Ladies in Waiting (7 page)

Eliza laughed. “I’ll give you a sovereign when you give us something useful, you old gossip. My father’s a merchant, and he taught me never to pay before I handle the goods.”

“Humph!” Prue said. “Merchants’ daughters attending the queen! I never thought I’d live to see the day. Ah, well, two shillings is more than that other lot of maids of honor gave me, so maybe times have changed for the better. Which one of you’s the Wodewose girl?”

Zabby untangled her feet from her night shift and presented herself.

“Got a wee bit of a thing for you. You’ve gone far for your age. There’s another maid of honor setting her cap at Buckingham already, but most work their way up through the foppery before they aim for the king. Officially it’s from Chiffinch,” she added, tapping her nose with one gnarled forefinger. “Ta!”

The three girls crowded together on the bed as if the present were meant for all of them. The wrapping alone was an impressive gift, a rare and costly piece of silk, soft as eiderdown, marked with a swirling pattern of churning sea and a pitifully small boat full of slanting-eyed sailors about to be swamped by a prodigious wave. Something small and dense nestled in the center. Zabby unwrapped it carefully, thinking,
If it is a jewel, I’ll return it. I’ll pardon him, but forgiveness must be bestowed, not bought.

It was not a jewel but a seashell, a finger long and three thick, intricately whorled, polished to a high sheen.

“Oh, how pretty!” Beth said, clapping her hands together. “Look at the stripes—they’re just the same hue as your eyes.”

“And what a shine,” Eliza said, claiming it and turning it toward the light. “Some poor underling worked many an hour to bring out that gleam.”

“No, I don’t think so.” Zabby reached out and stroked her own gift in Eliza’s hand. “There’s a snail in Barbados, the olive, that keeps its mantle wrapped around its shell all its life. The shell never gets marked or scuffed. This shell came from the Pacific, I’m sure, but I warrant it did the same.”

“Nature’s an odd thing,” Eliza said. “Fancy having armor to protect you, then putting your soft, tender parts out to cover it, all for the sake of vanity!”

“I have to give it back,” Zabby said, taking it and savoring its cool solidity in her palm for a second before resolutely slipping it, and the silk cloth, under her pillow. “I can’t accept presents from the king. What will people think?”

“Just what they think now. It’s lovely and rare, and he wants you to have it. Don’t give the king offense. Even if he is
Charles
to you.”

“Oh! I shouldn’t have done that. It just slipped out. After all those days in bed it seemed . . .” She clapped a hand to her mouth and Eliza burst into a guffaw. Even Beth giggled. “I didn’t! I swear!”

“Whatever you say, sweetheart!” Eliza said, smiling smugly.

Hortense came in and helped them dress, offering (no doubt with the incentive of a healthy tip from her mistress) her assistance to all three ladies. Zabby blushed as she was laced into her gown, recalling her first attempt at sophisticated dress. As it happened the merchant had deceived Papa—that copper gown was several years out of fashion, and observant Zabby was already—against her will—gaining the keen perception that told her what was à la mode. The court’s magnified eye could distinguish subtle differences in the dye of a plume, the height of a heel, the width of point, and summarily condemn or envy the wearer at a glance. It expected conformity but sometimes embraced bold novelty, and had she worn her backwards gown with enough zest, the trend might have been picked up by all the countesses within a week.

Still, Zabby felt ridiculous wearing a garment she needed an assistant to don. She drew the line at her coiffure, waving off Hortense’s nimble fingers and twisting her long pale hair into its usual low knot, secured with a coral comb.

“I’ll be writing a message to my godmother when I return,” she said. “She’s in town, so she’ll probably be able to send a coach for me before afternoon. If I don’t see you again . . .”

“Don’t go,” Beth said wistfully. After a short time in service she was passionately partisan for the queen, and admired the way Zabby had sprung to her defense, defying the king himself. “We took an oath of friendship.”

“Right,” Eliza said, “and now we must put it to scientific test. How can we do that in the absence of one of our elemental parts?”

Zabby wavered. “I don’t think the queen will let me stay.”

“She’ll have to, if the king orders it. You and Castlemaine both.”

“I wouldn’t want to stay if I’m lumped with her.”

“Why not ask the king to tell Her Majesty the truth?” Beth suggested.

“Though whatever innocent thing can keep a man closeted with a wench for two weeks and more is beyond my comprehension,” said Eliza.

“Mostly we spoke of science and philosophy.”

“A clever tongue, then,” Eliza replied, nudging Beth, who pretended not to understand. “No matter—we don’t want to know, though he ought to tell her, if there’s truly no harm in it. Hang me for a liar, though, we do want to know. Tell us, Zabby, or ask Charles if you may.”

“Is he Charles to you now, too?”

“Ah, well, my poor simple mind can only parrot what it hears. Go, and do whatever you must to stay. I’ve not had such a merry time in all my days as I have since you came.”

Beth patted Zabby’s hand to add her own encouragement, and Zabby, still undecided, put the shell in her pocket and went in search of the king.

Chapter 6

The Royal Seed

H
E WAS NOT AN EASY MAN
to find. At midday he would have one of his onerous public dinners, where any common man who managed to shove his way into the audience gallery could gawk at his masticating monarch. Mercifully, it was less crowded at Hampton than at the principal royal residence, Whitehall, in the heart of London, where the crowd sometimes got so bumptious that it had to be bribed with whole roast haunches and elaborate spun sugar confections, while Charles made a great show of eating nothing at all, retiring after the exhibition to dine with Castlemaine or in the privacy of his clock closet. It was one of his most unpleasant duties, a tradition he couldn’t quite shake.

But now, at his leisure early in the morning, he could be anywhere. A discreet query of a servant lowly enough that she could be guaranteed not to laugh in Zabby’s face revealed the king had risen betimes.
Not that I could have gone to his bedroom,
Zabby thought. Now he might be at the tennis courts, or sporting with the spaniels that followed him from palace to palace, or, for all she knew, in Castlemaine’s arms. Zabby’s jaw felt suddenly sore, and she realized she was gritting her teeth at the notion.

She wandered for a time, all but lost in the hallways, until she came upon a black and tan pup with a petulant face and silken ears trailing the ground, scrabbling at a recessed doorway. Accustomed to indulging animals’ whims, she opened the door and peered after the dog as it leaped and frisked toward a tall figure in black with silver braid, hunched over an instrument of some kind.

“I told you not to let the dogs in,” Charles said, shoving the fawning creature aside affectionately with his square-toed shoe without turning around. “At least I’ve no chemicals for him to upset today. Come in, George, come in, and shut the door behind you so we shan’t be bothered by any more simpering morts. I can’t stand ladies in my elaboratory. Their panting and giggling fogs the lenses.”

Zabby edged inside and closed the door, standing where she could see him in profile, his wide, full mouth curved in a smile at whatever he was examining.

Oh, he is handsome,
she thought, though he wasn’t by the standards of the time, which called for pallor and fair hair, small, neat bodies, gray eyes, and fine lips on men and women both. Charles wasn’t like any of the other men she’d seen so far at court. He towered over the tallest, standing six feet, three inches, a physical peculiarity that made escaping capture in the hunted days of his youth especially difficult. His features were large, his long black hair his own, not a periwig, just beginning to gray.

“Come look at this one,” he called, beckoning, with his eyes still downward. “I had the devil of a time getting them alive. Not that collecting them wasn’t diverting, but a man can only manage so much, and I believe something bad happened to Onan, though I can’t recall what. Here, lean in and take my spot. Careful not to singe your hair on the oil lamp. They’re still wiggling, though I’ve found they perish in a very few minutes under the heat of the lens.” He shifted his body to the side, creating a space for her. She slid beside him, her hair catching in the stubble of his cheek, and at this near-touch Zabby felt a great void open within her breast, as if her heart had disintegrated.

“Od’s fish!” Charles gasped, stumbling back. “I thought you were George.” George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, had been orphaned near the same time as Charles, and the lads had been reared together. Now, though they were boon companions, George’s fractious ways and constant plotting made him a thorn in Charles’s side. The court gossips often wondered if the day would come when the king would have no choice but to send his best friend to the Tyburn gallows.

“No,” she whispered, staring up at him wide-eyed, suddenly a little afraid. “I’m only me.”

He took her arm gently and turned it over, placing his fingers on the livid marks they’d made the night before. “I’m sorry for this,” he said. She thought he might say more, but he only let his fingers rest there, as if today’s gentleness might heal yesterday’s violence. His skin was very warm, and she could feel the beat of his pulse against her inner arm, just out of synchrony with hers. Then the rhythm was broken entirely when her heart raced recklessly away, beating so fast she thought she might faint.

She held his eyes a moment, and felt, for the first time in her life, a strange sort of power, like a sorcerer’s in an old tale, as if she need only raise her hand to work a terrible magic and bend him to her will.

Lady Castlemaine must feel this way all the time,
she thought, and the distaste of that comparison was so great that she laid the power aside and pulled away from him, allowing the warring tug of science to have a momentary victory over emotion.

“What’s that you’re observing in your microscope?” she asked. When she’d bent down she’d had a tantalizing glimpse of something wriggling, slightly out of focus.

“It is . . . well . . . ah . . . ahem . . . that is to say . . . what do you think it is?”

Zabby bent over the instrument, adjusting the screw slightly until the creatures came into focus. Most moved listlessly, but occasionally one would give a great thrash of its whiplike tail and propel itself out of sight.

“They resemble tadpoles, though with very odd tails.” She withdrew, blinked to freshen her eyes, and glanced at the sample. “But of course no tadpole could be this small.” She bent to the microscope again. “Some sort of animalcule? There is motion, so it must be animal life. This is much more powerful than ours at home, though of course we have only a single lens. My godmother would love to see this—whatever it is.”

Thinking about his collection method, Charles doubted it.

“What is it, then?”

It was hard to tell with his swarthy complexion, but Zabby believed he was blushing.

“They are . . . that is . . .” He seemed torn between mortification and mirth. “They are homunculi.”

A court lady would have giggled, blushed, or made a licentious jest, or more likely not known the word at all. Zabby simply cocked her head and said, “Papa and I looked at pond and sea creatures, and at the beasts that live betwixt the teeth. I had thought to look at homunculi, but couldn’t see how to harvest a sample.” She looked into the microscope again, and Charles was free to grin.

“Oh, but they’re dying, the poor wee things! Can you save them?”

“They always perish quickly.”

“Indeed? And this sample, is this all you produced?” With every molecule of her being she willed herself not to dwell on exactly
how
they were produced.

Charles steeled himself not to laugh and said, “A bit more. A dram, perhaps.”

“That would mean thousands, many thousands, of homunculi regularly wasted. Do you know, I don’t believe what they say about each homunculus being a perfect human in miniature. They certainly don’t look it, but beyond that, can you imagine any system, natural or divine, that would sacrifice so many countless creatures? They cannot be complete unto themselves. I don’t think they become human until they are in combination with a feminine counterpart. Yet Swammerdam speaks of the ovum as containing homunculi too. Perhaps . . .”

“Blight me, sweetheart, how you stare!” She was gazing up at him earnestly with her large, too widely spaced, pale-lashed amber eyes. “What a marvel to see the whites of a woman’s orbits. D’you know, the ladies here think it a sin to raise their lids above half-mast. They all look like sleepy Chinamen. But you open your eyes like a blind man newly cured. I wonder, do you see more than they?”

She smiled, losing her train of inquiry. “I don’t know if I see more, but I’m always looking.” She gazed at Charles as though she would devour him. She felt she could look at him forever, the sole object of her studies both physical and philosophical.

“You kept me alive in more ways than one during my confinement,” Charles said. “Without your lively mind I should have perished of boredom. Do you always speak so bluntly and fearlessly?”

“What’s there to fear from words and ideas?” she asked.

Charles’s face suddenly darkened. “Cromwell and a few others had an idea, and it spread like gangrene and sent a king, my father, to the block. Ideas can make action.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“No matter, sweetheart. Your ideas are pure, from a desire simply to
know.
How could your pretty little delvings into the inner cogs of the universe harm anyone? I don’t mean to quell you in the least.” He smiled winningly and took her hand with his easygoing familiarity. “In fact, if you ever stop speculating, I’ll banish you from my court entirely.”