Dark Angels

CONTENTS

For X and, one more time, for Carmen

When I was a child, I spake as a child. I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

 
For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

 
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

—I C
ORINTHIANS
13: 11–13

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

FOR ANGELS ALONG THE WAY:
my agent, Jean Naggar; my writing pod, Joyce Boatright and Sandi Stromberg; my friend Ann Bradford; my editor, Allison McCabe; and Crown Publishing.

A
UTHOR’S
N
OTE

T
HE HISTORY OF
kings and queens is seldom a happy one. But in 1642 there was a happy royal family. It was the family of Charles I of England, married to a princess of France, whom he loved and who loved him back. Theirs was a true romance. They had six healthy children. The queen was Catholic, however, a bit too Catholic for public tastes. Once upon a time, all kingdoms of the Western world had been so, but a prior king—one Henry VIII—had broken from the Church of Rome and established the Church of England. Charles I and his Parliament parted company over the rights of a king to rule absolutely and over questions of religion. A civil war ensued. The family of Charles I shattered to pieces. His last child, named Henriette, was born while her father was in battle, and she never saw him. Charles I was captured and sentenced to be beheaded. His son, the Prince of Wales, sent a blank sheet of paper to Parliament, with a signature. They had only to dictate the terms to spare his father’s life; it was to no avail—Charles I was beheaded in 1649. His wife wore the last letter he had sent her inside her gown, against her breast, until the day she died. The Prince of Wales became Charles II, a monarch without a kingdom. England became a protectorate, dour and narrow, ruled by General Oliver Cromwell. Charles wandered from France to Spain to the Dutch Republic for ten years, looking for aid, for enough soldiers to invade England and win. (He had invaded before and lost.) At last, in 1659 Oliver Cromwell died, and no one was strong enough to keep the kingdom together. Certain generals, particularly one, decided a monarchy would be best again. Charles was invited to return. Return he did in 1660, and he ruled until he died, holding together a kingdom that still threatened to split to pieces over religious freedoms and the authority of the king. This novel opens ten years after Charles II was crowned king. History named him the merry monarch.

C
HAPTER
1

May 1670

F
acing white cliffs in a strait of ocean separating two kingdoms, a fleet of ships lay at anchor. It was the fleet of the kingdom of England, sent to escort precious cargo: a princess of England and France, the most famous princess in Christendom, in fact. A yacht with a rakish bow slashed through the water toward the best and greatest of these anchored ships; the king on board liked fast yachts, fast horses, fast women. The princess was his sister, and he and those with him could not wait to see her.

“Monmouth’s on the yacht!” said a young woman leaning over the side of the princess’s ship. She had stepped atop a huge coil of rope for this view, and a sailor, eyeing her satins and the single strand of fat pearls at her neck, had warned her to be careful, but she’d sent him off with a withering comment to mind his own business. She wasn’t one to suffer fools—or even those who weren’t fools—telling her what to do. The sight of King Charles’s yacht racing toward them was thrilling. She could see the crowd waiting on shore. The queen and her father and her best friend were among them. She was so glad to see England again, she wasn’t certain she’d be able to keep herself from kneeling on the beach and kissing the sand of it when she landed.

“And who else is there?” asked the friend with her, like her a maid of honor to the princess, and like her, excited to be witnesses to this, King Charles and his sister meeting again after so many years—ten if it was a day. Flags were flying from all the topmasts, whipping smartly in the breeze. The day was bright and clear. Everyone was dressed in their finest, felt high-spirited, mettlesome as horses, stirred and thrilled by this reunion.