Ladies in Waiting (17 page)

The queen did not accompany them, saying she didn’t believe in such heathen flummery (though she swore by an unguent supposedly made from the fat of a boar and a she-bear taken in the act of generation). The girls dressed for the occasion in peasant costumes, at least, the way they imagined a peasant might dress if she had an unlimited supply of money. Their skirts, daringly above the ankles, were wool, to be sure, but of a weave as tender as a baby’s cheek, the petticoats trimmed with embroidery, and the stockings beneath them clocked silk. Tight black stomachers laced in silver ribbon and drooping straw hats bedecked with roses completed their outfits, and it was only a shame that the male half of the population had little interest in May dew. Curious, jealous female faces peered into the passing coach and wondered if their betters were mocking them.

They had a chaperone, the half-blind, mostly deaf Lady Bridget Sanderson, mother to the maids, eighty if she was a day. She earned a comfortable pension by sitting quietly in corners, fiddling with her rings and frowning at odd intervals just to show she was wise to her charges’ giddy, hoydenish ways.

Eliza and Simona continued to fling their barbs at each other, just to keep in practice, while on either side of them Zabby and Beth gazed silently out the windows. Beth, as always, was thinking wistfully of her beloved Harry. As time passed it seemed more like a dream, and she worried that each time she replayed the encounter she added something or stripped something away. Had he truly said he would find her? In her memory there was the crucial word
soon,
but soon had come and gone. Did he say he would see her, or contact her? She couldn’t quite recall, and so every day she waited for some page or washing woman to slip a note into her hand. But nothing had come, not a word or a sight. She desperately wanted to ask after him, but lived in such mortal terror of her mother that she dared not do anything that might get back to her. For a woman without the means for bribes, the Countess of Enfield had a remarkably efficient spy system within the court. Beth assumed the rest of the world was too terrified of her to deny her information.

He will come,
she chanted in her matins.
He loves me,
she whispered in her vespers. And every night she dreamed of him, clasping the proxy limbs of Eliza and Zabby beside her, though to her secret shame she could hardly remember his face. He had more substance than the shadow savior of her early fantasy, but he was still hardly more than a handsome fancy.
I know it takes a man a long time to make his fortune,
she bargained in her prayers,
but please, may I see him just one more time, even if he is still poor?

Beth thought about her love all the time, and chided herself if he slipped from her thoughts even for an instant. Zabby, in turn, had learned the terrible impossibility of trying not to think about something. One can ignore, one can lose interest, one can forget, but apparently one cannot purposefully not think of a thing. To make the effort is to think the thought, and the battle is lost in the first muster. Though Zabby marshaled all of her considerable mental forces to drive away the notion, it returned time and again to mock her with its logic.

Yet she had done nothing to further it. As far as she was able, she went to the elaboratory only when she knew Charles was elsewhere, playing at Pall Mall or taking his customary morning walk up Constitution Hill. Still, he found her often enough, and his flirtatious pleasantries were enough to make her heart race. She deliberately ignored his bawdery, feigned ignorance of his innuendo, and forced their conversations into purely scientific lines. Charles never ventured beyond talk, never touched her except to brush her fingers when taking a vial from her hands, or hold aside her tumbling pale wisps when she bent over a steaming concoction.

I wouldn’t have him out of wedlock,
she told herself time and again,
and I wouldn’t displace the queen to have him in marriage. But why won’t he at least make the attempt?
Every other woman, from loyal, sheep-faced Winifred to that clergyman’s daughter to the insufferable giggling Frances, was apparently worth the chase. Why, then, did he (despite her effort to avoid him) always seek her out, always look at her admiringly, always make his little jokes that could be taken innocently or indecently . . . and yet never attempt to seduce her? What was wrong with her? For the first time in her life she spent a long time before the mirror, tucking combs under her locks to bolster her curls, placing decorative black patches just so, anointing herself with orange-flower water, all to no avail.

I don’t want him to,
she thought as she stared out the window,
but why on earth won’t he?

They were well outside the city now, deep in the rolling fields. The six matched flaxen chestnuts thundered ahead of the carriage as the coachman searched for a solitary oak, reputedly the best place to gather May dew. Suddenly another horse pounded alongside, matching their pace.
How thoughtful,
Zabby mused for a moment.
Charles sent outriders for our protection.
Then the man flashed her a black-toothed grin, pulled a shining constellation of stars from his saddlebag, and whirled them around his head. No, not stars. Something she’d seen only in old manuscripts: a morning-star flail, three spiked balls swinging from chains attached to a cudgel. He winked at her, hung off the side of his mount like a Scythian, and smashed the carriage’s gilded axle.

The horses screamed as the drag caught them, the back ones stumbling in their traces and the lead beasts in their panic trying to rear even as they ran. The listing contraption tipped sideways and shuddered to a halt.

“Stop your bellyaching long enough to get your arse off my face!” Eliza shouted to the wailing Simona. The girls were tumbled on top of each other but unhurt, thanks to the masses of cushioning petticoats and the stomacher boning that would probably keep a mule kick from snapping their ribs.

Eliza struggled to the top of the heap and pushed open the door of the capsized coach. A large hand in ornately scrolled gloves took hers, and she said, “Many thanks, sir, and if the coachman’s still breathing, would you put a stop to it? You’d think the king’s servant could make sure the wheel was sound. Oh!”

She finally noticed the pistol. It wasn’t quite pointing at her, but its proximity was enough to make her queasy.

“Have you any cream for me today, my pretty milkmaid?” he asked, and now she noticed the mask, a hood of softest velvet covering his hair and his face down to the nose, with eye holes stitched in gold thread. She couldn’t help but notice too that what she could see was remarkably handsome: broad, curling mouth; crinkling, merry eyes that somehow took away the gun’s menace . . . while she looked in them. Then the cavernous barrel loomed, and she replied, shaking, “I’m afraid all my cream’s soured into clabber.”

The coachman, footman, and the spry teenage postillion rider had been dragged down and huddled in the grass under a third man’s gun, muttering curses but too frightened to meet the marauders’ eyes. The masked man helped the maids of honor out. Simona screamed until the black-toothed thug dangled his morningstar in front of her face, then she settled into a whimpering heap, throwing her apron over her head like a real peasant. Winifred looked like a soldier at his execution, knowing exactly what she was in for but willing to take it bravely, as was her duty. Zabby and Eliza each thought she should do something but wasn’t sure what. Eliza had grown accustomed to playing the dashing blade, but she never thought to use one, and that day her only weapons were hairpins. Zabby was perfectly comfortable with guns, knew the rudiments of fencing, and could hurl a tolerable harpoon, but she had even fewer weapons, for she’d worn her hair down.

Frances, pale as birchbark, cowered behind the mother of the maids. Her eyes were dead and her body rigid. She too thought she knew what would happen to any young lady captured on the open road by a band of highwaymen. Zabby felt a rush of sympathy for the girl, whose plans (if she was canny enough to have any, as Barbara thought) hinged on her chastity. However infatuated, the king would never have her, not as a lover and certainly not as queen, if she’d been ravished by three criminals in a roadside ditch.

Beth emerged last of all, and Zabby clung to her, thinking to offer comfort, for wasn’t Beth in the same position? She might not be angling for the throne, but her marriage prospects depended on her purity.

But of all the girls, only Beth was serene, for she had seen the mouth, the crinkling eyes, and they were enough to reconstruct the face she thought she’d forgotten. She patted Zabby’s cheek reassuringly and smiled at the highwayman.

“I know who you are!” Mother Bridget crowed. “You’re the one they call Elphinstone!”

He bowed, and Zabby noticed he had a courtier’s flourish. “Your servant, madam,” he said. “And you, likewise, gentlewomen.” He turned to Beth. “And you, my lady.” To her he bowed lowest of all. “As my reputation precedes me, it will save me my customary speech.” He winked at his fellows. The one with black teeth chuckled, while the lean man with the pistol rolled his eyes to the heavens. “Your jewels, my dears, or . . . something else. I’ll have payment one way or t’other.”

“You can see they have no jewels,” Mother Bridget snapped, brave, for she knew even the most desperate criminal wouldn’t bother ravishing her. “We’re May-Daying. Young man, do you know what fate awaits the man who molests the queen’s own maidens? Begone, gallows-bird, before His Majesty’s Life Guard is upon you.”

“Peace, madam. I have no fear of the noose. But if life’s to be short, why, then, it must be sweet. You wear no jewels, but every woman carries a choice treasure wherever she goes, and in the finest purse.” The other highwaymen guffawed. “Now which shall it be?” He stroked his beardless chin contemplatively as he paced before them, making a show of looking them up and down. Eliza tried to pull Beth back so he wouldn’t notice her, but Beth evaded her grasp and stood at the fore. “Only the loveliest lass will do for Elphinstone, a girl of unsurpassed beauty, charm, grace.”

Frances gave a stifled cry, sure he must mean her.

Elphinstone stopped in front of Beth and took her hand.

Shows you, Frances,
Zabby couldn’t help but think even as she lunged between them. “No, not her!” she cried. Eliza joined her, and Elphinstone stepped back, raising his pistol.

“You have loyal friends, my lady, but tell them to step aside. Now.” His voice hardened.

“Please, Zabby, Eliza, do what he says,” she said.

“Sir, if you’re a gentleman . . .” Eliza pleaded.

“I’ve seen a gentleman slit another gentleman’s nose to the bone for an imagined slight. I’ve seen gentlemen ravish other gentlemen’s wives in their own houses. I’ve seen gentlemen sell their families for a bottle of brandy and a poxed whore. Do you still ask me to be a gentleman?” He smiled ruefully. “I’m no more than a man today.” He took Beth’s hand again and gently pulled her from her friends. “I claim one dance from this beauty, nothing else. A dance in my arms is your ransom. Do that, lady, and all go free.”

“Gladly, sir,” Beth said, and followed him to the far side of the carriage.

“Better her than me,” Simona said, recovering as soon as her own skin was safe. “What will her demon mother say now? Ow!” Eliza had pinched her. “You know what these peasant louts mean when they say a
dance,
don’t you? They dance in the haystacks, they dance behind the hedgerows, they dance with their sheep if there’s no skivvy about. They say Elphinstone has never left a maidenhead intact, that indeed he’d prefer it to jewels and gold.”

“Can’t you do anything?” Eliza pleaded with the elderly coachman sitting on the ground.

He looked at the pistol, then at the slowly pendulating morningstar, and said nothing. One more year and he’d have his pension. He didn’t want his widow to enjoy it without him.

“Music!” Elphinstone barked from around the carriage, and, in the most incongruous sight, the barbarian became Pan. He slipped his flail into his wide leather belt and from under his coat produced a double pipe. He licked his lips, leaving a smear of black on them, and struck up a merry tune. Zabby strained to hear what was happening on the other side of the carriage, but the music drowned out whatever they were doing. She thought she heard a sound, perhaps a sob, though it sounded more like a laugh. She bit her lip and glanced at the third robber. He was tapping his foot to the lively jig, but his pistol still covered them. Perhaps if she and the others rushed him, only one of them would perish . . . but as she had no guarantee it would be Frances or Simona, she dared not risk it.

As soon as they were out of sight, Beth flung herself into Elphinstone’s arms.

“Oh, Harry, Harry! My love!” She kissed his masked face.

“Did you wonder why I’d kept away so long? Whether my heart was still true?”

“You couldn’t be false,” she cried, and kissed him again. She’d been practicing on her pillow so often that kissing felt quite natural by now.

Suddenly she pulled away and slapped him across the face, where the kisses had only just settled in.

“Perfidious wretch! Elphinstone? I know what they say about you! The Lusty Highwayman. You’re just like your father, and mine, and every man! Did you have every wench you waylaid up against the carriage door?” She drew back to strike him again, but he caught her hand easily, then let it go.

“Go on, hit me again, lemman,” he said cheerfully. “A blow from you is sweeter than a hundred honeyed kisses from a . . . no, please, I jest!” He held up his arms to fend off further attack. “I’ve never kissed another than you, my darling, I swear. Ye gods, because I haven’t blacked a lady’s eyes yet they call me a ravisher. I’m no brute, but believe me, I’d rather have gold than a bit of houghmagandie any day, except from you, dear Beth.”

“You mean it isn’t true?”

“What, rape a woman in the middle of a road, with carts full of ploughboys and soldiers passing every few minutes? You’re sadly misinformed about my trade. A robber must be swift as a peregrine. I take my life in my hands to dally with you now, Beth, but I’d risk the Tyburn dance for a chance to be with you.”