The Queen's Dwarf A Novel (47 page)

I would have given almost anything to see her happy. But in the months that followed Buckingham’s death, I saw her not at all. Only heard Will Evans and the other menagerie figures marvel over how tender she was to the king. How Charles Stuart clung to her now that his beloved Buckingham was dead.

Felton was hanged, the king’s retribution no surprise. But the reaction of the rest of the country must have seared the king’s heart. Bonfires filled the streets, people from Dover to Edinburgh hailing Felton as a hero, rejoicing that the duke would never again hold the king in his thrall.

The only people who truly mourned Buckingham’s death were Buckingham’s mother, his sister, his wife, and the king. The countess of Buckingham turned her dragon fire on Buckingham’s enemies, accusing French spies of plotting against her son to stop his fleet from sailing. She cast about wild tales of Frenchmen enlisting Felton’s help to keep Buckingham from returning to French shores to rescue stranded Huguenots. Her daughter Susan, Lady Denbigh, wept over her brother’s death, yet she was forced to put on a brave face as her husband took Buckingham’s place as Lord Admiral. The earl of Denbigh was less suited for the post than his brother-in-law had been.

When the new dowager duchess of Buckingham returned to court, she brought her fatherless children with her, Moll, Georgie, and little Francis, beautiful as the duke had been.

One of the first things the duchess did upon her arrival was to send for me. I was ushered to the gallery, where she sat in an alcove, watching her children play with the king’s gift to them, a pair of spaniel puppies determined to make them smile.

The duchess’s eyes were the most haunted I had ever seen. I could not forget the last time I had seen her, daubed with blood, vowing to make someone pay for her beloved husband’s death. “Jeffrey,” she greeted me, her voice so unlike the frenzied one I had heard in Portsmouth, I could scarce believe her half-mad cries had been real. “The world has turned upside down since Master Ware came to Wellingborough. Who would have guessed that the next time we met you would have fallen out of the queen’s favor and I would have seen my lord murdered before my eyes?”

I could not say I was sorry for her loss. My only regret was that I had not killed him before he had cast my brother into Fleet Prison. “Your Grace, you loved your husband well. No wife could have loved a man better.”

“So many people hated him.” She twisted a mourning ring around her finger. “No one understood why he was driven to do the things he did. Now he is dead. Sometimes I pretend he is off in the countess of Carlisle’s arms, or in France with Queen Anne of Austria, or in bed with that beautiful rope dancer. That he is losing a fleet in Cádiz or in the harbor at La Rochelle—anywhere as long as he might still come back to the children and me.” She blinked away tears.

“Love does strange things to us all,” I said.

“I am sorry for your rift with the queen. I worry my husband may have had something to do with it.”

“You are not responsible for what someone else has done.”

“I am the one who has done you harm in this case, I fear: placing your brother Samuel with Father Quintin.”

“Father,” I echoed. “Then he is a priest.”

“One very dear to me. I was attending a secret Mass at the house of a childhood friend when someone betrayed us to the king’s pursuivants. He had been captured once already and sent to the cane fields to work. One of the other Jesuits said he had asked to take the punishment meant for a child there, had his hand crushed.”

I remembered Samuel’s determination to save his tutor the labor of scribing things on paper. Had Samuel known how Quintin had crippled his hand? If so, little wonder my brother was devoted to the man.

“We all knew that if Father Quintin were captured by English authorities again, he would be executed and that the property of anyone who had helped him would be confiscated. We barely had time to hide him in the priest hole the family was in the midst of building. The joiner had left his tools behind. We had to shove them all—mallet and ax, wedge and saw—in with Father Quintin lest the pursuivants grow suspicious. Quintin is a tall man—not compared to Sergeant Evans, but not easy to fit into a small space, either. This was the smallest place imaginable, crammed behind one of the support beams. It was the only way they could design the hiding place without disturbing plaster, so the priest hole would not be easy to detect.”

I remembered what I had felt like when I’d been crammed into the pie the night Buckingham had given me to the queen. I had not even spent an hour thus and my body had ached and burned. What would I have suffered if I had been forced to stay still in that tiny space while men who hoped to arrest me and the flock I had come to minister to were trying to hunt me down?

“For two weeks, the priest-hunters milled around the house, sure if they watched closely enough, they could flush him out. Father Quintin was jammed in so tightly, it stopped the flow of blood to his leg. I cannot imagine the agony he was in, but he never made a sound. If he had, we would all have gone to prison.”

“That is why you called him brave.”

“He never regained the full use of his leg. After the priest-hunters left, my friend’s uncle and I bundled Father Quintin onto a ship bound for Spain. He was so weak, we did not expect him to survive the voyage. He must have had angels on his side. He could have stayed in Spain, safe, or gone to Italy or France. He had suffered enough for his faith. I cannot tell you how it terrified me when I saw him in London. I grew desperate to provide a shield to hide his true calling. When your brother needed a tutor, it seemed God had answered my prayer.”

“God wanted you to put an innocent youth in harm’s way?” Hard words, yet I could not stop thinking of Samuel’s suffering. This woman had played at dice with my brother’s life to gain a friend’s safety. How far into darkness might she have gone to support her beloved husband’s schemes? Could she have had any part in arranging to topple a scaffold on the queen?

Her chin tipped up in aristocratic pride. “I did your brother a service, giving him the chance to be educated by a fine scholar who has been in the great courts of Europe. More than that, Father Quintin has fed a hunger in Samuel for the true Church. Even I had heard how often your brother visited the widow who hides the carving of a Madonna under her floor.”

“You know of the statue?” I asked, my nerves clenching even tighter.

“I have packed away treasures of the old Church myself, in hopes I might bring them into the light one day. Now that my faith cannot damage my husband’s position at court, I can be true to my conscience, like Samuel may choose to be. Perhaps I will even have saved your brother’s soul.”

“My brother’s soul is not your concern! You nobles play with people’s lives as my father plays with the lives of his dogs. Regretting when we are killed, but then shrugging it off and turning to the next diversion.”

“Is faith a game? Sending people to Heaven or hell? Baptizing babies? Giving the dying Extreme Unction? Offering them confession and the comforts of Mass? Your brother would not say so.”

“Do not presume to tell me what my brother would say. You do not even know him.”

“Perhaps I understand him better than you do. Father Quintin wrote me often about his progress. Samuel’s faith is a thing of beauty, his devotion to Father Quintin—”

“If God and Father Quintin are so great, they could have managed Heaven and hell without dragging my brother into the fray. And so, Your Grace, could you. Moreover, the duke himself threatened to have Samuel killed unless I complied with his wishes.”

“My husband wished to rival Richelieu in intrigues and battle, to burn Cádiz like Sir Frances Drake.” She wrapped her arms around her stomach. “Great men do not climb to heights on the backs of butcher’s sons, Jeffrey Hudson.”

I wanted to assert that Buckingham had used
this
butcher’s son, threatening my whole family unless I became his pawn. Yet, the court teemed with nobles eager to take Buckingham’s place. Was it possible one might be conniving to rise to the highest position in the kingdom? If so, those who had hated Buckingham’s influence on the king now had another person’s influence to fear—that of the Catholic queen who had taken the duke’s place in King Charles’s heart.

“I did not summon you here to defend my late husband. I only wanted you to know that I am seeing to your brother’s needs and those of Father Quintin. Everything possible is being done for their comfort.”

“I suppose I should thank you.”

“I do not expect you to,” she said.

Yet she gave me a surprising gift months later, when Christmas holly was being garlanded about the palace. She approached me as I hovered about the outskirts of celebrations I would not get to see.

“I wanted to be the first to tell you something about the queen,” the duchess of Buckingham said.

“Her Majesty no longer wishes me to be privy to her affairs.”

“Jeffrey, when one loves as I have loved His Grace, one sees feelings other people wish to hide.” She looked at me, so sympathetic, I could almost forget my suspicions about her. Almost. “There are tidings about Her Majesty that you will be most happy to hear.”

“My companions in the menagerie keep me apprised of court doings.”

“Not even the king knows this yet. The queen is with child.”

My chest swelled with joy for Henrietta Maria. I should not have cared so much. The queen had refused to help Samuel, forbade me to see my brother. Yet I had betrayed her, not the other way around. Perhaps now my homesick French princess would be tied to England in a way that would make her subjects love her at last. Was it possible that, in her happiness, she might be willing to forgive me—at least enough to help my innocent brother?

Tears filled my eyes at the thought of Henrietta Maria bending over a cradle. Henrietta Maria with a babe to her breast. Henrietta Maria with a husband and child on whom she could lavish all the love in her passionate heart.

Perhaps it was just as well that she had cast me aside. She would not need her fool Jeffrey at all now.

“I am glad to know that Her Majesty will be happy,” I said.

“Jeffrey, I confess, I am a trifle uneasy. Not everyone will be happy at this news. The other day, one of the pages knocked over the queen’s goblet in the grass. There were strange flecks that clung to the leaves. When I walked in the garden the next day, I noticed something strange. The Christmas rose the cup spilled on had withered.”

She seemed to shake herself. “Of course, it’s more likely one of the spaniels has dubbed that plant its favorite place to make water. But the world can be a treacherous place, especially for a woman with child.”

I heard one of the maids of honor call out for the dowager duchess—some part in the Christmas decking of halls to play. But long after she had gone about her tasks, I was haunted.

Was it possible the queen had another enemy?

I thought of the powder I had secreted in my writing box the night I rode off to kill Buckingham: the dose that was supposed to wither the queen’s womb. Is that what had been in the cup the page had spilled? If so, the attempt had failed. The queen would bear a child, and that would put an end to those who wished Henrietta Maria to be sent back to France. She would be mother to a prince or princess. Untouchable.

Her enemies would claim she was now more dangerous than ever.

*   *   *

I guarded her from a distance in the months that followed, urging the king to make certain someone tasted anything that touched her lips. His Majesty, already vigilant, did everything he could to protect her, make her happy. Bonfires blazed in celebration of the coming prince; ambassadors came to congratulate the royal couple. Prayers were lifted up in churches across England, beseeching God to grant the queen a safe delivery and that He would make her a joyful mother of many children.

Sara shared news of the queen’s gratitude when the king paid off her mounting debts, banishing the tradesmen who had been clamoring at the queen’s door. It was no small feat to come up with the vast sum. His Majesty was again low on funds. When he called another session of Parliament in hopes of refilling his purse, members were hopeful, saying that things between them and the king seemed to be going well. Yet, after a night in the queen’s bed, the king sent the MPs home.

Archie visited the lodgings with the delight of one of the horsemen bringing down the Apocalypse. “Your mistress is doing a fine job spreading dissension throughout the land. The streets are full of chatter regarding her ‘crimes.’”

“Some poor servant girl was thrown into prison for saying she wished the queen be ducked in the sea with a millstone round her neck,” Rattlebones said. “While boatloads of captive French fishermen were allowed to go free at her request.”

“She has even convinced the king to begin talks with the Venetian ambassadors about making a treaty with France,” Archie grumbled. “It is rumored the queen got a condemned Jesuit priest not only reprieved but pardoned.”

My heart had all but leapt out of my chest with hope. “The priest … do you know his name?”

“It was not Master Quintin,” Will said quietly. “I am sorry, Jeff.”

Sorrow clouded court the day we learned the French Huguenots had surrendered at La Rochelle, despite the English fleet in their harbor. The king had been determined not to desert them. But now, that last bar to peace had been removed. We grieved at the news that the French king had ordered the starving Huguenots be fed, but their stomachs had been so far gone, they had died with the meat in their mouths.

But it was Sara who brought the most surprising news of all. The French wanted the queen’s French household restored to her as part of the treaty. It was Henrietta Maria herself who put an end to that hope. “She fears it might shatter the harmony she now has with the king,” Sara said. “I am so glad she was wise enough to see that danger.”

It seemed as if the fates wished to reward the queen, for on Sunday, May 10, 1629, the king and queen stood at the window of the gallery at Greenwich Palace as peace with France was proclaimed.