Ladies in Waiting (16 page)

“Fornication’s no novelty to him,” she went on, “though you’ve apparently come up with something bizarre to please him.” Zabby bristled, wishing she could tell the world once and for all that she and the king were not lovers. But then how Barbara would laugh at her!

Barbara smiled as pleasantly as if they were confederates, two admirals, perhaps, discussing how best to serve their monarch’s interest on the high seas. “It’s not you I have to worry about, nor you me, so long as you mind your place and never interfere with mine. Our danger lies there.” She nodded to where slim, golden Frances, now blindfolded for blindman’s buff, was letting herself be spun around. She stumbled unerringly into the king’s embrace, felt too low and guessed him to be Eduardo, the queen’s Portuguese dwarf, mistaking a fortuitously fondled bump for his nose. “For she says no.”

“Has he propositioned her?”

“Are you blind? He’s been after her for months now. She giggles and simpers and lets him paw her a bit, then pretends to be shocked and says not without marriage. She works him to a frenzy and then sends him away. Then he slakes it on us. Haven’t you noticed? There’s her fortune sitting like a cat in her own lap, and she won’t reach out to stroke it. She’s either the world’s master idiot, which is what we must hope for, or a thousand times cleverer than you or I.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I curse the day I married that blighted Palmer. If not for that . . . Well, I deceive myself. He needed Catherine’s money, and the people wouldn’t have stood for anything other than a princess, so he’d never have wed me even if I’d been free. But if the queen remains barren, and Frances keeps saying no in that way that seems to mean
yes, if only,
what do you think he’ll do? They say she has a drop of royal blood, if you dissect the escutcheons well enough, and if she’s virgin, too . . .”

“You mean he could cast off the queen and marry Frances?”

“That’s her game, if I smoke her right.”

“He wouldn’t do it!”

“If he gets no heir on his queen, he just might. It’s been done before, and no one can stomach the thought of James as king. Poor Catherine!”

“Poor Catherine? I thought you despised her.”

“Ah, well, one cannot despise a mouse in a trap. She had no say in her life. Not everyone is captain of her own vessel, like us. Besides, what would I be without her? She’s my safe port.”

“How do you mean?”

“Charles is bound to a childless, plain woman, so of course he loves elsewhere. But say he had a tart little baggage like that Frances to excite him, and give him children. Why, if she played her cards right he’d drop us all like blistering roasted chestnuts. I need Charles to stay bound to his yellow Portuguese bat. And he probably will. He likes things to be easy. Keep an eye on Frances, though. Together you and I should be enough to carbonado her.” She sighed. “If it gets too serious, we can always hire someone to ravish her. I doubt he’d be interested in spoiled goods, particularly for a queen. Well, back to business.”

With a wave of her fingers she sailed off and caught Charles expertly in her clutches, whirling him away from the pouting Frances, promising him untold delights. It didn’t look to Zabby as if they had anything to worry about.

What a merciless, terrible woman,
Zabby thought. All the same, there was something admirable about her. She was analytical, practical, almost scientific in her pursuit of power. With what cold precision she’d tossed off the scheme to have Frances raped, as though such a crime was but an inconvenience on the path to fulfillment, like the stink of urine in the quest for the visible soul. What a shame Barbara could not be a statesman, or a general.

She didn’t realize that in her own way, Barbara was.

Zabby stayed aloof for the rest of the festivities. She used to think the petty machinations of the court ladies beneath her notice, schemes of love and vengeance, but now she studied them like the natural history lessons they were. She saw Simona flirt simultaneously with four men, but after close observation Zabby realized it was all for the sake of a fifth, the Duke of York, whose interest increased in proportion to his competition. She watched Suffolk move among the foreign ambassadors, whispering a word here, granting a nod there, which struck Zabby as odd because she knew the mistress of the robes had no interest in politics. Then she remembered the woman had the queen’s ear, and as Catherine adjusted to court life people were beginning to court her favor too, thinking her word to the king might win them whatever they desired. She saw a something glinting change hands—a fine pair of diamond ear-drops from the Italian ambassador in an exchange for a message Suffolk would never deliver to the queen, that the queen would not comprehend, in any event, that her husband would not listen to. Gossip, bribes, blackmail, were the favored currency of the day.

Godmother Cavendish’s advice came back to Zabby.
I’m cleverer than any of them,
she thought,
and I have Charles’s ear. I could have ambassadors seeking my counsel. I could scheme to have funds sent here, withheld there. I could make such a fortune as to build my own elaboratory, a library surpassing the king’s, gardens full of wild beasts, alchemists and philosophers at my beck and call.

Zabby thought she didn’t care for money. The truth was, she simply had no wish to spend it as these empty-pated fops and wantons might. She could have money and power surpassing them all.

Why, look at Barbara. To the nation’s displeasure, Charles had granted Barbara all of his Christmas presents that year. So the clocks from the Netherlands, the Titian, the baubles and Bibles and pearls and plate from ingratiating courtiers and merchants all went into the royal mistress’s coffers, to be turned to cash, and thence to silks and jewels. What Zabby could do with that money! Her family had always been comfortable, but now, musingly, in the haze of the wassail bowl, she dreamed of extravagance: her own sort, a spendthrift riot of science and learning.

And all I have to do is take part in this vice and madness,
she thought.
I could be the most powerful woman in London, in England.

If the world worked out exactly right—and if I helped it along—I could be queen!

She’d been holding a goblet of raspberry cordial, viscous and rich as blood. When that thought struck home, the vessel slipped from her nerveless fingers, splashing Catherine’s hem with sanguine crimson. With a stifled cry, Zabby fled from the room.

She started for her own chamber, but at the last moment whirled, knowing it was all too likely one of her friends would seek her out there. Where to hide with her shame? The elaboratory, of course. Anyone might stumble on her elsewhere in the palace, but no one save Charles ever visited the elaboratory at night, and it was unlikely he’d be torn from the festivities by the lure of chemicals. She dashed down the hallways, her heels clack-clicking, and tucked herself away in her sanctuary.

Feverishly, she forced herself to work. There was a cured skin of a serpent waiting to be stuffed, and she spent some time coaxing it into lifelike articulations. If she could only focus on science, perhaps she could subdue those shameful thoughts.

But she looked into the snake’s dead, hollow eyes, thought how fine a pair of emeralds would look there, once it was mounted, and from there began to mull once again over what she could do with a fortune, with power.

How easy it was for her agile mind to light upon the notions that would make it acceptable—preferable, even, the best and most rational course. Catherine was not happy at court. She preferred the solemn silence of the convent. Charles wasn’t a brute; he’d not concoct some petty treason to behead her for. No, he’d simply point out her unsuitability, her barrenness, and send her back to Portugal. Where she’d be happy, Zabby added. And then, whom else would he choose but her? Not Barbara, married, and enough of a termagant to frighten Charles away from a permanent union in any case. Certainly not that insipid, giggling infatuation of the moment, Frances. And not, she was sure, some fat German princess or Spanish infanta. Who understood Charles? Who had nursed him back from the grave? Who shared his passion for books, for science, for beasts and plants and ships? Only Zabby.

“No!” she said aloud. “I couldn’t.” But that wasn’t true, and with a certain pride she amended it. “I wouldn’t.”

Still, the possibility loomed, and she could find no way to banish it utterly.

Me, queen! Me, with the riches and learning of the nation at my command!
The idea glowed before her like a sun, and she stared, though she knew it would blind her.

It would be an honorable way of having Charles, she thought. No, not honorable, but in the eyes of the world, to be a wife was a better thing than to be a whore.
If I were his wife, my passion for him would be right and proper. I could yield to it, as often as I cared to.
And as Barbara herself said (and who should know the ways of men, if not her?), if Charles had a true friend and helpmeet in his wife, he would not look elsewhere for his diversions.

I could do it,
she thought,
just to show that I could. The world might be a better place for it.

For a moment it seemed to her no more than an experiment. Given such a set of variables, with such forces acting upon them, would the anticipated result follow? Never had she been faced with a hypothesis without attempting to prove it.

She stroked the snake’s supple scaled leather and recalled a time on Barbados. She’d been twelve, as apt a student of her father’s natural philosophy then as she was still, marveling at the firm, sleek quicksilver bodies of dolphins sporting in the outflowing tide. They swam, like fish, but their eyes were quick and keen like a human’s, and once when she’d perched in the bow of a swift skiff and reached out her hand, a dolphin riding the forewake had puffed hot breath into her palm. Fish, she knew, are cold, so what could a dolphin be, with his warmth and canny eyes?

She’d asked a fisherman to spear her a specimen for study and dissection. He’d been reluctant to comply, because dolphins are luck to sailors, but she was the little mistress and at last he came to port with a slack body tied alongside his boat. Zabby had been so heartbroken to see the beast dead, its eyes as lifeless as any fish’s, its body as cold as any corpse, that she’d insisted the poor creature be given a proper burial. The slaves dug a hole on the beach and she’d strewn it with hibiscus, hating herself for what she’d done.

Then her father found out, and with very gentle words explained that in the pursuit of knowledge—as in the pursuit of anything that is worth the chase—there is always pain and sacrifice.
What’s more,
he pointed out,
would you see the creature’s death be a wasted one?
And so she had him dug up and together she and her father dissected the dolphin.

Had the knowledge been worth the sorrow? Would power be worth the pain she would cause?

The door opened, and Charles said her name. Of course he would know where to find her. Of course he would seek her out.

Ask me,
she begged without turning.
Ask me to be your whore, so that I may say no, so that you may desire me all the more. Or ask me so that I may say yes, and you may tire of me before I do irreparable harm. I want
. . .
I want
. . .

She did not know what she wanted, but she wanted it with all of her heart, with all of her body.

“What a pretty little jilt you are, sweetheart,” he said, looking her over with a slow, sweeping gaze that made her tremble. “Come, the court must see me dance with my favorite mistress or they’ll all think we’ve fallen out, and make your life miserable.” He held out his arm.

She wanted to rage at him, tell him he’d already danced with his favorite mistress, Barbara, and tell him she refused to play his foolish game any longer. She wanted to pound him with her fists and meet his mouth with hers, to bite him, tear at him, to envelop him.

But she only put her hand lightly on his arm and went back to the presence chamber for her dance.

Chapter 13

The Highwayman

S
LEEPY-EYED BUT MERRY
, the maids of honor piled into a gilded palace carosse before the May Day sun rose. The city teemed with hopeful young girls—and some not so young, who never lost hope—who flocked to the fields and commons outside London to gather May dew, a sovereign tonic for the complexion, sure cure of freckles, pimples, moles, wrinkles, and smallpox scars. They would spread their handkerchiefs or clean shifts over the damp grass and squeeze precious drops of fairy balm into stoppered vials, then wait anxiously for male attention to confirm their new beauty.

“And you must gather it yourself,” Winifred said, “else it doesn’t work.”

“There’s no rhyme or reason to that,” Eliza said. “It’s only that if you buy a pint off some Royal Exchange ’pothecary you can be sure ’tis no more than well water with a bit of sweet clover steeped in for effect.”

“But how is it that dew will do such wonders if gathered one day, but nothing if gathered on another?” Zabby asked. The custom didn’t exist on Barbados, where sea bathing and coconut cream were all a woman thought necessary for good skin. “A carrot isn’t healthy if torn from the ground one day, and unpalatable the next.”

“You should pray May dew works at all,” Simona told Zabby. “Or does His Majesty extinguish all the lights before he makes use of you? The Spanish have a saying: Any spittoon when the mouth is full.”

“Have you wheedled James into spitting into your filthy gutter, then, miss?” Eliza asked, referring familiarly to the king’s brother. There was a rote to all their acerbic raillery by now, and none of the girls took it very seriously. Spiteful Simona could never quite school her tongue, which dropped steady insults as a scored tree drips sap, yet she was forever making little overtures to Zabby, trying to do her small favors, because she, like everyone, believed her to be the king’s mistress. Zabby paid attention to neither of these behaviors.