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resources here. His Majesty’s menagerie is the finest in the world, learned men are always welcome at his court, and they say his elaboratory has advances I can only dream of. Fetch handkerchiefs? The whole of civilization is made in these halls, child. Every bit of wit and beauty and learning passes like flies through a web, and those living here decide what sticks. A mind like yours, Zabby-heart, can shape society from here. Only get yourself listened to by the right ears, and soon the whole nation will be thinking as you think.”
    “Then why aren’t you here, Godmother?”
    “Do you know why I write?” She had already published her autobiography and diverse treatises on philosophy and the physical world. She was at work on a volume titled Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy. “I write because I cannot speak. I think highly enough of my own opinions to wish that others might know them, but place me before a crowd and I become mute as a worm.”
    “You speak well to me.”
    “My trembling increases exponentially in relation to my audience. I can speak to you, or to my darling husband, but I lack the fortitude to make myself known in the press and rush of court. I was maid of honor to the last queen for a time, you know, though I only stayed for shame of fleeing. Everyone thought me a fool. But you, dear, you’re fearless.”
    “I don’t know about that!” Zabby said. “Do you know, although I spent more than two weeks with him, covered in his excretions, his body unclothed before me, I almost fear to see him now, in his natural element.”
    She feared for more reasons than one. Something had happened to Zabby in those two cloistered weeks, something she herself was hardly prepared to admit.
    “He was a tiger in the zoo then, caged and tame,” Margaret said. “Now he’s a tiger in the Afric wilds.”
    “Indian wilds, Godmother. There are only lions and leopards in Africa.”
    “Oh, dear, are you sure? Remind me to amend my manuscript. In any event, he is your king, and it’s only natural to hold him in some awe. If you find yourself growing faint, just remember him breechless and purging, and he’ll seem no more than an ordinary man.”
    Zabby had to hold on to the walls so she didn’t laugh herself into a puddle. A passing page ran from her as if she were a foreign demon.
    That’s one thing I can do that the other court ladies can’t—picture Charles naked. She recalled his reputation. Or can they?
    She felt suddenly possessive of the man she’d saved, of his body, so hard and handsome even in illness, his fevered skin, the feel of him in her arms when the charcoal braziers weren’t enough and she had to warm him with the heat of her own flesh. Her laughter died away as, seized with an unaccountable jealousy, she wondered if she could bear to know that other women had seen that splendid naked body, had lain with it, with him.
    Stop that at once, she chided herself. He was a patient then, a king now, and he will never be otherwise. What would he want with you when he has a queenly wife, and if all accounts are true, a bevy of nobly born mistresses?
    And what, her scientific self asked, would you want with him? You have your studies, your work. What more could you ask for?
    She didn’t quite know the answer, but nonetheless thought, perhaps, there might be more, if she dared to ask.
    She was still frowning at the thought when they swept into the hall. Generally any newcomer was pounced upon by threescore pairs of eyes, dissected, and devoured, to be regurgitated in gossip for days to come. In the hothouse environment of the court, a new face was that much more manure to till into the fecund soil of scandal.
    But now they ignored Zabby. Their gazes were all turned to two more familiar players in the second act of the drama, the prologue of which had been Suffolk’s presentation of the bedchamber list. After a necessary intermission caused by the king’s surprising absence (an amusing,