Dark Angels (41 page)

He made no answer. His shirt was open. She placed some of the coins Richard had given her on his nipples, down the line of dark hair that inched to his navel. She placed the last coin on the button of his breeches. “A little present for you because I find you so attractive.”

She traced the line of one of his brows; they arched naturally, giving him a look of amused cynicism. If the soldier sent to see her had been more acute, he would have described those brows. They were quite distinctive. “I have a love of other languages. Do you speak other languages, my sweet prince?” She leaned forward, moved a coin with her tongue, and kissed his nipple.

“Yes,” he said in French.

“What is that?” she asked.

“French, as I’m certain you know. And this is Italian. It’s dangerous to play games with me. Do you want me to embrace you, beautiful whoremonger, or kill you?” he said in Italian.

“What are you saying? It quite thrills me! When we play, you must speak to me in it. You’re so clever. Are you very bad as well?” she murmured against his chest.

He made no answer, closed his eyes, accepting her caresses like a cat, as his due.

She moved her hand to touch him more intimately. “You are, I just know it. Neddie loves bad boys. Let me show you how much.”

D
OWNSTAIRS
, R
ICHARD TRIED
to pay for the wine, but the footman told him there was no charge. He walked down the corridor, the sounds from the little openings following him to the door. Outside, he stood in the middle of the street. Night had fallen, and already here and there in the distance were the soft lights of All Hallows’ Eve bonfires. He pulled in air like a bellows, wanting to clear his mind, his lungs, his being. It won’t be pretty, Balmoral had warned. Jesus God.

He looked back to the red door, unsatisfied.

Back he went.

“Etienne,” he said to the burly man, who smiled in a way that made Richard consider hitting him but decide against it.

“If you want Etienne, sir, you’ve got to come inside, sir.”

Richard held out another coin. “No one has to know but you and me.”

“I can’t. I wish I could.”

She ran a tight ship; so Balmoral had warned. Flirt with her, if you can, he’d advised, but Richard couldn’t do it. He’d been too shocked at all he saw. He’d felt as thick and stupid as a country bumpkin. “All right, then, lead me to him.”

Etienne sat on the cot in his tiny chamber. He looked up as Richard entered, drew the sheer curtains shut, and his face remained as clear as a young angel’s. “Coins there,” he said, pointing to a bowl. “Then tell me what you’d like.”

Richard dropped them in, placed three more on the blanket. “For you, if you help me.” In a flash, Etienne moved the coins under a pillow. Figures walked by outside the sheer curtains, glancing in. It was as if they were ghosts, figures from a netherworld.

“I want you to watch for someone.” There was the sound of weeping and of a violin being played, and somewhere near a man was groaning. Richard described Henri Ange. “I’ll come again to ask if you’ve seen him,” he said, then held out his hand. Etienne shook it.

Outside, Richard walked briskly and carefully down a narrow street, little more than an alley, which brought him to the Strand, one of the broader streets of the city. From here, it was easy to cross over to the walls of the houses built along the river, find a side street to river stairs, hire a boat to take him to Whitehall. Here and there on the opposite shore were more bonfires, beacons in the dark night. Richard breathed deep of the night air and the river, pulling cold deliberately into his lungs again and again.

A
T
W
HITEHALL
P
ALACE,
Alice tied a last scarlet ribbon into Queen Catherine’s hair, curled to twisting ringlets everywhere. They both contemplated the queen’s image in the mirror. She wore a stiff, scarlet high stomacher out of which her chemise framed her shoulders with handmade lace. Her shirt was black velvet with satin stripes of red overlaid. It was very short, so that her ankles and shoes showed. And in her ears and around her neck hung Portuguese emeralds, mined in the Americas, part of her dowry, set in heavy gold. Her mouth was rouged vivid red, and Alice had taken great care with the rouging of her cheeks.

“Four,” said Queen Catherine.

“I think three.”

“Tyrant.”

Alice placed three gummed dark patches on her face, a coach and horses on her forehead, a star by her left eye, a heart by her bottom lip. With her mask on, only the heart would show. The mask was red. Queen Catherine was an apple vendor. She would carry a basket filled with the best of autumn’s last apple crop. On her black stockings, clearly and shockingly showing, were embroidered red apples. Her cloak was red velvet, lined with emerald green.

They were all going as street vendors, vendors of flowers and herbs. All of the maids of honor wore provocative short skirts high enough to show off their ankles, stockings, and shoes. On their stockings, the queen’s embroiderers had embroidered the flower or herb they were selling. For days beforehand, they’d debated among themselves as to the propriety of showing their ankles, the queen and Barbara holding out, feeling they were going too far. But somehow it had been resolved that they’d do it, and then Queen Catherine had fallen into the fun of it as if she had been its advocate all along. But that had been before the note arrived. It had been Alice’s idea that they perform as a surprise to the king. So they had called upon Fletcher to organize them, and they were going to enter singing and dancing—really it would be as if they were stage actresses, at least that is what they had secretly convinced themselves—and it was all going to be slightly shocking and therefore quite wonderful. The king would like the naughtiness of it. Each of them had a line to sing all by herself. It would end with the crowd of them dancing through costumed courtiers, offering flowers, herbs, apples, as favors to whomever they chose—another source of great excitement—and they would end by encircling the king and pouring whatever remained in their baskets into his hands. This last was the result of Alice’s having seen his sultan’s costume today.

None of the other ladies’ households, that of the Duchess of York or the Duchess of Monmouth, was doing anything other than dressing up—Edward and other court pages were their spies and told them so. It was all great fun, or would have been if the queen were not so dispirited.

“I want not to do this.” Queen Catherine dug her fingers into the fur of the little fox sleeping in her lap, and it yelped and stood up.

Alice knelt beside her. “You look wonderful, Your Majesty.”

“In here”—she touched her breast—“I am have such sad.”

“Shall we put it out that you are ill?”

The canaries in their cages and lovely little birds dabbed with different colors, from one of Portugal’s colonies, were singing in their cages. It was a last aria before dark. “And give more for talk to my enemies to do? No. Dress yourself. Mass, she is in half an hour.”

T
HE MAIDS OF
honors’ adjoining bedchambers were a welter of black velvet shirts, embroidered stockings, high-heeled shoes, giggling young women, servants running here and there, curling tongs heating in the fireplace, secrets being whispered, earrings being screwed in, laughter everywhere. Big ewers as well as a few silver tubs of water and the damp rags showed that bathing had preceded the dressing.

“Our faces!” Luce squealed as Alice rushed past.

Poll poured boiling water into a tepid tub, and, fingers flying, Alice untied, unpinned, rolled down, stepped out of clothing to bathe. That done, she began to reassemble herself as fast as she could. In no time she sat on her bed, tying the garter that held up her beautifully embroidered stocking. Poll was at the fireplace, heating the tongs for her hair. Everyone else’s hair was curled and beribboned.

“Our cheeks…” Luce stood beside her bed.

There was a knock at the door. Gracen opened it enough to see who it was, talked in a low voice with Edward, then turned to tell them all, “The queen is ready to go to mass.”

“Tell her we need but a few moments more,” Barbara said.

Alice stood up in her one stocking. “Is the splash ready?” she asked Poll.

“Yes, but your hair—”

“Never mind it, Poll. We’ll pin it up one way or another. Bring the splash.”

At once they sorted themselves into line, Luce sitting first in a chair before the fire. Gracen brought candles and set them all along the mantel so the light would be better. Wishing to miss nothing, several of the servant girls gathered around Alice. Carefully, Poll began to measure out the gum benzoin, which had been mixed in spirits of wine and very lightly boiled.

“Fifteen drops apiece,” Alice reminded her.

“As if I didn’t know that like I know my own name.” Poll dropped the amount into a very small pewter bowl of water and stirred it once with a thin stirring stick made of bone. Alice dipped a paintbrush into the mix and dabbed at Luce’s cheeks. Gum benzoin drew blood to the surface and gave a girl blooming cheeks. It wasn’t rouge, so Alice—discovering the recipe in a household book of her aunt’s that had belonged to her grandmother—had convinced Barbara it was fine. If Alice and Barbara agreed, all obeyed.

Giggling and whispering had stopped now. This was serious business; a girl could look as though she had scarlet fever if it wasn’t done properly, and no one had the art of it like Alice, who needed silence for her work. It had been two years since she’d done this. Every one of them was different, some needing more, some needing less. Alice put on a glove dirtied with coal dust. Poll handed her the shaved piece of coal. Deftly, she touched under the lashes of Luce’s eyes. Again the effect had to be subtle. Kit, Barbara, Renée. Gracen. Alice touched lightly at a last cheekbone, under a last eye, and it was done.

“Go on to mass,” she told the others. “I’ll slip in once Poll has pinned up my hair.”

“I’ll stay and do your hair,” said Barbara.

“Everyone has her mask?”

“Don’t let your cloaks open.”

Like mothers, Barbara and Alice called out instructions.

In the silence left behind, Alice tied her other garter in its place at the top of her stocking, while Poll checked the temperature of the tongs with a wet finger. Alice sat, her mind calming as Barbara began to curl her ringlets.

“Her earrings, Poll.” Barbara screwed in the pearl drops they all wore—badges of their position. “The brush, Poll.”

A paint stroke here, there, and Alice’s cheeks bloomed.

“We’re done. Go and look at yourself in the mirror. The color becomes you.”

Alice stared at herself in the glass. She wasn’t pretty exactly, but she was—she tilted her head—very interesting. Cloaked and ready, Barbara came up behind her and draped Alice’s own cloak over her shoulders, smoothing out the material the way a mother would. Alice turned, and Barbara fastened the ties, pulled up Alice’s hood, then her own. They stared at each other and smiled.

“We’ll break hearts tonight,” Alice said. “Let’s find Edward and be on our way.”

They took each other’s hands, just as they’d done since they were twelve and learned they were best of friends, and began winding their way through halls and sets of chambers until they were walking through the gallery whose end was Holbein Gate.

They walked down the stairs that led to the park, pulling their cloaks close to them. Winter was in the chill. In the sky a sliver of moon was surrounded by haze. Edward took a torch dipped in pitch from its place. In another moment it was lighted, and he walked out into the night before them. He was their linkboy—young boys who carried lanterns or torches to light the night—for the walk across the park and to St. James’s Palace. Other courtiers and Londoners, too, strolled in the park, the lanterns of their linkboys bobbing like small stars fallen from the sky.

The queen’s chapel was across the park, in St. James’s Palace, built by old Henry VIII, he of the many wives. The chapel was beautiful, its grace and intimate elegance the legacy of a man named Inigo Jones, who had been fascinated with the great Renaissance architect Palladio. Its ceiling had set the fashion for honeycombs—deep frames of gilded wood set one after another in the ceiling, resembling the outside of a bee’s hive. Inside each shallow honeycomb was a painting. The king’s mother, French, Catholic, had worshipped here with her ladies and gentlemen.