Dark Angels (76 page)

T
HAT EVENING, THEY
walked to Beuvron’s for supper. So, thought Richard, walking up a stairway to the first floor of a small town house near the great medieval cathedral of Notre Dame, Balmoral’s coins brought Beuvron ease.

Since it was the season of Lent, of Easter, Beuvron offered fish, all kinds, smoked, pickled, sautéed in butter, oysters, bread freshly baked, a jar of new butter. He had wine and champagne and port. He chatted happily, but Richard said little, and Walter less than that, even though he felt Beuvron’s eyes on him often.

“You must see Versailles,” Beuvron said at the end of the evening, when the champagne and wine were drunk and Richard refused another bottle.

“We return tomorrow.”

“What a shame. You should stay for Palm Sunday; let your cousin view it. There will be processions, a blessing of the palms, extraordinary to see, flowers everywhere, the singing of the Gospels. You can show him how we wicked Catholics celebrate the resurrection of our Lord.”

“Another time.” Richard rose, walked to a window, putting his head out to take a breath of air. He’d wanted to end with a triumph. Now he brought failure along with the news he was leaving the army. Balmoral would not be pleased.

Glancing at Richard still at the window, his back to them, Beuvron put his hand out, touched Walter’s knee very lightly, nothing disrespectful or forward in the gesture. His face had changed from its pleasant, heedless expression. He looked almost grave. “You’re very beautiful, young Stephen. You belong here. Not there. You would be happy here. No bonds against being as you are. Do you even understand me?”

Walter didn’t answer, stood, and Richard turned around. The moment passed.

He did understand, more than Beuvron realized, but he’d never leave Richard.

A
LICE SAT IN
a chair in the sun. Tomorrow, if she was stronger, Lady Saylor would allow her to attend church. People would be waving palm fronds, waiting to have their foreheads touched with ash. Perhaps in the afternoon she would sit on the hillock, a soft rise she could see in the distance, covered with huge oaks. It called to her. She longed to lie under its trees. A bird flew by, landed on the ledge of a window. It was a swallow. All the household talked of not having seen one yet, wondering who would have the good fortune to see the first swallow of spring. Alice began to weep. The weeping became Barbara’s. Perhaps you’ll be years grieving her, said Lady Saylor, and years more forgiving yourself.

C
HAPTER 44

B
almoral stood with a dozen men at the edge of the river on what was called the Isle of Dogs, nearer the sea than London, but no real isle and no dogs; just a narrow creek eastward separated it from the mainland. Across, on the opposite bank, windmills turned, for the draining of the marshes upon which they stood. Henri Ange was there, too, looking almost bloodless, so pale was he, a streak of gray that had not been in his hair before, legs and one wrist chained to the burliest of the men. A sleek Dutch yacht had just dropped anchor.

Ange moved forward as best he could, the trooper with him. Two men on the deck leaped into the water, climbed through the mud toward him, one slightly behind the other. “Miguel,” Ange said, putting his free hand on the shoulder of one of them. He touched his cheek to the man’s, said very quickly, very quietly, “Say nothing. Trust me. You’ll be rewarded.”

Balmoral stepped forward, nodding toward the second man. “And who would this be?”

“The servant, Pedro,” Ange answered. The servant cowered and stepped back as troopers surrounded Miguel. Before Miguel could speak, his arms had been pulled behind his back, and he was dragged away.

“Silence him,” Balmoral called when he began to shout in Spanish for Ange to help him. There was the sound of hand against flesh, a yelp, and then silence as troopers boarded the yacht and returned with a small strongbox, which they placed before Balmoral. Balmoral opened the lid, and coins glimmered. “Where are the letters accusing Buckingham?”

“I have letters. I know not what they are,” whispered the servant in Spanish to Ange, who held out his hand, took them, gave them to Balmoral.

“Search every inch of that vessel,” ordered Balmoral, who went to stand in the shade of a tree, reading through the letters. Ange remained where he was, tethered to the trooper. The servant sat at his feet, as still as stone, whimpering every once in a while, but Ange kicked him each time he did so. When the yacht had been searched and nothing else found, Balmoral walked over, gestured, and a trooper unlocked the chains from around Ange’s feet, but his wrist was still tethered to the trooper. Balmoral considered Ange. He didn’t wish to set him free, but Richard had failed to bring the casket. “A deuce of a way to spend my Palm Sunday,” he snapped. “You have one month to bring me proof of the treaty. If I haven’t heard from you in precisely thirty days, your sweetheart dies. Slowly.”

“You’ll have your proof.”

“What about this one, Your Grace?” A trooper nudged with his boot at the servant, still sitting at Ange’s feet. The servant began to weep.

“For pity’s sake, let me have him to help me sail the yacht, or I’ll never make shore. And I could use a coin or two while you’re at it.”

Balmoral tossed two coins at Ange, turned on his heel, walked to his carriage. The coachman flicked the reins; the carriage lumbered away, followed by mounted troopers, the body of Miguel lying across a saddle. The last trooper left unlocked himself from Ange’s wrist, eyed Ange and the cowering servant for a long moment as if he might just kill them anyway, then went to his horse, tossed the key toward them, and rode away.

“The key,” Ange said.

Wiping his eyes with the tail of his shirt, the servant ran to find it, knelt before Ange, and unlocked the chains around his legs. Ange knelt, too, held out his hands, took the other man’s hands in his. “I thought he meant to kill me,” Ange said. “You were so brave, my darling.”

“Our poor Pedrito. What will happen?”

“He will die in the Tower of London, but you and I won’t.”

“All your coins. It killed me to bring all your coins.”

“So, did you?”

“No.”

“And that is why I love you.” Once in the yacht, Ange opened the sail and turned the tiller so it caught a gust of wind.

“France is that way,” said Miguel.

“I know,” said Ange. “I’m not finished.”

C
HAPTER 45

I
t was Maundy Thursday. Everyone was at the banqueting house watching the king and queen and their attendants wash the feet of the poor. Ange, a full curling nobleman’s periwig on his head, a respectable coat and breeches on his body, walked into Balmoral’s front hall. He was up the stairs before a servant appeared in the hall to answer the bell that opening the door made ring. Balmoral’s bedchamber was simple to find. Ange went straight to the closet beyond it, shutting the door behind him quietly. He worked with concentration, opening cabinets and drawers, every sense open to sounds that would warn him of an approach. When he saw the sherry in its crystal decanter, he smiled. It was just as Buckingham had described, once upon a time long ago and far away. Pulling on gloves to take a folded paper from a pocket, he then poured its bit of grainy powder into the decanter, and shook it gently.

“For you, Alice,” he said aloud.

Quick as a flash, doors and drawers were closed again and he was crossing the bedchamber, walking down the stairs and out the front door. It took only moments for the coat and wig to be gone, his hair loosed, his sleeves rolled up. He might have been any servant at the palace. He walked into the mews, asked a stable boy where Captain Saylor’s horse was kept. The great dark head appeared over its stall door when he whistled.

“I’ve something for you,” Ange said. He opened a gloved palm, and the horse sniffed, then snorted at the smell of sugar. He licked it all, licked even the glove, while Ange whispered to him and told him how handsome he was. He gave him the glove to chew, and the horse did so. For you, Richard, he thought. He heard footsteps, stepped back into shadow. A half-grown boy walked forward, put out his hand, pulled the chewed glove from the horse’s mouth.

“What are you eating, Pharaoh?” Walter dropped the glove, kissed the long front of the horse’s nose.

Ange recognized him. Madame Neddie’s. Staring at him in the Whitehall kitchen. Part of the crowd who’d watched his duel with Richard. This one would be for Henri Ange. He stepped forward, as quiet as nothing. But Pharaoh whinnied, pulling his head from the boy’s embrace, and in that moment the boy saw him, and in one lithe turning movement, even as Ange’s hands grazed him, he ran from the dark of the stalls toward the light of the street, as if he knew this would be the race of his life.

A
LICE SAT ON
the hillock. Before her spread a view of daffodils, a field of them, their trumpets belled out and fragrant. In the summer, said Lady Saylor, the hillock is covered with bluebells, a carpet of the sweetest blue you’ve ever seen. Letters from her father and from Balmoral sat in her lap, unopened. A box had come from London, inside it the gown in which she’d marry Balmoral, the gown she and her aunt had created. The seamstress would come to her from London to finish it. Poll had lifted it reverently from its paper, but Alice wouldn’t look at it. She’d gone away, here to the hillock. If she tried to think, her head ached, so she didn’t think. But soon she was going to have to.

I
T WAS
G
OOD
Friday. Alice held a kitten—yours if you wish it, said Richard’s mother—exhausted from her afternoon of watching flowers arranged in the church for Easter, exhausted from the service and prayers of this evening, exhausted from her thoughts, which circled one another relentlessly. Richard appeared at the far end of the arbor where she sat with his mother.

“My dear boy,” exclaimed Jerusalem, who held Nan’s baby in her lap.

Richard remained half-in, half-out of sun, shadows made by the arbor’s vines playing across his face. He slapped his riding gloves in one hand. Jerusalem’s eyes narrowed. She stood up, the baby in her arms. “Is something wrong? Louisa or Elizabeth?”

Alice put down the kitten. Like Jerusalem, she suddenly knew he bore bad news. She stood up in a hesitant movement. Her strength was very small.

“Louisa,” said Richard, “I’ve brought her home. You’ll need to see to her. She isn’t happy with me.” He walked forward, and both women could see his jaw was held so tightly that the bones of it were showing against skin. The chickens come home to roost, thought Alice. Now I’ve hurt Louisa, too.

“Is she ill?” asked Jerusalem.

“No. My horse—” He stopped, unable to go on.

“Pharaoh? Not Pharaoh?” said Jerusalem.

“Dead.”

Alice began to weep. She sat back down, face in her hands.

“She’s weeping for more than Pharaoh,” Jerusalem said. “Oh, Richard, I’m that sorry. I’ll go see to your sister.” She touched her hand to his shoulder but walked out of the arbor, back to the kitchen to give the baby to her mother. Interesting, she thought, that he should ride all this way to tell me, only it is not me he comes to tell. Now why has he brought Louisa home? Into her mind came the vision of her daughter the last time she’d been in London whenever the Duke of Monmouth was near, and she suddenly knew.