Dark Angels (42 page)

They crept in, tiptoeing around statues of saints and memorials to the dead, to the queen’s pew. Candles shone from huge candle stands and from gilded chandeliers, saints held out marble hands to bless, carvings of angels smiled in forever faith, bunches of flowers scented the air like perfume. It was ornate and, in the evening, dark, mysterious, beautiful.

In a moment, Barbara was kneeling and saying the prayer, and although Alice knew it by heart, she didn’t say it. Her father’s words were ringing in her ears: Are you a Papist? Perhaps. She had been Papist while with Madame’s court, chanting the prayers. What if she had been? What did it all mean? Across the aisle was the Duchess of Cleveland, near her the Duke and Duchess of York. There were Lord and Lady Arlington, Sir Thomas Clifford, Lord Knollys, other ladies and gentlemen of the household. How many were here out of courtesy to the queen? How many were here out of a faith that was unfashionable, out of favor? It was said Papists caused the terrible plague of 1665, set the great fire that had burned London within a year. She glanced up into the gallery. There were John Sidney, the Earl of Rochester, and Lord Mulgrave. Mulgrave nodded shyly to her. Why were they here? To hear the prayers and chanting? To ogle the maids? To celebrate that which they did not admit openly?

Alice wanted to believe, yet it seemed to her God was capricious, cruel, a trickster who delighted in the trick. Was this how one fooled the trickster, by agreeing with Him that, yes, it was indeed a very good trick? How could one do that? She didn’t understand. Her history lesson taught her that King Henry IV had converted to Catholicism to rule France. My kingdom is worth a mass, he’d said. That she understood. Could her father not love her if she converted? Would he hate the Duke of York now if he knew of his conversion? Barbara said the bonfires were lighted tonight to aid souls out of purgatory; Rochester said Druids lit them in ancient ceremonies acknowledging life and death, and Christians took the ritual and made it theirs. Was not life purgatory enough?

Everyone was rising. Mass was over. She followed the others into the vestry, where plates of soul cakes rose in fragrant, bite-size piles. A soul cake, a soul cake, have mercy on all Christian souls for a soul cake. The Duke of York was murmuring names as he piled his plate high: “Mother, Father, Elizabeth, Mary, Henry, Minette…” His family gone. There were two cakes on the queen’s plate, no more, no less, for the babes conceived and ended. Alice turned her face away, went to stand with Luce and Kit, who were wild and giggling and eating cakes simply because they were there and dusted with sugar.

C
HAPTER 23

I
n the upstairs viewing gallery in the banqueting hall of Whitehall Palace, Luce ran to Alice and Barbara. “There are four sultans, not one!”

“It’s true,” said Dorothy, waving a hand in the direction of the great banqueting hall below. At one end was a throne. Paintings by Rubens sat settled in dozens of ornately gilded ceiling frames. Massive cherubs lifted their arms in blessing in the corners. Their blessings didn’t always work—the king’s father had stepped out one of the evenly spaced windows to his scaffold and beheading. But tonight, no one was thinking of that. Laughter and conversation echoed up to the gallery.

Alice maneuvered through the musicians playing for the crowd below, leaned one hand on the balustrade, and looked over. Milling among the costumed courtiers were indeed four sultans, not one. It was impossible to miss the papier-mâché heads with their ornate cloth of gold turbans. And because the head was so big, the king’s height couldn’t be used to mark him, at least not looking down from this level.

Fletcher clapped his hands to capture the maids’ attention. “It’s a bother, but I’ve thought it all out. We do everything just as we’ve practiced, but at the end, stand before the audience in a row, like flowers in a garden, and sing the last verse. The queen will be your anchor. Wherever she is, fan out on each side of her—Wells, are you listening?” Of course, Luce wasn’t. “Where’s Verney? Someone go and fetch her at once. She hasn’t heard a word I’ve said.” Fletcher fanned himself impatiently. “I’m as warm as if it were summer. It’s nerves. Let me live through this moment. It’s like herding cats. We’d never get a play done if the actresses behaved so. Who’ll be blamed if it doesn’t go well, James Fletcher, that’s who, not Verney or Wells, who is, I note, still talking. Grant me patience! May we begin, Your Majesty?”

At her nod, he signaled the musicians, and they ended their music at a stanza, while Queen Catherine and the maids walked down a staircase. After a time, many fell silent, looking up at the gallery, where Fletcher stood, silently counting to let drama build and the queen’s party assemble themselves in their places near the throne.

He raised a hand, and a single flute began to play.

The great hollow center of the hall took the notes and flung them toward the matching sets of windows at the gallery level, where they echoed back to the courtiers standing below.

“Pippins, fine pippins to sell…” Queen Catherine sauntered forward from behind the throne, her beaded scarlet mask covering her eyes, her skirt swinging out with every step. People moved back, leaving her that actor’s delight, a natural entrance.

“The apple has no seeds,” said the Duchess of Cleveland, arrogant in her five children. People around her tittered. An audible hiss rose up to mingle with the flute. Queen Catherine froze. Suddenly a sultan was before her, holding out his hand for an apple, his eyes behind his mask encouraging, well-known to her. She took a deep breath and recovered her poise. He bowed and moved back, handed the apple to Cleveland with an ironic bow.

“Whatever am I to do with this?” she asked, recognizing the king.

“Reflect upon your bad deeds.”

“But, darling, they were done with you.”

“Here’s lady of the autumn, here’s mistress of fall,” Queen Catherine began to sing, her voice trembling, but then taking hold, strengthening, as she advanced to the center of the hall. “I live not alone, but sisters have many, come, my dear sweets, to sell all your wares, one and two and three, three for a penny, one, two and three, three for a penny.” At that moment, violins swelled out to join the flute, and from every corner of the room, the maids danced out, calling:

“Flower, buy a flower, sir.”

“Primrose, bundle a penny.”

“Daffodils.”

“Rosemary, remember rosemary.”

“Buy my fine myrtle and roses, my myrtles and stocks, my sweet-smelling balsams.”

They held out roses and sweet williams, daffodils and stock, made of silk by the seamstresses, tied to fresh herbs cut that afternoon from the kitchen gardens. Once in a semicircle around the queen, they waited until applause had died back, then began to sing an old poem Fletcher had set to music.

Go and catch a falling star,

Get with child a mandrake root,

Tell me where all past years are,

Or who cleft the Devil’s foot,

Teach me to hear mermaids singing,

Or to keep off envy’s stinging,

And find what wind

Serves to advance an honest mind.

Alice stepped out in front of them, began to dance. She danced lightly, gracefully, to each of the four sultans and then to the queen. Alice and the queen leaped into the fast-moving steps of a Morris dance, centuries old, something mysterious and reminiscent of ancient times in it. The maids around them sang.

If thou beest born to strange sight,

Things invisible to see,

Ride ten thousand days and nights,

Till age snow white hairs on thee.

Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me,

All strange wonders that befell thee,

And swear nowhere

Lives a woman true and fair.

Breathless, as applause rose, the queen and Alice stepped back into the semicircle of maids, and, music still playing, they all wove in and among costumed courtiers, handing out flowers, herbs, apples, as favors to end as they began, back in a semicircle. On the last long note, all of them dropped into the deepest of curtsies.

Applause rained on them.

All the sultans were clapping. Above in the gallery, Fletcher was clapping. Alice and her friends met one another’s eyes, their mouths smiling below their beaded masks. They’d done it, surpassed all the other maids, brought novelty—always a treasure at this court—and in the surpassing, gathered notoriety to themselves, to the queen. They were, for the moment, the most fashionable, the most envied. They’d be the most sought after tonight, and for a few days, the court would talk of them. It would pass, of course; but it did for now.

A wizard, carrying a staff crowned with laurel and crow’s feathers, stepped forward. It was the Duke of Monmouth.

“As Merlin of this fete, I implore all evil spirits of this night to depart and leave us in peace.”

“Now that will be confoundedly boring,” said Buckingham in a low tone, dressed as a playing card. The man beside him, also dressed as a card, smiled.

“Never mind it. They’re within us,” the man said.

“I call upon all sprites and spirits everywhere to bless our gracious monarch, His Majesty, my father, and I command the dancing to begin.”

The four sultans stepped forward, selecting Queen Catherine, Renée, and the Duchesses of York and Monmouth as partners. Monmouth selected Alice and led her among the dancing couples. “Beautifully done, my fair primrose.”

“Jamie, I want you to do something for me.”

“If the dancing hadn’t betrayed you, the first words out of your mouth would.”

“I want you to flirt outrageously with Louisa Saylor.”

“With utmost pleasure. May one ask why?”

“One may not. Jamie, last year when Lord Roos brought his bill on divorce, were you a piece of that?”

“I thought it despicable,” he said quickly, and Alice thought, He lies. “The men who surround my father haven’t always his best interests at heart.”

“Yes, they’ll betray anyone, won’t they.”

“My uncle—”

“Isn’t, perhaps, the wisest of men, but he has a noble heart, and he is heir to the throne, and if ever he should wear the crown, he will need wise and loving councillors who have the best interests of us all at heart, men like yourself, Jamie.”

“You continue to confuse me with a schoolboy. What boredom. I thought to enjoy my dance with the most graceful woman at court, and I find myself lectured once more.”

The music ended. He bowed to her, and she sank into a curtsy, feeling flat, saddened.

She grabbed his hand, still in the curtsy. “I was your first friend. Remember that.”

“Remembering is what keeps me from cutting you out of my circle, Alice.”

“And flirt with Louisa.”

In spite of himself, he laughed, reached out to flick her under the chin before turning away. She stared after him. Her first true friendship was walking away.

“There you are, poppet,” said her father. “I thought I’d gather a dance while I may. You won’t be free this night, I don’t need that mountebank Ashmole to predict that. Sweet Jesus, you should see the crowd lined up to have their palms read by him! Come dance with your father.”

“How did you know which one I was?”

“The moment you began to dance, I knew you. And Monmouth always danced with you first, didn’t he, before France? Tell me you forgive me. It frets me to have quarreled.”

Just like that, he touched her heart, and yet he’d say anything to stop quarreling, as she well knew. “I want you to do something for me.”

“And if the dancing hadn’t betrayed you, those words certainly would. Up we go, turn, and bow.” He liked to talk aloud the dance steps.

“Patch whatever quarrel you have with Balmoral, Father. For my sake.”

“Right, then left, skip, and turn. I don’t think it can be done. If you want him, you’ll have to help the king win Keroualle. You’ll be invited to sup with the Duchess of Cleveland in a day or so. Don’t refuse.”