The Queen's Dwarf A Novel (48 page)

I could see Her Majesty place a hand on her swollen belly, tears in her eyes as a trumpet blared and four heralds announced we were no longer at war with her homeland.

She grew ever more luminous with joy and confidence as she took her barge to Somerset House to have the Te Deum chanted in thanksgiving for peace. I rejoiced that my love now had everything she could want within the palace walls. But in the world beyond, unrest simmered.

I tried to ignore the grumbling growing ever louder at the notion of a Catholic queen giving birth to England’s heir. Robin Goodfellow had brought word just the week before that some on the streets were claiming that Henrietta Maria had convinced her doting husband to let the heir to the throne attend Catholic Mass.

But despite the discord such rumors created, I did not guess anyone might try to strike her down in the palace. Not even after Will Evans burst into the menagerie’s lodgings at Greenwich to tell me three dogs had attacked her in the gallery. Dulcinea had seen the whole thing.

“What the devil bull-baiting dogs were doing running free, I have no idea!” Will complained. “Should’ve seen them—all torn up and scarred from the fight. If the earl of Carlisle had not been nearby, the beasts might have rent the queen from stem to stern.”

“The birth pangs have seized Her Majesty,” Will told me.

“It is too early,” I said, sick at heart.

Will nodded. “The king has summoned the queen’s doctor and His Majesty has done what no king has done before. He has defied them all—the midwives, the ladies-in-waiting—every scrap of protocol for royal births. He refuses to leave his lady’s side.”

I knew Henrietta Maria did not want me near her. But she would not have to see my face. I would wait outside her chamber and pray. I’d pray as I had rarely prayed before.

May 12, 1629

The queen’s screams pounded in my skull like those of a madwoman desperate to escape Bedlam. Hours upon hours, I paced outside her chamber, watching servants dash in and out, exhausted, fearful, and—in the case of Lady Carlisle—with a kind of expectant aura. Did the countess really hope her mistress would die? Ripped apart in the act of trying to give the king a son?

I plied anyone who left the room for news of how the queen fared. What scraps I got cinched my fear so tight, I could not breathe. The queen was tiring. The babe was turned crosswise. The king would not stir from his wife’s side, Henrietta Maria clutching at his hands so hard, they were swollen and bruised.

From the cluster of chairs nearby, I could hear Charles’s advisers mumbling. Were they raking through lists of princesses they hoped would replace her? I winced as I saw Archie Armstrong peel himself away from a cluster of the king’s servants, the old fool slouching toward me with a wicked curl to his mouth.

“Quite a spectacle baby Charles is making of himself,” Archie used the pet name Buckingham and King James had once used to describe the stammering prince. “A confinement chamber is no place for any husband, let alone for a king of England. Ha! When Henrietta Maria was born, her father was playing cards and plotting how he was going to retrieve a runaway mistress—the kinds of pursuits a king was meant to engage in.”

“I am certain His Majesty’s advisers would be eager for your opinion,” I said. “I am not.”

“Come, now, Jeffrey. I would not want to interfere with their happy musings about which Protestant princess would make the most advantageous royal bride if we are so lucky as to rid ourselves of the French beggar girl.”

“I’ll not hear such talk.”

“What else do you call a wife was brings no dowry?”

“Can you not hear how the queen is suffering?”

“I think everyone within a league of Greenwich can hear it—which is why I brought wool to stuff in my ears.” Archie made a sour face. “What is King Charles doing in there anyway? All his life, the man has had a horror of fierce emotion. Not a speck of passion in him, or he’d have taken Lady Carlisle up on her offer of a tumble in bed, as Buckingham had. Besides, the king and queen have spent most of their marriage fighting. Why the great change?”

Because they have fallen in love, I wanted to say as the earl of Carlisle and the earl of Denbigh summoned Archie with a wave of their hand. The king and queen loved deeply, completely, in a way that made me happy for them, yet which tormented me, as well.

As Archie sauntered away, I imagined Charles in the next room, bending over his wife as I wished I could do, stroking her hair back with man-size hands. In my mind, I could hear his voice—marred by the stammer he had worked so hard to eradicate, worn down with worry and exhaustion, but murmuring words of encouragement. Was he kissing her brow? Regretting that his lovemaking had caused her this pain? Did he feel as afraid and helpless against the alchemy of womb and birth as I did?

When Will Evans was not on duty, he brought me food and stayed to make certain I ate it. Simon, Robin, Boku, and Sara hovered nearby, as well, while Dulcinea floated restlessly here and there, as if she could not find a flower pleasing enough to light upon.

She even wandered into the queen’s wardrobe, but a servant shooed her from that forbidden room. If I’d had the king’s power, I would have swept every soul out into the gardens—anywhere I could not hear their macabre accounts of the most horrific birth tales anyone had ever told them.

I was half out of my mind by the time Charles Stuart and the queen’s physician stepped outside of the birthing chamber, the duchess of Buckingham and the countess of Carlisle following in their wake. The king’s advisers flocked over to hear the news. I doubted any of them noticed me drawing near, as well. The doctor look haggard and was spattered with blood; the king’s hands were trembling.

“Your Majesty, this cannot go on any longer,” the doctor said. “I can remove the child from your wife’s womb two ways. I can open her belly to save the babe. If I do, Her Majesty will bleed to death. The other method is to pull the babe out its normal passage with a hook, killing the child to save the mother.”

Bloody images from my days in the shambles made me dizzy. The notion of the queen’s soft flesh under a knife nearly drove me to my knees.

“How do you wish me to proceed, Your Majesty?”

“There must be some way to save them both,” Charles said, his voice breaking.

“If the queen were able to speak, I know what she would tell you.” The duchess of Buckingham pressed her hand to her stomach. Was she thinking of the other children she and the duke would never have? “Given a choice, any mother would rather you spare her babe.”

“There are greater considerations than a woman’s opinion,” the earl of Carlisle insisted. “Majesty, you must think of your kingdom. It is the queen’s duty—and yours—to give England an heir.”

The king wheeled on him, his face contorted with helpless rage. “Do you think I do not know what my duty is?”

“It is hard to make such a sacrifice,” Lady Carlisle said soothingly. “But the queen has been raised from the cradle to understand the one purpose of a princess is to bear heirs to the throne. To be barren would be worse than death.”

She looked away, and I wondered why she was childless.

“There is one more thing to consider if you do choose to spare the queen.” The surgeon pushed back his blood-speckled cuff. “If I use the hook to pull the babe out, the womb will be damaged. It is possible—even likely—the queen may never be able to bear another child.”

The king gave an anguished moan, wheeling away from the cluster of people. He stalked my way. Suddenly, those sad royal eyes met mine.

“Jeffrey.” He did not sound surprised to see me standing vigil, despite the fact that I had not waited on the queen these many months. “Do you hear them? The doctor? My advisers? Even the queen’s own ladies-in-waiting?”

“I hear them, Your Majesty.”

“They say I must murder my wife or my child. I would rather cut out my own heart.”

I could imagine the hell Charles Stuart must be suffering. “There may be other children,” I said softly. “There is only one Henrietta Maria.”

The king bent down to clasp my hands. I could feel the anguish the royal couple had shared in the weary hours of the queen’s labor, holding on to each other, trapped in a world they could not command. “Of all the court, only you understand,” Charles said. “I cannot live without her in the world.”

“Neither can I,” I told him. He nodded, and I could see him square his shoulders.

I watched the king return to the cluster of people, give his command. “Save the queen.”

He did not linger to hear the protests his advisers clamored to voice. He did not pause to notice the impatience sharpening the countess of Carlisle’s pretty face and the disapproval even the dowager duchess of Buckingham showed. He returned to his wife’s bedside, refused to leave it even as the surgeon did his work.

Sharper screams, more agonized. I had not thought it possible. I haunted the queen’s door until the king emerged with his tiny son in his arms, rushing the struggling mite to be baptized before he died. The moment the little prince breathed his last, Charles returned to his wife’s chamber, her screams having given way to grief-stricken sobs, the loss of their child a burden shared. When he emerged later, I was still waiting.

“She is out of danger,” the king said, drifting his hand down on my hair as the queen used to do when I was her best beloved pet. “Tell the menagerie to prepare a special entertainment to help the queen learn how to laugh again.”

“I am certain Simon and Goodfellow can plan something that will please the queen.”

“Not as much as you did.” The king frowned. “I wish that you and the queen would make up your quarrel. Will you not tell me what has driven this wedge? I can fix it.”

I wanted to pour out the tale to the king, rid my soul of its ugly burden. But to do so would mean exposing the queen’s secrets and Buckingham’s villainy. It would make things worse for the royals I loved, not better.

“Even a king cannot order affections to be mended.” My voice thickened with regret. “Her Majesty has a truer confidant in you, Your Highness. Your love and trust was what the queen longed for. I am grateful she has it.”

I dragged myself down to the lodgings. Everyone sat in their accustomed places around the table, not even bothering to pretend to work at the tasks that they had been using to keep busy. What had they been thinking as their hands slowed, then grew idle? I wondered as I looked at those faces I had come to care about so much. Had they been wondering what would happen to us if the queen died? Would our troupe be preserved intact by the king or divided up and scattered to other noble houses? Her Majesty’s Curiosities and Freaks of Nature a menagerie no more?

I shut the door louder than necessary. They spun toward me.

“The queen will live,” I reassured quietly.

“God be praised!” Sara exclaimed. Simon scooped up his fluffy white dog and buried his face in the fur. Robin Goodfellow closed his eyes as if in silent prayer to his God of ceruleans and crimsons. Boku glided to the window on feet that made no sound. He whispered some unknown language to the moon.

I had sagged onto a stool, when I heard a hiss, saw Archie spit into the fire. No doubt he’d come to stir up strife in the lodgings, since his own master was at the queen’s bedside. “Trust baby Charles to shy away from doing a king’s duty,” the old fool said. “Kill a Protestant prince to save a Catholic queen who’s been nothing but trouble from the day she landed in Dover. King James would never have made such a mistake, nor would Charles’s brother Prince Henry.”

“Your queen is alive!” I snapped. “You should be grateful!”

“There are plenty in this kingdom who will not be,” Archie sneered. “They’ve broken Buckingham’s hold on the Crown, only to have the queen take his place in the king’s esteem. Do you want England to be the chattel of a French woman? A Catholic? Better fling the country to the Irish savages and let them rend it to bits!”

He stalked from the room. Dulcinea stood up, as well.

“I had best try to caution him before he goes spouting his nonsense to someone who might tell the king,” she said.

“Do you wish me to go with you?” Will started to rise from his chair.

“No!” Dulcinea said with startling vigor. “I’ll do better myself. I have a talent for cozening men.” Were her eyes overly bright? Her hands more restless than usual? Something about her set my nerves on edge.

Tension gripped Will’s shoulders, and I wondered if she knew how badly such talk still hurt him. I wondered if she ever thought about the wedding that wasn’t or the man who had longed to be her husband.

As she went in search of Archie, the rest of the menagerie trailed off to bed, leaving Will and me alone with nothing but the soft chattering of Pug from the corner.

Will sighed with such force, the candles on the table guttered. He laid his hand across my back. “So, the queen is going to be well, Jeffrey. I am glad. I only hope someday she knows what a loving servant she has in you.”

“All that matters is that she is safe and the king loves her. She can never doubt that now. He went against the advice of all of his councillors to save her. She may never be able to bear another child.”

“Did the king know that when he made his decision?”

“I heard the doctor warn him.”

“Then His Majesty does love her.” Will gave a thoughtful nod.

“More than the future of his crown.”

“I am glad for the queen,” Will said. “I think there is nothing she needs more than her husband’s love. “

I looked at Will, unable to shake the memory of his face as Dulcinea disappeared. “At least the queen will have the wit to know she is rich beyond imagining.” I fetched a bottle of Rhenish wine some courtier had given me when people still sought my favor. “Rich, not because of crowns or jewels or palaces, but because she has earned a good man’s love.”

“But not the country’s love.” Will mourned. “I have heard there were some reckless enough to raise toasts at the possibility the queen might die. Perhaps they would not have dared light bonfires in the streets as they did when Buckingham was assassinated, but that does not change the fact that they wished her dead. How will that change if the queen cannot bear a prince? Will the king have the strength to set her aside if the country demands it?”