Ladies in Waiting (30 page)

“The king tells her she must live,” Zabby said.

“And that mewling wretch will do whatever her husband orders her,” she said, but sighed with relief. The she lowered her voice. “It appears I am in your debt.”

Zabby waited.

“It has reached me that there was some suspicion of a plot against the queen . . . by some party other than Elphinstone, I mean. You heard mention of treason, saw a certain someone go to my rooms afterward. You could have ruined me, yet you told Charles it could not have been my scheme. Why?” She looked genuinely troubled, and considerably older.

“Because I did not think you would do such a thing.”

“What matter the truth of it? If I had such a chance to rid myself of my rival I’d take it, truth or no. Charles trusts you. If you had told him I was involved . . . well, I might have escaped burning, but I’d be exiled to Scotland at best, which is nearly as bad, and you’d reign supreme of all the harlots. You should have done me in while you had the chance.”

What if she’d done as Barbara would have? With a little malice, oh, just a bit, and only the barest bending of truth, she could have doomed one of the three women who stood between her and Charles. And had she not alerted Charles to his wife’s miserable treatment at the hands of her Portuguese ladies, doctors, and priests, the queen too would have perished, and then the field would be clear of all but Frances.

“You really are a little fool,” Barbara said with something very like affection. “Well, this is the strangest rivalry I’ve ever known.” She gave Zabby a wry smile. “Our Charles, if I may style him such, will be attending me tonight in my apartments. Perhaps you’d care to join us? No? Well, should you change your mind . . . Your face isn’t near as fishy as once I thought.”

She laughed and sailed off, but Zabby called softly after her, “Do you know they’ve captured Elphinstone?” She wasn’t sure if she should mention it, but Charles hadn’t said to keep it a secret, so perhaps it was now common knowledge. In any case, she had to find out, for Beth’s sake.

“No!” She was back quick as a cat, eager for news. “Is he at Newgate? I’m a-dying to view the devilish fellow, though since he never had the sense to rob me, I ought to cut him.”

“I don’t know where he is. No one knows they’ve taken him. It has been kept quiet for some reason. Can you find out where he is, and what will happen? Charles said just now he’s gone to order his execution, but there must be a trial, no?”

“And just why is it so important to you?” Barbara asked archly.

“It isn’t . . . not to me.”

“Ah, to your little mousy friend. She met Elphinstone before, did she not? Fancies herself in love with him? Poor wretch. Well, since you did me a favor, I’ll do one for you and find out all about it. I would have anyway, because Elphinstone’s a fascinating figure of a man. But if I can clear my debt of you with such a pittance!”

Zabby was left having no idea which of Barbara’s words were false, which sincere, what was meant for kindness and what for scorn.

Barbara was true to her word, though, and before nightfall a note came for Zabby while she was in her room with Beth. She read it twice over quickly and then, as the missive instructed, tore it into tiny pieces and tossed it into the fire.

“Beth, dear, I have something to tell you. Harry—your Harry—has been captured.” She rushed to say it before she lost her nerve. “He’s to be executed Friday.”

She expected hysteria.

Beth blinked heavily, blinked again.

“So that’s why he didn’t come for me,” she said. And then, “So soon?”

Zabby told her what Barbara’s note had revealed: that Elphinstone had become such a popular figure, it was feared his execution would cause unrest. Someone might try to rescue him from Newgate Prison or the execution cart, so his arrest was secret, his trial swift, and his death was to be prompt.

Zabby thought her friend must be in shock. Surely tears would come soon; tears or screams or unconsciousness. But Beth said very calmly, “I do not think it would be possible to visit him in Newgate, do you? But surely I can attend his execution. Will you come with me? And Eliza too.” She had the glassy, staring eyes of a madwoman, and she was almost smiling. “We’ll go as boys, like before. I’d like to wear my buttercup lutestring silk, though it doesn’t matter, really, does it?”

Beth suddenly reminded Zabby of St. Catherine on the wheel, smiling through her torture, so full of holy joy that the spiked wheel broke.

“Beth, I don’t think you ought to go. Hold him in your heart, but don’t go to see his suffering. He wouldn’t like you to.”

Beth gave her a quizzical little look.

“But if I don’t see him again, how am I to marry him?”

Chapter 24

The Tyburn Jig

T
HOUGH SHE FEARED
for Beth’s sanity, Zabby agreed to help her, and even pulled Eliza away from the last day’s rehearsal to join them. Beth swore she’d go, with or without her comrades.

“We’d better accompany her,” Eliza said in an aside. “In her state she’s likely to toss herself into the Thames. She’d do best to forget that criminal love of hers and latch on to the earl. She needs a protector to save her from her own foolishness, and I for one won’t be able to do it for long.”

“Why, where will you be going?”

She gave Zabby a sly look. “Didn’t you hear? My father has arranged a most suitable match.” She gave such a screech of laughter that even Beth was dragged out of her faintly smiling somnambulism.

“And you’re going to marry him?”

“Heavens, no!”

“Then what—”

But Beth urged them to hurry, and Zabby wouldn’t get her answer until that night.

Zabby and Eliza both dressed in the formal black coat, weskit, and close-fitting breeches Charles and some of the older members of court had begun to favor, but Beth clad herself as gaily as she could and still be faintly masculine. Fortunately, foppery was still in its fullest flower among the young, and the rule was, if any creature appeared too feminine to be believed, it was in all probability a man. She could not wear her yellow lutestring, but she chose from among Eliza’s disguises a suit of emerald and silver petticoat breeches that flowed in such profusion that, if not for the elegantly hosed calves exposed below, they might well have been a gown. Ribbons in a contrasting shade of pale green wove and fluttered at her breast and elbows, and her shirt, peeking through the pinking, was dyed sapphire.

She seemed calm, with just a little flutter in her breathing, and as proudly modest as a bride. She scrutinized herself in the glass, angling it to catch the dancing firelight, and pronounced herself ready. Then they snuck out into the chilly predawn gloom to meet Beth’s groom at the Triple Tree.

They went first to the street outside the Newgate Press Yard, where it all began under the sun’s first blessed rays. There was a double-barred gate—a grate, a space between housing a drowsing guard, and another set of bars—through which the girls could just see movement.

“Oh!” Beth cried, and Eliza squeezed her hand hard, digging her nails into the flesh to bring Beth to herself.

“We are men, and we don’t know him. If Harry sees you weep he will lose heart. Be strong!”

The guard between the gates stirred himself. “You gentlemen are up betimes,” he said, yawning and scratching.

“We were never yet to bed,” Eliza said cheerily. “Why, is it morning? Pray, what is that glowing orb in the firmament? Could it be the sun I’ve heard the poets rave about? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen such a thing. This must be daytime, gentlemen! A novelty! What are you about, good sir? What is this unattractive place?”

The guard looked at Eliza as if she were straight out of Bedlam; but then, gentlemen could afford to be peculiar. “This ’ere’s Newgate. The prison,” he added for clarification.

Eliza strutted forward to peer through the bars. “And who are they?”

“No one you need to know about.”

“I like to know everything,” she said, handing him a golden sovereign.

He leaned close to the gate and, spitting as he spoke, said, “Not a peep of it, but that there’s the infamous Elphinstone and his band. ’E’s to be hanged today. Mum’s the word, though. If it got about, the ladies would all throw theirselves under the cart, and the men would all challenge ’im to a duel before we could ’ang ’im. ’Ere now, you’ll not be wanting to dirty yer fine clothes, sir!” For Beth had her whole body pressed to the rusty bars, her hands slipping through, yearning to be with her love.

Something had caught Zabby’s ear. “Hanged, did you say?”

“Ay, what else for the terror of the ’ighways—and the maidenheads.”

“I mean, nothing else? Only hanged? Not drawn and quartered? Not burned?”

“Yer a hard one, sir, if I do say! Hanging will do the job right enough, never you fear.”

Zabby frowned, puzzled. Hanging was for everyday criminals, common thieves, and robbers. Surely Harry Ransley had been charged with treason. To kidnap the queen with intent of doing away with her, either by murder or secret imprisonment, was a high crime against the throne, and had direr consequences than mere death. A woman guilty of high treason was usually burned to death. A man was hung, drawn, and quartered, a gruesome process in which the culprit was strangled half to death, cut down just in time, only to have his abdomen sliced neatly open and his intestines slowly drawn out like so many yards of sausage before his still living (for a time, anyway) eyes. Then, when sufficiently dead, he was hacked into pieces and displayed about town, a head here, a leg there.

Many offenses were considered high treason. The old woman who shaved slivers from coins to melt down was treasonous, because she interfered with the national currency in a way that could, on a much larger scale, have catastrophic civil results. The woman who killed her neighbor was a simple murderess; the woman who slayed her husband or father committed treason, because she defied the natural order of authority, and by extension the Crown.

But rarely were such people actually burned or drawn and quartered. It was simply too messy, and though the public loved a good clean hanging, there would have been trouble if everyone technically charged with treason was immolated or mutilated. The English public had a strong stomach, but not quite that strong. Those terrible consequences were reserved for the worst of the worst.

No one could argue that to steal a queen was not a crime against the king, the highest of high treason.

What did Charles know? Why was he letting Harry off with a relatively dignified and quick hanging?

Or what, she suddenly thought, did he not want others to know?

A swarthy blacksmith came to strike off the fetters binding the prisoners’ wrists and legs. They were then tied with rope, their arms bent before their breasts in prayerful pose and bound together, and to their bodies.

A small sound came from the pretty gentleman who was so fascinated by the proceedings. They had slipped a noose around one prisoner’s neck.

“’E’s a lucky one, ’im. Someone ordered ’im and ’is friends silken ropes.”

“I hardly think comfort matters,” Eliza said.

“Bless ye, sir, not comfort or fashion, but mercy. A silk rope lies close, ye see, and the knot slips that tight. A man might hang from a hempen rope a quarter hour before ’e perishes. A silk noose chokes ’im off quick as anything. Was a red-haired lady in the finest carriage you ever did see, pulled up late last night and handed ’em out. They say ’e ’ad ’em all, skivvy and quality alike. A fine lover’s present, that.”

Though the execution had not been announced, a crowd was already gathering. Apprentices, vendors, buskers, huswives, were drawn by the clang of the blacksmith’s strike. They had lived and worked near Newgate long enough to know that sound meant a show. Those with the leisure to do so began to mill around the gate, and as a small crowd always draws a large crowd, the numbers quickly grew.

At eight the guards appeared, mounted with pistols and swords, and afoot with lances. Then the cart rumbled in, drawn by a pair of shaggy dray horses, already loaded with the three coffins that would be the criminals’ couches on the way to Tyburn, their beds ever after.

The condemned climbed into the wagon, and now Zabby recognized the other two, the lean pistoleer and the solid barbarian skilled in pipe and deadly flail. The latter’s teeth were cleaned of black grease now, and they gleamed white and even. Both of Harry’s accomplices looked like gentlemen, or gentry at the least.

Beth stared at the lover she had scarcely touched, memorized him, burned him into her heart, as behind her the crowd began to murmur a name in rapturous awe.
Elphinstone!
Boys were sent running to spread the word, and by the time the cart rolled down Newgate Road with the city marshal at the head and the chaplain in a sedan, the crowd had burgeoned to a hundred. A thousand marched behind the cart on Holborn, two thousand at St. Giles. By the time the criminals were offered their penultimate drink at the Bowl Inn, the gathering had swelled to dangerous numbers. The three Elizabeths kept to the front as best they could, fighting the press together, and had an easier time than most, for their fine clothes commanded respect. Still, it was a long, slow trudge to the next tavern, the Mason’s Arms, and on to Tyburn’s triple gallows.

It was impossible for Beth to catch Harry’s eye. She was lost in the crowd, and in any event, was at present the wrong gender to attract his attention. Plenty of other women were trying to do just that, though, throwing him kisses and hastily gathered nosegays of dried flowers.

Harry ignored them all—the morbidly flirtatious women hoping for a glance, a touch; the men, frankly admiring his luck (up until then); the curious cottagers longing to be a part of something famous, for the chance to say around a fire that night,
Yes, I saw him, and a fine brave sight he was, riding to his death without a care in the world, head high, curls bright on the knotted rope.
His companions were eager for their share of spirits at the two tavern stops, but Harry only shook his head and looked above and beyond the crowd. From time to time on the tortuous two-hour trek he spoke a low word to his friends, but apart from that he seemed hardly there at all.