Dark Angels (8 page)

“I’ve called Poppy,” Poll whispered. Poppy was Alice’s groom. “He’s waiting.”

Once outside in the hall, Edward spilled over with talk, like a cup too full, while Alice’s groom listened, frowning. “They’re in the chapel, Alice, and I don’t know what they’re doing, but Mistress Howard is crying. She snuck out of the queen’s chambers an hour ago. It was luck that I saw her. Leo and Geoffrey and I were playing dice in a corner, and we looked up, and there she was, sneaking by, with a mask on her face. She gave us a coin to be silent, but I followed her. She went into the chapel where the marquis and the others were. I didn’t like it, Alice. They’d been in there for hours, drinking. So I went up a stair and into the balcony to see what I could. Some of them are half-dressed, and they’ve taken a crucifix down and leaned it upside down on a table, and the altar has a black cloth over it, and candles are lit everywhere on the floor. And Mistress Howard wanted to leave, but the marquis said no.”

A black mass? thought Alice. It was the latest rage among a certain set of noblemen and women in Paris, spoiled, too privileged, wild animals in their search for farthest pleasures. If Gracen was in the middle of that…She didn’t want to take her thoughts further. She raced down the corridor with Edward leading and Poppy, the groom, following.

Can you wash it in yonder well,

Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme,

Where never spring water nor rain ever fell?

And you shall be a true lover of mine?

Voices, accompanied by a guitar, mingled and fell out into the hall as they passed by. Alice peeped into the chamber. It was Lieutenant Saylor and John Sidney and that trooper with the massive shoulders and tender voice singing, several wine bottles on the floor between them. They looked like choir boys, and the harmony of their voices was beautiful. Something in their faces, something clean and strong, still innocent, boyish, made Alice risk stepping into the chamber.

John stopped singing at the sight of her. “Isn’t that—”

“A lady who doesn’t wish to be known,” Alice said quickly, cutting him off. Richard stood a little too carefully, put down the guitar a little too carefully, and walked over to her.

“Someone’s in trouble,” Alice said softly. “I might need your help and your discretion.”

Richard bowed, his head almost touching the floor. “At your service.”

She nodded toward John and the trooper. “Can they hold their tongues?”

“Of course,” Richard said. He turned to face the others. “We have to help Mistress V—” Alice pinched him. “This lady, I mean, and we have to be discreet.” He hiccuped.

“Whatever you need,” said John, stepping forward to bow, like Richard, a bit haphazardly, and Alice smiled, suddenly liking him, seeing what Barbara liked.

“Lead the way,” said Richard.

A boy, a groom, two slightly drunken soldiers, and a clerk, thought Alice, running behind Edward as he led them to the floor where the chapel was. It will have to do.

At the closed chapel doors, Alice put her hand carefully on the handles. The doors were locked. She put her ear to the door. She could hear what might be crying, what might be talking, but nothing clearly.

“This way,” whispered Edward, and he led the way up a steep, narrow stair that opened to the balcony. Richard followed Alice. In the balcony, as dark as night, the three crept forward.

Below, in the chapel, they could see Gracen, masked, her cloak off, her gown in disarray, twisting and crying to free herself from men who held each of her arms. D’Effiat, his shirt off, his chest bare, and Beuvron, fully dressed, argued. Lighted candles were everywhere on the floor of the chapel, making odd, frightening, flickering shadows play about the room, and the altar table had been pulled forward. The men holding Gracen were trying to put her upon the table, but she fought them too hard, and Beuvron and d’Effiat were telling them conflicting orders, to let her go, to hold her and tie her down. Other men stood in monks’ dress, cowls pulled up so that their faces were in shadow.

“Hands of Jesus Christ,” Richard swore very softly, recognizing Gracen. He motioned for Alice and Edward to follow him back to the stairs. He ran down them, taking them three at a time. If he been mildly drunk before, he seemed completely sober now.

“Are there other doors to the chapel?” he asked Edward.

“Yes.” Edward’s eyes were small saucers.

“Take—” He stopped, looking at Alice’s waiting groom.

“Poppy,” she told him.

“Take Poppy and see that every door out of that chapel is locked. If you can’t lock it, barricade it. Then find every priest you can and send them here, find the French ambassador, find His Majesty’s lord chamberlain.”

“I want to stay, to help you fight them,” Edward said.

“No fighting!” interrupted Alice. “The scandal will ruin her, and someone may be hurt!”

“Run on, Edward,” Richard said. “There won’t be any fighting. You,” he said to Alice, “drag her off to safety, to privacy, the moment the door opens.”

“Is it going to open? What are you going to do?”

He didn’t answer. “John, once the woman in there is out, get the key and relock these doors. Trooper”—this to the man who only moments ago had been raising his voice in a tender rondel—“you help him. The pair of you keep that door shut, and if you can’t…” Richard pulled the sword he wore from its sheath, threw it handle foremost to John, who caught it and stared down at it. “Stop them any way you have to.”

“No—” began Alice, but Richard had sprinted back up the stairs to the balcony, his mind moving far swifter now than his legs.

He moved again to the edge, looked down. Not a pretty scene, the upside-down crucifix, the drunken, quarreling men, their faces slack, some vicious, some simply vacant. He recognized a few, the rogues of court, Rochester, Sedley, Killigrew, who would try anything once, particularly if drunk. Gracen’s pleading hurt to hear. Thank God for the one called Beuvron, who was arguing fast and hard, or there was no telling the state they might have discovered her in. If he had to jump over the balcony, onto d’Effiat, could he do it? He measured the distance, tense and ready for whatever must be done.

Then he stepped forward, speaking in hard, deliberate French. “Let go of her at once!” The command fell like a thunderclap on the disarray below; the men holding Gracen dropped her arms, looking around to see who had spoken. “Unlock the doors! Now! I command you in the name of King Charles and King Louis!” He then said in English, “Run, mademoiselle! Leave this place!”

Gracen needed no second urging. She ran from the line of Richard’s sight, and d’Effiat and Beuvron raised pale, startled faces to him.

“Who is that?” asked d’Effiat. His speech was slurring, he’d drunk so much.

“We’re caught,” said Beuvron, his tone disgusted. “Well done, Marquis. You’ve brought disgrace to the gentlemen of Monsieur’s household. The king will be furious.”

He ran toward a door to open it and save himself, but it was locked. Others were doing the same, running to doors, but all were locked. Beuvron looked upward to the set face of the English soldier, who was leaning both arms on the balcony, staring down at them as if they were animals. He went to the crucifix, crossed himself, gently turned it right-side up, hung it on its nail again, and sat down in a pew.

J
UST OUTSIDE THE
doors, Alice caught a fleeing, sobbing Gracen in her arms.

“Follow me at once,” she said.

And they ran down the corridor, down stairs and more stairs, out into the night, across the gravel of the keep to the constable’s gate, a collection of massive towers that framed the entrance to the castle and where Queen Catherine and her household were staying. Alice could hear Gracen crying behind her, but she didn’t stop, not until they’d run past a startled Life Guard at the entrance and up stairs. There in the stairwell, Alice stopped, untied her mask. Gracen sat on a step, sobbing into her hands.

“I was so afraid,” she said over and over. When finally she’d quieted, she untied her mask, wet with tears, used it to dry her face, and looked up at Alice. “Thank you, Alice. I’ll never forget this, never. I’ll always be in your debt.”

“Did you think I lied? How could you be so foolish?” Gracen flinched, but Alice was past caring. “What if Edward hadn’t seen you? Do you realize you might now be—”

Gracen put her hands to her ears. “Don’t say it!”

“What did you call them? My friends? Only one is that, and even he isn’t completely trustworthy. Being a maid of honor isn’t a talisman against harm, Gracen.”

“I shouldn’t have gone. It was my vanity. I’m sorry, Alice.”

“We have to go to Brownie.”

That was their pet name for the mother of the maids, the woman responsible for the safety and reputation of Queen Catherine’s maids of honor.

“No! No, Alice. Let’s just see if everyone is still asleep. If everyone is still asleep, no one has to know. Please, Alice. What will I tell her? I can’t think. You have to help me.”

Gracen had begun to cry again, and Alice could see she was on the edge of hysteria. She turned and began to walk up the stairs. After a moment, Gracen followed.

The door to Brownie’s chamber was ajar. Was an alarm already raised? Please not. Please let there be time to tell a suitable lie and get this over with. Alice put her head into the chamber. Brownie sat with one of the queen’s household, he who was master of the queen’s horse, an important position. Their heads were together, their expressions serious. Alice knocked at the door, stepped inside, wadding her mask, a telltale sign she had been up to no good, in her hand.

“Lord Knollys,” she said to the queen’s master of the horse. She walked forward, her eyes on Brownie. “Oh, Brownie, the most terrible thing has happened, and it is all my fault. Gracen and I were playing cards and sneaking wine, and we fell asleep. We just woke, and we’ve walked across the bailey with my groom, and Gracen is sobbing like a child, she is so afraid.” Alice looked behind her, pulled Gracen forward. She was indeed sobbing. “It’s all my fault, but Poll was with us the whole time, I swear it, and Poppy is waiting for me below, and I’m in trouble myself. I have to go, Brownie. Please don’t be too angry—” And then she was out the door, on its other side, shutting it, leaving Gracen to get through on her wits. She retied her mask, ran down the stairs to the Life Guard.

“Will you escort me back?” she asked. At the keep, she gave him a coin. “For your silence,” she said. “My friend and I have been foolish.” He winked. Alice walked up the great entrance stairs. There was a crowd milling, and the Dragon, her French keeper of the maids, shawl over a nightgown, was among them. Her groom, Poppy, appeared out of nowhere, and she and he exchanged a look. He nodded, as if to say, All right, then.

“Where have you been?” The Dragon breathed fire on her, furious to have been waked, even more furious not to have found her in her bed. She didn’t like Alice to begin with.

“With my father,” Alice said coldly. “My groom escorted me. Surely I have a right to visit my father.” She saw John Sidney standing against the wall and walked over to him. “Tell me.”

“Seven priests, the French ambassador, King Charles’s lord chamberlain, and the Duke of York are on the other side of that door,” he said. “Is she—”

“Fine.” Alice put out her hand to shake his. “Thank you, Mister Sidney. Where’s Lieutenant Saylor?”

“Inside with them.”

“And Edward?”

“There, too.”

The Dragon was bearing down on her. She followed the woman to where Princesse Henriette’s maids of honor were sleeping, listening to a lecture on how she must always let the Dragon know if she left the sleeping room, that if this was the way all young Englishwomen behaved, well, it was a pity and a sin, young women who misbehaved in France found themselves behind convent walls, yes, they did. Alice pulled off her clothes, dropped into bed beside Renée, who didn’t move, and closed her eyes. It seemed they hadn’t been closed a moment when her servant, Poll, shook her awake again.

“Your father says come at once.”

Groaning, Alice sat up. All around her in the dark chamber, young women were still sleeping. “Is it dawn?”

“I’ve no idea, miss. I just know he roused me from my bed and said fetch you.” Poll placed the candle and its holder on the floor. “Put this cloak around you, and here are shoes.”

“I’m so sleepy.”

“That’ll be two of us, miss.” Poll was sharp.

A single lantern sat on the floor of the stone hallway where a dark shadow detached itself from among the other shadows. It was Sir Thomas Verney.

“Here she is, sir,” said Poll.

Copper caught just a glimmer of lantern’s light as a coin went whirling in the air, and Poll caught it.

“Come along, poppet.”

Alice stumbled behind as her father took her down winding corner stairs.

“That mix from France are a bad lot,” he said, talking over his shoulder. “There was some sort of ugly mix-up in the chapel this night, some girl involved, a serving wench, we think. Nasty business. They are locked in their bedchambers now, but must leave first thing in the morning, banished to the ships, king’s order.” He stopped before a stout door set into a stone wall and knocked on it.