Dark Angels (35 page)

Alice’s eyes darted back to the date. Sent over a week ago! Ange might already be in London, likely was. He’d come to kill the queen; she knew it. Balmoral said he’d put a taster at the royal tables. A taster ate of every dish, drank of every wine served. But Ange could get round that. It would be child’s play. Well, the Duke of Balmoral could expect another visit tomorrow. She’d put it on his shoulders. She stared into the fire. Beuvron’s note just added to the thoughts circling one another in her mind. She stood and walked down a hallway to the stairs to the maids of honor’s chambers.

I
N THE MAIDS’
chamber, they readied themselves for bed.

“Who’s Nell?” asked Renée, pulling her head away from the brush. Behind her, brush in hand, Barbara frowned.

Gracen, sitting in bed in her night smock, smiled a cat’s smile.

“The actress you saw tonight,” said Barbara.

“She is the king’s mistress?”

Gracen made a sound like a giggle and fell back in the bed.

“You mock me?” Renée asked her.

“I mock you?” Gracen repeated the question, tone for tone. “Yes, you silly French girl, she’s the king’s mistress. Would I were.”

“She’s the one who danced tonight?”

“Danced and sang,” said Gracen.

“Who else is the king’s mistress?”

“At the moment, only Nellie that I know of, but he loves where he wills. One time, we were watching a play, all of us, do you remember, Ra, and he—”

“You shouldn’t tell this story,” said Barbara. “It isn’t kind.”

“King Charles seems so kind,” said Renée.

“The play was performed here at court, for us, and there was an interval, and Moll Davis—”

“An actress,” explained Barbara.

“—came out to sing, and she sang so suggestively—” Gracen jumped from the bed and pulled down the front of her nightgown so that most of her breasts were showing. She leaned forward, began to sing, swaying her hips provocatively as she walked around Renée and Barbara, singing:

Then since we mortal lovers are

Ask now how long our love will last;

But, while it does, let us take care

Each minute be with pleasure pass’d.

Were it not madness to deny

To love, because we’re sure to die.

She jumped back on the bed, pulled the blanket around her shoulders. “The king stood up right then and there, grabbed her by the arm, and left with her. It was clear to an idiot what they were going to do. And Queen Catherine, her face turned such a color, and she sat as if stunned, and no one spoke, not the actors, no one. The musicians almost stopped playing in their surprise. Oh, I’ll never forget it. It was Christmas, I think.” Gracen laughed, the sound joyous. “Compliments of the season.”

“Don’t listen to her,” said Barbara.

“Isn’t it true?” said Gracen.

“It is true. But not everyone is like that.”

“Who isn’t?” asked Gracen.

“Lord Knollys, for one.”

Gracen nodded. “That’s true enough. Who else?”

“Richard Saylor, John Sidney—”

“Puritans, secret Puritans—”

“What are Puritans?” interrupted Renée.

“Not of the faith,” said Barbara, who was.

“They don’t believe that the sacrament is God’s body,” said Gracen, making devil horns with her fingers.

Renée crossed herself and put her hands over her ears.

“She’s going to cry,” Gracen said to Barbara.

Barbara sighed, put down the brush, knelt before this new maid of honor who came from a more decorous court.

“Richard is this Puritan?”

Barbara pulled the shawl tighter around Renée’s shoulders and hugged her. “He is not a Puritan. Gracen makes fun.”

“But he isn’t of the true faith. I know that, but can’t help loving him.”

Barbara pulled her up, pushed her toward the bed, where Gracen lay now. Under the covers and quilts, and in the half-dark of the candles, Barbara could see the gleam of her smile. Barbara snuffed out candles, climbed into bed. Under the covers, Renée reached for her hand.

“It doesn’t matter here,” Barbara said to her.

“Perhaps your love might save him,” said Gracen, laughter again in her voice.

Barbara felt Renée shiver beside her. It was simpler where Renée came from. There was one faith, and those who worshipped differently were few and far between. “Those in the Church of England believe they have the true faith, and the Presbyterians believe they have the true faith—”

“Don’t forget the Quakers. Here’s why they’re called Quakers.” Gracen began to move her arms and legs and head erratically. The bed holding them shook.

“Gracen, you’re not amusing.”

“But I am.”

“Only to yourself. There was a great and long war here about true faith. What we learned from it is that we have to live together in our differences, that perhaps there is more than one way to God.”

Renée didn’t say anything, just held Barbara’s hand hard. When she and Gracen were both asleep, Barbara slipped out of the bed, dressed hurriedly in the dark, crept out of the bedchamber, praying she wouldn’t meet Alice, who must still be up and wandering about somewhere.

B
UT
A
LICE HADN’T
gone to the maids of honor’s bedchamber. Instead, she had tapped on Dorothy’s door, then carefully opened it.

“My lord?” Dorothy walked forward, her long fair hair brushed and hanging thickly on her shoulders, her nightgown sheer and clinging, a Portuguese shawl vivid, bright against the nightdress. The fire in her fireplace crackled and spat. On a table between two chairs sat a tray with wine opened, a goblet waiting. The other goblet was in Dorothy’s hand. At the sight of Alice, she stopped short, disappointment so clear on her face that Alice began an apology.

“Forgive me for disturbing. I only wanted to…Of course, it’s so late.”

“Shut the door behind you and come in. He isn’t calling on me tonight, is he.” Without waiting for an answer, Dorothy poured wine in the other goblet, held it out to Alice while refilling hers. She sat in one of the chairs and showed her feet to the fire. All of Dorothy was sweetly plump these days, and her legs were moon pale and shapely in their roundness. Of course Lord Knollys would desire her, thought Alice, seeing her, as she had since the night she’d discovered the affair, in a new light. On her feet dangled high-heeled, fashionable, backless, embroidered slippers, their toes ending in steep points, the latest style at the French court.

“Fetch my other slippers just there, will you, Alice? My feet are cold. And in the cabinet there is cake. Bring it out, will you? Are you hungry? You’re thin as a stick. Eat some cake, put some meat on those bones. Men like women with flesh on their bones.”

“So I’m told.” Alice pulled off the beautiful slippers and placed wool booties on Dorothy’s feet.

Dorothy took a chunk from the crumbling cake Alice had found and ate it, licking her fingers and reaching for more. “Once I was tiny…well, not tiny, but smaller.”

“You were small when I left for France.”

“When was that, Alice?”

“I left just as the court was abuzz with Caro’s marriage.”

“I thought she’d be dead by now.” Dorothy gestured for more wine. Alice poured it.

“Caro?”

“The Countess of Knollys. She hangs on and on. Sometimes I think she’ll never die. She’s not left her bed in over a year. Here’s to the Countess of Knollys, God forgive me, whose death I wish. I can’t believe I wish it, but I do. The awful thing is, she was always kind to me.” She shook her head, drank, then raised her glass to the fire. “Here’s to me, countess next, someday.” She drank again.

“He’ll wed you?”

“Oh, yes. We’ve often talked of it.”

“How long—” Alice stopped, not quite knowing how to ask. But Dorothy knew precisely what she meant.

“Have we been lovers? Six years.”

“No.”

Dorothy smiled tenderly, the tenderness edged with pride. “I cannot tell you how kind he’s been, how much he’s done for me. There’s debt, you know. I was left in debt when Mr. Brownwell died. I still owe. Of course, some of it is my own fault. I like the cards, just as I like cake. He urges me not to gamble, but when he’s not at Whitehall, and everyone is playing cards and laughing, I don’t want to come here to my chambers, where my thoughts go round and round in circles like rats within the walls.” She looked over to Alice, her big eyes very wide, very like a child’s. “The thoughts frighten me.”

“What do you think of, Brownie?”

“That I will be here forever, nursemaiding ungrateful wenches who half of them despise me—”

“We love you! I thought you loved us.”

“You love me. Barbara loves me. Caro loved me, and Frances and Margaret and Simona before her. But this new lot. They’re little more than baggages, all of them. I’ll be fortunate if one of them gets from here without carrying a growing babe beneath her skirts, and who’ll be blamed? Dorothy Brownwell, mother of the maids, for not guarding well enough. As if I could.”

“Like Winifred.” Alice whispered the name; she’d dreamed of the baby on the floor for years.

“Winifred.” Dorothy shook her head. “Married now, settled in, her sins forgotten. I’ll say this for the king and Her Majesty the queen: They bear no grudges. Thank God for it, or half this court could never show their faces in public again. Oh, sweet God in His heaven, I want to be safely wed, settled in, to fret no more when I gamble too much, to buy any gown I wish, to eat cake until my stays pop, to let go the thoughts that say he’ll abandon me for another. Those are thoughts that torture me.”

“You’re young and handsome. There are many fish in the sea.”

“The fish want to swim among the young maids or with the actresses and whores.”

“I’ll find a husband for you.”

“You’d best find one first for yourself.”

“I’ve found one.”

“Oh?”

“Balmoral.”

“The duke? You don’t mean it!”

“Well, it’s not settled yet.”

“What does that mean, it isn’t settled yet?” Dorothy mimicked her, then smiled at her mimicry. “I did that as well as Gracen. There’s one who’s grown up. I turn around, and she turns into a beauty. Balmoral. Tell me about Balmoral. He has one foot in the grave.”

“Well, I’m determined to have him, and my father—”

Dorothy snorted.

“My father is going to help me do it.”

“Your father hasn’t anything on his mind but being king of the House of Commons.”

“Brownie, when did the talk of divorcing the queen start?”

“Oh, don’t bring up that dreadful subject. I’ve never seen her weep the way she did this last year—”

“This last year? Is that when it started?”

“Well, let’s see. You were gone…Caro had married your Lord Colefax…Frances had the smallpox, and all the talk was that she’d lose her looks, and the king went to see her in spite of the sickness—I always thought he truly loved her. The war with the Dutch was over, disastrously. The House of Commons was howling to investigate the council and officials right and left…the queen had miscarried again…yes, there it was, not long after that there just grew these whispers. There was something in the House of Lords—some divorce case—and I really thought for a time he’d leave her, and then nothing happened. Everything became Madame’s visit, what were we going to do to entertain Madame. Who is dead now. Oh, I want more wine. I don’t want to think about these things. There’s another bottle in the cabinet. Fetch it, Alice, that’s a good girl.”

“I will find you a husband, Brownie.”

“I have a husband. He calls me wife, I call him husband.” Dorothy began to weep.

Dorothy was in her weeping stage of drunkenness. Best to get her into bed, thought Alice. “There, there, yes, yes, you do. Lord Knollys is a fine man.”

“He is, oh, he is. I love him so.”

“So you do, I know that. Come along here, let’s go to bed now.”

“The sheets will be cold. If I had a proper husband, I wouldn’t have to lie in a cold bed.”

“Unless there was a quarrel.”

Alice took fire tongs, tossed some coals in the warming pan, walked to the bed, at which Dorothy stood sniffling like a lost child, and carefully—the handle was long, it was easy to tip open the pan and then hot coals would fall out onto the sheet and start a fire—rubbed the bottom of pan against the sheets, up and down, up and down, all around.

“There, jump in, quickly now.”

Alice emptied the coals into the fire, hung the pan by the mantel.

“I’m sick. The room is spinning,” said Dorothy from the bed.

“Here, sit up.”

Dorothy did as commanded. Alice fluffed pillows behind her, took the ones on the other side, placed them behind Dorothy’s back. “Now, lie back carefully—carefully; you want to be sitting up as much as possible. There. Close your eyes…Better?”