They rode down Great Tower Hill and turned into Tower Street, which was still lined with ruins, though the ways had now been cleared of debris and were passable. It was a slow ride of some two and a quarter miles over East Cheap and Watling Street, past the twisted iron and the great heaps of boulders that marked the site of old St. Paul’s, along Fleet Street and the Strand to Whitehall.
Barbara was shivering again, huddled in her cloak with her teeth chattering. Buckingham gallantly spread a fur-lined velvet robe over them both. “You’ll soon be warm,” he said consolingly. “If we pass a tavern I’ll send in for a couple of mugs of lamb’s wool.”
But Barbara was not to be diverted by such gallantries. “What’s his Majesty going to think to hear you’ve been paying visits to an astrologer?”
“Are you going to tell him?”
“Perhaps I will and perhaps I won’t.”
“I wouldn’t, if I were you.”
“Why not? You’ve been mighty strange with me of late, George Villiers. And I know more than you may think.”
Buckingham scowled, wishing that he could see her face. “You’re mistaken, my dear, for there’s nothing to know.”
Barbara laughed, a smug-sounding impudent laugh in the darkness beside him. “Oh, isn’t there? Well, suppose I tell you something then: I know that you’re having a certain horoscope cast—and it isn’t your own, either.”
“Who told you that!” Buckingham reached out suddenly and grabbed her arm, his fingers clenching it so that she winced and tried to jerk away; but he held her, bending his face close to her own. “Answer me! Who told you that!”
“Let go of me, you sot! I won’t tell you! Let me go, I say!” she cried, and all at once she gave him a resounding slap on the face with her free hand.
With a curse he released her, one hand held to his stinging face, mumbling beneath his breath. Pox on the jade! he thought furiously. If she were anyone else I’d give her a kicking for this! But instead he held his temper and began to wheedle.
“Come, Barbara, my dear. We know too much about each other to be enemies. It’s dangerous for both of us. Surely even you are convinced by now that if ever I take the notion to tell his Majesty what’s become of his letters he’d send you hence like a rat with a straw in its arse.”
Barbara flung back her head and laughed. “Poor fool! He doesn’t even guess, does he? Sometimes I think he’s stupid as a woodcock! He won’t even look for ’em!”
“That’s where you’re mistaken, madame. He’s had the Palace searched from top to bottom. But there are only two people in the world who could tell him where they are: you, Barbara—and I.”
“You’re the fly in my ointment, George Villiers. Sometimes I’ve a mind to have you poisoned—if you were out of the way I’d never have anything to worry about.”
“Don’t forget, pray—I know a thing or two about mixing an Italian salad myself. Now, let’s be serious for a moment. Tell me where you got that information, and tell me truly. I’ve an uncommonly keen nose for smelling out lies. They stink like blue-incle to me.”
“And if I do tell you what I know will you tell me something?”
“What?”
“Tell me whose it is?”
“Tell you whose what is?”
“The horoscope, dolt!”
“Then you don’t really know anything at all.”
“Try me and find out—I know enough to have you hanged.”
“Well, then,” said the Duke smoothly, as though he heard that news every morning before breakfast, “I’ll tell you. The truth of it is, my dear, I have an incurable aversion to hemp-rope and slip-knots.”
“It’s a bargain. The horoscope you’re having cast is that of a person of such consequence that if it became known your life wouldn’t be worth a farthing. Now, don’t ask me how I found that out,” she added quickly, shaking a finger at him. “For I won’t tell you.”
“God’s blood!” muttered Buckingham. “How the devil have you got hold of this? What more do you know?”
“Isn’t that enough? Now—tell me: Whose horoscope is it?”
The Duke relaxed, slumping with relief as he sat beside her. “You’ve got me on the hip, I’ll have to tell you. But if one word of this gets out to anyone—believe me, I’ll tell the King about his letters.”
“Yes, yes. What is it? Quick!”
“At his Majesty’s bidding I was having York’s horoscope cast to determine whether or no he will ever be King. Now there are just three of us who know it—his Majesty, you, and me—”
Barbara believed the lie, for it sounded plausible, and though she promised him that she would never speak a word of it to anyone she soon discovered that it was burning a hole in her tongue. It, was such an exciting thing to know, such a fatal secret, so loaded with potential trouble that she was sure it must be of great value to her. Certainly the worth of such knowledge was almost incalculable in pounds sterling and she saw it as the source of great sums to herself over the years to come—no matter what new and younger woman might supplant her in the King’s slippery affections.
She asked Charles for twelve thousand pounds one night, just as he was getting out of her bed.
