Ladies in Waiting (26 page)

The man held the reins and said nothing. He watched Harry and the other man approach the ladies.

“Your Majesty,” Harry said, bowing with elaborate Frenchified elegance, his leg forward, flourishing his hat. “I must ask that you accompany me.”

From the saddle, Beth strained forward to hear with what magnificent words her beloved would beg the queen for her hand in marriage.

Zabby knew him before she recognized the others. “Elphinstone!” she cried, and willed herself to step between the highwayman and her queen. Logic intervened, saying,
What can you possibly do against large, armed men?
From the direction of the shrine, leaves rustled in a laughing sound.
This is it,
the residue of intoxicating fumes said in her brain.
Your chance to be queen.

She did nothing as Elphinstone’s henchman lifted the queen bodily and carried her, shrieking, to the horses.

“Did she say no?” Beth asked stupidly as Harry swung into the saddle behind her.

“Tie her! No, don’t strike her, but gag her if you must. Oliver, take her on your horse. Hurry!”

“For the love of God, I am with chi . . .” Catherine began to say, but a roll of linen was shoved in her mouth and she was hauled belly-down across the front of the saddle.

“Harry! What are you doing? Harry!” Beth screamed at him, twisting in the saddle. She knew, suddenly, surely, what was happening, but she sought for some other explanation, however implausible. The queen had forbidden their marriage, and this was some impulsive scheme to convince her. Harry’s henchmen had turned against him with a treasonous plot of their own, and any moment now Harry’s sword would fly to his hand and he’d chop off all their heads, rescue the queen, become England’s darling, win full clemency, be granted an earldom . . .

“Hold tightly, my love,” Harry said, and spurred his horse forward. Beth struggled to dismount, catching at the reins and trying to disentangle her legs, but Harry held her pressed firmly to him with one arm. The horse, confused by spurs telling him to run and the reins ordering him to halt, reared and danced, and the other highwaymen hesitated, unwilling to fly without their leader.

And still Zabby did not act, wishing she at least had a dagger to plunge into her own unworthy breast.

Eliza, however, had nothing holding her back. With a deep, houndlike bay she flung herself onto the ruffian who had the queen pinned across his lap, dragging at Her Majesty’s indigo skirts with one hand and stabbing him in the back of the calf with her cloak pin. He kicked her and she fell back, breathless, but was up again, gasping curses, in an instant. The other rider, heavyset, with black teeth, got between them and shouted, “Let’s go!” He forced his horse to shoulder into the other, the queen’s legs between, to push him down the path. Eliza lunged at him, too, trying once again to reach her queen, but he dropped the lead of the riderless horse he was guiding across his saddle and caught her hand.

“None of that now, miss,” he said.

Miss
being a term for little girls and whores, Eliza took even greater offense, and this time wisely kicked the horse, who bolted away with his rider but without the spare mount. He caught up with the others, but his horse was already limping.

“Zabby!” Eliza cried.

Zabby watched the Queen of England bouncing away to her doom, trussed like a capon, and all she could see was a vast empty space, the vacuum chamber of Charles’s elaboratory, waiting for her to fill the void.

“Zabby!” Eliza cried again. “I can’t ride well enough to follow them.”

Zabby didn’t seem to hear her. She had a vision of Charles looking down at her, amused, in the elaboratory . . . no, in his private apartments . . .

“You are a good rider—you can go after them. Zabby! Do you hear me?” She snapped her fingers in front of her friend’s face. “They have a lamed horse, and not enough fresh mounts. Maybe you can catch them. Zabby!”

She couldn’t move—she was in a trance, one she knew she had the power to break, but she would not. She knew that what she desired, what she had against her will wished into the pit of Sulis, made her as despicable as any of the scheming half-whores of the court. Like them she was willing to do anything to get the man she desired, to rise in prestige and power. She hated herself, but she could not help rejoicing as she watched the queen’s abduction. Sulis had accepted her offering and granted her boon. It was out of her hands now. She was worse than Lady Castlemaine.

With that name, it came back to her in a rush: the midnight rendezvous, the last task Harry had to perform, the wicked, scheming Buckingham. The visit immediately afterward to the palace suite of his cousin, Lady Castlemaine. Barbara, the king’s chief mistress. Mother of his sons. The woman whom many people thought of as the de facto queen.

Zabby might allow a pagan goddess to guide her into evil, but never the despised Castlemaine!

The trance-image changed, and now it was Castlemaine standing at Charles’s side, laughing at the world, a crown on her head.

Still not quite knowing what was real, Zabby got her foot in the stirrup and called to Eliza as she mounted, “Ride for Bath and tell the king!” A heartbeat later she was low over the horse’s neck, urging him after the highwaymen.

Alone, Eliza looked at the fat, lazy ponies, thought of what the king would do to the bearer of bad news, and said in tragicomic tones to the unseen audience that followed her everywhere, “I’d rather be fighting the brigands.”

Zabby could just see them in the distance; it was open countryside and they kept to the road, riding into the molten setting sun. She didn’t know what she would do when she caught them; then, as her horse slackened his pace and settled into a canter, she realized that catching them shouldn’t be her goal. She should follow them until they stopped—they would have to stop sometime—and then mark the place and find help. The roadway was empty now, but well traveled, and she was bound to come across a farmer or merchant who could at least carry a message, at best set upon the highwaymen with hoes and staves.

Her schemes became moot when the landscape rose and roughened and they entered a parkland. She lost sight of her quarry. Then she came to a crossroads. One roadway was broad and well maintained, the other narrow and rutted, but both bore the marks of recent hoofprints, and she had no idea which to follow. Perhaps they’d even split up. She listened, but if hoofbeats sounded, they were lost in the settling night noises.

She chose the road that continued westward and rode into the red-tinged darkness.
I can’t go back to Charles—I can never face him again, unless I bring the queen back. If he ever knew
. . .

She slowed her horse to a walk. There was no point in hurrying in what might be the wrong direction.
I’ll keep going west,
she thought,
and if I don’t find the queen, at least I’ll find the coast, and board a ship bound for Barbados. I cannot stay here.

She rode for an hour or more until the night was so deep that she could no longer see the path. The horse would amble on for a time, then stop, hanging his head and dreaming of water and a warm stable, until Zabby dug in her heels and urged him on. Her head was completely clear now, she was sure of that, and she was mortified at the thoughts brought on by the shrine’s fumes.

Her mind wandered to her father’s home. That was where she belonged, managing his household, working by his side. She’d come to England to advance her store of knowledge and understanding, to expand her apprehension of the universe. Aye, she understood the world now. It was a base thing, as poisonous as Sulis’s vapors. It had corrupted even her. Best to get away.

She wished she could be with Charles one last time, though, see that swarthy, handsome face, be the victim of his gentle teasing, brush against him once more when they bent over a lens.

She felt nothing but contempt for herself . . . but still, in the back of her mind, impish thoughts played devilish tricks.
If the queen is gone, perhaps Charles will come after you. Perhaps he will send his fleet to Barbados to fetch his new queen home.

The more she tried to fight the thoughts, the more insidious they became.
They’re only thoughts,
she told herself.
Let them be—thoughts are not dangerous in themselves.
But she remembered what Charles had once told her. Cromwell and a few others had an idea, and it spread like a disease until it chopped off a king’s head. Ideas lead to action.

Sometime later she saw a dim light ahead, the first sign of companionship on the road.

Her horse nickered, still hoping for a stable, and Zabby hailed the two people approaching on foot.

A weary voice cried out, “Whoever you are, as you love your life and queen, help us!”

It was Beth, slow and footsore, supporting her dying queen.

Chapter 21

The Next Queen

T
HEY DID NOT ADMIT
she was dying, though—not all at once. The doctors at Bath, fearing a misdiagnosis might mean the gallows (as it might have, not many kings before) gave the queen a sedative and pronounced her safe enough to travel. If only they could get her home to her own physicians, she would be someone else’s responsibility. To save her might bring great glory, but to fail would mean, at best, being demoted to horse-leech in some backwater village.

Two days later she was back in Whitehall and the deathwatch had officially begun. Courtiers bore the most confusing countenances, endeavoring to look solemn but all the while madly speculating who would be the next queen.

Beth had collapsed as soon as they had returned to Bath, and at Eliza’s whispered suggestion remained in a swoon much longer than strictly necessary. Even Charles wouldn’t interrogate an unconscious girl. Nor could Eliza provide him with much information. Accustomed to writing plots twice as convoluted, she easily guessed that lover and highwayman were one, and that Elphinstone tried to neatly kill two birds with one elf-shot. Exactly why he wished to kidnap the queen, and to what end, she was not sure, though she had a score of ideas.

But Eliza had no desire to betray Beth to the hangman, and stayed as mum as Charles’s insistent wrath would allow. She told what she had seen—a group of masked men snatched up Beth and the queen—without adding what she assumed.

“Was it that damned Elphinstone?” Charles roared, to which Eliza quite calmly replied that he’d been masked, and one masked man looks much like another.

Alone together that first night, the three Elizabeths locked hands.

“We swore to stand by each other,” Eliza said staunchly. “You don’t have to tell us a thing, Beth-heart, and I vow I’ll tell the king any tale you like. I know whatever happened wasn’t of your doing.”

“Oh, but it was! It was all my fault. He told me . . . he promised . . . and then . . .”

“Easy, sweeting. Many’s the man deceived a maid. He loved you, is it, but he was really just after one thing? A common enough story, though he sought not a quim but a queen. He rooked the pawn to take the queen.”

“No, he loved me—I know it!” Beth protested.

“Stick to that,” Eliza said. “The king will forgive a pretty fool. A conspirator will swing. Whatever you knew, just keep those big eyes wet and say how you thought he loved you.”

“I never meant the queen harm. You know that! She’s been so good to me. When he did it, I couldn’t believe . . .”

“Hush,” Eliza cautioned, and checked the hall outside their quarters before locking it. Then she nodded for Beth to continue.

When she finished, Zabby was stroking her philtrum pensively, a habit she’d picked up from Charles, who when thoughtful treated his mustache like a favorite pet.

“Did he have a grudge against the queen, do you know?” Zabby asked. “Does he hate Catholics, or did she wrong him in some way?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. What could she have done?”

“Then someone hired him. He did it for money, for you, but someone else wanted the queen dead.” She thought she knew who but didn’t want to say anything until she was sure.

“Oh, he wasn’t going to kill her. He swore that to me.”

“He swore he loved you.”

“You see, so it must be true.”

Eliza shook her head and sighed. What was to be done in the face of love? “He made use of you, Beth,” she said patiently. “He never loved you.”

“Then why did he let us go?”

There was a sharp rap at the door, and Prue, chambermaid to the maids of honor, came in. “Well, you three hoydens have certainly made a night of it, keeping the poor servants in a tizzy till the wee small hours. Don’t expect your tea and cakes sharp at eight on the morrow, my ladies, as the likes of us won’t be abed until sunrise. Riders here, guards there, soldiers molesting the kitchen wenches, looking for treason under their aprons. Lord above, you’d think the king was glad to have her back. You, Madam Zabby, scrub your nails and tidy your hair. You’ve a royal summons. The king’s bedroom in a quarter hour. Another man would manage to spend the rest of the night with his wife after an ordeal like this . . . though if she’s been raped perhaps he’s lost his taste for her.”

She sighed deeply. “A shame that footpad was too clumsy to make a proper go of it. We might have ourselves a fecund queen within six months. Well, perhaps a year for royal mourning, but m’dear, you could get him to sign the contract before her corpse was cold.”

Zabby slapped her, and the wiry old woman took it without a flinch. Well-bred ladies were prone to slaps. She shrugged. “Oh, well. Smart money is on the other wench anyway. Perhaps I’ll see if she needs tea or a foot rub.”

“Barbara, you mean?” Zabby asked.

“That blown slut? The king’d sooner wed a sow. No, I mean that prissy minx Frances. She’ll be the next queen if anything happens to this one. I wonder, will the king hang the highwaymen because they tried . . . or because they failed?” She left with a cackle.

Zabby smoothed the wrinkles from her clothes and left to answer the royal summons. When she was gone, Beth gasped.