Ladies in Waiting

by Laura L. Sullivan

  Chapter 22

  The Edge of the Precipice

  AS WITH ANY TASTY BIT of gossip, news of the queen’s abduction spread through the court and the kitchens, thence like a plague to the populace. Like all such scandal, it was a joint of truth larded with savory speculation, but for once this was carefully guided by a team of courtiers charged with relaying misinformation.

  The queen, it seems, had let it get about that she was jealous of all the women who had been charmed by the ne’er-do-well Elphinstone, and had jocularly demanded that she receive her fair share of the attention. She did not like it that the meanest of her ladies in waiting, her insignificant maids of honor, had had an exciting meeting with the famed highwayman. She complained loudly—there were people who had been instructed to swear they had heard her do so—and word had no doubt traveled to the footpad’s lair. That bold and dashing scoundrel had taken this as a personal challenge, and put his mighty cunning to use to trap the poor queen alone and unprotected.

  All the court laughed to think that the queen had been abducted by royal summons! It can’t be a crime, the fops said, if Elphinstone was simply obeying the queen’s orders. Why, he should get a knighthood out of it!

  Beth fretted and paced, and her soft, gentle curves all wasted in sorrow as she mourned for her lost dream. In her inmost heart, hidden from all the world, she still thought her Harry would rescue her.

  She was to marry the Earl of Thorne in a week.

  Oh, Harry, why didn’t I go with you? she thought. You would have let the queen go anyway, I know it, if only I had tried harder to persuade you. Harry, my Harry, why didn’t I go with you?

  And in a secret place, even deeper than her inmost heart, hidden as well as we can hide anything from ourselves, was a dark thought: I should have let him keep the queen. At least we would have been together.

  Love will do that.

  She was not allowed to mope. When they returned to the palace, her mother snatched her up like a raptor and tucked her under her wing. She still slept with the other girls, but all the day she spent with her mother, being prepared for her marriage.

  “A dying queen has no need of you,” she snapped when Beth protested that she had other duties. “Being maid of honor was a useful occupation, but now you have a better one.”

  Perhaps Beth was more fortunate than other girls. While most mothers taught their daughters to walk with their head erect, their limbs graceful, Lady Enfield told Beth in exquisite detail every variation of what might befall her on her wedding night and the nights to follow. Another mother would drill her child in the lute and the virginal, in obedience and modesty and industry. Beth learned when to give her husband oysters, when to slip saltpeter into his morning draught. She learned which arguments are worth winning, how to make defeat seem a victory. Her mother schooled her in the secret ways a woman can harness a man, break him, so that he believes he still runs free. She taught her how to lie, how to guard truth like a treasure and use it like a weapon. When Beth’s attention wandered, as it did every few moments, her heart reaching out for her love, she received a smart rap on the legs with a cane.

  In short, Lady Enfield taught her everything she wished she had known when, as a pretty young thing, she’d married Beth’s father. The things that would have worked to keep almost any man tractable—any man save the Earl of Thorne.

  Beth no longer fought her mother, no longer insisted she’d never marry Thorne. Harry will save me, she thought, and if he doesn’t, why, then, what in the world could possibly matter? Plague or death, fire or flood. It would all be one without love.

  She did not quite lose hope, but she’d almost achieved resignation. She spent long hours thinking of Harry wealthy and happy on a farm in Alsace, his sisters and mother relieved of their worries. In her most self-punishing times she envisioned him married to a black-eyed French girl and told herself that though she could never be happy again, at least she could be content knowing Harry was.

  It was fortunate that Catherine’s illness freed the maids of honor from their duties, for Eliza’s own business kept her perpetually on her feet. Her father had taken rooms near the palace and visited her every day, dragging the unfortunate Ayelsworth along. To the young lord’s surprise Eliza treated him with courtesy, or if she railed against him, she was so subtle that he could not quite be sure.

  “My almanac tells me this will be an auspicious day for vows and agreements,” her father said, thumbing through the well-worn volume. For a man so practical, so religious, he put an amazing amount of faith in that book of superstition, and rarely took an important step without consulting it. Because of his trusty Almanac, he’d never in his life bathed on a Friday, and thus never caught a cold.

  Eliza smiled sweetly and said, “Oh, dearest Father, I could never take such a happy step during such a sad time. They say the queen is dying.”

  All the world admitted to it now, and in fact there seemed to be a contest among physicians to make the direst pronouncement. Once her death was assured, one said she would succumb to a putrefying fever, another to an eruption of bile, a third to a boiling of the blood. All they could agree on was that she was in great pain, and most certainly at death’s very door.

  “The signing of our marriage contract will be the start of the very happiest time of my life. Father, if we sign it as the queen is on her deathbed, I would always associate my greatest happiness with her great suffering. I am so eager to marry Lord Ayelsworth.” She cast him a look that was probably meant to be yearning but struck him as distinctly carnivorous. “But how odd it would look to the rest of the world to be merry while everyone else is airing out their mourning garb.”

  He could see the reason in this, and consented to wait another two weeks, no more.

  “In the meantime, dear Father, do try to enjoy all the things London has to offer. I’m sure some of them are far too crass for your tastes, but . . . say, the theater will be opening soon. I’m told the tragedies are quite improving. Every sort of vice is soundly punished. Shall I have them take a box for you?”

  “I don’t believe the theater is a proper place for a young lady on the eve of her nuptials,” he said sternly.

  She let her eyes widen slowly. “Heaven forefend! Why, I do believe they allow women on the stage!” She said this as though alluding to a housewife who allowed pigs in her buttery. “But you can tell me afterward, in the most polite terms, what message of virtue they meant to convey. For I think they mean well, those playwrights, even if they do cater a bit to popular vulgarity.”

  “Well, now . . .” he began.

  “Oh, and if you don’t care for them, only think how you’ll be able to change them once you and the king are in nightly converse. You can see exactly how those playwrights go wrong and set them right, as soon as it is in your power.” She gulped, fought back the memory of her father offering her virginity and fertility to this fop on a golden platter, and kissed his grizzled head. “I am so proud of you, Father. How this country will prosper once you take it firmly in hand!”

  She’d practiced this speech, in male guise, in front of Killigrew, Nelly, and a dozen of the other actors until they applauded her hypocrisy. She (or rather Mr. Duncan) told them it was for her next play, and they thought it the most wonderful farce ever.

  Her father ate it up and patted her hand.

  “You’ll be there?” she asked, a mite too earnestly. “Do you promise? Opening night? It is supposed to be the most incredible thing ever witnessed on the stage.”

  Later, Ayelsworth caught her alone. “Given up your pretty scribblings, my pet?” he asked. “When first we met I recall you had some notion of writing a play.”

  “Oh, that was but a poem, never a play. A foolish notion of childhood. Pray, never mention such things to my father.” She squeezed out a painfully girlish laugh. “If he hears I’m such an infant, he won’t let me marry for another five years.”

  So Ayelsworth wisely held his tongue.

  Thus went Eliza�
��s days. After spouting filial homage and stewing internally, she shed her skirts, donned her breeches, and slipped out into the night.

  Her play had been polished to perfection, every actor drilled in each comedic nuance. Killigrew himself would recite the prologue. Each evening they rehearsed and drank and talked until near dawn.

  “This play will be the making of you, Duncan,” Killigrew said, slapping his friend on the back. “And the saving of me. You may not know, but I am a poor hand at money matters.”

  Eliza looked solemn. It was well known that if Killigrew had a sovereign in the morning he’d spend three at dinner, gamble away five more, and invest another ten in an impossible venture. Money flew from him like swallows in spring, and if it weren’t for the support of the king, the King’s Theater would have shut down long ago.

  “After opening night, your name will be such that people will pay their shillings simply to read it on the notices. Duncan, my boy, you are my salvation. What will you have of me, eh? Your name in red splashed across the pit? The orange girls to carry you home? Ah, wait, you have an orange girl of your own now.” For Nelly had joined their ranks, and got as much money for her saucy quips as for her firm round fruit. “Name it, Duncan—anything short of money and it will be yours.”

  “There’s only one thing I want, my friend,” she said in her deepest voice. “On opening night, after the curtain falls, take me onstage and let me tell the world who is the author of Nunquam Satis.” Strapped tightly beneath her waistcoat, her bosom strained with anxious breath.

  “That’s all?” He sighed with relief. He was a bit drunk, and afraid he’d been too extravagant in his offer. “Certainly. You have my solemn oath on it.”

  And it was, after all, a prime day for vows. “You must let me in to see her!” Zabby said, trying to shove her way past, but Penalva, one of the few Portuguese attendants left from the queen’s homeland, understood English only when it was convenient—and at the moment it was most inconvenient. The dying queen was having her head shaved.

  Zabby could see little past the woman’s bulk, but the stench in the room was overpowering. Incense smoke hung in a churning cloud near the ceiling, a cloying odor of resins and spices. There was the smell of burning flesh, too, and Zabby thought they might be resorting to animal sacrifice to save their queen.

  “I am her attendant, and attend her I will!” Zabby insisted, and dodged around fleshy arms.

  As soon as she was through, she understood that the charred meat smell came from the red-hot glass cups that had been placed on Catherine’s bare skin to draw out her ill humors. Other patches of skin were blistered and flushed from a paste made of beetle wings and ginger. In the corner of the room, tucked beneath a table, was a copper basin of blood. Far more, Zabby thought, than the poor queen could spare.

  Catherine’s eyes were open, but bleary and unfocused, and she mumbled something under her breath, more eloquent sigh than words. In a corner a priest chanted in Latin, and at her bedside an efficient-looking woman scraped away the last of the queen’s beautiful black locks with a razor.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Zabby asked, aghast, and was met with hisses from the Portuguese attendants.

  “Hush,” one said. “The angels are near. She is dying.”

  “If she’s dying, it is because you are killing her. Where is the doctor?”

  He sat in the corner paring his nails with the little blade he’d used to bleed her. He’d done quite literally all that was known to medical science. Now that it seemed to be failing, he blamed not his knowledge or yet his technique, but a higher power. In his complacence he seemed to say, If God did not want this woman dead, I would have prevailed, but what can a physician do against the will of God? He had bowed out of the battle gracefully, after, for form’s sake, putting the queen through terrible torments.

  “You should be giving her broth, keeping her warm, rubbing her limbs, perhaps—but what is this?” Her lip curled in disgust as a man in a gold-embroidered robe drew a live pigeon, pink-necked and struggling, from a basket and wrung its neck so hard its head tore off, spraying a mist of scarlet. He proceeded to bind the twitching carcass onto the sole of Catherine’s bare foot, then reached for another bird, while at the other end a woman placed a cap of precious relics on Catherine’s head.

  Zabby gave a huff of disgust and went to find Charles, whom she’d not seen since the night in Bath when she’d revealed Beth’s secret.

  She had to ask a dozen pages and servants before she finally tracked him down on the tennis courts. She was shocked to discover that his opponent was Buckingham. Had Charles misunderstood her? It must be evident that Buckingham had something to do with the queen’s kidnapping. If she perished, the fault would be his. Had she been wrong? Were things not as they appeared? Perhaps Charles was lulling him into a false sense of security, the better to trap him later. If so, he was a master actor. He looked like he was thoroughly enjoying the game with his supposed dearest friend.

  But the queen’s survival was more important than figuring out Charles’s scheme. Zabby had not been allowed to see Catherine for days and, now that she’d forced her way in, was appalled at her condition. Why, a healthy soldier couldn’t survive that much bloodletting and blistering. Zabby had done what she could to make amends for her shameful desires by helping catch the queen’s abductor. Now she set herself to a more difficult task—saving the queen from her own doctors.

  Buckingham won by two points and leaped nimbly over the net to laugh and wrestle with his friend.

  “Char . . . Your Majesty!” Zabby called from the sidelines, where she stood with the several dozen spectators, courtiers, and hopeful petitioners who, in ever-jostling rotation, followed the king wherever he went.

  He rubbed his face vigorously with a cloth as he strolled up to her, still arm in arm with Buckingham. Zabby looked at the duke uncertainly, then came out with it.

  “You must do something about the queen’s treatment,” she said sternly. “The doctors are fools who all want to show off their most outlandish cures to a royal audience, and her Portuguese attendants have the room sealed tight and full of smoke, chanting as loud as bargemen. She needs air, and quiet, and to keep her blood in her body.”

  Buckingham laughed. “Have you physicked your moppets and think you can cure the queen, pet?” He smiled, but there was malice behind it. “You’re a loyal little maid of honor, I’m sure, and I’ve no doubt you’ll have a position still, may the worst befall.” He leaned in to Charles and said in the sort of whisper one uses on the stage, “And that position will be on her back in your bed, unless I miss my mark!”

  Like everyone else at court, he believed Zabby was one of the king’s many casual mistresses.

  “I do beg Your Grace’s pardon, but I know whereof I speak. They are killing the queen.” She fixed Buckingham with a steely gaze, then looked pleadingly at Charles. “They seem to be trying so hard to kill her with their cures, I’d almost think it was by design . . . or by command.”

  Charles looked at her sharply, then without a word for Buckingham hurried toward the queen’s apartments.

  Zabby turned to follow him, but Buckingham caught her arm.

  “What is your own design in this, miss?” he asked, as behind him a small page unfolded a footstool, climbed atop it, and affixed his master’s golden mane of wig.

  “None beyond the queen’s well-being,” she said.

  “Perhaps the gamblers should pay more mind to you. Frances has Old Rowley trailing after her like a puppy, but you, miss, send him off like a cur at your command.” He seemed to be talking almost to himself, calculating and speculating.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Zabby said.

  “Is she really dying, or is it only a ploy for pity?”

  She bit back what she wished to say. He was a duke, after all, and then too she hadn’t the time to say all the things she wished to say.

  “The queen is quite unwell,” she said blandly, and again tried to l
eave.

  “A hundred pounds if you tell me the moment she dies,” he whispered.

  This time she could not hide her disgust, but again held her tongue and walked away, while behind her Buckingham laughed.

  Chapter 23

  The Deathbed

  ZABBY HURRIED to catch up with Charles, and was out of breath by the time she came in at his heels.

  “Out!” he roared, and no one moved, each thinking he surely meant the other.

  “Are you deaf or treasonous? Out! All of you!”

  “Sire,” said the presiding physician, “Her Majesty is in a most delicate state. To leave her now might have fatal consequences.”

  Charles’s eyes grew large, and larger still, his face red, until the little doctor began to believe he might have a fatal consequence if he stayed. He scurried out the door.

  The Portuguese ladies left with clucks and murmurs, prayers and signs, but the priest in the corner stayed until Charles relieved him of his censer and guided him bodily out the door.

  Charles sighed, then choked on the fetid air.

  “Is it too cold to have the window open?” he asked Zabby, and a tight little knot within her unbound itself. They were together again. The sickroom was their elaboratory, Catherine their experiment. He trusted her; he asked her advice. She was his partner once more. Not the body, she reminded herself, but the mind. That’s where the truly blessed union lies.

  “I shouldn’t think so,” she said, throwing open the shutters and sucking in a deep, relieved breath as the smoke dissipated. “Not for a while, at least. Air and light are what she needs, and to be left to rest.”

  “Vis medicatrix naturae.”

  “Precisely! I told that to Chiffinch once, when he wanted to bleed the plague out of you.”

  “And he, perfidious man, quoted it back to me as his own a month later. Well, you’ve healed a king. Let us see if you can heal a queen. Hello, my love!” He’d finally noticed that Catherine was awake.