The Smallest Man

by Frances Quinn

  It hadn’t occurred to me that there was a question about it. For a second, I remembered the old days, when I pretended I was happy so they wouldn’t send me home. I was happy now, and this was home. Where was I going to go, if it wasn’t with the queen?

  ‘This isn’t like when we go to Hampton Court for the summer, Nat. What this comes down to, for the likes of you and me, is picking a side. If we go, that tells anyone who cares to notice, we’re for the queen – and we’re against those that aren’t. That puts us in danger as well. And you’d be in more danger than most. People who wouldn’t recognise a single other person at court know who you are. You’d be a trophy – and if they got their hands on you, they wouldn’t let you go.’

  I thought of that day in the Exchange: the angry faces and the grabbing hands, the shouts about things that were nothing to do with me but made them hate me anyway.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Jeremiah. ‘We could go down to Kent, where I was before. I could get back into the stables, I’m sure, and I reckon the lady of the house would be beside herself to have a footman who used to be the queen’s own dwarf.’ He looked down at his feet, then back at me, as a blush crept over his big old face. ‘And, well, the thing is… I’m thinking to ask Sukie to marry me. I don’t know for sure she’ll say yes. But she’s a country girl, from Essex, and I think if I could offer her a nice little cottage, it would improve my chances.’

  The sheepish look on his face made me smile.

  ‘I’m pleased for you,’ I said. ‘And of course she’ll say yes, why wouldn’t she? But would you really leave the queen?’

  ‘I don’t say I’d take the decision lightly, Nat. But it wants thinking about – and if you want my advice, you’ll think about it sooner rather than later.’

  Over the next few weeks, I did think about what Jeremiah said. But in the end it wasn’t that that made up my mind. It was a visit from my father.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  He looked smaller than I remembered. The powerful chest that once reminded me of a cockerel strutting across the yard had become sunken and bony, and his wide shoulders were hunched, as though he was protecting himself from a chilly wind. He was holding a battered hat, turning it round and round in his fingers, and looking up, open-mouthed, at the painted ceiling of the great hall. The front of his left boot was encrusted with something dry and brown. I hoped it wasn’t dog shit.

  He jumped when I said hello, and his eyes widened at my fine clothes and buckled shoes.

  ‘Look at you, you’re like a proper gentleman. And all this…’ He gestured around him. ‘Bit different from Oakham, eh?’

  Fourteen years. He’d left me at that door and walked away without once looking back, and now here he was, fourteen years later, all smiles.

  Why are you here? I wanted to say it, but my mouth wouldn’t spit out the words. So I asked how he’d got there, just for something to say.

  ‘Walked down to Northampton, and took the stage wagon from there. Five days in all.’

  I’d forgotten how long things take when you don’t have money. Now I really want to know why you’ve come.

  ‘So… you been all right then?’ he said. ‘They treat you all right?’

  He’d waited fourteen years to ask that. What are you going to do if I say no? Offer to buy me back?

  ‘They treat me very well,’ I said. ‘But how are things at home? Is everyone all right there?’

  He looked down, twisting his hat again.

  ‘That’s why I came. I thought you’d want to know. Your mother died.’

  My mother. I realised, with a flush of shame, that I hadn’t thought about her for a long time. I hadn’t thought about any of them. But now I saw her, as clearly as yesterday, sitting beside me on the woodpile, telling me I was big on the inside, and not to forget it. I remembered those early months at Whitehall, when I’d longed to see her face again. Now I never would.

  ‘She took a chill, and it went to her chest,’ he said. ‘As I say, I thought you’d want to know.’

  It was a long way from Oakham to Northampton; he’d walked all those miles, then spent his money on a wagon ride, so he could tell me the news himself. Perhaps he’d changed. It had been a long time, after all.

  ‘Thank you. For coming, I mean.’

  ‘You were always her favourite,’ he said. ‘Apple of her eye. She talked about you all the time, after you went.’

  Why hadn’t I ever gone back to see them? In recent summers, we’d often stayed at Wellingborough and I could easily have travelled to Oakham from there. But I didn’t want to by then. I was Nathaniel Davy, the queen’s dwarf, and I didn’t care to remember the shabby little cottage and the boy who was no use. I could have kept my promise to find Sam a place at court too, but as the years went on, I told myself he wouldn’t like it, he’d be happier at home. The truth was I didn’t want Sam, with his simple country ways, to embarrass me.

  We talked about the rest of the family for a while. Little Annie was still at home with my father, but Sam was married with a child of his own. Envy pricked at me when I heard that. But it eased my guilt too. He’d made a life for himself in Oakham, so perhaps I’d been right, perhaps he was happier there.

  There was news of the neighbours too. My old enemy, Jack Edgecombe, I was glad to hear, had married most unhappily, to one of the girls from the bakery. My father wasn’t sure which one; I hoped it was the ugly one.

  ‘You should see Sam’s little girl – she’s the spitting image of your mother,’ he said. ‘Curly-headed, just like she was. Sam’s wife had a bad time of it having her, the midwife thought the baby would die, but your mother must have been watching over her from heaven that night.’

  It took me a moment to realise what he’d said.

  ‘How old did you say Sam’s child was?’ I asked.

  ‘Sam’s child?’

  ‘You said she was two.’

  ‘Did I? No, she’s not two, no…’

  He knew he’d been caught.

  ‘When did Mother die?’

  He looked down at his hands.

  ‘Three years in August.’

  ‘So you waited three years and then thought I might like to know?’

  ‘It’s taken me five days to get here.’

  And I’d been stupid enough to think that meant something.

  ‘What have you really come for?’

  I knew, now, but I was going to make him say it.

  ‘Things changed after the duke was killed,’ he said.

  Of course; no more dogfights up at the big house.

  ‘Frank Herries, who used to run the fights at the White Horse, he hurt his back, so I took on his patch. Not as good money, but it kept me going. Then the place changed hands, and I was lucky to get a fight once a quarter. Well, you’ll remember how much those dogs eat, Nat. I held on as long as I could, but last year I had to do away with them.’

  Of course you did. Because they were no use to you.

  ‘The butchery side of things isn’t doing too well either. You don’t realise it, I daresay, sitting here…’ He waved an arm at the room. ‘But times are hard in the country. I live as cheaply as I can, but…’

  But it’s hard to drink yourself stupid three times a week without a bit extra coming in.

  He busied himself with picking a fleck of dirt from his hat as I opened my purse. I fished out a pile of coins and handed them up to him, taking care not to let my fingers touch his hand.

  ‘This should keep you going for a while. I’ll find a way to send you money every month, so you won’t need to ask again.’

  He resisted the temptation to count the coins in front of me, but he couldn’t stop himself fingering them, until he could get outside and check what he’d got for his five-day journey.

  ‘Perhaps you’ll come and see us some time?’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps.’

  I couldn’t have said which of us meant it less.

  * * *

  That afternoon, I sat by th
e window, looking out but not really seeing anything. I was thinking of my mother. I thought about the winter afternoons when she’d tell us stories by the fire, and the way she’d scolded us all the way home from the fair that day, and even the stew she used to make that still, in my memory, tasted better than anything on the king’s table. Three years she’d been gone, and I didn’t even know. I hadn’t asked my father if she’d spoken about me in her last days, because I couldn’t stand to hear if she hadn’t, and I couldn’t stand to hear if she had, and I wasn’t there.

  The queen noticed I was quiet, and called me over to ask if I was all right. I didn’t want to tell the story and admit how stupid I’d been to think my father had any reason but money for coming, so I said I had a toothache.

  As I lay in my chamber that night, I thought about that small kindness. With all the worries swirling round in the queen’s mind, she’d still noticed I seemed out of sorts; compare that to the man who didn’t think to tell me my mother was dead until he wanted money from me, and then pretended he’d come for my sake. So in the end the answer to Jeremiah’s question was obvious. My mother was gone. My father cared no more for me than he’d done for his dogs; quite possibly less. Sam had his wife and child – since I’d broken my promise to him, I couldn’t blame him if he never gave a thought to me. And to Annie, after all these years, I’d just be a name.

  If I had a family at all now, it was there at court. I wasn’t convinced the king was right in his fight with Parliament, not then nor later. But it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to lose a second family like I lost the first one. So wherever they were going, I’d go with them.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  We made a sorry sight when we eventually fled. Jeremiah was right: it wasn’t like the times we left for a summer at Hampton Court or Windsor. Back then, the entire court travelled in a parade of carriages, all of us dressed in our best, the horses’ coats polished until they gleamed, and behind us wagons piled high with trunks and boxes containing everything from the queen’s summer wardrobe to their favourite cups and plates. But on that cold, grey afternoon ten days into the new year of 1642, there were only half a dozen coaches, flanked by thirty or so guards, the rest of them left behind; there was no money to feed them or their horses. Ordinary carters had been hired to carry the baggage, and the queen insisted no one bring more than the necessaries. What she didn’t say, but everyone knew, was that room was required for the other things they were taking with them: the crown jewels and every piece of silver and gold plate in the palace.

  * * *

  They’d clung on in London for longer than I expected. To no one’s surprise, the peace the king had negotiated with the Scots hadn’t held, and to fund an army to fight them, he’d had to recall Parliament. Knowing they had him where they wanted him, they demanded changes in return for the cash; a bit more power for them, quite a bit less for him. Over the months, he handled the situation like an idiot buying a pig: first battling with them, then attempting to appease them, then stamping his foot again at just the wrong moment. London had become so jittery that ordinary people were arming themselves, and the palace came to feel less like a sanctuary, and more like a prison. The king had a guard tower built at the outer gate, but instead of making us feel safer, it reminded us we’d never needed one before.

  And suddenly there was no money in the kitty. Parliament had the purse strings pulled tight, and the king was running out of other places to go. And he had a lot of mouths to feed. Jeremiah worked it out one day: there were over a thousand of us at Whitehall, and by then the king had given the queen Denmark House, just down the river, where her chapel was, so there were a whole load more courtiers and servants there. Still, that problem was beginning to solve itself: servants who were fed up not getting their wages joined the ones who’d left because they were just plain frightened, and courtiers melted away too – they’d come to court with advancement in mind, and there was none to be had from a king who couldn’t even pay his own bills.

  I’d thought Jeremiah would stick it out, but his new love, Sukie from the kitchens, had other ideas. She was younger than him but older than me and, though I never mentioned this to Jeremiah, she reminded me of a goose, with that same bossy walk, a sharp way of speaking and a general air of being able to give you a nasty bite should she choose to. She kept him dangling for a week after he asked her to marry him, and then issued a list of her conditions: they were to leave London for Kent, Jeremiah was to ask for a proper cottage on the estate – ‘No one knows horses like you do, but if you don’t ask for what you’re worth, be sure they won’t offer it’ – and he must promise always to take his boots off before he stepped across the threshold ‘because your nose might not notice the smell of horses’ doings, Jeremiah Hobley, but mine very definitely does.’ But when they turned to walk down the aisle as Mr and Mrs Hobley, she smiled up at him as though he was the best thing she’d ever seen, and I thought, yes, he’ll be all right with her.

  When they left, I missed his company badly. By then, the queen spent most of the day ensconced with the king and his advisors – she told me they spoke to her as though she was a particularly simple four-year-old, but he valued her advice and insisted she was there. So I passed much of my time just wandering in the gardens, wondering how long it would be before I’d have to leave the place I’d come to call home, and what would happen to us then.

  * * *

  For months, the king and queen stayed put, convinced they could ride the situation out. When we eventually left, it was because they had no choice. That autumn, rebellion had broken out in Ireland, led by the Catholics, and of course people said the queen had stirred it up, as a sop to the pope for failing to turn England Catholic. Rumours began to swirl around that Parliament thought the same – and that they might even believe it well enough to accuse her of treason. When the king heard that, he decided enough was enough and marched into Parliament, with four hundred soldiers, to arrest the ringleaders. They’d been warned and fled, but the damage was done; with his usual knack for doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, he’d not so much stepped on Parliament’s toes as trampled all over their feet, and they weren’t going to stand for it.

  A few days later, we were sitting in the chamber, the queen, three or four of her ladies, and me – it was cold, I remember, she’d told the maids to make the firewood last. The doors crashed open and the king walked in, his face livid red.

  ‘What is it?’ said the queen. ‘What’s happened?’

  Shaking with anger and struggling to force out his words, he said Parliament had invoked a law allowing citizens to band together to keep the peace, and when they returned to Westminster the following day, to discuss the treason proceedings, they’d be accompanied by an army.

  ‘They s-s-say twenty thousand will come, armed and h-h-horsed. And a th-th-thousand sailors on the river.’

  The queen shrank back into her seat, her hands gripping the arms as though someone might appear there and then to tear her out of it. Westminster Hall, where the MPs and their army would be heading, was a step away from the palace. If they decided to take her into custody, the few hundred men the king could command at short notice would be powerless to stop them.

  ‘They are coming for me,’ she whispered, her eyes wide. ‘Charles, they are coming for me.’

  ‘The pretext is that it is to protect themselves,’ said the king. ‘But I would sooner trust the word of a snake. And if they think we will sit and take this boldness, they think wrongly.’

  She was trembling by then, and he took her hand.

  ‘We leave tonight, for Hampton Court,’ he said. ‘And I will make them regret this barbarous action, I promise.’

  * * *

  We spent just two nights at Hampton Court, the first most uncomfortably; we’d arrived in such a hurry that no beds were prepared. The king and queen and the children huddled together in one chamber, and the rest of us did as best we could with cloaks and rugs. Next morning daylight revealed wha
t, in the panic of leaving, no one had thought of: Hampton Court, open to the river and surrounded by parkland, was no easier to defend than Whitehall. The queen started at every unexpected sound, her eyes straying constantly to the windows, and when, during dinner, a crash was heard from the kitchens, half the company, me included, jumped up, ready to flee. So everything that had been unpacked was packed again, and we headed for Windsor Castle, with its high walls and lookout towers. And there, the king and queen prepared for war.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  During those weeks at Windsor, the queen was the one who wanted war, more than the king. Still convinced – against all the evidence to the contrary – that he was the wiliest of leaders, he thought he could outsmart the other side by clever negotiation. But safe behind the thick walls of the castle, her fears had been replaced by fury, and she wanted them taught a lesson.

  ‘How dare they!’ she spat, as Parliament sent daily demands: the king must agree not to take political or religious advice from his wife; she must swear an oath not to meddle in such affairs; her Catholic servants and priests must be dismissed. ‘These people don’t deserve their king. They are ungrateful children who turn against their own father. And we are going to show them their father will not tolerate it.’

  I understood why she was so set on a fight. Once, back in Oakham, a little cat wandered into our dog shed. Before I had a chance to grab it, the dogs had attacked, but there was a second when I saw it realise it couldn’t escape. The same look was in the queen’s eyes that day at Whitehall when she thought they were coming for her. And I’d seen for myself how it felt to be helpless at the hands of a mob, and how it makes you long to be powerful and strong, and take revenge on every single one of them. As I’ve said before, I wasn’t convinced the king had right on his side, but by then I wanted to fight them too, for frightening her, and for driving us all out of a home, and a life, that I’d grown to love.