The Queen's Dwarf A Novel (5 page)

“Hudson!” Ware’s voice pulled my attention back to the gleaming tableware. But despite such luxury, I could still feel the hook slickening under my hands, my arms shaking with the effort to hold on. I could still hear John’s voice:
Do you want to stay a freak? I cannot help you if you lie there on the floor, crying like a babe!

“You cannot clutch the glass like some clodpoll the shambles has shaken off its hoof!” Ware poured more wine, then pulled my hand from the glass and slammed my palm flat on the table. His face was so close, I could see puckered skin at the rim of his patch. “Try again, and this time use one hand, or I will nail your sleeve to the table.”

I wanted to fling wine into his face and storm off as other men might do, but I had learned from experience that such gestures were futile for one of my size. They only embarrassed me more.

I grasped the goblet as if I were hanging from John’s hook, the sweat on my hand mingling with the dampness beading the side of the glass. My fingers pinched the glass so tightly, it sprang out as if from a slingshot.

I had never heard glass shatter—had never touched glass until I joined the duke’s household. Ware wrenched around, nearly breaking my wrist before he released it. We both stared at the shards on the floor.

“Fool! Do you have any idea how much that was worth?”

I gawped at the ruined goblet in horror. “What will happen to me?”

Ware turned back to me, every line of his body agitated. “You won’t be flogged, no matter how much you deserve it. I reprimand you harshly for your own good. It is vital for this enterprise that you charm the queen, and I have only days to teach you what the families of courtiers spend years drumming into their children’s heads.” Ware paced away. “His Grace is demanding the impossible of me. But when has he ever done anything different?”

Seeking some brief respite from frustration, Ware delivered me to the man charged with fashioning the costume I was to wear when I was presented to the queen. I gave myself over to a new torment.

My ears rang from the blows of hammer on iron as the armorer fitted the helmet and breastplate. Once the smith released me from the hot forge, the torture grew even grimmer. Tailors trussed me up in whalebone-stiffened doublets and boots that chafed. When they finished, Ware greeted me with a lump of cream-colored doeskin with sausage-shaped swells front and back and straps and buckles that hung about the middle. “It is a gift from the duke,” he said just as I noticed the child-size stirrups. “The king and queen spend hours upon horseback when hunting. You will have to ride with them.”

“It is a lovely saddle,” I said. “But I prefer my own feet.”

“On a horse, you will be swift as other men,” Ware said.

“I’m sure it will be gratifying for the handful of minutes before the beast tramples me to death.”

Ware almost smiled. “This is no ordinary saddle. Place your hand here.” He indicated what I assumed must be the front of the saddle. The doeskin had been pleated into diamond shapes fastened with metal studs. I did as he told me.

“There is a slit where you will be able to conceal messages. Can you find it?”

I felt wadded wool padding, then wiggled my fingers and was surprised when they slipped into a natural hollow formed by the saddle frame.

“Even if you are searched, it is unlikely anyone would think to dismantle your saddle. I had the slit placed in front, so that if anyone notices you fiddling about there, they will believe you are adjusting your prick.”

The idea of riding a horse was terrifying enough. But to fumble with a missive that might condemn me while the animal was prancing around was unthinkable. “What if I drop the message?”

“If you are fortunate, I will kill you quickly. A necessity to spare you torture and to keep you from betraying His Grace. If I do not reach you first, you will suffer the rack and a traitor’s death. I suggest that you practice concealing the messages so neither of those possibilities come to pass.”

I nodded, my throat dry.

He escorted me to the duke’s stable yard and left me in the charge of the riding master who instructed His Grace’s children. A groom cinched the new saddle upon a horse whose nostrils looked like wet flame. The fellow plopped me astride the animal and strapped my legs into place with leather bands.

“Cling to the beast with your knees,” the riding master ordered. But how was I to accomplish this with my legs sticking straight out on either side like fire pokers?

Riding was difficult enough. But when I tried to get off of that mountain of equine muscle, only a groom stood between me and a horse eager to take vengeance for times my riding master had insisted I apply the crop. On my fifth day of lessons, I dragged my leg across the horse’s back, depending on the groom to catch me beneath the armpits to slow my drop to the ground. But just as I slid past the point of no return, the steadying hands vanished, and I was falling into a maze of stamping hooves.

I struck the ground so hard, I couldn’t breathe as I tried to scramble out from under the horse.

I heard an angry shout.”You fool! Help him!”

The groom grabbed the tail of my coat, flinging me out of the way. I skidded across the ground, then crashed into a waterfall of pink. It took me a moment to realize that I’d collided with a woman’s skirts. I arched my head back, the world still seeming to spin around me.

“I ordered you to teach him to ride, not to kill him!” Buckingham’s voice roared. “If you have marred his face, I will take a whip to you myself!”

The groom babbled apologies, but I heard gentler tones above me. “Are you hurt, child?”

I did not have to correct the woman before me. Buckingham broke in, a trifle impatient.

“That is no child, Kate. It is the creature I told you about.”

I had caught glimpses of Catherine Villiers’s coach on occasion, but I had never seen her up close. Her crimson riding hat seemed to have sucked some of the richness from her brown hair. The features framed between shoulder-length curls were pretty enough. But everything around her—from the palatial stable to the husband at her side—conspired to overpower her.

The duchess tucked her gloved hand into the crook of Buckingham’s arm, then nodded. “You are John Hudson’s son. Your father’s dogs have provided my husband with hours of sport. I am grateful for whatever gives His Grace rest from burdens of state.” She looked at Buckingham, love naked on her face. I thought of the masked woman I had encountered in the duke’s privy chamber—her sly smile, her dimpled cheek, her hand on this woman’s husband.

“As you see, Jeffrey, my wife is concerned with my happiness rather than her own.” Buckingham patted his duchess’s hand, then scrutinized me. “This groom has not damaged you, Jeffrey. No bruise is going to mar your face.”

It was not a question, as if he could order wounds to vanish. Parts of my body felt bludgeoned, but they would be hidden beneath my costume. I squared my shoulders. “I am fine, Your Grace.”

“In your appearance, perhaps. I am less confident regarding your manners. We leave for London day after tomorrow. I have gone to a great deal of expense to launch you properly, and I begin to fear my coin wasted. You have not applied yourself as diligently as I had hoped. It would be difficult for you to repay me, should you fail. You cannot afford the price of one goblet. The cost of an entire royal banquet would be beyond your imagination.”

“He will not be able to mind his lessons if you keep pricking at him,” the duchess chided.

“Do you believe I am ‘pricking’ at you, Jeffrey? Or am I in earnest?”

“A little of both, I think.”

“Exactly. Unlike my wife, I was not born to wealth. My mother struggled to give me a gentleman’s education after my father’s death. I brought all my efforts to bear on those lessons. You must do the same. Look at what I gained—a dukedom—title once given only to princes of royal blood. I rule over vast lands and have the best wife in England.” He cut her the same kind of glance the butchers gave a prime haunch of beef. I felt sorry for Buckingham’s Kate, having a husband far more beautiful than she could ever be.
A fortune is a great beautifier for an ambitious man,
the wizard’s daughter from the privy chamber whispered in my head.

What woman would ever love me with such devotion? I wondered as Buckingham led his wife away. I had watched John dance at the fair with girls, their breasts bobbing against the front of their dresses. I had dreamed of mapping the shape of them with my hand. But John was strong and tall. Girls looked at him in ways they would never look at me.

I had only my strange size and a face some claimed looked like an angel’s. I decided I must make the best of my assets, as the duke had done.

When I returned to the quarters I shared with the other servants that night, my bruises showed in patches. Clemmy insisted on sharing some salve his mother had sent for him. “Not easy, hauling heavy trays of food about the Great Hall. The other lads made the job even harder, taunting me about these ugly scales upon my chin. My muscles ached so much that first month here, I’d cry when no one was looking. Now, whenever His Grace needs a kitchen page to serve at one of his fancy meetings, who does the steward send but Clemmy Watson? Don’t know what would have happened without my mam’s salve.” He held the clay pot out to me. I smeared the foul-smelling stuff over my bruises in hopes that he would stop harping.

Instead, he filled my ears with tales of the wonders we would see in the city. “There is no place like London when it comes to putting on shows, be it in the theaters or the Tower’s menagerie, Southwark’s bear pits or horses racing near St. James’s Park.”

Suddenly, Clemmy’s brow darkened. Perhaps he thought once we reached the city it would be too dangerous to be friends with someone labeled “devil spawn.” His kindness to me in my patron’s own household had already caused gossip among his fellow servants.

“I will not have time for such excursions,” I said, surprised by my regret. “Besides, you have risked enough ill will on my account.”

Clemmy seemed to shake himself inwardly. “I was not thinking of those superstitious fools. The mention of St. James’s brought back memories I wish to forget.”

If Samuel had been in my place, he would have fallen silent to avoid jarring a wound. John would have changed the subject. I hesitated, aware that my place in Buckingham’s employ depended upon coaxing the queen to reveal incidents that pained her. Would it not be wise to test my skill?

“I am told London is full of dangers. Your expression when you spoke of your memory has made me more nervous than ever.” I saw Clemmy flush, the patch of scaly skin on his chin white. “I would not want you to recount something unpleasant,” I said soothingly. “I only wish I did not have so vivid an imagination.”

“No harm easing the mind of a friend,” Clemmy said. “Not like I had any part in it, except seeing something I wish I could scrub out of my head.” I felt both triumph and shame as Clemmy spoke.

“I’d just finished serving the sea captains Master Ware had brought to speak to His Grace. See, my grandda had sailed with Raleigh, and the captains were all agog to hear the tales Grandda passed on. Ware was so pleased with me that he gave me the rest of the day off. Met an old friend wandering near St. James’s Park and he took me to see two Jesuit spies executed at Tyburn Tree. Suppose I should not have been so surprised the prisoners showed such nerve when the executioner put the knives to their bellies. The Pope’s minions are trained by people who want to bring the Inquisition to England. My friend cheered with the rest of the crowd, raging that Jesuits plotted with other Catholics, wanting to make good Guy Fawkes’s plan to blow up Parliament and old King James. Said loyal Englishmen had to keep such deviltry at bay. The priests were getting the punishment they earned, but it didn’t sit well with my stomach to watch it. Broke down, I did, and begged the executioner to put an end to them quick.”

“Not wishing a fellow creature to suffer cannot be such a bad thing.”

“You don’t know how dangerous it is to sympathize with Jesuits in the city. Lots of Puritans there. The crowd got mad as snakes at me for trying to cut their fun short. Don’t like having the Roman faith rubbed in their faces.”

I could never understand why so many Catholics seemed eager to do just that. Why not be reasonable, as my family was? Like most country folk, we leaned toward the old ways, but we did as the law commanded and filled an Anglican pew every Sunday. Even Samuel, the only devout one among us, agreed it did not matter if you sat through the Anglican service as long as you were loyal to the true faith in your heart.

“Only a fool would think arguments about the sacraments were worth risking beggary or imprisonment or the death those priests were dealt,” I said.

“Still have nightmares about those Jesuits choking down their silent screams.” Clemmy shuddered. “Guess you’ll think me weak for hating bloodletting, you being raised around your father’s trade.”

“I didn’t like bloodletting between dogs and bulls,” I said, made smaller by his admission and my part in extracting it. “My older brother, John, never minded, but Samuel…” Clemmy’s talk of Jesuits made me think of Samuel’s medal and what the angry crowd at Tyburn might do to the boy who had sewn it there. “My brother Samuel has a tender heart,” I said, finishing my sentence.

“Guess we think alike, Jeffrey Hudson.”

I slipped under the covers, surprised that the bed Clemmy and I slept in no longer seemed strange. I had become accustomed to the bed and the man who shared it just in time to leave them.

*   *   *

Six years ago, John had boosted Samuel and me into a tree to watch the noble household of Burley-on-the-Hill stream out of the manor’s gates. Heralds and gentlemen at arms forged the way, a small army to guard the riches highwaymen would covet. Great lords rode glossy horses beneath fluttering pennons. Coaches carrying the noble ladies rumbled past, running footmen striding ahead of them. In the rear, two-wheeled carts labored beneath all the goods needed to set up household in grand estate. Servants were stuffed among the furniture in much the same way, choking on the dust raised by their betters.