The Queen's Dwarf A Novel (11 page)

“Very much like. Archie will want you to believe the queen’s other curiosities are all tooth and claw in the court arena. Promise you will judge for yourself.”

I slipped on shoes—the one bit of my costume that had not been shredded or ruined beneath the armor plate. “I am ready,” I said. But I doubted I would ever be ready to meet the queen’s famous freaks.

Will Evans crossed to the door. He swung it open and held it with one huge arm. I forced myself to walk out, the maze of chambers making me wonder how I would ever find my way back. Will snipped the length of his stride and paused so often to point out paintings of Greek gods and statues of legendary heroes that it took time for me to realize he was making certain I could keep up.

I tried to stir up resentment at this new evidence of his kindness, determined not to risk liking someone I knew I would have to betray. “There is no reason to dawdle over every lump of marble we see.”

I saw confusion, then temper spark in Evans, reminding me of the bulls just after father chained them in Buckingham’s ring. The moment the first dog lunged for no reason and sank teeth in the bull’s tender nose.

Had I been in Evans’s place, I would have told the ungrateful wretch I was “dawdling” so he could keep up. But Evans only regarded me with those probing eyes.

Evans no longer stopped, but he still slowed his steps. I all but ran in an effort to force him to speed up. Bedraggled, more than a little breathless, I entered a corridor, sensed a change in the giant ambling beside me. “These are Her Majesty’s privy quarters,” he said, “the place where she seeks refuge with only those she loves and trusts about her.”

I did not think I could walk any faster, but I did.

“Jeffrey, Her Majesty has not asked for you yet. There is no reason to race about.”

I could hear muffled voices—the queen’s, then a man’s, a burred Scots accent garbling in French so impassioned, I could not understand it. “Someone sounds angry with the queen,” I said.

“We can often hear the queen and her ladies through the wall. Makes it easier to answer the summons and to gauge what mood Her Majesty is in.”

And it would make it easier for Buckingham’s spy.

“Do you know who her visitor is?”

“It is your job to distract her from such unpleasantness, not add to it with questions about things that are none of your concern.” It was the sharpest Will Evans had been with me. I was surprised how his tone stung.

“You are right. I just…” I fumbled for a lie and settled for an unrelated truth. “I do not like to hear any woman spoken to thus. It reminds me of my mother and how my father plagues her.”

The storm in Evans’s eyes receded. “I do not like to hear the queen plagued, either, but I do not believe her visitor is angry with her. They are both angry about something else.”

I started to say “What?” then stopped. Too much curiosity would stir up his suspicion.

“They are trying to decide what to do about an injustice,” Evans continued. “But that is their burden to shoulder. You will find your own employment on the other side of this door.”

He nodded toward the carved wood panel. “Courtiers call this ‘the Freaks’ Lair.’ It is where we await Her Majesty’s summons. We keep whatever tools our trade demands—dancing ropes, props for magic tricks, beribboned hoops and such. Practice new tricks. Sometimes we take our meals when not performing or at our other duties.”

“What other duties?”

“I’m porter of the queen’s back stairs. No one gets past my guard to see the queen unless I give them leave to.”

You cannot be a very good guard, I thought. You know I come from Buckingham, but you trip over your own feet to make me comfortable.

“You will be spending many hours in this place with these people,” Evans said. “I hope you will be happy here.”

“In a ‘Freak’s Lair’?” I asked, incredulous.

Will Evans looked down at me with such sadness, it surprised me. “We are all twisted somewhere, Jeffrey. Some are freaks on the outside, where everyone can see; others are twisted inside.”

I wondered what Will Evans saw when he looked at me. All at once, I would have given anything to water down his pointed gaze. I hitched up my borrowed breeches, steeled my nerves, and stepped into a chamber stranger than any I had ever known.

S
IX

The chamber I stepped into was more like a shipwreck than a palace. A battering ram of gazes nearly pushed me back out. Rigging swooped from a hook driven into one wall to a second hook on the other side of the room. Ribbon-trimmed barrel hoops hung over the back of one chair, and costumes lay about the room like colorful corpses after a battle. A war the gigantic fowl on the platter had lost.

The “curiosities of nature” were in the midst of devouring their roasted enemy. Five souls clustered around a long table, hands frozen midair, jaws stilled in the midst of chewing.

Time seemed to stop as I attempted to take the whole company in. One man of middling height might have played Death in one of the church paintings the plague had inspired. His skin stretched so tight, sharp bones seemed ready to slice through. The knobs of his jawbone stuck out like the knuckles on a stonecutter’s hand. Set in that death’s-head were the merriest eyes I had ever seen. A small red-and-white spaniel was helping himself to the meat on the man’s plate as if it were his due.

Two dwarfs were seated at the table. One was a woman in crimson with hair as intricately dressed as the queen’s. The other was a man spattered with paint, the leg of fowl in his hand so large compared to his size that it might have come off of a bear.

I had seen other dwarfs of their kind at the market fair, their faces strangely fascinating, world-weary eyes trying to hide their pain. Their heads were so large for their bodies, the weight threatened to overset them. Their arms seemed to have gotten distracted in the womb and quit bothering to grow. Even fine clothes could not make their stout bodies look graceful.

The moment I had been able to escape my parents, I had run over to their troupe of traveling players, delighted to see little folk like me. But the people who had been watching the dwarfs’ comic antics thronged around me. The dwarfs had thrown rotten eggs at me in hopes of regaining the crowd’s attention. I could still remember the snotlike goo dripping down my neck.

A monkey capered in the middle of the menagerie’s table, seeming ready to fling the ripe peach it clutched in humanlike hands. Revolted, I stared as the creature bared its yellow teeth and chattered a fiendish curse.

More spiteful still was the man teasing the monkey. He was about the same height as the skeleton, but gnarled as a burl oak and so bitter when he glared at my clothes, I knew it could only be the king’s fool.

At the end of the table sat a woman as out of place as a butterfly on a dung heap. Exotic eyes regarded me with vague interest, white fingers picking at food, as if she preferred sipping nectar from the cup of a flower. Yet her beauty possessed a cruel magic, her perfection making the flaws of the table’s other occupants all the more apparent.

Was I like these people? Once I stepped through this door, I would be
embracing
the fact that I was a grotesque, repellent as the living corpse or the aged fool who seemed constructed of nothing but bile and gristle.

Still, what did it matter what outcasts such as these thought of me? I took a bold step into the room, trying to seem confident, though my breeches were bagging. My cheeks warmed and I could not keep myself from hitching the waistband higher. It only made the garment more lopsided, one knee bared, the other lost in a puddle of black damask. No wonder they were all staring.

“Look at the shape of him!” I heard someone murmur.

“An angelic freak,” another marveled.

“This is Jeffrey Hudson.” Will said, interrupting. “His ears may be small, but they work just fine.”

The dwarf woman stammered. “There were rumors you were beautiful, but no one believed it. Even Archie had never seen a dwarf like you.”

“The rest of us had better keep our traveling clothes ready.” The unpleasant fool glared at me with personal venom. “Their Majesties will have no more use for ugly gits like us.” I glimpsed very real fear in the faces around the table. “Took you so long to get here, the rest of us could have starved,” he grumbled.

“Pay no attention to Archie, Master Hudson.” The dwarf woman climbed down from her seat and came to greet me. “Pardon us for forgetting our manners, but none of us would have believed someone like you could exist at all if Will Evans had not given the rumors credence. He is the most trustworthy man in England.”

“You would think serving as the queen’s sergeant porter would cure him of believing everyone is as honorable as he is,” Archie crabbed.

“I do not
believe
it,” Evans said, correcting him. “I
hope.
There is no crime in that.”

“Only inevitable disappointment,” the thin man said softly.

“I’m called Little Sara,” the dwarf woman said, tucking a shining curl behind her ear. “Welcome to the Lair.”

I executed a bow as Master Ware had taught me. “Little Sara,” I echoed.

“Moves as graceful as he looks.” Curiosity curved the butterfly’s cherry lips. “It is uncanny.”

Little Sara pointed to each person in turn. “The fellow who has done his best to spoil your appetite is Archie Armstrong. He belongs to the king’s household, so he’s not here all the time. When he does visit, none of us takes his grousing seriously.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“I’m sure you can guess which one we call Simon Rattlebones.” She pointed to the jolly skeleton. “He juggles and does vaulting and performs tricks with Her Majesty’s dogs.”

“Most of the time their ‘tricks’ involve deciding whether to jump through a hoop or piss on someone’s shoe,” Archie grumbled.

“They are very discerning dogs and piss only on Puritans, eh, Scrap?” Rattlebones scratched the spaniel’s ears. “Welcome to the menagerie, Master Hudson.” I nodded in greeting, not wanting to like the dog trainer, yet unable to stop myself from being amused by him.

“The woman you men can’t take your eyes off is our rope dancer,” Sara continued. “She came to us as Deborah Martin, but we ignored that name once Will Evans christened her Dulcinea—you know, after Don Quixote’s love in the book.”

I did not know, but I wasn’t about to tell them. The rope dancer fluttered her hand in greeting. “Are you afraid of heights, Master Hudson? There are tricks I want to try with a dwarf, but none of the others have the courage to try them.” She turned a pointed look on the one person Little Sara had failed to introduce, the other dwarf. I noticed a spot of orange paint under his beaky nose. “Around here they call me Robin Goodfellow, but I sign my paintings Robert Gibson.”

“You are an artist?” I looked at his hands.

“I paint scenery, but mostly miniatures.”

“Miniatures?”

“Tiny portraits you can carry with you.” Little Sara displayed a porcelain oval pinned in the lace at her bosom. It depicted a kind-looking woman with eyes like her own. “Robin painted this of my mother.” It was hard enough to imagine Goodfellow’s short fingers painting bold brushstrokes. Such intricate work seemed impossible.

“Don’t let Dulcinea lure you into peril, Master Hudson,” Robin warned. “Last time I aided her in one of her tricks, I flew through the air as if I had been shot from a sling. Will managed to slow my fall or it would have been the end of me.”

Dulcinea made a farting noise the butchers’ apprentices in the shambles would have been proud of. Will Evans cleared his throat as if to obscure the fact Dulcinea had made such a sound. I was not sure whether he wished to hide it from me or himself.

“Sit down, Jeffrey,” he said. “You can eat while you tell us about yourself.”

“That is right,
Jeffrey.
” Archie made my name sound like an insult. “The queen has cast the menagerie the scraps from her table. You will want to get your share.”

Evans pulled out a chair that stood before a clean plate and I could see him trying to decide whether he should help me into the seat. I scrambled up myself before he could ask.

“Part of our allotment is to receive the broken meats from the queen’s table,” Evans explained. “It is a privilege, not something to complain about. Better food than most people get at a feast.”

Archie shoved himself back from the table. “If you listen to Evans, he’ll paint life in the menagerie as bright as Gibson’s rainbows. I will tell you the truth. We are dogs at the royal table. The royals may claim they love you, that you are part of their family. But you are no more human to them than that performing monkey.” Archie snatched the animal’s peach. The creature screeched and leapt up and down, frantic.

“Their Majesties keep us scampering about like poor Pug here, that is certain,” Rattlebones reached toward the monkey, but it would not be comforted.

“What are our duties?” I asked.

“Rehearsals, costume fittings, designing new tricks. Collecting gossip to work into our performances. There are books of jests to study and make our own. It is no easy thing to choose the perfect moment, the perfect inflection to carry off a jest, and captivate a royal audience. Robin and I sometimes take Scrap and the other dogs beyond the palace walls to perform, as long as the queen has no use for us. Londoners will pay a pretty penny to see the queen’s menagerie perform.”

“When the queen is busy with other affairs, entertain anyone who crosses your path,” Robin said. “People wait for weeks in hopes of an audience with the queen and many never reach her. They will offer handsome bribes to get you to drop a word in the queen’s ear.”

“Especially ambassadors,” Archie said. “You don’t even have to put forward their suit. Just pretend you’ll speak to the queen, look at the ambassador a good deal and nod.”

“But that is dishonest,” Sara said.

“You can pray for forgiveness during Mass,” Archie sneered. “All that Catholic chanting of spells and incantations should be good for something.”

“You go to Catholic Mass?” I asked, thinking of Samuel.