Ladies in Waiting (24 page)

They retired early, and he spent every night in her tent.

By the time they quit Tunbridge Wells, Catherine had begun to suspect that she might at last be pregnant. She mentioned it to no one, though, not even her trusted maids of honor. She didn’t realize that most of the court followed her monthly courses so closely that they suspected almost as soon as she did.

Chapter 19

The Quickened Queen

C
ATHERINE WAS NOT A NATURAL HORSEWOMAN
, but in an attempt to show she was as good as Frances, she donned her tightest habit and rode a large, handsome leopard-spotted gray for the last leg into Bath. She trotted at Charles’s side all the while, smiling blithely, but unfortunately the beast had an awkward gait and she wasn’t skilled enough to correct it, so by the time they rode into the city of creamy gold stone, her thighs felt like they’d been ground under a pestle.

The three Elizabeths, seeing her distress, lured her into the thermal baths, and she found these so soothing, she visited every day. Wearing long, full shifts that billowed about them, they would soak by the hour, gossiping (another sport for which the queen was acquiring a taste), singing, and helping the queen perfect her English. Sometimes Simona or Winifred joined them, but the older ladies thought it was a barbaric habit that would disrupt the humors.

“A good wipe-down with a damp cloth every other day is enough for any modest Englishwoman,” one of her ladies sniffed. But Catherine loved to let her muscles melt, her vision blur in the steam, dreaming of a warm nursery filled with happy children, while outside the baths the first frost settled on the grass.

She drank the heavy ferrous waters too, with each sip feeding the baby she knew grew inside her. She ate the sweets and pastries the city was becoming famous for, and her slim figure grew rounder. Charles began to pay attention to places he’d previously overlooked.

One morning, Charles had risen betimes for a game of tennis, while Catherine lazed in bed. She sent the chambermaids away and only the three Elizabeths remained.

“What would you like to do today, Your Majesty?” Eliza asked as she rummaged through the queen’s jewels, holding them up to her throat and thinking how well they’d look against Nelly’s creamy skin. She passed along a pair of fire-laced opal drops to Beth, who fixed them in Catherine’s earlobes. “Lady Southesk is setting up tables for gleek this morning.” The card game was currently in fashion at court. “I believe some of the ladies are going riding, and there’s a party going to Lord Bartlett’s estate to tour his gardens.”

“It all sounds dreadfully dull,” Catherine replied.

“What would you like to do, then, Your Majesty? Maybe a bit of archery?” The queen was becoming quite a sure shot with her light bow. Like fishing, it was another pastime that required patience, and she had that to spare.

Catherine rose and stretched, deciding, and suddenly Beth let out a little shriek. “Oh, Your Majesty!” She pointed to a red blot of blood on the white sheet. “We had all hoped that you’d at last . . .”

Catherine’s hand went to her throat as if she were choking, and then dropped to her belly, now ever so slightly rounded. “No! It cannot be!” She fell to her knees, keening a prayer, then stopped abruptly in the middle of a plea to the Virgin and got to her feet.

“Take the sheets away and dispose of them. Say nothing to a soul. This is a small matter. I’m told breeding women often bleed a bit.” But her lips were pressed tight and she was scarcely breathing.

“Then it’s true? You’re pregnant?” Beth asked.

Catherine nodded, ignoring the gripping sensation low in her abdomen.
Misfortune is like the devil,
she thought.
To acknowledge it gives it strength. A bit of blood is nothing. I know I carry Charles’s child.

“But I’ve not yet told Charles,” she confided to her maids of honor. “I wanted to wait until I was certain. And then . . .” She gave a little forced laugh. “If he knew, he’d bundle me home and coddle me for eight more months, and I’m having such a good time here.” She swept the sheet off the bed and scrubbed with a handkerchief at the russet stain on the down-stuffed mattress underneath. A sob escaped her again.

“Don’t worry, Your majesty,” Zabby said. “I’ve midwived many times at home on Barbados, and what you say is true: there is often blood early on. Most of the time it means nothing.”
And the rest of the time it means a miscarriage,
she thought.

“How is it that you’ve midwived?” the queen asked, astonished.

“We have hundreds of slaves on the estate,” Zabby said, “and perhaps three doctors on the whole island. Many of the slaves and bondswomen are competent midwives themselves, but if there’s no one else, or if it is a difficult case, I assist. I’ve birthed babes, foals, pigs.”

“But a foal isn’t the next king of England. Oh, what should I do?” Despite her best efforts, her desperation was evident. “Should I send for the physician? If the gossips think I’ve miscarried, they’ll never let me live it down. What good’s a barren queen?”

“You’re not barren, Your Majesty,” Zabby said firmly, all the while thinking,
If the queen gives birth, there’s no chance for me.
Then,
What if she dies in childbirth?
a demon voice whispered in Zabby’s brain, barely audible. She pinched herself hard on the thigh and buried the thought under a thousand blessings. “Perhaps you should send for the physician after all, just in case.”

But Catherine, though frightened by those crimson spots, didn’t want to let a lack of faith doom her. If God had granted her a child, He would be offended if she doubted Him. She tended to think of God as the ancient Greeks regarded their pantheon, having capacity for a few petty human emotions. If she let a little blood shake her, then her child might be stripped from her, just to teach her a lesson. Blessed Mary might forgive her fears, but God would punish her.

She forced herself to be cheerful. “No, let us disport ourselves. Archery, did you say? Fetch my quiver and let us go to the green.”

But though her courses didn’t come, Catherine continued to bleed irregularly, a bit on her petticoat, a bit more on her bedclothes. She kept it secret from the other ladies, but at last she got her favorite maids of honor, her confidantes, together, and sobbed wretchedly.

“Tell me what to do!” she begged of them. “I must give him a child—I must! It is my only duty in this life, and if I should fail . . .”

She thought Zabby would have midwife lore for her, or Eliza some jest to cheer her. But it was Beth who said, timidly, “There is a shrine nearby. I . . . Someone told me it is the shrine of one who protects mothers in difficult times. Women go there to ask for an easy birth. We can go there, just the four of us. No one else need know.”

“A shrine? To one of the saints?”

Beth knew it was not, but she didn’t think the queen would be willing to pray at an old Celtic altar. “I think so. I don’t know which one. The local women swear by her.”

“I’ll go!” Catherine said, starting up and scrubbing away her tears. “Where is it? I’ll have my coach made ready.”

“Can your coachman be trusted, Your Majesty?” Beth asked. “Does he gossip? Everyone near Bath knows why women go to that shrine, and if you don’t want anyone to know you’re quick . . .”

“You’re right. We can hire a coach.”

“The women say no man is allowed to approach the shrine,” Beth said. Harry, in his latest message, had been very specific that she should get the queen alone.
If there’s a coachman or footman there, he may be your mother’s agent,
he told her.
She has spies everywhere, you know. He might try to stop us from eloping.

She didn’t call it lying.
Subterfuge
was a better word. She never would have believed she’d have such a knack for it, but love gave her courage, loquacity, a swift and crafty mind.

Zabby gave a gasp and pretended she’d just stubbed her toe. That midnight conversation came back to her. Of course—this was it! Their dear Beth was going to join her lover tonight. He’d get the queen’s blessing and carry her off to a life of love and delight. Oh, lucky Beth.

She thought of Charles, of the love she would never have, and forced herself not to notice how haggard and unwell the queen had been looking lately.

“We’ll go straightaway!” Catherine said, gaining hope.

“Not this morning,” Beth said. “Tomorrow, late, when the others are dining. They say . . .” She wracked her brains for something convincing. “They say if you visit the shrine near nightfall, you will receive a dream from the saint that will tell you what you need to know.”

“Very well, then. Tomorrow.”

That would be quite enough time for Beth to get a message to Harry.

Chapter 20

The Shrine of Sulis

I
T WAS BRISK
the next evening, but the day had been sunny enough that the sharp scent of late-blooming verbenas and pinks still rose from the roadside to fill the air. Catherine and the maids bundled into a pony cart Eliza had wheedled from one of the local families, who loaned it gladly when they learned their queen was to ride in it. Why, once word got around, they could sell horse and cart for twice their price, as souvenirs of the royal visit . . . though perhaps it would be better to keep it themselves, and tell guests they sat where the royal rump once rested.

This outing had none of the festival atmosphere of their last evening adventure. They dressed somberly, the queen in deep indigo with a high neck, and no jewels. Even Beth, after much debate, decided a serviceable gown of sturdy make was better than silks and finery. Harry had told her they would have to ride hard for a while before they’d rendezvous with a coach, and proceed from there to a secret chapel where he had a minister prepared to marry them by special license. She packed an inconspicuous bag with her most minute treasures—her yellow gloves, a length of the emerald ribbon that looked so becoming tied in a bow at her throat, a swirled turquoise brooch Eliza had forced on her, swearing it wasn’t her color.

Under her dress she wore layer upon layer of her finest petticoats and sheer shifts, some gifts from the queen, some of which she’d painstakingly embroidered herself. She didn’t think her Harry would mind if she had a plain dress, but she rather thought he’d like her to have pretty underthings.

The ponies fretted and shivered their withers as Zabby drove them out of Bath. They were used to a clean, warm barn and sugar from the daughters of the house, and shied at shadows along the roughening path. There was a queer yellow half light in the air as the sun descended and warm day met cool night.

“It looks like a poisonous vapor,” Catherine said, and told them of a sickening mist that rose from a marshland not far from her convent and periodically devastated the town perched at its banks.

Zabby was too distracted to tell her that the disease likely came not from air but from water befouled by their waste. Beth thought only that the mist might make her curls come undone. What if she looked so bedraggled that Harry decided he’d made a bad bargain and rode away without asking the queen for her hand?

They rode for almost an hour—and could have walked nearly as fast, if that had accorded with their dignity and footwear. The ponies usually pulled children, with a plump nurse or elderly groom strolling at their head, and only managed a trot under protest. Even then, their short legs made a great show of lifting primly and elegantly high, but accomplished little in the way of distance with each stride.

“Here, I think,” Beth said, touching Zabby’s arm.

“You think?” Eliza asked.

“He said turn at the little ruined inn. Yes, there.” They could just see the skeleton of what had once been a building, long since burned out and overgrown with dying bracken.

“
He?
” Catherine asked. “I thought this was a shrine for women. What does a man know of it?” She nervously smoothed the midnight silk that lay flat over her stomach, flat where it should have bulged. Her belly still fluttered with what she was certain were the kicks and caperings of new life, but there was an ache, too, which in recent days slowly tightened around her like a snare.

“Oh, well . . .” Beth had run out of lies, but suddenly they were there.

The land dipped down sharply into a close copse, and Zabby pulled the ponies to a halt. Where the vegetation thickened stood the tumbled remains of a dry stone wall.

“It must have been badly built,” Eliza said. “All the ones I’ve seen have stood for centuries.”

They left the rig loose—it was obvious the ponies would never exert themselves without provocation—and picked their way along the narrow path that led into the little wood. It was just the sort of place a vixen would have liked to make her den, secret and dry, but the path was marked by many shoeprints and the flotsam of human passage: pipe ashes, torn laces, scraps of paper. No fox would have dared dig her earth here. Still, it felt wild, and though they knew the main road was nearby, it seemed to the girls that they’d stepped into something primeval.

Zabby ran her hand over the crumbling, lichen-covered stones. “Perhaps this wall
did
stand for centuries,” she said. “Look at that. Surely it is Roman.”

She pointed to a worn squat stone with the barest impression of having three sides.

“A grave?” Catherine asked, crossing herself.

“A terminus, I think. A Roman boundary stone.” Zabby crouched down and could just make out the letters
DSM.

A few more steps brought them to the shrine.

“Is that it?” the queen asked. “It looks more like a well. Which saint’s can it be?”

A low oval wall of flaking stones surrounded a navel that descended into the earth deeper than any of them could see in the failing light.

“I think I know whose shrine this is,” Zabby said. “Lady Bartlett was telling local legends over dinner a few nights ago. Don’t you remember?
Dea Sulis Minerva.
This must be a shrine of Sulis. She was here before the Romans, Lady Bartlett said, but was so important to the native Britons that the Romans adopted her as an aspect of their own Minerva rather than offend the locals by banishing her.”