The Queen's Dwarf A Novel (32 page)

She pressed the note against her breasts, her eyes burning with adoration. “Think what a blow that will be to those who oppose His Grace. The people of England will see him as a hero, tested in battle, winner of a great victory over His Majesty’s enemies.”

From gossip Rattlebones brought from his performances in the city, there were many in Parliament and in the rest of the citizenry who could stomach the loss of a few ships as long as Buckingham joined the sailors he had squandered at the bottom of the sea.

I wondered if she knew how far Buckingham’s list of adversaries now stretched. I felt the duchess must know of their enmity, and yet it was hard to imagine she could be duplicitous enough to care for the queen so tenderly while seeking to undermine Henrietta Maria’s position. But the fervor in the duchess disturbed me. She had surrendered her faith, scorned her duty as a daughter in welcoming Buckingham as a husband when he had destroyed her honor. Had she known Buckingham’s plan beforehand? Aided the scheme said to have broken her father’s heart?

I remembered Simon once saying that men are taught to see women as either wicked or angelic. Most men were disgruntled to discover women merely human, with all the flaws and graces mixed together. Did women see men the same way, cads or heroes? If the duchess loved her husband so fervently, could she bear the truth? What would happen if she saw the ugliness Buckingham hid beneath that glittering exterior? The duchess gave me a wobbly smile. “Jeffrey, you need not linger here while I grow morose over things I have no power to change. I am worried my husband will grow even more reckless in order to prove his enemies wrong. I yearn for my little ones back at Burley-on-the-Hill. Moll’s and Georgie’s nurses write they are doing well, but I cannot guess when I will see them next. The city is too full of contagion to risk bringing them here, and I must protect my husband’s interests at court while he is away. Court is filled with jealous men who would go to despicable lengths to damage the king’s affection for my lord if they could. You see? I am dismal company. You should follow Her Majesty’s example and seek more amiable friends. The countess of Carlisle is always amusing.”

“You are of a finer cast. You have shown it in your kindness to my brother.”

“It was His Grace who asked me to find your brother a tutor. People do not give him credit for the generosity he shows.” She fingered the miniature pinned at her breast, an exquisite disk of ivory painted with Buckingham’s face. “I cannot bear to see him so foully misjudged.”

She seemed to be waiting for me to say something in the duke’s defense. I thought of how Buckingham had made her father beg him to wed her honorably. I thought of the women Buckingham and his friends lured out so he could debauch them. I thought of His Grace sending Uriel Ware to entice the queen deeper into debt. And there was my own unholy alliance with the duke.

“His Grace is fortunate to have so loyal a wife.”

“Someone should be loyal to him,” she said with heat. “When I am holding my own little Georgie … a boy’s mother should guard him, not thrust him into…” Her voice trailed off, but I guessed what she was thinking—of King James’s passion for pretty young men. I had no doubt Buckingham’s mother was ambitious enough to put her son in the king’s path. My stomach curled at the thought. “My husband wants to be a good man, Jeffrey,” the duchess insisted. “A wise adviser to the king. But who will take him seriously after…”

She might have been speaking of the rout he suffered at Cádiz, a third of England’s great fleet limping home in defeat. But I sensed it was something far more personal, shameful clouds cast when beautiful, young George Villiers was being kissed and fondled by the old king.

“It is not my place to judge anyone, Your Grace.” Especially after the things I had been coerced into doing.

“I would do anything in my power to see him honored as he deserves,” she said fiercely.

Did she see my reaction? She rushed on. “I see that look upon your face—even you sit in judgment on him. There is nothing I would change about my husband. Nothing. Except perhaps—his only fault is that he loves women too well.”

She stopped, collected herself. She smoothed the passion from her face, seeming the gentle duchess again. “Now, here, I have chattered on about things in a most inappropriate way. I fear I cannot speak of such things among the queen’s ladies, and certainly not with His Grace’s mother. I have no excuse except that I am so worried and you … Jeffrey, you are a good listener.”

I quelled my sudden bitterness, concentrating on her kindness to Samuel instead.

“Your Grace, I would do whatever I could to lighten your worries. The duke might have agreed Samuel might have a tutor, but you found a kind master, one, I have heard, Samuel is most attached to.”

“Master Quintin is the kindest man I have ever known and one of the bravest.” It was a strange word to describe a tutor.

“I can think of few things more dangerous than disciplining an unruly scholar. I would far sooner join your husband in storming French citadels.”

She rewarded me with a laugh. “I can understand your view if your brother has anything close to your sharp wit.”

“Samuel is nothing like me, Your Grace.” Just as you are nothing like the man you married, I added silently.

E
IGHTEEN

It seemed a hundred years had passed since Father marched me out the door of our cottage in Oakham, stopping to warn Samuel that he’d not endure any son of John Hudson giving way to womanish weeping. My brother had swallowed his tears as he followed us as far as the stone step. But when I glanced back over my shoulder some ways down the street, I saw the terrible silent weight of his grief. I carried it with me, like a beggar’s bundle, to Burley House and every step I took beyond.

Now, at last, I would have a chance to paint over that image of my brother the way Robin Goodfellow fixed a miniature portrait that did not please him. I clutched the top edge of the coach door, bracing myself as the equipage the queen had ordered me to take jolted over the streets. The spire of St. Paul’s Cathedral pricked the September sky. Somewhere near the imposing building, lanes rimmed with booksellers could be found, and the shop where I was to rendezvous with my brother lay somewhere in their midst. Samuel’s tutor was staying with a school friend who had married a printer’s daughter, and Samuel had not been able to work himself free of the arrangement. My brother was always loath to injure someone’s feelings, even when it was in his best interest.

But I would remedy that bit of foolishness. Master Quintin could be made to understand that the chance to lodge at the palace was too great an opportunity to miss.

I could hear the coachman swearing at the hackney driver who had squeezed too close in the crushing traffic. The coach jolted, flinging me against the door, the blow cushioned by the oranges I carried in a bag tied to my waist. I checked the fruit I intended as a treat for Samuel, consoling myself that even a crushed orange would be more delicious than anything my brother had ever tasted.

If I ever reach Samuel at all, I thought. I begrudged every minute this tangle was eating away from the three-day span the queen had granted me to enjoy my brother’s company. Archie Armstrong had managed to cast a shadow over Her Majesty’s generosity, saying I’d better squeeze as much diversion into the first afternoon as possible. Her Majesty was likely to decide she needed me to lighten her mood after all. With a wave of her hand, she could order a page to fetch me, and that would be the end of my time with Samuel. I hated Archie for clouding my excitement with dread. I hated him more for being right. It was possible the queen would change her mind. Her Majesty had much to worry about these days.

The seventy-six gentlemen imprisoned for refusing to lend the king money had insisted they could not be held without a trial. Parliament supported their assertion and refused to grant the king moneys no king had ever been denied before. It was easy to whip up public anger in citizens forced to billet soldiers in their homes for a war they did not want, military law laid down in troublesome swaths of the country, taxes seized without Parliament’s consent.

Once the king had realized he could neither win the funds needed nor protect Buckingham from impeachment if Parliament continued to meet, His Majesty had solved the impossible deadlock the only way left to him: He disbanded Parliament a second time.

The members had returned to their shires furious over the king’s abrupt reprisals and had left a trail of discontent in their wake. What had the fools expected for their pains? I wondered. That this king, so jealous of his dignity, would thank them for their impudence?

“I cannot deny you the pleasure of seeing your brother, no matter what it costs my peace of mind,” the queen had said when she learned of Samuel’s visit. “But you must travel by coach. There are disturbances in the street since the king dismissed the Commons. I cannot fathom what these English merchants hope to achieve.”

I shook off the memory and glared out the coach window. “They are succeeding in frustrating me,” I muttered. Just down the street, Samuel was waiting. I could have reached the address hours ago if I’d been allowed to ride my horse.

I considered making a dash for it, but once on the ground I would not be able to see my destination. Getting lost meant reaching Samuel even later.

The equipage rattled forward, then slammed to a halt. The hackney driver had overturned a cart, its load of cabbages rolling about the street. Thrifty housewives chased after the bounty, filling their aprons. Heaven knew how long it would be before they got out of the way.

I viewed the path to my destination: Seven doors in the direction of the basket and broom seller who was hawking his wares, a tower of straw hats stacked on his head. If I could spring across the street and make it to the first door without getting turned around, the rest would be simple.

I took a deep breath and pushed the door open. “I’m going on foot!” I warned the driver. Despite his protests, I made a leap Dulcinea would have been proud of. Trying not to be knocked over by rolling cabbages like a pin in a game of bowls, I scrambled to the first door. With a triumphant grin and a few jostles, I reached the open front of the shop, not much worse for the wear.

A boy of about thirteen with pimples on his nose gaped at me. “You must be here for Master Quintin. They said you’d be coming by coach. I didn’t see one.”

I’d been in the company of Boku and Inigo Jones for too long. People want to believe illusions. That’s why they see what a conjuror tells them to see, I thought. “I decided to travel by magic instead,” an imp of mischief made me say.

The boy made a sign to ward off the evil eye. Several other lads who’d been hovering near the shop—doubtless to get a glimpse of me—whispered among themselves. A hard-eyed lad with bald patches on his scalp and a nose squashed flat as the oranges in my bag said, “We don’t hold with devils here.”

I did not want to get the bookseller in trouble, in spite of my frustration over Samuel’s reluctance to refuse his invitation. “Look down the street,” I said. “You’ll see the coach Her Majesty sent me in.”

“Might as well be sorcery,” Patch Scalp said. “The queen is just another Catholic chanting spells. Turning bread into flesh and eating it.” He spat on the floor.

Outrage swelled in my chest. “You dare speak against the queen?”

“She is French and a Catholic, is she not?”

“Stop it, Scabbers!” the pimpled youth said. “Should’ve left you at your own shop and never told you the queen’s dwarf was coming. Master will give me no supper if he hears you blathering.”

“You need not fear going hungry, Fred,” a cultured voice said from deep among the tables full of books for sale. Everyone turned to look in that direction. A man stood on the stairs that lead to the upper floors, where the bookseller and his family no doubt lived. Was this man the owner of the shop? If so, he had been working too hard. His face was paler than good health would allow. The smile he gave me was patient, grave. “The queen is indeed a Catholic, though there are more gentlemanly ways of saying so. Perhaps we may all agree on that and return to our duties.”

“Scabbers” and his friends scattered as the man came toward me. If my brother John had seen the newcomer, he would have wanted to hang him from a hook in the butchery’s ceiling to straighten the fellow out. The stranger would have been a fine, tall fellow if John had succeeded, but as of now his right shoulder crumpled inward toward his chest, giving him a hunched appearance as he limped toward me. He wore a scholar’s gown of brown frieze with frayed cuffs that ended halfway down his forearms. The doublet and hose visible where the robe hung open were of sturdy wool the color of moss. Those garments seemed as large for his lean body as the robe seemed small, as if no one could agree what size the man was.

“You must be the famous Jeffrey Hudson,” he said, addressing me.

“Are you the master of this shop?” I asked.

“He is occupied setting type in the back. I am Benedict Quintin, the tutor fortunate enough to have your brother for a scholar. Samuel cannot say enough wonderful things about you.”

I was not sure what I had expected in a tutor secured by the duchess of Buckingham, but it was not this man with his red-gold hair.

“I fell off a mountain,” he said quite amiably.

“What?” I asked, startled.

“I was accompanying the grandson of a baronet around Europe and I was contemplating Socrates instead of watching where I was going. Pardon my abruptness, but I find it easier to satisfy people’s natural curiosity about my appearance at once. That way, they don’t have to exert themselves probing around the subject to discover how I was injured. I am not offended by their prurient interest and they can concentrate on more important things—for example, going upstairs to see your brother. I expected him to have his nose pressed to the window, watching for you.”

“So did I.” I felt a sudden twinge. I followed the tutor up the steep flight of stairs into a dark, cramped room. Wattle and daub plaster was lime-washed white, cut into diamonds by dark wooden slats. Against walls soot-stained by three generations of coal fires, one bright spot shone: Samuel. My brother sat at a table so rickety, it seemed in danger of pitching the articles arrayed atop it onto the scrubbed floor: an ink pot with a chipped rim, a penknife that had been sharpened so often that the blade curved inward instead of out, books and blotting paper and a vial for sprinkling sand to dry the ink. The few rays of sun that dared to filter through the grimy windowpanes were tangled in my brother’s dandelion-fluff hair.