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.

“If I had twelve thousand pound,” said the King, standing up and reaching for his periwig, then glancing into a mirror to see that it was on straight, “I’d spend part of it to buy myself a new shirt. The footmen have been looting my wardrobe lately to get their back wages. Poor devils—I can’t blame ’em. Some haven’t been paid a shilling since I got back.”

Barbara gave him a pettish glare as she slipped into her dressing-gown. “God’s my life, Sire, but I’m sure you’ve grown miserly as a Jewish pawnbroker.

“I wish I were also rich as one,” said the King, then put his hat on his head and started for the door. Barbara thrust herself in front of him.

“I tell you, I’ve got to have that money!”

“Mr. Jermyn demands it?” asked Charles sarcastically, referring to current tales that she was now paying some of her lovers. He adjusted his lace cravat and walked on by her; but she reached the door first and covered the knob with her own hand.

“I think your Majesty had best reconsider.” She paused significantly, lifted her brows and added, “Or I may tell his Highness a few things.”

He gave her a puzzled scowl, but his mouth was half amused. “Now what the devil are you about?”

“Such a superior air! Well, no doubt you’ll be surprised to hear that I know what it is you’ve been trying to discover?” There! It was out! She had not actually expected to say it, but her tongue—as it often did—had spoken anyway.

He shook his head, uninterested. “I haven’t the vaguest idea what you’re talking about.” He turned the knob, opened the door a few inches, and then stopped abruptly as she said:

“Did you know that Buckingham and I are friends again?”

He shut the door. “What has Buckingham to do with this?”

“Oh, what’s the use of pretending! I know all about it! You’ve had York’s horoscope cast to find out if he’ll ever be king.” Look at him! she thought. Poor fool, trying to seem unconcerned. Twelve thousand! What devil put that paltry sum into my head! I should have asked for twenty thousand—or thirty—

“Did Villiers tell you this?”

“Who else?”

“Pox on him! I told him to keep it a strict secret. Well—you’d better not let him know you’ve told me or he’ll be in a fury.”

“Oh, he hasn’t told anyone else. And I wouldn’t let him know I’d told you for anything. Now—what about my twelve thousand pound?”

“Wait a few days. I’ll see what I can do for you.”

The next morning Charles talked privately with Henry Bennet, Baron Arlington, who, though he had once been Buckingham’s friend, now hated him violently. In fact, the Duke had few friends left at Court; he was not a man to wear well under the strain of daily association. Charles told his Secretary of State exactly what Castlemaine had told him, but he did not mention Barbara’s name.

“It’s my opinion,” said the King, “that the person who told me this was deliberately misinformed. I’d be more inclined to think it was my horoscope Villiers had cast.”

Arlington could not have been more pleased if someone had brought him the Duke’s head. His blue eyes glittered and his mouth snapped together like an angry trap; his fist banged down on the table. “By Jesu, your Majesty! That’s treason!”

“Not yet, Harry,” corrected the King. “Not until we have the evidence.”

“We shall have it, Sire, before the week is out. Leave me alone for that.”

Three days later Arlington gave Charles the papers. He had immediately put into operation all the back-stairs facilities of the Palace, and upon arresting and examining Heydon they discovered copies of several letters from him to the Duke and one from Buckingham to him. Charles, thoroughly annoyed at this latest treachery on the part of a man who was literally his foster-brother, issued a warrant for his arrest. But the Duke, in Yorkshire, was warned by his wife and he got out of the house just before the King’s deputies reached it.

For four months the Duke played a cat-and-mouse game with his Majesty’s sergeants, and though sometimes a rumour arose that his Grace had been located and was about to be taken prisoner, it was always the wrong man they captured or the Duke was gone before they got to him. People began to make disparaging remarks about his Majesty’s espionage system, which had always been compared unfavourably to Cromwell’s. But actually it was not strange that the Duke could elude his pursuers.

Fifteen years before, the King himself had travelled halfway across England with a price on his head and posters fixed up everywhere describing him, had even talked to Roundhead soldiers and discussed himself—and then finally escaped to France. The best known noblemen in the country went unrecognized to taverns or brothels. Any gentleman or lady could take off the jewels and fine clothes and go masquerading with the danger not that they would be recognized but that, if need arose, it would be almost impossible to establish identity. And Buckingham was an accomplished mimic into the bargain, able to disguise his face and manners so that even those who knew him best had no idea who he was.

And so it was that at last he even turned up in the Palace itself, dressed in the uniform of a sentry with musket, short black wig and heavy black mustache and eyebrows. He wore built-up boots to increase his height and a coat thickly padded over the shoulders. The sentries were often posted in the corridors to prevent a duel or other anticipated trouble, and no one noticed him—for a couple of hours. He amused himself by watching who came and went through the entrance to his cousin’s apartments.