Dark Angels (73 page)

“Why put yourself out so?” He was truculent, combative.

“My son has always spoken of her with high regard. I believe she has done him some kindnesses, as, indeed, have you.” My son stood in the night outside, watching over her, she did not say; for that I would do anything. “And I like to mend things when I see them broken.”

“Broken?”

“She’s broken here—” She touched near her heart. “I would not like to see that spread to here—” She touched her head.

“It’s her father’s decision.”

Jerusalem didn’t bother to reply.

“I want her well by May.”

“For your wedding?”

“For our wedding.”

They were silent. When the carriage stopped outside Holbein Gate and the door was opened, Jerusalem leaned forward, touched Balmoral on his hand, making him start. No one touched a duke, just as no one touched a king. “You may not have a drop of wine, not a drop. I have second sight. I see things.”

“Am I dying?”

“We’re all dying.” She descended the carriage and walked into the crowd.

I
N HIS CLOSET,
Balmoral opened the cabinet where his sweet sherry from Portugal lay in its precious Venetian crystal decanter. He liked the first cup to be sherry. After that he cared not. The siren called to him. He closed the cabinet, sat in a chair, thought about being alive to marry this young woman he found he’d grown more than fond of, disobeying him, fetching babies, grieving too hard, walking into rivers, throwing fevers. He thought about secret treaties and Buckingham’s betrayals and the fact that if King Charles had agreed to anything with the Church of Rome—if York was indeed Catholic—then Buckingham, king of the dissidents, attracting the odd sects like a candle did moths, would be necessary. He thought about Richard’s idea to steal the casket of letters King Charles had written to Madame. With that in his hands, the king would be in his hands, too. He thought about the young prince of the Dutch House of Orange, William, strange, he’d heard, asthmatic, brilliant. He thought about the dark angel Ange. What betrayals was he plotting in that twisted mind of his? He will try to kill me, he thought. No doubt of that. How? If Richard brought the letters, there was no need of Ange. I will kill him first, he thought, and smiled. Odd, here at the end, that life had never been more interesting.

T
HAT EVENING,
R
ICHARD
walked into laughter, faces softened by candlelight, people enjoying themselves with talk and good food. Prince Rupert rose from his chair, a chicken leg in his hand. “Surely it’s not time for you to bear her off?”

“I regret that it is, sir.”

Prince Rupert, primed with wine, bowed to Jerusalem. “Lovely lady, we’re not ended with you. You’ll go riding with me tomorrow, yes?” He put his hand on his mistress’s shoulder. “We’ll go to Peg’s for supper, perhaps. She has a cozy little villa in Chelsea. Saylor, I’m trying to convince your mother to move closer to London, lease a little place outside of town, Marylebone or Chelsea. We need to see more of her. I want her to pose for an engraving. She fobs me off.”

The thought of his mother anywhere near court made Richard smile. It would be like trying to tether some creature of the forest. He thought of the queen’s little fox, the creature’s dainty hesitancy, quick, wild ways. Did the fox dream at night of trees and midnight rambles? His mother was not made for court. She would dream of Tamworth and its hillock, its bees, its fields of clover.

He led her to the queen’s apartments, deserted of company. Even during the divorce rumors, it had not been this quiet, this empty of people. Everyone who was not on duty to the queen was on the west side of the palace, where the king was, where Renée was.

He knocked upon the queen’s bedchamber, and her old nurse opened the door, led his mother inside; he waited for a time, until the door reopened and his mother reappeared. She gave a great sigh when they walked out of the palace, into the dark of the courtyards. She stood a moment, looking up at stars. Richard watched her profile.

“Take me to see Pharaoh.”

At the mews, she stood in the dark of the walkway between stalls, listening. She was very sensitive to animals. Richard opened Pharaoh’s stall. He could see the dark bulk of the horse lying down, Walter asleep on his belly. Pharaoh lifted his head, snorted, and Jerusalem knelt down, kissed his sleek neck.

“Beautiful boy, prince of horses, how are you?” she asked, paying him his homage. She wrapped arms around his neck to hug him. The horse nuzzled her shoulder, blew softly through his nostrils. As a child, Richard had believed his mother talked to animals. He still did.

“I’ll sleep here tonight.”

“Mother—”

“Come for me at dawn.” She settled down beside Walter like a stable boy herself, flipping off shoes, pulling off her necklace, unscrewing earrings and dropping them in the straw as if they were nothing.

“What do I tell Elizabeth?”

“The truth, if you dare.”

Richard smiled at the thought of his sister’s response to the news her mother had refused a bedchamber in her elegant new town house in the new St. James’s Square near the palace to sleep in the king’s mews with Richard’s horse.

“I’ll be taking Alice to Tamworth,” his mother said.

Richard felt something in his heart move. He walked back out under the stars and looked up at them as his mother had done. Thank you, he told them and what was behind them, silently. Alice would heal at Tamworth. Everything did.

C
HAPTER 42

Q
ueen Catherine sat still as her tiring woman combed out her hair. What is it that you want? Lady Saylor had asked. Honor to my position. Children. Love. Affection. Security. Loyalty. Admiration. Everything. Which of those have you any hope of achieving? Affection. Security. Honor to my position. He will give me that; he always does if I let him do as he pleases. “Go to the Keroualle,” she told Lord Knollys, “and inform the queen, she calls. This afternoon.”

She walked into her withdrawing chamber as, haloed by morning light, Edward took the covers from the canary cages. The birds began to trill and warble. She put a hand against the metal of a cage. Several of them fluttered close, flirted with her. She clucked to them, made cooing sounds. She had come to him trained to love, to obey, and she did both. He liked her, was even fond of her upon occasion. They had laughed together in bed. He had made her trill with passion. She had confused zestful duty with love. But he could not be in love with her. She was not beautiful enough, not English enough, not French enough, not enough enough. She had wanted to bear a child of his, a lusty, long-legged, black-haired boy as he must have been, full of life, naughty. Whitehall was her cage, and there would always be another Renée.

Why do the canaries sing? Lady Saylor had asked. They know no better, she had answered. I believe they do, Lady Saylor had said.

That afternoon, her entourage of ladies surrounding her, she walked down the corridors and through hallways to that part of the palace in which Renée now resided. Heels clicked on the wood of the floors. Gowns made swishing sounds. Her maids—so decimated now, so sad with Alice and Barbara and Gracen gone—laughed and chattered, excited, like children with a special treat promised. Even their demeanor was different, brighter, excited, hopeful. Her isolation had affected them. She darted in like the bird she resembled. Renée was in a curtsy, Lady Arlington with her. Queen Catherine met Lady Arlington’s eyes; she had moved to where the power lay. It was the nature of a courtier to follow power, just as it was the nature of a bird to sing.

“I am so honored that you visit me.” Renée was sincere, nothing ironic in her voice, her English softly accented, precisely correct. She meant her words. The other mistress, the monster Cleveland, had never been humble, or kind, or excited to receive her. To be accepted by the queen meant something to this one. That would be useful.

“I am have the curiosity to see where you are the live.” The sound of workmen hammering, talking, could be heard through closed doors on another wall. “And I am the bring a small gift, a—how do you say it?”

“Housewarming,” said Frances.

The queen lifted a kitten out of the basket Frances held, and Renée took it, lifted it high. “I adore cats. Thank you, Your Majesty.”

Charles did not. “You are the welcomed.”

“May I show you my chambers?”

“Please.”

And they walked through several rooms farther on, workmen carefully, with mallets and wooden pegs, joining carvings for oval ceiling surrounds and door moldings. Furniture was covered in sheeting. Queen Catherine lifted a sheet. Lustrous fabric, its embroidery stiff and handsome, graced a chair.

“Yellow is my favorite color,” Renée said.

Queen Catherine felt rage surge up. Blue-eyed whore. How dare he give you these chambers! How dare he spare no expense that you might furnish them! How dare he be he! But that was a hole into which it was best not to fall, at least not now.

“How is dear Mrs. Brownwell?” Renée asked. They were seated again in her presence chamber, and a servant was passing around crackers, small cakes, goblets of wine.

“With her brother. Better to be.” Queen Catherine looked toward Lord Knollys, who dropped his eyes. Dorothy had left the court the day after the funeral, after the sight of Lord Knollys and his young wife entering the church together.

“It’s all been so shocking,” said Lady Arlington, placid, the way people are when shocking things have not touched them.

“And Mistress Verney?”

“Better.”

Queen Catherine looked around. “Charming. Many windows. Much light. You are having a good view of garden.” She’d always liked this side of the palace.

“Will you—would you think of gracing them with your presence tonight?”

She most certainly would. She was not going to sit alone and abandoned in her apartments for one more evening. They could crucify her as they did the Christ; they could whip her with scourges; they could savage her in every street ballad—but she was the queen. “Yes.”

Mission executed, Queen Catherine stood, and there were curtsies all around, Luce and Kit kissing Renée’s cheeks, laughing and chattering behind the queen as they walked back to their part of the palace, deeper in, darker, its view the Thames River, its windows smaller because it was older, its furnishings not sparkling and new, not the latest fashion from France.

“Crimson and diamonds tonight,” Queen Catherine told her tiring woman later.

Frances took up a book she’d been reading to Her Majesty, began. Queen Catherine closed her eyes. After a time, thinking the queen asleep, Frances stopped reading, her expression unhappy. The queen watched her through slitted eyes. She could have taken Frances’s hand, patted it, said in the mangled English that never quite expressed what she thought, You would like me to remain prideful. Do you think I can stay the rest of my days here, seeing no one, being visited by no one, under the cover of my cage, never seeing the sun? I cannot.

T
HAT EVENING, THERE
was an air of bubbling excitement in the queen’s apartments as women waited for Queen Catherine to be finished dressing. They laughed and talked, whispering among themselves, straightening one another’s sleeves or trying on one another’s bracelets, so glad to be going to where King Charles would be, where courtiers would be, where the life and pulse of court would be. Pearls for the maids of honor, diamonds and rubies for the queen, diamonds for her ladies-in-waiting. Frances, Duchess of Richmond, looked particularly stunning. Queen Catherine smiled when she saw her. So, she thought, dressed for battle. To remind him of what he never obtained. He will be compelled to flirt. Little Keroualle will be jealous. I will be amused. Edward and the other pages punched one another’s arms in impatience to be on their way. Captain Saylor, with six guards, stood ready to escort.