Ladies in Waiting

by Laura L. Sullivan

  His shoes—the foppish slippers favored at court, red-heeled, with bows at the toes—were stained dark purple-black near the sole. Her own boots had been tinted a similar color. She was certain it was mulberry juice.

  Zabby gasped, so that the queen, under her ministrations, gave her a concerned look. “Only a pin, Your Majesty,” she said, and stared hard at Barbara and Buckingham, calculating. Buckingham was the right size, as large as the man she’d seen the night before, and he favored an expansive golden wig with trailing curls. It might not have been him—or he might have been in St. James’s Park coincidentally, for his own purposes—but it was too likely for her to dismiss. What’s more, the man had let himself into Barbara’s room without a knock or announcement, something only a relative (or lover) would do, not a hireling.

  If Barbara was involved, mischief was afoot; if Buckingham had combined forces with her, it must be downright evil.

  But no, it could not be. Who would want to harm poor sweet Beth? And what harm could they do to her by granting her fondest wish? Zabby’s mind, easily as keen as Buckingham’s but less well versed in the subtleties of treachery, could not unravel it.

  Then, with a little laugh, she chided herself. Why look for intricacies and evil when the simplest answer will likely suffice? Didn’t Papa say that while you should explore all avenues, the most probable solution will be the most obvious? Harry must be doing some important job for the king, and Buckingham, as the king’s dearest friend, was playing messenger. And afterward he merely paid a visit to his cousin Barbara, who had nothing to do with any of it.

  Still, she could not help but be worried that the court’s two most notorious troublemakers were in some way involved with the fate of her innocent friend.

  In the morning, Eliza, dressed more soberly than usual, sat ensconced with her father and Lord Ayelsworth. She kept her head bowed and a modest little smile on her face as her father spoke to her quite sternly.

  To his surprise, she responded gently, “Why, of course I will marry him, Father.” To her personal disgust she managed a shy, seductive glance at her beau under batted eyelashes. Her acting was progressing apace. “I would never go counter to your wishes, particularly when they so closely follow my own. Only . . .” She looked up to her father appealingly. “Please, may we wait until after the queen returns from taking the waters at Tunbridge Wells and Bath? I have sworn to serve her, and she would be so vexed if I wasn’t there to dress her hair. She says I’m the only one who understands how to place a comb.”

  He laughed and patted Eliza on the head. “Ah, what a loyal little featherhead I’ve raised. Combs for the queen! You’ll soon have a host of other duties as a wife and mother, no doubt more pleasant than sticking tortoiseshell in a popish poll. Still, there’s no harm in waiting a month or two. When will the queen return?”

  “In October. I’m not sure exactly when.”

  “Then let us plan the wedding for the middle of November, the second Sunday. Will that give you time to buy enough pretties for your trousseau? Here, my dear.” He was positively benevolent now, and Eliza felt a fleeting qualm at deceiving the old man. He handed her a purse fat with coins. Buying and selling, she thought. My body, my loins, my generation. All for sale on the open market, and I’m not even the seller. “Buy what you wish,” he said. “There’s plenty more where that came from. I mean for my daughter to be happy!”

  She had to bow her head to hide a most unfilial snarl. She remembered the father who had petted her as a little girl, who bought her books and ponies and ribbons in every color, wind-up automatons and foreign songbirds to entertain her. He thinks he loves me, she thought. He really thinks it is for the best. She hated him for his ignorance.

  She controlled herself, and simpered at Ayelsworth, who laughed nervously, his hand still hovering protectively near his cods.

  That evening she dressed as Mr. Duncan and confirmed with Killigrew that her play was to be performed upon the court’s return from its peregrinations. Most of the players would be traveling with the court to amuse the ladies as they took the restorative waters.

  Next Eliza tracked down the owner of her little apartment at the end of Maypole Alley and, after a bout of strenuous dickering, managed to secure a ten-year lease in exchange for the sack of gold that was supposed to buy her stockings and embroidered smocks for her husband’s pleasure. She put the lease in Nell’s name, just in case it ever came to the law. After all, Mr. Duncan didn’t exist.

  “Ten years of safety,” she told Nelly.

  “Of lodging, anyway. If you don’t have money, what will we do for food?”

  “Oh, I’ll manage some way. I can sell a play or two a year, and maybe act.”

  “I’d love to act,” Nell said wistfully.

  “Well, why don’t you? All of the players adore you.”

  “The men do, anyway.”

  “Well, they’re the ones who make the decisions. For now.”

  “My sister Rose said the theater is looking for another orange girl this season. I could do that for a time, to tide us over.”

  “Only, an orange girl’s next door to a whore. Don’t forget you’re in Mr. Duncan’s keeping. I don’t want you earning any extra money that way. Mr. Duncan will be mighty jealous.” She smiled, but she was only half joking.

  “I wouldn’t mind, you know, if it brings in money.”

  “I have a bit of my own, don’t forget, dear, no matter if the worst happens. Two hundred pounds a year or so, plenty to get us by if we’re careful. Be patient, have faith in me, and before long you’ll be living like a queen.”

  “I don’t see as the poor queen lives so very well. I’d rather live like one of the king’s mistresses.”

  Eliza laughed and kissed Nelly on the cheek. “He’s the only man I dare not be jealous of. If His Majesty wants you, Mr. Duncan won’t object to parting with you.” She didn’t think Mr. Duncan had a thing to worry about.

  Chapter 18

  The Healing Waters

  THE THREE ELIZABETHS did not forget their sorrows while the court was on pilgrimage, but they managed to defer them. Eliza and Beth had been granted a temporary hymeneal reprieve, and each planned to make the stay of execution permanent.

  Eliza, filled with an excited dread about what she planned to do, was preternaturally lively and witty, and many of the courtiers went home after an afternoon’s converse with her to scribble down her epigrams and later claim them as their own. In years to come, she’d discover lines in plays that sounded awfully familiar.

  She danced and joked, gambled and gamboled, and lived as high a life as she could manage in skirts. Her father had returned to his estate, but Ayelsworth, parasite that he was, had naturally followed the court and plagued Eliza with unwanted, awkward affections until she actually bribed two penniless younger sons to become his disciples and pretend they thought him a mortal god of taste and brilliance. Thus encumbered, flattered into obedience, he spent most of the day spouting off his own silly opinions and utterly missing the two men’s yawns. They weren’t such good actors as their employer, but they did their best to earn their money, and Ayelsworth was fooled and distracted enough to leave Eliza in peace.

  At Tunbridge Wells, Eliza took one swig of the chalybeate waters and spat it out.

  Ayelsworth, who had broken free from his feigned admirers, giggled and said, “You ought to drink it, my lady. ’Tis said that taking these waters all but guarantees conceiving a son.”

  She looked at him evenly for a long moment, so that he flushed and began to stammer—he still wasn’t sure if she was Puritan or wanton, and didn’t much care, beyond what it might mean for his chances of consummating the union and securing her fortune. Then she said, loud enough for those standing nearest to hear, “How ignorant I am—I thought children were gotten in quite another way. Then surely, sir, I should avoid the waters now. Or would you prefer me to come to our wedding big-bellied with a son?”

  Ayelsworth slunk away, red and confused, and Eli
za dumped the remainder of her water on the ground. “It tastes of nails,” she said to the small crowd around her. If the water stank and tasted of eggs and iron, she wouldn’t drink it, no matter how good the world said it was for her.

  Beth spent most of her time with the queen, living in a dream of love. Despite formidable protest, her mother had been forced to remain behind. These travels were for the king and queen’s pleasure, and their pleasure would be marred by that woman’s presence. So, though several hundred rode with the entourage, Lady Enfield was told to stay in London, albeit in slightly more diplomatic terms. She ground her teeth and poked her silver beak into the face of every courtier she thought might change the royal mind, but in the end she could not quite defy the order. She did, however, closet Catherine alone before the journey and once again promise deadly consequences to anyone who allowed Beth to fall to ruin.

  Beth, blessedly free from scrutiny, reveled in thoughts of her lover. She sat by Catherine’s side for hours on end, playing with her hair and talking, in a confusing abstract, about love. The queen, who had heard of Beth’s ambitious engagement, smiled indulgently. She knew little about the Earl of Thorne, but if the girl waxed this enthusiastic about him in the months before the wedding, it was sure to be a happy union.

  Beth had already received a coded message from Harry telling her he would meet her in Bath, and they would arrange their elopement from there. Beth waited patiently for the day her lover would come for her.

  And what of Zabby? At Tunbridge Wells she rediscovered the king who was her friend, and enjoyed that so much, she sometimes forgot for minutes at a time that she loved him.

  Tunbridge was little more than a spring with rough rooms on either side, one for the repose of ladies, one for gentlemen, though as might be imagined there was much commingling. Southborough was the nearest town, but rather than try to lodge in this cramped and unfashionable place, Charles had decided to emulate kings of old and established the entire court on the downs in gaily flapping tents and pavilions. Standards fluttered in the air, and the whole thing was lovely and vastly inconvenient, romantic and almost intolerable. The good parts, as always, were experienced by the upper crust—starlit nights, cool breezes, rambles, a sense that one was on a gay adventure—while the bad parts—hauling water in for washing, hauling the night soil out for dumping—were borne by the servants. If not for their constant labor, the place would have stunk unbearably within three days, and no doubt the whole court would have died of dysentery.

  As it was, the king and his friends lived as they imagined King Arthur had on his promenades and pilgrimages. He rode hard across the downs, and though there were no stags to bring to bay, he took his greyhounds and lurchers out to course for hares. He also renewed his interest in falconry and, though he didn’t catch much, enjoyed riding for a time classically posed with a harrier on his wrist.

  Zabby was with him all the while, riding as hard as Charles, full-skirted but astride, the wind whipping her white-blond hair. When they hunted they always had companions—to Zabby’s dismay Frances had a good seat and looked splendid in a habit, sidesaddle—but Zabby managed to lure Charles into other pursuits where they were not likely to be followed for long. They explored the spring, speculating about its origin, its properties, examining the water and surrounding earth through the lenses he brought with him. They hired a local farmer to show them the ruins of a Roman villa and, much older, the weathered battlements of a hill fort. Other courtiers, eager to ingratiate, always started on these expeditions but even for king and country couldn’t maintain their façade of interest for long, and after a while, Zabby invariably found herself blissfully alone with Charles.

  She succeeded in schooling herself, never revealing by word or glance or touch that she desired him, and Charles treated her like a sister . . . or perhaps a favorite younger brother, because he never would have allowed his sister, Minette, now a princess of France, to slog barefoot through creeks, digging the banks for arrowheads.

  One day they rode their mounts to exhaustion to see an ancient giant figure of a horse carved into a chalk hillside. They sprawled on the opposite hill, talking about what tribe could have carved the elegant white beast, and for what purpose.

  “I suppose there was a horse god, or they killed a horse as sacrifice,” Zabby conjectured.

  Charles disagreed. “I think perhaps they made it simply because it is beautiful and men love to gaze at loveliness.” He was looking at her when he said this, and Zabby’s heart gave a great saltation. Charles touched her hair. “Almost as pale as the chalk,” he said, and she didn’t know if it was compliment or criticism or mere observation.

  Charles lay down and took her hand in his. She stiffened. But a moment later he was asleep in the sunshine, and she kept perfectly still, shading him with her body, for more than two hours.

  “I love you,” she whispered to her sleeping king.

  Catherine too was having a marvelous time, mainly because Barbara was still at Whitehall, though this satisfaction was somewhat marred by the fact that Barbara had recently given birth to her third bastard by the king. Then too, while Frances was frequently riding or hunting with the king, she was never, as far as the queen knew, alone with him. Tents made for pleasant dalliance so long as no one worried about keeping it a secret, and she was sure she would have heard if Charles had finally convinced Frances to yield. Timidly, Catherine had begun to employ her own spies, and though they gleefully reported that Charles was still sedulously courting her young rival, they assured her that the maid was maiden still.

  She knew Zabby was often alone with Charles, but if she had any suspicions, she fondled her seashell and fought them down. She believed her husband, and yet . . . there was something in the girl’s eyes when she looked on her sovereign—a wistfulness, a devotion. That same look was in Catherine’s eyes, if only she knew it, and it would never leave them, not all her life.

  While at Tunbridge, Catherine discovered a pastime that perfectly suited her early training in the convent—fishing. Her childhood and youth had been spent gazing placidly over verdant scenes, sitting in the shade, deep in contemplation, and it was a short step to place a rod in her hand. She was accustomed to hours of solitude and patient silence, and so she had the serenity to wait for the fish’s pleasure. What’s more, the countless hours of embroidery allowed her to tie a pretty fly, and it was not long before she was happily casting her line into merry creeks and still ponds, in such prayerful repose that it was sometimes a shock, practically a disappointment, when a fish finally struck. Charles joined her frequently, though he preferred more active pursuits, and these were some of the happiest days of Catherine’s life, when he sat beside her, scarcely talking, stroking her arm occasionally.

  They retired early, and he spent every night in her tent.

  By the time they quit Tunbridge Wells, Catherine had begun to suspect that she might at last be pregnant. She mentioned it to no one, though, not even her trusted maids of honor. She didn’t realize that most of the court followed her monthly courses so closely that they suspected almost as soon as she did.

  Chapter 19

  The Quickened Queen

  CATHERINE WAS NOT A NATURAL HORSEWOMAN, but in an attempt to show she was as good as Frances, she donned her tightest habit and rode a large, handsome leopard-spotted gray for the last leg into Bath. She trotted at Charles’s side all the while, smiling blithely, but unfortunately the beast had an awkward gait and she wasn’t skilled enough to correct it, so by the time they rode into the city of creamy gold stone, her thighs felt like they’d been ground under a pestle.

  The three Elizabeths, seeing her distress, lured her into the thermal baths, and she found these so soothing, she visited every day. Wearing long, full shifts that billowed about them, they would soak by the hour, gossiping (another sport for which the queen was acquiring a taste), singing, and helping the queen perfect her English. Sometimes Simona or Winifred joined them, but the older ladies thought it was a ba
rbaric habit that would disrupt the humors.

  “A good wipe-down with a damp cloth every other day is enough for any modest Englishwoman,” one of her ladies sniffed. But Catherine loved to let her muscles melt, her vision blur in the steam, dreaming of a warm nursery filled with happy children, while outside the baths the first frost settled on the grass.

  She drank the heavy ferrous waters too, with each sip feeding the baby she knew grew inside her. She ate the sweets and pastries the city was becoming famous for, and her slim figure grew rounder. Charles began to pay attention to places he’d previously overlooked.

  One morning, Charles had risen betimes for a game of tennis, while Catherine lazed in bed. She sent the chambermaids away and only the three Elizabeths remained.

  “What would you like to do today, Your Majesty?” Eliza asked as she rummaged through the queen’s jewels, holding them up to her throat and thinking how well they’d look against Nelly’s creamy skin. She passed along a pair of fire-laced opal drops to Beth, who fixed them in Catherine’s earlobes. “Lady Southesk is setting up tables for gleek this morning.” The card game was currently in fashion at court. “I believe some of the ladies are going riding, and there’s a party going to Lord Bartlett’s estate to tour his gardens.”

  “It all sounds dreadfully dull,” Catherine replied.

  “What would you like to do, then, Your Majesty? Maybe a bit of archery?” The queen was becoming quite a sure shot with her light bow. Like fishing, it was another pastime that required patience, and she had that to spare.

  Catherine rose and stretched, deciding, and suddenly Beth let out a little shriek. “Oh, Your Majesty!” She pointed to a red blot of blood on the white sheet. “We had all hoped that you’d at last . . .”