Ladies in Waiting (25 page)

Catherine recoiled. “What have I done? A false pagan god? We must leave at once!”

“Oh, Your Majesty!” Beth cried. She reached out to restrain her queen and stopped herself just in time. “Wait . . .”

She looked desperate, and Zabby realized that if the queen left, Beth would lose her chance to elope with Henry. She squeezed Beth’s hand and whispered, “I know about your young lord, my dear. Don’t worry, I’ll keep her here.”

To the queen she said smoothly, “Your Majesty, don’t leave just yet. Now that we’ve come all this way, you must consider—will you pass up a chance to bear a child?”

Catherine stared at Zabby, alarmed.

“Oh, I don’t know that there’s anything to it, and it is, as you say, naught but a pagan shrine, but think on this: For centuries, millennia, women have been coming here to ask for the help of Sulis. Would they still come, generation upon generation, mother and daughter, if there was not some small sign of its efficacy?”

“But it is a false god. Why, to even be here is almost a sin.”

“Forget Sulis, Your Majesty,” Zabby said. “What if there is some other explanation? We know that the waters at Bath can cure certain ailments. The ancients thought that was the goddess—now we say it is some essence in the water, no more. Perhaps the same holds true here. Look at that hole—it seems to extend to the bowels of the earth. What if it emits some rare and precious vapor, a healing gas? They call it Sulis, but it may be only science. If women who come here say they have easy births, then why not try it? Forget the reason, and look at the facts.”

Catherine hesitated, returning to her old nervous habit of counting the rosary on her fingertips. If there was any chance, and she failed to grasp it . . .

“Will you go first?” she asked her maids of honor.

Eliza laughed. “Allow me,” she said, blustering forward. “If a sinner such as I ain’t stricken down immediately, you three should be safe.”

Zabby thought of her own secret sin, and wondered.

“What do I do?” Eliza asked.

Beth stepped up, casting Zabby a quick grateful glance. “I’m told you kneel at the shrine and . . .”

“I will not pray to a pagan god!” Catherine said.

“I don’t think you have to pray, Your Majesty, and who’s to hear it anyway? But they say you lean over the opening and ask for something, then make an offering. Something small, a coin or ribbon. Like a wishing well.”

Catherine lightened at once. “Oh, a wishing well. There was one near where I grew up. A mere harmless entertainment.” It never occurred to her that her natal well might have begun life as the holy site of some long-forgotten goddess. “Go on, Eliza, and if you’re smitten, I’ll pray for your soul.” She gave a nervous laugh.

The girls and their queen retreated out of earshot while Eliza knelt by the shrine.

Eliza chuckled at herself; she scarcely believed in the religion of her birth, and certainly gave no credence to some old goddess who hadn’t the good sense to drift forgotten into the mists of obscurity like a dowager when the new bride arrives. But it was not long before her keen sense of the dramatic took over, and she imagined herself not in the moment but on a stage, the rocks only plaster, the hole descending below the proscenium, where some actor thin and nimble enough to play the part would presently rise, wraithlike, to murmur strange prophesies in iambic pentameter. She found her voice, and who knows but that she didn’t fool Sulis herself?

“Spirit of the waters, goddess of this holy hole . . .” No, that would never do, unless this was to be a comedy. She leaned over and stared into the shadowy pit, trying to find exactly the right words for her monologue, something that would make the audience, if there was one, shiver with delicious premonition. Before she could frame the words, she found herself growing dizzy, and swayed above the pit as if she would pitch forward.

Give me strength,
she begged Sulis or herself, God or the world.
Give me the courage to leave comfort and safety and family and cast myself on the mercy of the audience as a playwright and a player. I have been my father’s coin, a golden thing he’d spend to buy the ear of the king. Let me be my own coin, a ha’penny, if only it is one I can spend as I wish. Give me the words to astound the world, the voice to thrill them, and please, let me have no regrets when I have thrown away wealth.

She bent her head to the well and stared into the blackness, looking, listening for answers. But Sulis, like every goddess and every woman, gives her answers in her own good time, and Eliza heard only her own surging thoughts.

On impulse she unclasped an emerald bracelet from her wrist and let it slither from her fingers like an asp into the depths. She thought she heard it brush the sides, but she never heard it hit bottom.

“Oh, well,” she said aloud. “If it doesn’t work out, I can always come back here with a grappling hook on a cord. Likely every lady with a hankering is as madly generous to Sulis as I’ve been. If I’m poor, I’ll just fish up their wishes.”

Beth stood and brushed off her skirts, lighthearted again, and thought how to turn that last line into poetry.

“Here I am, unblasted and uncursed,” Eliza said blithely, returning to her friends. “Go on, Beth. Your turn at the altar.”

Beth blushed fiercely and caught Zabby’s smile. “No, you go, Zabby. There’s nothing else I wish for.” She peered through the boscage, waiting for Harry.

“There’s nothing I wish for either. You go, Your Majesty.”

“Nonsense,” Catherine said, still a little afraid of the shrine, delaying as long as possible. “Why, a girl of sixteen must have as many wishes as there are stars in the sky. Pick a worthy one and go.”

The command of a monarch could not be refused, and Zabby went slowly down the path. Her desires were not stars but one single burning sun that dimmed all else with its brilliance.

She did not kneel but stood defiantly above the maw, peering into it, wondering at its secrets. She had no real faith in anything she could not observe or theoretically surmise, but all the same she had time and again seen the efficacy of folk wisdom. The slaves on her father’s estate packed cobwebs into freely bleeding cane-knife wounds and the flow quickly ceased—far faster than if they had stuffed them with cotton. They said the web is accustomed to being knit by the spider, and knits the wounds as well, but Zabby knew there must be some other mechanism. She didn’t understand it, but she knew it worked. There must be some property of this well, or cave, or pit . . .

She dropped a pebble into it and heard no splash, no sound at all. She bent and put her face to the gap. With a faint susurrus the earth exhaled in a warm, sweet breath, a gust that made her gasp, inhaling deeply of the cloying gas. She felt lightheaded, but cogent enough to think,
Yes, a vapor, I was sure of it,
before reclining, half conscious, beside the shrine. The hot, honeyed smell was gone, and she knew she should move before it returned, but the worn stones were oddly comfortable, and she began to think, or dream—she was not sure which.

If Catherine dies in childbed,
Zabby thought, for the first time not at all troubled,
Charles will marry again. He has to—there cannot be a king without a queen, a kingdom without an heir. Will he wed that simpering golden fool? Not if I have anything to say about it. And I will. Alone, in our elaboratory, I will have him to myself, as no other scheming hussy of the court ever does. A baron isn’t much, but it is enough—Frances’s family is no better. And then, once he is mine, he will never even think of her again. Not her, not Barbara
. . .

It was not a wish, a possibility—it was a vision, an oracle, a certainty. Bemused by that intoxicating breath churned from miles below, she saw herself as queen, her hand in Charles’s, ruling together, shining such a light of knowledge and progress across the land as would never be dimmed.

Her head spinning pleasantly, she tilted to look down the hole once again, smiling at the unseen forces, breathing the earth’s breath. Then she remembered: an offering.
What do I have precious enough to give?
She had a pretty garnet ring, pins with bits of topaz in her hair, but they were only minerals, and surely the deep beneath had enough gems. She was a bit confused now. Was it a well, or a goddess? A mouth? A scientific curiosity? No matter. There was one thing so precious, even pure science would value it, a worthy sacrifice to achieve her ends. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the silk scarf of the tempest-tossed sailors. She kissed it fervently, feeling Charles’s lips in the weave, and loosed it to spiral like an ash tree seed until it was swallowed.

She lay in her waking dream a while longer, the silk kiss lingering on her lips, until merry voices called her, teasing, and even Catherine jested that she must save some of the well’s wishes for her poor queen. Zabby sat dizzily, then rose, the trees marching in a widdershins dance before settling into their rooted places. She had a sudden fierce headache, and felt ill.

What have I done?

A bare moment later, she could hardly recall. She felt for her scarf. It was gone. So that much was true. Tears came then; the scarf had been her nightly bedmate, the confidante of whispered secrets.

The memory of her wish returned to her in bits and pieces.
No! I don’t really want that! I take it back!
If she could retrieve her offering . . . She returned to the chasm’s lip, then pulled away. She couldn’t risk breathing that vapor again.

I swore I’d never even think of that. I cannot go near the shrine again. One breath, and I lost control.

She felt, acutely, how near to the surface her desires were. She thought she’d fought them so valiantly, beaten them until they cowered, but they were craftier and subtler than she’d ever imagined. She was afraid of herself, of what she would do, could do.

Zabby took great gulps of pure air, backing away, but she could not get that final image out of her head: standing at Charles’s side, his queen.

She turned, and found the only obstacle to her success standing before her with her brow furrowed. “Are you unwell?” Catherine asked.

“Oh, Your Majesty!” Zabby cried, and fell at her feet.

“What is it, child? Did you make a foolish wish? Don’t fret—this is all a jest. I’m sorry we came here. What was your wish, then?”

“I . . . I wished something about you.”

“How kind!” Catherine said, and Zabby dug her nails into her palms. “Did you wish I would bear a son?”

Zabby gathered herself together.
She’s right—it is a jest, a superstition. I breathed noxious fumes and hallucinated, and now I feel unwell. I haven’t cursed this noble woman. I haven’t lusted after a married man, my sovereign.

I haven’t hoped with all my heart that poor Catherine is indeed with child, so that she may die trying to bring it into the world.

She sniffed and hastily wiped her eyes. “I
do
wish you would bear a son,” she said, equivocating. “I wish all of the best things in life for you.” With a superstition she never knew she had, she cast her thoughts back to the chasm, hoping this new, controlled, conscious wish might undo the one she had made in her moment of drugged weakness.

“Then I suppose I’d better add my own feeble wish to it,” Catherine said, and started for the shrine.

“Your Majesty, don’t!” Zabby said.

Catherine looked back.

“There is something there, coming from the hole. It made me dizzy. It made me think things I shouldn’t.”

Catherine, misunderstanding, seeing her flush, sighed and said, “You’ll find when you are married, such lusty thoughts are quite natural. Now ready the ponies; I’ll only be a moment.”

Watching her disappear into the little wood, Zabby knew exactly what Catherine would wish for. She wouldn’t have a thought for herself. Not
Let me come safely through delivery.
Not
Let me live to bear him many children and watch them grow to take his place.
Simple, good woman that she was, she would think only of one thing.
Let me bear him a living son.
That done, she would have no care for her own life. Her duty in this world would be accomplished.

This business of wishing and praying and offering is falderal,
Zabby thought. Still, she fervently hoped Catherine would, through cleverness or chance, frame her own wish in such a way as to undo Zabby’s.

It must have been the aftereffects of the chthonic gas: Zabby was suddenly sure that someone, some thing, had indeed heard the shameful wish of her inmost heart and, maliciously, granted her the power to make it come true.

A moment later the queen came out, coyly smiling, and Zabby knew, unequivocally, that if she wanted to, she could be in her place.

“I have made my wish, for what good it will do,” the queen began, but before she could say more, they heard a low, rhythmic rumble of rushing hooves. One of the ponies did her best to rear in alarm, but she was so stout she only managed a hop and then tried to dance sideways.

“Riders?” Catherine asked, unconcerned but hoping vaguely that Charles had been worried about her, discovered her whereabouts, and come in search.

Beth broke from her friends and rushed down the path, lifting her skirt to show layer upon layer of petticoats, colored and plain, as she ran.

The horsemen thundered into sight. At their head was a laughing young man with a wide, handsome mouth, flashing white teeth—and a black silk mask over his face and hair. Two others flanked him, leading fresh horses.

“Harry!” Beth cried, and reached up to him as his horse came to a dusty halt. But he swung down, pausing only long enough to say, “Where is the queen?” before striding past her. He spied Catherine before Beth could answer.

“Into the saddle, m’lady,” one of the other men said.

“But wait. I must be with him.”

“We leave within the minute,” the man replied gruffly. “Mount or stay behind.” He held his cupped hands for Beth to use as a step and settled her awkwardly astride.

“Why so soon?” she asked, baffled. “I must say goodbye to my friends.”