The Queen's Dwarf A Novel (51 page)

“If Ware fears she has survived, it will put him off balance. We want to pluck at his rope, shake him as much as we can. Nervous people make mistakes.”

“I’m nervous,” Sara whispered. She leaned against Robin. I saw him take her hand.

“You must try not to show it,” I said. “Stay near the queen. Watch and listen. Have you a knife of some sort?”

“I do.”

“Find a way to conceal it in your costume.”

“What of Samuel?” Simon asked. “He is locked up, beyond our power to help.”

“Ware needs my brother alive if he wants to force me to defame the queen. Samuel will be safe until things at the pageant go awry. We need to find some trustworthy guards at the prison who could move to protect Samuel on the day of the pageant. Will, you know half of London. I don’t suppose you have some acquaintance in Fleet Prison? A secret Catholic? Do any of you know such a person?”

“There is a man I have seen collect coin from the dowager duchess of Buckingham. He carries food and such to Master Quintin for her. I saw him sneak into the Queen’s Chapel once and light a candle at the Virgin Mary’s feet.”

“When next you see him, tell him I wish to send something to my brother.”

“What will you do? Tell him about Ware’s plan?” Robin frowned. “It is a great risk.”

“It is a risk to sneak into the Queen’s Chapel. I have seen the gift Master Quintin has for inspiring loyalty. We will have to hope that this guard will be brave enough to protect Samuel and his priest.”

Sara nodded. “I will send him to you. Is there anything else I can do?”

I touched the miniature of Sara’s mother. In a voice only she could hear, I said, “Next time you see Robin alone, ask him to paint an ivory image of Dulcinea as she was: before our butterfly flew into the flame. Pray that Will might forgive her enough to ask for the miniature one day.”

Sara nodded, and I could see something wistful in her eyes. I hastened from the room, not wanting to wonder whom she was thinking of. There was no time for anything but trying to save the queen. The woman I loved. The woman who had cause to hate me.

The menagerie and I would fight the evil that threatened to consume her. Perhaps Henrietta Maria’s curiosities did not know whether we sprang from God or from the devil. We only knew that we must rise or fall together.

T
HIRTY

July 1629
St. James’s Palace

Only Archie Armstrong was fiendish enough to maneuver the king into putting the royal theatrical stores at the disposal of a seven-year-old child. In the mayhem that followed, the crabbed court fool fairly burst with pride as he watched Moll Buckingham drive everyone else involved in the performance insane.

After a whole life petted and adored, then set aside and neglected until someone scooped her up to indulge her again, Moll seized power like I had seized the food Samuel had sneaked up to the loft when I was at my hungriest. Still reeling from the murder of the godlike father she adored, the child tried to cram every bit of delight into whatever time the adults would grant her.

Not that a sense of confusion was unexpected in the menagerie’s course of work. There was always a mad roil when a pageant was being staged—scenery, crew to move the pieces about, mechanisms to try out, costumes to change, musical cues to match to actions, visual tricks to insert where needed. We had even worked with a few children in our performances in the past.

But this chaos permeated more deeply than any I had experienced before. As I peered out at the shifting maze of children, the surveyors and designers, the cast and the workmen, the foreboding in my belly grew cold as stone.

Moll had embraced my idea of a sea serpent ship with an enthusiasm that made everyone involved in the performance want to throttle her, the child intent on turning dry land into a fantastical realm beneath the sea. She had Master Jones’s apprentice drape tree limbs with ropes that looked like seaweed. Platforms shaped like giant shells perched in forks in the branches. Scalloped edges glittered silver. False pearls large enough for a woman to sit on had been balanced in the shells’ cups, providing a perfect place to conceal an assassin who was skilled with a pistol. Ship’s rigging scaled trees, making it possible to scramble up the thick trunks, despite the fact that they were wound with gauze—Moll’s attempt to transform them into the pillars of Triton’s castle.

This whole area of the park was a veritable wonderland of climbing and leaping and swinging about for Moll, the girl determined to revel in the hazardous entertainments her nurse and her lady mother usually forbid her to enjoy.

“Such pursuits must be allowed this once in the interest of the queen’s pleasure,” the king had said, apologizing to the worried ladies, gifting them with one of his rare smiles. Just as the queen must loan her menagerie to Buckingham’s daughter for these few days—the performers one more piece of scenery in Moll and the king’s view.

That is how Will Evans became Moll’s favorite toy.

I might have found the sight of the pretty child in her ribbons and curls enthroned upon Will’s shoulders as enchanting as everyone else as I skulked about in the background, but Moll’s fascination with “her nice giant” curtailed my ability to ask his advice while setting up our defense of the queen.

I had planned to station Will as close as possible to Her Majesty, but Moll would not have it. Will was to stay at her side with the “pretty Moon Lady”—the role in which Moll had cast Lady Carlisle. I could imagine the pain it would cause the dowager duchess of Buckingham to see Moll with Buckingham’s exquisite mistress, listen to the child marvel at how beautiful the courtier was. I had even dared to come out of hiding and waylay the child myself. But my attempt to dissuade Moll met with an obdurate glare that would have done her father proud.

I was fairly certain Buckingham’s daughter would have happily fed me to the sea serpent Goodfellow had transformed her dragon into: a project that had kept him up all night, even with the help of Will Evans and Boku. It was an amazing piece of work—newly set wooden planks here and there giving form and substance, billowy sails caught up on masts Robin cautioned could snap if too much pressure was put on them, the correct supports not having been built into the design. The dragon’s mobile face had been altered into the ship’s figurehead—a sea serpent upon the bow.

Boku was to be wedged into the cramped space in the serpent to make it come alive when it was time to devour the Mermaid Princess. Every time Robin fastened the sorcerer into the compartment, there was a feverish tension in Boku that I had never seen before. I wondered if it reminded him of his captivity.

If Moll had been working hand in hand with Uriel Ware, she could not have crippled our efforts any better. It made me wonder if Ware was moving Buckingham’s daughter about like Inigo Jones shifted scenes.

I tried to quell my mounting frustration as I attempted to find the best places to conceal other sentinels we needed to watch for any unusual actions in the play’s midst or about the perimeter.

If Ware does suspect we hope to foil his plan, the bastard must feel smug, I thought. Whatever plan we laid out, Moll dashed with her next command, changing her mind so often that no one—not even Moll, I was convinced—knew where anyone or anything was to appear at any set time.

In desperation, I even sent Sara to the king. But when she suggested that the performance might be more pleasing to the audience if Moll did not have quite so much control, Charles had grown so sorrowful, Sara said, his countenance brought tears to her eyes.

“Letting the poor poppet have her way in this is small recompense for the papa she has lost. Just last week, I found her weeping because some lads were tormenting her, saying what a villain her father was. I told her His Grace had been my dearest friend. He loved me when no one else did—when I was still an awkward, stammering boy. I told Moll that I could not give her father back to her, but that I would stand in her father’s place, love her and protect her,” Charles had told Sara.

“The king would have been such a good father,” Sara said. “I cannot understand why God would take their child but saddle parents who can’t feed one babe with so many children, they have no choice but to sell them.”

I thought of the desperation simple people must feel and the actions such emotions might drive them to. Felton had murdered the duke, who had cheated him of his livelihood and sent countless troops to their death. Would it not be easy to imagine that I was lashing out at the queen in the same way—because of the rift between us? If our plan went awry, wouldn’t people think I was involved in the plot against her, willing to revenge myself for the rejection I’d suffered at her hands?

If I failed, what would it matter? The queen would be dead. I could not close my eyes now without seeing that horrific scene play out in my head.

The only victory I won over our beribboned tyrant was in convincing Moll to create a costume for Her Majesty to wear—a steel breastplate and pretty feathered helmet that might at least be some small defense against arrow or blade. It was too small a victory.

I stole out to take my post before the royal party passed through the gates of St. James’s Palace. I felt as if I could not breathe as I wound through the park. This path was stalked by ghosts of the youth I had been, a butcher’s son, trapped by intriguing courtiers and so bewildered in this strange world that he’d not even attempted to stand against them. I could see Henrietta Maria as she had been—spoiled and headstrong, homesick and so unhappy, pressed on all sides to be a Joan of Arc who would save England for the Pope. I could not forget her bare feet in the muck as she walked to Tyburn, her earnest face as she murmured prayers. I could not forget the crowd pressing along the sides of the road, how exposed she had been, how vulnerable. Then, the glowering sky had looked down on the possibility of threat.

Today, the sun shone in a sky bluer than Moll’s mermaid sea. Amid the lilting music of viols, flutes, and children’s laughter, an evil archangel waited to kill the queen.

Taking care, as Robin had warned, I climbed up into the crow’s nest. From my perch, I could see the flower-draped carts rattle through three arches of silver cloth, the courtiers disembarking in King Triton’s world. Boys mounted on great sea horses brought a chariot made of shells to carry the queen and king to the dais, from which they would watch the masque.

I wondered if anyone noticed that one of the boys looked a good bit older than the others—a wiry page Will had taken into his confidence, a real sword concealed in a makeshift scabbard Robin had designed in the lad’s “saddle.”

From my hiding place, I could see half a dozen such sentinels and wondered if I had made a fatal mistake in allowing Will to muster them. The man was not the best judge of character. After all, look how he had latched onto me.

Affection for him made my eyes sting. I prayed no bullet or blade meant for the queen would strike him down. My friend made an appallingly big target.

“Do you think Ware might call off the assassination if it seems too difficult to strike?” He had asked me as the morning of the masque dawned.

“No,” I said. “Ware fancies himself like Samson driving the greedy Catholics out of England and off of the sea. Saving English pride and seizing the fat purses from men like Buckingham. God will handle trivialities such as Philistines.”

Will had cracked his knuckles. “My mother used to say men loved to boast how God was on their side. She always wondered how they felt when they got to God’s table and realized that the enemies they were fighting believed they were fighting in God’s name, as well. Said if she were in charge of Heaven, she’d take her wooden spoon and whack the whole lot of them on the backside like she did to my brothers and me when we misbehaved.” He frowned. “Men willing to be martyrs are the most dangerous of all.”

Am I one of those men now? I wondered, peeking out over the edge of the crow’s nest. Am I willing to martyr myself to save the queen?

We would soon find out. While Their Majesties were being settled upon the dais, the rest of the troupe spilled out of their conveyances and hastened to their posts. They did well, taking care not to look up at my hiding place and risk betraying my whereabouts to our foe.

As the pageant commenced, I was grateful that I, at least, could see the surrounding area well enough. With the watchman’s rattle Will had placed at my feet, I could sound the alarm if necessary so that those stronger and more able could rush to the queen’s defense. Not that I wasn’t prepared, if necessary. I patted the lump at my waist where my pistol was hidden, shifted the weight of the sword the queen had had a smith make for me.

Never had time crawled more slowly than the next hour, my head pounding, my neck aching from straining to see all angles. But nothing—no one—seemed out of place.

By the time the Mermaid Princess and Moon Lady went to honor the glittering Sun God that clearly represented Moll’s father, even I had begun to suspect that Ware might have changed his mind. Or was there a more ominous reason he had not struck? Was it possible he had planned for Dulcinea to escape? Had he fed her wrong information when he’d told her of his plan for this masque? While we had been wasting our time plotting how to protect Henrietta Maria here, was Ware setting up a trap somewhere else?

I shifted my weight without thinking, cursing in frustration as the mast swayed.

Suddenly, I saw it—something askew: the door to the sea serpent’s compartment ajar. Boku and Goodfellow had argued for hours over the latch. Goodfellow insisted the adjustments he had made in the design did not leave enough room inside the compartment to include a release for the door’s latch. I had even seen Boku’s hands tremble at the notion that he could not escape the small enclosure of the compartment under his own power.

The unfastened latch wasn’t enough by itself to warrant sounding the alarm, but someone on the ground needed to take a closer look. I tried to catch Will’s eyes, warn him to go check the irregularity, but he was turned the wrong way, and the rest of the audience was too transfixed on the spectacle to notice me. The sea horses that had led the procession were circling now, their riders attempting to capture the Moon Lady with silver nets while nymphs wove in and out among them. Their trailing scarves of sea green and blues from cerulean to lapis lazuli created waves that fluttered, spirals of mist rising in the air.