Royal Harlot (8 page)

“Take care of your words, Barbara, I beg you,” cautioned Roger swiftly. “The Commonwealth still holds sway, and their laws with it.”

“But the army won’t follow Richard Cromwell.” I’d well learned the complicated lessons in politics that Roger had taught me. I understood that the true leaders within parliamentary England were not those members themselves, but the old Protector’s generals, Monck and Lambert and Fleetwood, taciturn men of action who were as chary with their allegiances as they were with their men’s lives. “They believed in the father, but distrust the son. If Richard had, say, General Monck in his pocket, then that would be another matter, but without the army’s support, then Parliament’s grip on the country surely must collapse.”

“In time, Barbara, in time,” Roger cautioned. “These things never run swiftly. There’ll be official mourning, of course, and a state funeral, but after that is done, confusion is sure to follow in Parliament and across the country. And you are correct about Richard Cromwell. He hasn’t the stomach for leadership.”

“And then the king shall return!” I’d heard so much of Roger’s plotting and scheming, eagerly following his allies’ successes and failures, that I couldn’t keep from crowing now. “Oh, what a joyful day for England!”

Roger nodded solemnly, though his joy beamed from his eyes there in the slanting sunlight. “And for us, Barbara. An auspicious day for change and transformation of every kind.”

“Of course,” I said, not quite understanding, but not caring, either. “If England is joyful, than we shall be, too.”

Belatedly I drew one of the apples from my muff, and handed it to him like a golden prize.

“Here you are, Mr. Palmer,” I said playfully. “I offer you the bravest of worlds, if you’ll but claim it for your own!”

He took it slowly, briefly clasping his hand over mine with the fruit inside. “I could have all the world in my hand, yet still not be happy were you not a part of it.”

I tipped my head to look up at him from beneath my lashes, still unsure as to where this serious gambit of his might lead, and studied the curves of my own apple for the choicest place to bite. “How vastly kind of you to say, Roger.”

He nodded again and looked down at the apple in his hand while the wide brim of his hat shadowed his face. “It is bold of me, I know, but might I ask the state of your, ah, your connection to the Earl of Chesterfield?”

I felt my smile turn dry and brittle, like the leaves in the trees overhead soon would with the coming season. Once again Philip had chosen to absent himself, though whether for an amorous intrigue or a political one, he’d not vouchsafed to me. His absence and neglect both pained me, and I’d no wish to be reminded of it like this.

“It is bold of you to ask that of me, Roger, unconscionably bold,” I said. “I do not see how my
connection
with His Lordship is any worry of yours, Roger.”

“It’s not,” he said, clearly so miserable that I almost—almost— pitied him. “That is, my father is concerned.”

“Concerned about me?” I asked, that brittleness still in my voice. “Why should Sir James Palmer concern himself about me, when we’ve never so much as bowed to one another across a street?”

“Barbara, please,” Roger pleaded. “My father is old, and in weakening health. It’s natural for him to show concern for me as his son.”

“So this concern of his is for you, and not for me?” I bit into the apple, my teeth piercing the skin and digging deep into the sweet flesh.

“Father no longer lives in our house in London, you see, but at Dorney Court, near Windsor, in the country and away from the noise of the city, in the care of my mother, a most pious lady,” Roger explained in so much anxious, unwanted detail I could easily guess what was coming next. “He has heard rumors that have, ah, put your name with mine, and he—”

“He is
concerned
.” I bit again into the apple, heedless of the sweet juice and flecks of bright skin that sprayed and beaded on my lips. “Sir James is
concerned
because his only son has been seen with a Villiers. A
Villiers
. And what, pray, is your country nest of pious Palmers compared to that?”

Roger began again. “I’m sure the rumors were false, Barbara, yet—”

“Are you so sure?” I demanded. He was foundering like a man thrown out of his depth in a stormy sea, but I was too angry to offer him any succor or relief. “I thought you knew me well enough, Mr. Palmer, but perhaps you don’t, if you would dare ask me such a question.”

“I do not ask for myself, Barbara,” he said, humbly bowing his head again, “but for my father’s sake.”

“You are a man grown, Roger,” I said, biting each word with the same savageness with which I’d bitten the apple. “At least you should be, if you wish to address me. I’ve made my own choices of friends and actions, my decisions, and whether they’ve been wise or not, I’ll make neither apologies nor explanations. Accept me as you find me, Roger, else you’ll not see me again.”

He looked back down at his own apple, the very picture of dejection. I’d not intended to be so harsh, but his father’s question inflamed me because of what lay behind it. Clearly the old man judged me to be a whore and a slattern because I was Philip’s lover. I’d never hidden that, nor felt shame for it. None of us in our circle who were similarly engaged did. Roger himself had dallied with other ladies, and I’d wager that even this sanctimonious father of his had had his sport when he’d been young, in the days of the old court.

“Which is it, Roger?” I asked. “If I don’t suit you as I am, then I’ll take myself away from you, and not sully you further.”

“You’d never sully me, Barbara,” he exclaimed, wounded. “Not a lady so beautiful and delightful as you.”

“Is that your answer, then?”

He paused, clearly at war with himself, for which in a small, vengeful way, I was glad. His gaze dipped lower, from my face to my bosom, and I knew at once his decision.

“Yes,” he said, puffing out his cheeks with the single word. “No more questions.”

“I am glad.” I slipped my hand into the crook of his arm and smiled, willing to be gracious now that I’d gotten my way. “You will, I think, never regret it.”

 
For as long as the dreary Protectorate had been in power, it seemed his heirs took longer still to bury the Lord Protector himself. The first day allotted for the funeral, over a month after the death, was deemed insufficient, and it was postponed again until the end of November. Roger had cautioned me that these things seldom run swiftly, and how right he’d been.

Burdened with irony that his followers refused to see, Cromwell was buried with all the pomp and costly ceremony usually reserved for true kings. Those spectators who could recall the funeral of James I saw remarkable similarities; to younger folk such as I, the whole affair seemed no more than a mockery of beliefs both Puritan and Royalist, with everything jumbled together in an unholy mess of symbolism.

Though it was commonly understood that Cromwell’s body had been buried by his family soon after his death, a cunningly wrought effigy now took the place of his rotting corpse. Crowned and dressed in royal robes with an orb and scepter tucked alongside, this effigy was borne through the streets on a bier drawn by six horses with plumes atop their heads. A lengthy procession of distinguished mourners followed, from diplomats in the elegant mourning of foreign courts, to great lords, country mayors, and generals, to a cluster of nicely wailing common women.

I stood on one side of the Strand beside Roger, watching the procession from behind the special draped railings as it passed us by with excruciating slowness. Of course we hadn’t been among those to receive tickets to participate, and a good thing, for they’d had to gather at Somerset House by eight in the morning. Huddling in the blustery cold as long as we did was more than enough for me, and more than enough, too, to see the gaudy show of plumed horses, drummers, banners, and trumpeters on its way to the abbey.

True, we were not sympathetic mourners, but there to ogle from curiosity more than anything else. But it did seem to me that the mood of the crowd in general was closer to ours than to the wooden-faced folk in the procession—a splendid omen for the king’s return. Few wept, and more than a handful made disrespectful jests as whispered asides. Even the infantrymen guarding the railings in their new black-banded crimson coats drank strong spirits and smoked and spat at will, and winked slyly at me when Roger’s head was turned.

“Let’s leave, Roger,” I said at last, though the procession still stretched into the distance in each direction, farther than we could see toward Charing Cross and Whitehall. “I’m so cold you’ll have to bury me soon, too.”

He nodded with no argument, and we began to make our way through the hoards. We had no choice but to walk, for the streets had been ordered closed, and besides, they were so full of people that no carriages or hackneys could have passed. Finally we found a small cookshop that had remained open, and though nearly every bench inside was taken, we squeezed our way to a place in the back, mercifully close to the fireplace. There was more merriment than somber mourning here, too, with voices happily raised in convivial good cheer.

A harried maid brought us ale in pewter tankards and set a steaming dish of sausages before us. I’d never smelled anything so deliciously fragrant, the scent of the ground mace together with the browned chopped meat and suet cooked in butter, and set in a pool of mustard sauce.

“Here you go, Barbara,” Roger said, tipping several of the glistening sausages onto my plate. “Is there any finer dish on a chill day than Oxford Kate’s sausages?”

I pushed back the hood of my cloak and drank deep of the ale. “And who, pray, is Oxford Kate?”

“You shouldn’t ask that of a Cambridge man,” he said, laughing, “but I’ve always heard she was the first cook to concoct these little sausages for the students there. Go on, try one.”

I speared one of the small sausages with my fork, holding it up before my face to consider it: no larger than the size of my middle finger, yet delectably greasy, with juice oozing around the fork’s twin tines. “Poor Kate! Is this the best-sized prick she can expect, surrounded by so many randy young scholars?”

Roger gulped and snorted his ale, and glanced about to see if any others had heard me. “You’re a wicked lass, Barbara.”

“Not wicked, Mr. Palmer, but honest,” I said, running my tongue the squat length of the sausage. “Fie, fie on your puny Oxford men, if they expect to please the ladies with only so much meat as this.”

I slipped the sausage daintily between my lips and into my mouth. Because it was so small, it was no great trick to take the entirety into my mouth, and a tasty morsel it was, too, after so long and cold a day. My cheeks must have bulged with it, and my lips glistened with the fatty juice.

Ah, but all gentlemen are alike in their carnal thoughts, and how easy this makes it for women to play them however they please! From the dumbstruck look upon Roger’s long face, I knew he’d watched me devour that sausage with his own share of simmering lubricity, just as I knew he was imagining another essence of his own manufacture glistening on my sated lips.

All of which, of course, was exactly how I’d hoped to stir Roger on this day of national mourning. I was honest, yes, but I
was
wicked, too. The more ale and sausages I consumed amidst the cheerful clatter of the cookhouse, the more delectable Roger looked to me. I’m not sure what else could have made me choose that day, except that I’d neither seen nor heard from Philip for over two months, and Roger was here and being extraordinarily pleasant to me, and that I wished to send the most priggish man in all England to his next reward with a tribute more fitting than all drums and trumpets.

But then Roger did something that reduced all these wicked inclinations of mine to a sentimental pudding. He reached inside his coat, drew out a small leather box, and slid it across the pockmarked table to me.

“I had this made for you, Barbara.” He cleared his throat with a sawmill’s scraping rumble, so unsure was he of how to give a token to a lady. “Because, ah, you share my devotion to His Majesty, and my belief in his right to the throne of this country. It seems especially proper for today.”

I set down my fork and opened the little hinged box. Nestled inside was a chain and pendant framed in herringbone silver gilt, a faceted glass heart. Buried deep within the heart for safekeeping was a cypher wrought of twisted golden wire, so finely made that it might have been the work of dainty fairy fingers rather than mortal man’s.

“It’s a
C
and an
R,
of course,” Roger explained. “For Carolus Regnum. Charles the King. They first were made to honor our martyred sovereign, but now the followers of his royal son wear them as well. You’ve shown yourself to me to be worthy of our party, and with this around your throat, others will recognize your loyalty as well.”

“Oh, Roger,” I whispered, tracing the cypher’s delicate outline with my fingertip. The significance of his gift was not lost on me. This was no ordinary bauble, such as a man gives to his sweetheart, but a symbol of far greater meaning. “That you would grant such a pendant to me!”

He was watching the glinting gold and glass in my hand, and I’d no notion of which mattered more to him. “I’ve spoken of you to the leaders of our group, and they agree that a lady of impeccable loyalty could be of use. There would be risks. There would be danger. I can’t deny that.”

“Do you mean I could carry messages for you?” I asked with excitement. My teasing play with the sausage now seemed shameful bawdry. No one had ever expected more of me than that I be amusing and beautiful, and this—this was a heady expectation indeed. “You would trust me that much?”

“In the right circumstances, yes,” he said, and the admiration with which he regarded me made me shiver. “Put the chain around your neck, Barbara. I wish to see it there.”