The Queen's Dwarf A Novel (34 page)

Warmth filled me. I had never seen Samuel this happy.

“And I owe it all to the duke of Buckingham’s kindness!”

The warmth whooshed out of me as if I’d taken a fist to the belly. “Buckingham?”

“I hear what people say about him. Sometimes Father would take me with him to the public house—the master there won’t take his coin anymore. Gives him free ale because he’s father of the queen’s famous dwarf. But folks there spew hate along with their spittle. Especially the widow’s son. Told tales of Cádiz that spread like fire. People say such evil things of the duke of Buckingham, you’d think him a devil instead of a man. It is absurd. I tell them what good he has done you—and now me. They refused to believe it.”

I wanted to leap in, yet what could I say? The last thing I wanted was to ruin Samuel’s happiness, betray my own sins. Still, touting Buckingham as a hero was dangerous.

“It is better not to spread it around that Buckingham is responsible for your tutor,” I warned. “England loathes the duke—so much so that the Commons tried to impeach him for treason. They failed, yet people like Scabbers and the other apprentices would love to take their wrath out on someone connected with Buckingham. They would not care who.”

“If someone is wrongly accused, isn’t it important to defend him?”

“Even men who do terrible wrong are capable of some acts of…” I could not squeeze out the blasphemy of using the word
kindness
and the name Buckingham in the same phrase. “Acts that benefit someone who deserves…” I fumbled to a stop again. “Just be careful.”

Quiet fell, and I wondered what Samuel was thinking. Instead, I filled the silence with a question I knew he would jabber on about long enough to give me time to gather my thoughts.

“How are things at home?”

“Little has changed since I wrote you last.”

“You sent me a letter?”

“Eight of them. Clemmy said you would marvel at how my penmanship has improved. It was so kind of him to carry them.”

“But … I never got…” My stomach knotted. My time at court had taught me well—I needed time to sort things out before I spoke. I had to think what the missing letters might mean.

One letter might be misplaced, even two. Clemmy might have been embarrassed to confess his carelessness. But eight letters over months? That was no accident. Samuel was staring at me, strange in the silence. “Did you not like the letters? I am sure you are used to far more exciting news than I could share.”

“Even the best letters are not the same as hearing about family from your lips. Tell me the news again.”

Samuel looked at me strangely. “I’d not expected to waste time—”

“Indulge me in this. Please.”

He let go of his curl and began. “Mother is fretful, taking care of Father. He’s not been himself since John was taken by the press gangs.”

I fought to hide my shock. “Press gangs?” I echoed, as if to prod him forward.

“He’d taken to drinking like Father, telling everyone about his fine brother at court. After the way he used to try to stretch you, I thought it was a change for the better. It might have been, if the innkeeper hadn’t given him all the ale he could swallow. One night, John left with some strangers and never came back. Turned out, they were a press gang grabbing sailors up the coast. Father walked through a rainstorm to Portsmouth, searching, but it was too late. The fleet had already sailed for France.”

I tried to imagine John sailing to war that hot June day, laying siege under Buckingham’s command. Was there any chance the duke would guess John was my brother? Unlikely in that crush of men, but if he did, would Buckingham’s attention serve John good or ill?

Samuel was looking at me, puzzled again. I could not think, pressured under the searching in his eyes.

I rapped on the coach top. The coachman stopped. I leaned out the window. “To the Rose and Crown Theatre,” I said. I would be able to think more clearly amid the familiar furor of a performance, and the play would keep Samuel’s attention directed away from me. Could there be a more apt place to unravel this knot than in a theater full of actors?

I could not even enjoy Samuel’s excitement as the play began. I had seen enthusiasm before. Clemmy had all but quaked with delight at Samuel’s impending visit. Could Clemmy be such a fine actor as to fool me into seeming my friend? Who had Samuel’s letters? Buckingham? The queen’s enemies, or the king’s? Was it possible I had an even more intimate foe myself? What of Archie Armstrong and his fall from popularity since I had come to court?

More important, why would this adversary keep the letters once he had read them? He had to know the theft would be discovered the moment I saw Samuel. Everyone at court knew the reason for my absence. Somewhere, someone was leafing through the confidences Samuel had written for my eyes only. That person knew I was aware of his mischief. Did he only want to unnerve me? Or was there a more sinister purpose behind his actions?

I watched the comic villain of the piece inch his way across a narrow ledge toward the window of the maiden he planned to seduce. The man gripped a lantern in one hand, unaware the girl’s scruffy dog was creeping along the ledge behind him.

Suddenly, the dog clamped his teeth in the villain’s breeches, shaking him until he dropped the torch into a box left as a trap by the hero. Shrieks and applause filled the theater as fireworks exploded, raining down on the audience. It was a miracle the theatrical effect meant to surprise and delight did not set the place afire.

Samuel flung his arms around me, shielding me from the sparks as he laughed. That was what I had missed most of all, wasn’t it? The closeness we’d always shared? The way we had both tried to shelter each other? Despite Samuel’s efforts, a glowing fleck landed on my hand. I clung to Samuel all the tighter as it burned me, knowing that a single stray spark from a foe I could not see might burn Samuel’s whole world—and mine—down to ash.

Night had fallen by the time the coach lumbered up to the Saracen’s Bane, heavier by the weight of as many packages as Samuel and I could carry. The smell of the new leather shoes I had insisted Samuel wear as we left the boot maker’s stall mingled with the satisfying rustle of clothes getting their very first creases.

He had spent much of the trip fastening and unfastening the lower three buttons on his tawny wool doublet, as if practicing to get the new process right. Handsome green stockings without a single snag warmed legs that still seemed astonishingly long to me. A warm brown cloak draped Samuel’s shoulders and a felt hat with a pheasant feather pinned to the side brought out the gold in his hair. But of all the things we had bought, the one that pleased him most was the simple russet robe he had fingered so longingly at the secondhand clothing stall near the shop where we’d bought his own suit ready-made.

I still was not certain what made me buy it when Samuel had said it would fit his tutor. Or maybe I did so to protect the purchases I’d already made. It would be just like Samuel to trade his new hat for the robe once I was gone.

Yet it was hard to remain disgruntled as I watched my brother bound up the stairs, his eyes shining in that absurd way they did when he was sneaking food to someone he thought was hungry. What was to become of him without me or John or our parents around to make sure he was warm enough or fed enough? Could the tutor be trusted to guard him?

I was wondering how I might steal a word with Master Quintin as we entered the chamber above the shop. For an instant, alarm gripped me as a small dog yapped. I crushed the irrational fear. Even if the queen had ordered someone to fetch me, they would not have brought one of her dogs. A small bat-eared bulldog trotted toward me, wagging its stump of a tail. But every thought in my head vanished as its master stood and I saw the guest that had made the Rowland daughters shy.

There, framed against a crackling fire, was a face that might have escaped from hell. The top half was ordinary enough, with its green eyes and delicately drawn arched brows. But beneath those regular features, the tip of his nose curved like a scythe, reminding all who saw it of the blade used to carve a ghastly smile that stretched from the knob hinging one side of his jaw to the knob hinging the other. We had both been ten years old when I had last seen that face at the Oakham Fair, but who could forget it?

“Jeffrey, my old friend!” he cried, hastening to embrace me. “I know you have not forgotten the Gargoyle!”

“Phineas! Of course I have not forgotten you! Where have you been these many years? How have you fared?”

“Not as well as you! But I roved all over the world with traveling players. Even spent some time in Valencia, where Master Quintin’s quick action saved me from a most unfortunate encounter with some Spaniards intent on burning me for a demon.”

I suddenly wished I’d bought a hat to go with Quintin’s russet robe.

“The good master took me in and taught me as much as I could hold, but the knife that carved my smile must’ve nicked a hole in my brain, for I fear the learning tumbled out as fast as Master Quintin tried to stuff it in. Imagine my surprise when I visited my old tutor and found my favorite Fairy Piper was his new student. How kind of Master Quintin to share news of your visit and invite me to see Oakham’s Fairy King.”

It took some getting used to, that grin that never changed. Yet if one could look past it to the Gargoyle’s eyes, there was pain and sorrow, patience and humor. Bitterness and gentleness all tangled together unrecognized, still waiting for people to see. “I am glad you are safe,” I told him.

“No more ranging across the globe, where I can get my hinder parts singed. That encounter in Spain was too close a call. I’ve a mask and hood good Master Quintin gave me to wear when I go among the vulgar herd, and he finds me enough work here and there to keep body and soul together.”

I saw past the toothy grin to a wistfulness Phineas didn’t bother to hide. “I miss performing, but there is not as much need for a horror like me—once the ladies and gents shriek, they scurry away. It is angels like you people can gaze at forever.”

“That depends upon what use we’re put to. We’ve a whole troupe under the queen’s protection. They call us the Royal Menagerie of Curiosities and Freaks of Nature.”

The Gargoyle touched the scarred edge of his grin. “Nature had nothing to do with this, but I am a freak now, by anyone’s opinion.”

“There are countless roles in Her Majesty’s masques. I will have to wait for the right time to ask, but there might be a place for you.”

The Gargoyle tipped his head. “You would do that for me?”

“It would be good to have an old friend nearby.” Especially since I could no longer trust Clemmy.

Samuel was falling asleep in his chair by the time I walked the Gargoyle to the door. I watched him place the full mask over his mutilated face, noticed it was the type the plague doctors wore, with a long, hooked beak they could fill with herbs to ward off disease. When he pulled his hood up over his head, he chuckled. “Never have to worry about any ruffians bothering me when I’m decked out this way. The nastiest brute runs the moment he thinks I’ve come from a plague house.”

“You know how to take care of yourself,” I said.

“No choice. I’m not beautiful like you, nor do I have a kind brother to watch out for me. I always envied you and your Samuel the piper.”

“Phineas, I … I cannot explain, but something is troubling my brother. I fear for him.”

The green eyes between the slits in the Gargoyle’s mask turned away from me. At first I thought he was searching for the door latch. But then I realized that he had not rushed to reassure me. Was that a matter for concern? Or had he just seen so much cruelty that he was never surprised by a sinking sense of dread?

“Master Quintin will guard him as he did me. Would God that the good man would take as much care of himself.”

“Is there something I should know?”

“Nothing certain. If there was, then I would tell you.”

“Will you keep watch on my brother? I know it is much to ask.”

“Refuse a request from the Fairy King? Never!” He clapped me on the shoulder, and I was reminded of Will Evans’s warmth. The Gargoyle sobered. “I do not forget a friend, Jeffrey. In my life I have had too few of them.”

I watched him disappear into the shadows. I knew the coach was parked behind the bookseller’s now. The coachman had doubtless found someplace with a warm fire and a flagon of something bracing.

I could rouse him and return to the palace, and yet I trekked back up to the shop, where Samuel was still dozing. Master Quintin sat opposite him, regarding my brother over folded hands.

“It is a rare thing to see the sleep of innocents,” Quintin murmured.

“Not so innocent. He’s a thief, you know. Used to steal food for me, then bedevil his conscience until he could confess it.”

“So he told me. Shall I carry Samuel down to the coach so you might take him to the palace?” He must have seen my doubt, for he said, “Despite appearances, I am stronger than I look.”

I imagined him lifting my lanky brother, limping to the stairs. I imagined them both pitching down the risers. But, strangely enough, I doubted the tutor would fall. In spite of that, I shook my head.

“Who am I to disturb the sleep of innocents? Can you get him to his bed?”

“I’ve done it often when Samuel fell asleep over his books. Will you stay the night, as well? It would be a fine surprise for the lad to find you here when he awakes.”

I nodded. The tutor went to Samuel and lifted the youth with a gentleness no one save me or our mother had ever shown my brother. I followed them to a nook behind a curtain, where a small bed was tucked under an eave.

“You will have to crowd in with your brother. But then, he has never gotten used to sleeping the night without you.”

“Hasn’t he?” I looked at the tutor in surprise.

“I gave him an extra bolster, which he tucks against his side. But tonight he’ll have his brother instead.”

“I had to learn to sleep alone.” An unexpected knot formed in my throat.

“I fear you’ve had to learn a great many things you did not choose to at court.”