The Queen's Dwarf A Novel (24 page)

“How awful for her, to have a husband locked away.”

“The thing that confused me was why my mother worked so tirelessly to get him out.”

“For shame, Lady Carlisle!” Buckingham’s mother reprimanded. “To speak of your parents in so disrespectful a manner!”

“I am certain my parents would agree with me if they were here.” Lady Carlisle plucked up the dice and cast them upon the table. “Things were much better at home without the two of them railing at each other, my mother dissolving into tears or burrowing into her room, too melancholy to care about Dorothy or me. I suppose our mother was considering her children’s futures when she petitioned Queen Anne to pardon father. It is not easy to find husbands for the daughters of a condemned traitor. As it happens, Mother need not have exerted herself. Dorothy and I found husbands for ourselves.”

The queen’s mouth rounded in astonishment. “Is that allowed in England?”

“Not for an earl’s daughters—unless they have an indulgent father. Our father definitely was not. In fact”—a crease formed between her elegant brows—“I do not think he cared for children at all—daughters in particular.”

Her Majesty thrust forth another stack of coins to join the mountain of gold she’d already wagered. I could not help but wonder what simple folk would think if they saw such recklessness. She took up the dice. “I pray the king will be kind to our children when God grants them. He is kind to his horses and dogs.”

I thought of my father, who would nurse his dogs with surprising tenderness. I did not have the heart to tell the queen that trait did not always carry over to a man’s children.

“So tell us what happened, Lucy,” Lady Denbigh urged.

“Armed with the proposals of our lords, Dorothy and I marched up to the Tower to inform our father of our decision. We were both quite terrified of his temper. The rows he had with my mother were almost the stuff of legend at court. But Dorothy and I were willing to face anything together. It helped to know that once our ordeal was over, we would be going to a banquet my betrothed had planned in my honor. No man at court entertained more lavishly than the earl of Carlisle. True, he was much older than I, but so elegant, so worldly—do you know he is the one who first invented the antebanquet?”

I had seen the wasteful practice several times since my arrival at court and it never failed to make me sick: an entire banquet of the finest delicacies laid out for display, then discarded and replaced with fresh wonders to eat.

“Father was not pleased with Dorothy’s choice of Robert Sidney, but at least Lord Leicester was an Englishman of noble blood. When I told him I wished to marry James Hay…” Her eyes clouded. “I had never seen Father in such a rage. He ordered Dorothy to go home, have my things packed, then sent to the Tower. As long as I held to this lunacy of mingling Percy blood with that of a Scottish upstart, I would remain in the Tower with him.”

“He housed you in a prison?” The queen gasped. “With men condemned of the worst crimes against the Crown?”

“I had committed my own treason, as far as he was concerned. He thought he would break my resolve. I am sure he believed I would relent by the time my belongings arrived. I did not. Trust me, being walled up in the Tower with him was torment beyond imagining. I went from being surrounded by the most jovial society at court to being captive by a deaf, ill-tempered tyrant who spent his time stirring up foul-smelling concoctions and attempting every kind of outlandish magic his half-mad friends could bring through the Tower doors.”

“It sounds dreadful. Two years is a very long time to be forbidden any kind of pleasure.” Susan Feilding glanced at her mother, and I wondered if she was imagining being free of the old dragon for a while. “What did you do to fill your time?”

“Out of stark boredom, I read what books were at hand. Listened to father and his visitors drone on about whatever new theories travelers brought through the Tower gates. Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned at the same time. They had been fast friends my whole life, and kept each other amused. They merely quit having their discussions at Syon House and moved meetings with their band of scientists to the Tower.” Lady Carlisle’s voice softened. “I do not think Father has ever recovered from Raleigh’s death.”

Lady Carlisle’s father was still alive?

“Raleigh was executed for piracy, was he not?” the queen asked. “He was meddling with Spanish ships?”

“He was executed for failing to bring back the gold he had promised. King James released him for one final voyage to Guyana with the understanding that they would bring back riches to equal the Spaniards’ gleanings from the New World. It is still something to be hoped for—an English share in that wealth. If the king upholds the grant King James gave to my husband, including the Caribbean islands—”

“The king will dispose of the islands as he chooses, Lady Carlisle,” Buckingham’s mother said. “One of my son’s servants is determined the house of Villiers will succeed where other men have failed. In my opinion, he has listened too much to those speculators in the new East India Company—merchants intent on grabbing more money than is decent. He is eager to have my son invest in his enterprise. But Master Ware is no more fitted for such independence than his father was. Or my late husband, for that matter. I knew it from the time Uriel was a lad.”

It was hard to imagine Ware was ever a boy. I imagined him stumbling, fully formed, out of one of Will’s cyclops caves.

Apparently, Lady Carlisle agreed. “Master Ware had a father?” Her face dimpled. “He must have been a grim fellow.”

“I remember him being rather vague and ridiculous instead,” Lady Denbigh said. “He was a clerk in the spicery and was always chattering with spice merchants and sailors. Kept his purse full of useless things he found—stones with dragon skeletons trapped in them and polished seashells. My Lady, remember how Uriel used to follow him? Father said you couldn’t take a step around Edward Ware without treading on his son’s toes.”

“Or Genevieve Armistead’s,” the countess of Buckingham said drily.

“Was that Ware’s mother?” Lucy asked.

“Hardly. She was the baseborn daughter of a seaman. She brought Edward Ware those heathenish rocks he was so fond of. He claimed she was as fascinated by them as he was.”

Lady Carlisle’s brow wrinkled. “Of course it is impossible to believe a woman might wish to explore something like that.”

“His wife was too canny to swallow such nonsense. Her mistake was not ignoring the indiscretion like other wives do. Off she went to some prayer meeting in a wheat field, carrying back threat of hellfire to try to shame him.”

“Remember the day Mistress Ware left?” Lady Denbigh said eagerly. “It was quite the scandal, Majesty. She stole the smithy’s hammer and shattered the dragon stones to dust. When her husband tried to stop her, she struck him, as well. George saw her drag Uriel away, the lad sobbing.”

I tried to imagine Ware thus. My imagination had grown to encompass green knights and marauding dragons, but Uriel Ware weeping was beyond its scope.

“The woman must have been mad to try to murder her husband!” the queen exclaimed.

“Her husband lived,” Lady Denbigh said. “Mistress Ware must have been too weary from all that smashing to finish him. As soon as he was strong enough, he went in search of Uriel, but they’d vanished like the creatures in the stones.”

“Yet you say this Master Ware now works for the duke?”

“He appeared at our door one day, asking for his father. Edward Ware was dead, but my brother took the son in. Master Ware has worked for the Villiers ever since. Now he hopes to follow in Raleigh’s footsteps.”

“But Raleigh’s enterprise ended badly,” Henrietta Maria said.

Lady Carlisle nodded. “When the mission failed, he could not resist taking a few fat Spanish galleons. One cannot blame Raleigh for attempting to salvage the voyage thus. Queen Elizabeth would have applauded such audacity.”

“In secret.” The countess of Buckingham pursed her lips, a wasteland of wrinkles appearing around them. “Gloriana was far too wily to let her sea hawks’ prey know that she approved of such tactics. Yet too practical to turn away her portion of the loot they had stolen. The condition of the royal treasury is of utmost importance to anyone who wears a crown.” The duke’s mother regarded Henrietta Maria through narrowed eyes. “It vexes a king to be robbed of money that is rightfully his.”

The queen swallowed hard and I heard the accusation unspoken between them. The French king still refused to deliver the remainder of the queen’s dowry until the English honored the terms agreed upon for the marriage and lifted the persecution of Catholics. Part of that wealth had been meant to support the queen’s household. The lack of it made Her Majesty dependent on the king’s already-strained purse—a strain only the increasingly troublesome Parliament could ease.

“Perhaps Your Majesty would be wise to put an end to the day’s wagers,” the countess of Buckingham said.

It was good advice. Court buzzed with rumors of the queen’s appalling gambling debts. Yet I knew better than to think the queen would yield to the old dragon’s impudence.

“You forget yourself, Lady Buckingham.” She drew off a necklace twinkling with diamonds and cast it on the growing pile. “Does anyone else dare match this?”

Lady Carlisle tossed an etched emerald brooch onto the table, then took up the dice and cast them. She clapped her hands. “I fear you have lost your stake again, Your Majesty,” she said. She scooped the pile of jewels and coin into her hands.

*   *   *

In the weeks that followed, I congratulated myself that I was on a winning streak, as well. Every day I was becoming more accustomed to the court’s quagmire, dancing across the danger as Dulcinea did her rope. I spent more time with the queen than any of my fellow curiosities. They prepared for thrice-weekly performances, while I was summoned as soon as Her Majesty was dressed and often not sent away until she retired. Those hours I did not attend her, I found plenty of other audiences grateful to applaud my capers. I collected information along with their coin.

Father Philip loaded my table with books. I would wrestle the heavy volumes to the table, always aware I could topple them over onto myself if I were not careful. Balance—that quality my very survival depended upon.

Yet just when I was growing smug, the devil yanked on my ordered life as if it were the string upon a huntsman’s bow. Nothing could have prepared me for Will Evans’s announcement when he bounded up the stairs and found me practicing dancing steps upon Dulcinea’s rope. His broad face reflected delight. “Jeffrey, a surprise awaits you belowstairs! Family from Oakham!”

I tumbled from my perch. Luckily, Dulcinea had taught me how to fall, rolling myself up and letting the momentum carry me where it would.

“You broke his concentration!” Dulcinea scolded Evans.

Will turned the color of brick. “Forgive me. Jeffrey, are you hurt?”

“Is there ill news from home?” I asked.

“No!” Will exclaimed. “Fairly pop-eyed with awe, he is.”

I scrambled to my feet, dizzy with excitement. No one fit that wide-eyed description better than Samuel. “My brother—has someone brought him to London?”

“No.” Will shifted his shovel-size feet, reluctant to disappoint me. “It is your father who has come. Alone.”

I could picture my father gawping up at Will. Imagined what cruel, ignorant things my father might say, this man who scorned the legends Will burnished bright with honor. Strange, but I wanted to spring between Evans and John Hudson as if I were Gawain shielding the Green Knight instead of battling him.

“Your father said he had some business in London and stopped to see you.”

What business is that? I wondered. Does he want money? Perhaps hopes I might bring him into this luxurious life he has thrust me into? My stomach suddenly started to pitch from the fall.

There was nothing I wanted less than to see my father’s blood-caked fingernails, smell that lingering stench of entrails and animal panic that clung to his clothes even after my mother and sister had scrubbed them. It had been bad enough in the shambles to be known as such a man’s son. But the thought of having people in the palace see where I had come from sickened me. I imagined Lady Carlisle’s sneer, the queen’s abhorrence. I did not even want the rest of the menagerie to see John Hudson. How was it possible that in such a short time I had changed from the child he had starved to stunt my growth? I was the favorite of the queen of England now. I ate my fill of the finest victuals.

“Tell Master Hudson I cannot interrupt my practice.”

Will frowned at the chill in my voice. “The man has traveled a long way. You owe him a father’s due.”

“Nothing on God’s earth could compel me to see him unless he has brought others of my family along.” I should have known better than to challenge God with such a declaration.

Will had not been long gone when he returned, sheepish. “The king and queen wish you to join them in the king’s privy chamber.”

I made my way to the chamber, wading through crowds of supplicants and ambassadors until the gentleman usher announced me.

The king and queen sat together in the light of the window. Catherine Villiers, Susan Feilding, and Lucy Hay clustered some distance away, worldly beside the maids of honor perched on cushions. The giggling bevy of noblemen’s unmarried daughters were ever ready to offer sips of wine or nips of dried fruit to the royal couple or untangle the embroidery silks Mitte, the spaniel, was merrily stealing from the queen’s sewing box.

Her Majesty outshone the other women in my eyes. Her head was bent over some needlework, her hair soft and dark, her gown billowing around her in shimmering folds. The king sat beside her, watching the picture she was making. He would have seemed stiff had he been any other man, but for Charles Stuart, he appeared almost at ease until I entered the room. Disappointment clouded his features as I made my bow.

“Majesty, you wished to see me.”

“Jeffrey, is it true that your father has come to visit you and you have turned him away? Say you are not guilty of such disrespect.”