Читаем Forever Amber полностью

“Meddlesome jade, am I? Very well, then—I’ll tell you what you are! You’re a fool! Yes, that’s what you are, a fool! Because if you weren’t you wouldn’t allow yourself to be ruled by fools!”

Heads turned, faces appeared at windows and then hastily retreated out of sight. All the Palace seemed suddenly to have grown quieter.

“Govern your tongue!” snapped Charles. He turned on his heel and walked off.

Barbara opened her mouth, her first impulse being to order him back—as she might once have done—and then she heard a snicker from somewhere nearby. Swiftly her eyes sought out the mocker, but all faces she met were veiled, innocently smiling. She swept her train about and started off in the opposite direction, rage swelling within her until she knew that she would burst if she did not break something or hurt someone. At that moment she came upon one of her pages, a ten-year-old boy, lying on the grass singing to himself.

“Get up, you lazy lout!” she cried. “What are you doing there!”

He looked at her in amazement, and then hastily scrambled to his feet. “Why, your Ladyship told me—”

“Don’t contradict me, you puppy!” She gave him a box on the ear, and when he began to cry she slapped him again. She felt better, but she was no nearer the solution of her problem.

The council-room was a long narrow chamber, panelled in dark wood and hung with several large gold-framed paintings. There was an empty fireplace at one end, flanked by tall mullioned windows. An oak table extended down the center and surrounding it were several chairs, high-backed and elaborately carved, with turned legs and dark red-velvet cushions. Until the councillors came it looked like a suitable place to do state business.

Chancellor Clarendon arrived first. His gout was bad that day and he had had to leave his bed to attend the trial, but he would not have missed it had his condition been a great deal worse. At the door-way he got out of his wheel-chair and hobbled painfully into the room. Immediately he began to sort over a stack of papers one of his secretaries laid before him, frowning and preoccupied. He took no notice of those who came next.

After a few moments Charles strolled in with York at his side and several busy little spaniels scurrying about his feet. One of them he held in his arms, and as he paused to speak for a moment with Sir William Coventry his hand stroked along the dog’s silken ears; it turned its head to lick at him. The dogs were not affectionate but they seemed to know and love their master, though the courtiers were often bitten for trying to strike up a friendship with them.

Presently Lauderdale, the giant Scotsman, arrived and stopped to tell Charles a funny story he had heard the previous night. He was a very inept raconteur, but Charles’s deep laugh boomed out, amused more by the Earl’s crude eccentricities than by what he was saying. York, however, regarded him with contemptuous dislike. Now he went to sit beside the Chancellor. Instantly they were engaged in earnest low-toned conversation. No two men there today had so much at stake; Buckingham had been an active and dangerous foe of both for many years. The enmity far predated the Restoration, but had become even more virulent since.

If there was one man in England who hated and feared Buckingham more than either York or Chancellor Clarendon it was the Secretary of State, Baron Arlington. They had been friends when Arlington had first arrived at Court, six years before, but conflicting ambitions had since separated them until now each found it difficult to show the other the merest civility.

At last Baron Arlington paced majestically into the council-chamber—he never merely walked into any room.

Several years in Spain had given him an admiration for things Spanish and he assumed an exaggerated Castilian pomposity and arrogance. He wore a blonde wig, his eyes were pale and prominent, almost fish-like, and over the bridge of his nose was a crescent-shaped black plaster which had once been put there to cover a sabre wound and which he had kept because it gave his face a kind of sinister dignity he thought becoming. Charles had always liked him, though York, of course, did not. Now he paused, took a bottle and a spoon from one pocket and into the spoon poured several drops of ground-ivy juice. Placing the spoon to his nose he snuffed hard several times until most of the juice was gone; then he wiped at his nose with a handkerchief and put bottle and spoon away. His Lordship suffered from habitual headache, and that was his treatment for it. The headache was worse than usual today.