A Health Unto His Majesty Read online

  She believed that he gave himself to these pleasures so wholeheartedly because he wished to please her; she could not tell him that the happiest times were when they were alone together, when she taught him Portuguese words and he taught her English ones, when they burst into laughter at the other’s quaint pronunciations; or when she was in bed and he, with a few of his intimates, such as his brother the Duke of York and the Duchess, sat with her and shared with her the delights of drinking tea, of which they declared they were growing as fond as she was.

  But they were rarely alone. Once she shyly mentioned this to Charles because she wished to convey to him the tenderness of her feelings towards him, and how she never felt so happy, so secure, as at those times when there was no one else present.

  ‘It is a burden we must carry with us, all our lives,’ said Charles. ‘We are born in public, and so we die. We dine in public; we dance in public; we are dressed and undressed in public.’ He smiled gaily. ‘That is part of the price we pay for the loyalty of our subjects.’

  ‘It is wrong to regret anything,’ she said quietly, ‘when one is as happy as I am.’

  He looked at her quizzically. He wondered if she were with child. There was hardly time yet. He could not expect her to be as fertile as Barbara was. He had had news that Barbara had been delivered of a fine son. It was a pity the boy was not Catherine’s. But Catherine would have sons. Why should she not?’ Lucy Water had given him James Crofts, and there were others. There was no reason to suppose that his wife could not give him sons as strong and healthy as those of his mistresses.

  Then he began to think longingly of Barbara. She would have heard of the life of domestic bliss he was leading here at Hampton Court; and that would madden her. He trusted she would do nothing to disturb the Queen. No, she would not dare. And if she did, he had only to banish her from Court. Banish Barbara! The thought made him smile. Odd as it was, he was longing for an encounter with her. Perhaps he was finding the gentle adoration of Catherine a little cloying.

  That was folly. He was forgetting those frequent scenes with Barbara. How restful, in comparison, how charmingly idyllic was this honeymoon of his!

  He would plan more picnics, more pageants on the river. There was no reason why the honeymoon should end yet.

  As he was leaving Catherine’s apartment a messenger came to him and the message was from Barbara. She was in Richmond which was, he would agree, not so far from Hampton that he could not ride over to see her. Or would he prefer her to ride to Hampton? She had his son with her, and she doubted not he would wish to see the boy – the bonniest little boy in England, whose very features proclaimed him a Stuart. She had much to tell him after this long separation.

  The King looked at the messenger.

  ‘There is no answer,’ he said.

  ‘Sire,’ said the young man, fear leaping into his eyes, ‘my mistress told me . . .’

  How did Barbara manage to inspire such fear in those who served her? There was one thing she had to learn; she could not inspire fear in the King.

  ‘Ride back to her and tell her that there is no answer,’ he said.

  He went to the Queen’s apartment. The Duchess of York was with her. Anne Hyde had grown fat since her marriage and she was far from beautiful, but the King was fond of her company because of her shrewd intelligence.

  The Queen said: ‘Your Majesty has come in time for a dish of tea?’

  Charles smiled at her but, although he looked at her so thoughtfully and so affectionately, he was not seeing Catherine but another woman, stormy, unaccountable, her wild auburn hair falling about her magnificent bare shoulders.

  At length he said: ‘It grieves me that I cannot stay. I have urgent business to which I must attend without delay.’

  Catherine’s face reflected her disappointment, but Charles would not let that affect him. He kissed her hand tenderly, saluted his sister-in-law, and left them.

  Soon he was galloping with all speed towards Richmond.

  *

  Barbara, confined to her bed after the birth of her son, fumed with rage when she heard the stories of the King’s felicitous honeymoon. There were plenty of malicious people to tell her how delighted the King was with his new wife. They remembered past slights and humiliations which Barbara had inflicted on them, and they came in all haste to pass on any little scrap of gossip which came their way.

  ‘Is it not a charming state of affairs?’ the Duchess of Richmond asked her. ‘The King has at last settled down. And what could be happier for the Queen, for the country and the King’s state of mind than that the person who should bring him so much contentment should be his own wife!’

  ‘That crow-faced hag!’ cried Barbara.

  ‘Ah, but she is pretty enough when properly dressed. The King has prevailed upon her not to employ her Portuguese barber, and now she wears her hair as you and I do. And hers is so black and luxuriant! In an English dress one realizes that beneath that hideous farthingale she is as shapely as any man could wish. And such sweet temper. The King is enchanted.’

  ‘Sweet temper!’ cried Barbara. ‘She would need to have when the King remembers how he has been swindled.’

  ‘He is, as you would know better than any, the most forgiving of monarchs.’

  Barbara’s eyes glinted. If only I were up and about! she told herself. If I had not the ill luck to be confined to my bed at such a time, I would show this black bat of a Portuguese Infanta what hold she has on the King.

  ‘I long to be on my feet again,’ said Barbara. ‘I long to see all this domestic bliss for myself.’

  ‘Poor Barbara!’ said Lady Richmond. ‘You have loved him long, I know. But alas, there is a fate which often overtakes many of those who love Kings too well. Remember Jane Shore!’

  ‘If you mention that name again to me,’ cried Barbara, suddenly unable to control her rage, ‘I shall have you banished from Court.’

  The Duchess rose and haughtily swept out of the room; but the supercilious smile on her face told Barbara that she for one was convinced that Lady Castlemaine would no longer have the power to decide on such banishment.

  After she had gone Barbara lay brooding.

  There was the child in the cradle beside her – a bonny child, a child any man or woman would be proud of. And she had named him Charles.

  The King should be at her side at such a time. What right had he to neglect his son for his bride, merely because they had chosen to arrive at the same time?

  She thumped her pillows in exasperation. She knew that her servants were all skulking behind doors, afraid to come near her. What could she do? Only shout at them, only threaten them – and exhaust herself.

  She closed her eyes and dozed.

  When she awoke the child was no longer in his cradle. She shouted to her servants. Mrs Sarah came forward. Mrs Sarah, who had been with her since before her marriage, was less afraid of her than anyone in the household; she stood now, arms akimbo, looking at her mistress.

  ‘You’re doing yourself no good, you know, Madam,’ she said.

  ‘Hold your tongue. Where’s the child?’

  ‘My lord has taken him.’

  ‘My lord! How dare he! Whither has he taken him? What right has he . . .?’

  ‘He has a right, he would say, to have his own son christened.’

  ‘Christened! You mean he’s taken the boy to a priest to be christened? I’ll kill him for this. Does he think to bring the King’s son up in the Catholic religion, just because he himself is a half-witted oaf who follows it?’

  ‘Now listen to Mrs Sarah, Madam. Mrs Sarah will bring you a nice soothing cordial.’

  ‘Mrs Sarah will get her ears boxed if she comes near me, and her nice soothing cordial flung in her face.’

  ‘In your condition, Madam . . .’

  ‘Who is aggravating my condition? Tell me that. You are – and that fool I married.’

  ‘Madam, Madam . . . there are scandals enough concerning you. Tales are carried t
o the people in the street about your rages . . .’

  ‘Then find out who carries them,’ she screamed, ‘and I’ll have them tied to the whipping-post. When I’m up, I’ll do the whipping myself. When did he take my son?’

  ‘It was while you slept.’

  ‘Of course it was while I slept! Do you think he would have dared when I was awake? So he came sneaking in . . . while I could not stop him . . . At what o’clock?’

  ‘It was two hours ago.’

  ‘So I slept as long as that!’

  ‘Worn out by your tempers.’

  ‘Worn out by the ordeal through which I have gone, bearing the King’s child while he sports with that black savage.’

  ‘Madam, have a care. You speak of the Queen.’

  ‘She shall live to regret she ever left her native savages.’

  ‘Madam . . . Madam . . . I’ll bring you something nice to drink.’

  Barbara lay back on her pillows. She was quiet suddenly. So Roger had dared to have the child baptized according to the Catholic rites! She was tired of Roger; he had served his purpose. Perhaps this was not a matter to be deplored after all, for she could see all sorts of possibilities arising from it.

  Mrs Sarah brought her a dish of tea, the merits of which beverage Barbara was beginning to appreciate.

  ‘There! This will refresh you,’ said Mrs Sarah, and Barbara took it almost meekly. She was thinking of what she would say to Roger when she next saw him.

  Mrs Sarah watched her as she drank. ‘They say the King is drinking tea each day,’ she commented, ‘and that the whole Court is getting a taste for it.’

  ‘The King was never partial to tea,’ said Barbara, absently.

  Mrs Sarah was not a very tactful woman. It seemed to her that Barbara had to become accustomed to the fact that, now the King had married, her position would no longer be of the same importance.

  ‘They say the Queen drinks it so much that she is giving the King a taste for it.’

  Barbara had a sudden vision of tea-time intimacy between the foolish simpering Queen and the gallant and attentive King. She lifted the dish and flung it against the wall.

  As Mrs Sarah was staring at her in dismay, Roger and some of his friends came into the room. A nurse was carrying the child.

  Barbara turned her blazing eyes upon them.

  ‘How dared you take my child from his cradle?’

  Roger said: ‘It was necessary that he should be baptized.’

  ‘What right have you to make such decisions?’

  ‘As his father, the right is solely mine.’

  ‘His father!’ cried Barbara. ‘You are no more his father than any of these ninnies you have there with you now. His father! Do you think I’d let you father my child?’

  ‘You have lost your senses,’ said Roger quietly.

  ‘Nay! It is you who have lost yours.’

  Roger turned to the company. ‘I beg of you, leave us. I fear my wife is indisposed.’

  When they were alone Barbara deliberately assumed the manner of an extremely angry woman but inwardly she was quite calm.

  ‘So, Roger Palmer, my lord Castlemaine, you have dared to baptize the King’s son according to the rites of the Catholic Church. Do you realize what you have done, fool?’

  ‘You are legally married to me, and this child is mine.’

  ‘This child is the King’s, and all know it.’

  ‘I demand the right to have my child baptized in my own faith.’

  ‘You are a coward. You would not have dared to do this had I been up and able to prevent you.’

  ‘Barbara,’ said Roger, ‘could you be calm for a few minutes?’

  She waited, and he went on: ‘You must face the truth. When you get up from that bed, your position at Court will no longer be the same as it has been hitherto. The King is now married, and his Queen is young and comely. He is well pleased with her. You must understand, Barbara, that your role is no longer of any importance.’

  She was seething with rage but with a great effort she kept a strong control over herself. As soon as she was up she would show them whether a miserable little foreigner with prominent fangs, a little go-by-the-ground, who could not speak a word of English, should oust her from her position. But in the meantime she must keep calm.

  Roger, thinking she was at last seeing reason and becoming reconciled to her fate, went on: ‘You must accept this new state of affairs. Perhaps we could retire to the country for a while. That might make things a little more comfortable for you.’

  She was silent; and Roger went on to talk of the new life they might build together. It would be foolish to pretend he could forget her behaviour ever since their marriage, but might they not live in a manner which would stop malicious tongues clacking? They would not be the only married pair in the country who shelved their differences and hid them from public view.

  ‘I have no doubt there is something in what you say,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘Now leave me. I would rest.’

  So she lay making plans. And when she was up and about again she sought a favourable opportunity when Roger was absent for a few days, to gather together all her valuables and jewels; and, with the best of the household’s servants, she left Roger’s house for that of her brother in Richmond, declaring she could no longer live with a husband who had dared to baptize her son according to the rites of the church of Rome.

  *

  The King was more attentive to his Queen than ever he had been. Our love is strengthened day by day, thought Catherine, and Hampton Court will always be to me the most beautiful place in the world because therein I first knew my greatest happiness.

  Often she would wander through the gallery of horns and look up at those heads of stags and antelopes which adorned it; it seemed to her that the patient glass eyes looked sadly at her because they would never know – as few could – the happiness which was hers. She would finger the beautiful hangings designed by Raphael, but it was not their golden embroidery depicting the stories of Abraham and Tobit, nor the Caesarean Triumphs of Andrea Montegna, which delighted her; it was the fact that within these elaborately adorned walls she had become more than the Queen of a great country; she had found love which she had not believed existed outside the legends of chivalry. She would look at her reflection in the mirror of beaten gold and wonder that the woman who looked back at her could really be herself grown beautiful with happiness. Her bedroom in the Palace was so rich that even the English ladies marvelled at it, and the people who crowded in to see her, as was the custom, would gasp at the magnificence of the colourful hangings and the pictures on the walls as well as the cabinets of exquisite workmanship which she had brought with her from Portugal. But most admired of all was her bed of silver embroidery and crimson velvet, which had cost £8,000 and had been a present to Charles from the States of Holland. To Catherine this bed was the most valuable of all her possessions because the King had given it to her.

  Now, as the summer days passed, there seemed to be nothing he would not give her.

  Tiresome state business often detained him, but on his return to her he would be more gallant, more charming than he had seemed before, if that were possible. Never, thought Catherine, did humble shepherd and shepherdess – who chose each other for love, without any political motive – lead a more idyllic existence.

  She could have been perfectly happy but for her fears for her country. She had had news from her mother. The Spaniards had been frightened off by the sight of English ships in Portuguese waters, the danger to the country was less acute than it had been, now that Portugal and England were united by the marriage, but England was far away, and Spain was on the borders of Portugal.

  When the King asked tenderly what was causing her apprehension, she told him.

  Then greatly daring, for she knew that the request she was about to make was one which the monarch of a Protestant country would be loth to grant, she told him what was in her mind.

  ‘It is becaus
e you are so good to me, because you are always so kind and understanding, that I dare ask.’

  ‘Come!’ said the King. ‘What is this you would ask of me? What do you wish? I doubt if I shall find it in my heart to deny it.’

  He smiled at her tenderly. Poor little Catherine! So different from Barbara. Catherine had never yet asked for anything for herself; Barbara’s demands were never-ending. He was foolish to see her so often, foolish to ride so frequently to Richmond, foolish to have acknowledged the new child as his own. But what a charming creature that small Charles was! What flashing eyes, and there was such a witty look about the little mouth already! He was undoubtedly a Stuart, for how like a Stuart to get himself – the King’s bastard – born at the time of his father’s marriage! He was more foolish still to have acted as Sponsor to the boy, with the Earl of Oxford and the Countess of Suffolk, at the time of his christening in accordance with the rites of the Church of England. And now that Barbara had declared she would never again live with Roger Palmer, and Palmer himself had left the country in his fury, there was certain to be more trouble; but if he could prevent its touching poor little Catherine, he would do so.

  His one concern was to keep from the Queen knowledge of the state of his relationship with Lady Castlemaine; and as all those about him knew this was his wish, and as he was a most optimistic man, he did not doubt his ability to do so.

  In the meantime he wished to indulge Catherine in every possible way; it pleased him to see her happy, and it seemed the easiest thing in the world to make her so. Now he listened to her request almost with eagerness, so ready was he to grant it.

  ‘It is my country,’ she said. ‘The news is not good. Charles, you do not hate the Catholics?’

  ‘How could I, when that would mean hating you?’

  ‘You are being charming as usual, and not saying all you mean. You do not hate them for other reasons?’