One day they went to see a bull-and-bear baiting across the river in Southwark. And Amber leaned out the coach window to gape at the weather-beaten heads, some twenty or thirty of them, exposed above London Bridge on poles that stuck up crazily, like toothpicks in a glass. Another time he took her to a fencing-match, and one of the antagonists lost an ear which flopped off into the lap of a woman sitting down in front.
They went to supper at various fashionable taverns and two or three times he took her to the theatre. She paid no more attention to the play than did the rest of the audience—for she was too much interested, though she pretended not to be, in the havoc she was creating down in the pit. Some of the young men came up to Almsbury in such a manner that he could not avoid presenting them, and two or three made her outrageous proposals beneath his very nose. Almsbury, however, always assumed his dignity at this and let them know she was no whore but a lady of quality and virtue. While Amber, ashamed of her country accent, hoped that they would indeed take her for a Royalist lady who had lived retired with her parents during the Protectorate and had only now come up to Court.
But the greatest adventure of all was her visit to Whitehall Palace.
Whitehall lay to the west, around the bend of the river from the City. It was a great sprawling mass of red brick buildings in the old Tudor style, honeycombed with hallways and having dozens of separate apartments opening one into another like some complex maze or huge rabbit-warren. Here lived the royal family and every court attendant or hanger-on who could wheedle official lodgings on the premises. It fronted directly on the river, so close that at high tide the kitchens were often flooded. And through the grounds ran the dirty unpaved narrow little thoroughfare of King Street, flanked on one side by that part of the Palace called the Cockpit and on the other by the wall of the Privy Garden.
Whitehall was open to all comers. Anyone who had once been presented at Court or who came with one who had could get in, and many total strangers filtered through the carelessly watched gateways. Hence, when Amber and Almsbury arrived in the Stone Gallery they found it so thronged as to be almost impassable.
The gallery was the central artery of the Court, a corridor almost four hundred feet long and fifteen feet wide, and on the walls were hung some of the splendid paintings which Charles I had collected and which his son was now trying to reassemble—paintings by Raphael, Titian, Guido. Scarlet-velvet drapes covered all doors opening into the royal apartments, and Yeomen of the Guard were posted before each one. The crowd was a motley assortment of satin-gowned ladies, languid sauntering young fops, brisk men-of-business hurrying along with an air of having weighty problems to solve, soldiers in uniform, country squires and their wives. Amber could easily recognize these latter for they all wore clothes hopelessly out of fashion—boots, when no gentleman would be seen off his horse in them; high-crowned hats like a Puritan’s, though the new mode was for low ones; and knee-gartered breeches, although wide-bottomed ones were now the style. Here and there was even a ruff to be seen. Amber was contemptuous of such provinciality and glad that her own clothes did not betray her origin.
She was less confident, however, about herself. “Gemini!” she whispered, round-eyed, to Almsbury. “How handsome all the ladies are!”
“There’s not one of ’em,” said the Earl, “half so pretty as you.”
She gave him a grateful, sparkling smile and slipped her arm through his. She and Almsbury had become great friends and though he had not asked again to sleep with her he had told her that if she ever needed money or help he would be glad to give it. She thought that he had fallen in love with her.
And then all at once something happened. A ripple of excitement flowed along the Gallery, turning heads as it passed, catching the Earl and Amber in its wake.
“Here comes Mrs. Palmer!”
Amber’s head turned with every other. And she saw advancing toward them, with people falling back on either side to make way for her, a magnificent red-haired white-skinned woman, trailing behind her a serving-woman, two pages, and a blackamoor. Haughty and arrogant, she walked with her head held high, seeing no one, though she could not but be well aware of the excitement she was creating. Amber’s eyes began to burn with rage and jealousy and her heart set up a suffocating flutter. She was sickeningly afraid that Madame Palmer would see Almsbury—who she knew was acquainted with her—and stop. But she did not. She went past them without a glance.
“Oh! I hate her!” The words burst out as though driven by some pent-up violence.
“Sweetheart,” said Almsbury, “someday you’ll learn it’s impossible to hate every woman a gentleman may make love to. It wears out your own guts, and that’s all the good it does.”
