Dark Angels (28 page)

September

B
ut look,” said the dressmaker, holding the shimmering dress against herself. “The shade will be perfect with your dark hair and those great eyes and that complexion. I call it seashell. Come, my lady, let me put it on you, and we’ll have it pinned to fit in a twinkling.”

Alice frowned. “And my dress would be which one?”

“Your dress?”

“I am Sir Thomas’s daughter.”

“You—of course. Of course. You must forgive me. I was carried away by the beauty of—of you both. For the daughter of Sir Thomas, I think this white—”

“I like it not.”

“Why, then I have the pale gold. Do look at the embroideries—”

“No.”

“Take this one.” Renée offered the gown whose soft color was so lovely, it mocked a woman’s blushes. “You have dark hair and eyes, it will become you most handsomely.”

The truth was it would become Renée best. The truth was the dressmaker had been sent to please Renée; there hadn’t been a thought of her. The truth was her father was an old fool, a potential poisoner, and it broke her heart and muddied all her plans.

“I’ll try the gold,” Alice said.

Once it was upon her, she had to admit it was handsome. The dressmaker, knowing she’d displeased, fussed and fretted, pulling the belled skirt this way and that. Cut through billowing sleeves were openings, the same down the very tight front. The dressmaker pulled through touches of a gauzy gold-threaded undergown. Between each opening was a square button of opal encased in a tiny gold frame. The undergown spilled from the bodice and showed off Alice’s handsome shoulders.

“We’ll thread a gold ribbon through your hair; we’ll make your maid curl it in a hundred ringlets, the way Madame de Montespan wears hers, and it will be perfect,” said Renée.

But it was Renée who was perfect.

Her gown was striped, blush and palest gray. It, too, had the long tight waist, and there was tied a narrow ribbon belt with a small silver buckle. The only bit of undergown showing was lace at the bodice, framing her creamy shoulders and equally creamy face. She looked as luscious as a young plum.

“I’ve fans and gloves and hair ribbons,” exclaimed the dressmaker, walking around Renée as if she’d created her herself. There would be business off this, if the young lady could be brought to buy the gown. Other women would see her in it and wish the same for themselves, not knowing how much Renée’s beauty had to do with the beauty of what she wore.

“No,” said Renée reluctantly. She already owed Sir Thomas too much.

“Yes,” said Sir Thomas, walking into the bedchamber. “Anything she desires,” he said to the dressmaker, running his eyes critically up and down Renée.

“No, please, I couldn’t,” said Renée.

“Yes, please, you could. I stand as your guardian while you are on these shores, and I am responsible for your upkeep, and I won’t be shamed by your appearance. Pearls,” he said. “Mademoiselle’s gown would be best set off with pearls. Did you bring your jewels, mademoiselle?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, go and fetch them.”

He then considered Alice, who was watching him with one eyebrow lifted. “A handsome color for you, poppet. I like it. We’ll have this gown, too,” he said to the dressmaker. “The king of England comes to call tomorrow, and I wish them both to look their best.”

Renée had returned with her jewel box, held out her pearls.

“Why, I can barely see these,” exclaimed Sir Thomas.

“They were given to me by my father.”

“Alice has pearls you can wear, a necklace and bracelet and earrings and a pin, too.”

“No pin,” said the dressmaker, “and I think no necklace. But drops at her ears, that would be lovely, youthful, angel-like, if you will, sir.”

“Very well, we’ll get Alice’s drops, and you’ll wear those.”

“And what will I wear?” Alice inquired in a steady voice.

“Oh, something gold, I think. You’ve any number of earrings.”

“Something with the brown of the buttons would be pleasing,” said the dressmaker.

“I like my pearl drops. They were given me by the princess.”

“Get the ones I gave you. You’re to share them, like a good sister. She’s never had to share,” he said, winking at Renée.

“I’ve some earrings that match the gold gown,” the dressmaker said. “My brother is a jeweler,” she explained, as if anyone cared.

“It’s settled, then,” said Sir Thomas.

“May I see them?” Alice inquired coldly. “I may not like them,” she said to her father and the dressmaker and anyone else who cared to challenge her. But, unfortunately, no one—not even she—could deny that the dressmaker’s earrings were wonderful with her gown.

“Distinctive, perfect for the young lady,” said the dressmaker, adding up in her mind all that she would be putting in her account box from this day and already giddy with the sum. “If I may say so, mademoiselle,” she said to Alice, “it is my opinion that you must favor a distinctive style. You wear it well—”

“You may not say so.”

“Our little guest will need fans and gloves and other things. Go through Mrs. Tuck’s trunk of pretties while she’s here, pick what you like, Mademoiselle de Keroualle.” Sir Thomas was expansive, full of himself. “We’ve a special visitor tomorrow, and you must look your best. He is coming to see how your voyage across the sea was and how you are. And my daughter, too,” he added hastily, seeing the look that had settled on Alice’s face. “Whatever either of them desires.”

Renée went to Sir Thomas and knelt before him, took his hand to kiss it. There was dignity in her gesture. “No one has ever been so kind to me. I don’t know how I can repay it.” She looked up at him. “But I thank you from the bottom of my heart and promise you one day I will.”

“Get up, young lady. Those sweet words and the sight of you in that gown is payment enough.”

Alice could see her father was touched. Oh, she was going to need her wits about her to make this tangle unravel the way she wished it. And if he were part of a plot to poison the queen? Well, she didn’t know what she was going to do with that.

A
FTER FANS AND
gloves and ribbons were picked—Alice going through the dressmaker’s items with an ice cold intent, determined to cost her father a pretty penny—and the dresses were taken away to be sewn to fit perfectly—the dressmaker and the young women who worked for her would sew through the night by candlelight for this—Renée knocked on the door of Alice’s bedchamber.

Alice sat at a table, shuffling cards. The court was back at Whitehall Palace settling in for winter. August had ended while they were in Paris. Fall danced forward in small steps. Outside, in the garden of this barn of a house, leaves were beginning to turn, crimsons, ambers, golds, the shades Lady Nature wore for autumn. Buckingham had lingered long in Paris, over a month. He and his wretched plots, thought Alice.

“I cannot believe it is already September, Renée. Can you?” she said, to say anything other than what was in her mind. “Marry in September’s shine, your living will be rich and fine. My mother was born in September, but her living was neither rich nor fine. She died bearing me.”

“I don’t need to wear your pearls, Alice—”

“Suit yourself.”

“Am I wrong to accept your father’s generosity? Does it upset you?”

I must remember she is no fool, thought Alice. I must remember none of this is her doing. “He may do as he pleases, but I do think you might be wise to be a bit wary of him. He can be an old dog. But come, we’re going to pay a call upon the Duchess of Monmouth, and guess who will very likely be there?”

“Richard?”

Yes. The sight of Richard would dampen whatever might have been sparked by her father’s generosity today. Let her father, whose bloody ambition and bloody greed were never to be trusted—and might have drawn him into a plot to hurt the queen—buy as many dresses and fans and gewgaws as he pleased. It would be for Renée’s trousseau to someone else.

Which was amusing, when one thought of it. Ha.

T
HEY WENT BY
water, with Poll and Poppy to accompany them. The tide was high, and they could step from the house stairs directly into the wherry. It was a short journey to Whitehall Stairs, and Alice wanted Renée’s first sight of the palace to be by river. Ahead of them, on the other bank, were the spires and turrets of Lambeth Palace, home to England’s highest prelate, the Archbishop of Canterbury. And there was the long sprawl that was Whitehall Palace, her world, her milieu. Ten years ago, she’d arrived there with her father as part of the king’s threadbare, ragged, beggared court. Growing up in rented chambers, moving often because there were never coins for the rent; this was the only home she knew.

Whitehall Palace was a hodgepodge of buildings dating over five reigns, a sprawling complex of courtyards and linking galleries, a cobbled-together warren of chambers, halls, stairways, balconies, gardens. There were as many as two thousand rooms within its boundaries, and any number of courtiers, not to mention servants, as well as the royal family. Its north faced St. James’s Park, its south flanked the river; it began near Charing Cross and ended near Westminster Abbey. A royal rabbit warren, her father called it, but he was dismissive only because he had never lived within its walls, a grief to him.

It had its own wharf and brewery and timber yard. It had been taken as booty from a bishop who displeased Henry VIII and been a royal palace since. King Charles I had died on a scaffold set outside one of its great buildings.

“I’ll show you the spot where the king’s father died,” Alice said to Renée. “Some say his ghost walks at night.”

Renée shivered and crossed herself.

“Catholic,” said the waterman, eyeing Renée, and then spat into the river.

Ahead of them lay a long, low stone pier.

“Whitehall Stairs,” cried the waterman.

These stairs were between the kitchen buildings and the queen’s suite of apartments. Farther on was an elaborate, covered river entrance, but that was the privy stairs, for the use of the royal family. The waterman helped them onto the pier, and Alice darted forward, pulling Renée by the hand. They walked between buildings, the chapel, the butteries, and pantries, to Whitehall Street.

It was a melee of carriages—both those stopped and those attempting to turn around—and noise. Sedan chair bearers waited for passengers, grooms sauntered about or gathered in groups to talk to one another, coachmen shouted warnings and curses from carriages as they maneuvered horses this way and that.

Added to the mix were porters, young court pages, servants, Londoners on business or pleasure, and barking dogs, some tied to stiles, some running free.

“There,” said Alice, turning in a slow circle, “was the scaffold built for our dear Majesty King Charles the First. They built a scaffold before one of the banqueting house windows, and he stepped out to die.”

At this juncture, the palace was built across the street in the form of Holbein Gate, and the only way a Londoner could continue by foot or carriage to Westminster—other than by river—was to pass through Holbein Gate, the palace rising on both sides, and rattle on through to King Street.

Holbein Gate’s octagonal turrets and slate roof gave it an old-fashioned look. Its opening was wide enough only for a single carriage to pass through, so there was always a jam of carriages and impatient coachmen waiting their turn. Alice pointed to the gatehouse’s second story, where there were sets of narrow, high mullioned windows.

“A wicked one lived there.”

“Who?”

“The Duchess of Cleveland.”

“Ah…,” said Renée, for if her king’s mistresses were famous, so was this one, whose reputation for wildness, beauty, and ruthlessness had followed her even when a girl.

“I used to see her at the windows or on the roof of the banqueting house. She loved it when the coachmen brawled among themselves.”

Behind the gatehouse, one side of the palace was devoted to the king’s privy garden; the other was a warren of royal buildings in which various dukes lived.

Alice knocked on a door, and it opened, and they stepped into the handsome ground floor of the Duke of Monmouth’s apartments. Poll and Poppy stayed below as Alice and Renée gave over their cloaks, looked at themselves quickly in pier glasses to shake their curls, and walked upstairs toward the sound of music and conversation.

The chamber was long and large, everything in it of the latest fashion, from the beautiful oval plasterwork on the ceiling to the sets of matched chairs to huge silver firedogs at the fireplace. Twilight had come, and footmen were at the candles, lighting them. Musicians played a viola and a violin at one end of the chamber. The Duchess of Monmouth sat on cushions on the floor, surrounded by her maids of honor and various friends. In a window seat farther down the wall sat Barbara and Gracen, talking with their heads close together. John Sidney sat beside Barbara, Alice saw at once.

She made her way to the duchess, curtsied, said, “Ma’am, I do bring my guest, Mademoiselle de Keroualle, to meet you.”

“Back from France, are you? Monmouth will want to know all of the funeral. He’s somewhere about.” And then the duchess said in French, quite coldly, to Renée, “Mademoiselle.” She turned back to the others even as Renée was curtsying, and Alice led Renée from one friend and acquaintance to another, introducing her.