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
