“I never meant the queen harm. You know that! She’s been so good to me. When he did it, I couldn’t believe . . .”
“Hush,” Eliza cautioned, and checked the hall outside their quarters before locking it. Then she nodded for Beth to continue.
When she finished, Zabby was stroking her philtrum pensively, a habit she’d picked up from Charles, who when thoughtful treated his mustache like a favorite pet.
“Did he have a grudge against the queen, do you know?” Zabby asked. “Does he hate Catholics, or did she wrong him in some way?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. What could she have done?”
“Then someone hired him. He did it for money, for you, but someone else wanted the queen dead.” She thought she knew who but didn’t want to say anything until she was sure.
“Oh, he wasn’t going to kill her. He swore that to me.”
“He swore he loved you.”
“You see, so it must be true.”
Eliza shook her head and sighed. What was to be done in the face of love? “He made use of you, Beth,” she said patiently. “He never loved you.”
“Then why did he let us go?”
There was a sharp rap at the door, and Prue, chambermaid to the maids of honor, came in. “Well, you three hoydens have certainly made a night of it, keeping the poor servants in a tizzy till the wee small hours. Don’t expect your tea and cakes sharp at eight on the morrow, my ladies, as the likes of us won’t be abed until sunrise. Riders here, guards there, soldiers molesting the kitchen wenches, looking for treason under their aprons. Lord above, you’d think the king was glad to have her back. You, Madam Zabby, scrub your nails and tidy your hair. You’ve a royal summons. The king’s bedroom in a quarter hour. Another man would manage to spend the rest of the night with his wife after an ordeal like this . . . though if she’s been raped perhaps he’s lost his taste for her.”
She sighed deeply. “A shame that footpad was too clumsy to make a proper go of it. We might have ourselves a fecund queen within six months. Well, perhaps a year for royal mourning, but m’dear, you could get him to sign the contract before her corpse was cold.”
Zabby slapped her, and the wiry old woman took it without a flinch. Well-bred ladies were prone to slaps. She shrugged. “Oh, well. Smart money is on the other wench anyway. Perhaps I’ll see if she needs tea or a foot rub.”
“Barbara, you mean?” Zabby asked.
“That blown slut? The king’d sooner wed a sow. No, I mean that prissy minx Frances. She’ll be the next queen if anything happens to this one. I wonder, will the king hang the highwaymen because they tried . . . or because they failed?” She left with a cackle.
Zabby smoothed the wrinkles from her clothes and left to answer the royal summons. When she was gone, Beth gasped.
“She didn’t promise!”
“What?” Eliza asked.
“You swore you wouldn’t tell. She didn’t. Will she tell the king?”
“Never,” Eliza said. “She may have lost her heart to that royal rake, but she’s a loyal friend. Besides, what does she know? A given name? There are a hundred Harrys at court, a hundred thousand in England. But no, pet, she won’t tell him a thing more than she has to. She’s our friend.”
Zabby thought so furiously that she scarcely noticed she was entering Charles’s private chambers for the first time. They were in a borrowed estate, of course, but he’d had his Bath residence fitted up much like his bedroom at home. Eight ornate clocks ticked just out of synchrony, pendulums swinging, gears whispering. His bed was done up in royal purple, tufted with a hundred ermine pelts. She curtsied low as soon as she stepped across the threshold, but when she rose she saw he wasn’t there yet.
She stood stiffly by the doorway for a time, but then when he still did not come, she began to explore the room. It was not the royal bedroom—that which held the marriage bed. That was where Catherine slept, where he often slept too, at least the latter part of the night. The queen lay in that other bedroom now, fevered, weak, waiting for the physicians to say if she would die. The royal chamber was practically a public room, and any courtier above a certain rank could enter freely at most hours of the day. Charles granted petitions from beneath the bedclothes, drafted proclamations in his bath, with three secretaries, a baron or two, and a host of ministers hovering over the steam.
But when he needed privacy—and for all that he was a gregarious man, Zabby sometimes thought his moments alone were the food that truly sustained him—he came to his own bedroom.
Zabby stroked the bed’s deep plush and wished she were brave enough to lie down on it, just for a moment. It would be fodder for the fantasies she’d sworn off to no avail. To be on his bed, in his bed, with him in his bed . . . But what if he was to come in and catch her?
Or, her hopeful brain offered, what if that’s exactly why you’re here?
Impossible, she thought. The king always goes elsewhere for his liaisons. She knew that as well as any courtier. He went to the lady’s rooms or, if there was a small obstacle such as a husband, to some bed or couch set aside specifically for that purpose. He never sullied the queen’s bed with his extramarital passions, and he had never, to her knowledge, brought a woman to his private room.
She thought back to Prue’s words. Nasty spite they might have been, but servants know everything, and if all the palace thought she had a chance (even if most put Frances ahead of her), why, then, it must be true. Perhaps he has come to speak to me of the future, she thought. Have the doctors told him Catherine is not long for this world? Her guilty rage at the thought had been enough to make her strike the gossiping servant, but if it was truly what the king wanted, why, how could she argue with her liege lord?
Better me than Barbara or Frances. Certainly neither of them had been in Charles’s private bedroom.
And so she was half prepared for seduction when Charles came in, her breast pushing in a rapid rise and fall against her busk, the pale wisps at her temples trembling.
There was a portrait of Charles at Whitehall, stuck in a dim room because it wasn’t very good, but still, who would risk ill fortune by destroying any image of a king? It showed him on a glistening, rearing sorrel with sweaty flanks and a foaming mouth, its ears laid back and eyes rolling. Whoever had ridden the poor beast to exhaustion, it was evidently not the king, for he perched on its back, fresh as a spring clover, with his armor impeccable and his helmet at a jaunty angle, holding a longsword improbably in one hand. It was a ridiculous picture, and perhaps because of it, Zabby had never envisioned Charles as a warlike king, though she knew he’d seen battle in his youth. He charmed, he debated, he occasionally demanded, but he did not fight.
The Charles who charged into the bedroom just then was King Henry at Bosworth Field. He was an enraged Celt in a war chariot charging the invading Romans, or, given his saturnine complexion, a Roman himself, armored in gold-plated iron with the Eagle behind him. His eyes flashed darkly, his lips were curled almost in a snarl, and he glared around the room as if looking for someone to kill with his bare hands.
His gaze settled on Zabby.
“You!” he shouted, and started for her, then stopped, breathing deeply to collect himself. When he spoke again he was more controlled, but there was rage just beneath.
“You must know,” he said, coming near enough to kiss her if he’d cared to, before whirling away to pace like one of the leopards in his menagerie. “Nothing escapes those wide-open eyes of yours, Zabby. Who was it? No one will tell me a thing. Beth stays in her daze, Eliza quips like a comedienne. But you see things others do not see; you think things they’d never think. You were there—tell me, as you love your king, who was he, and why did he steal my queen?”
“Charles, I . . . I do not . . .”
He swept to her side and caught her hands. “You saved my life, Zabby. You keep my secret. I trust you more than any other woman in the world, save my own sister, but she is far away in France. Please. You know something
. I can tell. Haven’t we worked side by side in my elaboratory— our elaboratory—sharing every discovery?” He dropped one hand only to caress her cheek, letting his palm linger. Zabby could not retreat; the edge of the high bed pressed into her back.
She grabbed handfuls of her skirts to keep her own fingers from reaching for him.
“Your Majesty,” she breathed, tilting her face.
With a roar he turned away again and resumed his pacing. “I am not a king! I am a servant! I am nothing!” he shouted. “If they think they can bully me, threaten me, steal my property for their own ends, force me to . . . Hell and damnation! I might as well be back in the Hague, or begging for a mutton chop in France. No king was ever used as I am. I want their blood, Zabby. Whoever has crossed me like this, they will pay with their pain, their lives, their very souls. I showed mercy once.” He had let some of the lesser conspirators against his father keep their lives and estates. “Never again. Who was it? One who hates her, or me?”
“Neither, I think.” She said it as a lure to bring him nearer, and it worked as well as any of the queen’s own exquisite fishing flies.
He took her shoulders this time, and she thought, If I can keep him here long enough he will touch my hips, my breast, my lips. She was as dizzy and trembling as she’d been over the well of Sulis, poisoned by love, intoxicated by desire.
Everyone thinks I’m your lover, she wanted to say to him. Why not make it true?
With the queen your wife lying ill, perhaps dying, not two rooms away.
She closed her eyes and at last let go of her skirts. Up came her hands, touched Charles on the chest . . . and pushed him gently away.
I am his friend. I am a scientist beside him. I am his loyal subject. I will never be his lover.
I will never be queen.
“You must promise me something first,” she said with a sigh.
His eyes narrowed, and for a moment he was the king again, not Charles—the man who could have her hanged for conspiracy simply for not revealing what she knew. Then his eyes softened.
“Little Beth. Your friend. Is she involved in this treason? I know there was some business with Elphinstone last spring. Was this the same man? I cannot believe that good Beth would conspire against me, or the queen, who loves her so.”
“I swear to you, she knew nothing. You must promise me nothing will happen to her. She is as innocent as the morning star.”
“The morning star, I believe, is named Lucifer.”
“Charles!”
“Forgive me. Go on—what other demands do you have of your king? Ah, no, that’s not fair. You are the one woman who never asks a thing of me. Pray, demand away, my sweet.”
“Please, please don’t let her know what I’ve said to you. Can you pretend you found out some other way?”
“Lie? To my ministers and my people?” He looked aghast, then laughed. “Zabby, a king does nothing but lie. Every smile when I see the rabble that killed my father is a lie. Every time I praise the Commons for granting me a pittance for defense of the kingdom, it is a lie. I see my cousin and fellow monarch Louis across the sea, ruling like a god, and I lie to myself and say the English way is better. Yes, Zabby, it is a small thing to lie for you.”
And so she told him all she knew, save only Harry’s name.
“Why did he let Catherine go?” Charles asked.
“When Beth knew what he was about, she refused to marry him. She loved him, Charles—oh, the little fool loved him! Yet when she knew what he had done, she would not fly with him. And he had done it for her! Treason, for her! To get money, to marry her! She says he did. I did not believe it, but he must have loved her, to risk all. If not he would have left her behind when he took the queen, or cast her aside after he had what he wanted. But when he couldn’t have Beth, he let the queen go. He had success in his hand, and he threw it away, because she would not come with him. He was to take Beth to France and buy a farm and . . . Oh, Charles! To be loved like that!”
“I can only dream of it,” he said softly.
Zabby almost laughed. “So many people love you,” she said.
“Not like that,” he said, staring at some inner vision. “Never like that.”
There is one, she thought, so strongly he must feel it.
But he only drew her to the divan, where they sat together, thigh to thigh, and tried to make sense of it.
“Someone wants me to have a new queen,” Charles said.
“Beth said he vowed he had never meant to kill the queen,” Zabby said.
“What, then? Ransom her? Imprison her?”
“She said he told her Catherine would be sent to a distant island, to live comfortably among women.”
“That makes no sense. Why steal a queen, yet ask for no money, and let her live?” Zabby frowned; then it suddenly dawned on her. Of course Barbara knew Charles would never marry her, but her son could still be a king.
“I think . . . I think perhaps someone wanted you to name one of your sons heir to the throne. One of your natural sons, I mean. If Catherine was dead, you’d marry again and get legitimate heirs, but if Catherine had simply disappeared, you might not marry. You’d wait, hoping for news, and one of your other sons might be the next king.”
“And you say the highwayman met with Buckingham? That Buckingham then went to Barbara’s apartments?” He glowered blackly.
Zabby had a sudden vision of the lovely, hated Barbara desperate on the gallows cart, the noose tightening, her exquisite face turning purple and grotesque. She despised Barbara, but mostly because she was Charles’s lover. There were other sides of her too. She was the woman who helped the injured child on the wharf. She was the one who pitied the queen—not enough to give her back her husband, but a shred of sympathy was something.
Barbara was cunning, ruthless, ambitious . . . but was she capable of this terrible act?
“It could not have been Barbara,” Zabby said with certainty. “She wants more, but I know her—she’d never be willing to risk what she already has. To kidnap the queen . . . If it worked, she might be mother to the next queen. If she failed . . .”
“She’d be dead,” Charles said flatly.
Would he really do that? she wondered. Kill the woman who had given him so much pleasure for so long?
“You’re right,” he continued. “Either way, it could not be her. She knows I’d never wed her even if we were both free. And she wouldn’t hazard what she has on such a chancy wager. But stay, what if another was advising her, pushing her? She’d never do it on her own, but if someone else laid all the plans, perhaps she’d join.” He rubbed his finger along his mustache and frowned. “But who?”
“Buckingham.” She was reluctant to suggest it. Buckingham was the king’s closest friend, and though the man had betrayed his sovereign before, he’d always wormed his way back into Charles’s heart.
“But why? He has no sons to offer up to the throne.”
“He and Barbara are both of the Villiers family. Perhaps that blood is close enough. Or maybe he didn’t do it for Barbara’s sake. There are other contenders, though. Some foreign princess, or . . . a court maiden.”
“Ha! A court maiden. Is there such a thing?”
“There is one,” she said. “Two,” she added under her breath.
“Frances, you mean. Yes, I’ve heard the court gossip giving her the crown. I only hope Catherine has not.”
Zabby waited for him to deny that he’d marry Frances if he could, but he said nothing more.
“I’ve seen Buckingham talking with her,” Zabby went on. “All the ambassadors, too. Everyone believes that she will be in a position to influence you. And she seems so placid and biddable, each is sure they can make her their pawn if she is queen.”
“Is that what they believe? The poor deluded fools. I’ve never met a woman more cruelly obstinate than that bewitching creature.”
To her shame, Zabby felt tears begin to sting, and she cupped her temples with her hand to hide t
hem.
“What a beast I am, dear!” Charles said, slipping an arm around her shoulders. “You must be dead tired. You went through nearly as much as poor Catherine, and look at me, keeping you up all hours speculating. You’ve been so helpful. I knew you would never fail me.” He gave her a smile of such warmth that she knew it must be close to love. So close. Not quite close enough. “You’ve given me and my guards ample information to work with. I’m certain we’ll track down the blackguards ere long. My best men are on it. When we have the culprits, we’ll find out who is behind them. Tomorrow or the next day, if Catherine can manage, we’ll away to Whitehall and put this all behind us.”
He squeezed her shoulders, drawing her into those manly scents so unfamiliar to her, the radiating heat, the body soft and hard all at once.
“Oh, Charles!” she managed, and swayed into him, letting his chest absorb her tears.
Whether friend or lover or queen, I must be loyal to him above all else, she thought.
“There is one more thing I know,” she murmured into his body.
“It can wait until the morrow, my love,” he said, and though she knew he called her that absently, she clung to him.
“It cannot,” she said, picturing, then banishing, Beth’s sweet face. “I know his name. Harry Ransley.”
She collapsed against him, and Charles swept her into his arms, laying her carefully in his violet bed. He kissed her forehead, her lashes.
“Thank you,” he breathed into her ear. Then he left her there, alone, and went to wreak vengeance.
Harry was captured in a barn near Dover the next morning, and the rest of his band were taken on the docks, trying to find passage into France. The king made sure that none save his hand-picked guards knew that the notorious Elphinstone had been taken.
Soon enough, another select group was made aware of his capture. Men who made their living extracting secrets from prisoners by whatever means necessary, men with clever, precise fingers and whetted knives, men with bludgeons of lead shot cased in velvet, men whose lies and truths could slash the very soul, went to work on the conspirators.
Ladies in Waiting Page 21