melodies skipped across the water.

  “There’s that daggle-tailed slut Castlemaine,” Eliza said, boldly gesturing to a raised walkway attached to the palace. “And isn’t that her husband nearby, poor Palmer? Look, he doffs his hat to her, pleasant as you please, then turns as if they are strangers. Ah, well, he can wear a pair of cuckold’s horns as well as any other man in England. Your Charles should make him a duke for his tolerance.”

  She hardly made an effort to keep her voice low. Her father had recently paid for a new warship, the Catherine. Her place was secure.

  “I knew she had a scheme when she didn’t press to be on the royal barge. Look at her up there at the corner, with her paps almost out and her hair tossing in the wind. Here, she’d be lost in the rest of us. There, she looks like a queen herself, waiting to meet her king on the battlements. She holds their son, too. Oh! She blew Charles a kiss, the hussy. What’s that, now?”

  There was some commotion below. Spectators had climbed up a piece of scaffolding erected to carry banners, and it collapsed under their weight. There was a cry that a child was hurt, and suddenly Lady Castlemaine was running down the stairs, her scarlet and gold skirt lifted above her knees and puffing like a mushroom with the speed of her descent. In a moment she was among the rabble and had the child—a little boy, grubby, as little boys of all classes generally are—half on her lap as she felt him for any hurt and, finding none, ruffled his hair and tied a crimson ribbon from her curls around his collar as a keepsake. The crowd roared its approval. No other great lady had even deigned to notice the near tragedy of the lower order. For a moment at least, she was their darling.

  “It was staged,” Eliza said in wonder, a little awed at Castlemaine’s cleverness. “It had to be.”

  “I don’t know,” Zabby said. “Perhaps she’s not as bad as we think. Or perhaps her sins are limited to lust and greed. Even Caligula was kind to animals and children.”

  In any event, the crowd forgot the queen and cheered the royal mistress. Every eye was on Castlemaine, and she put on a pretty show of nonchalance as she arranged herself on the stairway, isolated from the crowd and on full display.

  “Now, who’s that handsome devil come to talk with my lady Castlemaine?” Eliza nudged Beth, who had yet to look up from her hands curled in her lap. “You know everyone at court. Who’s that fellow she’s throwing her charms at?”

  Beth reluctantly looked up, and saw him. Him! It must be, for why else would he, a stranger, look so familiar, if he had not been in her dreams? When she looked on his face she felt like a child again, before the troubles came. Who could make her feel like that but the one she had been waiting for? As if on cue, like trumpeting angels, the great cannons on the far side of Whitehall Bridge went off with earth-shaking booms, proclaiming her love to the world.

  Castlemaine and the man were just above her now, as the royal barge struck the jetty with a gentle thud. He wore high riding boots and spurs, and a low-crowned cavalier hat with a dipping white plume, and his golden periwig was a bit disheveled, as if he had just come from a hard ride. His sun-browned, youthful face was marked with mirth, crinkling eyes and curling smile lines, but even at this distance Beth could see two deep furrows between his eyebrows, as if some weighty concern never quite left him, even when he was talking to the most desirable woman in the kingdom.

  “Well, who is he?” Eliza asked again, but Beth didn’t hear her.

  Look at me, she willed. Meet my eyes only for an instant. It will be enough. I will die content.

  Then he did look, and she knew it would never be enough.

  His eyes didn’t even flicker over the other women in the golden barge. There was no evaluation, no choice, no comparison. He did not pick her out of the other beauties in the boat—he picked her out of all the world, instantly, unequivocally. His eyes settled on hers like a striking goshawk, heavy and fatal, sinking talons into her heart that would never loosen their hold.

  “Are ye having a fit? Who is he?”

  “I don’t know,” Beth said, but she did. “My true love.”

  Eliza thought it a good joke and turned to tell Zabby. Just then, Castlemaine noticed that a man she’d given her full attention wasn’t returning the favor in kind, and a scowl marred the perfection of her face as she sought out her competition. Her relief when she saw Beth below was evident. Oh, that pretty chit! her now relaxed features clearly said. And here I thought it might be real competition!

  Beth felt the full weight of her inexperience and poverty crash down on her, and looked away. If he can interest Lady Castlemaine, what would he want with me?

  She couldn’t help it—she looked up at him again. Castlemaine had commanded his attention, laughing and holding up a hand to shield herself from the rising wind. Her hair was dressed à la negligence, with long lovelocks trailing down her breast. Now it whipped around her face as if she was tossing her head in passion, and though it gave her a wild, barbaric beauty, in a moment she would simply look bedraggled. She appeared to make a request, and the man swept off his hat with an accompanying bow, and handed it over to Lady Castlemaine.

  With that gesture, Beth knew him. At once she was back on the Enfield estate in its heyday, a half-grown girl braving the gardener’s wrath to pluck new-blown rose blossoms from the avenue of thorny shrubs. It was her last summer of childhood, before propriety forced her into long skirts and poverty into first rags, then tart’s clothes. The Ransley sisters had been to call, with their brother, too big for games, tagging along. He’d teased his sisters without mercy, but when Beth got her tumbling hair caught in rose briars, he doffed his own hat and tucked her silky locks up underneath it. They walked together that afternoon, rode together the next day . . . and by the following week Harry Ransley’s father had ruined both their families. She hadn’t known him at first, so much older, his brown hair beneath the golden periwig, but it could be no other. Here was her dream of love made flesh at last—a dream that was also a nightmare, because of all the men in the world, Harry Ransley was the one forbidden to her.

  Lady Castlemaine took the proffered hat, and with a little pretext of embarrassment, she settled it over her deep auburn waves and cocked the brim to a raffish angle, turning slightly to make sure the staring throngs got the full effect. They responded with hoots and whistles, tossing flowers meant for the queen at Castlemaine’s feet. Within a week, every woman of fashion and half the whores wou
ld be wearing men’s hats.

  Harry did not look at Beth again.

  The people have forgotten Catherine, Beth thought miserably, and Harry has forgotten me. I was wrong to let myself think Harry was the paladin who would rescue me. He’s my family’s enemy—I could never marry him. I must take whoever will have me, and then let him desert me and ruin me, as Father did Mother.

  She couldn’t help herself—she glanced quickly up at the stairway, but Harry was gone. She made herself forget him, as he had no doubt already forgotten her.

  She scrambled out of the barge, nearly upsetting Simona, who snarled at her before recalling she was on display. While making herself useful to the queen, Beth did her best to disappear.

  Chapter 8

  The Rape of Love

  THAT EVENING there was a dance in the Banqueting House. Charles and Catherine sat on chairs slightly less grand than thrones at one end, while the court displayed itself before them in stately, intricate movements that were more like elaborate strolls than dances. The three Elizabeths stood in attendance on the queen, though Winifred danced with Buckingham, and Simona, looking smug, with teenage James Crofts, the king’s bastard by the deceased Lucy Walter.

  Beth searched the room eagerly, but he wasn’t there. At least her mother wasn’t there either. That was some small relief. She could look around without fear of being accused of inviting liberties.

  She felt like she was in a pagan temple, for the high, open room was lined with classical columns and the ceiling, by Rubens, featured fleshy naked cherubs and lush, bare-breasted women (though she’d been told it was really an allegory of Charles I’s own birth). It was windowed all around, and in daytime light poured in, but now it was lit only by low-hanging three-tiered chandeliers. A pair of lads with saucers affixed to rods dodged among the dancers, to catch stray wax before it dripped.

  There was a gallery around the second floor where those not quite important enough to attend the fete but moneyed enough to be clean and presentable and not offend noble eyes and noses could mill about and observe their betters, and tell all their friends they too had been to the royal celebration. The separation was emphatic—no stairs led from the gallery to the interior hall.

  Absently, Beth enumerated those strolling above. There was Mr. Pepys and his wife, another Elizabeth. He did something with the navy, she knew, and though he was reputed to be a man of parts, learned in a wide array of fields, he looked chronically ill at ease and slightly artificial, like a monkey carefully aping the manner of a man. He had an eye like Zabby, always questing and analyzing, though everything he saw seemed to confine rather than expand him, squeeze him more snugly into some ideal mold of his own imagining. Then there was Verney, whose son had made such a disastrous marriage to a madwoman. Idling among them was Lupa, a notorious courtesan, and a few other harlots of the highest order, plying their trade or angling for bigger fish below.

  She knew him at once this time, for he looked like the gallant boy she remembered. The gold periwig was gone and he was even more handsome in his own short-cropped chestnut hair. In place of puffed breeches he wore a suit of sober black, the sort that was just coming into fashion, with coat and vest falling to the knee, and closed, tight breeches. But she would know him if he were covered in smallpox or clad in fur. Seeing him was like a promise kept, and though she knew it was not possible, she felt that old childish love creeping back, tempered now by the bitter knowledge that it would never be, and was thus somehow all the more precious.

  Love—she would call it love, for it could hurt none but her—gave her courage. She stared her fill at Harry, and at last he found her too and smiled a slow, creeping grin. He made a subtle gesture no one else in the Banqueting House could have noticed, but she interpreted it right away. Slip out and meet me, he said. Before she could respond (or even decide if she should), he darted out of sight.

  Heart thudding in her chest like echoes of cannon, Beth looked around for her mother. She didn’t bother to search for her face. It was easier to look for any gap in the crowd, any revolted clearing that would indicate the Countess of Enfield stood at the center. But no, all she saw was merriment and dancing, gossip and flirting and backbiting.

  I dare not go to him, she said to herself, even as she told Catherine, “You look chilled, Your Majesty. Allow me to fetch you a wrap.” She was gone on little green slippers before Catherine could protest that she was actually quite warm.

  Gasping at her own temerity, she ran until she was alone, then leaned against the cool, rough wall, plaster painted with a solution of cobalt and crushed glass.

  She did not let herself think of what her mother would do if she found her with Harry Ransley. She’d likely murder the man on the spot. But what if he had made amends for his father’s perfidy? What if he’d grown rich?

  She remembered the touch of Harry’s fingers on her cheek those many years ago, gentle as the flutter of moth wings as he tucked up her hair. She felt dizzy, confused, intoxicated.

  I won’t search for him, she decided. I’ll just stay here. With all the excitement inside, the hallway was deserted, but the Banqueting House had a straightforward, simple layout, and she’d be easy to find, if he was looking for her.

  And if he finds me, I’ll speak with him. But I certainly won’t allow him any liberties.

  Thinking of those liberties, she closed her eyes and let her bright brown hair rest against the wall. She had little practical idea what lay beyond kissing, but knew it must be something that transcended Eliza’s bawdy jests and the courtiers’ mysterious whispered innuendos. While imagining a mystical (and highly inaccurate) union, bare knuckles slipped under her gloved palm and lifted her hand to something insistent but yielding, warm even through the kidskin. She opened her eyes to find him kissing her hand, passion disguised as chivalry.

  “Do you know me?” Harry asked her.

  She couldn’t bear to pull her hand away, yet she knew that if she confessed she recognized him, family honor would compel her to slap him, or scream, or faint. So she said breathlessly, “I don’t know you, sir.”

  “Indeed? But I’ve known you all my life.”

  “All my life . . .” she echoed.

  “You’ve grown, little Beth, but you still smell of late-summer roses. Do you know me now?”

  If she said yes the dream would end. She shook her head.

  “Swear you will not hate me when you know,” he said.

  “I do not want to know!” she pleaded in desperation.

  He smiled. “Then I will tell you everything but the one fact that will damn me. I have come for your hand, Beth. I have no fortune, but when I do—and I will, one day soon—even if you should hate me, a part of what I have will be yours. And if you should love me, tolerate me, even, my hand will join my gold.”

  His lips brushed the curve of her cheek. She felt like a mouse in a vacuum chamber, one of Zabby’s experiments.

  “You can’t,” she protested weakly.

  “Yet I did.”

  “You mustn’t.”

  “I never will again until you ask me.”

  “Please!” But she didn’t know what she begged of him. Her body felt liquid.

  “I found I had to take that liberty, for when you know who I am you will likely claw my eyes out.” He chuckled softly, and those eyes, amused and sincere, crinkled. “Ah, out with it, you coward! It was easy when I thought you might have grown up plain.” He sighed, smiled, and said, “I am the son of the man who ruined your father. I am Harry Ransley.”

  The Earl of Enfield, Beth’s father, had been a sober aristocrat, pleasant to his small family, taking an interest in his cows and mangelwurzels, until Lord Ransley crossed his path. Beth, a child when her father began the trek down the road to perdition, wasn’t sure how it happened. Perhaps Ransley took him to his first whorehouse, or taught him to palm a card. Ere long, Lord Enfield owed Ransley a considerable sum, and had to sell timber lands to pay it off, but even money failed to sour the relationship, a
nd they pursued their pleasures together, as merry a pair of disreputable rakes as could be found in Cromwell’s England.

  After a while, though, the restrictions of the Puritan land began to pall, and the two men scraped together what money they could and went to the stews and whorehouses of Europe. They pretended to serve the king in exile. Send money, they would write to their families at home. Sell the lower acreage, Enfield scrawled in a drunken hand, and send the proceeds to . . . wherever they were at the moment. The Hague, Paris, Lisbon, Beth never knew from one month to the next. Then the house was sold from under Beth and her mother. Just before they were forced out, they received word that Lord Enfield had died from a combination of pox and ague and an unforgiving liver. They never knew what had become of the money paid for their estate. Not long after, Ransley died in a duel, or a brawl, but in any event with a sword in his tripes.

  Those two men, Father and Ransley, had been the chthonic gods and devils of the Countess of Enfield’s personal religion, the hatred of masculinity.

  “No!” she cried. “I will not let you be him!” Her eyes grew luminous.

  “I am not him. He is my father. I am me, only me. Hush, hush!” She was weeping with little gasping sobs. “He ruined us too, sweeting. My mother, a lady, took in embroidery to keep meat on the table. I have four sisters with no dowry. We live in the gamekeeper’s cottage while our erstwhile tenants tip their caps to the privateer who rents our manor for a pittance. I hate his memory too. But I mean to make amends.”

  “Oh, Harry,” she cried, “do you really think I wouldn’t know you out of all the world? Of course I knew you, the moment I saw you. I only pretended . . . I thought if I could have these few minutes with you, before I was forced to hate you, it might be enough.”

  “You do not hate me,” he said gently.

  “I thought of you for so long, after we were forced from our house. I imagined there might be some mistake, that our fortunes would be restored and our families reconciled, and you would come to the rose garden once more. No, I do not hate you. I’m afraid, if you stay but a moment longer, I will love you. But it cannot be. You, of all people! My mother curses your name daily. Oh, why did you come only to show me what I cannot have?”