The Queen's Dwarf A Novel (52 page)

Master Jones struck the tiny droplets of water with lights so bright that they shimmered, and fireworks popped off to one side to draw the audience’s eyes away from the ship just long enough to shove the final bit of scenery into place. I saw Sara in her plump salmon-colored fish costume—complete with fluttering silver-stitched fins. She swept up to the queen and signaled so that the sea horse men cast a net over Henrietta Maria, weaving this way and that.

I saw the queen laughing as she was pulled into the game, the king clapping his hands as they brought their captive toward the magical ship. She was awash in a sea of children; a score of them pooled around her, singing and dancing in an adorable choir of dryads. The plumes in Henrietta Maria’s helm swept up, red as blood. Unease twisted in me. Somehow, in the dance, the queen had been cut off from everyone save the children and Boku, who was hidden in the serpent’s head.

I prayed he would be able to see her, guard her until she sprang into her guards’ range of vision again. Robin had assured me the sorcerer could break through the slats of wood and plaster that formed the figurehead if he was needed. I knew Boku was armed with more than his skills in necromancy. He had a thin blade bound into his velvet gauntlet. Swift as his reflexes were, I had no doubt he could best any attacker.

The ship shifted, flinging my perch off balance just enough for me to notice something else I had not before. As the serpent’s mouth opened, the void was not filled by the darkness of Boku’s skin, but by a pale smear cut across its middle by a black band.

I grabbed for the watchman’s rattle, but the noise was drowned out in shouts from the crowd, a spate of fireworks exploding in dazzling colors somewhere behind the king.

Everyone spun to see them, sure they were part of the performance. But I knew better as I saw a pimpled face, a scalp plucked bare in patches—two of the apprentices I had seen at the Saracen’s Bane.

I saw something move in the serpent head, glimpsed a flash of what must be steel. Not one of the sentinels was looking at the queen, and I could never climb down the mast in time. I prayed there was another way.

I flung myself against the rail of the crow’s nest with all my might, once, twice. The third time, I heard a telltale crack. I felt it starting to tip as the serpent burst open.

Ware charged toward the queen, a knife in his hand. I heard a murmur from the crowd—people thinking it was part of the masque. Then they gasped in horror as they and the guards realized the threat was real. I saw the king leap to his feet on the dais, cut off from his wife by the crowd. The queen screamed, but the tangle of silk waves bound her. Guards tried to clamber toward her but were blocked by panicked children attempting to escape in a chaos of confusion. No one, not even Will, could reach her in time, even if they trampled the little ones.

But I might have a chance. The mast was shifting, falling, the ship’s deck rushing up to meet me. At the last instant, I did as Dulcinea had taught me, launching myself toward the figure looming over the queen.

Just as he plunged his dagger, I struck the queen like a cannonball, knocking her out of his way. White-hot pain sliced my right arm, bones in my shoulder seeming to snap.

I rolled and gained my feet, Ware towering over me, his eye patch torn off. Looking off in the distance, I saw Will thundering toward me through a sea of frightened children. I had to buy him time to reach the queen.

I heard the king shouting, glimpsed Charles trying to push through the mass of people as I groped for my sword. Pain seared through the wound in my shoulder, making it impossible for my right hand to draw the sword from the scabbard. I tried to use my left, but my arm was too short and the blade too long to get free, the hilt snagging under my arm. I could see the queen’s eyes, dark and filled with terror.

Scorn flooded Ware’s face. “Worthless little fool!” He wheeled toward her. I launched myself into the space between them just as Uriel Ware drew his dagger back to strike. I knotted my hand in his hair, using his own momentum to overset him. Had he managed to wound the queen? I could not tell. We tumbled across the ground as I clung to him with the fierceness of my father’s dogs when the fight was the most uncertain.

Ware slammed his elbow back into my midsection, my ribs giving a hideous cracking sound. I couldn’t breathe, choked as if I were drowning. Triumph filled Ware’s face as he shook free of my grasp and turned back to the terrified queen. Blackness swam before my eyes as I groped for my boot top, the dagger hidden within. I forced my left hand to close around it, gave a guttural cry. Ware turned to look at me over his shoulder. I thrust the dagger point into the empty socket where Uriel Ware’s eye should have been.

Ware pitched forward, his body sprawling over that of the fallen queen. Blood … there was so much blood.… Please, God, let it be his, let it be mine … not Henrietta Maria’s.

I tried to drag Ware off of her, tears flowing down my face, my breath coming in tortured gasps as I fought to keep unconsciousness at bay. “My … lady … Someone help me!”

Suddenly, Ware was yanked skyward. His arms and legs dangled like a spider’s; then he was flying through the air, flung across the void into a mass of yeomen guards.

Will appeared above me, a hazy blur of thick brows, deep-set eyes, and wild hair.

“The queen. Will, tell me she is safe.” My voice broke, my right side seeming to be full of glass shards. “God, let her be safe.”

The queen cried out to calm those around her, her voice all but drowned out by the sobbing children. “I am unharmed!”

“The queen is unharmed!” Will bellowed above the din of the crowd.

“The assassin?”

“Buckingham’s man: Uriel Ware. Jeffrey Hudson cut him down!”

I could hear gasps of relief and astonishment going through the crowd, and, in the distance, the bellows of guards and shouts from the king as he attempted to get to his wife. I expected Henrietta Maria would be running to Charles as well, but her shadow fell over me. I saw tumbled dark curls, felt that soft hand that had not touched me in so long. She stroked the hair back from my cheek. “Jeffrey. You are not supposed to be here! I forbade you to perform.”

“I couldn’t bear being away from the audience,” I started to joke, then said, “Dulcinea betrayed a plot to harm you. I couldn’t stay away.”

“How did you get to me? When I saw Ware’s knife … How could you reach me when no one else could?”

“Goodfellow’s shoddy workmanship on the mast. He told me it would snap if I leaned the wrong way.” It hurt to jest. “Thank God it fell the right way. You must have angels looking out for you.” I thought of her father, taken from her by just such a lunatic with a knife. Had Henri le Grande reached down from heaven to aid me? Or was it merely the training I had gained in other performances, the reflexes Dulcinea had nurtured, the times I had watched her with Simon Rattlebones and Inigo Jones, plotting acrobatics to accompany Boku’s magic?

“This is no time for jests. Your arm is bleeding and your shoulder is awry.”

“A trifling matter, though being able to draw a decent … breath might be a pleasant change.”

She turned her face away, looking at Will. “How badly is he hurt?”

“I cannot say.” The grief in Will’s voice told me all I needed to know.

“Henrietta Maria, come away from there. We must get him to a surgeon,” I heard the king say from some distance.

I expected Henrietta Maria to disappear from my sight, go to the king. I dreaded the tearing away, all too aware I would never see that beloved face again.

But the queen bent closer to me. “You must not die, Jeffrey. I command you not to die.”

“There are some things even a queen … cannot decree.”

“You flung yourself between me and a naked blade.”

I tried to force a smile. “Did I not promise to be your champion the night I burst out of the pie?”

“I have been so dreadful to you! I cast you out, let your brother languish in prison.”

“You had good reason to hate me.”

“I did not hate you. I could never hate you. When Lucy gave me the letters, she said…”

“Lady Carlisle was right to warn you.” I swallowed hard, licked my dry lips. It hurt, my chest feeling half-caved in. “I am … sorry I betrayed you.”

“Why did you do it? Why?”

“Buckingham gave my father coin, forced me. But after the defeat in France … Ware took the reins. Went further than even Buckingham dared. Malevolent bastard. He had Samuel imprisoned … said he would kill him. But I would not hurt you anymore.”

“You might have died.”

“I would have laid life down gladly. Because I love you.”

“Of course.” She brushed the words aside with a wave of her hand. “I know that.”

“No, you don’t.” I drew on my last ounce of courage, knowing I was going to die. What did it matter if I confessed the truth? I would not have to bear ridicule, scorn, or see the withdrawal in Henrietta Maria’s eyes. At least not for long. “I do not love you as your servant, Majesty, as your fool. I love you as a man loves a woman.”

Her face crumpled. Not into revulsion, but into heartbreaking empathy, the passionate kindness I had been starved of for so long. I could see her search for the right words to say. I did not want to leave her with more guilt, more regrets.

“I know it may be the most fool-like thing I have ever done. Courtiers … and servants alike will laugh. But I could not help loving … not the queen … but the Henrietta Maria who loved her spaniels, who dressed up for masques with such delight … who comforted me when my brother died. I know you can never love me the way I love you. You cannot even forgive me … for mistakes I made.”

“I can! I will! If I had not been so infernally proud, I would have let you explain.…” She pulled me into her arms, like she might have embraced Mitte or little Moll Buckingham or a babe of her own. Agony shot through me, and yet it was worth the pain to feel her against me, the softness of her, the warmth, just as I had always dreamed. “Just wait, Jeffrey. I’ll make certain Samuel is freed.”

I saw Will bending over us. My friend’s face was wet with tears. “Sara found Boku,” he said. “Let Boku attempt to treat him. Majesty, there is something he can try.”

I saw the magician—a gash on his brow, his hands a trifle unsteady. Ware must have struck him. Dragged him from the compartment he had recoiled from?

The illusionist had a wand in his hand—one of the reeds from the set. Did he intend to work some charm? “The sack that air goes into is crushed,” Boku said in that strange accent. “Let me punch this hollow reed through the chest, try to fill…”

I saw the king reach down for the queen, meaning to draw her away to let Boku do his work. “Do not leave me, Jeffrey.” The queen wept, clinging to me a moment more. “You will be featured in every masque, ride with me on the hunt, play every game of bowls. I have missed you so much, my dearest friend.”

“But I am not … your love,” I said softly. “In every hero tale Will has ever told me, the lady’s champion … sacrifices himself in her place. Never forget I am … honored … I had the chance to do that for you.”

She drew herself up, looking almost haughty. “I order you not to die. Do you hear me? Who will make me laugh?”

“Your husband. The babes I know will come. Let Lord Minimus go. It is better … if my tale ends this way.”

I felt a piercing pain in my chest, as if Boku were driving a stake through my heart. His black skin seemed to diffuse into a night sky, blotting out the world.

T
HIRTY-
O
NE

I was only a little surprised that Heaven resembled Will Evans’s room. It made sense in a strange way—this first place I discovered friendship. But a jolt of fear went through me at the sight of Samuel’s face.

“No. Samuel, you’re not supposed to be dead,” I gasped. “The queen promised she’d free you.”

“I’m not dead, Jeff, and neither are you. Even though everyone, including the royal doctor, says you should be,
would
be, if it weren’t for Boku.” Samuel sat down on the bed. The jarring made fire explode in my chest. “Some people claimed it was dark magic, a kind of evil. Father Quintin told them he’d heard of the procedure from some Moors when he was in Spain. It was no more magic than the other treatments the Moors had shared with the rest of the world before the Inquisition burned all their books, decreed it un-Christian to use their methods.”

“Just waking up and I get a lecture about how clever Father Quintin is.”

“Father’s stories were the only thing that kept me sane during those weeks in that horrible cell. Took my mind off the things that evil man said.”

I felt a sinking sensation, my greatest fear. “What evil man?”

“Ware.”

“Ware?” If Samuel had doused me with water from the wintery Thames, he could not have roused me more thoroughly. “What did the bastard say?” I swore, tried to force myself up on one elbow, but someone had bound my arm against my midsection.

“Don’t strain yourself,” Samuel said. “Let me help you.” He worked one arm beneath my back and lifted me so I could almost sit up, leaning back against a mound of pillows. “How do you feel?”

I arched my brow. “Remember that time you ran out into the street to save that widow’s cat when they were driving the cattle through to be slaughtered?”

“You were the one who saved her.”

“Only because I wasn’t big enough to haul you back by the seat of your breeches and I knew you’d never go back into the cottage unless the blasted creature was safe. Scratched me for my pains. Damned ungrateful beasts, cats.”

“The widow was so thankful for its rescue, she got out the Lady statue so we could offer prayers of thanks.”

That was the first time Samuel had seen the carving of Mary. I could remember his face, so enthralled. How the widow had let him touch the Holy Mother’s face. That was when it had begun—Samuel’s devotion to a world he could not see, while I was too concerned about keeping us both alive in this world.

“You leaped into the fray again—this time, from a height that could have killed you. What were you thinking, Jeffrey?”