by Karleen Koen
“I could be a groom, couldn’t I? If you was to teach me, I could be one.”
Richard slapped his horse on the shoulder. “What do you say, boy? Could Walter be a groom?”
The horse nudged Richard with his nose, snorted loudly, and shook his head. Richard laughed. “Go get some apples and bribe him for a better answer.”
Richard watched as Walter fed the horse bits of dried apple. He was very thin, at that leggy stage that was the cusp of leaving boyhood, yet still a boy, not near a man.
“What about Italian?” Walter said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Could that man speak Italian?”
Something in Richard stilled. “He might. Tell me more.”
“Madame Neddie has a friend. She says he speaks Italian to her. He says it’s Gibberish. I don’t know Gibberish from Italian. Where is Gibberish? In the Indies?”
“In China,” answered Effriam.
“He’s thin, like you said. Dark hair.”
“Interesting. Let’s saddle Pharaoh and ride him back to Madame Neddie’s.”
“I could eat first.”
There wasn’t pleading in his voice, but something quiet, beyond begging.
“The boy’s hungry,” said Effriam.
“Richard, I have to speak with you.” It was Alice, her dark furred hood making a halo around her face.
“Not now. I have business to attend to. Walter, put a blanket on his back, else the saddle will give him sores.” But then Richard had second thoughts. “Is it Mistress de Keroualle?”
“No. When may we speak together?”
“This afternoon.”
“I’ll wait for you in the Stone Gallery.”
“Who is she?” Walter asked when Alice had gone.
“A friend.”
“A mai of honor,” said Effriam. “Too high for you to be gawking at.”
“She’s pretty.”
“Is she?” Richard said absently.
AT THE SWAN, Richard saw the clerk for the secretaries of state, went over to talk with him. As he did so, he watched Walter put the last pieces of a meat pie into his pocket. Caught, he thought, some of his anger from last night sparking. Is he playing me for the fool? He went back to his table. “What are you doing?” He waited for the lie, waited to give him a blistering lecture on stealing.
“For Nan. She’s always hungry these days, and sometimes there ain’t enough to eat for her. I didn’t take none of yours, I swear.”
Richard walked to the counter, purchased a tin pail for a few pennies and two more meat pies, set the pail on the table before Walter with a thud, dropped in the fresh pie and added the remainder of his, gave Walter another whole one. “You eat your fill. Here’s one and more for Nan. Don’t think I’m going to be buying meat pies for nine months.”
“No sir. We wouldn’t expect it, sir.”
Out on the street, atop Pharaoh, Walter felt like a burr against his back. The cold was good on his face. How did those clerks in the treasury and navy do it, live all day in closed chambers lit by candles? He felt he wasn’t alive unless he was outside, cold or rain or sun. It was a bright enough day, sun feeble, but no fog. Richard trotted the horse skillfully through carts, some carrying barrels of water, some carrying piles of refuse, through carriages and sedan men carrying sedan chairs. When I’m through with Madame Neddie, Pharaoh and I are going for a gallop, aren’t we, boy? he thought.
At Wych Court, Walter slid off the back of the horse and ran toward a corner turn the narrow alley made, calling to Richard, “I’ll just take this to Nan.”
Richard dismounted, knocked on the red door. The burly giant opened it. “I want to speak with Madame Neddie,” Richard told him.
“She ain’t receiving visitors just now.”
Richard held up a coin. “Tell her Captain Saylor wishes only a moment.”
CHAPTER 30
In her festooned bedchamber, Neddie had her skirts pulled up. Henri Ange sat on a small embroidered stool before her, her feet in his lap. He was painting her toenails. At the knock on the bedchamber door, she called out, “Go away.”
“Someone to see you.”
“There’s no one I want to see.”
“That soldier.”
Neddie motioned for Ange to stop. “Enter,” she called, and the giant opened the door gingerly. “The handsome one with the gold hair?”
When the giant nodded, she lifted her feet from Ange’s lap, stood up, and shook out her skirts. “Send him up, Tiny. I haven’t a stroke of rouge on, damn it.”
“What soldier is this? Why would he come to call on you?”
Neddie winked at Ange’s image in the pier glass as she pinched her cheeks and fluffed out her hair. “He’s formed an infatuation for one of the boys. So sweet. I think he wishes to make it official. Oh, Madame Neddie sends another beloved out into the wicked world with a new family, but not for nothing. It costs. Wait here, my love. I won’t be long.” She shut the door firmly behind her, but Ange moved forward silently and opened it just a crack.
“A captain are you now? Bravo, sir. What brings about this visit?”
Neddie stood before a window, and she was still beautiful, but not quite so startlingly so. Richard was trying to determine what, exactly, was different about her as he bowed over her hand. Perhaps the candlelight last time? Perhaps the rouge? “Do you remember the man I asked you about?”
“Not really.”
“He was a Frenchman, dark and thin, who spoke English. Well, it’s come to us that he may be posing as an Italian. He may speak Italian. Has a man of that description visited your establishment?”
Neddie played with her hair. “My curiosity is up. Why is it so important that you capture this man?”
“Capture? I don’t think anyone has said that word. We want to speak with him, that’s all.”
“It must be a very important question you want to ask him.”
“It is.”
She bit the tip of a curl and batted her eyes at Richard, flirting.
“There would be some sign of gratitude,” said Richard, reading her flirting properly.
“How much of a sign?”
“Ten guineas.” Am I mad? thought Richard. Would Balmoral pay that? It was a huge sum.
“My, my, I am impressed.”
Richard had an odd feeling. He glanced around the chamber, but he couldn’t put his finger on precisely what bothered him. She isn’t going to play, he thought, or she is going to lie. He’d set a watch on this house, back and front, to see if anyone who looked like Ange entered or left. That was better than paying ten guineas for what might not be the right man at all. He bowed again, turned to leave.
She followed him to the door, walked out into the hall with him, shutting the door of her antechamber. She said quietly, “For twenty-five guineas I might have seen him. Thirty and a promise from Bamoral himself that this place will never be closed, and I have seen him. There was an alderman up my ass the other day because his son is a regular.”
Her crudity shocked Richard. His senses began to tingle. Something was off. “That can be done.”
“Bring me a letter from Balmoral and the coins.”
“The man first.”
“What man?”
Richard started down the stairs. Neddie followed him.
“A letter and half the amount I ask. The other half on sight of him.”
Richard held out his hand to shake hers.
“A kiss, my sweet, let’s seal it with a kiss.”
He put his mouth on hers, and her tongue stroked his lips, darted in between. She bit his bottom lip, held the playful bite a moment before stepping back, her eyes shining. “Sweet as honey,” she said. “I knew you would be.”
“This man, he’s very dangerous.” He was telling her too much, but the kiss had thrown him off guard.
“How dangerous?”
“He’s killed.”
“I’m invincible.”
Richard stared after her
as she ran back up the stairs, her skirts lifted so she wouldn’t trip. Her feet were bare, her ankles shapely.
ANGE WAS SITTING on the sumptuous daybed Neddie liked to drape herself upon to receive visitors. She shut the door behind her and pouted. “Now don’t be mad. I kissed the soldier. I couldn’t help it. He is so gorgeous.”
“Why did he call on you?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Are you going to do what he asks?”
“Of course not.”
“Why? Wasn’t the price high enough? I’d give away any one of the brats you pimp, dead or alive, for ten guineas.”
Neddie’s laugh was low and throaty. “You heard that, did you?” She sat in Ange’s lap, lifted her skirts high. It wasn’t the fashion to wear drawers of any kind. She flicked his ear with her tongue. “We need to finish my toes.” She bit his ear.
“Do you have a razor?”
She breathed in his ear, “Touch me? We can share the soldier. I know he’d do it….”
“I want to shave my hair off.”
She sat up. “Why? I adore your hair.” She ran her hands through it. “It’s as thick as a sheep’s. Don’t cut it. It’s winter. Wait until summer when it’s hot.”
“I want to shave it off and wear a periwig. It would be warm, as warm as a hat.”
“That might be handsome. Yes, I can see you in a periwig. Yes, I like that vision.”
“Shave my head.”
“Now?”
“You’ll shave my head, and we’ll finish the garnishing of your toes and see what else occurs. Something interesting, I promise.”
WALTER WAS WAITING outside beside Richard’s horse. “Come and meet them. They want to say thank you.”
“Who does?”
“Nan and her mother.”
“No, I need to be off.”
“It won’t take a minute. They’re just around the corner here.”
Richard followed him around the corner of Madame Neddie’s, down the narrow space made by buildings that were only a few yards across from one another. The mud separating the buildings was slimy, smelled. It was the habit of Londoners to throw the contents of their chamber pots out a window or a door.
Richard had to stoop to enter the dwelling. He stood in a low-ceilinged chamber that seemed to be filled with people, children from babies to Walter’s age or more and, as his eyes adjusted to the dark, an old man in the corner, someone feeding him some pie from the pail. The furniture was sets of beds and stools. There was hay on the floor, fresh hay, a way to keep out the chill of the dirt under it. Sweat broke out on Richard’s upper lip. It was the combination of the dark, the dank, and the smell of too many people in one chamber. A thin woman came forward, a baby on her hip.
“This is Captain Saylor,” Walter said. “Captain, this is Mrs. Daniell.”
“We be thanking you for the food you gave Nan. Come here, Nan, and make your curtsy to the soldier.”
At the word soldier, the old man stood and saluted.
“Dad be in the war, fought under Fairfax.”
Richard nodded to the thin girl, who obeyed her mother and came forward to meet him. Was she twelve? Perhaps thirteen? “Very good. And a good day to you, Mrs. Daniell. Nan.”
“My man would thank you, too, but he works in Wapping.”
Wapping was past the Tower of London, where the ships docked. Likely he worked on one of the wharves unloading cargo. Her husband had a long walk to and from work, thought Richard. Outside again, he put his hand on the horse’s neck. Pharaoh’s stall had more light than these people lived in. They looked thin and pale, like plants without enough sun. He would be buying meat pies for nine months. Longer.
He headed up Wych Street to make his way to Drury Lane. Fields lay at its end, and he put just the touch of his spurs on Pharaoh, who knew what to do with open fields and country lanes, the horse running in his bold, nothing-held-back, gallant style and Richard leaning against his neck, leaning into the wind and cold until the pair of them were less restive. Clearheaded again, he trotted a tired Pharaoh back to Whitehall. Now there was the matter of Alice, but more important, there was the matter of Renée.
CHAPTER 31
Alice was in the Stone Gallery, a long gallery on a lower floor in the palace, just as she’d said. Dozing, she was huddled up into a chair, her skirts bunched around her. Richard stared down at her, at the sweep of cheek and neck, the dark hair curling out of its clips and ribbons. He didn’t want to do this, to talk about the wedding last night. That had to be why she had demanded to see him. He pulled a stool close and sat. “Alice.”
Her eyes opened at once. There were shadows under them. She’s suffering, thought Richard, that’s good. He could see a pulse throbbing in her neck, right near her jaw. The blue vein of it was pretty. For a fleeting second, he had the urge to put his finger there and trace it.
“Barbara married John Sidney last night,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
“Were you there?”
“Of course.”
“She didn’t invite me.”
There was nothing to say to that.
“Tell her I’m never going to forgive her.”
“I’m not going to tell her that.”
“Where is she?”
“I’m not going to tell you that.”
Alice gripped the sides of the armchair in which she sat until her fingers were white. “Why not?”
“So that you can find her and quarrel with her in the first days of her marriage? Tell me why I’d want to do that, Alice, but then answer me one better—why would you want to do it?”
“She’s made a mistake.”
“If she has, it’s over and done with. And I take umbrage at that. John Sidney is a fine man.”
“He’s a nobody, a nothing.”
“You mean he isn’t an earl or even a lowly baron like me. One day he may be. Lord Rochester’s father was a knight of the squire. It was his faithful care of the king that won his earldom. Do you think there are no more earldoms to be won? Barbara will be a great man’s lady one day.”
“She should have told me.”
“It’s your own fault that she didn’t. You’re as stubborn and arrogant as—” He stopped himself.
“As who said?”
“I am not going to quarrel with you.”
“Who said I was stubborn and arrogant?”
“I formed the opinion myself.”
“You hate me, don’t you.”
He pushed back the stool. This discussion was going in directions he refused to follow. It was always so when he quarreled with his sisters. They turned on him and stung him in places he hadn’t thought possible, like tiny, determined, completely ruthless blond bees.
“Answer me, Richard Saylor.”
He clenched his jaw. “Sometimes I don’t like you, it’s true.”
“Why not?”
“You order people around, people who care for you, as if they were minions, and you think you know what is best, always.”
“I do know what is best. Always.”
He walked away from her. If she thought he was going to put up with this, she had another thought coming.
“Richard—”
Something small, unlike her, in her voice stopped him, made him turn. Her eyes—eyes so dark that one couldn’t see the center—were moist, but no tears were falling. At the sight of a tear, he would walk away without a backward look. She held out her hand beseechingly. “Please don’t leave me. Please.”
“Don’t weep,” he said.
She met his gaze head-on, her eyes wet, but not a tear falling, he’d give her that. He pulled out a handkerchief and gave it to her. She blew her nose in it loudly. He grimaced. “The handkerchief is yours to keep.”
“I love Barbara like my own sister.”
“Then love her like a sister in this.”
Alice swallowed. He watched the taut line of her jaw.
“If I can’t?”
“Have the courtesy not to tell her so. You forget a piece in this, Alice. You forget that she loves you, too, and that your anger and disapproval hurt her greatly. And there’s a third little being in this, to be born in a few months. Barbara mustn’t be upset.”
She made a growling sound and shook her head the way a wild dog might. For some reason, that made Richard laugh. If Alice sank her teeth in you, you’d never get loose. She was worse than the pit bulls that fought the bears and bulls in Southwark across the river. “Now I have a question for you,” he said. “Is Renée in love with the king?” He watched her carefully.
“I don’t think so.”
She lied well.
He kicked a nearby stool. It flew in the air and landed with a clatter near another chair. “Then what the blazes is she doing allowing his kisses?”
“He likes to kiss the maids of honor, flirt with them.”
“Does he kiss you?”
“He has, upon occasion. He thinks her pretty. Her being French charms him.”
“Damn him.”
“Why don’t you just take her?”
“What do you mean?”
“The next time you two are alone, do more than kiss and cuddle, take it all the way.”
She shocked him. “Ravish her? You mix me with Sedley or Buckhurst.”
“I doubt very seriously it would be ravishment, now, would it?”
He didn’t answer.
“May I speak frankly?” Of course, she didn’t wait for his answer. “She’s not very bright.”
“How dare you—”
“I mean that she’s an idiot to choose him over you.”
“Does she truly choose him over me?” He wanted to throttle someone, beginning with the woman who sat before him.
“You know she loves you. I know she loves you, but it’s flattering to be admired by the king. It’s turning her head. He can be—” Alice stopped. No use to describe to Richard how King Charles could be. It would only make matters worse. “If you love her and want her for a bride, take her the very next time the kissing leads to…well, to where it leads.”
“I have this dream, she and I side by side in life, turning front to front in lovemaking, back to back in threat, protecting each other.”
