Forever Amber

by Kathleen Winsor

  They were all convinced that she would die, most of them hoped she would, and the talk was not so much of the dying Queen as of the new one. Whom would he marry next? For of course he must and would marry, after a decent interval of mourning.

  Frances Stewart was the bride they had selected. She had some royal blood in her veins, enough to make such a match possible, she was beautiful—and she was still a virgin. That, at least, was the opinion of the best-informed, even though his Majesty had been pursuing her for months, ever since she had come from France to take a place as one of Queen Catherine's Maids of Honour.

  She was not quite seventeen but rather tall, and slender as a candleflame; she had about her an air of tranquil poise which could be suddenly broken by a bubbling merry laugh that gurgled up out of a happy well of youth and confidence. Her beauty was pure and perfect, flawless as a cut gem, delightful as the sight of a poplar glistening in the sun.

  Charles had been first attracted by the irresistible lure of beauty, and then, discovering in her a modest shyness that was to him as incredible as it was genuine, he began a systematic program of seduction. So far, it had been unsuccessful. But her fresh youth and naivete appealed to him strongly, sent him yearning toward the lost years as though in her he could catch again for a moment something of that perishable and precious charm.

  During the past four months, since the discovery of her Majesty's pregnancy, Charles had seemed to lose interest in Frances; he had been as coolly polite as though he had never desired her at all—or as though he had already had her. But now he seemed to return to Frances again for comfort in his despair. They were so positive she would be the next Queen of England that it was not even possible to find betting odds. Frances believed it herself.

  But certainly not even the King's sorrow was more extravagant or more seemingly sincere than that of the least likely of all mourners, Lady Castlemaine. She kept a continuous stream of pages running from the Queen's apartments to her own at every hour of the day and night, went there frequently herself, and was reliably reported to pray for her Majesty's recovery five or six times a day. Barbara was alarmed.

  It had never occurred to her, when Heydon had made his astounding prophecy, that the Queen would be as sick as she was. Certainly not that she would die. And she had not even considered the possibility that if she did she might be replaced by a woman like Frances Stewart, whose marriage to the King could mean nothing but Barbara's own ruin and, more than likely, her exile into France. She and Frances had not been friendly for some time, not, in fact, since Barbara had become convinced that his Majesty's infatuation for the girl was a serious one. She had always underestimated all women but herself, and it had taken her a long while to discover that Frances was really a formidable rival. Now she lived in terror that the Queen would die.

  The gatherings in Barbara's rooms were sober affairs now, for though the King came almost every night at supper-time his mood was a morose and silent one, and discretion kept them from seeming to be as indifferent as they were.

  On the tenth night after Catherine had fallen sick he stood in Barbara's drawing-room, over against the fireplace, thoughtfully swirling the red wine in his glass and talking in quiet tones which the most intent ears could not catch, to Frances Stewart. For Frances, though her own hopes of glory depended upon the Queen's death, was genuinely sympathetic and sorrowful for the quiet unhappy little woman who had befriended her.

  "How was she when you left her, Sire?"

  Charles scowled, a drawn and worried scowl which seldom left his face nowadays, and stared down into his glass. "I don't think she even knew me."

  "Is she still delirious?"

  "She hadn't spoken for more than two hours." He gave a quick shake of his head as though to drive away the painfully vivid image of her that dogged his memory. "She talked to me this morning." A strange, sad and cynical smile touched his mouth. "She asked me how the children were. She said that she was sorry the boy was not pretty. I told her that he was very handsome and she seemed pleased—and said that if I was satisfied then she was happy."

  Frances gave a sudden hysterical sob, her fist pressed against her mouth, and Charles looked at her in quick surprise, as though he had forgotten that she was there. Just then a page entered the room, running in without ceremony, and went immediately to the King.

  Charles whirled around. "What is it?"

  "The Queen, Sire, is dying—"

  Charles did not wait for the boy to finish his sentence but with a swift movement he flung the glass into the fireplace and ran out of the room. The Queen's bed-chamber was in the same miserable condition it had been in for days: All windows were closed and had been since she had first fallen sick, so that the air was heavy and hot and stinking; the darkness was complete, but for a few low-burning candles about the bed; and the priests hung over her like bald malefic ravens, their voices eternally wailing and moaning.

  Catherine lay flat on her back. Her eyes were closed and sunken in dark pits, her skin was yellow as wax, and she breathed so faintly that at first he thought she was dead. But before he had even spoken she became aware of his presence beside her, her eyes opened slowly and she looked up at him. She tried to smile and then, painfully, she began to talk to him, falling back into Spanish.

  "Charles—I'm glad you came. I wanted to see you just once more. I'm dying, Charles. They told me so, and I know it's true. Oh, yes it is." She smiled gently as he started to open his mouth to protest. "But it doesn't matter. It will be better for you when I'm dead. Then you can marry a woman who will give you sons—I want you to promise me that you won't wait. Get married soon—. It won't matter to me where I'll be—"

  As she talked he stared at her, horrified and sick with shame. He had not realized before that she was dying because she had no wish to live. He had never wanted or tried to understand what this past year had been for her. The enormity of his selfish thoughtlessness, the guilty awareness that in his secret heart he had hoped for her death, struck him like a blow from a mighty fist. He had a moment of passionate regret, of devout promises for a better future.

  Suddenly he leapt to his feet and turned to face the priest who was standing just beside him, interrupting the old man in the midst of his clamorous prayer.

  "Get out of here." His voice was low and tense with fury. "Get out of here, I say! All of you!"

  Priests and doctors stared at him in astonishment, but made no move to go.

  "But, your Majesty!" protested one. "We must be here when her Majesty dies—"

  "She's not going to die! Though God knows what you've put her through would kill a stronger woman! Now, get out, or by Jesus, I'll throw you out myself!" His voice rose to an enraged shout and one arm swept out in a violent gesture of dismissal. His face was dark as a devil's and his eyes glittered savagely; he hated them for his own errors as much as for theirs.

  They began to straggle out, puzzlement on their faces as they looked back again and again, but he paid them no more attention and turning away dropped once more to his knees beside her. For a long minute her eyes remained closed and he watched her, his own breathing almost stopped; at last she looked up at him again.

  "Oh—" she sighed. "It's so quiet now—so peaceful. For a moment I thought I must be—"

  "Don't say it, Catherine! You're not going to die! You're going to live—for me, and for your son!"

  But she shook her head, a vague almost imperceptible movement. "I have no son, Charles. I know I haven't. But, oh, I did so want to give you one—I wanted to be part of your life. But now, before very long, I'll be gone— And when you marry again you'll have sons— You'll be happier, and so I'm glad I'm going—"

  Charles gave a sudden sob. The tears were streaming from his eyes and his two hands crushed her tiny one between them. "Catherine! Catherine! Don't talk that way! Don't say those things! You've got to want to live! If you want to you can — And you've got to—for me—"

  She stared up at him, a new look in her eyes. "For you,
Charles? You want me to?" she whispered.

  "Yes, I do! Of course I do! My God, whatever made you think — Oh, Catherine, darling, I'm sorry—I'm sorry! But you've got to live—for me— Tell me that you'll try, that you will—"

  "Why, Charles—I didn't know you—Oh, my darling, if you want me to—I can live—Of course I can—"

  Chapter Twenty-three

  It was not until after he was dead that Amber realized how much Rex Morgan had meant to her. She missed the sound of his key turning in the lock and the feeling of warmth and happiness he had always brought with him, as though a fire had just been lighted in a cold dark room. She missed waking up in the morning to find him half-dressed and shaving, screwing his face this way and that as he scraped the beard off. She missed the evenings when they had been alone and had played cribbage or crambo and he had listened to her strum her guitar and sing the popular bawdy street ballads. She missed his smile and the sound of his voice and the reassuring adoration in his blue eyes. She missed him in a thousand ways.

  But most of all, though she scarcely knew it herself, she missed the comfortable sense of security with which he had surrounded her.

  For now she found herself suddenly adrift, lost, and filled with a cold apprehension for the future. She had almost seventeen hundred pounds with Shadrac Newbold; so there was no immediate cause for concern on that score, and she could not be arrested for debt anyway. But even seventeen hundred pounds, she knew would not last very long if she continued to live on her present scale, and when it was gone she would be at the mercy of the tiring-room gallants.

  The thought was not pleasant—for after a year and a half of association she saw them naked now and unvarnished with the gilt of a naive young girl's illusions. To her they were no longer gallant and gay and valiant, fine gentlemen because they wore fine clothes and could trace their families to followers of William the Conqueror—but only a half-breed species of Frenchified Englishman, shallow, malicious, and absurd. They had all the trappings of cynicism, careless ill-breeding and light-hearted cruelty, which were now the marks of quality. There was not another man like Rex Morgan to be found among them.

  "Oh, if I'd only known this would happen!" she thought, over and over again. "I'd never have gone away! And I wouldn't have gone to the King that time, either. Oh, Rex, if I'd known, I'd have been kinder to you—I'd have made you happy every minute—"

  The first visitor she admitted after Rex's funeral—though many others had come—was Almsbury. He had been there before but she had been unfit to see anyone at all, and so Nan had sent him away. But one afternoon, ten days after the duel, he came again and this time she said that she would see him.

  She was sitting on a couch before a burning fire, for the weather was cold and wet, and her head was bent in her arm. She did not even glance up until he sat down and reached over to put one arm about her, and then she looked at him with red and swollen eyes. Her dress was plain black and she wore not a ribbon or a jewel, her hair was tumbled and only carelessly combed, and her face was shiny with tears; her head ached and she looked thinner than she had.

  "I'm sorry, Amber," he said softly, tenderness and sympathy in his eyes and the tone of his voice. "I know how little it means to hear that when you've lost someone—but I mean it with all my heart, and please believe me when I say that Bruce—"

  She gave him a venomous glare. "Don't you dare speak of him to me! Much I care how sorry he is. If it hadn't been for him Rex would still be alive!"

  Almsbury looked at her in surprise and an expression of impatience crossed his features, but she had covered her face with her hands and was crying again, wiping at the tears with a wet wadded handkerchief.

  "That isn't fair, Amber, and you know it. He asked you to stop the duel; he even let Captain Morgan cut his arm in the hope that that would satisfy him. There was nothing more to do unless he had let Morgan kill him—and surely even you couldn't have expected that."

  "Oh, I don't care what he did! He killed Rex! He murdered him—and I loved him! I was going to marry him!"

  "In that case," said the Earl, with unmistakable sarcasm, "it would have been better judgment not to go off on a honeymoon with another man—even if he was an old friend."

  "Oh, mind your own business!" she muttered, and though he hesitated for a moment, Almsbury got to his feet, made her a polite bow and went out of the room. Amber neither spoke nor tried to stop him.

  She did not feel able to go back to the theatre immediately, and then shortly after the first of June it closed for two months. But as soon as she began to admit visitors her own apartments became almost as crowded as the tiring-room. She found, somewhat to her surprise, that the duel had made her as much the fashion as red-heeled shoes or Chatelin's Ordinary. Lord Carlton was handsome, his family one of the oldest and most honourable, and his exploits as a privateer had made him a spectacular figure, not only at Court but throughout the city.

  Amber knew how much such popularity meant, but she determined to take every advantage of it that she possibly could. Somewhere among those clamouring beaus, those beribboned fops and wit-imitators, there must be a man—a man who would fall in love with her as Rex had done; and if she could but single him out, this time she would know what to do. Marriage she did not expect, for the social position of an actress was no better than that of the vizard-masks in the pit, and with Rex dead her earlier opinion of matrimony had revived. But the brilliant lavish exciting life of an exclusive harlot seemed to her a most pleasant one.

  She saw herself occupying a magnificent house in St. James's Field or Pall Mall, driving about town in her gilt coach-and-six, giving fabulous entertainments, setting the styles which would be taken up at Whitehall. She saw herself famous, admired, desired and—most of all—envied.

  It was what she had wanted for a long time; and now that she had begun to reconcile herself to the fact of Rex Morgan's death, the wish opened once more into quick full blossom. Optimistically, she decided that he was all that had kept her from having those things.

  But though she encouraged them all, flirted with them and laughed at their jokes, she never accepted their proposals. She knew that they held constancy in contempt, but also that they valued a woman more if she pretended concern for her virtue and made a great issue of surrender—just as they would rather win money from a man who hated to lose it. And so far no one had offered what she wanted.

  "Phoo pox, Mrs. St. Clare!" said one of them to her. "A virtuous woman is a crime against nature!"

  "Well," retorted Amber, "then there aren't many criminals nowadays."

  But nevertheless she was growing uneasy and discouraged and in spite of her insistence that she intended never to err again, the other actresses taunted her because she had not found another keeper.

  "I hear the young gentlemen are grown mighty shy of keeping these days," remarked Knepp one afternoon when she and Beck Marshall had come to call on Amber. Over her glass of clary—a potent drink made of brandy and clary-flowers flavoured with sugar and cinnamon and ambergris—she flipped Beck a sly wink. "They say three months is the limit a man will keep now, for fear of losing his reputation as a wit."

  "Oh, gad, a man is as much laughed at for keeping as ever he was for taking a wife," said Beck. "More, I believe, for at least a wife brings a dowry to settle his debts, while a whore gives him nothing but a bastard and more debts."

  "Especially," said Amber, "if she's being kept by three or four at once."

  Beck looked at her sharply. "What d'you mean by that, madame?"

  "Heavens, Beck." Amber opened her eyes wide in pretended innocence. "I'm sure it isn't my fault if your conscience troubles you."

  "My conscience doesn't trouble me at all! Don't you agree it's better to be kept by three men at once—than by none at all?" She gave Amber a malicious tight-lipped smile, and then defiantly downed her drink at one gulp.

  "Well," said Amber, "I'm glad I learnt my lesson on that score. I intend never to go into keeping again."
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  "Hah!" Knepp gave a sudden short barking laugh, and then she and Beck got up and prepared to leave.

  As Amber closed the door after them she heard Knepp say, "She intends never to go into keeping again—until she can find the man who'll make her an indecent proposal at a high figure!" And the giggling voices of the two women faded away down the stairwell.

  Amber turned back to Nan, who rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  "Oh, Nan, maybe they're right! I half believe it's harder to find a man who'll keep than one who'll marry."

  "Well, mam—"

  "Now don't tell me again I should have married Captain Morgan!" she cried warningly. "I'm sick of hearing it!"

  "Lord, mam, I wasn't going to say anything about that. But I have been thinking of a plan you might try."

  "What?"

  "If you quit the theatre, took lodgings in the City and set yourself up for a rich widow, I'll warrant you'd find a husband with a good portion within the month."

  "My God, Nan! Can you imagine me married to some stinking old alderman with nothing to do but breed his brats and visit his aunts and cousins and sisters and go to church twice on Sundays for my diversion? No thanks! I'm not that discouraged—yet!"

  For three months it had rained, and then on the last day of June the sun came out brilliantly, the puddles in the streets began to dry, and the air was fresh and sparkling-clean. Children appeared, like a ragged legion sprung up overnight, in every alley and lane and courtyard in London, running and shouting joyously at their gutter games. Vendors and ballad-singers and housewives swarmed out-of-doors to feel the sun, and in St. James's Park and the Mall courtiers and ladies strolled again.

  Since his Majesty's Restoration St. James's Park was open to the public and not only the nobility but other idlers were free to saunter through its broad tree-lined avenues and stop to watch the King playing pall mall, which he did with the same enthusiasm and skill he showed at every kind of athletic contest.