Henry
London, 1667
The Duchess of York’s reception rooms are crowded with people. Henry hesitates on the threshold, haunted by the fear of contagion. But the illness has not lingered in London. After claiming thousands of victims, it has died out, leaving its remaining citizens scarred with the memories of what they have seen. The nobility would not be here, milling about, drinking wine from crystal goblets, if there was still a danger they could sicken and die.
Henry himself had stayed in London for the duration. He could not abandon the apprentices or Mary, whose child and husband sickened the same day Lavinia died. Sometimes he worries that he will never recover from the things he witnessed. The horror of discovering Lavinia’s bloated body inside her sickroom. The smell of burning corpses. The pervasive reek of the herbs said to ward off illness. The only bright hope he carried was that Emilia had somehow survived. During the long nights of nursing George through his delirium, Henry conjured Emilia from memory, recreating her in his mind just as he had once done on parchment. These pleasant memories sustained him through the hardest weeks and months.
When he checked in on Mary at home and found her too unwell to care for Walter and Cuthbert, he steeled himself by remembering Emilia’s soft hair, her neck, her arms. It was the only way he could battle through the despair of watching Mary whimper in fear as she fought the contagion. Casting aside the danger to himself, he brought her cool drinks and changed her sweat-soaked sheets. He held her hand and talked to her quietly about art and the pleasures of London, trying to distract her from the pain, and ease her fevered mind.
He didn’t tell her how sick her son and husband really were. Lying seemed like a necessary kindness. He did his best to nurse them, too, but by the time he arrived they were beyond help. Henry promised himself that if Mary made it through, he would break the news to her as gently as he could. He would support her, as a friend. Tragedy comes to every doorstep. How we deal with it defines the way we forge our future.
Some part of him is still trapped in that house with Mary’s warm, shivering body; trapped in the studio with the boys battling their fevers; trapped in the streets where carts were piled high with bodies. Surely, surely, he can’t really be here, dressed in his finest clothes, mingling with courtiers and nobles, all of them guests invited to the first exhibition of the Windsor Beauties. Two realities now exist in Henry’s head. In one timeline, he is watching the people around him die, afraid he will be forced to face the world’s myriad hardships alone. In the other, he is in a room full of survivors, drinking from a golden cup and staring at the lavishly mounted portraits of some of the court’s most beautiful women. In both cases, he is without Emilia. Is it really living, if the hollow left by her absence cannot be filled?
‘Henry!’ Mary’s sharp voice recalls him. ‘Come here,’ she hisses. ‘You’re blocking the door.’
Startled, he moves forward to join her.
Mary is dressed in grey silk and her hair has been tamed into ringlets. A rash of angry red dots across her left cheek are the only remaining evidence of her encounter with the contagion. Clutching a goblet, her cheeks rosy from the warm room, she looks handsome.
She rolls her eyes when he tells her this. ‘Enough of your false flattery,’ she says, taking a sip of wine then slipping her arm through his. ‘Come along. We have a job to do.’
She leads him along the corridor, past the portraits they spent so many painstaking months working on. Frozen in time, the Beauties are like rare flowers from a different time. The warm colour palette unites them, as does the sleepy-eyed expression worn by each of the painting’s subjects. Lely himself is talking techniques with another painter, his back to them. He gesticulates, his voice animated, explaining how he’d worked tirelessly to fulfil this great commission.
‘You’d think he did all the work himself,’ Mary whispers, and Henry hides his smile.
They are walking towards the far side of the room, where the Duchess of York sits on a carved chair on a raised platform, receiving the compliments of courtiers. Surrounded by attendants, she looks content, pleased to have given all these people a reason to gather, to appreciate art’s ability to capture beauty, to protect it against the ugliness of life. But Henry, used to observing, thinks her face a little gaunt, the cheeks hollowed out by some toll on her body. She seems thin. Her dress sags, although her attendants have done their best to pin it up. Perhaps she is still suffering the effects of the contagion.
‘She looks ill,’ Mary says, echoing Henry’s thoughts. ‘I heard a rumour the physician was here three times last week. That doesn’t bode well.’
‘You should be careful what you believe,’ Henry says. ‘Rumours can be dangerous. I say that as a friend.’
Mary purses her lips. They are friends now, though they don’t often acknowledge it. ‘Here’s another rumour,’ she says. ‘This one you’ll like. Lely plans to make you his principal assistant again.’
He detects only a slight bitterness. Since he helped nurse her through the plague, Mary has been almost entirely loyal.
‘Is that true?’
She nods.
‘Then I will insist we share the role.’
Mary’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘You would do that?’
‘It seems only fair. We are a good team.’
Mary’s smile is like the sun shining after a storm.
‘Come on. I spy an opening.’ Tugging his arm, she leads him forward to bow before the duchess. After their names are announced by the herald, the duchess instructs them to stand.
‘So, you are the ones I must thank for bringing me this bounty of beauty. The king is very happy with the portraits. He visited me last night for a private viewing. We are pleased with your extraordinary efforts and so glad you did not succumb to the sickness that killed so many.’
‘Your Grace is very generous,’ Mary says. ‘It is we who are grateful to be given a chance to capture such exquisite likenesses and give such pleasure to those who carry a love of painting in their hearts.’
The duchess bows her head. ‘Well stated.’ Her gaze swivels to Henry. ‘You will notice we left one space empty. A tribute to the woman whose painting would have completed the set.’
Henry’s stomach twists. ‘I’m sorry, Your Grace.’
‘Such a pity,’ the duchess says. ‘What happened to Madam Lennox?’
‘She was struck down by the plague,’ Mary says, when Henry can’t find his voice. ‘She died alongside her husband. We offered to paint a posthumous portrait, based on the sketches we made, but the king refused out of respect to Madam Lennox and those others who perished. He did not want a reminder that such vibrant youth and beauty could be snuffed out like a candle.’
The duchess clucks her tongue. ‘I understand, of course.’
Dismissing them, she turns to her attendants.
Mary and Henry are quiet as they walk away, back down the corridor. Henry is still thinking of the portraits. Lady Castlemaine, her expression imperious, dressed as Minerva, the God of War. The Countess of Rochester, who married for love, smiling like a cat who has just caught a canary. Elizabeth Hamilton, known to all as La Belle Hamilton, dressed as Saint Catherine, a martyr’s leaf clutched to her chest. He has stared at them for so long, he fancies he could picture them in his mind forever. It’s time to let them go. All but one.
‘Do you still have it?’ Mary says. ‘I know you kept it.’
Henry looks at her. ‘Yes.’ The portrait haunts him, the promise unfulfilled.
Mary swirls wine in her goblet. ‘What if I told you I heard one last rumour? Though it is unconfirmed,’ she warns. ‘This one is about a woman who has just been offered the role of set designer at a little-known theatre in Blackfriars.’
Henry’s body goes still. Warmth climbs into his chest, burning a path up his neck and into his cheeks. His heart beats wildly. His breath is short. He wishes for a cooling breeze.
‘I don’t know her name,’ Mary says. ‘But I asked my friend for a description. An incomparable beauty, he called her. Men are such sops for a beautiful woman.’ She throws back the wine, swallows. ‘Should we have another glass, to celebrate our new arrangement?’
In his haste to push his glass into her hand, he manages to spill some wine onto the floral rug. Mary makes a tsking sound, but there’s no heat behind it. In fact, she is smiling.