The Queen's Dwarf A Novel (9 page)

I thought of answering in French but was too tired to go into some lengthy explanation. Instead, I replied in kind. “I did not dare ask permission to fetch a wrap,”

The queen touched my cheek. Even through her gloves, her hand felt warm. “Griggory, give Jeffrey your cloak at once.”

The footman’s fingers tightened on the folds at his throat, as if he wanted to refuse. But in the end, he stripped off the heavy garment and flung it around me. It swallowed me up, pooling on the ground, as if I were a tall man whose legs had melted. I did not show how much more comfortable it made me. If I continued to behave as if I were cold, the queen might invite me into that private circle she and Saint-Georges would share near the brazier meant to warm Her Majesty’s feet.

I must have looked forlorn. I certainly felt so. The queen beckoned me as she moved to her throne in the vessel, Saint-Georges at her side.

“Majesty, do you think it would be wiser to send the little man to the front of the boat with the others?”

“He looks so exhausted, he will be asleep before we are three boat lengths beyond Buckingham’s wharf. Let him be, Mamie.”

The queen patted one of the damask cushions strewn around her. I hauled myself onto the slippery mound. With one last, wary look, Mamie Saint-Georges settled in next to us, the footmen shooing everyone else to the prow of the barge, as if closing a door behind us.

Link boys wedged torches into iron holders to light our way and the bargemen cast off their lines, a drum beating rhythm as the oars dipped into the water.

Madame Saint-Georges spoke as soon as the other women were out of earshot, her French more biting than the wind. “What arrogance for Buckingham to thrust his wife at you that way!” Madame Saint-Georges huffed, no doubt certain I could not understand. “His Majesty was no better—instructing
her
to teach
you
how to be a good wife?”

I expected temper from the queen, but she grew pensive. “I fear Buckingham is right. I am not very good at being a wife.”

“The duke is hardly qualified to advise you! That scoundrel abducted Catherine Manners after her father refused to consent to his beloved daughter marrying such a fortune hunter. Then, after Buckingham had ruined her reputation, he forced her father to
beg
him to marry the little idiot. Imagine! One of the greatest heiresses in England being handed over to such a man!”

“Yet the duchess adores her husband.”

“She deserves what she gets. Buckingham dallies with any woman who can gain him power or wealth or merely diversion. They say the duke is hand in glove with that sly witch Lucy Hay and the earl of Carlisle encourages his wife in the affair so he can benefit from Buckingham’s power.”

“It is easy to see how the countess of Carlisle fascinates men,” the queen said. “I am sure she does not flinch from the unpleasantness of the marriage bed, no matter how embarrassing and painful and clumsy the act is. I heard so many great love tales and thought my bedding would be different. Perhaps if I learned from her, I might win the king’s affection.”

“All you would learn from her is harlot’s ways! His Majesty
does
care for you. If Buckingham would stop interfering, the king would care even more!
Why
cannot some obliging assassin thrust a knife in him?”

“Mamie!” the queen exclaimed, hushing her. I thought she would remind Saint-Georges of my connection to the duke. But I might have had no more wit than the pillows they sat upon. “I cannot wish Buckingham harmed. The loss would devastate the king. Besides, I cannot bear talk of such violence after what happened to my father.”

“Your life would be easier without the duke to plague you,” Mamie insisted.

“His would be easier if he were rid of me. Rescuing those Huguenot nobles in New Rochelle like he craves would mean war with my brother, while Rome hopes to use French armies to force England back into the true faith. A French Catholic with an empty womb can serve neither side.”

“My mother says anxiety keeps a woman’s womb too bitter to feed a babe. If King Charles wants a son, he should make Buckingham and the others stop tormenting you. As for the English Catholics, you have done all in your power to ease their burdens. You’ve made Denmark House into a haven where they can come to Mass and confess. The chapel Inigo Jones is building there will be magnificent.”

Sorrow knit the queen’s brow. “How many of my subjects will be able to seek comfort there? A handful with enough wealth and power? What of the poor scattered to the corners of this island? Even those few who do use my chapel—what happens once they walk out of my door? The hatred and suspicion toward Catholics grows. I cannot tell you how many letters I receive from France demanding to know why I do not accomplish what I was sent here for.”

“That fop Buckingham is no match for a daughter of France,” Madame Saint-Georges said. “Be merry, chase roses back into your cheeks, laugh and dance. You will win the king in the end. No one can resist you when they see you thus.”

“If I was without you and my menagerie, I would die of loneliness. I did not think my life would be like this. Not when Charles rode out to meet me, so eager that he could not wait for protocol. He seemed so delighted with me the first time we met that I thought … well, it hardly matters now. The king and I even argue as to whether or not it is raining.” Henrietta Maria gave a sad little laugh. “Was I foolish to hope for love? My parents did not love. I cannot think of any royalty who found love with their husband or wife. But the first time I saw the king’s picture, I felt as if he were locked behind that coldness everyone speaks of and I could release him.”

Madame Saint-Georges gave her a hug that flew in the face of all the royal protocol Ware had drilled me in. But the queen accepted the caress with a sigh and leaned against her friend. Mamie kissed the top of her head. “Sweet Etta, you were always hungry for affection. In our
petit troupeau
at Saint-Germaine, you were everyone’s favorite. It is no wonder you are lonely here. Just close your eyes and think of the flowers and sunshine and your brothers and sisters playing at hoodman-blind.”

“Buckingham wanted me to be ashamed of them. He would have called them bastards and cast them out of the palace walls. His heart is too small, while my father’s … I wish I had known him, Mamie. I have only the memories you and
le petit troupeau
shared with me. I begged for tales of him so often, they almost seem my own.”

I leaned back so I could see the sadness that pooled with the shadows around the queen’s mouth. I remembered the duke’s warning that I must not be drawn in by the queen. “She has a certain charm,” he had claimed. I braced my feet against the deck and pushed to put more space between us.

I watched as Madame Saint-Georges stroked the queen’s hair. “Close your eyes,
mon ame,
” Madame Saint-Georges murmured. “Tomorrow things will look bright again. We will play with the puppies in the garden and see what antics that dreadful monkey of yours gets up to. And we shall dress your new little man. Think what fun we shall have.”

The rhythm of oars in water lulled me. The queen’s voice drifted to my ears. “It is so cold here, Mamie,” she said. “I begin to fear I will never get warm.”

I shivered as wind gusted across the water again. Yet it was not the weather outside that chilled me, but the loneliness I felt within—that hollow place where someone’s love might have warmed me.

F
IVE

The ground was moving. I tried to lift my eyelids, but some wicked brownie had knotted my lashes together. Foreign fairies, it seemed, for I heard melodious French and a sonorous accent speaking a kind of English far from what I had heard in Oakham.

My body wedged against a craggy wall of wool, which made it impossible to move my legs or arms. I tossed my head, thumping against something metallic. The sting made my eyelashes come untied at last, torchlight splashing hell glow across the face of a monster. Slabs of granite formed cheekbones longer than my whole head. Brows jutted over eyes that seemed aflame from reflected torchlight. Ivory teeth gleamed in a bristly nest of beard. I would have screamed if I’d had enough room to suck air into my lungs.

“Easy, there, man,” rumbled the deepest voice I had ever heard. “You’ll hurt yourself thrashing about, and then what will I tell the queen?”

I craned my neck, glimpsing Her Majesty a little distance away, her flock of ladies adjusting her cloak as she started toward the palace. I wanted to escape the monster who imprisoned me, scramble over to the women, who were at least somewhat familiar, but one arm was trapped against my captor, the other so tangled in my wrappings, I gave a cry of frustration. “Let me go.”

“I can’t be doing that,” the monster replied as we fell into step behind the royal party. “Her Majesty ordered me to carry you up to my rooms until the steward can make you a place of your own. Griggory is to valet you. My fingers are too clumsy to work fastenings tiny as the ones on your clothes.”

“Who are you?”

One thatched eyebrow arched higher. “My mother would smack me with a broomstick if she knew I have forgotten the manners she taught me. William Evans, sergeant porter of the queen’s back stairs at your service.”

This was the giant I had been taunted about, until the “curiosity” loomed like a bogey in a child’s night terror. I struggled to get a better look. His was as homely a countenance as I had ever seen. A prominent brow made his eyes seem buried in caves. His shovel of a nose must have collided with a door lintel and healed askew. Everything about Evans was forged on a scale to intimidate the most stalwart man. I felt like a nit he might crush just by flexing his hand.

“I was having a walk when I saw the queen’s barge approaching,” Evans said. “I came to see if I could lend a hand. Wasn’t on duty, but no one at Denmark House is better at lifting and carrying things than Will Evans.”

“You were taking a walk at this hour?”

“The world doesn’t fit me, so my legs need stretching now and again. Good thing for you I was about. Griggory would have dropped you once you started to squawk. Man’s scared of anything that’s not common-looking as mud on a rainy Sunday.”

The queen’s party veered away from us, Her Majesty lifting a hand in farewell. Evans kept walking, and I noticed a hitch in rhythm that kept his stride from being graceful. I could scarce believe how his legs ate up the ground as we turned into what were obviously the servants’ quarters.

A fortune in wax candles lit the way, whomever we met drawing a word from the giant. “How goes it with the new babe, Maude?” “Did the patch on your mam’s roof hold, Donald?” It was as if Evans knew everyone. The smiles they gave back were real. Who was this man beyond a hulking form and harsh features? If I had been his size, no one would have dared to grope me or move me around as if I were a basket of carding wool. I imagined switching bodies with Evans. Grim satisfaction filled me at the thought that even Buckingham would be awed by my anger, though the nobleman would never show it. Would I even need to be seven feet six inches tall if Will Evans became my friend? Or would those who harassed me be cautious because they feared the giant would settle my debt?

When we reached a stairway, Evans shifted me onto his shoulder and pinned me with one arm as if I were a babe. He bent down, and I saw a thin girl hunched under the weight of two buckets of coal. Evans grabbed both handles with one platter-size hand, hefting the buckets as if they were filled with goose down. I could not see the maid’s face, but I heard her, prickly with pride as she scurried along beside us. “I am strong enough to do it myself, Sergeant Evans.”

“I’m capable of scraping up my arm while fetching my stockings when they roll under the cupboard. But every time I’ve lost one thus, it magically reappears, folded on my bed. You’d not know how that happens, would you, Becky?”

She grumbled a reply, but she did not protest as Evans hefted both the buckets and me up stairs that seemed to go on forever.

“What have you got in the cloak, Sergeant Evans?” the girl asked.

I braced myself to be shown, as if I were still in the Fairy Cage. Instead, I heard Evans’s voice, kind but firm. “This bundle has nothing to do with you.” He set the buckets down on the landing. “Now, run along and don’t be listening to Riley’s flattery. He’s trouble for a good girl like you.”

“Yes, Sergeant.” She took up her burden and went off.

Evans’s reticence puzzled me. People were usually eager to display me and impress whoever they encountered. “Why did you not tell her who I was?” I asked.

He shifted me so he could see my face. The eyes set in those bony caves of his were cornflower blue and kind. “A man doesn’t like to be introduced to a lady unless he’s standing on his own feet. Here we are, at my quarters.” He opened a heavy wooden door and doubled over to pass through it.

He closed the door, then straightened and carried me to the stone fireplace. My legs nearly buckled when he stood me in front of its cheery warmth. “There now,” he said, hunkering down so he could steady me. “I’d wager the queen danced you off of your feet. I’d be tipsy, as well, after such a night.”

I glanced around the chamber as fingers thick as sausages began untangling the cloak that cocooned me. A lone taper guttered in a pewter branch. Walls were hung with weaponry meant to be used, not arranged in decorative sunbursts as in Buckingham’s residences. Evans’s swords, shield, and halberd were kept within quick reach for a man who might need them.

Furniture crouched like oaken beasts. Not one piece was set squarely, as if Evans had bumped into things so often, he had quit bothering to straighten them. Patches of raw wood showed at the chairs’ joints, where someone had made crude attempts to repair damage likely caused in bearing Evans’s weight.

A once-fine tapestry, now in disrepair, seemed out of place in a giant’s room. Israel’s David stretched almost to the floor, his sandaled foot planted on a fallen Goliath. Something, likely a rat, had gnawed one corner of the tapestry into a ragged mess and snagged the lower portion with scrabbling claws.