Dark Angels (11 page)

Near the crest of the hillock, Richard saw his mother asleep under the oaks in what his sisters described as the fairy circle. He moved softly, not wanting to wake her just yet; but his mother’s eyes opened when he was within a few feet of her, and she smiled. Richard knew, without putting thought to it, her love for him. In memories that had no words to them, she’d held him close, rocked him, cradled him, murmured his name, sung to him, and walked through fields with him. She’d fed him pasties and sweetmeats from her own fingers, porridge and French ragout with a spoon. Sometimes he thought she read his mind. He knelt now on one knee, and they hugged, and she pulled him down beside her, and they looked up through the oaks at the sky, their profiles identical, the same straight nose, the same slant to the eyebrow.

“The wheat is planted, and barley and oat. Sir Winston”—he was their neighbor—“brought some Dutch seed from London, which Squire Dunwitty and I are trying in some of our fields. Old Mistress Marrow is selling the family farm and the flour mill. I think you should purchase them. We could borrow from Lizzie’s husband.” Elizabeth was one of his sisters, the married one, who’d captivated a lord, an earl, and brightened all their prospects.

“I’m going to go away for a time. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. I’ve met a woman I want to make my wife. I’ll be asking her father’s permission to court her. She’s French, Mother.”

His mother turned on her side to regard him. Annie appeared, lugging a basket that weighed almost more than she did. Richard sat up, fished in the basket for the first thing he could grab, and ate it ravenously as Annie and his mother laid out a starched cloth and placed food neatly on it. Between bites of cheese and chicken, he described Renée to his mother, told her how he’d known he loved her from the moment of seeing her, told how he was going to France to guard Princesse Henriette, except that it was a secret, and that Renée was her maid of honor, so he would be able to continue his courting.

He smiled that smile of his, and Annie, restless as a titmouse, was pinned to a moment of stillness by its beauty. She had to run behind a tree to recover. She lingered in the background, blending herself into the oaks so that no one might notice her and so that she could listen as much as she wanted.

“Louise Renée de Keroualle…” His mother repeated the name softly. “What do you know of her family?”

“They live in Brittany.”

“So her father hasn’t a place at court?”

“No, I believe not. I think her marriage would be blessed by the princess, and there might be a favor given. I know King Charles thinks her very beautiful and pleasing, so there might be a place for her at this court after we’re married.” He swallowed down the ale as if it were water, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, not the least doubt in him that everything would go his way. “I thought to walk over to the Ashfords and see if Sir Winston will loan me his horse. I’ve ridden Pharaoh too hard. He has the heart to take me back, but I don’t wish to lame him.”

“You leave today?”

“Yes, the French court departs soon.”

Jerusalem Saylor was silent. Her son had ridden the miles from Dover simply to tell her he was in love, and that he left for France, with no more mind to it than if he were walking across the fields to Ladybeth Farm. She patted her lap, and Richard, who’d eaten enough to be sated for the moment, laid his head there, and she smoothed his forehead with her fingers, grateful to have him to herself for even these few moments. You’re to leave him be to be a man, Dicken had told her before he died. You’re not to cling on him. He has his way to make.

“Annie,” Jerusalem said, “run and tell Susannah that Master Richard leaves in a few hours. He’ll need food and drink to take with him. You’ll ride Mandy back to Dover—” She put her fingers over Richard’s mouth. “I can do without her for a few days. Effriam is going with you?” Effriam was Richard’s groom. “Well then, he’ll fetch her back. Now, close your eyes and rest a while.”

She lifted her eyes from his face a moment and stared out at Tamworth, allowing herself the luxury of the feel of Richard’s forehead cupped in one of her palms. She guarded Tamworth for him, had loved it from the first moment of viewing it as a bride, not yet knowing how its seasons, its roof over her head, would at times be her only constant. To everything there is a season, she had learned in this place, learned in anguish and in joy, and surely the anguish had carved out the preciousness of the joy, seasoned and prepared it, for joy was what she felt at this moment, little as it was, that her son should be lying in solid sleep before her, a man now overlying the boy, taking him farther away from her each time she viewed him, and yet the boy in him had ridden many hard miles to tell her his news.

R
ICHARD OPENED THE
door of Tamworth church, dipping his fingers in the holy water and kneeling a moment toward the direction of the altar. He moved aside the panels of the side chapel and stepped in. His father was here and his grandfather and his grandfather’s grandfather. Their coffins were beneath his feet, beneath the broad stones on which he stepped. Tablets in memory of them were among the stones and fastened to the walls. Sunlight was dimmed, cooled, changed to something else as its light was filtered and stained through the colored glass of a window, a window his father had had made by artisans in Italy to celebrate the restoration of King Charles II. They’d mortgaged a farm, and it had been quite a day the day the window arrived. It had sat in state at the front of church for three Sundays in a row, so that all of Tamworth, all of the district, could view it. The vicar had blessed it with holy water. The village blacksmith had soldered it into place, and his father watched from his bed the burning of the boards that had covered the hole of the window for some twenty years, for the Puritans didn’t trust joy in their worship, no joy or beauty, either. Everything must be as stark as their souls.

Richard closed his eyes and prayed, asking God’s blessings on his mission, asking that God watch over his mother and Tamworth, over his sisters. He asked that God make his eyes and mind sharp, so that he might help the princess, asked that the Duchess of Monmouth might forgive him, and his mouth be filled with the words that would make Renée and her father trust him. That he should be returning to France with her was a blessing he had not expected. He was besotted, a weak word that—he was bewitched, enchanted, bowled over. He was in love, the fire of it scorching, leaving nothing else standing. And in France, it was his hope to make the acquaintance of the two greatest generals in King Louis’s army, the Prince de Condé and Maréchal de Turenne, who led soldiers in an army that was the wonder and envy of Europe.

Later, after Richard had been fed again and changed his shirt, and his mother and Susannah had packed his saddlebag with food, and he and Annie had walked around Tamworth so that Richard could see fields, sheep, apple trees, he knelt for his mother’s blessing, then swung himself up onto his mother’s horse, with Effriam, the groom, clamoring up behind him in the saddle, and they rode away.

Jerusalem and Susannah went at once to the kitchen fire, and Susannah looked into the flames for a long time. She threw in some holy water that Annie had gotten for her when Master Richard was in chapel and listened to the resulting sizzle and hiss. Finally she shook her head.

“I can’t see a thing about the sweetheart. Annie, go and fetch Nana her shawl.”

Annie, sitting on the stool, blinked, did as she was told, but only after she lingered near the doorway long enough to hear her grandmother’s next words.

“Bad times in France, though, I see that. Come here and look for yourself.”

Dear God, thought Jerusalem when she’d done so. She went outside to walk restlessly along the stream, among the marshmallows and summer lilies blooming there, sending Richard blessings with every breath of her body. Someone would die in France, that’s what the embers said. She knelt among the marshmallows. Let it not be Richard, she prayed. Please.

C
HAPTER 6

I
n Dover, one merry day led into another. There seemed to be no end to laughter, dancing, flirting, amusement. But on the morning of the day before they were to leave, all the English maids of honor were summoned to the chapel. Barbara came rushing to find Alice, still dressing, and pulled her to one side so they wouldn’t be overheard.

“She knows—”

“Nothing,” Alice said. “Whatever happens, you are to admit to nothing.”

“How can you be so calm?”

“Well, for one thing, I’m not summoned, am I? It means they haven’t a clue as to who is doing what. Think, Ra.”

But still, she and Fletcher crept into the back of the chapel at the appointed hour, sitting in the farthest corner, where the dark of the balcony hid them. Maids of honor from Queen Catherine and from the Duchess of York sat in the front benches used as pews, their chatter flying up high to the vaulted ceiling. Fletcher poked her in the side, pointed. From where they sat, they could see King Charles hidden behind a wooden screen. He sat twisting a ring around and around his finger.

“You’re going to end hanged,” Fletcher whispered.

The king’s lord chamberlain stood in front of the altar. It took the man a long moment before he finally had the attention of all the young women.

“Someone,” he began, “has been playing a game with the Duchess of Cleveland, which has ceased to be amusing. We all understand high spirits, particularly on this festive occasion.” The lord chamberlain’s eyes swept over the sets of maids of honor. Alice shrank farther back in the corner, and Fletcher, beside her, couldn’t help but smile. “The high spirits of youth. But it is time to rein in such spirits. The duchess feels that certain attacks—”

At that word, a low murmur rippled through all the maids of honor, and they turned to one another, exclaiming, protesting, questioning what was meant; but the lord chamberlain spoke over the noise, subdued it. “Attacks against her person have come from among these quarters.” The murmuring grew again. “I feel certain she is wrong,” he continued, “but I have promised that I would bring her suspicions before you. I have assured the duchess that she may rest easy for what little bit is left of our happy time. I should hate to see the last evening of Princesse Henriette’s visit ruined by antics that make everyone look foolish.”

Barbara stood up. Alice took a breath. What was she going to do? Confess?

“Of what do we stand accused?” Barbara asked.

“Dung in dancing shoes, frogs in bed, salt in a sugar bowl…” The lord chamberlain paused.

“False mastic,” King Charles called out from behind the screen. Alice could see that he was amused.

“False mastic,” repeated the lord chamberlain. Alice had remixed the mastic with which patches were glued to one’s face. The fashion was a few years old. Still, women were mad for the little dark spots of silk shaped like half-moons or stars or other things that could be put on their faces, at their mouths, upon their cheeks, or near their eyes. Only married women might wear them. Men patched, too. One of King Charles’s councillors wore a patch, like a thin lightning bolt, across his nose to disguise an old dueling scar. Queen Catherine swore it was why half her maids of honor married—to be able to patch and wear rouge. The Duchess of Cleveland’s patches had fallen, one after another, into the first course of the supper served last night. Alice considered it one of her finest moments.

“Is there any one of us who is suspected?” Barbara asked. She looked very regal and very pretty, color the shade of strawberries high on her cheeks, as if she had been accused.

King Charles walked out from behind the screen. Young women stood, dropped into curtsies as best they could standing in the narrow spaces confined by backless benches. His eyes swept over them. The sight of them, woman after woman, head bowed, earrings dangling, the bolder of them peeping through their eyelashes at him, was charming. “You’ve done your duty,” he said to the lord chamberlain, who let out a huge sigh. King Charles looked from one woman to another. Alice could see he was holding his mouth not to laugh.

“It would be a great service to me,” he said, “if the pranks might stop. In other words, behave yourselves, I command you as your sovereign. I beg you as a gentleman. It would be an even greater service if there were no gossip about this. Be gone, now. Shoo.”

Women obeyed him, talking nonstop, leaving the chapel in groups. Alice and Fletcher caught up with Barbara, dragged her away from the others.