The Queen's Dwarf A Novel (50 page)

“The poison must be spinning visions in her head,” Sara said, looking to Boku. “Is there nothing you can do to ease her?”

The conjuror shook his head. “It is too late. As for this master of angels, John Dee, I learned of him in the years when I first knew the countess of Carlisle. I studied about Queen Elizabeth’s sorcerer. Some think he went mad trying to speak to an archangel: the one who holds the key to hell at the End of Days.”

“What was the archangel’s name?” I asked, hoping it might give us some clue.

“Uriel.”

The name hung in the air, realization dawning in me. “There is a man named Uriel,” I said. “Buckingham’s servant, Uriel Ware.”

Dulcinea’s head and shoulders came up off of the pillow. She strained, hoarse, her eyes red as vessels burst beneath the white film. “Yes. Angel Uriel would not let me into the Garden of Eden, no matter what secrets I sold him.”

“You sold the secrets of people who trusted you?” Will said. I had never known my friend to refuse forgiveness. But something in his face had turned immovable as stone. If I had ever wondered how he would react if he discovered my secret, I did not wonder any longer.

“The archangel Uriel checked doors for lamb’s blood the night the firstborn were slaughtered in Egypt,” Sara said softly.

Dulcinea nodded. “Your brother, Jeffrey. The sacrificial lamb awaiting the knife in a Fleet Prison cell.”

“Ware was only a hireling,” I insisted. “Buckingham was the one who cast Samuel in prison. Buckingham had a guard ready to kill Samuel if I did not do as he wished.”

Dulcinea shook her head. “Buckingham didn’t even know your brother was in jail. The blind angel was the one determined to keep Samuel in his power.”

I felt dizzy, remembering Ware’s face as he spoke of my brother’s letters, how Samuel reminded him of his father. If Ware was behind my brother’s imprisonment, Buckingham’s assassination had not made Samuel safer at all. Even now, the order could be winging its way to the guard’s hand. Ware’s assassin could be turning the key in Samuel’s cell door, knotting his hand in Samuel’s golden curls, yanking Samuel’s head back to expose his throat to the sharp bite of a blade.

“Ware needs Samuel to make you destroy the queen, Jeffrey.”

“Jeffrey never would!” Will raged.

“Ware determined to show the whole world how unholy the queen’s household is. Angel set up so the people will not stop razing palace until all the unholy are dead,” Dulcinea said.

“Ware is no Puritan. His mother was a madwoman, cut out his eye. He turned his back on the Church. Buckingham told me. Felton … Ware told me himself.”

“Buckingham told me everything about Ware. How Ware blamed a Catholic woman for bewitching his father. Magic dragon stones. Curiosities collected from voyages. How Ware believed a Jesuit gave her some … some saint’s blood to drive Ware’s mother mad. Make his father forget his son.”

“There was a woman involved with Ware’s father,” I said. “Genevieve Armistead. I heard Buckingham’s mother and sister speak of her.”

“Ware vowed he would rid England of Catholics, starting with the queen. He would grab the seas from the Pope’s minions; put the power in the hands of honest, hardworking Englishmen. Only way to save from becoming slaves to the Pope was to purge England of every Catholic, every freak of nature. Wants to turn us against one another like dogs … tear one another apart trying to save ourselves.”

My hands knotted into fists and I prayed she would not reveal my part. Was it selfish of me to care if she did? What did it matter? If Buckingham was not behind Samuel’s arrest—if Buckingham’s signature wasn’t necessary to make the guard murder my brother in jail, then that meant Samuel was in more danger than ever.

Was that why Ware had disappeared after Buckingham’s death? When I was imagining him, free to do what he wished at last, free to find a berth on some ship, join the East India men exploring the world, was Ware putting other pieces of his plan into motion? Using other cogs to turn the wheels of his machinations? Wheels like Dulcinea? Maybe even Phineas? Or was he merely waiting to put the right pressure on me?

“Where can we find Uriel Ware, Dulcinea? Do you know where this accursed angel is?”

“Went to see him tonight. Took evidence of how he got the dogs to attack the queen to the Saracen’s Bane.”

The hair at the nape of my neck stood on end. “Saracen’s Bane? The bookseller’s? There are rumors he’s printed lascivious broadsheets accusing the queen of fornication with us.”

“Was that not where Samuel was staying when he came to London?” Will asked. “I thought your brother’s tutor was friends with the bookseller. Why would he spread such slander?”

“Owner trapped since Ware had the Jesuit arrested there. Must do whatever Ware tells him to or daughters killed. Meetings there, inciting apprentices, people’s rage. Saying Jeffrey told of orgies at the palace. Ware promises that once the queen is dead, a witness would rise to testify that is what the queen keeps the menagerie for.”

My stomach pitched, and I guessed who Ware’s witness would be. My testimony, my final betrayal would be the price of Samuel’s life.

“Many will
want
to believe it’s true.” Sara’s voice—small and soft—came from behind us. “People far gone in superstition are already afraid when they see us. My mother always said not to mind them, to feel sorry for their ignorance. But I don’t. I think they like to hate us.”

“It’s all a lie—Ware’s salacious tales,” Robin insisted.

Dulcinea groaned. “The army Ware is gathering thinks it is their duty to ‘save’ the king from the devils that surround him.”

“But where will they strike?” I asked.

“Six weeks from now. At St. James’s Park. There is to be a children’s pageant to celebrate the queen’s recovery.”

“I’ve heard of no such pageant,” I said. “Who would think such a gathering of children would cheer a woman who just lost her babe?”

“I think Archie proposed it just to vex everyone else,” Sara said. “Buckingham’s little daughter was there and he promised her the main part. Neither the king nor the queen could bear to disappoint the fatherless little girl.”

“It’s made a good deal of trouble for the rest of us.” Robin Goodfellow frowned. “The king told Moll Buckingham she could have any scenery or props she wished. I am designing a dragon for her to ride. A servant is to be hidden inside it to make it gambol up to the queen so Moll can present Her Majesty with a toy sword to slay the ‘demon.’”

“Ware is counting on the queen’s sorrow to distract those around her during the play. The king, her ladies, and even her guard trying to shield Her Majesty’s feelings. That way, Ware can strike more easily.”

“Strike how?”

“He would not say, only that once the queen is dead, he will claim before all that he is cleansing England of enemies—foreign powers that consort with the devil’s spawn and plot to make us the slaves to the Pope. That is when Jeffrey is to mount the stage and say the broadsheets’ claims are true.”

Will raged. “There is no power on earth that would make Jeffrey lie like you have!”

“Ware has … some kind of secret signal arranged. Let his allies know if Jeffrey has obeyed. If he doesn’t, a mob will be waiting outside Fleet Prison’s gates. The guards will fling Jeffrey’s brother into their midst to be torn apart.”

“God in Heaven,” Sara whispered, and I could see her clasp her hand around her mother’s miniature. “Why didn’t you come to us earlier? Tell us instead of going to face Ware alone? We could have found a way to fight him together.”

“Haven’t I paid for that mistake?” A spasm gripped her, and she tossed her head on the pillow, her red hair damp with sweat. “Ware forced poison down my throat. Locked me in a room so high, he didn’t believe I could escape. But I found a ledge, a piece of rope.” She shivered. “I was so … afraid, but kept conjuring Will’s voice in my head, the words he always says before I step onto my rope. I danced well, didn’t I, Will?”

She reached out one hand to him, looking so hopeful, for a moment the butterfly the giant had not wanted to crush in their bridal bed.

“Tell her she danced well,” I urged him, those familiar words holding the keys to forgiveness. Will glared at me.

He nearly choked on the words. “You danced well.”

“Don’t … hate me,” Dulcinea moaned. “I didn’t mean any harm.”

I watched, helpless, as Dulcinea’s hand fluttered gracefully through the air one last time and came to rest upon the pillow she and Will had never shared.

“She is gone,” Boku said. “It is over.”

Silence fell, shadows seeming to freeze upon the walls—monster forms of dwarfs and giants, sorcerers and fatal beauties. Masks and dragons to be built of wire and papier-mâché, cloth of silver scales, a glittering world of imagination with a thousand places an assassin could hide.

“We must alert the king. Stop the pageant,” Simon insisted at last.

“No,” I said, startled by the sound of my own voice. “We will put an end to this blind angel ourselves.”

“Jeffrey, I know you are desperate,” Simon said, “but we deal in illusion, entertainments. The queen has guards trained to protect her. Let them handle this peril.”

“Are you certain none of those guards belong to this army of Ware’s? It only takes one hand to wield a knife, shoot an arrow, or aim a pistol. Dulcinea had access to Her Majesty every day and no one suspected her for a moment. You cannot doubt Ware has other minions seeded within the queen’s household. Any person we pass might be waiting for a chance to strike.”

I saw Simon and Robin look at each other, sensed their unease.

“You are wondering if Ware has agents in our own menagerie,” I said. “You know he has my brother Samuel. Ware believes he has me at his mercy. He would, except for one weapon I have left: all of you. The tricks we master together, the trust we have to have in one another if we are to leap from mock towers, pretend to slay one another with swords, fly in midair attached to pulleys and wires and cogs that could plunge us to our deaths.”

“But our tricks are just for show, Jeffrey,” Goodfellow said. “Mock battles, not real ones. Ware and his men will be trying to kill us in earnest. Even if we can cut Ware down, we will never find all the others.”

“We may, if we are canny. Kill Uriel Ware and the pack turns on itself, fighting to define the new leader. We just have to be vigilant—alert. We can pick out Ware’s dogs in the chaos.”

Simon rubbed the back of his neck. “What Jeffrey says is true. There’s not one of us who has escaped without some scars from the world beyond. Our very survival depended on gauging the temper for violence in a crowd.”

“There is one problem with your plan, Jeffrey,” Sara said. “The queen has banished you from her presence. You’ll not be allowed anywhere near the pageant.”

“That might be an advantage in this case. The rest of you will have parts to play. I will have no other task except to watch out for Ware.” I raked my hand back through my hair. “Robin, can you work a place for me to hide into your design: a place where I can conceal myself from the audience but see as much of the surrounding area as possible?”

“What do you want me to do? Put a crow’s nest on the dragon?”

“Tell Moll dragons are far too commonplace for her play. A ship with a sea serpent figurehead—that is something no one has ever seen before. It’s sure to dazzle the queen.”

Robin frowned. “It will mean a good deal of work. There is not much time.”

“Then you had best get to it.”

Robin plucked a stick of charcoal from behind his ear. He went to the hearth and started sketching something on the stones. “I’ll need help,” he said, casting a glance at Will.

I went to my friend. He stood there, so stoic, I did not know what to do to rouse him.

“Are you going to stand there while Uriel Ware uses children as a shield so he can murder the queen and kill my brother? Or doesn’t it matter anymore? Freaks don’t feel things like the beautiful do? Maybe Ware is right, since he killed the woman you love and you would barely even tell her good-bye.”

Will rounded on me, and for a moment I thought he would strike me. I clambered up onto the nearest table, determined he would have to look me in the eye—or at least as close as I could get to it.

“They want to paint us as monsters?” I put my hands on my hips. “I say it is time to hunt down the real monster who is trying to destroy everything we love. Are you going to ride with me, Will Evans?”

I could hear a clock’s muffled ticking, counting down minutes Dulcinea could never spend. The whole menagerie seemed to hold its breath.

Will gritted his teeth. “I ride.”

I heard an exotic murmur, words from lands I would never see. Boku reached down and gently closed Dulcinea’s eyelids. His dark, deft fingers unlaced his left gauntlet, the velvet parting and revealing ghastly scars. Upon the pale ridges were markings—each a different shape. “When slavers came to my village and took my mother and father, I could not stop them. When they took my sisters, I could not defend them. The slavers had my wrists bound so tight. One of the white men dropped his knife. I cut the ropes. I wanted to kill myself. The gods cursed me, and made me live. I tattooed these marks so I would not forget. Wherever masters sold me, sent me, I sought out magicians, sorcerers, thieves who could teach me their secrets, tricks to make certain no rope would ever hold me again. Tonight, I fight back for this new family I found.”

Resolve surged through me, a sense of belonging such as I had never known before. “We will fight Ware together,” I said. “Boku, prepare anything that might be of use to us during the pageant. Ways to distract, to climb unseen, ways to hide blades or make them appear when they’re not expected. Ware is clever. He’ll be watching.”

“What should I do?” Sara asked.

“Ware’s spies will have told him Dulcinea reached the palace. We must cloak how much we know of Ware’s scheme. Find servants you know will gossip, tell them Dulcinea has been stricken with some strange apoplexy and cannot speak. Say Boku is trying to gather strange herbs to brew some antidote but has had no success.”

“Why not let him know she is dead?” Robin asked. “Ware would act more boldly.”