Dark Angels (67 page)

Q
UEEN
C
ATHERINE WAS
in her closet, her confessor, Father Huddleston, with her. The sight of him checked Alice for a moment, that and the stillness of the queen’s face. She curtsied and stayed down a long moment in the gesture.

“There’s been a letter from Lord Knollys,” said Father Huddleston. “He sends a letter for Mrs. Brownwell, asks that the queen give it to her, that she not be alone when she reads it.”

Foreboding filled Alice. “May I ask why?”

“He’s taken a wife.”

“Gracen Howard,” said Queen Catherine. “Mrs. Brownwell is at the Duke of Monmouth’s. Bring her. Say nothing.”

A
LICE CROSSED
the privy garden to Monmouth’s. The sound of a guitar being strummed met her as she walked up the stairs behind his majordomo. Courtiers played cards, Prince Rupert the guitar.

“Your Grace,” Monmouth greeted her, made an exaggerated bow, kissed her cheek. Over his shoulder, she saw Louisa Saylor. “I’m happy for you, Alice. Everyone is.”

There was Dorothy. What am I going to say? Alice thought.

Prince Rupert signaled for her to come to him. “What’s this I hear?” He strummed and talked at the same time. “You’ve captured Balmoral. Well done, girl.” A crowd was gathering. Alice was too well-known for the news to go unnoticed, and Balmoral was too important.

“Your Grace,” said Louisa Saylor, curtsying to her with a saucy look.

“Kit and I want to be bridesmaids,” said Luce.

“It’s going to be a small wedding,” Alice answered.

“Yes, he’s very old, isn’t he?”

“Very.” King Charles walked forward. “You are going to lead Balmoral a merry chase.”

Renée slipped in to kiss her cheek. “My duchess,” she said in English, rolling out the word like a flag.

“Where is the duke?” King Charles asked.

“Resting, sir.”

“He’d best. He needs to stay in bed until the wedding night. I may command that. I’d hate to have you disappointed, Alice.”

Amid the general laughter, Alice said to Dorothy, “Can you come with me back to Her Majesty?”

“Of course.”

“Let’s leave quietly. She asked that we be as discreet as possible.”

“I’ve taken your advice,” Dorothy said as they walked across the privy garden, gravel crunching under their feet. “I’m not allowing myself to imagine the worst. And I’ve stopped eating cake. And I spent too much on a new gown, but it’s his favorite shade.”

“I’m glad, Dorothy.”

Dorothy breathed in the night air. “I can’t wait for the first rose to open. The queen might be in Portugal for all she missed. She must make peace with His Majesty.”

“Yes, that’s what is wise, isn’t it, to make peace with what is.”

Dorothy took her arm and began to hum the music Prince Rupert had been playing. She was still humming it when Edward opened the door to the queen’s closet. Alice stayed outside, stood by a covered birdcage. After a time, she heard sounds of desperate weeping. Edward, who was hitting dice against the wall, raised eyes to Alice. The door to the closet stayed closed. How brave Queen Catherine is, thought Alice.

When the door finally opened, Father Huddleston walked out with Dorothy leaning on his arm, sobbing. “The queen wishes a word with you,” he told Alice.

Queen Catherine stood at her windows, looking out into the night. “Alone she cannot have. You stay with her.”

“Of course.”

“Cut through the heart. I send sleeping draft.”

“I’ll see she takes it.”

“Coins he send. For her debts, he write. Guilt money. Take it. He ask for it to be his Gracen a lady of my household. Stupid man.” Alice picked up the letter, the bag of coins, curtsied to the queen, who had still not turned to face her. “I forget. Blessings on your good fortune, Verney.”

Dorothy lay on the bed, her maidservant trying to talk her into putting on her nightgown. Somehow, between the two of them, Alice and the maidservant managed to make Dorothy stand, managed to strip gown and skirt and stockings. All the while, Dorothy wept, a high, keening sound that made Alice’s hands shake. How can this many tears be in someone? she thought. Are they in me? Will I sob like this someday over something? She’d wept over Cole’s betrayal, but not like this. She could imagine it now because of Richard. It frightened her, the depth and breadth and pain that might be the cost of loving.

Dorothy was still keening when the physician arrived with the sleeping draft.

Silence fell only when she slept.

Alice let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. The maidservant had pulled out her own little trundle bed for Alice to sleep upon, and here was Poll, and she was fussing, helping Alice out of her gown, and there was a bowl of clean water in which to wash her face, and then Poll was brushing out her hair, familiar and soothing, and Alice felt something inside her let go, loosen. She gave a little hiccup of a sigh, and Poll, folding her gown, put it down to reach over and give her a quick pat on the arm. “You’re that tired, Mistress Alice. Into bed with you.”

“Leave the candle, Poll.”

“Don’t you go to sleep with it burning. The last thing we need is for Whitehall to burn down.”

“I won’t.”

With Poll and the maidservant gone, she went to Knollys’s letter, unfolded it, but found that she—Alice the curious, Alice the sneak—couldn’t bring herself to read it. So she refolded it and blew out the candle. She climbed into her bed and said prayers, for once with feeling, asking God to bless this muddle.

The next morning, when she woke, Dorothy was out of bed, sitting at the table, the letter unfolded before her, the coins spread out neatly on the table. “You didn’t have to stay the night, Alice.” Her voice was a croak, her face puffy.

“We were worried for you.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Her maidservant entered with a tray.

“Go on, Alice. I need some time to myself today.”

Alice kissed her cheek, grabbed a shawl to cover her nightgown, and in another moment was outside, walking to the maids’ bedchamber.

“A bath, Poll.” She was going to bathe and then go for a long ride, all the way into the little hamlet of Chelsea with Poppy. She was going to listen to birds and walk along the banks of the Thames and let the cold air chill her cheeks, waft away her sad thoughts, celebrate her little triumph, paled in the larger machinations of court.

In another hour, she was dressed warmly, her boots on, in the kitchens coaxing a cook to give her bread and cheese and two bottles of ale. Then she was crossing courtyards, stopping to talk with this one or that as more good wishes came her way, then she was running up the stairs at Balmoral’s. He sat in a chair in his closet, his legs covered with a blanket. She paused on the doorstep. He’d never looked so wan, so frail. Some of her happiness faded. This was part of it. Not just honor and safety, but this. She put down her parcel of food and went to him, kneeling as she’d done in her happiness at St. James’s Park. “So, having to marry me sent you into a fit, did it?”

He grimaced. “I fool myself, Alice, that I may have one taste, and one taste leads to this. I vow to you that I am not going to drink again.”

His hands were trembling in his lap, but whether from this promise or from his last bout, Alice didn’t know and didn’t want to. She was happy simply to believe him. She laid her cheek on his covered knee. “I would be so glad of that.”

“Where are you off to, with your jaunty feathered hat and your riding clothes?”

“I thought to ride to Chelsea. I could wait. We could go together in a carriage.”

“No. I cannot stir from this chair today, nor tomorrow. The jolting of a carriage would make my head, which is barely fastened on as it is, fall off.”

She told him about Dorothy, about Lord Knollys and Gracen.

“Well, I’m sorry for Mrs. Brownwell. Off with you, then. Be careful.”

He leaned forward and kissed her, and a shudder rose in her at the feel of his lips on her cheek, but this, too, was a piece of it. “Shall I come to visit this evening?”

“No. I’ll be worse.”

Poppy had a horse for her, one from the queen’s stables, fresh and sassy and hard to manage. Hoisted into the saddle, she smiled as the horse turned a circle and reared slightly. A hand reached out and yanked her bridle. Alice stared down into the face of Colefax, once her near bridegroom, always Balmoral’s heir. So, she thought, here it is at last, what I dreamed. “Let loose my bridle.”

“I want to speak with you.”

“Later.”

“Now.”

“Speak, then.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going for a gallop in the country.”

“That’s not what I refer to. What do you think you’re doing with this business of marrying my uncle?”

“What piece is it you don’t understand, Cole?”

“You’re doing this for spite, Alice.”

She laughed, and the horse tried to rear. Colefax was yanked a few feet in the animal’s dancing anxiety, but he still held the reins. “I’m not going to allow it.”

“You think you can stop it? How amusing. Do try. It will be fun to see.”

She jerked on the reins, and the horse did rear, and Colefax stepped back to be out of the way of the hooves. It danced on hind legs, and Alice allowed it, soothing the animal with little clucking sounds, staying in the saddle. Poppy helped her settle the horse, pulled himself up into the saddle of the horse he was riding.

“Are you finished?” Poppy said. He meant her conversation with Cole.

“Quite finished,” she answered and galloped off, her groom following.

She’d thought this moment with Cole would be more satisfying. It had always been in her daydreams. But it wasn’t. She didn’t marry Balmoral to hurt him anymore, and she didn’t know when that had changed.

I
T WAS
E
DWARD
who told Richard about Dorothy Brownwell, describing the sobbing. Later in the guardroom, Richard saw her maidservant. “How is your mistress?”

“A watering pot. If you break my heart like that”—she shook a finger at the guardsman who was her sweetheart—“I will stab you with a knife.” The guardsman pretended fear, and she slapped at him, and the movements were really rough-and-tumble kisses between them. “She had me dress her up in her finest gown. We curled her hair and rouged her cheeks. She’ll be over this in a fortnight.”

That afternoon, Richard brought a basket of kittens, born in the stable a few weeks ago, to amuse the queen and her ladies. Cards were abandoned, embroidery circles dropped, as women grouped around the basket.

“I thought I’d show them to Mrs. Brownwell, Your Majesty.” With the queen’s consent, Richard went down the stairs to the maids of honor’s apartments, and there was Alice, her cheeks pink with cold, looking very fetching in a jaunty hat with a feather, at Dorothy’s door, knocking.

“Richard,” she said, seeing him, “there’s no answer. I don’t like it.”

“Perhaps she has gone for a walk.”

“Guard,” Alice called to a guardsman whose duty was to stand at attention down the corridor, “has Mrs. Brownwell left her chamber today?”

“Not that I saw, ma’am.”

Richard rattled the handle of the door, knocked loudly, then hit the door with his open hand. “Mrs. Brownwell, open the door!” He could hear movement on the other side, a chair being dragged, perhaps.

“I don’t like this,” said Alice. He didn’t, either.

“Mrs. Brownwell, it’s Captain Saylor, open the door!” He pounded the door with his fist. “Open at once! Her Majesty needs you!” He stepped back. “We’ve got to open this,” he told the guardsman, who had walked up the corridor to watch. They hit the door with their shoulders, and both fell back.

“I think I’ve broken my shoulder,” said the guardsman.

Alice ran down to the maids of honor’s bedchamber, took a key from a door’s inner side, returned. “The keys are likely the same.”

Richard pushed the key into the keyhole; it turned easily, and the door swung open.

“Sweet Jesus!” cried Alice.

Dorothy hung suspended from a twisted sheet like a slaughtered animal.

Richard heard an odd sound come from himself; behind him, he heard Alice begin to weep and the guardsman shout for help. He bolted across the chamber, clambered up the table, grabbing Dorothy’s legs, trying to hold her up, to loosen the grip of the sheeted noose around her neck.

“We’ve got to cut her down. My God, man, cut her down! Reach into my scabbard and take my sword. Now! Someone hold the table steady; if we fall…Grab that chair. Stand on it…Saw it, keep sawing!…Sweet Mother of God!”

He swore as he fell off the table with Dorothy in his arms as the blade cut through the last of the sheet. He fell so hard that the breath was knocked out of him. Someone screamed, a maid of honor standing in the doorway.

“Get the queen’s physician now!” he heard Alice order.

Pushing himself to his knees, he crawled over to Dorothy, pulled at the knot around her throat and managed to loosen it. He turned her over, pulled a knife from his belt, cut through the back of her gown, then through the laces of her corset. It seemed to him he heard her sigh. He slapped her face hard. “Breathe!” he shouted. “Breathe, damn you!”