Ladies in Waiting (9 page)

After that spontaneous public kiss, Charles and Catherine subsided to mere civility. He was polite to her before an audience, and regularly performed his marital duties. (The girls soon learned from the more sophisticated ladies to spot the telltale signs of lovemaking as the sheets were daily whisked away. Though they had no desire to probe, that knowledge, once gleaned, was inescapable, and they noted their queen’s nocturnal activities as casually as they might notice she left a capon wing uneaten or had a rent in a stocking.)

“Poor Catherine,” Beth said as they assembled their own clothing and trinkets for the short jaunt to Whitehall. “She doesn’t speak of it, but I know she’s terribly distressed not to be with child yet.”

“Our Friesian mare was covered for three years before she foaled, but then she dropped one every spring thereafter,” Zabby said. “The queen’s been trying only for three months. Why is everyone in a pother already?”

“Don’t you know?” Eliza asked. “If there’s not a Protestant son of Charles, the Catholic brother takes the throne. James isn’t a popular man. All the world knows he’s Catholic, however he dissembles. If she doesn’t give Charles a son, the succession may not stand. We’ll have another civil war.”

“She would be patient, for herself,” Beth said, folding the whatnots she’d acquired since becoming a maid of honor: dog-skin gloves and ribbons and handkerchiefs, gifts from the queen or things lent by Eliza that she later swore she couldn’t stomach and Beth might as well keep. “But now that she can understand English a mite better she hears the gossip. Oh, the cruel things! Lady Castlemaine said in her hearing that a barren woman is really a witch who eats her own children inside her womb. Don’t they care how they hurt her?”

“No,” Eliza said bluntly. “Not so long as they think she can’t hurt
them.
And she can’t, until Charles elevates her to her proper place, or she seizes it for herself. She’s hardly a queen yet.”

“She would never hurt anyone,” Beth said.

“Even Castlemaine?” Eliza asked.

“I think she feels sorry for her.”

“Trust the papists to send us a saint. I’d like to slit Castlemaine’s nose. Don’t look so shocked, Beth! You should hear what she says of you, and your mother. Prue told me she told Lady Shrewsbury . . . No, don’t get snively, pet. Your revenge is being a thousand times more lovely than Castlemaine, the decayed hag. I’m surprised she hasn’t tried to pimp you to Charles yet. They do say she plays at flats.”

Neither girl understood this.

“Dallies with the maidens. Dances in the figgery of Lesbos. Strictly on an amateur level, of course. Then she throws her tidbits to Charles to whet his appetite for the main course—her! What dish would you say she is, Zabby? Pickled sturgeon? I warrant she’ll proposition you soon, too.”

“No, she hates me too much for that,” Zabby said.

A few days before, when Zabby was leaving the elaboratory after having been closeted with Charles an hour or more, Lady Castlemaine waylaid her outside the door. Before Zabby could stop her, she threw up Zabby’s skirts and gave a mighty sniff. “Nothing!” She glared down at her pale competitor, eyes flashing, as Zabby furiously adjusted her clothes. “What do you do for him in there all these hours, eh? Something too filthy for me, I warrant, and that must be a trick indeed. Have a care, fish-eyes. You think you serve the queen, but all England knows who the true queen is. I bore his son. I have his ear. He’s not yours, nor yet that preposterous short-legged Portuguese cow’s. The king is mine, and I rule beside him. He may swive wherever he pleases. I know men’s ways, which your silly queen does not, the jealous trull. Let him sample a bit of coney when he hungers. He’ll always return to my arms, and my legs, and my . . .”

At this point Zabby had walked off. “Don’t cross me, miss!” Castlemaine hissed behind her.

They were to proceed by barge from Hampton Court to Whitehall. Charles loved boats, and though he preferred a swift, sleek yacht on the channel, he wouldn’t turn up his nose at a stately barge ride along the sluggish Thames. It allowed the court to show a great deal of pomp, to be fully on display, without being within touching distance of the populace. “Support me, but not with thine own dirty hands” was the credo of most of the nobles, and though a few rakes enjoyed slumming, most had nothing but contempt for anyone below a baron. Still, they all thrived on admiration, and Charles knew the most important role for a king is symbolic. The people love a figurehead on parade.

Today they got their monarchs twice over, the false and the true. First came a grand pageant, two gilded barges with enameled swan wings, each bearing a royal tableau. On one, the king’s champion sat enthroned, in a paste crown with a mock orb and scepter, an overblown caricature of kingliness, with purple wool robes and tufts of fleece dipped in ink, making, from a distance, a convincing show of royal velvet and ermine. Around him stood faux courtiers in exaggeratedly heroic poses. At the four corners were men holding symbols of Charles’s reign—a brandished sword for military might, an oversize sextant for overseas trade, a pair of scales for justice (properly ironic, for they tilted crazily with each oar stroke, and never balanced). At the last corner stood a seasick man—the symbol of commerce—tossing coins into the crowd. So great was his misery that hardly any money made it to shore. The scavenging mudlarks—children who lived by salvaging the scraps of coal and rope that fell into the Thames—would reap the benefits come low tide.

The queen had her own proxy. Perched on a filigreed throne was a lady more likely than the true queen to please the populace with her looks, though at least they chose a girl with dark hair. She was the daughter of one of the king’s privateers, those quasi pirates with a royal charter to pillage England’s enemies on the high seas, to burn and rape and rob, so long as they turned over a percentage of their plunder to the Crown.

The maids of honor watched the panoply from an upper window—it would be another hour at least before the real queen progressed, with a fraction of the fanfare.

“They do say he’ll bed the mock queen tonight,” said Simona Cary, a luscious brunette who had so far managed to safeguard her reputation by sacrificing that of others.

Winifred Wells made an unladylike noise. She was said to have the carriage of a goddess and the countenance of a drowsy sheep; without possessing beauty, she held herself as if she did, and thus convinced everyone but females near her own age. She made it no secret that Charles had summoned her several times since his marriage. Like many ladies of the court, she did not believe that a bout with the king would sully her name.

“What do you say to that, Zabby?” Simona persisted. “Do you mind sharing his affections? Or if not his affections, at least his pillicock.”

“Here, Simona, you have a bow coming loose in the back,” Beth said, and jabbed the unsuspecting girl with a pin as she pretended to adjust it.

“We all serve the king,” Eliza said blandly as Simona, squealing, whirled to look for blood and finally ran away to make herself perfect before being on display.

Winifred leaned her elbows on the sill and watched the mock king float slowly away to roaring cheers. “My father was loyal to the first Charles, and did his best to die for this one in the war.” She shrugged. “To deny him anything would be treason.” She smiled at Zabby, no more jealous than a soldier is of another soldier when fighting for his king. She raised her large body rather ponderously and nodded farewell, leaving the three Elizabeths together.

“I didn’t know you had it in you, Beth!” Eliza said. “Serves that cat Simona right. Hope you got her kidney.”

“I should never have done that,” Beth said, hanging her head.

“Yes, you should. We swore an oath. D’you see how Simona and Anne squabble all the time, concoct little bedevilments for each other? Even the dressers, Lady Mary and that Scroope, do nothing but foul each other’s name. And none cares a farthing for the queen. We three, we stand by each other, and we stand by Catherine. That way we’ll all get what we’re here for. By the bye, Beth, any rich young fops catch your eye today?”

Beth blushed. She was always talking about falling in love, though she never so much as raised her gray eyes to any of the admiring gallants. Love, she firmly believed, was not a quest—it was an epiphany. She had no desire to flirt and lure, because she was certain, with all her heart, that there was, somewhere, the man she was destined for. She would not mock love by playing at it with fops, batting her eyes and letting them touch her hand. When true love found her, there would be no need for such rituals of courtship.

“Lord Halifax tried to speak with me last night.”

“And?” Eliza asked excitedly. “He’s prime prey. How did you answer him?”

“I didn’t.”

“Not a syllable? Darling, you have to talk to them to make them propose, even if all you say is
yes
before they ask. Why are you so pitifully shy, with all the charms you have to offer?”

“My mother doesn’t like me to be pert,” Beth answered, avoiding their eyes. “She . . . she’s always watching.”

Beth trembled, but Eliza didn’t notice. “Now, me, I couldn’t catch a man save I lured him on with a trail of guineas laid behind me, then snatched him in my snare. But you—why, with that face you could have any man you chose!”

“Not in marriage,” Beth said miserably. “For a night, for a month, but not for good. Not without money.”

“Poor child,” Eliza said, taking her in her arms. “It’s a thousand pities
we
can’t marry, eh? You need a fortune; I need a grand title. Tell you what: when I find a proper doddering old impoverished duke for myself, I’ll stipulate in the contract that you come with me.”

“You’re an angel, Eliza,” Beth said, dabbing her tears. “But kind as you are, I know you’d never take my mother too.”

“Ah . . . no. Not even in play. I’m sorry.”

“I know how everyone feels about her. Sometimes I hate her. She’s such a bitter, cruel, heartless thing now. But she was soft and good once. I remember. My father made her what she is. For so many years, she’s struggled to keep us alive, to keep us on the fringes of respectability. Whatever else I do, I must take care of her. I’ll marry whomever I can, so long as he’ll give her a good home. But I know no one will take me, with her.” She gave a sardonic smile. “Even you. Besides, I couldn’t let you support me, with or without Mother.”

“What good is money if you can’t spend it on whom you like?” Eliza said. “But it’s not really mine, though I spend freely enough. I’ll see none of it if I don’t marry with my father’s blessing. Precious little, anyway—two hundred pounds a year in my own control, left me independently by an aunt. God’s mercy! I spend that much on gloves in a month! Come, let us join the barges. You can tell us your philosophies of panoply, Zabby, and you, Beth, can give us the gossip. For so chaste a maid, you’re certainly well versed in scandal.”

“I’ve been watching it for years,” Beth said.

“And I’ll compose couplets on them all, and turn their sins to song.” Eliza took her friends’ arms, and they made a formidable fluttering phalanx as they marched through the palace to the waterfront.

Like actors in the wings, they waited out of sight for their cue, then gathered up their skirts to trip down the freshly scrubbed jetty and step onto the royal barge.

Beth looked better than she had in the years when her mother had her dressed like a freshly slaughtered kid for the marriage market. Gone were the garish paint, the false high color, the breasts hoisted to their most globular protuberance. Her face was its own clean white and pink, with a single crescent-shaped black patch perched piquantly high on her cheek. Upon entering her service, Catherine had promptly ordered Beth’s shoddily provocative gowns burned (Beth actually smuggled them out to her mother, who sold them to secondhand dealers for two months’ rent) and had a half-dozen new ones made up for her, simple and luxurious and lovely. Beth, in her weak way, had tried to refuse, but in truth she was so happy to be rid of her harlot’s costumes that she accepted the charity.

That day she wore a draped and tucked gown in sprightly apple green and cream, the low-set sleeves gathered four times in alternating colors to her mid forearm. Beth was hardly aware of her own appearance—she was too happy to see her queen riding in triumph with the king at her side. In public, he treated her as if he were very much in love. Only those close by would notice the pained anxiety in Catherine’s face, her pathetic eagerness to please, her knowledge that she wasn’t enough for him.

“What a fresh little bud you are,” Catherine said to Beth as she passed before her attendants.

Flustered by the praise, Beth stumbled and caught herself just before her knee touched the ground. A collective gasp rose from the crowd, followed by a myriad-breathed sigh of relief when she recovered. Beth looked up and saw a thousand eyes on her.

She’d never been bashful in crowds before. On the contrary, they had always been her best protection, for who, she thought, would ever notice her when there was anyone else to look at? It was only in intimate interviews that she quailed.

Suddenly, she knew what it was to be singled out. It didn’t matter that male voices now praised her well-turned ankle (exposed briefly in the mishap) or asked who the pretty little jilt in green might be. The mere fact that she was noticed, even positively, by so many people, oppressed her so that she trembled. Zabby had to take her hand and help her aboard, where she crouched at the queen’s feet, shaking, afraid to look up.

Mother will be out there, somewhere, watching,
Beth thought.
She’ll think I’m being wanton, and beat me.

The only bad part about returning to Whitehall was that her mother would be there too. Out of their minuscule income she had taken lodgings nearby, and as a countess she had right of entry nearly everywhere in the palace—except the queen’s own chambers. At Hampton Court, Beth had been left to her own devices, for her mother couldn’t afford the hackney ride, but once they returned to Whitehall she would resume her Janus-faced persecution, pushing Beth at men while ferociously guarding her virginity, so that rather than risk her formidable wrath, Beth (and the men too) chose to do nothing at all.