She flinched inwardly, but her gaze remained steady.
“It would be kind in you, sir, to recall that it was not I who ended our perfectly honorable association.”
“Nor I, truly, I declare. I would have gone through with it—honorably, as you say. Alas, circumstances intervened.”
“Circumstances,” she repeated in a dry and bitter tone.
“Aye, circumstances. Or would you rather I speak more plainly and say your father’s damnable—”
“I beg you, sir.” She rose hastily as she spoke, hearing a tremor in her voice. He leaned back in his chair and looked up at her, pale eyes glinting.
“Just so. Pray, my lady, be seated. And tell me what you have learned of the queen’s treachery.”
Eleanor resumed her seat, her stomach clenching. She said, “I am profoundly sorry to disappoint you, my lord. But I have nothing of value to report.”
He frowned. “Nothing?”
“I promise you, no one could be more desirous than I to discover something that might be used against her. But I cannot tell you what I have not seen. She goes about her religious observances in perfect decorum.”
His face darkened. “I find this hard to believe. Does she not attempt to convert any of her household?”
“I have not seen any such attempt. We attend her to Mass, of course, in our turn, but that is only as is seemly; no observance is urged upon us. She does not so much as speak of the Pope—were it not for her own constant devotion, one would scarcely know she was a servant of Rome.”
He stood and began to pace. “This will not do. I have not spent valuable influence getting you placed in the queen’s household on the expectation of nothing.”
“I am very sorry, my lord, but—”
He took no notice of her protest. “It will not do, it will not do; I will not have it! The Queen of England, our England, a follower of that absurd, vile, bloody, and perilous cult? They are sworn to the Pope, sworn to do his bidding. What might follow? Will she not be determined to undermine the king’s faith and bring him over to Rome, to the ruin of us all? His family is already infested by them—his mother, the Duchess of York—and it’s said his French sister writes him at every post! How do we know what persuasions they bring to bear? And even if he be firm, who can say what the future will bring, if our lady bear him a son, and he die before her? Will she not be determined to give us a Catholic for our next king? I swear, I will burn before I turn Catholic, before I see our country forced to its knees before a foreign power.”
He had been pacing and speaking as though to a greater audience than she; it was the speech he longed to give in Parliament and never, never could, she thought. Now he turned his cold blue gaze upon her again. “I will fight to the limits of my strength to prevent such a catastrophe. I will use you as long as you are useful, and if you fail me, I swear, I will not fail to ruin you.”
Eleanor had listened warily to the young lord’s ranting, but at this, her pale face turned even paler with anger. “Ruin me?” she cried, rising. “How much more can I be ruined?”
“I believe you know,” he flared back at her. “I believe you know how much farther you have to fall, if you lose my favor.”
Stung, she lost all control. “Yes, yes, I am in your power, but you need not taunt me with it, when you must know—you must know all too well—how little I need your urging to wish to destroy the queen—aye, I would murder the king himself with my own hands if I dared!”
“Be still!” She caught her breath, and stood trembling. He seized her by both shoulders. “You go too far. I do not seek the king’s life. You are too rash, my lady.”
His fingers were bruising hard. She lowered her eyes, defeated. “I know it. I know it. Pray you, overlook it. You know I was provoked.”
“Well. I have no wish to threaten you, only to make you know I am in earnest.” His grip softened, and his voice grew less harsh. “Indeed, I am sorry for your troubles, Eleanor. Your father was foolish, but I would not have wished his death on a dog that had bitten me.”
“Foolish. Aye. Foolish to have trusted a king who spoke of mercy and showed none.” She was trembling so, she found herself glad for his hands still on her shoulders. Strange: He was her tormenter, not her friend, yet he was the only person in all the world to whom she could speak freely of the worst things in her mind.
“Have you seen a man drawn and quartered, my lord?”
She was speaking to the breast of his charcoal-velvet doublet, finding herself unable to look up. He didn’t answer at once, and then he only murmured, “Yes. But not your father. And nor did you.”
“No. We stayed behind in the country. But . . . but we knew . . .”
Her voice faltered. That agonizing day, her family weeping and praying, knowing that in London, their father was being hanged, cut down still conscious, his . . . his parts cut off and his entrails pulled out of his living body, his body cut in pieces as though he were a hog at the butchering . . . Her breath stuttered. Somewhere far away, she heard Russell saying, “It was the law. He signed the old king’s death warrant. He was a regicide.”
At the word, she felt her strength return a little, fueled by anger. She pulled away and walked a few steps, gripped the back of a chair. “Yes. He was. He did what he believed was necessary. What was right. And he might have fled the country, when the prince came home. But he was promised mercy.”
She looked back at Russell, who was watching her tensely. He said, “That is in the past now, lady. And you will admit the king has shown you mercy. In allowing the penitent daughter of a fallen earl to attend his queen at court, he has shown himself gracious and forgiving.”
“Aye, shown,” she said passionately. “All show, all playacting—behold the bountiful King Charles—”
“Enough, my lady, enough. Your grief for your father does you credit, no doubt, but you must not let it make you stupid. You are not the heroine of an old play; revenge is not in our story. Again, shall I remind you of what you have at stake?”
Eleanor straightened, her lips tightening. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
“I have always said you were the only intelligent person in your entire family,” Lord Russell went on. “A pity that you were not born a man. Your brother is as foolish as his father.”
“If you please, my lord, no, you need not remind me.” Her voice was hoarse with bitterness. “My brother’s foolishness is the halter round my neck.”
Her brother, her beloved younger brother, as passionate a Parliamentarian as their father had been, and wild to avenge him. It had been nothing, truly—only impetuous talk with sons of other dissenters—but oh, God, the reckless boy needs must put it in a letter, put it in writing.
It could have been far worse; the letter could have fallen into the hands of authority rather than their country neighbor’s. When the zealous young Lord Russell had come to her, he had told her he did not wish to see her brother in the Tower; he did not wish to see their lands seized, she and her mother left homeless. He did not wish it. But while he held this proof of her brother’s crime, she must play his game. She must come to London, in exile from all she loved, and do things she had no skill in at all: dissemble and feign as she spied upon the queen.
Russell came too close again, one hand on her arm to keep her still. She knew he did it with deliberation, to let her know what he could do, if he would. But she did not truly fear him on that point. For all his ruthlessness, he was too temperate and self-controlled to violate her honor. As for her own desires, if matters had gone differently, if they had been wed? She hardly knew. Any such tender inclinations in her had been cauterized the day her father died.
He spoke quietly. “Well, then. No more of that. I will not harry you more. But we must have patience, and steadiness of will. We are playing chess, not some witless pall-mall. Hate the king all you like, but do not let it distract you from our purpose: to secure the country against the threat of a Popish queen.”
He released h
er, and began his restless pacing again. “We must find out something against her. Something sufficient to send her home and free the king to marry a good Protestant princess. There must be something; it is not in the Catholic nature to be innocent of all intrigue.”
Eleanor sank down into a chair. She was aware she had not eaten yet this day, and it was nearly evening. She never wanted to eat, nowadays.
Her head swimming, she said, “I will try, I promise. I am sure I will find something. I have begun well; I will continue to attempt to gain her confidence. I think she is kindly disposed toward me.”
“I am glad to hear it.” Russell spoke absently, as though he were thinking of something else. He turned back to her. “There is something . . . perhaps nothing. But I have heard . . . the barest wisp of a rumor.”
“Yes?”
“It is suggested that she insisted upon a Catholic wedding, in secret. That she married the king privately by her own rites, before making a mockery of our own decent ceremonies. For a king of England to undergo any such rite in his own dominion presided over by a Romish priest is quite outside the law.”
Eleanor’s eyes widened. “If I could discover such a thing . . . !”
“Aye. It would do our business for us. It would go off like gunpowder, and hurl her back to Portugal well scorched.”
She stood, perfectly composed once more, and gave him a grave curtsy. “It grows late. I must return to Whitehall. Trust me, sir.”
He did not return her bow. But he nodded, and spoke with a degree more civility. “I do trust you. Only look you my trust is not misplaced.”
“Fear me not. No hawk has ever watched a mouse more keenly than I will watch the queen.”
• • •
Having followed the slow-moving train of sedan chairs back to Whitehall, Jenny hurried under the arch of the Holbein Gate, across an expanse of graveled courtyard and in through a small side door. She pattered along halls and up and down stairs, winding about through a maze whose key she had not long mastered. She could have laughed to think how naïve she’d been before coming, to think of the palace as though it were merely a large house. It was more like a sprawling city within the city, wing upon wing, outbuildings, courtyards, ornamental gardens and kitchen gardens, on and on. But at the very least, she had by now learned her way about sufficiently for her duties.
She emerged at last into a large, hot, and clamorous hall: the kitchens. These were not the only kitchens at Whitehall, but they served the royal households and those of the Duke and Duchess of York and the Lady Castlemaine, all of whose rooms were conveniently close to each other.
Well, convenient for some.
The kitchens filled a long room, light filtering down from high windows, whitewashed brick ovens lining one wall, work-scarred tables running down the middle, large open hearths at either end. Fires roared, cooks and kitchen boys shouted, knives and wooden spoons banged and clattered, the short-legged turnspit dog ran in his wooden wheel up on the wall, revolving a dripping pig above the banked fire. Various doors led to pantries and butteries, and tall shelves gleamed with platters in silver and pewter and gold. Down at the far end, a cluster of the queen’s own Portuguese cooks worked apart, distinguished by their red neckerchiefs.
Jenny went straight to the shelf where the queen’s teapot stood, and carried it to a worktable. She handled it with reverence, for it was the rarest thing she had ever had the care of: tall and ewer-shaped, of porcelain painted and gilded all over with flowers and long snaky dragons. No one else she knew had such a thing as a teapot, let alone one that had come a-voyaging all the way from China on a Portuguese trading ship, and then to England with Catherine in a great straw-stuffed crate. She set it down, and went to fetch the paper-lined wooden box, stamped with strange red foreign symbols, that contained the precious tea.
All the while she worked, not one person greeted her. In fact, they all seemed to avoid even looking at her, as though utterly absorbed in their tasks. She sighed. What now? Had they talked about it and decided it wasn’t enough to tease and scorn her, but they must absolutely shun her too? In the months since she’d been in London, she’d only made one friend, Mavis, and perhaps that was only because they shared a sleeping room. And then there was Thom . . . but she pushed that thought away. With everyone else almost, she’d been wrong-footed and looked down upon and tsked at almost past bearing, and made to know she was a fish very far out of her proper water. Well, she cared not. She would serve the queen and trust God and let the rest fall out as it might.
Lifting the lid of the tall pot, she carefully spooned in the right amount of tea. It was stale enough stuff. Tea was not plentiful in England, but she would have thought the queen would be better supplied. Was Jenny the only servant she had who put her whole heart into her work? So she grumbled inwardly, as she went over to a kettle steaming on the hearth, wrapped her apron round its handle, and carried it back to carefully pour in the near-boiling water.
Steam billowed out of the pot—and Jenny gagged and coughed. What was that horrible stench? She hastily set down the kettle and brought her apron up to cover her mouth and nose. A foul smell emanated from the pot—what on earth—?
The room burst into loud and raucous laughter as every soul, from the haughty chef de cuisine to the lowliest scullion laughed and pointed and jeered. She stared, then flushed with anger and blazed out at them, “A joke, is it? Do you think it funny, to poison the queen?”
They only laughed louder at that.
“Ah, don’t be daft, we knew you’d smell it first!”
“What odds she’d know the difference, the nasty stuff she eats!”
“Ho, as if she has a nose for smell left, with the reek of that Popish incense!”
Their words echoed in Jenny’s ears as they roared and hallooed and fell against each other with the joy of her outrage.
“Oh, will ye look at it, mad as a kicked hen, is it!”
“Well, there you are, foreigner’s got no sense of humor!”
“Ah, can’t you take a joke, little Spaniard?”
“The funniest thing this age, oh, ha-ha-ha!”
Jenny was speechless and choked with fury. At the far end of the kitchens, she saw the Portuguese cooks look grim, but at her pleading glance, they turned silently back to their tasks. They had to work down here; they couldn’t afford a battle. Worse, there was Mavis, not joining in the laughter, to be sure, but not speaking up for her, not meeting her eyes.
Jenny set her jaw, picked up the reeking pot, and carried it through the door into the sunken kitchen yard, leaving the rude cacophony behind her. She marched over to the wall where the slops were dumped and poured out the hot stew of tea and—she supposed—horse shit, careful not to splash her skirts. Then she went to the pump, picked up a wet rag, and cleaned out the pot, cradling it protectively despite the stink.
She understood rough humor. Servants everywhere had a way of letting off steam with plain talk and teasing. This was something different. This was meant to hurt. They were letting her know she was an outsider, and always would be. Her sight blurred, and she blinked hard. She would be damned before she let them see they’d gotten to her.
Someone had come up, and was offering her a long-handled scrubbing brush. Jenny rubbed her forearm quickly across her eyes, and looked up. It was Mavis. Jenny’s lips tightened. She took the brush without a word.
Mavis glanced back at the door, and stood with her back to Jenny, her hands on her hips, stretching as though to ease her back.
“Never mind them, Jen,” she remarked to the sky. “It’s only by way of a jape, you know.”
“I don’t know. And thanks very much for speaking up.”
Mavis sighed. “Well, I’m sorry for it, I am. But what could I do? I’ve got to get along, and they won’t like you more for liking me less. You’re new. It’ll pass.”
“It’s not only because I’m new. You know that.”
Mavis chewed her lip. To be fair, she did look rueful. “Aye,
it’s true. Your being half foreign and a countrywoman to boot, and that loyal to the new queen . . .”
Jenny shook a stray lock of hair out of her face and glowered up at Mavis. “And are they not loyal? She’s their queen too, isn’t she?”
“Now, Jen, off your high horse, it’s not treason they’re about, but you can’t make people love where they don’t. They don’t know her yet. And they don’t know you. Give it time, that’s all.”
Jenny rinsed the pot out for the fifth time, and put her nose right inside to inhale. Sweet as well water.
She handed Mavis back the brush. Mavis made a face, and threw it across the yard to the slop heap. Jenny couldn’t help but snort a short laugh, and Mavis looked relieved. Well, Jenny thought, disappointed as she was, could she blame her? Mavis was a sensible girl, not looking for quarrels, and was it her fault Jenny was feeling so terribly alone? Again, Thom’s face came unbidden into her mind. He looked no more English than Jenny. Did he know what it was like to be an outsider? Would he have stood up for her, if he’d been here?
She shook the last drops of cold water out of the pot, and went back inside. Everyone was hard at work; she was greeted with no worse than subdued sniggers and wry looks. She made the tea, and turned to leave with her loaded tray.
She paused in the door and looked back. How she longed to say something to put them all in their place, to shame them and wipe their eyes, something witty and scornful and devastating! She took a deep breath, hoping for inspiration.
Nothing came. And no one was minding her anyway. She exhaled, squared her shoulders, and went her way.
• • •
Catherine sat at her writing table by the window in a loose indoor gown, finishing a letter to her mother, Queen Regent of Portugal. Her spaniel Feliciana lay under the table with her head resting warmly on Catherine’s foot. The candles had been lit, but she held up the page to the last of the autumn daylight to read over what she’d written.
Her last letter from Mamãe had been worrying. It was more full of admonitions to her daughter than news from home, but Catherine could read the cracks in the queen’s usual stoicism. Her younger brother the king was in no wise fit to rule; the childhood illness that had withered one arm had disordered his wits as well, and without their mother’s wise and steady regency Portugal would likely be in a sad state. Lately her brother had come under evil influences, and Catherine feared he was growing rebellious. She wished she could be there to help rein in his wildness. Alfonso was fond of her, and would sometimes listen to her when he would not to others.
Whitehall--Season One Volume One Page 18
