Celia looked up at him.

Her eyes were as gray 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.

The Astrologer’s Daughter
Paula Marshall

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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AUTHOR NOTE

In the seventeenth century, when the action of this novel takes place, the English language was undergoing a period of great change. Until then all women, whether married or single, were called mistress. But early in the century it often became shortened to miss when used to address a very young unmarried woman—but not always!

This confusion persisted until late in the following century. Thus Celia is always named as mistress, although she was unmarried, because she was over twenty and the mistress of her father’s house. The Queen’s maids of honour were, however, always called miss, and so I have named them in The Astrologer’s Daughter.

Similarly, you, your, thee, thou, and thy were interchangeable and often mixed up in the same sentence.

Again it was the eighteenth century before the present usage of you and your at all times became customary.

I have followed the fashion of 1665/66 to make the dialogue more authentic sounding.

Kit’s song on pages 10 and 11 was written by the author and is copyright to her.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter One

K it Carlyon was pleasuring a woman against a wall in an ante-room in the Court of Whitehall. She was one of the maids of honour of Queen Catherine of Braganza, wife of King Charles II, and the enjoyment of both parties was heightened because they might be found by anyone at any moment.

Kit Carlyon’s pleasure was even greater than his partner’s because he was winning a bet with George Buckingham that he would swive this particular maid before anyone else would be able to do so, and that the act would be performed in the precincts of the court itself.

Consummation achieved, there was no further time for enjoyment. Voices and footsteps could be heard and, laughing and cursing, Kit tied up his black velvet petticoat breeches. The maid, who had certainly lost the right to that title long before she reached King Charles’s court, was pulling her skirts down and frantically doing up the bodice which Kit had undone in the early states of their encounter.

By the time the door had opened and George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, the handsome son of an even more handsome father, had entered with a group of his cronies, Kit was sitting down again. He had picked up his discarded guitar and was playing ‘Greensleeves’ while Dorothy Lowther, the maid, was looking out of the window so that sharp eyes should not see her swollen, scarlet face.

Kit’s eyes met Buckingham’s as he began to sing and a silent message passed between them. At a pause in the song Buckingham said, a trifle ruefully, ‘You have been entertaining the lady, Kit?’

Kit said, head bent over his guitar, ‘Oh, I hope so, George, I do hope so.’

Dorothy Lowther’s head swung round at the sardonic note in Kit’s voice. She was a plump girl with an emptily pretty face and had been fortunate to achieve a place at Court. Kit Carlyon was not the first man whom she had favoured, as he had rapidly discovered, nor was he, he thought, the first man she had favoured at Court, but so far she had always been discreet. She looked from him to Buckingham who was pulling a silk purse from the heavy skirts of his splendid scarlet coat, and was proffering several guineas to the singer.

Kit raised his head to stare at his friend and said briefly, ‘Twice that, George. I was right on both counts.’

Buckingham began to laugh. Dorothy Lowther went first pale and then scarlet as she watched Buckingham toss the guineas into Kit’s lap, remarking through his laughter, ‘I have to accept that you are not cheating me, Kit—on either count.’

Before Kit could answer, Dorothy Lowther was between him and Buckingham. ‘You whore-son rogue, Kit Carlyon, you bet upon me with him!’ And she swung her right hand with such force as to leave a bright red mark on Kit’s left cheek.

He put down his guitar, caught at her hand and kissed it as she swung it to strike him again, announcing in a voice of such calm reason that he left her aghast at his coldness, ‘Since, my sweeting, you have chosen to broadcast to all the world what we have so recently been doing, you may as well tell George, here, that I was not the first man to plough your particular field—he might not believe my unsupported word. I bet upon your lack of virginity as well as your complaisance.’

Dorothy Lowther had gone bright red but his last words left her ashen. She stood away from Kit, looked from his mocking saturnine face, framed in chestnut curls—he wore his own hair—to Buckingham and his laughing friends, and said slowly, ‘They warned me what you were, Kit Carlyon, and I chose not to believe them. I thought that you were different from the rest, that you liked me a little, but I see that I was wrong. I hope that one day you will know what it means to love—and to be betrayed.’

‘Love,’ sang Kit to the music he was playing. ‘And what the devil’s that? You enjoyed yourself and so did I. Isn’t that enough? Must you have more? Seize the day, as the Ancients said, and, by God, we have just seized it together. As for the money, it’s yours; you’ve earned it.’ And he rose and stuffed the guineas into her hand.

As rapidly as he had bestowed them on her, she raised her hand and threw the guineas at him. They rolled and clattered beyond him upon the polished floor. She turned on her heel and prepared to run from the room.

Kit was not a whit abashed. He raised his guitar to salute her and said over the top of it. ‘My pretty dear, I have a song for you. Only stay, and you shall hear it.’

‘A song!’ cried Buckingham, no mean performer on the guitar himself and, like most of King Charles’s court, given to writing poetry—and even, on occasion, a play. ‘A new one, Kit? Say it is a new song. I am weary of the old. We lack invention these days.’

‘New, quite new. But the theme is old—all the best themes are old.’ And he began to sing in his pleasant baritone. Even Dorothy Lowther stayed to hear, caught by the melancholy beauty of both the music and the words. Kit was so intent on his performance that room, courtiers and maids of honour alike vanished. He was alone with his creation; the harsh realities of life had disappeared. For a brief moment he was a boy again, joying in his newly found power to create, the world lying all before him…

In the middle of his song the King himself, drawn by the sound of music, came into the room followed by yet more courtiers. He placed his finger on his lips, mutely asking Kit’s audience not to acknowledge him so that the music should not be disturbed.

Yes, it was a new song and yes, the theme was old, but, for a moment, it held King and courtiers in its spell.

Love is joy, love is fleeting,

And parting is as sure as meeting.

’Tis the burden of my song,

That love, alas, is never long.

So enjoy it while we may;

Tomorrow is another day—

If love should last until the dawn,

By dusk its farewell we shall mourn.

Seize then the hour before it passes,

For sure there will be other lasses.

Time and chance may change my song,

But love, alas, will ne’er be long.

The last haunting notes hung in the air. There was something so plaintive, so sad, about both the song and the singer that for a moment no one spoke, and then the King, striking his hands together, came forward to greet Kit, his courtiers parting before him.

Charles was not a particularly regal figure, but then he never had been. Informality reigned at Whitehall in 1665 as it had done ever since Charles had come home from his travels in 1660. He was wearing a crimson velvet coat, laced with gold, and a vast lace cravat; his petticoat breeches—wide culottes falling to his knees—were black, his shirt loose over the top of them. His stockings were of scarlet silk with gold clocks and his black leather shoes had red heels. His wig was long, curling and black, and added another couple of inches to his height of over six feet. He towered over every man in the room.

‘Well sung, Kit. No, do not stand, man. The song is your own?’

‘Yes, sire.’ Kit obeyed his monarch and remained where he was.

‘Passing fine, Kit, passing fine. I missed the first verse. You will sing it again?’

It was formed as a question, but was really a command. Kit nodded and once again the strains of the song filled the air. One or two, including George Buckingham, began to hum along with it by the end.

‘I am not sure, Kit—’ Charles was judicious ‘—whether I prefer the music or the words. Both are rare. You will let me have a copy of both, will you not? I would like to hear Castlemaine sing it.’

Few dared to laugh at this somewhat double-edged statement. Charles II was free and easy with his court, but whether he would have appreciated any comment on his mistress, Barbara Palmer, Lady Castlemaine, singing a song about fleeting love—her own hold on the King being the opposite of that—was quite another matter.

Kit looked up at his master, his friend since they had fought side by side at Worcester field in 1651 and had fled that doomed battlefield together—Kit barely seventeen years old and Charles already a man of twenty-one, cynical beyond his years.

He rose and bowed. He was not much shorter than the King in height and, like the King, was well-built and athletic—Charles sometimes teased him with his nickname ‘Shoulders’, and frequently demanded that he play opposite to him at tennis.

‘Certainly, sire. As always, your wish is my command.’ And he gave yet another bow—as perfunctory as the first had been. The King’s eyebrows climbed. Kit’s words might sound obedient, almost servile, but there was nothing of either in his manner. He was neither as rebellious nor as insolent as the young Lord Rochester already was, occasionally being condemned by the King to short periods in the Tower for his lèse majesté, but he was always his own man—as Dorothy Lowther had found.

‘You were not formed to be a courtier, Kit. Natheless, lend me your shoulder for a moment.’ He flung his arm around Kit, leaning on him, and began to walk him to the tall glass doors which led on to one of Whitehall’s many lawns.

The palace by the river was a rabbit warren. It had been built over the reigns of many different monarchs and it was Kit’s joke that, like Theseus pursuing the Minotaur in the labyrinth, one needed a thread unwinding behind one to find a safe way in and out of it.

Behind them both streamed not only the courtiers but also Charles’s small spaniels, yapping their pleasure as they ran into the open. The King made for one of the many seats scattered about the grounds. He released his human prop, saying, ‘Another song, Kit, and then you may retire—to please yourself, perhaps,’ and his black eyes shone, leaving Kit in no doubt that his monarch knew perfectly well of Kit’s dalliance and neither approved nor disapproved of it.

Kit had carried his guitar in his left hand as he walked along and, standing, he lifted a foot on to the bench before beginning to sing Herrick’s poem ‘Delight in Disorder’. He had set it to his own music the other evening and his eyes rested on Dorothy Lowther as he sang it. She had followed him and the King into the gardens almost unwillingly, and blushed a little at the opening words of the song:

A sweet disorder in the dress

Kindles in clothes a wantonness…

which he sang to her in defiance of her displeasure.

Once more King and Court applauded him. The King raised his hands and said, ‘Go, Kit. Let your time be your own. I shall call on you again soon.’

Kit, now released, bowed gracefully this time—he was supple and elegant in all his movements despite his size—and walked slowly away from the King, his guitar by his side. He had hardly reached the paved walk which ran alongside the lawn, some of the little dogs following him, before George Buckingham caught up with him.

‘Stay but a while, Kit. Old Rowley may have released you, but I have not done with you yet.’

Kit turned to face him. Buckingham was both an old friend and a rival. Despite his delicate beauty, rapidly running to seed, there was an aura of brutality about him which many of Charles’s old friends and courtiers possessed. It was a relic of the days when they had followed him around the courts of Europe, penniless, begging for a living, hardly knowing where the next crust was coming from. It had made them all hard, and they had seized with both hands the pleasure of ruling England again after Charles’s restoration in 1660.

Their boyhood had been harsh and penurious; their manhood was making up for it. Buckingham and Rochester were among the leaders of the self-styled Merry Gang who surrounded and amused the King, their antics often bordering on cruelty.

‘Come, Kit,’ Buckingham said, his smile a rictus, not a smile at all—he never liked being bested. ‘Easy enough to pleasure the little Lowther, eh? Nothing to that, you must own. Her nay is always her yea. Now, I have a proposition for you of another coin. A trial of a different kind. A wench who not only flaunts her virtue, but clasps it tight to her. Now, if you could but breach her…that would be a triumph indeed, for she hath resisted so many. Could she resist you, think you? What would you wager with me on that?’

Kit looked at his friend, who was his enemy—for Buckingham was all contradictions—and mocked back at him. ‘Nothing to that, indeed. Who is this paragon? Not to be found at Court, I’ll be bound.’

‘No, never at Court—until you bring her here, perhaps to joy us all. After you, my friend, always after you. That is the wager. She is the astrologer’s daughter, no less.’

‘What, William Lilly’s get?’ Kit was incredulous. ‘I had not known that he had any.’

‘No, not Lilly. His friend, his colleague, his rival. They live near to one another, hate each other’s guts, cast horoscopes at one another instead of stones.’ Words were pouring in a torrent from Buckingham; he could never resist them. ‘Who but Adam Antiquis, who hath a fair daughter, Celia, a most chaste maid, who meets your eyes so steadily and says with hers, Stand off, do not touch me, I am cold Diana, I was born beneath the sign of the moon. Be Apollo, Kit, the Sun himself, and conquer, and I shall give thee—the manor of Latter, no less.’

‘And if I lose? What then, George, can I give you, having so little?’

‘The ruby on thy finger, Kit. I have long coveted it. The setting is magnificent—Cellini might have made it. Come, man, be not a laggard. You lose but a ring and you stand to gain Latter, which, my boy, would give thee a better hearth and home than that scrub you own in Cheshire, crowned with a burned-out ruin where your father, old Sir Kit, once held court. I’ll never love thee again if you do not humour me. A good friend, but a bad enemy—you know my way. Besides, the wench hath flouted me most cruelly. I would see her endure love’s pangs and love’s shame—and who better than you to ensure them?’

At the mention of the ruby Kit looked down at the ring which blazed on his finger. He knew that Buckingham coveted it, knew also that he had vowed never to part with it. It was all that was left to Kit Carlyon of another life, another time, when he had been young and innocent, a man who would never have treated Dorothy Lowther as he had just done.

‘I’ll wager anything you like, George. But not the ring.’ There was a hesitancy in his voice, he knew, for Latter was a temptation. At a stroke he would gain a competency, a home. Why, he might retire the Court, cease to be one of Charles’s gentlemen, not need his small bounty; late though the King often was in paying those who served him, at least it was pay.

‘But not the ring,’ he repeated slowly.

Buckingham saw his hesitancy, threw back his head and laughed. ‘Oh, Kit, Kit, why not the ring? Sure, you’ll not fail, you never do. The girl once yours, you keep the ring and gain Latter, too. As for the girl, whether you keep her or not, why, that’s another matter.’ And he began to sing Kit’s song back at him.

Madness seized Kit. What was there left for him, after all? Thirty-one years old, a bachelor, nigh penniless, no kith nor kin—why hang on to the dream of a lost past? Why not cut loose? To risk the ring would be to say that Kit Carlyon was still alive, not mourning that dead past. As for the girl, this Celia Antiquis, she must take her chance. If she were truly virtuous then she had nothing to fear; if not, then she deserved Kit Carlyon, did she not?

‘The ring against Latter, let it be. Do you wish a term for this, George?’

‘Nay, not I—or yet, perhaps this twelvemonth, Kit, there shall be a reckoning. Say a year from now. And now let’s to the river to feed the ducks, to watch our master.’ And he flung his arm around Kit’s shoulders, as Charles had done, and walked him down the steps towards the riverbank, calling to the ducks as he did so, so that they scattered across the water, the King swearing at him genially as they fled, and the courtiers laughing.

And Kit Carlyon?

Why, Sir Christopher Carlyon, Bart, thought himself Judas that he wagered what was precious to him on such a thing, with such a creature as George Buckingham had become. Save that I am no better he thought, and, yes, the girl must take her chance.

‘Now, my Celia, my wench, if thou hast cast the horoscope for which Sir William asked, then let me have it. You have saved mine eyes the pain.’

Adam Antiquis, outwardly hale at sixty, although inwardly failing, stood in his luxurious parlour at the back of his fine house in the Strand. Once he had been able to enjoy the view of the gardens outside, see the small wooden summer-house where he was wont to sit on a fair evening, listening to Celia as she played the viol for him, but latterly his sight had begun to dim.

Celia, her hand on the parchment on which she had inscribed Sir William Harmer’s horoscope, lifted her blonde head and smiled at him. ‘And what regard for my pains, sir?’ she asked demurely, teasing him a little, for he well knew that she never asked for reward, being content to serve him.

Adam was about to answer when Mistress Hart, their housekeeper, came in carrying a flagon of good sack and two metal goblets on a silver tray. ‘Master, mistress, as you commanded,’ she said, and placed the tray on the oak table before Celia, neatly avoiding the parchment, inkhorn and Celia’s quill.

‘Pour out the drink,’ commanded Adam in his most noble vein. He had been born a poor yeoman’s son in Leicestershire, by the name of Archer. But nobler far was Antiquis, he had thought, for one who had set up as an astrologer, counting Elias Ashmole as his master and William Lilly, another Leicestershire man, as his friend and rival.

Nothing of his origins remained. He was as finely dressed as any courtier—if more soberly—in black velvet with silver trimmings, to match his luxuriant silver hair. Celia was the child of his middle years and his wife had died at her birth. She was like her father, not her dead mother. Her face was noble, classic—a Greek nose, great grey eyes beneath fine black eyebrows, her mouth long and firm, but generous. Her blonde hair, deeply waved, was caught simply back in a great knot.

Her clothes were simple, too. A grey gown with a while linen collar edged with fine lace, all spotless. Both of the Antiquises were spotless in clothes and body—for Adam had long noted that the clean lived longer than the dirty and were less inclined to agues and bad humours. He and Celia bathed frequently in water drawn from a well far from cesspits.

‘I would thou gave me a reward,’ he said, putting down the goblet. ‘A reward which would please me, seeing that I am old and failing. I would not die leaving you alone and unprotected. Robert Renwick, the goldsmith, came yester eve to ask if he might offer for you. He would want a dowry, he said, to which my answer was, “No heed of that, Master Renwick, for Celia is all I have and will inherit all that is mine.” He is a good man, Celia, and would treat you well, I have no doubt. His first wife was well cared for, ’till the sweating sickness took her.’

Celia rose, holding the goblet before her, and stood quite still to say at last, ‘I have a mind to die a virgin, as you have long known, Father. I also have a mind to carry on your work. You have trained me well, but I think Robert Renwick would not want his wife to be other than his housekeeper and his bed-mate.’

Adam sighed, walked to the window, peered out of it, inwardly cursing his blurred sight and his failing body.

‘I should not have trained you as I would have done a son,’ he answered her. ‘It pleased me to do so, and well you have rewarded me. You are better than most sons and, for a woman, your grasp of matters both plain and arcane is remarkable. But I have done you no favours. Times are changing, daughter. Sarah Ginner might be an astrologer under the Commonwealth, but the lives of women become ever more straitened. You would be safer as Renwick’s wife. I would not die thinking you in danger, or penniless, or to be despoiled by the ruthless. Say you will obey me in this. You have never refused to obey me before.’

He had never asked such a thing of her before. Robert Renwick was well enough. He was older than she was—thirty-five to her twenty-two—but that was not it, either. He was heavy, dull: he would not wish his wife to know more than he did. He would cabin her—confine her to his kitchen, his bed, to be the mother of his sons. He was not asking for her out of love, she thought, but out of expedience—and Adam was passing rich. That must weigh with him, for all would come to him if he married her, and she—why she would be his chattel, nothing more.

Adam had made her his equal—and now he wished her to be another man’s slave. She drank long and deep, but hardly tasted the sack.

‘Allow me but a time to think,’ she answered him.

‘Aye, you may have that. But not too long—the stars say that my time on earth is nearly run and my body answers yes to them. And catastrophe awaits London—whether the plague or the fire, as Lilly thinks, I do not know, but I would have thee settled first.’

Celia knew that he was disturbed when he used thee and thou so freely. She put the goblet down on the table. ‘And meantime, Father?’

‘Meantime, my Lord of Buckingham comes this afternoon, my girl. He wishes me to make an election. Of what, his messenger did not say. But he will pay well, I think, and he is not a man to deny. You will be my eyes, will you not?’ Writing was beginning to be a burden to him and Celia was his hand as well as his sight.

He added, abruptly for him, ‘And he is a man you would be safe from if you married Renwick. He would have no occasion to meet you then. I would not have you with us when he calls, save that my sight needs thee. You understand me, daughter?’

Oh, Celia understood him. She had not known that her father had read Buckingham, and read him aright. He frequently visited Adam, to commission him to draw up an election, which was a decision on some important matter, to be made by consulting the disposition of the stars. But he also came to pursue Celia, to place a careless hand on her when she passed him and then, when her father was not by, to suggest with obscene directness that she become his bawd, his plaything.

Celia did not like him. Handsome he might be, and the housekeeper cast sheep’s eyes on him, but there was something about him which made her shudder. Besides, the stars said that he was a danger to her. Adam had cast Buckingham’s horoscope for him and she had written it out, and there, lo, when she placed it beside her own, was the message that she was in an unknown way tied to him.

Fear rode on her shoulders, for Buckingham was great, and she and Adam, for all their arcane knowledge and the respect in which the commonalty held them, were small.

There was a bustle outside—a noise. It was the Duke, come with all the train which his state demanded, rowed downriver from Whitehall in his barge, doubtless, surrounded by his minions, to come to leer at Celia Antiquis while using old Adam’s knowledge which increasingly, as he aged, was her knowledge.

The door was rapped upon, was opened. Mistress Hart was there, curtsying to the visitors, her head held low. A steward stood before her, a white staff in his hand. Today my lord of Buckingham had come as Duke, not as he sometimes did, informally, to lean on Adam’s shoulder and call him friend.

Buckingham entered. He was all gravity, in black and gold. There was a pearl in his right ear; the wig above his handsome dissipated face was like his silver-blond hair—except that it had not faded with age. He had his right arm draped round the broad shoulders of a man whom Celia had not seen before and was whispering in his ear. None other was with them.

Celia, curtsying, avoided the eyes of both of them. Like a wild creature, she would not give the Duke a direct glance of her eyes, keeping her head submissively low, focusing her attention on the white bows of her polished black shoes.

His Grace would not allow her that. He pulled his arm away from his companion’s shoulders, nodded briefly to Adam, put a hand under Celia’s chin to tip her face towards him.

‘I would have a proper greeting from you, mistress. And one for my friend, Sir Christopher Carlyon, too. He hath a mind for you to cast his ’scope, or provide him with an horary—is not that so, Kit? What question shall thy horary answer? Nay, that you must tell the maiden, not myself. She is your eyes, is she not, Master Antiquis?’

If Adam disliked His Grace’s easy handling of his daughter there was no show of it in his manner. He murmured his agreement, offered the Duke a chair as Celia bowed to the two men. Sir Christopher stood beside it, leaning on the chair-back, curious green and hazel eyes roving the elegant parlour.

Celia had been compelled by the Duke to look Sir Christopher Carlyon straight in the eye. She saw a tall man, taller than the Duke, more carelessly dressed in green and silver, whose face was deceptive, for while he was not handsome there was something compelling in it. As she looked at him, the room moved around her. For a moment Celia was lost. She had had such a fit before, where her body remained but her spirit roved, but never such a profound one. Adam knew of her rare trances and they frightened him, for nothing he had read, or been taught, could explain them.

She was in the open. There was a smell of burning and the sky was not blue, but black and orange. The air was not fresh, but hot and humid. People were shouting and the face of Sir Christopher Carlyon was before her, strangely distorted. She thought that he was shouting but she could hear nothing.

And then she was back in the parlour again, the sweet smell of spring was coming through the window, the smell of fire had gone. No time at all had passed, and yet an infinite time had held her imprisoned.

The green and hazel eyes were hard on her. She knew that her face changed on these occasions, that her eyes became wide and blank. He had seen the change, the shift of her consciousness, and he said, leaning forward, ‘You are ill, mistress? Master Antiquis, your daughter needs attention, I think.’

His voice was beautiful, a caress, the voice of a singer or an actor. For sure he was neither. Her spirit, that sometimes remained with her after her trance had passed, told her that he was, or had been, a soldier. The spirit vanished. She was ordinary Celia Antiquis again, saying in a submissive voice, as colourless as she could make it, ‘It is nothing, sir. A passing malaise only.’

She was surprised that he had registered that something strange had happened to her. It supposed a sensitivity in him which she would not have thought he possessed. The green eyes were suddenly veiled and Sir Christopher waved a dismissive hand. ‘Enough, then, mistress. George, I must not stop you from your business here.’ He looked through the open window at the pretty garden and turned his green eyes away from Celia as though, restored again, she bored him.

Celia’s surprise was now at herself. She sat down at the table, listened to her father taking the Duke’s instructions, heard her father’s answers and wrote in her clear plain script at his instruction, and was, astonishingly, piqued at Sir Christopher’s lack of interest in her.

Kit, his friend called him. Or was the Duke his master? She thought not. No one was his master. Green-eyes was owned by none. How did she know that? She did two things at once, a trick Adam had taught her. She was achingly aware of Sir Christopher’s every movement while appearing to be absorbed in her work. He was listening to the Duke, who needed advice from Adam on a financial enterprise.

‘I will leave it to you, Master Antiquis. You will bring me your answer to Whitehall, will you not? And your daughter shall accompany you. You may need her eyes and her good right hand.’ He had risen from his seat and walking over to where Celia worked, he said idly, ‘You write a fair hand, mistress.’

He made no move to touch her or to woo her as he had been wont to do in the past. Was it because of his friend, or had he lost interest in her? She was grateful for that if he had.

Celia continued her work for a moment; the horoscope grew on the parchment before her. She consulted an almanack.

Buckingham surveyed the parlour. ‘A fair room, sir. Thy presses are fit for the treasures you display in them.’ And he gestured at the books behind the glazed doors of the presses. ‘Hast a fine library, and a strange one. There are texts here, sir, that would have brought you down under the late tyrant, Cromwell.’ He swung on his red-heeled shoe to stare at his friend. ‘Silent, Kit? Most unlike you. I have a mind to be entertained. Entertain me—and the astrologer and his daughter, too.’

Kit remained silent, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with him. Buckingham clapped his hands together loudly. His steward, white rod in his hand, who had been standing the while beside the door, started towards him. ‘Your Grace?’

‘Fetch the servants and the food and bid Sir Kit’s man bring him his guitar. A fair white cloth as well, to cover Master Antiquis’s good table after the French fashion. I would eat, sir. You will join me?’

It is his house now, not ours; these great ones own all that they desire or see, thought Celia resentfully, looking up to catch Sir Christopher’s eyes on her. They said, silently, I know what you are thinking. Adam, by contrast, showed his pleasure at the Duke’s condescension, spoke to him with a catch in his voice.

‘You will do me a great favour, Your Grace, and drink of my wine, before you eat?’

The Duke waved a beautiful careless hand, flung his arm about Kit’s shoulders again and, after agreeing to drink with Adam, announced, with none to say him nay, ‘We shall drink in thy garden, Master Antiquis, thou and I and Kit and thy daughter. When his servant brings his guitar, Kit shall sing for us as we drink. What is better on an afternoon of sun and scents, such as this, but to eat and drink and listen to good music? Faith, they have no better time of it in heaven. Cherubim, seraphim, powers and principalities will envy us.’

Kit has little to say for himself, was Celia’s sardonic thought; he leaves all to his master—for Kit merely nodded his agreement and Adam opened the door to the garden and they all walked through, the Duke leading. Outside, the early April afternoon was as warm as June. The sun was up and high. The flowers were all out as though it were very June, indeed. Apple trees, a crab among them, arched their boughs over them. The Duke flung himself on the garden bench, Kit at his feet, and motioned to Celia and Adam to sit with him, their seat being the grass, already yellowing. It had not rained for weeks.

Kit’s man brought his guitar, Mistress Hart the wine and goblets. Adam was proud that his possessions were so fine. The yeoman’s cottage where he had begun his days seemed far away. The steward came and a man following him in the Duke’s colours handed the wine about. Kit tuned his guitar, bent his head over it, looked up and this time collected Celia’s eyes.

‘A song for you, mistress, seeing that you have been a good and obedient clerk. It is one of the late Will Shakespeare’s and is a favourite of George’s. The cherubim will envy this.’ It was the longest speech he had yet made. His musician’s hands plucked the strings. He sang, and his voice was so soft and tender that the tears started in Celia’s eyes.

O mistress mine! where are you roaming?

O! stay and hear; your true love’s coming,

That can sing both high and low.

Trip no further, pretty sweeting;

Journey’s end in lovers’ meeting,

Every wise man’s son doth know…

What is love? ’tis not hereafter;

Present mirth hath present laughter;

What’s to come is still unsure:

In delay there lies no plenty;

Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,

Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

Kit had kept his eyes on Celia while he sang and, when all was silent at the end, repeated, ‘Youth’s a stuff will not endure,’ not in his singing mode but low, breathily, as if he were giving her a message and they were alone in the garden, Adam and Eve together. But the serpent—where was he?

Buckingham spoke. It was to quote from Twelfth Night, the play from which the song was taken. ‘“A mellifluous voice, as I am true knight.” Well sung, Kit. Thy singing matches the wine. Matchless, Master Antiquis, like your talent—and your daughter. A toast to thee, Mistress Celia. A fairer face never adorned the court.’

There was mockery in his tone, but Adam was deaf to it. He took all as his due. This was his zenith, his apogee, to have a Duke in his garden, one of the King’s favourites singing to his daughter—for he knew of Kit Carlyon if Celia did not—wine before them and a meal waiting in his parlour, for the steward was at the garden door summoning them to eat.

Celia heard the Duke’s mockery, saw his knowing eye on her, and thought how much she preferred his friend, who had behaved so quietly, who had noted her earlier distemper, but had not refined on it to distress her. So, when Buckingham said to the steward, ‘In with you, man; Master Antiquis will accompany me and Sir Kit will take a turn around the garden with Mistress Celia before he brings her in to dine with us, for he hath a great interest in posies as well as poesies,’ she felt no fear of Kit.

She allowed him to take her arm after he had handed his guitar to his waiting servant, whose grin after Celia had walked away from him, her hand on Kit’s arm, was as knowingly insolent as only a servant’s could be.

Kit had not known what to expect when Buckingham had collected him at Whitehall. He had watched the Duke order the hampers of food to be loaded into the barge. He had laughingly told Kit to take his guitar with him to old Antiquis’s home, ‘For music undoes more ribbons and buttons than fingers do—as well you know.’

He had passed the house on the Strand many times. It was a decent place with its own curtilage. Many of the dwellings had gardens at the back. He had not accompanied the Duke to the astrologer’s before. Kit had grave doubts about astrology—he thought it a fraud and those who practised it mere tricksters.

Adam and his home had impressed him. There was a decency about it, a plainness, nothing tawdry. He had expected toads, perhaps, dried and pinned to the walls, mystic cabala—all the trappings of the charlatan—but nothing to that. Master Antiquis’s home was as grave as an Oxford scholar’s, like the rooms he remembered being tutored in that last year before the world fell in and he became a penniless rover around the principalities of Europe and the Turkish dominions.

Celia was a surprise, too. She was quite unlike Buckingham’s usual fancies. He had supposed her to be a knowing lass, sure of herself—George had told him that she was her father’s clerk. He had also called her a chaste Diana—but anyone who held him off was a chaste Diana, until she became the Whore of Babylon in his arms. Once the girl was conquered, George moved on. One day, however, Fate would play one of her tricks on him and cause him to fall desperately in love with someone quite unworthy, and leave him unable to move on—but that day lay in the future. For the present, he enjoyed life and defied it to rule him.

Yes, that grave face, the cleanly dress, the modest deportment—for there was nothing tawdry about the astrologer’s daughter; she matched his home—came as a surprise. But she was a woman and therefore to be won. What lay behind that demure mask? Could Kit Carlyon transform her to desire itself, writhing in his arms? To win her would be to win a trophy worth having, but only a cur would despoil her innocence.

Almost he cancelled the bet, handed George the ring he coveted. And then, why then, she showed the cloven hoof! Belial had laid his mark on her. The coy trance into which she had fallen was there to fetch him—or the Duke—was it not? Why, if Buckingham had but continued to pursue her, he could have had the sweet cheat for himself. Her tricks, like her father’s, were not obvious ones, but tricks they were.

What was it that Shakespeare had said? ‘Springes to catch woodcocks.’ He, Kit Carlyon, would not be a woodcock. She had given him her blind grey look and he had refused to answer it. Oh, she had known that he was there and had refused to look further. Another sweet trick.

He had sung to her and for a moment their eyes had met again. When she rose to accompany him on the Duke’s order, all in one fluid movement, her body was momentarily outlined beneath the concealing gown and he caught his breath at the sight of it. It was as purely lovely as her face with its classic profile.

But oh, he must go carefully with her. He had spoken little. To win her would need all his arts for, were he to be clumsy, as Buckingham had been, sure in his power to woo and win, he would lose her. Never underestimate a clever woman—and the astrologer’s daughter was clever.

He put out his arm for her to hold and, when she took it, there was the sweet smell of her—lavender, a country perfume for a town girl—and he led her along her garden path—to perdition and surrender, he hoped.

Chapter Two

‘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.

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