The Smallest Man

by Frances Quinn

  Afterwards, when we were about to leave, I was standing near the duke, who was talking to a couple of navy officers. Just as the conversation came to an end, a thin man wearing a shabby brown coat darted out of the crowd.

  ‘My lord,’ he said, ‘I must speak with you.’

  The duke went to walk on, but the man caught his arm.

  ‘You won’t remember me, but I served you in the first expedition to La Rochelle. John Felton’s my name.’ He lifted his left arm; the sleeve hung empty from the elbow. ‘That’s where I got this. I haven’t been able to find work since, sir, but I’m a good sailor, and if you’ll take me with you I’ll serve you well.’

  The duke smiled. I’d seen that smile before, but the man hadn’t. His shoulders relaxed; he thought the duke was going to help him. The duke glanced round at the two navy officers, then turned back to the man.

  ‘We’re going to fight the French,’ he said. ‘Not wave at them.’

  The officers smirked and the poor man looked at the duke as though he was trying to make sense of his words. The duke leaned forward, and spoke very slowly, as if to an idiot.

  ‘I’ve no use for you. If you wanted to fight, you should have taken better care to stay attached to your limbs.’

  ‘But my lord… I’ve no way to live.’

  ‘In that case,’ said the duke, ‘you will have to go hang.’

  He strode off towards his carriage. The man stood there, watching it drive off. He didn’t look angry, just puzzled, as though he’d expected things to go one way but they’d somehow gone another, and he wasn’t quite sure how that had happened. Still staring at the coach, he repeated, ‘But I’ve no way to live’.

  I fished some money out of my purse, and went up to him.

  ‘Here. It’s not much, but it’ll tide you over for a little while.’

  He looked down at me, and the gold coins in my palm.

  ‘You were with them,’ he said. ‘You could speak to him for me.’

  ‘He wouldn’t listen to me,’ I said.

  ‘But I have to go to sea. I’ve no way to live.’

  I held out the money again.

  ‘Please, take it. I wish I could help, but the duke’s no more a friend of mine than he is of yours.’

  He took the money then, and walked away.

  * * *

  The king went back to London, but the queen decided to spend some time in Wellingborough, to take the waters, which were said to help ladies wanting to become pregnant. She confided to me that she also wanted to get away from the king, whose endless praise of the duke’s preparations for the campaign was trying her temper:

  ‘All I hear is how wonderful his dear Buckingham has been, and all I see is how that man will ruin this country with his stupid games. But if I say a word, I play into his hands. So it’s better to be somewhere else for a while.’

  We were all sitting in the gardens when a letter came for the queen. She read the beginning, and gasped. She looked at me; by then we’d come to know each other so well I could usually read her thoughts in a glance, but that day, I couldn’t. She was shocked, but there was something else in her eyes that I couldn’t interpret.

  We all watched as she read to the end of the letter, then read it again before she looked up.

  ‘It’s Buckingham,’ she said. ‘He’s been killed.’

  I understood then what I’d seen in her eyes. I felt the same; shocked but not sorry.

  ‘I must go to him,’ she said, and at first, confused, I thought she meant the duke, but then she caught my eye and wiggled her finger like a little bee flying, just a tiny bit that only I would notice. She’d seen her chance. The king would be distraught; if ever she was to make him depend on her as he’d done on the duke, now was the time. My mother would have been proud of her.

  We didn’t hear the full story until later. As the duke left his lodgings in the morning, a man had rushed forward and stabbed him. That one blow being all it took, he gave himself up and told his story. He’d been staying at an inn for the past few nights, he said, and there he’d drunk and eaten his fill. He mentioned a particularly good steak pie that had formed his dinner on the last night. That morning, he paid his bill, walked to an ironmonger’s and spent his last ten pennies on a knife. His name was John Felton.

  * * *

  The death of the duke changed everything for the queen. By hurrying to the king’s side when he needed comfort, then gradually taking the place of the duke as his friend, advisor and constant support, she made him love her. The change was astonishing to watch: he gazed at her like a spaniel at a lamb cutlet, constantly touching her arm or her cheek, as if reassuring himself she was real. Before long he was consulting her on every decision; impossible to imagine in the days when he treated her as a silly girl. But the change in him was nothing compared to the change in her. I thought at first she was playing at it, that now the duke was no longer there to be defeated, she was gaining the king’s confidence as a way to make him help the English Catholics. But to my surprise – perhaps even to hers – over the months she grew to love him back. I didn’t understand much about love in those days, but in later years I came to realise what changed was that he needed her, and she found she liked being needed.

  By December that year, she was expecting their first child. By then the king consulted her on everything, and she was helping him negotiate peace with her homeland. And though she still hadn’t been able to improve matters much for the Catholics, he’d had a beautiful chapel built for her, and she’d taken that as a sign there was hope for change. At the New Year feast, she shone with happiness. I sat back in my chair, tired from a morning ride on my very own horse, my belly full of goose and syllabub, and watched the king laugh as she whispered in his ear. It felt like a golden time for all of us. And for a while, it was.

  We didn’t know, of course, what was waiting.

  Part Two

  Chapter Twenty-one

  You’ll wonder how we didn’t see it coming. Looking back, I wonder myself. But even when the trouble started, no one could have predicted where it was going. That the king and queen could end up at war with their own people? That the people could put their king on trial and sentence him to death? It was impossible, and if anyone had said it, I’d have thought they were soft in the head. And no one did, then, but it happened anyway.

  I remember very clearly the day I realised things had changed. It was not long after my twenty-fourth birthday, the first sunny day of spring. The queen was visiting her children – they had six by then, and they lived out at Richmond, where the air was fresher, with a small army of nurses, tutors and cradle-rockers. I’d been in her service for fourteen years by that time, and since I’d turned eighteen she’d paid me a generous allowance. So that day, I took the chance to go into the city and buy a book from the seller in the Royal Exchange.

  It was busy, as usual, and being in no hurry after I’d made my purchase, I stood in the upper gallery for a while, looking down at the comings and goings. Fashionable ladies strolled and chatted, trailed by maids laden down with parcels from the drapers and the furriers. Orange sellers, rat catchers and bird vendors yelled out their wares, and men of business with important-looking faces strode along the walkways between Cornhill and Threadneedle Street. A couple of lads in the aprons of apprentices were loitering by the fountain, and I watched them glance admiringly as a maid carrying a small heap of packages passed by. She didn’t look at them, but her jaunty step said she knew perfectly well they were looking at her. A few yards on, she dropped one of the parcels, and the tallest lad rushed to pick it up for her. She smiled at him, looking up through her lashes, the look that every boy learns means he’s in with a chance. A look that I’d long ago realised would never be directed at me. Though I was a man in years, I stood no higher then than when I left Oakham. I’d studied the young men at court until I could stride as manfully as any of them, and with the change in my features since my boyhood, I was rarely mistaken for a child anymore, but st
ill, the only glances I drew from women were curious ones.

  The closest I’d got to love – and it wasn’t close at all – was an occasional visit to the stews of Southwark. In a conversation that had meandered down a great many euphemistic lanes, Jeremiah had recommended an accommodating Welsh girl called Tessa, who didn’t mind what shape or size her customers were, so long as they paid in good hard cash and didn’t take too long about the proceedings. Her cheerful good humour made what I was afraid would be a humiliating experience into a happy one, and whenever I returned, she did me the kindness of appearing pleased to see me. It was a pale imitation of what it must feel like to be loved, but it was all I could hope for. So although there were girls at Whitehall who caught my eye, I’d taught myself to enjoy a pretty face much as you might a painting, or a lovely view, and try my best not to want more. But watching how easily the boy had won that look, envy stung me, hard. I had a purse of gold at my waist, quite likely more than he’d earn in a month, but what would that count for, beside his long legs and broad chest?

  Cross with myself for letting my guard down, and at the same time sincerely hoping the girl turned out to have a vicious temper or dull wits – ideally both – I tucked my book under my arm and made my way out. Outside on Cornhill, a pamphlet seller was shouting:

  ‘Read about the papist queen’s secret plans!’

  On another day, I’d probably have ignored him; it wasn’t news that the queen’s religion made her unpopular. But I was in a bad humour already, and when I saw the way people were muttering and shaking their heads as they read the pamphlets, anger bubbled up inside me.

  ‘Give me one of those,’ I said, handing over a coin.

  The seller looked at me curiously, but took my money. Underneath a crude sketch of the queen carrying a cross encrusted with jewels, the pamphlet said she was in league with the pope, and blamed her for the rebellion in Scotland the year before, saying it was on her instructions that the king had insisted the Scots use the English prayerbook, hoping it’d be a first step to turning them Catholic. And now she and the pope supposedly had an army in Ireland, ready to invade England and force people back to the Catholic faith. I thought back to the young girl who’d tried so hard to make a strange country her home; all these years later, she was still getting the blame for things that weren’t her fault.

  ‘How can you print this?’ I said. ‘It’s all lies.’

  ‘Oh, you say so, do you, little man?’ said the seller. ‘And how would you know?’

  ‘That’s her dwarf,’ said a woman standing nearby. She looked down at me. ‘So you’re saying this ain’t true?’

  ‘Of course not. The queen loves this country.’

  ‘So why’s she writing secret letters to the pope?’ demanded a red-faced man, brandishing his pamphlet. ‘Says even the king doesn’t know about them.’

  ‘That’s nonsense too,’ I said.

  ‘Why should we believe you, if you’re in thick with her?’ said the pamphlet seller.

  ‘And he’ll be a papist,’ the woman chimed in. ‘They all are, her lot.’

  That I couldn’t deny: to please the queen I’d been baptised a Catholic when I was thirteen. In the sheltered world of the court, it didn’t seem to matter one way or the other. But I wasn’t there now. The little crowd that had been standing reading the pamphlets closed in around me, and passers-by were stopping, eager to see what was going on. I glanced behind me; in a matter of moments the crowd had become two or three deep and I couldn’t see a way through. The red-faced man pointed a fat finger at me and said:

  ‘I bet you he’s one of her spies – I’ve heard about it, she sends ’em out all round the town. Spying on honest people so they know who to round up when the time comes.’

  ‘A papist spy!’ someone yelled, and suddenly the whole crowd was shouting down at me, about the Irish, and spies, and plots and the pope. I tried to push my way through, but they shoved me back.

  ‘Tell us the truth!’ a woman shouted. ‘When are the Irish coming?’

  ‘We’ll make him tell us!’ said the pamphlet seller, and snatched me off the ground. He shook me like a rat, until my brain seemed to rattle inside my skull. Then the crowd pressed in, faces hard, hands grabbing at me.

  They’ll tear me apart.

  I did the only thing I could think of: punched the pamphlet seller on the nose, as hard as I could. He was holding me up near his face, and the bone cracked as I hit home. Clapping one hand to his bleeding nose, he dropped me. Other hands clawed at me as I scrambled to my feet, but I ducked them and ran. I didn’t stop until I was three streets away.

  At the river, I had to lean against a post and get my breath back before I could hail a boat. The boatman nodded as I clambered in; I’d travelled with him before. Not one of the chatty ones, thank the Lord. As I looked back across the sun-spangled water, all I could think was, why didn’t we know? The rebellion in Scotland was far away, but this was on our doorstep. For months, we’d heard reports of disturbances in the city, people gathering to rant about taxes and shout wild accusations about Catholic plots. Yet at Whitehall the balls and the masques and the dinners had gone on as they always did, and until that morning I’d had no idea how angry London was.

  The queen’s religion had always caused suspicion, but in the past it was tavern talk and whispers in the markets. This was different; there’d been pure hatred in the faces that looked down at me, just because I was linked to her. Even safe in the boat, it made my belly turn to water to think what they’d have done to me if I hadn’t got away. And though they weren’t yet brave enough to say whatever they liked about the king too, it was obvious to me, that day, that soon they would be. Everyone knew he wasn’t loved by the people, even though at court we all pretended he was.

  I hadn’t liked him much myself, in the beginning, but over the years I’d come to see him differently. He was a good man, and an honest one, who truly wanted the best for his country. But he wasn’t overburdened with sense, and every time he tried to do what he thought was right, it turned out wrong. Convinced he was gifted with wisdom, he’d battled with Parliament from the start, saying God had put him in charge, not them. When they demanded more of a say, he packed them all off home, but that meant grubbing around for taxes and loans he could raise without their say-so, until rich and poor alike thought he was bleeding them dry. And then he took it upon himself to tell people how they should worship on a Sunday morning. Myself, I doubted if God in his heaven cared what prayerbook people used, or where they stood the altar, but plenty of people on earth did, so even someone with lettuce for brains could see that was going to cause trouble. The Scots had refused to stand for it; what was he going to do if the English realised they could do the same?

  As the boatman began to steer towards the jetty, I fished out the fare from my purse. He tipped his hat as I handed it over.

  ‘See you again,’ he said, and headed back the way we’d come. I stood there, looking up the river towards the city. How did we not know? And how long would it be before people started looking this way – towards us?

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I didn’t tell anyone what happened that day at the Exchange; I didn’t want the queen to know about all that hatred boiling up against her. But it wasn’t long before the mood in the city became impossible to ignore. Shopkeepers took to boarding up their premises and the rumours got wilder each week – one pamphlet said the queen was planning to poison the king and install young Prince Charles on the throne, a puppet king with her pulling the strings. Anonymous placards popped up all over the place, calling her a shrew who wore the king’s breeches, and the pope’s personal harlot.

  And then one morning, a maid noticed marks on a window. The king and queen had spent the previous night together, as they often did by then, and, steps from where they’d been sleeping, someone had stood in the darkness and etched the words: ‘God save the king. God damn the queen and all her offspring.’ The king smashed the glass with his own hand, whil
e she looked on, white-faced. What nobody said, but everybody was thinking, was if one person could get that close, so could more. And if a mob attacked, the sprawl of buildings, with a road running through the middle and jetties on the river, was impossible to defend. Sometimes, in the dark of the night, I would wake, certain I’d heard voices shouting, or the slap and grate of boats tying up, and I don’t think I was the only one.

  That’s when people began to leave: first a maid here, a groom there, mostly those who had family outside London, but then anyone who could get a place elsewhere. The guard was doubled, then trebled, but still, courtiers took to tucking their valuables inside their clothing in case they had to up and leave in a hurry. And we all knew that, before long, it would become too dangerous for the king and queen to stay. The question was when. Would they leave quietly, or wait to be driven out? I hoped it would be the former, because I could still see that ring of angry faces pressing in around me, and hear the fury in their voices. But no one dared ask.

  ‘We ought to give some thought to what we’re going to do when they go,’ said Jeremiah one morning, as we walked back from the stables.

  It was a while since we’d talked; there was a new cook in the kitchens who he’d taken a fancy to – Sukie, she was called – and he spent his free time hanging around down there, hoping to catch a word or two with her.

  ‘We’ll go with them, won’t we?’ I said.