The Noble Assassin. Christie Dickason

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      Many people think Arundel cold and aloof, but I found him a steady friend when poverty had turned many people against my husband and me. His own experience of childhood poverty may have left him softened by understanding.

      I exchange chilly nods with two of the bindweed knights and move on through the packed bodies.

      The hall smells worse than a barnyard. I had forgotten the nasal assault of the court. Civet, musk, and herbal waters applied to freshly shaved chins. The reek of anger and aggression seeping out from armpits. Damp wool, leather, foul breath, horse and farting dogs. Woodsmoke overlays the dark heaviness of old ashes and damp stone. Through the open arches and passageways, smells of sewage, rotting weed and fish seep in from the river. The herbs burning on the fire fail to sweeten the air.

      On the low dais at the far end of the hall, the King’s empty chair confirms his absence hunting at Royston. George Villiers is standing as close as is possible to the royal chair without actually occupying it. Even if he were not at the centre of a gaggle of courtiers, I would have spied him at once by the bright flashing of diamond buttons and the wide, stiff white-lace collar that sets off his handsome face.

      Nearest to him in the crowd stands Cranfield, the Lord Treasurer, looking wary, and the Lord Chancellor, Francis Bacon, nodding and smiling at Buckingham’s words. Buckingham’s brain-sick brother John, now made Viscount Purbeck by the doting King, sits on the edge of the dais, picking at the cuticles of his left hand.

      Buckingham’s other brother, Kit, amiable enough if little more than that, stands smiling when other men smile, laughing when they laugh. Though still only a groom of the royal bedchamber he has been promised an earldom by the King. Just behind Buckingham hover two secretaries, ready to note down any licences or patents or letters of favour that his lordship might grant.

      The beautiful youth has become a striking man. He is still lean, in spite of the indulgences of James’s court. Since I last saw him, he has grown a neat, elegant stiletto beard and a moustache that flicks up at the ends. These frame his full, sensuous mouth, which – I would have sworn – he has reddened with carmine. His eyes, edged with long thick lashes any woman would envy, shift thoughtfully from face to face as if choosing from a flock of chickens which neck to break for the pot.

      He seems more sharply drawn than the men around him, larger than his true size. A five-strand yoke of pearls, like the diamond buttons and red and white fires sparking on his fingers, make him seem a source of light. Even in a daytime doublet of yellow silk, and leather shoes instead of evening silk, he looks as rare and glamorous as a player in a candlelit masque.

      My eye had been as good for a man as for a painting when I chose him.

      I watch him speak to an eagerly nodding courtier, whose face I do not know. As he does so, he places a casual hand on the back of the King’s chair.

      I see no sign of his poor credulous, wealthy new wife, little Katherine Manners, the only daughter and now, on the death of her brother, the sole heir to the Duke of Rutland. However, I spy his monster mother holding court in the far corner of the hall, at the same time she sees me.

      I nod coolly to the three-times married Lady Villiers. We loathe each other. She always saw me as an enemy. I despise her for the coarse hunger of her ambition for her entire family as well as her son.

      Then Buckingham sees me. He breaks through the circle of courtiers and holds out his hand. ‘Madam! My dearest Lucy! Such a long time!’

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