Across the river, the King’s skiff could be seen approaching the bank. A group of courtiers and ladies had already assembled there, and to a chorus of delighted laughter the King replaced his wig and shrugged himself into his coat before he alighted and gave his hand to his bride, who with her glowing, happy face was sufficiently attractive to please any eye. Barbara Castlemaine’s eyes were attentive, though as the others crowded round she drew back as if in modesty. The King espied her, however, and seemed not to know whether to frown or smile. The smile won, as it so often did with him, but Catherine, surrounded by her chattering ladies, who were much intrigued by the informality of this water excursion, did not notice it. Nor did she observe the red-haired beauty who promptly sank in a deep and graceful curtsey.
Seven
Not a few of the more decent-minded of those who witnessed Barbara Castlemaine’s genuflexion were anxiously concerned; but although storm clouds threatened, the Queen was to be blissfully unaware of it for a few days. Then that happened which even to thoughtless Frances appeared shocking and inexcusable.
She, with the other maids-of-honour, found herself pushed aside and redundant, while the older ladies and the King’s physician ministered to a grossly insulted Queen, who, perhaps fortunately for herself, had at such a crisis been overwhelmed by fainting and a violent nose-bleeding.
“Oh, how could he?” whispered Joan Wells, the maid-of-honour nearest in age to Frances. “So fond of the Queen as he seems, and then to trick her cruelly by himself presenting to her that pushing, shameless creature, knowing that the name of Palmer would be no warning to her?”
“We cannot be certain that the Queen’s fit had anything to do with the Presentation; it might have been only a coincidence. The Queen may have agreed to it, for all we know,” Frances defended.
The other girl stared at her incredulously.
“You know full well that she would never have agreed. The King made sport of her before all the Court. Everyone is talking of it.”
“If they had any real feeling for the Queen they would not talk,” Frances said hotly. “It could have passed off without remark, but immediately there was the whisper going from one to the other, and that Portuguese crow who is always hovering at her ear, telling her that Lady Barbara Palmer was none other than Lady Castlemaine. Could she not have kept it to herself until the evening was over?”
“Better that she did not,” said Joan Wells virtuously, “for at least when the poor Queen fainted and her nose bled the King was put to shame.”
“And that made me feel ashamed — for him.”
“It will be long,” said Joan, “before one so spotlessly good as Catherine of Braganza will pardon such an affront.”
The same opinion, though in different words, was expressed by the Duke of Buckingham as he lounged in Barbara’s boudoir.
‘It was unwisely done, as I told you when you nagged Charles into agreeing,” he said. “You should have bided your time. And then acceptance might have stolen upon the Queen by degrees. It is hopeless to expect easy condonation from such a convent-bred saint.”
“And am I to be hidden away until the saint becomes less saintly — if ever?” fumed Barbara, in appearance no longer the wistful penitent who had so disarmed Frances Stuart, but rather, with her flashing eyes and bitten lips, an enraged tigress. “Charles told her days ago that we are no longer lovers, and were both penitent. That comedy I would have maintained to oblige her, and it would not have been too difficult. Worth it also if it meant the Court position which is the least Charles can procure for me after all our family have done for him and his father. How can he forget that my father was killed at Edgehill? And there was the ignominy we suffered when Cromwell was Protector. Does it not occur to him that it was a matter of loyalty when I accepted him as a lover…? Don’t laugh, George, or I vow I will strangle you.”
But Buckingham could not control a paroxysm of mirth at the thought of Barbara’s loyalty being carried to this length. He held her off easily as she rushed at him, and the brief struggle ended with a kiss or two more ardent than was called for by their cousinly relationship.
“There is no certainty that you will get your own way,” Buckingham said. “Charles is chivalrous and they have been wedded scarce two months. The Queen has only to announce her pregnancy and you, fair coz, may find yourself banished to the Ireland from whence you have derived your title.”
“Charles would never do that to me — never!” stormed the maitresse en titre. “How can you seem amused, you buffoon? You know well that you detested this marriage and did your best to set Charles against it, suspecting she might convert him and turn the Court into a nunnery, which it seems she has a mind to do. But, for all your vaunted influence, the marriage has come about, and here am I, the mother of his two sons — and God knows I bore them with agony — treated as a mere concubine.”
“Concubines have had much power ere now. This marriage may not last, and the more dullness and piety and sulks, the more greedily Charles will turn to you, who still hold him on a chain, though perforce a loosened one. You must be as generous, Barbie, as the Queen is niggardly; provide gaiety and amusement and, above all, novelty.”
“I had thought of that myself,” Barbara said. “It came to me the first time I saw Frances Stuart — a pretty romp, and with that gift for laughter which appeals to Charles. Once brought out from behind the Queen’s petticoats and the child could divert him. Tomorrow, though he is cast over with gloom, I have persuaded him to sup with me, and I shall ask Frances as well.”
“And supposing he falls in love with her?”
“Charles has his scruples. She is too young, and she is his mother’s protégée. Also she is quite unawakened — the little Stuart — and he would never force himself upon her. But as a pastime she will do well enough, and it will not only divert his thoughts from his stubborn wife, but his jealous eye from me.”
“Ah-h! Young Jermyn, I assume. ’Pon my soul, Barbie, and the King’s babe less than four weeks.”
“Harry Jermyn is for me just such a pastime as I design for Charles. As for the babe, while I groaned in labour, he was consummating his marriage. I prayed,” said my Lady Castlemaine viciously, “that it was proving of small pleasure to him, and even if it was, I vowed that he should pay for it — not only with titles and settlements and every honour I can grasp for my poor whelps, but with doubt and jealousy and a more fevered love, so that in the end it may seem to him a small thing to be King of England if Barbara Palmer tires of him; as I shall do, many a time and oft, before he tires of me.”
Buckingham did not doubt it. He would never make the mistake of underrating this gorgeous cousin of his who had the temper of a fiend and no more moral sense than an animal, though at will she could subdue the one and give a convincing exhibition of betrayed virtue. As a lover, though well-born and carefully reared, she was as accomplished as any cocotte. Her beauty was startling, and more surprising than all was her genuine maternal passion for her children, no matter by whom they were conceived. With her infant in her arms, and her little daughter and son at her knees, seeing her tenderness for them and their love for her, it was hard to believe ill of her.
“Poor Charles!” murmured Buckingham, who in his way was fond of his boon companion, though he was not weighed down by loyalty to his King.
He knew his power, and this was rooted in something of the same qualities that Barbara discerned in Frances. He was gay and frivolous and had a sense of the ridiculous. Who without such would, while the Roundhead soldiery were searching for him, have disguised himself as a mountebank and taken part in a public performance on an open-air stage at Charing Cross?
Charles, when Buckingham had escaped to join him in exile in Holland, had doubled up with laughter when this absurd masquerade was retailed to him. And Frances Stuart, hearing some rumour of it, had but a few days since coaxed him to tell her of it, her blue eyes dancing with gamin amusement. Now, to Buckingham’s thinking, the Court of Englan
d had become mighty dull, and was in sore need of such feckless maidens.
“If the King and the fair Frances are to sup with you tomorrow, I would beg to make a fourth,” he said. “If Charles is put into a good mood, it would be an opportunity to reveal the low state of my exchequer.”
“As though he ever turns a deaf ear to you when you are in need of funds,” Barbara said. “Nothing — according to Charles — will ever repay the privations you shared during his exile. And for the matter of that, when did I ever disavow the claims of kinship?”
“Never, that I know of,” Buckingham admitted, for this was another facet of Barbara’s complex character. Immoderately grasping where her royal lover was concerned, she would yet lavishly replenish an empty purse did it belong to one of her own family or a passingly favoured lover.
Now she remarked carelessly that Charles had sent her both gold and jewels after the birth of her second son by him, and that of the former Buckingham was welcome to a share. Tossing the small but heavy leather bag into the air and catching it again, Buckingham remarked that within the next few hours he hoped to double its contents.
“De Gramont is out of luck these days, but my luck is in,” he said, “since I am one of the few not to be distracted from play by a fair wench who has a circle of gallants round her while she builds castles of cards, with a dozen aspiring architects to assist her.”
“Does Frances do that?” Barbara was amused. “Then indeed De Gramont must have a sour face. By my life, a professional gamester is the dullest of all dull company, for that in truth is what the elegant Chevalier is. Now that gaming is the one diversion of the Court, it is little penance to stay away from it. I am tormented with ennui when there are card-parties here.”
But such card-parties, as they both knew, were but a smoke-screen for other diversions. Barbara had the sense to provide an ample meal for the gamesters and she would often retire to her bedroom with the favoured one of the moment, planting outside a trusted maid who would be on the lookout to warn that the King was on his way, though as a rule the royal approach was announced by messenger.
Buckingham, remarking that Frances Stuart’s knack of monopolizing the attention of all present certainly put the Chevalier de Gramont off his game, took his departure, leaving Barbara to restlessly pace her apartment. Although by a ruse she had been presented to the Queen and it was therefore permissible for her to appear at Court, she had haughtily told the King that she would absent herself until the Queen was prepared to accept her with courtesy.
But this was what Catherine steadfastly refused to do, and gloom pervaded Hampton Court Palace which only a short while before had been the scene of such happiness.
The Queen kept to her apartments, and the few Portuguese ladies she had been allowed to retain hovered round her in sighing commiseration, retiring with black looks when the King visited her. These visits invariably ended in recriminations, and finally Charles sent Clarendon, his Lord Chancellor, to reason with Catherine. But apparently to no avail, for that evening the storm broke in fury, and the King and Queen railed at one another with a gusto which could not have been bettered by a married couple of low degree.
The maids-of-honour, gathered in an anteroom, gazed at one another with appalled eyes when even through the closed doors the enraged voices penetrated to them.
The Queen’s sobs were heartrending as she accused her husband of tyranny and lack of affection and declared that she would return to Portugal, whereupon he retorted that she would do well to first discover whether she would be welcomed there by her mother, and reminded her that as yet only half her dowry had been received.
“We must not speak of what we have overheard,” said Mary Boynton, a sober young woman.
“It is not only we who have heard,” Frances retorted. “If you were to look into the corridor you would find at least a dozen loitering there.”
“Oh, the poor Queen!” Joan Wells mourned. And then as Frances was silent: “Surely you must pity her.”
“I think she could be more sensible,” Frances said, speaking her mind as usual. “After all, she must have known what to expect, and royal wives have to put up with certain disagreeables to offset the pageants and the glory and their high position.”
“But the Queen cares so little for those things,” objected Lady Anne Herbert, who was even younger than Frances.
“I wonder. Does any woman? But at least she cares for the King and wishes to please him.”
“How dreadful for her if he sends her away,” Mary said in a shocked whisper.
Frances shrugged her pretty shoulders.
“He will not. He has too good a heart. Madame, his sister so often told me that he was incapable of real unkindness, especially to a woman.”
“But he is being dreadfully unkind now, Frances.”
“And so is she. Why cannot she believe him when he says it is all over between him and Lady Castlemaine?”
“Could you?” Joan enquired sceptically.
Loyalty to her new friendship with Barbara induced Frances to say: “Yes, I could,” and then out of an uncomfortable doubt to qualify it: “At least I would try to believe, and I would pretend I did, and think that I was the Queen — which no other woman could ever be. As the Princess Henrietta once said to me, there is no happiness for one of royal birth if they ask the impossible, and such as they must make the most of what they have — which, after all,” concluded Frances reasonably, “is a great deal.”
When she and Mary Boynton waited on the Queen the next day, Catherine’s eyes were swollen with weeping; but although the Palace gossips were still avidly relating all that had been heard to pass, it was evident that a compromise had been reached, for that morning Catherine rode with the King, and amongst those riders who followed in their train was Barbara, Lady Castlemaine, bearing her head high, and with a small smile of triumph curving her lips.
Eight
At the end of August Charles and his Queen made their state entry into London, The King had bestirred himself to give detailed orders, and when the eventful day arrived, Frances, though accustomed to the pageantry at the Court of Le Roi Soleil, was impressed. The journey from Hampton Court Palace was made by water, and the royal barge alone was a gorgeous sight. Fortunately it was a hot and sunny day. “Not a cloud in the sky, Your Majesty,” Frances had said delightedly, hovering about the Queen, presenting jewels on a small velvet cushion for her inspection and choice, while Catherine was robed in a silver gown, interwoven with gold threads and cleverly moulded to show her pretty figure to the best advantage.
Catherine had smiled upon the bevy of young girls who fluttered around like brilliant butterflies, too excited to be of much use to anyone. The Queen, though only a few years older, had the poise of her royal training and was outwardly calm, though her heart was soft to her husband because she knew that he had arranged this pageant to do her honour.
As the splendid, open vessel started on its long journey up the Thames, it was seen that the banks of the river were crowded by spectators, who cheered loudly at first sight of their Sovereigns.
The twenty-four bargemen who rowed the vessel were dressed in scarlet livery, and the King and Queen sat beneath a canopy of cloth of gold, supported by flower-festooned Corinthian pillars.
Frances with the other maids-of-honour stood in a cluster behind the Queen, and for once it was no temptation to chatter, so much was there to see and hear.
Other barges sailed alongside in procession, the river being broad enough to accommodate them. Those of the City Companies were disguised as floating islands with realistic trees and shrubs and rocks, and from these professional actors in the classic garb of river-deities declaimed dramatic verse lauding the new Queen.
Catherine, thought Frances, could not have understood much of the finely turned phrases; but when the bargemen rested on their oars to give the orators the chance to be heard, she gave every appearance of listening with pleased attention.
But even those who di
d understand could hear but indistinctly, for now there were several orchestras playing. The church bells were ringing, the people were cheering themselves hoarse, and the Thames was so crowded with vessels filled with rejoicing spectators that it was scarcely possible to see the water.
It was Catherine’s day and she was at her best, darkly pretty and glowing with satisfaction, her hand clasped by that of the splendidly dressed Charles. The admiration of the crowd was unstinted, and did not ignore the handsome courtiers and lovely women in the background.
Barbara Castlemaine and Frances stood near to one another, and the former, conscious of evoking much curiosity, bore herself with such excessive decorum that more than once Buckingham cast an amused side-glance at her.
She had got her own way and was satisfied, at least for the time being. The pampered cat gorged with cream, he thought, shaken momentarily by silent laughter. The Queen, as he had prophesied from the first, would be no more than a figure-head, for all the King’s obvious intention that she should be treated with honour.
All the same, Buckingham had a shrewd suspicion that Barbara’s hold on him had slackened and that he was sometimes bored by her demands and caprices. Though so beautiful, she was in danger of eclipse and that by the enchanting child whom she had decided to cultivate.
Frances was not yet sixteen; not yet, Buckingham judged, at the zenith of her beauty, but she was tempting enough even so. It was true that Charles had not paid any particular attention to her, but a woman was a fool to become too confident. Barbara’s last thought was that she could ever be outrivalled by such an inexperienced girl, but yet…
The procession at last arrived at Westminster, where there were more loyal addresses and quantities of rose-petals thrown at the royal pair. Some of these fell upon Catherine’s attendants, and Frances gathered them from the folds of her skirt and buried her little nose in their fragrance.
Lady on the Coin Page 7
