The Queen's Dwarf A Novel (25 page)

I wanted to demand to know if Will Evans had been carrying tales, but I could hardly behave like a thwarted child in front of the king of England. Even so, His Majesty’s mournful expression made me want to drop an anvil on Will Evans’s foot to keep the giant from tramping into my private affairs in the future.

“Majesty, my life and my father’s were separated at his wish, not by my choice. Your own actions with the queen’s French household show that sometimes it is better to put one’s past life behind one.”

The king’s brow furrowed. “This is a man who has worked to put bread in your mouth and clothes upon your back. When God grants me a son, I hope no minor quarrel will divide him from his father’s love.”

How could I explain to Charles Stuart the kind of love my father had shown me? The hungry nights, the tight bandages bound about my limbs to keep me small, the mercenary glint in my father’s eyes when he sold me as a spy to the duke of Buckingham. I wondered what the king would think of John Hudson if he knew that.

“It is my wish that you and your father no longer be divided.” The king turned to the duchess. “Do you have anything to add?” he asked her. “Jeffrey hailed from near your estate in Rutland, did he not?”

“His father trains His grace’s bull-baiting dogs,” she said.

“I imagine Jeffrey looks like a tender mouthful,” Lady Carlisle smacked her lips in a way that would have enticed most men. “Did a bitch ever mistake you for a meal, little fool?”

I remembered my old terror of being eaten alive—the image of being clamped, helpless, in canine jaws and shaken until my neck snapped. But it would be a fool indeed who allowed Lady Carlisle a glimpse into his nightmare. I crushed my fear and latched onto my fool’s trade, turning a series of cartwheels and flips. The last feat I executed on the seat of an empty chair and propelled myself atop a table as Dulcinea and Rattlebones had taught me. The room erupted in applause at my trick. I bowed with a flourish so I could catch my breath. “I am rather harder to catch than a bull tied to a stake by eight feet of chain,” I quipped to the countess.

Her Majesty gave me a tender smile. “Thank God you are so nimble. I could not do without you, Jeffrey.” The queen touched the red scar the glass had carved into her hand.

“I am certain Jeffrey will serve Your Majesty until the end of his days, you are so kind to him.” The duchess of Buckingham turned to me. “Jeffrey, your father will be pleased to see what a gentleman and scholar you have become. I am certain he wishes all his children should have such advantages.”

“So the father shall see the son’s triumph!” the king said. “Jeffrey, you will entertain your father in your chambers in a style worthy of the queen’s fool. Tell Her Majesty’s page to have meat and drink sent to you there.” I saw the page bow, then dart from the chamber on the king’s errand. Then the pounding of running feet could be heard.

I wanted to plead for the king to call him back, explain that I did not want my father entering my refuge. I did not want his fingerprints on the table, his imprint on the seat of Will Evans’s chair. But when the king gave orders, what could I do but obey and thank him for his kindness?

The moment I exited the royal presence, I ran down the gallery, past men at arms and disapproving hangers-on at court, startling servants busy at their tasks and setting dogs to barking in my efforts to reach my chambers. What should it matter if I arrive before my father? I asked myself as a stitch dug into my side. But I felt a need to sweep away anything he might pry into, especially the blotted pages of Will Evans’s writing, which Father might jeer over, though it was the giant’s own fault my father was to be in the chamber at all.

At length, I stumbled through the door, blessedly alone. I scooped the evidence of Will’s lessons into a wooden chest, then paced the length of my room and fed more coal into the hearth than the harshest winter would demand. Somehow, the sight of shiny black chunks being devoured by fire gave me the assurance of power. Father had ever been miserly when parceling out fuel.

When I heard a rap on my door, I crossed my arms over my chest and bade my father enter.

Did he look a trifle fleshier in the face? Buckingham’s gold had fed him well. I wondered if any of that bounty ever found its way into Samuel’s stomach.

“Jeffrey, lad!” he exclaimed in a rustic accent that made me cringe. “You’ve done well for yourself. I’d wager you piss in golden pots!”

“Piss is still piss, whether you splash it in a gutter or a palace chamber pot. Why have you come, Father?”

“To see my boy in such fine lodgings. I did well by you, Jeffrey. No father could have done better.”

I said nothing, only walked to the table. It took both hands to maneuver the ewer and pour myself a glass of wine. But my silver goblet had been cast in my size, a gift from the queen on New Year’s Day. I caught the stem between my fingers as gracefully as any courtier and gulped down a mouthful, longing for that dulling of sharp edges I had experienced at banquets. But the pain my father awakened was still too keen to be dispatched thus.

“Is Mother well? My brothers and sister?”

“Aren’t they just grand? And they’re like to be grander. Do you remember your cousin Starkey? Came through Oakham five years ago on his way to sign on with a captain going to Virginia.”

“The man with tattoos over his face?” Starkey claimed the natives he had encountered had showed him how to rub ash into tiny scratches in the skin. He had offered to make the same markings on me, so my parents could pass me off as a pygmy and make even more coin. Fortunately, my father had seen plenty of ugly creatures on display at fairs. Things of beauty were far fewer, and the more valuable for that scarcity.

“So you do remember him,” father said. “He came traveling through the village on his way to the ports. He had spoken for a crate of ship’s cargo but hadn’t the money to pay now it was in harbor. He agreed to split his profits with me, since I staked him.”

“Didn’t such dealings with him fall through before?” I remembered it as one of the rare times my mother had fought back, trying to wrestle the bag of coin out of father’s hands. He’d given it to Starkey anyway. Those had been hungry times, when even Father had grown thin.

“It wasn’t Starkey’s fault that ship was lost at sea! This time will be different.”

“The duke’s money was to take care of Ma and Ann and the boys!”

Father’s face turned red as raw beefsteak. “It’s not for you to say what I put my own money to! I’m the head of the household, by God and the law. You can’t deny I made young John comfortable as any Oakham lad could hope for in his apprenticeship.”

It was true my elder brother seemed satisfied following in my father’s trade. John’s broad shoulders and lack of imagination made him able to swing the cleaver without thinking it was living flesh. English tables needed men with that skill to provide them with meat.

“As for you, Jeffrey,” Father continued. “B’God, you’re turned out in luxury fine as any lord in England.”

“You and everyone back home should have been kept comfortable with the money Buckingham paid for me. I doubt you will see Starkey again. What do you intend to do without the money you gave him?”

Father threw out his chest, in that way he had whenever he was about to say something the listener would dislike. “I’ve arranged an apprenticeship for Samuel with Beetle Garth, stirring up the blood pudding and chopping the scrap meat.”

Beetle Garth? Twice, lads in his care had gone missing. The ones who had lost only fingers through careless chopping were the lucky ones. I thought of Samuel trapped in Garth’s shop, digging through the worst of the butcher’s gore, stirring the huge hot cauldron stinking of blood. My stomach bubbled the same way. “Samuel is not to work in the shambles.”

“Pah!” Father spat into the fire, the gobbet of phlegm sizzling. “You are not master of the Hudson family, in spite of your high-and-mighty doings! Were Samuel stunted like you, I might have been able to place him in a noble household. Do better for him if you can, you with your court position! Surely there is a place here—in the stables or kitchens.”

The idea of my gentle brother at court, under the eye of Buckingham and Lady Carlisle, was more than I could bear. What wickedness might they force me to do if they realized how far I would go to protect my brother?

My father crossed to my writing table, tugging open the drawers in my writing box and rummaging in them the way a pig might root through a pail of slops. “’Od’s fish, where’d you get this fancy bit? What is it?”

“It is a writing box, a gift from the queen.”

“What did you have to do to get it? Turn a few somersaults or dance on the table?”

I remembered the queen crumpled on the floor, sobbing. I was not about to reveal that ugly scene to my father. “Her Majesty cut herself on broken glass. I stopped the bleeding.” Had I not done just that in the months since? Attempted to bind up her wounds, apparent and more hidden? Using whatever chance came my way to mend what I could between Henrietta Maria and her husband—without letting any of the Buckingham faction detect my efforts?

“Might want to perch some spectacles on that honking French nose of the queen’s. Face on the knight looks like you sure enough, but had you painted a bit taller than life, didn’t she? What do you think you could sell this lot for?”

I felt revolted by the avaricious bent of his smile, and yet for a moment I wondered. Surely I could raise enough to spare Samuel from hell at Beetle Garth’s hands.

“Turn these trinkets to coin and put them to something useful for the family instead of hoarding it all for you,” Father said. “Starkey told me of another venture—”

Father’s words dashed any possibility I could spare my brother pain with coin—either raised from selling my possessions or by handing over the purse Buckingham had given me: my own Judas pieces of silver. Father would just pour fresh coin into the fool’s ventures, doubling the size of the purse he had already wasted. “I wouldn’t insult Her Majesty by selling her gift,” I told him.

“The French goose wouldn’t have to know. Isn’t likely to come to your bedchamber, now is she?”

The sneer implied in his words pinched more than I wished. Had I imagined such a visit from Henrietta Maria? Her lively chatter filling the silence? The quick movements of her hands like a sparrow in the air. I would give her the seat nearest the window, where she could look down and see the flowers. But such a visit would never happen. Queens did not visit their servants’ chambers. Or if they did, it was to chambers of men like the earl of Leicester during Elizabeth Tudor’s reign. Handsome, dashing, dangerous men those queens were half in love with. Men like Buckingham, not like me.

“I will not sell this box,” I insisted. “There is no other painted like it. Someone else might discover it was gone, or tell her. Do you want me to risk losing her favor?”

“Doesn’t seem your high position will be doing me much good if you can’t even help me to seize the chance Starkey offers.”

I swore under my breath. “Do you think the chance to join a royal household and better ourselves comes every day for folks like us? If I behave rashly, as you want me to, it will slip away. I will do my best for all of you back in Oakham as long as you do right by Samuel. Do not send him to Beetle.”

My father shrugged. “The apprenticeship is all signed and sealed. Nothing either of us can do.”

Sick panic gripped me and I knew it was true. I could no more pluck Samuel safely from this briar of contracts than I could wrest myself from Buckingham’s grasp. But perhaps there was a way I might convince the duke or king or queen to champion Samuel’s cause. They would be able to do the impossible and cut my brother free.

As soon as my father left, I went to my trunk and dug out the coin Buckingham had paid me for brewing the trouble at Tyburn. I pictured the queen’s face as it had been at the banquet at York House, so fresh, as yet unmarked by the grief of losing Madame Saint-Georges and the others. I was the author of that grief. If I approached the duke now, would the price of Samuel’s freedom mean conjuring more trouble between the queen and her husband? Injuring them both another time? There were moments I almost believed Henrietta Maria might be able to ease the sadness in Charles Stuart’s eyes and that he might cherish her as she deserved. But not while the duke of Buckingham had his spies to poison the air between them.

“I am sorry for the wounds I cause,” I said aloud. “But I cannot let that regret change what I must do.”

Steeling myself against the memory of the queen’s now-rare smiles, I tucked the purse in the front of my doublet, then set out in search of the duke. What would happen if someone noticed me on the way to his court lodgings? Would it stir suspicions? This time, I had to take the risk.

I could explain there was some business about my father if anyone asked. That much, God help me, was true.

It was astonishing how swiftly the duke admitted me to his presence. His gaze—greedy, calculating—echoed my father’s.

“Jeffrey Hudson, I had not expected a visit from you. I heard you had a most unwelcome guest of your own at the palace.” One corner of his mouth ticked up in amusement. “I hope there is no ill news from Oakham.”

Why should his mockery bother me so much? Buckingham was the one who had plucked me out of the shambles gutter and set me up in this new life. I wondered what he saw when he looked at me now in my fine garments with the simple bits of jewelry the queen had added. Those marks of her favor provided a startling contrast to the guilty weight of Buckingham’s cross-etched ring.

Did he still see the scrubbed raw, overwhelmed, half-starved boy he’d poked and prodded like a horse for sale? Or did he see the queen’s most trusted servant—the one among all of Her Majesty’s royal attendants whom courtiers must bribe in order to have access to Henrietta Maria? No, I realized, reading the expression on Buckingham’s face. When Buckingham looked at me, he saw what he had always seen: a freak.

“Have you intelligence on the queen or her ladies?” Buckingham asked. “The beautiful countess does not fare well in her siege upon His Majesty’s virtue. The king finds her lively, of course, but perhaps more so than he is comfortable with. After his father’s lecherous misadventures, King Charles has a horror of scandal.”