Читать книгу The Astrologer's Daughter - Paula Marshall - Страница 8

‘A fine garden, Mistress Celia. Are you the gardener?’

Celia shook her head and said a little timidly, which was most unlike her, for she was usually controlled where the opposite sex was concerned. ‘I tend the herbs only, Sir Christopher. Our handyman, Willem, cares for the rest.’

‘The herbs?’ Kit looked about him but saw no herbs. Celia gestured towards a wicker arch, with climbing plants wreathed about it, through which a further garden could be seen.

‘If you are interested in herbs, Sir Christopher, then mine lie through there.’

‘Then I would visit them, Mistress Celia.’ And he led her through the arch to find himself in a knot garden where, instead of flowers, herbs were arranged. Along the brick wall which divided them from the next property stood terracotta urns, filled with more plants whose scents perfumed the air.

Kit bent down to pluck a sprig of thyme and sniff it before handing it to Celia. ‘You use herbs in your mysteries, Mistress Celia?’

Celia crushed the thyme in her hands before smelling it and answered him. ‘I have no mysteries, Sir Christopher, but yes, I use the herbs. Like Mistress Ginner, of whom you may have heard, I serve those women among us who need help in their sicknesses. Culpepper hath shown us the virtues herbs possess, and both my father and I believe that they possess others, yet unknown. Since the willow gives us surcease from pain and mould from many plants aids in healing wounds, may it not be that other plants have their virtues, too? It is for us to discover them and to use them as the stars direct.’ And she slipped the thyme into the small pouch which swung at her waist and walked composedly on.

Kit, from his great height, looked down on her. She was not small, he noted, but neither was she over-tall. A woman to reach above a man’s heart, he thought. And what a strange woman. She had spoken to him as soberly as though she were a scholar and he another, nothing of a woman’s traditional coquetry about her.

He answered her as he might have done a scholar. He thought that George might have failed to win her because he spoke to her lightly, as he did to all women.

‘And the plague, mistress? Do you think there might be a specific against that? A fine thing if there were.’

Celia knew, as Kit did, that the plague was abroad in London and the numbers dying from it were growing each day. From being a thing distant from the haunts of the powerful and the comfortable, like Adam and herself, it was coming disturbingly near and to catch it meant almost certain death.

‘No herbal specific of which I or my father know, but…’ Celia paused; she was fearful that he might mock her if she spoke of what her father thought he knew.

‘A “but”, Mistress Celia? What does thy “but” conceal or reveal? Pray tell me.’

Celia looked up at him. Her eyes were as grey as clear water before a storm, Kit thought. Her face as calm as that of one of the many statues of the goddess Diana he had seen in Italy. It was not a holy, but a classic calm. If he touched her damask cheek would he feel flesh, or marble?

Kit’s hand rose. He checked himself. To win his bet would be far more difficult than he had thought. To go too fast would be to lose her. She would close herself against him as she had closed herself against Buckingham. She would live in a bubble, would be seen, spoken to, but not reached—forever sealed away from him.

Would she be so for any man? Or was there some Hodge, some decent, dull merchant to whom she would surrender her treasure? Or had she vowed herself a vestal virgin to the pale moon?

His hesitation, the thoughts hastening pell-mell through his head, took but an instant of his time. Celia barely noticed his movement, or his hesitation, and said again without artifice, ‘But Father thinks that perhaps we misunderstand the cause of the thing. He says that if it is mere bad air then why does the plague so often confine itself to the poor? The air is as bad in many great houses and yet the plague most often leaves them free. He thinks that perhaps it is because the houses of the rich are spacious, and not huddled together, hugger-mugger; that instead of shutting those infected away, as the law has recently ordered in St Giles in the Fields, we ought to put them outside and let them live in the open. What is there, he also asks, that the rich do and the poor do not, which makes the difference between them? Or mayhap it is the other way around; it is what the poor do.’

She fell silent. She had spoken too long and too vigorously, but she and her father had thought much about the plague and how to contain it.

‘And the stars?’ asked Kit slyly, for he thought astrology a cheat, but would not tell the astrologer’s daughter so. ‘Why do they not tell your father where, how and why the plague works on us as it does? If they are so powerful over our destinies, that is a question which they can surely answer.’

‘That I know not,’ said Celia frankly, her brow a little troubled. ‘The stars do tell us when the plague is coming. All the charts which my father and I prepared for our almanack this year foretold its arrival, and it has come. Master Lilly, too, agreed with us. Perhaps there are things which we may not know…’

‘You dispute as well as any scholar,’ remarked Kit, fascinated by her, admiring first her full face turned towards him and then her profile, pure against the dark of the house.

‘So I have been taught,’ she answered. She had never spoken so long with any man other than her father and had not thought to spend an afternoon discoursing with one from Charles’s court. Nor had she thought that he would speak to her so gravely. Buckingham had always teased her, tried to make her talk nonsense, and had talked nonsense to her. She had no answer to that, so rarely answered him.

This man, now, was different. She stole a glance at Kit and admired his powerful face, his haughty pride, barely held in check. She knew he was proud because he bore the marks of it as the old text she had recently read had told her: ‘head high, eyes steady, mouth firm—he looks to the distant, not the near—carriage erect, voice sure’. To win his respect would be a fine thing, and already he spoke to her not as a woman to be lightly handled and then thrown away but as a fellow soul to dispute with, as he would have disputed with her father.

‘You do not believe in astrology, then, sir?’ she asked him as she would not have done had he merely played the light game of love with her.

‘I do not believe in anything that I cannot see, touch, or experiment with. I am with Prince Rupert in that,’ was his reply. ‘But, mistress, we must to the house again. The Duke and your father will wonder what has kept us and will not like to believe us if we say that we were having a most scholarly discourse. Such is not the usual converse of man and maid left alone together!’

Celia did not blush, or raise a hand to flap at him, but nodded her head in agreement. ‘I had forgot how long we had been alone,’ she said, ‘in the pleasure of our discourse. You are perhaps a member of the King’s great society which seeks to discover the secrets of the world in which we live.’

‘Most surely,’ agreed Kit, leading her back to the house. He was a little surprised that she knew of the Royal Society, but then if her father spoke freely to her of his work, and she had read widely, as it was plain that she had, then she was like to know of it.

‘Oh, I wish,’ said Celia wistfully, looking up at him so that Kit felt that he was about to drown in the grey waters of her eyes—and what a splendid death that would be—‘I wish that I were a man that I might be present and listen to the sages and the learned men speak. Sometimes when Father hath company I am allowed to be present, but I am not allowed to speak. I may merely listen.’

‘And what a waste—’ Kit was suddenly a gallant, a true member of the King’s dissolute court ‘—that would be. That you were a man, I mean, mistress. You are too fair to be a man.’

‘And that,’ she said gently, as they reached the door to the house where they could hear Adam and the Duke speaking together, both having drunk too well, and their voices rising and falling almost as though they were singing, ‘is what I most complain of. That it is my looks which men think of and never of me—the Celia who has thoughts and dreams that a man might have, but may rarely express them.’

She had thought him different but she had been wrong. He was a man and a courtier and he might dally for a moment with her and speak as he might have done to one of his fellows, but that was no matter, she was, forever and ever, merely a woman, and that she must endure.

Kit knew that he had sounded a false note, and that with it he had lost all that he had gained with her. But no matter. He could not believe that she was so different from all the other women he had known. Her wooing and winning would take longer, and would follow a different path, but the end would be the same—if only he guarded his tongue and showed to her that face of him which she would most like to see.

Buckingham lifted his glass mockingly to them as they entered the room. ‘Hast been a devil of a long time admiring the flowers, Kit, my boy. Or is that all you admired? Nay, do not answer me; I would not have the fair Celia put out of countenance. That would never do, my sweeting, would it?’ And he rose and bowed to her.

Kit felt a flash of anger at such boorishness. He saw that Adam had drunk too well to mind the Duke’s grossness, but he need not have feared for the lady at his side.

Celia curtsied and put out a hand to the dish on the table to take a sweetmeat from it, refusing the wine which the Duke’s servant offered her. ‘Why, Your Grace,’ she murmured, before she bit into the sweetmeat, ‘we did but speak of the plague and specifics against it. Sir Christopher was of a mind that an herb might be found, and so we spoke on. And of the King’s society, too. The flowers were not outfaced, I think. Was not that so, Sir Christopher?’

Kit made her a great leg, in respect for her wit, and the Duke gave a great shout.

‘Oh, the astrologer’s daughter is a pearl of great price!’ He turned to Adam, who was beaming at the compliment. ‘Why, man, when you bring my election to Court when thou hast finished it, bring thy daughter, too. Pearls are to be admired by all, not only by such lucky dogs as Kit and myself.’ And he threw back his head and laughed, the drink strong in him.

‘If you so command,’ replied Adam, too dazzled by such condescension to think of the dangers to his daughter of being seen by the denizens of Whitehall’s labyrinthine corridors.

Kit Carlyon’s reaction to the Duke’s carelessness was extraordinary. For a moment he felt a cold rage on the girl’s behalf, that she should be exposed as prey to those who might feed on her. After that came the thought, like cold water thrown over him, and what are thy intentions, Kit, friend of this whoremaster? What of the bet? What makes that of you?

He looked at her, smiling a small smile, a goblet in her hand from which she was drinking lemonade. He repressed his feelings. She’s but a woman after all, no better nor no worse than the rest, and he said again what he had said to himself on the day of his bet—she must take her chance, as we all must. If she be chaste, why, she’s in no danger, for I’ll never force her. I’ve never forced a woman yet.

Now why did Sir Christopher Carlyon walk through her head? He had nothing to do with her—she must forget him, which was difficult. He was with her when she rose the morning following the Duke’s visit and he walked with her on her chores about the house. He was a haughty ghost who bent his head and spoke kindly to her as few men had ever done.

Adam had a bad head, rose late and broke his fast lightly—food nauseated him, he said. He decided to work after noon, when his head might have cleared. He had had second thoughts about the Duke’s visit and, sober now, regretted that he had promised to take Celia to Whitehall. So far she had kept herself clear from that world, and he regretted even more that he had not persuaded her to marry and forget that she was the astrologer’s daughter.

‘You will receive Master Renwick when he comes, will you not, daughter?’ he asked her as she prepared to go shopping. ‘And you will be a good daughter, I know, and give him the answer he—and I—wish to hear.’

What could she say to that? He had been a kind father and she did not want to distress him but, talking to Kit Carlyon, brief though their speech had been, had made her even less inclined towards a marriage with Master Renwick. He was not an unkind man, she knew that without needing an astrological chart to tell her so, but he was not the man for her. Perhaps there was no man for her and, if so, then Amen to that. Except that her father did not want to hear that particular Amen!

‘I like Master Renwick as a friend,’ she said gently, her head bent a little, ‘but I do not wish to marry, Father. You know that. Not him or any man.’

She thought that she spoke the truth but, for a moment, was there not such as man as he had seemed to be yester afternoon whom she might wish to marry? She straightened up and looked her father full in the eye, for she would have refused to marry Robert Renwick even if the Duke had never visited them and brought his haughty friend with him.

‘Say not so, daughter, before you speak with him.’ Adam uttered no threats, no words such as, You will do my bidding, daughter, or be thrashed and remain in your room until you agree to the marriage. It was not his way. Besides, he had done an election, soon after rising, and the election had told him that his daughter would marry, and that her marriage would be long and blessed. It did not tell him whom she would marry, but reason said that Renwick was the man—for who else could there be? No need, then, to act as most men did towards their daughters when they flouted their authority. Time and chance were on his side.

‘Very well, Father. I will listen to Master Renwick, speak him fair, but I warn you, I do not think that I shall change my mind.’

Adam was pleased to take this as a half-submission and said, ‘Go to, then; go to. Do this day’s duty. And should he chance to come today, why, then do that duty, too.’

All the way down the Strand Celia walked, not with Robert Renwick, that decent man whom her father wished her to marry, but with Sir Kit. Oh, it was not just the fashion in which he had spoken to her which entranced her, but it was the whole man. So tall, so proud, the green eyes flashing at her and his voice, that seducing voice when he sang.

What a fool I am; how many women has that beautiful voice seduced? Why should that voice not wish to seduce me? Why should he see me as any different from the other women he had known? Celia suddenly walked with a pride as great as his. I am no court light of love, I am Celia Antiquis—and if I do not wish to be Robert Renwick’s wife, neither do I wish to be Kit Carlyon’s whore, for that is all I should be. Great men do not look at such as I am for other than a passing entertainment. But a girl may dream of other things, so long as she understands that dreams and daily life may never meet!

Willem thought his mistress a little more distant than usual that morning as she bargained with the mercer over stuff for a new gown. A pretty wench, Mistress Celia, but cold. Robert Renwick would be taking an icicle to his bed.

Robert Renwick came that afternoon. Celia and Adam were working on the Duke’s elections, for he had made several. Neither father nor daughter was to know that the true reason for Buckingham’s visit had not been the elections, useful though they might be to him, but to introduce Kit to Celia, to start the consequences of the bet on their way.

Buckingham was mischievous. It would be as good as a play to watch Kit lure Celia Antiquis into his toils. It might even make a play for him. Who knew what the future held for any of them?

Robert Renwick thought that he knew. He was a goldsmith and saw men and women as an extension of his craft, particularly women. They were malleable, could be bought and then bent to the whim of the craftsman or the master. He knew his worth and thought that both Antiquises did. He had spoken often with Celia, and she pleased him. Modesty always pleased a man and Celia was truly modest, save only that her father had unfortunately chosen to treat her as his acolyte. No matter. Her nature, woman’s nature would mean that she would become Robert Renwick’s acolyte and, in so doing, would relinquish what her father had taught her.

He stood in the parlour where Buckingham and Kit had stood the day before. He admired it, particularly the presses. He thought that one day, perhaps not long distant by Adam’s looks, they would grace his home and grace it well.

He ignored the view of the garden through the window. Gardens were for women and his sole thought of it was that Celia might make such a one for him. She entered and was before him.

Celia had thought and thought what to say to him. She neither liked nor disliked him. He was someone with whom her father had supped and spoken. She had known Nan Barton, his first wife, and liked her. She had grieved at her death in childbirth, had watched with pity Robert’s grief at his loss. He was a good man, she thought, but not a good man for Celia Antiquis to marry.

He was finely dressed and, although the day was warm, he had put on his best murrey-coloured doublet with the fur collar. He wore one of his own gold chains and carried a pair of fine gloves in his strong craftsman’s hands. He was not as tall as Kit Carlyon, but broader. His eyes were not flashing green, but brown pools. Why did she think of Kit Carlyon at this juncture?

‘Mistress, you will be seated, I hope.’ He handed Celia into one of her father’s high-backed chairs. Few stools for the prosperous Antiquises, Robert had noted.

‘Indeed, Master Renwick.’ Celia arranged the skirts of her pale blue dress about her. She was neat and careful in all her ways, a good sign for a prospective husband. The house was neat, too, most carefully tended. Her studies had not kept her from her proper work, Robert noted with pleasure.

‘I understand that your father has spoken to you of my visit and its purpose, Mistress Celia.’ He was standing, his back to the light, so that she could not properly see his face. She supposed it was set in lines of pleasant determination. She was right.

He was sure of himself—as who would not be? He had her father’s favour, and the daughter was obedient. Almost, Celia gave him his yes, and then, as she began to frame the words, something inside her rebelled. To wed him would be to go with freedom to servitude. She had secretly vowed never to marry any man for, as a single woman, she might own her own property, run her father’s business while he lived, own it after his death. She would be in all things the equal of a man.

But if she married Robert Renwick she would lose all. Her property would pass to him for him to use without consulting her. As a separate person she would cease to exist. She would be Robert Renwick’s wife and that would be all. Now, if she loved him, she could perhaps bear that servitude, become his chattel—for that was what a wife was, a chattel, nothing more. But, since she loved him not, she would on marriage give up all to receive—nothing.

The words of acceptance stuck in her throat. She would speak him fair, be kind to him, but she would not marry him. As to what her father might say, well, she would have to live with that.

‘He has so,’ she replied. ‘He has told me that you wish to marry me and that if I wish to accept you, he will give us his blessing.’

For a moment Robert thought that she had accepted him; his face lightened, then darkened again.

‘And you, mistress, do you wish to be my wife? I vow to you that I will treat you most lovingly. You were my Nan’s good friend. You know how well we dealt together. I believe that you and I could be as happy. A man would be proud to call you wife, mistress.’

He would treat her lovingly, he said, but he had spoken no word of love. Nor had he asked for hers. Well, that was common enough, but the word might have reconciled her.

She curtsied to him, and something he saw in her face darkened his. ‘Master Renwick, you are a good man, I know, and your offer is a kind one, made in good faith, and as such I have considered it most carefully since my father told me that you wished to speak to me. It grieves me greatly to refuse you, but refuse you I must. I have no mind to marry any man, but were I to marry one, then, Master Renwick, that man would be you. The world is wide, London is large, and there are many maidens who would be happy to be your wife. I wish you happy with one of them.’

He advanced on her, his face grim. Celia suddenly saw that he could be cruel, and her refusal, which had sounded capricious to her as she made it, no longer seemed so. She had thought him tame but she had misjudged him—and the power which her own sex held over the other.

‘Good Mistress Celia, I want no other maid, I want only you. I have dreamed of you as my wife, lo, these many years, and now it has become possible. I shall speak to thy father and persuade him to command thee to accept my offer.’

‘I think not,’ said Celia spiritedly. ‘He has never yet forced me to do that which displeases me. He may lament my refusal of you, but he will not force me.’ Something he had said struck her. He had wanted her ‘lo, these many years’, but Nan had died only six months ago…

‘No!’ she exclaimed, the colour deserting her face. ‘I hope I have misunderstood you. You wanted me when Nan…’ And she paused, as Robert threw himself on his knees before her.

‘I have wanted thee since I first saw thee as a maiden of sixteen on the day I married Nan. God forgive me, when she died I could only think that it freed me for you. It has been torture for me to see thee about my house. I had not meant thee to know, but when you refused me, my tongue betrayed me.’

He seized her hand and the words of love were pouring out at last, and now Celia knew more than ever that he—and his tainted love—was not for her. Nan’s shadow would lie forever between them.

‘Oh, accept me, I beseech thee. Do not let me burn longer. I will buy thee a silken gown, make thee a fine chain, jewels for thy fingers. Robert Renwick’s wife will be as fine as any lady of the court. You cannot turn away such love.’

Celia pulled her hand away. ‘Please stop, I beg of you, Master Renwick. To learn of this makes my mind more fixed than ever. I can never marry you. Nan was my dear friend. Her ghost would lie in our bed reproaching me.’

It was hopeless and, knowing that it was hopeless, he lost all self-control. ‘What, have you a lover, then, mistress, a secret one, that you should treat a good man so? No wench who looks as you do could truthfully prate of staying single. Was the court gallant who came here yesterday with my lord of Buckingham a man to please you more? Or is it the Duke himself you have an eye to? He hath haunted thy father’s house. Was it for thee he came?’

‘For shame.’ Celia was at the door. She had heard a hundred songs which told of the bitterness of unrequited love, but to see that bitterness exposed, to feel it lashing about her as though he had taken a whip to her was more than she could endure. ‘My nay is my nay, Master Renwick. My father did not breed me to be a weak fool. There is no other man in my life, save in thy sick imagination. I will leave you, Master Renwick. You have had your answer.’

Her small hand on the door latch was covered by his large one. ‘Why, mistress,’ he said, panting slightly, ‘never think that this is the end of the story. Robert Renwick hath always got what Robert Renwick wants, and this is no time for him to begin to lose that reputation. If I find you have lied to me, why, mistress, I make a good friend, would have made thee a good husband, but I am a bad enemy. Think on that.’

Celia wrenched her hand from under his and was through the door, sobbing slightly between fright and disgust. The calm which had ruled her life until this day was shattered quite. She had seen the face of naked lust in one whom she had thought was free of such a vulgar passion, had learned how little she knew of the true face of the world, and it had frightened her.

She fled to the sanctuary of her room.

Celia Antiquis walked with Kit Carlyon that day. She was with him when he woke with a thick head. He rarely drank heavily, and seldom gambled, having little with which to gamble. But at Whitehall on the night of the first day that he had met her he sat down to Basset and lost. The old saying went, lucky at cards, unlucky in love. He staggered to his bed, hoping that the reverse held good.

He had supposed that to win his bet he would also need to win something which he did not want—a woman’s love. He had thought that the astrologer’s daughter would be such that he could woo and win her and toss her away without a thought, as he had tossed away Dorothy Lowther.

Aye, and that was the worst of it. He saw Dorothy Lowther that morning and felt only shame at the sight of her. What! Had one walk on a pleasant afternoon among the herbs and shrubs and flowers with a sweet-faced virgin at his side unmanned him quite? He was run tearing mad. He would forget her—but he could not.

The day was fair, the sun shone, the King was not capricious. The Privy Council met in the morning. In the afternoon the court walked in the open, down an alley whose fruit trees were flowering early. The talk was of the coming war with the Dutch.

The Duke of York had left to join the fleet, Charles Berkeley with him. Berkeley was a friend of Kit’s. It might be more truthful to say that he was a friend of everyone, universally loved by all, from the King downwards. He had written a song before he had gone and early in the afternoon the King called on Kit to sing it—his reward a game of tennis with his monarch in the cool of the day.

The role of courtier fretted Kit. But what else could a landless, penniless man do, who knew no trade save war? For that reason, Latter beckoned. A home of his own, an occupation to see his small lands well-run. Like many others, the late Civil War between King and Parliament had deprived him of his inheritance. At first, to serve the King, adorn his court, had seemed some recompense but, as the years drew on, he found himself needing security, his own home—a wife, children around him.

But to gain Latter, find that home, he must betray Celia Antiquis, and Buckingham, clever devil that he was, had thought of the one way to bribe Kit to do for him what he had failed to do for himself. Being Buckingham, he could not fail—he would succeed through Kit.

Kit finished Berkeley’s merry ballad. ‘To all you ladies now on land’, and Celia Antiquis popped into his mind again. The King saw his melancholy and, being a melancholic man himself, had compassion for him. ‘Why, Kit man, what ails thee? Hast taken a fever? Is there none here to please thee, haul thee from the dumps?’ He waved a hand at the assorted beauties sitting or standing in the sun. His queen had accompanied him and held court from a bench beside an urn of unseasonally early flowers.

Kit shrugged and laid down his guitar. ‘Nothing that a game of tennis will not cure, sire.’ And that was true, he knew. Action always dissipated melancholy for, in the violent doing, the mind disappeared and the body took over.

‘Buckingham tells me that you and he hied to the astrologer, Antiquis, yesterday and that he hath invited him here, and his daughter, too. He says that the daughter practises his trade, knows his mysteries. Is that the truth, or Buckingham’s extravagance talking?’

Kit looked at the King, his master. He was wearing a royal-blue coat with a silver sash and trimmings; his petticoat breeches were of a deeper blue and a scarlet garter bound each stocking. He had a spaniel on his lap and toyed with its ears—as he was toying with Kit’s in a different sense.

‘The truth, sire? The maid is as knowledgeable as the father.’

‘And is she fair?’

Kit’s eyes were on Charles again. Was this mere idleness, or had the King the thought that a new sensation might be found in toying with the astrologer’s daughter instead of a noble beauty? Actresses had graced his bed, Nell Gwyn and Moll Davis; why not a maiden from the city streets?

‘Very fair,’ he said at last.

The King began to laugh. ‘Why, I verily believe I have found the cause of Kit Carlyon’s melancholy. And is she chaste, as well as fair, and has she refused Buckingham and looked sideways at the good self? Fie, for shame, you cannot have wooed her properly. Kit Carlyon to be bested by an unknown virgin?’

What to say? For he knew that Charles was truly toying with him, that Buckingham had told him of the bet and all the court were agog to see whether a cit’s daughter could do what the maids of honour could not, and deny Kit Carlyon what he wished.

Kit picked up his guitar again, stared at the scarlet ribbons which decorated it and thought how often its music had helped him to a worthless victory over women whose virtue had long vanished. What true pleasure lay in that?

‘The maid scarce knew that I was with her,’ he said at last. ‘Her eyes are fixed on a greater master than—’ and he dared to say it ‘—than you or I.’

Charles took no offence—he rarely did. ‘And what master is that, good Sir Kit, who is more attractive than any man, even one who wears a crown?’

‘Why knowledge, sire. The lady would be a sage, know the secrets of the universe as well as those of the stars. She wishes that she were a man, able to sit at the meetings of our society and dispute the meaning of our findings with us. She does not see men as lovers, or husbands, I dare swear.’

‘Oh, a rare wench, indeed. When she comes hither I must see her. Arrange it, Kit. I would talk with a maiden who is fair, chaste and does not wish to deal with men but with natural philosophy. Yes, a rare creature, indeed. Go now, but do not forget our game this evening. I would play with someone who does not fear to beat me. I grow weary of “A splendid stroke, Majesty”—“Oh, a fig for my play, you have bested me quite”—and that after I have been given the game!’

Kit watched him go. Charles held out his hand to the Queen as he passed her and Catherine of Braganza, dumpy, with a pleasant monkey face, was only too pathetically glad to take it. She loved her careless husband and was grateful for the crumbs of his attention. She possessed but one thing to hold him, and that was the promise of a legitimate child, but so far the child had not come, nor, some whispered, was like to. Recently she had been ill and in her delirium had thought herself delivered of the wanted children. Charles had been kind to her, but kindness was all she got. It was his love she wanted, and that she would never have.

Kit was thinking on this as he walked back to his lodgings to change to play tennis, and to rest a little. He met Buckingham coming from his quarters which faced the Privy Garden; Kit’s were not far from the tennis court.

‘Well met, Kit. Hath Old Rowley done with thee?’ Old Rowley was the King’s nickname after a notorious goat, given because of Charles’s many loves. Charles knew of it and, in his sardonic way, was amused by it.

‘Not yet. I am to play tennis with him later.’

‘Sooner thou than I.’ Buckingham became confidential, put his arm through Kit’s. ‘I had news today which should give us all pause. They say that the plague is far worse than the Bills of Mortality suggest. That it grows apace and leaves the warrens of St Giles and Alsatia behind and advances towards the City. I should have had old Antiquis perform an election on it.’

‘His daughter said that they forecast that the plague would come this year, and that it would be a great one…’

‘So, that was the burden of the talk. Small wonder that you progressed no further with her than you did if that was all you could think to speak of!’

Kit shrugged. ‘I think,’ he said slowly, ‘that I may have progressed further than I thought. I am not sure, George, how far I wish to pursue this bet, even though by winning I might gain Latter.’

Buckingham laughed maliciously. ‘Too late, man, too late. The die is cast. The bet is made that you will make the fair Celia no longer a maid.’

Once, Kit would have continued to play further with words, but not today. ‘Did Antiquis say how much time might pass before he brought your answers to Whitehall?’

‘Oho!’ Buckingham laughed again. ‘So hot to see her, Kit, that you cannot wait? He said it might be a week, but should you wish to see her sooner, why, you know the way to the Strand. Her father would welcome thee, so pleased was he that the Court now patronises him. Would his pleasure agree to the surrender of his daughter’s virginity, think you?’

Commonly Kit might have continued jousting with him after this fashion, but today he was uneasy, sick at heart, and did not know why.

‘Oh, I can wait,’ he answered. ‘What was it that the old Roman, Fabius by name, said? That the best generalship draws the enemy on by slow degrees to destroy him utterly.’

‘A soldier’s answer,’ responded Buckingham gaily. ‘Well, I live to see that day, Kit, when she comes and you retreat and retreat so that alone, in enemy country, there is no retreat for her, but only surrender. I do not wish thee well, mind, for I covet thy ring.’

He was gone. Quicksilver in mind and body, a man whom few would trust, but old hardships shared bound him and Kit together. Had he told his friend the truth it would have been that he wished to see her again and soon, if only to find that his memory of her was false—that she was but another woman, after all.