The Queen's Dwarf A Novel (42 page)

“I will never be able to thank your maid enough for drawing you away. It is the first time I have ever been grateful for someone in an audience ignoring a performance the menagerie worked so hard on.”

“Little Jane had just received a marriage proposal and was all aflutter. His Majesty may knight her suitor. Their eagerness to share their joy likely saved my life.” The queen managed to smile. “King Charles was most attentive to me after the accident. He came to my chamber to make certain I had not suffered from shock. His Majesty said His Grace had his man Ware inspect the wreckage. They insist the accident was not Master Jones’s fault. The mistake must have originated with one of his workmen. Such a fine architect as Master Jones could not possibly have botched such an insignificant construction.”

“I believe the duke has used Inigo Jones often on his own projects. Some might call his interest selfish, but I agree with His Grace on this point. I do not think Master Jones is at fault.”

“Someone must be held accountable! I might have been killed. How many others were injured?”

“I do not know.”

”You were not hurt, Jeffrey?”

“A sliver jammed into my palm, but that was after the collapse of the scaffold, while I was pulling timbers off Will.”

“How is Sergeant Evans? And Dulcinea? She fell so far. It quite chilled my blood to hear him cry out to her. When the scaffolding landed upon Sergeant Evans, I feared the worst.”

“Will says his head is too hard for a few blocks of wood to damage him. Dulcinea is resting. She has lost—” I stopped, remembering the babe’s existence had been a secret. “She has lost a lot of blood. She will need to rest. But the surgeons are taking good care of her.”

“Tell her she must get well. I expect her to be beautiful by her wedding day.”

I wondered if it was my place to tell the queen that there would be no wedding now. Was it not up to Will to do so? Yet something about the way the queen had spoken made me want to spare Will the pain and embarrassment of explaining the situation.

“There is not going to be any wedding.”

“Of course there is! The gown is all but finished, the feast planned. I even convinced the king to give the bride away.”

I drew in a steadying breath, trying to remember this behavior was not her fault. From the moment of her birth, she had had countless servants racing about to satisfy her every whim. Yet this was one time Her Majesty must be disappointed. “You have been kind to take such an interest in the menagerie’s affairs,” I began. “None of your curiosities deserves your generosity more than Sergeant Evans does.”

“I admit that when I first heard of the attachment, I was startled. Yet I’ve grown very fond of the idea. Now it is a matter of necessity. After what happened last night, the whole court needs some pleasure to distract them. What better than a menagerie wedding?”

“Majesty, there are so many wonders at your fingertips—the finest performers in the world clamor to entertain you. Will and Dulcinea have chosen not to wed. I beg you to accept their decision and seek your diversion somewhere else.”

“You seem most eager to see this wedding canceled. Is it possible that the Countess Carlisle is right? She claims you have a
grande passion
for some lady.”

My cheeks burned.

“Even Kate Villiers believes it. By the look upon your face, I think it must be so. Who is this woman who has won the heart of my Lord Minimus?”

“Did not the greatest knights in Arthur legends serve their lady in secret? I would do the same.”

“Is it Dulcinea you love? Is that why you wish me to let this inconvenient breach in the betrothal stand?”

She was such a mass of contradictions: tender and kind, imperious and selfish. Childlike when she romped with her spaniels and played with her maids of honor. A woman, praying for babes to fill her arms and secure her husband’s love. Did she have any idea how fragile this world of hers was?

What would she do if I told her the truth? Said that I did not love Dulcinea but that Will Evans did. That Dulcinea would break his heart if she wed him.

“You do love her!” the queen exclaimed. “I can tell by the anguish in your face.”

I did not deny it, only whispered, “Please, Majesty, do not let her marry him.”

I thought the queen would keep my supposed love secret and the whole wedding nonsense could fade without any more upset. I should have known better. Three nights later, while I sat in the menagerie’s lodgings Will stormed in, his eyes burning under his shaggy brows.

“Jeffrey, what the devil have you been up to? Telling the queen you are in love with Dulcinea?”

“Her Majesty said it. I just didn’t contradict her.”

“Is it true?” He looked so stricken. I could feel his sense of betrayal, feel his horror at the thought of all the times he had spoken of his love for her, how that might have wounded me.

“No.”

“Then why would you let her believe such a thing? The queen’s ladies have spread it far and wide. They claim that is the reason the wedding has been canceled. Because the queen will not allow her precious Lord Minimus to suffer seeing a beast like me wed to his lady.”

“Does it matter what they say?”

“The truth always matters.”

“The queen intended to force you to go through with the wedding—as if it were a game to entertain the court. I could not let that happen.”

“Do you think I would have minded? Game or no, Dulcinea would have ended up as my wife. I could have protected her. Even Buckingham would not have the courage to torment my wife.”

“I do not think there was any ‘tormenting’ going on at all where Buckingham and Dulcinea were concerned. I do not want to wound you, Will. But it is the truth. She would have gone right on chasing after her fine gentlemen. Three years from now, when you met a woman who could make you a decent wife and take care of you for a change, that woman would have been beyond your reach. Dulcinea would have made you miserable, and you know it.”

“It was my life! My choice! I did not ask you to meddle in it!”

“Dulcinea did not want to marry you! You heard her, Will. She’s a fool for not realizing what a fine man she’d have as husband, but then anyone who climbs up on a rope that high in the air and dances on the thing is not the smartest woman God ever put on earth!”

“Damn you, Jeffrey!”

“I did this for your own good,” I said. “You are my best friend. You said yourself—‘the brothers we choose.’”

“Not anymore.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do. For once, Archie Armstrong is right. At some point you stopped being one of the queen’s pets and began to be one of
them.
”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“As ridiculous as a hideous giant marrying the most beautiful woman he ever saw?”

“You’re not hideous!”

“Did you stop to think what it will be like for me? Not only having the wedding called off but knowing that everyone in the castle believes that it was because my best friend used his influence with the queen? Got her to cancel the wedding so he could have a chance with the woman I love?”

I kneaded my temples, my head aching. “Is that worse than having people think you put a babe in her belly? You with all your fine honor? Or, more humiliating still, that she got pregnant by some nobleman and married you because she had to if she ever wanted to perform at court again? Will, whatever those fools think or say, it doesn’t matter! We know it’s a lie.”

“You say that as if the truth doesn’t matter at all.”

“It doesn’t. Not here. They do not even know what the truth is anymore. The king would paint Buckingham as a hero—hand him another fleet to squander. Let him make officers of fools with no more military experience than Pug while good soldiers rot. The court will kiss Buckingham’s arse while waiting for a chance to stab him in the back. I wish they’d get on with it! Stab away!”

Will’s eyes narrowed, his voice suddenly quiet, cold in a way I’d never thought to hear. Not when he spoke to me. “Why don’t you kill him yourself? You’re grand at stabbing men in the back.”

Will turned and stalked away.

He will see reason, I told myself later as I scribbled a report to Buckingham, documenting the loss of Dulcinea’s babe, the medical skills Boku employed, and my role in getting the queen to cancel the wedding. In time, Will’s temper will cool, I thought. I went out to the stable and slipped to the place where my saddle was kept. I slid the message into its accustomed place.

It was gone when the queen went riding the next day. Will Evans’s anger was not.

T
WENTY-
F
IVE

June 1628

I thought I had known all there was about being an outcast, but it wasn’t until the menagerie quietly froze me out that I realized how comfortable I had become in their company, how enveloped in the daily warmth of friendship, of family.

I should have expected some reaction as the rumors spread. No one could help but notice the rift between Will and me. We had always been together when not at our duties. A footman claimed there was even a public house that had called itself the Dwarf and Giant in our honor.

The whole court seemed divided: Archie jubilant at the triumph of our darker angels, Sara wounded, Simon reproachful, Goodfellow chill and distant. Boku said nothing, only watched with his fathomless dark eyes.

Dulcinea frustrated me most of all, accepting my supposed adulation as her due, as if she found it easy to believe best friends would betray one another and go to war over her favors.

The courtiers found the triangle of giant, dwarf, and beauty titillating—the stuff of legends and romances. Of course, they cast the beautiful and witty Lord Minimus in the hero’s role.

Scorn for the courtiers built up inside me, honing new edges into my jests. Sometimes when I dealt one, I could see the wounds I left, and for the first time I understood Archie’s satisfaction in seeing all that aristocratic pride bleed. What did the courtiers know of true worth?

Only the queen seemed to understand my loss. Her affectionate caresses rained down on me more often than ever before—each feather-light touch of my lady’s hand Heaven and hell.

As May gave way to June, the king wrestled with his own challenges, summoning Parliament in a bid to raise funds for Buckingham’s return to La Rochelle. On the seventh, the whole court was afire with ill tidings for the king.

Archie stormed into the lodgings, furious. “Have you heard the news? A crew of malcontents—Eliot and Pym, Thomas Wentworth and Prynne—they’ve forced the king to sign something called the Petition of Right.”

For days, the Commons and the king had been locked in a battle of wills, the queen distraught over their impudence to the king. I had heard her disbelief, her outrage, her longing to defend her husband.

“What does this petition say?” Sara asked.

“It is not so terrible,” Rattlebones reasoned. “The petition just assures we keep the rights won in the Magna Carta. Look at what Buckingham has had the king doing—forcing loans from the wealthy, imprisoning men like Wentworth if they refused to pay.”

I ventured out of my self-appointed exile in the chimney corner. “Parliament denied the king money for ships,” I said. “Funds no king has ever been denied before. I know Wentworth and the rest denied the funds to spite Buckingham, but once they did so, the king had to find another way to fill his purse.” It was the queen’s argument, one she’d laid forth with tears of frustration.

Though Rattlebones deigned to speak to me, his tone was chill. “The king will not make the Commons more amenable to his requests by imprisoning its members and denying them habeas corpus. He will not make people love him by declaring martial law in areas that disagree with him or billeting soldiers in their houses whether they are willing or no. The petition sets forth in law that His Majesty can do none of those things.”

“Let the great ones tussel over such matters,” Sara said, disliking the conflict. “It has no effect on us.” As the others turned back to their ale, shutting me out once again, I wondered if she was right.

When July came, the court split, the queen’s household leaving for Wellingborough, the king and Buckingham for Portsmouth to ready the fleet.

No one in England wanted to go back to war. Not that the king heard the protests or heeded his wife’s loneliness. He stayed with the duke at Portsmouth, overseeing ships and supplies, demanding more coin from subjects who struggled as crops failed.

While the two men played at war, the queen was left on her own, breaking my heart as she waited for His Majesty to ride from Portsmouth to visit her bedchamber.

The holy site at Wellingborough was said to give aid to barren wives desperate to conceive. I accompanied the queen to the site and held her hand as healers applied ointments that burned and fed her tisanes and foul-tasting concoctions to stimulate the womb. She was so brave, so hopeful, my Henrietta Maria. She was drawn to every babe she saw, be it one of the village folks’, lambs in the fields, or the puppies Mitte brought forth again with so much ease.

One night, I found her weeping in the garden, having sent all her ladies some distance away. I went to her, dared lay my hand upon her hunched shoulders. “My dearest lady, what grieves you so? I cannot bear your tears.”

“What if I can never have children?” she cried. “I pray and pray, and yet perhaps the people who say Charles should send me back to France are right. I am useless if I cannot give him a prince.”

“Never say that, Majesty.”

“It is true! But I had rather die than be sent away. I love Charles, Jeffrey. So much.”

“The fleet will sail,” I said, trying to soothe her. “Then His Majesty will return to your side. With Buckingham gone, all will be well. Boku says that discord can clench the womb shut like a fist. Once Buckingham has sailed, you and the king will be able to relax in each other’s company.”

“Do you think so?”

“I am sure of it.”

I was not the only one. In mid-August, Uriel Ware arrived at Wellingborough, bringing news of the king. I stood at the queen’s side as Ware bowed before her.