The Queen's Dwarf A Novel (20 page)

“Try to soften his anger if you can. Remind him how young the queen is, how far from home.”

“I am a court fool. He is the king of England. Why would he listen to me?”

“Because fools can tell kings the truth without fear of reprisal. Sometimes they are the only ones who dare. Because you will be speaking the truth and the king is a decent man.”

“Do you think he will arrest her?”

“I do not know.” Will kneaded his brow. “But I cannot think of anything that would please the duke of Buckingham more.”

I fled to my chamber and drove Griggory out. Alone, I went to my wooden chest. I dug my hand into the darkest corner, heard the coins clink in Buckingham’s purse, felt the lump of Samuel’s medal in the costume I’d once worn. There, among treasures and secrets, I felt the silk of my lady’s token.
If you are to be my champion
…” Her lilting voice drifted through my memory.

I thought of the queen’s lips pressed fervently against the bloodstain upon Tyburn scaffold and wondered. Was I sending my queen into a future where she would mount a scaffold of her own?

T
HIRTEEN

When I woke next morning with aching legs, I thanked God and Will Evans that I had walked for only part of the queen’s pilgrimage instead of the whole. I wanted to send word to the queen that I was unwell. Pull the coverlets over my head and annoy Griggory all day, having him fetch hot compresses to ease my stiffness. But I could not bear to stay in my room any more than I had been able to remain in the coach while the queen paced inexorably toward her ruin.

I pasted on my court fool’s smile, then went to the queen’s withdrawing chamber to face the havoc I had wrought. It hardly looked like a site of disaster. The queen’s ladies flitted about in their rich gowns, chattering about how they had defied the heretic English. Father Phillip bent over some documents with a new sense of purpose, apparently embracing the sin of pride.

Henrietta Maria sat near the window with her spaniel Mitte, the queen’s animated face a feverish blend of triumph and dread. Everyone else in the chamber was too busy congratulating themselves to notice she was alone.

I crossed the room, hearing her speaking to the little dog, her words cryptic, yet tugging at my heart nonetheless. “We do not need to fret anymore. You got such a worried look on your poor face, I think you have been afraid ever since that she might take you back.”

“Majesty,” I announced myself, wondering who this ominous “she” could be.

“Jeffrey!” the queen exclaimed as she turned to look at me. “I am so glad that you are here.”

“I did not mean to intrude. But please tell Mitte I will not allow anyone to separate the two of you. Just point me toward the villain and I shall challenge her to a duel.”

“You cannot duel the dowager queen of France.”

“You were speaking of your mother?”

“She gave me Mitte as a parting gift just before I sailed for England. Mitte was in my arms when … well, it scarce matters anymore. I have struck a blow for my Catholic subjects at last. No one can believe I have forgotten them.”

“You showed great courage,” I said.

“Did you see all the people lining the road? Sergeant Evans was most distressed.”

“The sergeant guards you from every threat he can see.” Unfortunately, he has not guessed I am spinning Buckingham’s webs at your feet, I thought.

“Sergeant Evans could not understand why I needed to take such bold action. Yet, now my pilgrimage is over, I feel as if the weight of three kingdoms has rolled off of my breast.”

She had best enjoy the respite, I thought, because the king’s wrath is about to crash down upon her head.

“Did you know that the Pope sent me a Golden Rose before I left France? He chose me as the prince or princess in all Europe who most embodied the Catholic spirit.”

“A nice gesture, since he was about to throw you to the lions,” I grumbled.

“Lions?”

“His Holiness had just granted dispensation to send you to a country full of people he considers heretics and wed you to a Protestant king.” Anger kindled at the thought. The Pope, the dowager queen, the king of France, Buckingham and Richelieu, even King Charles had flung a fifteen-year-old princess into the center of their religious battles. What had they expected would happen? That this slender young woman would sort out a tangle no one had been able to unravel since Martin Luther had nailed his protest onto a church door?

“The rose is a mark of fatherly affection from the Pope,” the queen said. Little wonder she clung so hard to that token of warmth—a child whose father died before she could have memories of him, leaving her with a harsh mother thirsty for intrigue.

I had heard snippets about the queen’s mother from the ladies Her Majesty had brought from France. The woman had her son regularly beaten when he was king. What scars had Marie de Medici left on her youngest daughter, this vibrant young queen who so thirsted for love?

I pictured my own mother, the way I sometimes caught her looking at me, dread and fascination in her eyes. There had been love, as well, Samuel insisted. But what is love when it is veiled by a thin layer of fear?

“Your mother must have been proud of a daughter as perfect as you.”

“The last thing she said before I sailed was that if I faltered in my faith, she would curse me. Can you think of anything worse than fearing your mother might curse the day you were born?”

“Yes.” I closed my eyes; suddenly I was back in the cottage at Oakham. “Knowing that your mother does.” Ever so softly Henrietta Maria squeezed my hand.

July 31, 1626

For three weeks after the queen’s pilgrimage to Tyburn I felt like a clockwork bird wound too tight, my thoughts flapping inside my head at a speed that made my stomach pitch. We had heard nothing from the king; His Majesty was still off with Buckingham. I tortured myself in the hours I stood at my post in the withdrawing room by imagining the venom my master was pouring into the king’s ear.

It was the thirty-first of July. Tomorrow, August would begin. I feared what was happening in the household of the king. Were his privy councillors goading him to set the queen aside? Might they even be attempting to charge her with treason? Surely her enemies would wield her trip to Tyburn like a sword. But where would they strike at her? When?

I picked at my fingernail until it bled as I looked about the withdrawing chamber, which seemed more like a prison every day. The room was a jewel box of color once more, all traces of coarse black cloth banished. A flageolet played hide-and-seek about the lute’s melody, the instruments weaving in and out like ribbons around a maypole, the queen’s ladies-in-waiting and maids of honor dancing in the space footmen and pages had cleared in the center of the room at Madame Saint-Georges’s command.

I had heard Archie tell stories he had gathered from Prince Henry: Sir Walter Raleigh’s descriptions of how red-skinned natives in the New World danced mad skirls with war clubs after winning some battle. Despite the perfumes and lace that filled this chamber, this frolic Madame Saint-Georges had got up felt very much the same.

The French court had dealt the English a blow, shown that their princess would not be tyrannized. Henrietta Maria would not shrink her faith into the tiny cell the Protestant lords wished to lock her in, celebrating Masses behind closed doors, hastening her priests out of sight, allowing the king to ignore the terms of the marriage contract without voicing her protest. It was an act of youthful rebellion, I believed. But she had shown her tormenters that she would not be silenced. Little wonder her ladies wanted to exult over her triumph. Yet as I watched their skirts whirl, heard their hands clap in rhythm, I wanted to stop up my ears.

I saw Madame Saint-Georges make a graceful leap, her slippers flashing beneath her primrose skirts. How I longed to trip her. Especially when I stole a glance at the slumped figure in the velvet-covered chair beside me. The bedraggled pilgrim queen of weeks ago had disappeared, and Henrietta Maria was dressed and coiffed as perfectly as ever now her penance was done. But her aspect betrayed a tangle of heavy thoughts; the rims of her eyelids were raw.

The queen’s left hand clamped over the side of her jaw, her wedding ring glittering in light that poured in the window. She’d said her tooth ached and made excuses to avoid joining the dance. Even her favorite spaniel sensed something was amiss. Mitte curled in a subdued ball upon the queen’s lap, not even licking or wriggling as usual. Instead, the dog peered up at the queen, Mitte’s eyes rivaling the worry that had been in Will Evans’s when I’d encountered him earlier that morning.

Evans had hunkered down to tell me, “The king’s party has been sighted riding in this direction. Servants stationed about the palace will bring word of how His Majesty’s temper fares. I hope to warn Her Majesty when the king is coming so she can prepare herself.”

“Is his Majesty riding to confront her?”

“It seems so, but I cannot be certain.”

For three hours, I listened for Will’s heavy tread, but now I feared the infernal music would drown out even Evans’s great clomping boots.

Is it better to know when the headsman’s ax is about to fall?
I could almost hear Archie’s cynical voice say.
Or better to remain blissfully clueless until your head is rolling across the scaffold?

One of the maids giggled, and I saw the queen wince. “Majesty,” I said. “Should your ladies take their dancing elsewhere? I never feel like being around merry people when I am unwell.”

She rubbed the knot that hinged the left side of her jaw. “I fear I have insulted this joint beyond pardon. I was clenching my teeth when I woke.” She paused a moment, then asked, “Jeffrey, do you have nightmares?”

The court fool in me wanted to quip, I don’t bother with them any longer, since I’m living one.

But such a reply would never do. “Did you spend a restless night, Majesty?”

“I have ever since I visited Tyburn.” She leaned closer so that no one else could hear. Not that her ladies seemed overly worried their mistress was in torment. “I dreamed I was on the rack. I was trying to keep from betraying other Catholics, but the pain … I kept thinking, I’ll tell.… I’ll tell. I would picture these faces … people I know, like Mamie, and I would clamp my jaws shut to keep from screaming out names.”

She shuddered. I wished I had the courage to dare the unthinkable. Reach out to squeeze her hand, a hand as tender as a babe’s, no callus ever roughening the skin from work. I said, “It was only a dream, Majesty.”

“Not for the martyrs who died at Tyburn. It must have been horrifying, knowing you held so many lives in your hands. That if the torture master broke you, they would suffer as you were suffering. Can you imagine?”

I wanted to tell the queen she had nothing to fear. But I was not a clever-enough liar.

“Only a fool would not be afraid to meet the kind of fate you describe. But you are safe from the rack, Majesty. England does not torture aristocrats, and certainly not its queens.”

“There are many kinds of torture, Jeffrey. To feel like a stranger so far from home. To know people are suspicious of you, even loathe you for things you cannot help. Things they knew about you before you even met them.”

“You are not alone in feeling that way, Majesty. I would guess all of us in your menagerie have felt the same.”

“I had not thought that I might have been speaking of you instead of myself. Who would have guessed how alike we are? Perhaps that is why just having you nearby comforts me. You smooth the jagged edges of this country, this palace, the courtiers beyond my own household.”

“I would give whatever ease I could,” I said. Whatever ease I can sneak past Buckingham, I added to myself.

“I wish…”

“Wish what, Majesty?”

“That I could speak to my husband as I speak to you. Without his advisers tearing at me like crows on carrion, trying to force their will on me. Even when the king comes to my bedchamber—” She choked to a stop. “No. I must not speak of such things to any man.”

I could hear the censure in her head—her mother’s voice, Buckingham’s, Madame Saint-Georges, every priest or adviser who had ever ruled over her.

“What if my marriage is a dead thing, Jeffrey? Will they allow me to fly away?”

“Majesty, I do not—”

Suddenly, a sound came, a tramping of feet, the door swinging wide. Will Evans hastened over to us, alarm etched deep in his face.

“The king is approaching, Your Majesty,” Evans said. “His Gentlemen Pensioners march with him.” The queen turned white as bone.

The flageolet tumbled to the floor with a hollow crack. The lute strings twanged and went silent. Maids of honor stumbled out of the dance and clustered near the older attendants like lambs do when a flock scents a wolf. Even the youngest among the queen’s attendants knew what the approach of the Gentlemen Pensioners meant.

They were the king’s armed force, made of nobles of the land. What use could the king have for them while visiting the queen unless she was to be arrested?

Henrietta Maria straightened up in her chair. She reached down, caught hold of my hand, and hid our clasped fingers beneath a fold of her skirt.

The door filled with men in bright livery, halberds in their hands, their faces schooled into emotionless masks. But their eyes showed that ugly pleasure I’d seen suffuse my father’s face when he knew his dog was going to take down its quarry.

“His Majesty, the king.” Will Evans’s booming voice did not betray that he had been dreading this moment since the queen decided to go to Tyburn. The announcement brought the queen to her feet. I could see a tremor work through her as her short-statured husband strode through the door. The king’s garb of black embroidered with touches of white thread was silhouetted against Buckingham’s court raiment of crimson and gold. Buckingham towered above his master, as if the king were a meager shadow of the far more imposing duke.

Bile rose in my throat as Buckingham’s gaze flicked to me, then slid past, leaving only the ghost of a smirk to betray his satisfaction. Was it possible someone in the queen’s household might guess that the tiny curl of the duke’s lip was meant for me? Anger burned in me, a fierce need to protect her.