Ladies in Waiting (29 page)

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 leave.

“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

Z
ABBY 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.

“What have you done?” she asked. “I am to have extreme unction now.” Her cap of jewels and saints’ knucklebones was askew. “Where is my priest? If I die unshriven . . .” Her words were heavy and slurred, and she could not focus on Charles, though she reached for his hand.

“But you are not going to die, my love,” he said lightly. “I forbid it.”

She squeezed his hand. “But how are the children, my darling?”

Charles exchanged a look of alarm with Zabby. “The . . . children?”

Catherine sighed and smiled. “Our little girl is so like you. She will be a beauty. But I am sorry about the boy. He is such an ugly baby.”

Zabby nodded, and Charles, looking frightened, said after some hesitation, “I was a very homely child, they say, all red and black.”

“Oh, if he grows to look like you I will be pleased.” Her eyes closed, and for a time she seemed to sleep. She was in any event more peaceful than before, her head resting easily on the shorn locks of hair still scattered on her pillow, that slight smile of maternal pride hovering on her lips.

“She is raving,” Charles whispered to Zabby across the room. “Her mind is gone. Is this, then, the end?”

“She has a high fever. You should have heard the things you said in your delirium. Give me a moment to examine her.”

Zabby felt the queen’s pulse, put her ear to her chest to listen to her breath, to her stomach to hear her intestinal sounds.

“Charles, I am no physician.”

“You saved me.”

“I helped keep you from dying. That’s completely different. You had an illness I knew of, one that has no cure save to exhaust itself. If the patient endures longer than the disease, he lives; that is all. I do not know what is wrong with the queen. She said . . .” Zabby bit her lip, but again, she could not withhold any confidence from Charles. “She said she was with child, before we went to the shrine. She didn’t want to tell you until she was sure, and then she began to have problems. Bleeding, pain.” To her own surprise, Zabby began to weep quietly. “Did the physician say whether she was still with child?”

“No. I never knew.” His face hardened. “To steal the queen is treason, but to kill my unborn heir!” His fists clenched at his side, as if he, a monarch, would thrash his enemy like a common citizen. He started toward the door.

“Where are you going?”

“To order an execution. He’s been questioned long enough.”

“Wait!” she cried, and darted in front of him. “Have you found proof? Tell me! Is that why you were playing tennis with him, to keep him off his guard?”

“What?”

“Buckingham—he is to die? Did he do it for himself, or for Barbara?”

Charles took a breath as if to yell, but let it out in a long sigh. “I speak of that blackguard Elphinstone. Buckingham is not involved.”

“But he must be, in some way. I heard him say quite clearly that the job came from him, and . . . Oh!” How could she have forgotten? In all her attempts to unravel the plot against the queen, that was the one morsel she’d neglected, the one unbelievable thing too impossible to even consider—so she hadn’t. Now, glancing at the apparently sleeping queen, she said, “Buckingham told Harry the orders came directly from you.”

She stared at him with her wide-open tawny eyes, full of hope and dread. Her own Charles would never be the sort of man to order his wife’s kidnapping, possibly her murder. Nothing could make her believe it was true. But then, if he had done it so he could marry again . . . If he had done it for her . . .

A woman can forgive almost any crime done in her name.

“Would you believe such a thing of me?” he asked softly.

What could she say but no?

He smiled and touched her hair briefly. “Of course you wouldn’t.”

She noticed only later that he had never denied it, and it lingered like a worm in her mind, burrowing and writhing.

She turned her attention to Catherine, sweeping away her cut locks and bathing her face in mint water to cool her. Charles, distracted from his lethal mission, sat at his wife’s bedside, looking alternately grieved and bored.

At length Catherine stirred again, and her eyes blearily found her two caretakers.

“You are here,” she said to her husband. “I feared it was only a dream. I have so many fantastical dreams of late. There was a snake that came from a cave, and . . . but no matter. You are here after all. They told me you must not come, but I am glad you defied them.” She gave a weak chuckle that disintegrated into a pained cough. “How silly I am. You are king! To think that there is anyone to defy, save God. But I am glad, for now I can go.”

“Go? You mean die? No, nothing of the sort.”

“There is only one thing I will regret in leaving this world,” she said, her plaintive eyes regarding him. “My husband, my love, say it has not been a bad union. Say I have not disappointed you. I know I have caused you trouble, but oh, I have loved you so hard, and I’ve tried . . . tried . . . tried . . .”

Her voice trailed off and her eyes fogged for a moment, so that when she spoke again they could not tell if she was with them or in her own dream world.

“Now that you are with me I find I almost wish to remain. But no, it is too late for that. I know in dying I give you a greater gift than I could in life. They say I lost the child, that I may not be able to bear one even if I lived. They thought I did not hear them. Charles, my king and love, with me gone you can marry again. She will not love you as I love you. No one can . . . I do not think you know . . . But she will give you what I can’t—an heir. A king needs sons. My womb will not provide, but still my body in its death will serve you.”

Charles was weeping openly now. What he could not feel for his wife while she lived at his side he got an inkling of now as she all but sacrificed her life for him.

“Choose not a princess,” she went on. “Why do you need a princess when your love will make her a queen? Marry a friend. Oh, Charles! It hurts me so!” She kneaded at her belly as if to drive the pain away.

“It hurts me so,” Charles echoed.

“Will you hear my sins?”

“I will fetch the priest.”

“No, you are my confessor. Forgive me. Once when I was angered I asked what you would do if I took a lover. Believe me, I never would, never could. We are made differently, men and women.” She chuckled, then curled in pain. “When I came from the convent I scarcely knew that much about marital relations. My little maids of honor knew more than I, and they tried to guide me in the ways of men. But I did not understand until now.”

“Forgive me,” Charles said.

“There’s nothing to forgive. I’m only glad to have had a little of your love, a touch or two, a brief joyous time as your wife.”

“Oh, my Catherine, my darling, you must not die. Please.” His tears fell on her breast. “Please, try to live. For my sake!”

Her eyes lit up. “Do you mean it?” she asked, weak, but with a sudden spark of vitality. “Oh, Charles, have I ever disobeyed you? If you say I must live, then I will!”

Charles, his husbandly duties (about which he was always punctilious) accomplished, wiped his tears, ordered a prompt execution, and sent a message to Lady Castlemaine to prepare for his night’s recreation.

“You’re a good girl, Zabby,” Catherine said when the king had gone, condescendingly but lovingly patting her head.

Which is a far cry from
You’d have made a fine queen,
the sentiment she knew had been on the queen’s lips not a moment before.

They say the king’s touch has miraculous healing powers. So too, perhaps, his tears. From the moment his salt had landed on Catherine, she began to rally. She was weeks in bed, her mind continued to wander, and she became a little deaf, but by winter she was back in the presence chamber enduring spiteful looks from all who had lost money or power or the possibility of queenship from her refusal to die.

Not until Charles left did Zabby realize what he’d revealed—Beth’s lover had been captured and would soon be executed.

The moment the queen was sleeping peacefully, Zabby slipped from her side, sent in one of her servants to attend her (with strict orders from the king not to allow any additional treatment except by his own approval), and went in search of information.

She was bewildered that Charles had kept the secret from her and, unless the court gossips had lost their passion, from the rest of the world, too. She thought he would have celebrated the capture of the man responsible for his queen’s kidnapping, not to mention the scores of robberies he and his band had committed. It would have made Charles look a hero to the people, the avenger of his queen, and the savior of all travelers. She knew how he felt about the populace, a queer admixture of fear and anxiety to please. He hated them; he needed them.

“There you are!” came a brazen voice from down the hall.

Zabby sighed. Lady Castlemaine was the last person she wanted to deal with at the moment.

“Well, how does our dear queen?” Barbara tapped her red-heeled foot impatiently and her eyebrows arched high into her perfect forehead. She affected an air of scornful unconcern, but Zabby knew she must be fretting.