The Queen's Dwarf A Novel (16 page)

Yet the queen’s fancy to turn the bishop into a dragon had unleashed something unruly in all the French women. They decked Will in Madame Saint-Georges’s new hat and made him recite love poems to Little Sara, giggling until I grabbed his halberd. I braced myself against the weight, anger giving me strength to spear through the hat’s floppy brim. “Mice might bedeck a lion in flowers,” I said with undisguised scorn, “but the lion is still a lion and the mice are still mice.” I turned to Little Sara. “Such creatures might gnaw upon a hundred jeweled hats, my lady, but they will never reach a generous heart.” Sara’s smile and Will’s laughter had made me feel a new power all my own.

The “mice” turned their spite elsewhere, teasing any Puritans who strayed into their path and taunting high-church dignitaries who went about the king’s business. They might as well have been slipping toads under people’s coverlets, so girlish did they seem. By the night of the masque, I feared they might burst from laughing at their game.

Yet as I waited to drive my hell chariot, I could see others playing games of their own. I fingered the reins harnessed to my “horses”—Rattlebones’s spaniels dressed in coats stitched with orange-and-crimson silk flames. I saw Bishop Laud folding his hands with disapproval, and the Puritan courtiers did the same as the performance progressed. I glanced at the tight-lipped king and doubted he would see any humor in the masque’s jests.

It is not wise to court a king’s displeasure, I thought as my imagination conjured up the ghost of the king whose rage had become legend. I could imagine Henry VIII presiding over such an entertainment—the monster who beheaded two wives and gorged on the wealth of the abbeys he pillaged. Royal excess figured large in the tales I had heard of King James, as well. His Scot’s retinue had been a grasping lot, greediest of all the pretty, ambitious youths James had slavered over and lifted from obscurity to the highest rank in the land. Young men like Buckingham.

Both former kings—and the duke, as well—were so different from Charles: the short-statured, painfully shy second-born son who was never supposed to be king. How inadequate Charles must feel in the shadow of more forceful nobles, I thought. Even his kinswoman Elizabeth had been more kingly than he, facing down the Armada that had sailed from Spain intending to rip her from her throne and drag England back to the Roman Church.

I thought of how England would have faced the Inquisition had the Spaniards won: torture dealt in the name of God, a faith that seemed the opposite of my gentle brother’s. The constant feel of inquisitors’ eyes upon you, waiting for you to make a mistake. Terrified victims being put to the question … the same question over and over, one you could never prove the answer to.

Did Charles face an inquisition of his own every day?
Are you Christian enough to head God’s church? Ruthless enough to protect your people no matter what the cost? Are you even man enough to control your French wife
?

Empathy for Charles Stuart woke in me, though I did not want it to. Is that why the king is so stiff? I wondered. Was Charles’s only shield against the debauched legacies of other kings his rigid need for propriety? His desperate attempt to seem kingly in spite of his bowed legs and his stammer was little different from my own habit of stretching myself as tall as I was able.

This mockery of the bishop was no private jest, despite what the queen had claimed. It would humiliate the king before his own court. Infuriate those watching a French Catholic scorning the English Church. The lines and characters shifted, and I saw what those hostile onlookers had obviously discerned. A powerful churchman in England made into a beast, the Catholic queen his victim.

By the time our tableau was finished and we bowed before the court, King Charles was fingering the length of his cane as if he wanted to use it on his wife’s backside.

As the dancers mingled with the other guests, I was one of the few who stood near enough to the royal couple to hear what ignited the outrage in Henrietta Maria’s remarkable eyes.

“… Queen Anne—your own mother—performed in the masques!” the queen protested in French, withdrawing into a quiet alcove. “Tonight’s work is a play only. Entertainment.”

“… jeer at the church of England, at the bishop … insult me as its head … Catholic nonsense…”

“Your mother was a Catholic and people did not hate her or persecute her for her faith. I am a daughter of France, far above—”

“
A daughter of France?
” the king’s voice cut like ice. “That is nothing to pride yourself on when compared to a queen who served her husband and gave him her loyalty instead of throwing tantrums.”

The queen recoiled. I could not help but think the king had made a good point.

“You could take a lesson from my lady mother and stop flinging your popery in people’s faces,” Charles said. “This very afternoon, the bishop told me you and your ladies came dancing through chapel while he was conducting services—the lot of you gavotting about, disrupting people’s prayers on purpose. Now you dare behave as if
you
are the one being tormented?”

I saw the crowd around me strain to catch their words. I saw the lips of the queen’s enemies grow stiff while trying not to show their pleasure.

The queen’s reply to His Majesty was hushed yet filled with outrage. Buckingham shoved his chair back from the table and watched the couple from beneath half-lowered lids.

King Charles’s voice rose above her outburst. “I think you had best retire until you learn to speak proper English. This is the court of the king of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. France is your enemy now, as it is mine. We’re on the brink of war because of French arrogance. I will not suffer it from my own wife!”

“War?” The queen paled. “No. Sire, I pray you—”

“Yes, pray, pray this—that God will teach you your duty and you will be honorable enough to fulfill it.”

Tears streaked Henrietta Maria’s face. I could see what it cost her not to turn and run.

“I do not forget where my loyalties lie.” She said it so proudly, I had to admire her. “Now, since I have obviously displeased you, I will remove myself from your presence. By your leave, Majesty.”

“Go, go!” He waved his hand and I watched her curtsy, then exit the room. As I followed with the rest of her entourage, the duke of Buckingham thrust his leg in my path so I could not avoid it. I sprawled onto the floor, heard a ripping sound as something on my costume snagged his silk stocking, tearing a nasty hole.

Or had Buckingham torn it himself with the object all but hidden in his hand? One thing was certain, though no one else in the hall might guess: He had tripped me intentionally.

“Fool!” he snapped. “Have you been picking up French tricks? You tore my stocking on purpose!”

I tried to scramble to my feet, but he grabbed me by the collar and forced me back to my knees to look at the damage I had caused. “It was an accident,” I said, taken aback by his anger. “Forgive me, Your Grace.” Had I really offended him to this degree? I felt the banquet guests watching with intense pleasure.

“Perhaps you should seek absolution the way your new Catholic friends would—mumble over pig’s bones or make a pilgrimage to holy wells that are good for nothing but watering a man’s horse. Or you could find one of those accursed Jesuits sneaking about and pay a priest coin. Fatten the Pope’s purse and he’ll forgive murder.”

Suddenly, I understood. The duke was creating the illusion that we loathed each other. One more cloak to disguise that he was my real master. I knew I must play my part.

“I do not think I’m in danger of hell at present,” I said. “One can hardly murder a shoe.”

“But you can make a laughingstock of the bishop of Bath and Wells in front of the king himself! Perhaps this coin might buy you absolution, but it will not buy you the goodwill of any true subject of the king.” He pushed something hard into my grasp. I looked down at the object in my cupped palm. A metal token struck by vendors at Tyburn, a souvenir that spectators could flash as they bragged about the executions they had seen. I recalled Clemmy’s description of those horrors, could not believe anyone who had witnessed such torture did not want to forget.

I closed my fingers over the medal, my heart sinking. I would have to manipulate the queen as Buckingham desired. I thought of the queen’s tear-washed face, her courage, her irreverent humor in capturing the bishop’s character so well in the guise of Jones’s mechanical dragon. I wished I could work magic as Jones seemed to do—sweep back scenery and scaffolds, strip away costumes—turn back time to the moment Will Evans had begged me to help deter the queen from her reckless course.

I wished I could soften the queen’s defiance, veil her fiery Catholicism, muffle her French ways, and coax plain English from her tongue. But I’d stand a better chance dancing the galliard wearing Will Evans’s shoes.

Buckingham tugged on one of the silk flames stitched to my tunic, his voice for my ears alone. “You know what to do,” he said.

I did.

I bowed to the duke, terrified I would not be able to persuade the queen to go to Tyburn. More terrified still that I
could.

T
EN

I had been handled roughly by Buckingham. I fared no better at the hands of Madame Saint-Georges. The Frenchwoman met me at the door to the queen’s chamber. “Some court fool you are! The queen is in distress and you are nowhere to be found. She sent Little Sara in search of you.”

“I did not see Sara,” I said, grateful the woman’s sense of duty was so great that she’d not return to the queen until she made a thorough search. The endeavor would take longer than usual, since her awkwardly formed joints pained her after a performance. A decent man would have sent a page out to fetch her, but the possibility of Sara’s witnessing what I was about to do was too dangerous to risk.

Mamie glanced over her shoulder at the woman pacing before the fireplace. The costume donned with such merriment hung limp about the queen’s slender body. Tears had washed makeup in rivulets down cheeks that had flushed with excitement only a few hours before.

Yet this misery was not enough for the duke of Buckingham.

“Where have you been? Licking the king’s boots to remind him you’re English?” Madame Saint-Georges grasped my arm and shook me so hard, she lifted me off my feet. “How could you grovel to that man after the way he treated the queen?”

Pain throbbed beneath the vise of Saint-Georges’s fingers, and my toes scrabbled but failed to reach the floor. I hated how helpless I was against the court factions battling to control me.
The same way they were determined to control the queen.

For a moment, empathy filled me and I wanted to snatch Henrietta Maria away from all of them—Buckingham and the king, Madame Saint-Georges and Father Philip and the royal French family pummeling her with their blame-filled letters from across the Channel. I shoved aside the sense of kinship. Samuel and my family were defenseless, not this queen all but drowning in riches, allowed to put on elaborate masques at a whim. At least the queen had some power to fight back.

I bolstered my courage and confronted Madame Saint-Georges. “Actually, Buckingham’s shoes were the reason I was delayed. I tripped over them and he yanked me up by my collar to upbraid me.” With my free hand, I pulled down the edge of the garment to display a nasty welt. I heard the Frenchwoman draw in a sharp breath. “Now, thanks to you, Madame. I shall have a claw print on my arm, as well.”

She released me. The instant I regained my balance, I strained to stand as tall as I could. Not that it mattered. I was still half-suffocated in her skirts.

“Jeffrey! Mamie! I cannot bear your squabbling.” The queen tore loose the roses Saint-Georges had woven into her lustrous curls and flung them into the fire. The petals shriveled, the smell of savaged beauty filling my nostrils. “What are you fighting about?”

“I am showing Madame Saint-Georges my battle scars, Majesty. I’m as war-torn as Calais, attacked by two countries. English here”—I displayed the first welt—“and French here.” I rubbed my arm. “However, I made certain I left my mark on one adversary, as well,” I said with satisfaction. “I tore Buckingham’s fine stocking and scuffed his fancy shoe, so he’ll not be wearing them again. I made certain that when His Grace’s man strips the duke’s garments off tonight, he will find bruises as painful as mine.”

“Do not say so, Jeffrey!” the queen exclaimed. “Not even inside this room. You must never say you injured Buckingham on purpose. It is against the law for even the most exalted courtiers to strike someone in the palace. You could lose your hand.”

“Yet there is no penalty for raging at Your Majesty that way? Perhaps it would be better to cut out men’s tongues.”

Lines bracketing the queen’s mouth softened. I saw the ghost of a smile, but there was no mockery in it, only the tenderness of one as badly in need of refuge as I was. “You look quite fierce, Jeffrey,” she said. “I am almost afraid of you.”

You should be, I thought.

“A princess is not supposed to show fear,” the queen continued. “A queen—never. But here in England, your castles are haunted by fallen queens. You have not yet stayed at Hampton Court, Jeffrey, but the ghosts of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard walk the gallery there. They faced a headsman before a hateful crowd. Catherine Howard was only a little older than I am.”

Madame Saint-Georges broke in. “You are the French king’s sister! The English would not dare harm you, even if our countries go to war.”

I wanted to believe her. Yet, how far would men like Buckingham and the bishop go if the queen clung to her Catholic faith and her French loyalties?

I could not pull my gaze away from the queen’s eyes, which were dark and expressive as a doe’s. “I would be fierce in your defense, Majesty, were I not trapped…” I buried my face in my hands, horrified at what I had almost confessed. Henrietta Maria stroked my hair.

“Trapped by what, Jeffrey?”

I struggled to find some answer that would satisfy. “By things I cannot control … this body of mine. I am sorry, Majesty. I am sorry!”