Dark Angels (48 page)

“You told my fortune at All Hallows’,” Barbara said. Don’t tell too much, advised Gracen. Make him work for his coins.

“I told many fortunes that night,” Ashmole answered smoothly, watching her.

“I’d hear mine again.”

He was silent, shuffling the cards. At last he began to place them upon the cloth of the table. He put seven down, turned one over. “Fortunate in love.”

She made no movement, but he could feel her smile. He turned over two more, said nothing, turned over the rest. Quickly he picked up the cards, reshuffled them, and dealt out seven again. He turned three of them over. Now he knew exactly who she was—the laughing lovely who would die soon.

“Mademoiselle has a wonderful life ahead,” he said, pulling the cards back into the deck. “She will live a long life, surrounded by children and then grandchildren, and her husband will prosper. It’s in the cards.”

“They say I’ll die, don’t they?”

He never answered questions like that, no matter what the cards said. “No such thing. They promise—”

“How much for truth? I’ve brought guineas, gold guineas. How many of them will it take for you to tell me the truth?”

“What is truth, mademoiselle? An imp, a wisp, changing from moment to moment, ephemeral, hard to grasp.”

She put a guinea on the table. Even her hands were gloved. But he knew who she was. It was rare to see a woman who had so marked a fate. She and the young man were deep in love. Time would never mar that. There would be no opportunity. So her beloved would always remember her with blazing love. She was fortunate in that, at least. He took the guinea and smiled, showing missing teeth, reshuffled cards, laid them out. “I see long life, happiness, oh, perhaps a quarrel or two, but a—”

Barbara touched the Death card with the tip of a gloved finger. “It shows every time. It did the same before. I saw your surprise. You shuffled the deck three times before you would talk with me. You did that with no one else.”

“Because your future is so handsome, I had to do it over to believe it. Travels, your husband will travel in his life, but you—”

“Tell me this, at least. Will my child live?”

“Oh, you’ll have many children. And that husband, he’ll travel to faraway places, the empire of China, the mountains of India…” On and on he went, describing the full life she would have, telling her how many boys, how many girls she would birth, telling her whatever came into his head, telling her everything but what she came to hear. Her silence was a presence, rebuking him, but he ignored it. At last she stood, dignity in her movements. At the door, words came from him that he would later ponder. Perhaps the dignity forced them. “She will live.”

She opened the door and closed it silently behind her.

He sat where he was. What had made him speak? There was so much that was unseen by most. The child wouldn’t live, nor would her beautiful mother, who had always known this. He’d seen it the other night in her eyes, staring at him through her pretty mask, felt it from the spirits, which hovered over her and showed themselves to him. There was much sorrow in this life, his fate to see it, but not necessarily to tell.

“Y
OU’VE NOT SPOKEN
a single word since you came out of his chamber. What did he say?”

Barbara didn’t answer, just kept walking, head down, as Gracen and the servant hurried to keep up with her. When they finally entered the maids of honor’s apartments, she took off her cloak, untied her mask, found her rosary beads, and said sharply to Gracen, “When Alice comes, send her to me, please.”

“Where will you be?”

“In the queen’s oratory.”

Gracen stretched out a hand. “Let me—”

“Do as I say.”

Gracen pulled back her hand, her face mutinous, but also sad.

R
ICHARD WALKED DOWN
Whitehall until he was at the mews, the vast royal stables that were just on the other side of Charing Cross, the intersection where Whitehall, Strand, and Cockspur streets met. Grooms and stable boys, street vendors and sedan men, liked to loiter about the base of the statue of the king’s father at the center of the intersection. He walked into the stable yard, into a barn of horse stalls, down the alley between the stalls, opened one, and his horse snorted at him, nudged his shoulder as he walked closer. “Hey, old man, I got here as soon as I could. I’m busy these days.” He found a brush, began to curry the horse’s coat, even though it was gleaming, began to whistle.

“Is that your horse?”

Richard saw the boy from Madame Neddie’s standing on the other side of the stall door. He seemed thinner than Richard remembered, more awkward and young. “How’d you find me?”

“Soldiers like yourself have horses. Horses have to be stabled. I waited at the statue until I saw you.”

Richard slapped Pharaoh’s rump. “Do you hear that? He tracked us down. You have the makings of a spy, Etienne, isn’t it?”

“It’s really Walter.”

Richard brushed Pharaoh’s neck a stroke or two. “Outside the door, down a bit, is a barrel of dried apples. Get one,” Richard told him, and when Walter was back, “Walk slowly toward the horse, holding out the apple so he can smell it…Let him have it…Now pet his nose. Pharaoh, meet really Walter. Really Walter, this is Pharaoh, the strongest horse in His Majesty’s stables, won the King’s Cup at Newmarket this summer. Here, make yourself useful. Brush his mane. Have you ever brushed a horse? Steady and firm. Pharaoh likes it if you pat him once in a while and talk to him. I tell him my troubles.”

“What does he answer?”

“To stop whining and brush him properly and then take him for a gallop. You have to mind not stepping behind him because he’ll kick you. Have you eaten?”

“No.”

“What time must you return?”

“Before dark.”

“Good enough. We’ll get you back before dark. Get on with it. I’m hungry. Have you seen that man about?”

“No Frenchmen.”

“It’s said now that he may not speak in French, may speak like you and me.”

A
LICE ENTERED THE
oratory quietly. Barbara was still kneeling at the altar rail of solid silver, her fingers flying over her beads. Alice sat on a bench. Barbara finished her last prayer, crossed herself, and sat by Alice, leaned her head on Alice’s shoulder.

“What is it, Ra? I’m to sup with the Duchess of Cleveland this evening, if you can believe it. At my father’s command. Some kind of silly Guy Fawkes supper.”

“There will likely be gunpowder under your chair.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Alice, how long have we been friends?”

“Since you came to court.”

“And you love me.”

“With all my heart.”

Barbara raised her head from Alice’s shoulder, shifted so that she could see Alice’s face. “I’m going to marry John Sidney.”

A storm was there in Alice’s suddenly drawn brows, but Barbara felt strangely at peace. “I want your blessing.”

“And if I don’t give it?”

“I’ll marry him anyway.”

“Sweet Jesus, I could get you anyone if you’d let me! With your beauty and my father’s interest, you could have your pick. Don’t do this, Ra!”

“It’s too late.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m with child.”

“Ra!”

“I want your blessing.”

Alice stood, stepped back. “I can’t give it. We promised each other better than this. You said you were never marrying, and then I come back from France and you’re hanging all over him! There are a dozen better matches you might make if you must. You deserve better than him! I want to kill him and slap you!”

“It wasn’t his doing, Alice. I wanted it as much as he.”

Alice put her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to hear.”

“It isn’t so simple when you truly love someone. It’s so sweet, the flesh is honey, like fire—Oh, Alice, you felt something like it for Cole. You talked to me of it, how hard it was to stay chaste, how close you came to yielding. I understand now. I didn’t then, but I do now. I love him so. I want this, more than anything. I want to be his, completely, to be one in the eyes of God. And he wants it, also.”

“You don’t have to marry. Father will send us to France. We can live there while you grow the baby, and then—”

“I’m to abandon it? Is that what you’d have me do?”

“No, no, of course not, but—”

“I’m marrying John Sidney. I want your presence at—”

“No.”

Alice took another step back. Barbara reached to take her hand, but Alice snatched it away. “I have to tell you something, Alice—”

“I don’t want to hear another thing from you. You’re a fool, Barbara Bragge. Stupider even than Winifred. Acting like a whore! Throwing yourself away! A fool, a fool, a fool!” Alice picked up her skirts and ran from the oratory, not knowing where she was going. She had to be alone.

She felt murderous. All her plans, all her hopes, knocked to pieces. She knew how it should be. Not Barbara. She was the clever one. Not Barbara. Never Barbara.

Somehow she was on the first floor in Dorothy Brownwell’s chamber, moving swiftly past a surprised servant, moving to the little chamber that was Dorothy’s closet. She tried to open a window there. She must have air. She banged on it, then somehow had the sense to push, and it hinged open. She drew in drafts of the cold air, breathing in and out. Such stupidity on Barbara’s part! There wasn’t a happy marriage. She’d never seen one. There was lust to begin with, perhaps, but it cooled, particularly for the men. It always cooled. It was the fashion, and no one could be behind fashion. A woman had to choose with care, think of the time when she’d be bearing his children, think of the life she must build for herself. There had to be a handsome allowance, perhaps something only of hers. There had to be a title, or the promise of a title, else why do it? Why endure a man’s boredom and cruelty, indifference and selfishness? Ra was one of the loveliest young women at court. She could have married on her beauty alone. She beat her fist on the stone ledge. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! In three years there would be three babies and not enough coin, and John Sidney would be pinching and ogling any woman who took his eye, just to add some spice to their humdrum life. It wasn’t what she’d planned at all. She didn’t want Barbara to leave her—

The shock of that thought stopped her.

She leaned her face against the metal of the window. There was such a hard knot in her heart. She didn’t want Barbara to love anyone better than her. That was the truth of it.

Her friend, her sister, her keeper of secrets, moving on, leaving her behind. She’d desired Cole, but she’d never truly loved him. What was love? Blindness, nothing but momentary stupidity. She couldn’t see what Barbara saw.

And she hated her for that, for seeing what she couldn’t and for leaving her behind.

A
T DUSK, HER
father was waiting outside the Duchess of Cleveland’s house in the neighborhood of Westminster, to the east of Whitehall. On the meadows and hills in the distance, bonfires were burning. They burned in Hyde Park, in the hamlets of Marylebone and Chelsea. For Guy Fawkes. In London itself, bonfires burned in the streets, and people danced around effigies of the pope. The great fire that had burned nearly four hundred acres of London had started with far less, and London wasn’t rebuilt from it yet.

“You’re late, Alice. His Majesty has already arrived.” Sir Thomas waved Poppy toward the back where the servants would be, took her by the arm as if he would shake her. She pulled away from him.

“Don’t trifle with me, Father.”

He looked her up and down. “What’s brought on this pretty little mood?”

“Nothing. What am I doing here?”

“You are accompanying your father, who is creating a truce with the Duchess of Cleveland so that you are not ruined. You will behave yourself.”

Alice made a sound.

“You are not to show that dreadful temper of yours tonight, or I swear I’ll do as your aunt asks and send you to live with her.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was most perturbed by some behavior of yours on All Hallows’ and has made a formal call on me to say that you are not being supervised properly as a maid of honor, and that if you wish to make a respectable marriage and not disgrace the family, you need to live with her.”