Dark Angels (60 page)

In the queen’s kitchen, there was confusion and shouting. The guards Richard had summoned had arrived, but Richard was not to be seen.

“Which way?” asked a lieutenant.

“I’ll show you!” shouted Edward. He set off at a run, followed by the small troop of guards, followed by Walter and Effriam, and now by Alice, too.

Ange ran out onto Whitehall Street, ran among carriages and sedan chairs, back toward King Street on the other side of Holbein Gate. He’ll lose me in Devil’s Acre, thought Richard. Devil’s Acre was a nest of hovels and houses and alleys near the great abbey. There was a ferry that crossed the river farther down.

Richard took a deep breath and redoubled his effort. And as fast as Ange was, Richard was faster. He ran straight into Ange, sent him sprawling into curious bystanders. Ange leaped up, tore himself loose from Richard’s grasp, and ran through Holbein Gate, snatching a sword from a bemused watcher who’d unsheathed one to help. By now, the small troop of bodyguards was close behind, and guards from other troops—the Life Guards, Prince Rupert’s guard, Monmouth’s, York’s, off duty and on—had joined in. Two guardsmen had stationed themselves at the end of King Street, pikes crossed. Ange would have to get by them to gain the warren of hovels or the ferry. He stopped, looking back toward Richard and forward to the pikemen. Richard slowed, wary, not trusting him. Ange had lost his wig in the chase, and he looked like something that wasn’t quite human; but he smiled, and the old charm was there.

“Give me the sword,” Richard said to him.

“We never fought, did we?”

“It was d’Effiat I wanted to kill.”

“First blood? Either way”—Ange motioned to the guards around them—“you win.”

Why not, thought Richard, a formidable rage in him, compounded by the memory of Madame’s death, this man’s arrogance, grief and anger at Renée, at King Charles, at the simple treacheries that were as common as clover here. “First blood. Stand back,” Richard called to the soldiers. “Open the garden gate. We’ll fight there.”

“What are you doing?” asked the lieutenant in his bodyguard.

“Settling a score.” Richard followed Henri into the privy garden, and men crowded in behind him, Alice among them.

“First blood drawn, and the duel is over,” Richard called out. “First blood, and we end it. He goes to the Tower no matter what. Is that clear?”

“They’re dueling,” said Edward excitedly to the group of pages who had run along with the soldiers and would not have missed this for the world. “The king will be angry.” King Charles enforced laws against dueling, trying to keep his young, hot-blooded, pleasure-seeking court alive.

Alice watched Ange take a small vial attached to a leather cord around his neck and sprinkle it along the sword’s edge. “What is that?” she called sharply.

“Fair Alice! What a pleasure to see you. It’s holy water, my sweet, so that my sword will cut your Richard deeply. Still in love with him? Has he guessed it yet?”

“Ready?” called Richard.

“En garde.”

They walked forward, swords raised, then crossed. And then it began, dazzling, frightening swordplay, a dance of death and chance and skill, punctuated by steel meeting steel in light, zinging sounds that made the heart beat fast. They were both skilled, both driven, Ange by survival and Richard by the clearest rage he’d ever felt.

There had been much noise and shouting before; people had gathered at windows that looked down upon the privy garden. Prince Rupert stood out on his balcony in the cold, watching. He knew he should stop this, but he didn’t want to. Their swords moved so swiftly that the eye could hardly follow. Both of them were breathing hard. There was a stamina and speed necessary for swordplay that could test the strongest man.

Behind him, Prince Rupert heard his name. King Charles had entered his chamber, Renée on his arm.

“Keep her back!” Prince Rupert said quickly, but they were close enough to see the figures moving in the garden.

“What’s this, a duel?” said King Charles.

“Who is dueling?” asked Renée.

“Back!” growled Prince Rupert, giving his king and cousin a desperate look.

“Go into the other room and wait for me,” King Charles told Renée as he walked out on the balcony. Renée went to a window and rubbed the moisture settled there from the cold with her sleeve so that she could see into the garden.

“I ought to stop that,” King Charles said.

“You’ll get Saylor killed if you distract him. Whoever he’s fighting is the best I’ve seen.”

“Look, Saylor’s drawn blood.”

Renée, hearing Richard’s name, came out onto the balcony before either man could stop her.

Richard had cut Ange on the shoulder. He stepped back. “First blood,” he was saying as he heard his name screamed in a sweetly familiar voice. He looked up toward the windows surrounding the garden on two sides, and Ange, in one graceful, deadly step, stabbed him straight through his side, bringing the sword back out again, bright crimson painting it, staining Richard’s shirt, his jacket.

Richard stared at him, stupidly, from the shock of the act and of the sword entering him.

“It’s poisoned, my dear.” Ange stepped back formally, raised the sword to his forehead, and then let it drop to the ground; but he had not counted on Alice, who heard his words, snatched Ange’s sword from the ground, and jabbed it forward blindly, catching his arm.

“If he dies, you die!” she said, and leaned into the sword with all her weight so that it would go deeper, as around them there was beginning pandemonium. Ange had his hand on the sword blade, trying to pull it out of his arm, and she growled in triumph at the sight of blood from the cuts on his hand as guardsmen began the attempt to pry her hands off the sword hilt. That accomplished, she’d have gone after Ange and scratched out his eyes, but someone held her back. She twisted out of that grasp and ran to Richard, who sat in the gravel of one of the walks, holding his side, rocking back and forth. She began to weep. “Richard…oh, Richard.”

He looked at her, his face very white.

“Oh, God, I love you, I love you,” she heard herself saying, but Richard looked past her because Renée was running full-tilt into the garden, and she threw herself at him, making him yelp in pain as she covered his face with kisses.

“A pretty drama there,” said Prince Rupert from the balcony.

“Goddamn it,” said King Charles.

“That little piece with Alice stabbing that man, better than a play, I tell you!”

“Goddamn it to hell and back again.”

Alice was able to stop herself, to draw back. If he dies, she thought—and her thoughts could not go beyond that point. Such feelings of grief came up, she could hardly bear them. It was all she could do not to beat Ange with her fists as guardsmen surrounded him. She wept into her hands.

Ange nodded toward Edward, who approached him carefully, his eyes practically starting from his head. Ange leaned over and whispered into Edward’s ear. Then Ange was being marched away, bleeding with every step. Richard was being helped up by his fellow guardsmen, was being led off, Renée at his side. Alice stood where she was, sobbing as if her heart were broken. Edward took her hand.

“Don’t cry, Alice, don’t.”

“He’s going to die. He’s going to die.”

“He said to tell you it really was holy oil. What does that mean? Is that what he put on the sword before? I saw him do it—did you? But I didn’t really think at the time; I was so excited to see a duel—”

“Take me somewhere, Edward, where I can be alone.”

Of course the sword was poisoned, and of course Ange would say it was holy oil, so that Richard would die. Ange had an antidote somewhere, something to counteract the poison; she’d bet her right hand on it. And Richard didn’t. What a devil Henri Ange was, even to the last. Oh, God, she’d made a great fool of herself. Was there any possibility that in his shock Richard hadn’t heard her?

“Lean on me.”

“Edward, you’re so sweet.”

So are you, thought Edward. And fierce.

C
HAPTER 35

March 1671

P
haraoh reached out his long neck and took the corn from Alice’s hand. She rubbed his nose, then leaned her face against his neck. Outside, away from the dim of the stall, the spring sunshine was almost fierce.

“I’m so sorry, Richard,” she said.

He continued to brush Pharaoh, steady, long sweeps of the brush that made the horse snort in pleasure and whisk his tail.

“Is there anything I can do?”

Effriam said to Walter, “You and me, we’ll be getting water.”

“You can let the subject drop.”

“Yes, of course…. I bring a note from her.”

Thin, his cheeks hollow, Richard held out his hand, put the note in a pocket.

“Did your mother make it back to Tamworth in one piece?”

“I haven’t heard, but I can’t imagine muddy roads stopping Mother. Sleet and ice didn’t prevent her coming here, now, did they?” His mother, upon receiving word of his wound, hearing the word
poison,
had traveled up to London with her servant, her books of remedies, and dried herbs and flowers from Tamworth’s woods and gardens. He should have died. She’d seen to it that he hadn’t.

“She’s very lovely, Richard.”

“Do you think so? Most people consider her odd, even frightening.” He laughed.

“What?”

“I was thinking of my sisters, Louisa and Elizabeth. They were appalled to see her. I could have died so long as she remained out of sight.”

“That’s not true! Your sisters were on their knees in prayer for you. I think King Charles admired her very much—” Alice stopped herself, aghast at her clumsiness in speaking the king’s name to Richard.

Richard was silent, his face grim again.

“Well, I only wanted to give you her note. If there’s a reply, I can—”

“There won’t be.”

“Well, then I must go.”

“Walking with Balmoral?”

She smiled. “Yes.”

Richard stepped back from the horse, hearing something in her voice. “Is that a new gown?”

“It is.”

“Very becoming.”

“We can only hope His Grace thinks so.”

“He will. Answer me this. Do you always get what you want?”

Alice gave Pharaoh a kiss on the nose. “Not always.”

“Do you ever give up?”

“Not when I want something and think it possible.” I thought you would die, Richard, but I didn’t give up on you, and here you are, alive and very well.

“I do—I have. Go away and seduce your duke.”

“If there’s a reply, you have only to find me—”

“I said there won’t be.”

“Of course you did. Good-bye, Richard.”

“I’m a bear—” He stopped her at the stall’s door. “Misfortune in love does it, isn’t that what poets preach? Give me a good-bye kiss, Alice.”

They kissed chastely on the lips. She had come every day to see him, couldn’t stop herself. Their friendship had grown deeper.

“When are you going to see Barbara?” he asked.

“You know the answer to that.”