The Temptation of the Night Jasmine pc-5

by Лорен Уиллиг

  “If Your Majesty were to desire me to read to you,” Charlotte suggested haltingly, “a new book might need to be procured for your amusement. It is the merest coincidence that the library opens directly into the King’s chamber. . . .”

  The Queen’s dull eyes lifted to Charlotte’s, comprehension lighting in their depths. The royal spine straightened.

  “Fetch me a new book, Lady Charlotte,” the Queen commanded in her charmingly accented English. “I find I desire to be read to.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  To promise daring deeds was one thing; to actually accomplish them quite another.

  Even though it was the same route she had walked a hundred times before, Charlotte felt dreadfully conspicuous as she made her way from the Queen’s apartments to the Great Library. How did proper spies manage? Charlotte couldn’t help feeling like her purpose must be blazoned in fireworks above her head for all to see. But no one else appeared to notice anything out of the ordinary. They were all too busy whispering about the King’s health to bother with her — “I heard he jumped right out of bed and built an ark in the middle of the night!” she heard one footman whisper excitedly to another. “Calls himself Noah and runs around looking for animals to put on the ark!”

  With news of the King’s madness already spread, the library was completely deserted. It would, Charlotte supposed, take rather a lot of cheek to go on reading Plautus or Livy with the King suffering in the next room.

  Feeling like a poor excuse for an emissary, Charlotte placed a palm carefully to the surface of the door to the King’s room and pushed. The door gave without the slightest murmur, moving soundlessly. With the door merely an inch open, Charlotte paused, listening for all she was worth. There was nothing to be heard, no footsteps, no voices, nothing — except for a low mumbling monologue like water running over the rocks of a stream, an indistinguishable burbling punctuated by low sobs and a sort of rustling sound.

  Throwing caution to the winds, Charlotte pushed the door the rest of the way open and beheld a sight to stir the hardest heart. In a sodden nest of disordered linens, the King lay curled into a protective ball, knees tucked up to his chest. The poor royal legs were bare beneath his nightshirt, pitted with goose pimples in the merciless cold of the room. Charlotte’s nose wrinkled at the reek of an unemptied chamber pot.

  Had the servants never come? The fire was still banked from the night before and the room was dreadfully cold, with the bone-aching January chill that fires could keep at bay but never quite eliminate. With his covers off, the King was all but exposed to the elements, shivering and crying and sweating despite the cold, crooning to himself in a low, continuous monotone. Charlotte stood frozen with pity and horror.

  How, oh, how was she ever going to tell the Queen? Surely, such things couldn’t be allowed to happen. Not to a monarch. The servants must be called and scolded, the fire stoked, the linens changed, a soothing draft of some sort prepared. . . .

  But all that faded into insignificance next to the most horrifying sight of all. As the King floundered among his sheets, Charlotte at last saw just what it was that made him move so awkwardly and lie so strangely. His arms were twisted and tied around his chest in a hideous contraption of a waistcoat, holding his upper body all but immobile.

  Charlotte must have made some noise, of horror or pity, because the King paused in his whimpering and, with an effort that made the veins of his neck stand out, twisted his head in a pitiful effort to try to see.

  “Emily?” he called, in piteous echo of the night before. “Oh, Emily, why won’t you save your father? Take off this cursed waistcoat, my Emily! Emily . . .”

  Charlotte didn’t know what she might have done. Her automatic instinct was to take the King away, free him from his bonds and spirit him up to the Queen, where his poor shrinking flesh would be covered with warm robes and his anxious daughters would lavish him with every attention that might sooth and heal. But in that instant the sound of another voice was heard through the door that led to the King’s dressing room.

  “I say,” someone called. “What was that?”

  It was too late to escape back to the library; the door lay clear across the room. Without stopping to think, Charlotte dove for a squat mahogany cabinet in the corner of the room, decorated with an elaborate design of garlands and flowers, all made out of tiny pieces of inlaid wood. The side curved inwards in the rococo style, leaving a space just large enough for Charlotte to crouch. On its squat, ormolu legs, the cabinet was nearly flush with the ground, leaving no telltale gap underneath.

  The King thrashed uncomfortably in his bonds, jerking his neck from side to side in an attempt to see her. “Emily?” he called. “Emily?”

  “This way, Doctor,” said a voice she didn’t recognize, a smooth, almost too-polished sort of voice. “And you’ll see what we’ve been telling you about.”

  Charlotte scooped in the last, betraying fold of her skirt and pressed herself as small as she could make herself between the curve of the cabinet and the wall. She was ridiculously grateful that today wasn’t a Drawing Room day; the spreading hoops of her court dress would have been impossible to hide. There was nothing to be done about the white muslin of her dress, but at least her red spencer blended nicely with the crimson hangings of the wall behind her.

  The floor, uncarpeted like most of the palace, vibrated beneath the sudden onslaught of footsteps. Charlotte could feel the floorboards quivering beneath her fingertips.

  “Emily?” moaned the King, jerking like a fish on the line. “Emily?”

  “As you can see, Dr. Simmons,” said the first voice again. A pair of booted legs strode past Charlotte’s hiding place, polished to a mirror sheen and smelling of leather, champagne, and horse. “The situation is dire.”

  “How long has he been like this?” It must be the doctor this time, with snagged and dirty stockings and buckled shoes with the cross bar of one buckle missing. Mad-doctoring was seldom a lucrative calling.

  More shoes, this time shiny buckled ones, attached to heavily muscled legs, every step thundering down like a giant trampling on a village. “Since last night.”

  Charlotte froze stiff as a board against the side of her cabinet. She knew that voice.

  “He grew agitated last night, so we had to restrain him. Upon his Royal Highness’s orders,” Lord Henry added, with the instincts of a born coward. “I found him with one of the Queen’s maids of honor. He appeared to be making, er, indecent conversation.”

  The very idea! Charlotte rolled her eyes in the general direction of Lord Henry. It wasn’t a very satisfying response, but it was all she could do without giving herself away. As if the King would do such a thing!

  “As he has before,” said the smooth-voiced man with crocodile regret. “I am sure we all recall his fascination with Lady Pembroke the last time this . . . unfortunate situation occurred. Both her Majesty and Lady Pembroke were most embarrassed by it. And then, of course, there was the incident with Mrs. Drax on His Majesty’s yacht at Weymouth.”

  “You mean when he told Mrs. Drax she had a pretty ass and demanded that she bring it over so he could pat it?” Lord Henry sounded as though he wished he had thought of that. “It’s good to be the King, hey?”

  “There is no need,” said smooth-voice chillingly, “to go into details. But you can see, Doctor, why the Prince thought it necessary that his father be restrained.”

  Smooth-voice, Charlotte realized, must be the Prince’s man.

  “Well done.” The doctor’s voice vibrated slightly, as though he were nodding. “I approve your reasoning entirely, Colonel McMahon — and that of the Prince, your master, of course.”

  Toady, thought Charlotte, glowering at the cabinet wall.

  “The only way to tame a madman is by constant use of restraints,” the doctor continued, in a lecturing tone. “I hear you have a chair of correction?”

  The mention of the chair had a terrible effect on the King, who began thrashing about with hi
s legs, trying to get off the bed.

  “At Kew, I believe,” Colonel McMahon replied smoothly. “That was the last place it was used. It can be sent for, if you so desire.”

  “Indeed,” agreed the doctor. “Have it sent for at once.”

  “Emily?” the King called, rolling wildly from side to side on the bed. Desperation threaded his hoarse voice. Despite the chill of the room, the sheets were soaked with his perspiration, emitting a thin, sour smell. “Emily? Don’t let them take me to the chair, Emily . . . Emily?”

  “Hallucinating again, I see,” said the doctor. “Well, that was to be expected, given his earlier episodes. I gather last time he thought his Chancellor of the Exchequer was . . . a pigeon?”

  “A peacock,” Colonel McMahon corrected briskly. “But I fail to see why the species of bird — ”

  “Interesting,” said the doctor, advancing on the King. “Very interesting. You must recognize, Colonel, it helps to understand his mania in order to control it.”

  “Control or cure?”

  There was a moment of fraught silence reeking with the stench of the King’s fear. Beneath it, Charlotte fancied she could detect the sickly sweet scent of treason. Treason smelled remarkably like the champagne on Colonel McMahon’s boots.

  “We’ll just have to see as we go on, shan’t we?” said the doctor coyly.

  Charlotte didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Get him cleaned up,” ordered the doctor. Two more pairs of legs, previously stationary by the far wall, began moving. These were pedestrian sorts of legs, wearing heavy shoes and wool stockings. “And build up the fire. No need to freeze him to death.”

  “But the Willises — ” began Lord Henry, referring to the doctors who had served the King is his two prior illnesses.

  “The Willises aren’t in charge any longer. I am.”

  “I saved this for you.” Charlotte heard the slosh of liquid as Lord Henry presented the doctor with a brimming chamber pot.

  The doctor recoiled, his nostrils flaring. “And to what do I owe this honor?”

  “I had thought . . .” Lord Henry made the mistake of gesticulating with the chamber pot and both gentlemen shied back. “Er, I had thought you might need it for your medical analysis.”

  The doctor sniffed, remembered the stench, and thought better of it. “That is antiquated stuff,” he said loftily, “poking about at stools and dabbling in urine. I am a man of modern science.”

  “So we’ve been told,” drawled McMahon. “You came recommended most highly by Sir Francis Medmenham.”

  “Ah, yes,” said the doctor. “Sir Francis. I had the care of his great-aunt. A fascinating case. She stripped naked, painted herself blue, called herself Boadicea, and attempted to invade Hadley-on-Thames.”

  McMahon cut him neatly off before he could reminisce further about his brief brush with the Queen of the Britons. “That, I am relieved to say, does not appear to be His Majesty’s problem. How will you proceed with him?”

  The soiled stockings prowled along side of the bed. By dint of leaning sideways and cricking her neck, Charlotte was able to get her first look at more than the doctor’s legs. He looked like a Drury Lane caricature of a mad-doctor, in his old-fashioned black frock coat, shiny from wear, and his equally old-fashioned horsehair wig, which came down too low over his forehead, as though he had bought it too big for his head. A rumpled white stock, none too clean, appeared to have eaten his chin. To be fair, most of his patients probably couldn’t care the slightest about his appearance, unless they wanted him to paint himself blue and join in the fight against the invading Roman legions.

  The edge of the frock coat moved and Charlotte hastily ducked her head again, attempting to impersonate a very large mouse.

  The King whimpered weakly from the bed. Charlotte heard a rustling noise, as though the King were trying to bury himself in the bedclothes, away from the impudence of prying eyes. “We will start with a course of hot vinegar applied to the feet, to draw the humors down through his body,” announced the doctor. “If the King continues restless, we will follow it with an emetic of tartar to purge the humors via the rectal corridor.”

  “And then?” asked McMahon.

  “Blistering,” said the doctor firmly. “Blistering of the arms, legs, and head, combined with a preparation of musk and quinine to be taken internally.”

  McMahon gave it his nod of approval. “All sounds quite sound to me. I will relay your recommendations to His Royal Highness. In the meantime, I see no reason you should not begin treatment.”

  “Excellent.” The doctor rubbed his hands together, undoubtedly in glee at having obtained a royal patron. “I must return briefly to St. Luke’s, to leave instructions for my patients there, but my men know what to do. With your leave, gentlemen, I would have them begin with the vinegar at once.”

  “I trust you will return as quickly as possible.” From McMahon’s lips, the words had all the force of a direct order from the Prince of Wales. “I must return to His Highness. In the meantime, we leave His Majesty under Lord Henry’s capable supervision.”

  Lord Henry didn’t look best pleased at being delegated to stay. Charlotte could see him shift his weight from one shoe to the other as though he were squirming. “I say, doesn’t vinegar have a powerful tang?”

  “All part of its healing powers,” said the doctor soothingly. “The forceful aroma rises through the nostrils into the brain, driving down the evil humors, while the application of heat to the soles of the feet allows the humors to puddle in blisters, which then may be safely drained.”

  “Modern science is, indeed, a wonderful thing,” said Colonel McMahon sagely.

  It was easy for him to be sanguine; he wasn’t going to have to smell it in progress. Charlotte, however, was beginning to fear that she would. The bed was between her and the door. And all attention was very much centered on the bed. Next time, she would have to pick a hiding place nearer the door. Not that she intended there to be a next time for this sort of escapade, but just in case.

  With much noisy clumping against the floorboards, Lord Henry ushered McMahon and the doctor out of the room. That would have been all very well and good but for the two attendants who had been left behind to begin the dreaded vinegar treatment. The King sounded even more unhappy about it than Charlotte. From beyond her hiding place, she could hear the sounds of the fire being vigorously stoked. Her corner by the wall began to feel uncomfortably warm.

  “There, now, Your Majesty,” one was saying, in a thick St. Giles accent. “We’ll soon have this over with. You got the vinegar, Billy?”

  Billy, it appeared, had not got the vinegar or, as he preferred to put it, the bleeding vinegar. A long discussion ensued. Charlotte crouched in her hiding place, hands braced against the floor, wondering just how long it would be until Lord Henry came back and if he were really quite stupid enough to believe that she had accidentally wandered in while looking for a book and fallen asleep beneath the cabinetry.

  “Doctor said to apply the bleeding vinegar before he got back,” said the one who wasn’t Billy. “We’d better get it.”

  “Should we leave ’im, do you think?” Billy asked in hesitating tones.

  The other emitted a coarse chuckle. “He ain’t going anywhere, is he? Come on.”

  The floor vibrated again, and was still. Poking her head up like a turtle out of its shell, Charlotte peered over the edge of the cabinet. All the doors were ajar, and the fire was hissing and crackling, but the room was empty of human habitation save for the helpless form of the King. Charlotte couldn’t believe her luck. However, there was no guarantee that her luck would hold. The doctor’s assistants might be back at any moment.

  Stumbling on limbs gone numb, Charlotte squeezed herself willy nilly out of her corner, catching at the edge of the cabinet to keep from tripping over the hem of her own dress. With her right leg all pins and needles, she lurched towards the door in a lopsided lope until the thready sound of the King’s voice
brought her up short.

  “Emily?” They had rolled the King onto his back, and his rheumy eyes gazed pleadingly up at Charlotte. Tears leaked helplessly down the withered cheeks. “Do . . . not . . . leave . . . me. . . .”

  “I must,” Charlotte whispered. “I will fetch help. I promise.”

  As he continued to call piteously for his Emily, Charlotte fled through the connecting door into the library, not slowing her pace until she had achieved the hall beyond. She would go to the Queen; that much of her promise, at least, she could keep. But what help could there be for the King if the Prince himself ordered it otherwise?

  Stumbling on her skirts in her haste, Charlotte scrambled back up the great marble stairs to the Queen’s chambers, where she breathlessly poured out her report to the Queen and princesses.

  Princess Sophia inveighed heavily against her older brother. “Does he really fancy, because he is the rising sun, anything he says is to be swallowed whole? How dare he treat the dear angel so! And not even to do it in person — but by proxy! It is too beastly.”

  “It is beastly, but it may be necessary, Sophie,” said Princess Mary tiredly. “They did the same last time, you remember, with the restraints and the blistering. And it brought him back, didn’t it?”

  “Yes, last time,” said Princess Sophia mutinously. “But what do we know of this new doctor? For all we know, he could be an utter charlatan. Much anyone here would care.”

  That last was clearly intended for her mama.

  “Lady Charlotte,” said the Queen, ignoring her turbulent daughter. “I believe I may have another commission for you.”

  “Why exactly do you want me to go to a madhouse with you?” asked Henrietta forty-five minutes later, adjusting the ribbons on her bonnet as the carriage racketed down Clerkenwell Road towards Dr. Simmons and his hospital. “Not that I mind, but it does seem an odd way to spend an afternoon.”

  “It’s not a madhouse, exactly,” hedged Charlotte. “More of a mad hospital.” Without thinking, she scrubbed her gloved hands together like Lady Macbeth. Beneath the kid, she fancied she could still smell the reek of the King’s sickroom on her skin, that acrid stench of sweat and despair.