Dark Angels

by Karleen Koen

  King Charles followed the pair with his eyes, strolling out into the entrance hall to watch them run up the stairs. Back in the great chamber, he walked around the foursome playing cards, stood a moment behind his brother’s chair before tapping him on the shoulder. York surrendered his chair. The others stared at King Charles.

  He smiled. “Jemmy has the best hand.”

  “Dash it, that’s cheating,” said Rupert. “I’m too old to duel with you and too strapped for coin to lose.”

  “Oh, very well. She’ll be at court tomorrow?”

  “Before noon,” answered Sir Thomas.

  “Excellent. Who is winning?”

  “I am,” he answered again.

  “He’s unbeatable when fortune smiles on him,” said Buckingham. “She doesn’t always smile, though, does she? Remember that run you had last year?”

  “Sweet Jesus, yes. I very nearly went bankrupt, sold properties to recoup that I regret to this day. Sold them to you, if I remember correctly. I’ve been buying in the hell the fire left, from people too discouraged to rebuild, glad to rid themselves of the bit of land.” Four years ago, a huge fire in the city of London destroyed much of it. Sir Thomas glanced at the king, proud to share that he knew court gossip, too. “They do say Christopher Wren has given you a grand plan for the rebuilding.”

  “But I haven’t the funds in the treasury to buy the land,” said His Majesty. “Already shacks and hovels breed like rabbits. Why don’t you donate your London land to the crown, Sir Thomas. It would be much appreciated.” The king was sardonic, and Sir Thomas stared at him, uncomfortable, not certain how in jest he was.

  “Your daughter was buying up properties in Paris,” said Buckingham.

  “Looking only.”

  “The talk at Madame Rouge’s in Paris was that you were moving to France.”

  “Not likely.”

  “Were the whores pretty?” King Charles asked Buckingham.

  “All the whores, male and female. And clean. I don’t know where Madame Rouge finds them.”

  “They say if you want someone dead, begin at Madame Rouge’s,” said Balmoral.

  “If the whores are pretty, when we declare war, we’ll have to make certain we leave it standing and divide the whores among us. Spoils of war,” said Sir Thomas jovially.

  None of the others responded to his jest. He looked from one face to another and felt suddenly, coldly, how much he was the odd man out, no matter the old days. In the silence he felt knowledge here that he wasn’t privy to, and that in spite of his latest favor to Buckingham, he would never be privy to it, unless Buckingham needed him to know. I’m his dog, he thought, no more, no less. And to the others, I’m less than that.

  “Does Your Majesty ever fret?” asked Balmoral, as if Sir Thomas had not spoken.

  “Over?”

  “The fact that some factions do indeed want you dead.”

  “Religious fanatics, you mean? No. It’s been ten years. I think the worst of them have tired or fear the tyrant my brother would be.”

  For a moment all eyes went to York, whose ruddy face flushed. The king spoke what people feared, but with a humorous tone in his voice.

  “They do say it’s become quite the thing in Paris to poison one’s wife or husband or mother or father, whoever is in the way,” said Balmoral.

  “Like my sister?” The words were so unexpected, King Charles’s voice so quiet, his expression suddenly so forbidding, that every man except Balmoral cleared his throat in discomfort.

  “Precisely like the princess,” Balmoral said in clipped tones. “I think you should have a taster. You and Her Majesty and Their Graces the Duke and Duchess of York.”

  “Oh hell and damnation, Balmoral, I won’t believe there’s a plot to poison me.”

  “Did you probe into the poisoning rumor while you were in Paris?” Balmoral asked Buckingham.

  “Why would I?” he answered indifferently.

  “What if she was afraid?” said Prince Rupert. “It’s something I can’t forgive, that I never asked her that.”

  King Charles slammed his hand on the table, and the cards jumped. “I don’t want her mentioned. I don’t want her name said.” He looked around into each pair of eyes. “Am I clear?”

  “Very clear,” answered Balmoral, calmly. “May one ask why?”

  “If I think too long on all that’s happened, all who’ve been lost, particularly this last, if I think on the betrayals upon which this kingdom rests, I’ll gladly take poison, and if it doesn’t kill me fast enough, I’ll hang myself. When the black mood comes to visit in her long ebony gown and her hollow fiery eyes, I’ll hang myself and thank God this bloody business is over. And you’ll all have to deal with Jemmy here as your liege lord. Lord, Buck, look at your face.”

  No one spoke. No one moved. Anger of this sort was so unlike the king that all of them were shocked. And some of them, the one or two who loved him, were saddened.

  York put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Listen to Balmoral. Hire a taster for a time.”

  “How long a time, Jemmy? A day? A year? Two years? If I start fearing some madman will kill me, I’ll go mad myself.”

  “Just for a while,” said Prince Rupert, gruffly.

  “A precaution, nothing more,” said Balmoral.

  “It might be a blessing if she were poisoned.”

  Aghast, every man there turned to look at Buckingham.

  “She’s useless.”

  “She is the queen of England, married under the eyes of God! What God has joined together!” York thundered. “Are you an assassin now, George? Is that your latest fancy?”

  Buckingham shrugged.

  “I’m fatigued,” said Balmoral. “Might we return, Majesty, if you can forgive an old man’s weakness?”

  The way he said the words, the quietness in them, as if an older age looked down on this one and shook its head at its contemptuous folly, affected every one of them. King Charles stood so abruptly that the chair behind him fell over. “Hire a taster,” he said to Balmoral. And to Buckingham, “Make your presence scarce for a time, my dear George.”

  When the king was on the barge again, everyone with him but Buckingham, Sir Thomas came back inside. Buckingham still sat at the table, playing solitaire. Sir Thomas sat down near him. The king was furious, and he would remember that he’d been made furious in the house of Sir Thomas Verney. This afternoon he had so looked forward to was smashed to pieces like a dish.

  “Are you mad? I don’t understand you,” he said to Buckingham.

  “I only say what he’s thought himself. There’s much you don’t know.”

  As if he didn’t know that! As if he hadn’t worn himself to the bone trying to break into the inner circle. As if he hadn’t whored and gambled and served one man or another to get there. He’d been there in the old days; and he’d stuck it out, unlike pretty-faced Buck here, who had turned tail to England and married a Roundhead’s spawn. King Charles had forgiven it; he forgave too damn much, that was his problem. “Tell me, then. But I tell you now, I won’t be a part of harm to the queen,” he said.

  “No one is going to hurt her. We’re not barbarians.”

  “I thought you were hot for war with France?”

  “That was last month, my dear.”

  Anger filled Sir Thomas and, under that, the gall of humiliation. He had obeyed this man and stirred up as many as possible for a war with the French. And now, like that, like a snap of the fingers, it was not to be. And he wasn’t going to be told why. One didn’t talk to the dog, did one. “Did your dealings in Paris prosper?”

  “Dealings?”

  “You went over for more than the funeral.”

  “Did I?”

  “I say you did. I say you ought to tell me the whole of it.”

  “Do you now? Well, maybe there will be a war, after all.”

  But with whom? Buckingham threw the dog a bone. Sweet Jesus, he’d lied to his only daughter for this man, used her l
ike a minion, like the minion he was! And for what? For hope of notice from the king. Smashed to nothing today. Smashed right here at this table before his very eyes. Enough. Time to find another master. But of course, no need to announce it. Let the great duke think he still had a loyal servant; the dog had at least learned that trick, hadn’t he? Woof.

  KING CHARLES, NAKED and very drunk, held up his son, who squirmed and gurgled at him.

  Just as naked, Nellie Gwynn the actress stood close, keeping an eye on both the king and their son. “He has three new teeth.”

  The boy laughed and flailed out his legs, staring down at the king.

  “I see them,” said King Charles.

  He kissed the child hard on each cheek, and Nellie took the baby and nodded to her mother, who stepped forward to return the babe to his bed, her face expressionless to the nudity of a king. God only knew she had seen worse than naked men. She and Nellie were both from the streets, but Nellie had the wit and youth, saucy beauty and voice like a lark, to bring her up to these high places, and she didn’t forget her mother—ancient by the standards of this age, when it was said a woman was prime at twenty, decaying at four and twenty, old and insufferable at thirty. The streets were hard. One had to be quick-witted, ruthless, and lucky to survive. Nellie was.

  Nellie poured another goblet of wine and gave it to the king. He drank it down like water. She sat on his lap. He had long legs with lean thigh muscles, and the sight of them excited her. She wanted to make love again. After a year, she might, just might, love this man, and love was a fragile seed in her world. But she didn’t know him. Her mother before her was a whore. Nellie knew men. But not this one.

  “I dreamed the queen had a son the other night. And today, I had an evil thought,” King Charles said. In his mind was the reaction to Buck’s words—that it would be a blessing if the queen was poisoned, God forgive him, never mind the dower she’d brought, the kindness she’d shown, and the loyalty.

  “I ain’t a clergyman, sir, but you can confess to me, if you like.”

  “The church of Nellie Gwynn. Confession to a naked whore. Appealing, Nellie. You’ll take the bread from priests’ mouths.” He smiled at her, and she was comfortable with and comforted by the lasciviousness in that smile. She’d known such smiles most of her life. Her mother had shown her how to use them to her advantage.

  Nell kissed his hand, held it to her breast.

  He was unable to make his wine-soaked mind command the hand to caress her. He loved women’s pleasure, loved, always had, always would, their shape, their smell, their softness, the way their minds worked, their loyalty, and then, if crossed, their treachery. Ruthless, colder than any man’s. Life plays the traitor to us all, takes our best hopes and fairest promises and turns them against us, he thought. The only thing to do was make a jest before you became the jest. But he couldn’t jest at his sister dead, his wife barren. A bargain with France, and Minette died. Freedom from his House of Commons’ parsimony and high-handedness thanks to Louis’s coins, but for his sister’s life? No one had told him the true bargain. The coins filled his privy purse, and he felt like Judas. But he’d spend them, wouldn’t he? And bugger Louis in the bargain. Everywhere he fathered sons, except on the queen. Old Rowley, his subjects called him, for his virility. Life demanded its pound of flesh, played out two right real jests before his very eyes, and he, who loved to laugh, could not summon the strength to do so. His eyes closed. His head lolled back. “Two jests, Nellie, on me. The boy is very fair. I can beget sons.”

  He laughed, and the actress in her picked up nuance. She put both her arms around him and hugged him, her lust lessening now, a bit of fear in her. Without this man, she was nothing again, plaything to men without the kindness he had. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, vanity, all is vanity—one of her mother’s best customers had been a Fifth Monarchy man, and he would thunder out those words as he finished his pleasure with her mother, before he turned to her.

  “Is there a God, Nellie?”

  “Oh yes. Come to bed now. Come and play with me.” She touched her cheek to his, then drew back, shocked. There was wet against her cheek from where it had lain against his. A king’s tear. From this man who always smiled. Worth what? A king’s ransom?

  “A fine boy. I’ll make him a duke someday, and he can play with my other children.”

  In another moment he was snoring. Nellie moved off his lap, called for her mother and the footman, and together, heaving, they managed to get him to the bed. She summoned his Life Guards, who waited downstairs, and they came up and dressed him. They eyed Nellie, naked still, as they dressed him, and she saw the lust in their eyes, enjoyed it with a wicked zest that was part of her spark. They’d never get a piece of her, not while the king desired her, but they could have a look at what pleased a king. They carried him off as tenderly as a babe in their arms, out into the night, back to Whitehall. Nellie went to look in at their son, sleeping in innocence. A future duke, was he? Nellie Gwynn, tart of the stage, mother to a duke.

  He talked about two jests. She couldn’t read, and she couldn’t write, but she could count. That made three.

  CHAPTER 17

  Under the trees, sitting at charming tables built round their trunks, lanterns flickering from branches, Charles’s young court flirted with one another, drinking wine in the dark. Most of them had been children when he was restored to the throne. They remembered the poverty, the want, the shifting—but barely.

  Alice had shown Renée the king’s garden house, which his father had built, and the bowling green where Monmouth and his cronies did play many an afternoon. They’d walked the pall-mall court the king had had built. He liked all things of the outside, walking, tennis, fishing, boating, riding horseback, archery, bowls, pall-mall, a game of sticks hitting balls, which he’d made the fashion. They’d strolled along the long canal of water in St. James’s Park nearby, a landscape pool that would do pride to any French palace. Richard was sitting with them, along with Barbara and John Sidney, and Dorothy Brownwell and her Lord Knollys. Gracen was here, and Kit, and Charlie Sedley, and some of his friends.

  Alice allowed the wine’s expansive mood. She had decided to be hopeful about her conversation with Balmoral. Barbara and John stood up. “Where are you off to?” Alice asked.

  “A walk, nothing more,” said John.

  “Without chaperone?”

  Dorothy stood, but Lord Knollys put his hand on her arm in a proprietary way. “Will you trust me instead?” he asked Alice as if she were the queen.

  “And me?” said Gracen, going to stand with Barbara.

  “I grant you your walk.” Alice laughed, amused with her grandness, with the fact that her disapproval carried weight. Maybe she’d gain back the old days. To her right, Renée and her lieutenant were talking about this Tamworth of his.

  “You don’t like John Sidney?” Dorothy asked Alice when he was in the distance.

  “It isn’t the match she should have.”

  Dorothy played with a ribbon on one of her full sleeves. A widow, she loved the maids of honor she was given charge of, each and all, no matter how they might tease her and trick her. Girls will be girls, she would say when some mischief happened. And then she loaned the coins or upheld the lie that would keep the girl from dismissal, telling her in her soft lisp, You must beware, you must behave. She had large, protruding eyes and golden hair—falsely golden, Gracen swore—and a heart as soft as goose’s down.

  “You saw me last night.” She looked Alice full in the face, her great round eyes begging.

  Alice sipped at her wine. “I saw nothing.”

  Dorothy leaned forward and kissed her. “I knew you’d say that. I fretted all the day, but the heart of me knew you’d say that. I’m glad you’re back.”

  The truth was Dorothy Brownwell had been too lax, especially with Barbara, but Alice would begin to deal with that tomorrow, when she took her place again among the maids of the queen.

  Behind them, at another table, r
evelers had begun to sing, pounding their hands on the table as they sang. It was a soldier’s song.

  Who comes here?

  A Grenadier.

  What do you want?

  A Pot of Beer.

  Where is your money?

  I’ve forgot.

  Get you gone home

  You drunken sot.

  “See what you’ll have to put up with,” Richard said to Renée, and winked. He was off to France again in a day or two for Balmoral.

  CHAPTER 18

  October

  Clear moon, frost soon. If the moon shows a silver shield, be not afraid to reap your field.

  Alice jerked off gloves, said to the new footman, “Fetch my father at once.” She strode to the fire in his great chamber, putting her hands to it. It was cold out. September’s feast day of Michaelmas, with its roasted goose, its paying of rents, was over. So, almost, was October. All Hallows’ Eve, time of spirits and magic, the ending of the month, was only days away.

  Reading his daughter’s mood from her face and the way she stood, Sir Thomas paused in the doorway of the house’s great chamber. So, the moment he’d been dreading was here. But to his surprise, she ran to him, kissed his cheek.

  “There’s something you have to know. It’s awful. The king is paying too much attention to Renée. He has spent an hour with her every day of this last week. I’m there, but I might as well not be. You must tell him to stop it, Father. You’re her guardian. You must go to the king and tell him to stop it before there are duels and scandal.”

  “What duels?”

  “Well, Lieutenant Saylor, of course,” Alice said sharply. “He’s a man of honor.”

  “Why the devil would he duel?”

  “You’re not listening, Father. Tell the king to find another flirt. Tell him Renée is a respectable girl. Tell him he can’t do this to us again—”