Lady on the Coin

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  “A mishap that has happened once can happen again,” he remarked to Frances. “It is often so with high-strung, jealous women who are in a fret and a fever when their husbands are out of their sight. You will see — this marriage is like to be as unfruitful as that of Katherine of Aragon, and Charles wants an heir as badly as did Henry VIII. Any childless Queen must be haunted by the memory of Anne Boleyn.”

  Frances retorted flippantly: “It’s a memory to haunt any King’s favourite. Better to keep one’s head on one’s body than to be Queen for a few years.”

  “Henry was a brute, but Charles is a horse of a different colour. He might divorce a woman but he would never have her executed,” Buckingham said. “Don’t let that worry you.”

  “Worry me?”

  Frances, who had been plucking at the strings of a harp while Buckingham, who was no inconsiderable composer, tried out verses by Mr. Dryden, which he had set to music, now turned from the instrument and stared at him.

  “If this marriage were broken the chance would be yours, Frances. Myself, I have nothing but admiration for your tactics. All men burn to the point of fever for that which is persistently denied them.”

  “If you mean the King…? I like him, he is kind to me, we are cousins.”

  “On the Blantyre side,” Buckingham supplemented mockingly, having heard both Charles and Frances say the same thing. “It is not a near cousinship, and, even if it were, cousins, and more especially royal cousins, frequently marry.”

  “I would not have thought that even you could be so fantastical,” Frances said, sobered as she was not often sobered. “Even if Charles were free, and I were royal, I could never care for him — romantically.”

  “A Queen does not need to be royal or romantic either. What of Anne Hyde, who now that she is York’s wife is near to the throne? You would make a delicious queen, my pretty one, and what matter if unlike most women you are not enamoured of Charles? Queens can have their lovers. They are not all as prim as the little brown Braganza hen.”

  “This is an odd kind of humour. I don’t understand it,” Frances said, and indeed the sea-blue eyes were so blankly expressionless that Buckingham did not find this difficult to believe.

  “You do not know your own power,” he said, but now his voice seemed to mock her.

  “I have none. I want none.” She rose from her stool beside the harp and went out of the room without another glance at him.

  But there was a turmoil in her heart which did not readily subside, though after a time she was able to tell herself that she had taken the rattle-pated Buckingham with unnecessary gravity. Did he not always say the first thing that came into his head? Had not Barbara been heard to declare that he never meant a word he said? Frances generally found him an engaging companion, for his extravagant exploits could move her to helpless laughter. Save on state occasions he rarely displayed any dignity at all.

  Only yesterday a bevy of them had played Buckingham’s version of “Animal Farm”, and what riotous fun that had been. Frances, decked up as a peacock, racing through the long corridors and from one room to another with shrieks of laughter, had been pursued by a dozen or more ardent young men, who had been promised a kiss for every feather they could tweak from her. And then Buckingham had wrapped himself in fur rugs and had leapt out of a dark corner upon one of the Queen’s dressers, who had not known such a game was in progress and had been scared nearly out of her wits. In the end he had sobered and had played on his lute and had commanded his little mouse-like wife to sing for them. And so she had with a surprising sweetness and clarity.

  “Live with me and be my love,” sang she who had been born Mary Fairfax, and they had all joined in the last verse.

  “He did not mean it,” decided Frances. “It was all an absurdity. He compared the Queen with Katherine of Aragon though there is no resemblance. Besides, even if there were, Henry’s first wife had a daughter, and if the Queen gave him one, Charles would not disinherit her for anything in the world. Men are often proud of their daughters. Monsieur of France, peevish toad though he is, is proud they say of the little girl ’Rietta has borne.”

  It was ridiculous that for the space of a few minutes she had been frightened, Frances told herself.

  Nevertheless, for the next day or two she avoided Buckingham and was thankful when, almost without warning, Mistress Stuart, with Sophie and little Walter, arrived in London. There was a letter delayed en route, and within a few hours of its arrival all the excitement of reunion.

  The London house which the Blantyre cousin had lent Mistress Stuart was a pleasant one. There were servants who had been with the family for years and who were delighted to have a mistress who was kind and efficient and who promised them that she would be there for months, if not longer. The middle-aged housekeeper, and the not-so-young maids under her, the elderly butler, had been lost and aimless since the death of the last owners, an old couple who had gone within a few weeks of one another. The heir, who lived by choice in Scotland, had kept them in his service, but they had felt insecure, so the housekeeper told Mistress Stuart. There had been nothing said about the future, and their dismissal would not have surprised them. Now it was a joyful thing to welcome one of the Stuart family again, especially as there was the sweet little boy and the pretty Sophie on the threshold of young girlhood. Frances, when she called round on the first day of her family’s arrival, found the confusion blissful. It was heaven just to see the trunks and baskets and scattered belongings. Did Sophie still have her dolls? “Why yes, though she was getting too old for them. She would soon be in her teens,” said Mistress Stuart. But Frances found the puppets she had dressed while at Colombes out of odds and ends of material, and was as delighted as though they had been living beings.

  She need not go back to Whitehall for a few days, she told her mother. The Queen had said she could stay with her family.

  “That hardly sounds as though you have made yourself indispensable to Her Majesty,” said Mistress Stuart with some misgiving.

  “Indispensable? None of us is that. When Joan Wells was ill before Christmas there were a score of important people pressing the services of their daughters upon the Queen, but she has said more than once that she is pleased with me.”

  Frances was even lovelier, her mother thought, than in the days when as the friend of the young Duchess of Orleans she had been so admired. But she was still flippant and careless and as little disposed to take anything seriously. Questioned, she admitted to friendship with various young men, but nearly always qualified this by saying that they were already betrothed, and had been for years, to girls who even now were too young for marriage.

  “There is a lot to be said,” observed Mistress Stuart, “for these marriages that are so arranged. Parents know then that the future is settled for their sons and daughters, especially for their daughters, and need no longer worry about them. I only wish this had been possible in your case, but how could an exiled, widowed mother make any such safe provision for you?”

  “I am thankful you could not,” exclaimed Frances with her light laugh. “How I should have hated to feel that I was tied-up and settled. I don’t want to feel that even now. There is time enough. Barbara Castlemaine often says she was far too young at seventeen to be married.”

  “You are not influenced, I hope, by anything that woman says or does,” and Mistress Stuart cast an anxious glance at her daughter. “Naturally, as the Queen countenances her, you are obliged to meet her, but any real friendship would be preposterous.”

  “Yes, I suppose it would.” Frances’ too expressive face was averted as she played with her little brother.

  She felt guiltily deceitful, but was thankful that in her letters to her mother she had rarely mentioned Barbara. She was also thankful, though Mistress Stuart was grievously disappointed, that the Queen Dowager had left for France to be with Henrietta-Anne, and would stay there until after the birth of her second child.

  Although Mistress Stuart woul
d be received by Queen Catherine, it was unlikely she would be seen much at Court. She was too preoccupied with the delicate little Walter, and it would be surprising if the Queen mentioned the friendship to her.

  “The Queen, it is said, will be some time picking up her strength,” Frances said conversationally.

  “Poor soul! Rumours abound even as far away as Scotland, and it is said the marriage is doomed to failure, that the King cares nothing for her, and that, as the conditions of the marriage were not complied with, it will be annulled, and she sent back to Portugal.”

  Frances, who had been kneeling on the floor, assembling a quantity of small, carved, wood animals that she had brought for Walter as a present, sat back on her heels and stared at her mother in consternation.

  “No such rumour has been heard here,” she declared. “Nobody would dare…” She broke off, and a sense of fear swept over her as she recalled the scene with Buckingham and some of his disturbing remarks. “The King is vastly fond of the Queen,” she asserted; “and as for the conditions of the marriage…”

  “It is said that the dowry is still withheld, and that there was some flaw in the wedding ceremony itself. It could be so, as it was conducted in private in Portsmouth.”

  “Oh no! I cannot believe it. To be parted from him would break her heart,” cried Frances, with her mind in chaos. “People spread these stories only for the love of the sensation they cause.”

  “That may well be,” Mistress Stuart placidly agreed. “And the King has a kind heart — we all know that. He would not treat the Queen ill for the sake of such a woman as my Lady Castlemaine, whose favours have been his for many a day. But men are swayed by their desires; and should the King conceive a passion for a girl as virtuous as she is beautiful, who refused to listen to any but honourable proposals, who can say that he would not use to his advantage any loophole there might be in the marriage settlement or the way in which it was conducted?”

  Frances was aghast. Her mother, of course, had no idea that her own daughter might possibly be the virtuous damsel to catch the King’s fancy, but her prognostications opened up dangers that had not hitherto occurred to her. The impulse welled up in her heart to confide in her mother, but she swiftly dismissed it, for, after all, what was there to confide? The King was attracted to her; he had made tentative love to her, but it had been in a light-hearted vein, and Frances had had little difficulty in fending him off. Buckingham had uttered some mysterious, even sinister remarks, but with part of her mind, Frances still believed them to be ridiculous.

  “I hope the Queen has twin sons as soon as may be,” Frances cried, “and that will put an end to all such scandalous talk.”

  Mistress Stuart regarded her with approval. Frances, she thought, was not so feather-pated as she seemed. It was right that she should be loyal to the Queen. She was even better pleased when her daughter rushed into talk about her latest admirer, George Hamilton.

  “You have heard of him perhaps, Maman. He is the son of Sir George Hamilton and well liked at Court, We often ride together, and we went hawking at Windsor when we were there for a week before the Queen fell ill. He is the most diverting person. Only imagine…he can hold a burning candle in his mouth and keep the lighted end of it there for minutes at a time.”

  Although Mistress Stuart was not singularly impressed by this feat, she was on the alert, since this was the first admirer that Frances had mentioned positively.

  “The family is known to me by name,” she allowed, “but this is only the second son, if I remember rightly. No doubt, like most younger sons, he has his way to make in the world,”

  “Oh yes, I dare say he has,” Frances agreed, so evidently unconcerned that her mother was exasperated. What was wrong with the girl? She was of an age now to set her heart on a man, but it seemed as though none had the power to interest her seriously.

  Frances, for her part, was thankful when at this juncture Sophie came in, proclaiming that she had unpacked all her mother’s belongings as well as her own.

  “She has become such a useful little thing, Frances,” Mistress Stuart said approvingly. “It is arranged, you know, that on her thirteenth birthday Sophie will become one of the dear Queen Dowager’s household. I could not wish a better start in life for her, and I am convinced she will do well”

  “You will spend as much time in France as here, Sophie,” Frances said half enviously. “You will often see my dear ’Rietta. You remember her, don’t you?”

  “Well, of course I do. I wasn’t a baby when we lived at Colombes,” Sophie said. “But I never thought much of the Princess Henrietta-Anne. She was very plain and thin and her hair was straight.”

  “She was only plain and thin because life was so hard in those days. She changed and became beautiful before she married. Even King Louis said so.”

  “It is easy for princesses to be beautiful, for they have such clever coiffeurs and dressers,” stated Sophie, “but you, Frances, were beautiful when you were practically in rags. And now they call you La Belle Stuart. Mamma says I have a strong resemblance to you.” And the twelve-year-old Sophie paraded before a looking-glass with such complacency that her mother and sister both laughed at her.

  Pleased though Mistress Stuart was to have the company of her elder daughter, she was uneasy over her absence from Court, and glad when she returned to Whitehall. They could see each other nearly every day, Frances said blithely, though inclined to reproach herself because after the first excitement of reunion she had found it dull to be alone with her family.

  There were several at Whitehall to welcome her with rapture, and the Queen, who was up and about again, was pleased to see her. Even though Frances had been away for such a short time there were a few new faces. The first evening her glance fell on a tall man at the Chevalier de Gramont’s card table. He was extremely good-looking, Frances thought, tall and with dark hair and eyes. His finely cut features resembled those of a cameo. Yet he bore a slight likeness to the King.

  The card game came to an end, and the stranger had evidently lost heavily. The Chevalier swept a pile of gold coins towards himself, and someone else took the place of the newcomer, who remained standing at the table, at first watching the play, but afterwards more intent on watching Frances as she sat near the Queen laughing at the antics of a company of professional tumblers who had been engaged to amuse the company that evening.

  When this entertainment came to an end, the Queen retired, and kept Frances with her, though somebody had suggested an informal dance, and Catherine dismissed the others in order that they might join in it.

  Frances did not object. She was pleased to see the Queen again, pleased also that she looked as well as usual and did not seem to be unduly depressed. Moreover, it amused her to tantalize the King who had not been able to get a word alone with her the whole evening, though his eyes had devoured her. He would, she knew, expect to find her either in Barbara’s apartments or joining in the dance which Barbara and her particular friends were unlikely to think worth their while. But he would be disappointed, thought Frances with some malice, for when the Queen dismissed her she would go to bed, carefully bolting her door, as she invariably did, though neither the King nor any of her admirers had as yet had the trepidity to follow her to her room.

  “I missed you,” Catherine said. “You have a sunny nature, Frances, and can generally cheer me. But I was happy to think you were with your mother again. You must have sorely missed each other.”

  “We had both become used to the separation,” said Frances honestly, “but of course we are glad it is over and that we can now often see each other. I am sorry Your Majesty has needed cheer…sorry about what happened. I haven’t had the chance to say so. I only saw Your Majesty for a few moments. We were all kept away from you.”

  “It was a sad disappointment,” Catherine said simply, “but I am not brooding over it. The King was so kind and concerned and anxious for me to gather up my strength again. Later, in the spring or the early summ
er, we plan to spend some weeks at Tunbridge.”

  “So that Your Majesty can take the waters? I know they are said to be beneficial. At Bath too, especially if…when…”

  “For women who have miscarried and desire to be enceinte again as soon as possible,” Catherine said. “If the physicians are to be believed these spas are a great inducement to fertility. God grant they may be right, as of all things we desire a family — for our own happiness as well as for the sake of the country. Some women seem to achieve this state easily, but for others…” and the Queen sighed.

  Frances knew she was thinking of the King’s children born out of wedlock, and she said sympathetically: “Your Majesty has been married less than a year. Surely it is too early to be anxious. And at least this mishap proved…”

  “That I am not barren,” Catherine interposed. “Yes, there is that consolation. The King and I have found it so. But tell me about your mother and sister and the little brother. Are they comfortably settled? Is the little brother in better health?”

  Answering these questions, it was some time before Frances had the opportunity to put one of her own.

  “There are quite a few foreign guests at Court,” she said. “I noticed especially the tall man in the dark suit with the silver embroidery.”

  ‘The Duke of Lennox and Richmond? I am surprised he was not presented to you. I suppose it was forgotten you had not yet met, since he has been here for a few days. He must be a distant kinsman of yours, for Charles says he is his fourth cousin. There is a resemblance between them, and the same name — Charles Stuart.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard of him,” Frances cried, interested. “When we first knew we should be coming to England, my mother found out all she could about my father’s cousins and even his more distant relations. She had not known them all when she lived with my father in Scotland. This Charles Stuart’s father was Lord Aubigny, and his grandfather was the Duke of Lennox. Lord Aubigny was killed at Edgehill, poor man, and King Charles I then made this boy the Earl of Lichfield.”