The French Mistress

by Susan Holloway Scott

  “You mean Lord Buckingham.”

  He nodded. “His Grace is one such, yes. But there is another you would do wise to fear more, and that is Lord Rochester.”

  “Lord Rochester?” The earl wasn’t like Lord Buckingham; there was only the slightest history between us. I tried to recall any offense I’d given him or reason for his disliking me, and could think of none. “He has no cause.”

  “He has two,” Colbert said. “First, he is of the Anglican faith, and you are not. Second, he is a close acquaintance of Mrs. Gwyn, and you—you assuredly are not. He is also apparently a skilled satirist, and has made you a prime character in a scurrilous piece, a play of his composition entitled Sodom.”

  “Sodom!” I exclaimed with dismay. I’d heard enough of the wit popular among Charles’s gentlemen to guess the nature of this satire. Scurrilous was likely too gentle a criticism. “Have you a copy in your possession, my lord? Does he dare use my given name in its pages?”

  The marquis’s expression was so grim, even for him, that I feared the worst.

  “Thus far it exists only as a manuscript, surreptitiously passed among his lordship’s friends,” he said. “May it never be published more widely! But no, mademoiselle, your name is not sullied directly, though to those who have read it, the most sinful character, a maid of honor by design, is in fact and circumstance clearly drawn from your life.”

  “What name did he give her, then?” I asked, my voice trembling with anger. “I must know, my lord, so that if I am called this name by someone who wishes to insult me, I won’t be trapped unknowingly.”

  “Oh, mademoiselle,” he said, grimacing. “His Lordship has named the character Lady Clytoris.”

  I gasped, and shot to my feet. “That is not to be borne, my lord! I do not care if Lord Rochester is His Majesty’s dear friend, or that his father saved His Majesty’s life, or whatever other shabby defense he may offer. How dare His Majesty permit—”

  “Mademoiselle, please, please, calm yourself!” the ambassador exclaimed, taking me by the shoulders and forcibly sitting me back down in my chair. “Please. His Majesty knows nothing of this satire, nothing at all, and if you are wise, you will not be the one who tells him of it.”

  For a long moment I wavered, then realized that, for once, the ambassador was right. I took a deep breath to calm myself, and steeled my determination.

  “That is true, my lord,” I admitted. “If I were to show it to him, I would be doing exactly as Lord Rochester desires. Far better for me to pretend as if the vile thing does not exist.”

  “Far better,” he agreed. “For you it does not.”

  “No, it does not,” I repeated firmly. So long as I had Charles by my side, I could ignore a legion of Rochesters and Gwyns. “His Majesty treats me with the regard of a lady, and no true lady would acknowledge the existence of such venomous slander.”

  “Not only a lady, mademoiselle, but a French lady.” The ambassador smiled with approval, and finally rose to leave. “You’ll do well with this matter, I am certain. This is the first time I have seen you willing to fight for what is yours by rights and talent, and that, too, is to be commended. I am pleased, mademoiselle. We are pleased. Only take care to measure your passions before you act, and you will succeed.”

  He paused as Bette gave him his cloak, and bowed his farewell to me. Yet at the door, he stopped again and came back, recalling one more bit of advice.

  “Mademoiselle,” he said, tapping his finger to his cheek, “one more question, I beg of you. I do not know how I forgot it until now. His Most Christian Majesty asked this specifically of me, and thus I must ask you.”

  “Yes, my lord?” I waited warily; after all the other indignities that had spilled out during his visit, his question could be anything.

  He nodded, his thin lips pressed together as he chose his words with caution. “While we rejoice in your new position with the English king and the attraction he shows for you, your place could be even more secure if you could give him a child. You haven’t employed any means to prohibit a possible conception while you have been with him, have you? Are you taking every opportunity for him to plant his seed vigorously within your womb so it may find fair purchase?”

  I should have been shocked by the frankness of that question, and earlier this same year, I might well have fainted clear away. But now—now I was not. It was Charles’s seed that he spoke of, Charles’s seed within my own womb, and because I loved him, it seemed not shocking, but expected.

  “I took no unnatural precautions nor used courtesan’s tricks, my lord,” I said softly. “It will be in God’s hands to decide, not mine.”

  The ambassador’s smile was wide with relief and rhapsodic admiration. “Ah, mademoiselle, you are both a true daughter of France, and of our Holy Church.”

  I nodded, and offered my cheek for him to kiss in blessing and farewell.

  A daughter of France, a daughter of the Holy Church: but of the greatest importance to me was that I was Charles’s to love.

  I noticed the difference at Court immediately.

  No matter where I went or what I did, everyone turned to look. I was worth the looking: the newest royal mistress. Some looked from curiosity, some from envy, some from scorn, some from amusement, some from lust, and some from bitter, blind hatred. I felt their stares upon me wherever I went, and heard their whispers. I’d a surprising stock of new friends who hoped to gain the king’s favor through me, and I’d an even greater number of instant enemies, who wished for nothing but my downfall. Through it all I held my head as high as I could, acknowledging none of it, and striving to think of nothing beyond my own counsel. Charles himself advised me to pay none of it any heed, but then he was already so accustomed to comment and scrutiny that I believe he truly could ignore it.

  Yet soon after we’d returned to London, I suffered two separate, scandalous insults that were impossible for me to do as he asked.

  I had been away from my lodgings for most of the afternoon. The royal mantua maker had come to measure the queen for new gowns, and because Her Highness respected my taste over that of all others, she had insisted that I be at her side as the woman and her assistants presented their silks and other cloths for her consideration. By the time I was released, I’d had to rush to make ready for Charles’s visit to me, and I was out of breath by the time I reached my rooms.

  On the door was pinned a handwritten note, the words large and plain enough so that anyone passing along the hall (and many would, given my proximity to the king’s chambers) would have been able to read them.

  Within this place a bed’s appointed

  For a French bitch and God’s anointed.

  I tore it down at once, before Charles saw it, but I was far too late to stop the riotous amusement of all the others who’d read it first. No one claimed its authorship outright, but I soon heard that Lord Rochester and Mrs. Gwyn had boasted loudly of its wit, and they’d plenty of cronies to laugh with them.

  But not all insults come from enemies. Soon after I’d ridden in Lady Arlington’s coach from Euston, she appeared one night in an extravagant new necklace of diamonds. In my hearing, another lady complimented her upon the jewels, asking if the necklace had been a gift from His Lordship.

  Lady Arlington had laughed, touching her fingers to the sparkling diamonds.

  “As generous as my lord is to me, he’d never put ten thousand pounds around my neck,” she said blithely. “This necklace is my reward from King Louis for playing the bawd for Old Rowley and his little French chit.”

  When I had been at the French Court, the sole person I’d trusted there had been Madame. Now, again, it was the same at this Court as well. The only one I trusted, my one true friend, was her brother and my Charles.

  Chapter Nineteen

  WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON

  December 1671

  The coming war with Holland was much on Charles’s mind that winter. It was strange to me how a gentleman of such a mild and pleasing
humor could so crave the destruction and suffering of a war, but so it was with Charles. True, his public reasons were wise ones—to vanquish the Dutch supremacy at sea so as to forward England’s merchant power in foreign waters, and thus make her stronger at home as well—but the private ones he confided to me seemed less so.

  Though long past, he still resented England’s defeat at Dutch hands in the two earlier wars of his reign, especially the vast and humiliating losses suffered by the English navy. He also seemed to harbor a peculiar contempt for the Dutch as a people, thinking them dull and thick, a dangerous presumption. He also believed that he could somehow make his young nephew (the son of his elder sister Mary) William of Orange into his pawn, and control Holland from within. Further, it pleased him to think of England not only as France’s ally, but her equal, which, of course, it was not. How could it be, when he continued to accept gold from Louis, gold he very much needed?

  I do not know if these ideas were Charles’s own or the spawn of his ministers. Certainly they served the purposes of France, which I dutifully reported to the French ambassador. But his determination to conquer the Dutch had become an obsession with him, a troubling condition for one who should rule, rather than be ruled. He ignored the wishes of his people, who clearly did not want another war, and he proceeded with his plans as if he’d more gold in his treasury than Croesus himself, which he certainly did not.

  To this end, he let himself be persuaded on a most hazardous course by Sir Thomas Clifford, one of his privy councilors. Without a Parliament in session to vote him the funds he still needed to pursue the war, Sir Thomas suggested the Stop of the Exchequer, which, simply put, meant that for one year the Crown ceased to make any payments on its outstanding debts. This did in fact give Charles a fresh source of funds, but in the process it also bankrupted a great many of the financial gentlemen who had shown their faith in him by loaning him large sums of money, and also ruined many lesser folk whose stocks had been lent to him.

  It was a shortsighted move at best, and a cruel, unfortunate one at worst, and because Sir Thomas was also a Roman Catholic, this hated Stop was likewise damned as one more Papist plot to control England. All that Charles saw was the money he needed, and as a reward Sir Thomas was created Baron Clifford of Chudleigh.

  Though I was as shocked by this as anyone, I said nothing. As a woman, it would never be my place to advise the king on his finances, and as his mistress, it would simply be foolish. My purpose was not to criticize, but to provide a pleasing haven for him from his troubles.

  Besides, by the end of the year, I’d accounting troubles of my own. For whatever reason, I’d never been particularly regular with my courses, the way some women are, and the weeks since Euston had passed in such a pleasing blur because of Charles that I’d lost my reckoning. Now I sat with a calendar and tried to count the days, and balance them against the subtle changes I’d noticed in my body. My breasts seemed somehow fuller, my whole form rounder, and I was often so languid in the middle of the day that I returned to my bed. At first I’d dismissed these as due only to my loss of virginity, small differences to mark that I’d crossed into true womanhood.

  But it was Charles who finally said what I’d not been able to.

  He had come to me after his morning walk, as he often did. I’d given him his usual light repast, then taken him to my bed, as was also usual. Outside my windows, lazy snowflakes drifted into the courtyard of the privy garden, but I always took care with the fires in my rooms, and Charles and I were as snug and content as could be imagined. We had loved each other well—the brisk air of the park seemed always to invigorate him—and now we lay comfortably together in the warmth of my bed, still curled around one another.

  “You have the most delicious breasts,” he said, idly fondling mine to his obvious delight. “Exactly to my taste.”

  “As you are to me,” I said, stretching indolently beneath his caress. I’d gained flesh since I’d come to England, and Charles clearly enjoyed me more for it, rather than less. In this arena, I knew I clearly outdid my rivals: Mrs. Gwyn was small and puny, little more than an undersized girl, and Lady Cleveland worn and aged by hard use and childbearing.

  “If I could, sir,” I said, “I’d keep you here with me all the day long.”

  “If I could, I’d let you, Fubs,” he said, using the charmingly silly nickname he’d minted for me on account of my babyish round cheeks. Lazily he rubbed his thumb over my rose-tipped nipple to rouse it. “You’re far more diverting than another admiralty meeting.”

  “I should hope so,” I said, and sighed with restless pleasure. “Venus or Mars, sir. It’s your choice.”

  He groaned. “That’s not a fair choice at all. You know it’s my duty to attend. You’re tempting me.”

  “Yes, I am,” I confessed, laughing softly. “If you continue doing that, sir, then I’ll insist upon you staying here at least another hour.”

  To prove my words, I pressed my bottom against his cock in sweet invitation, rubbing myself along his length in a fashion I knew he relished. I could see us reflected in my Parisian mirrors, like the subjects of a secret painting, and I guessed he was looking, too. Why shouldn’t we? I’d always liked seeing the contrast that our bodies made together, mine so pale and lushly rounded, while his was dark and lean and full of vitality, and I liked even more to watch how well we suited and served each other.

  “My wicked mademoiselle,” he said, grunting with appreciation, “who would believe you were the same shy innocent I first had at Arlington’s place?”

  I chuckled low. “It’s all your doing, sir.”

  “I know that,” he said, “and it pleases me that I’ve never shared you with any other man.”

  To my surprise, he rolled me over onto my back and leaned across me, his expression turning thoughtful. “How long has it been since that first night, Louise? Seven, eight weeks now?”

  “I’d venture that’s so, sir,” I said, lightly tracing his mustache with my fingertip. “Seven weeks of bliss with you.”

  He turned my hand toward his lips, absently kissing the tips of my fingers while his gaze never left mine. “Seven weeks, then,” he said gently. “In that time, you’ve yet to turn me away from your bed. How far gone are you, Fubs? Was it truly that first night?”

  “Oh, sir.” At once my eyes filled with tears, for now there was no more ignoring what I’d tried to deny. It was not that I didn’t want his babe; in truth I could think of nothing finer than to bear the proof of my love for him. But this soon—Oh, I’d not wanted that. Mrs. Gwyn was ready to be delivered of her latest bastard offering most any day, and Lady Cleveland was with child again, too, though this one likely was credited not to Charles, but to her young officer, John Churchill. Yet still it all made me feel like one more breeding mare in the royal stables, a sad conviction for any lady in my condition.

  “At least the first week, then.” He smiled wryly. “I know at Euston we raised glasses to a son in nine months, but I gave it no real thought.”

  “You’re not happy.” I rolled away from him, curling myself into a tight ball as I wept, my tears bitter with chagrin.

  “Oh, sweet,” he said gruffly, putting his arms around my shuddering, woeful self. “Of course I am happy.”

  “You’re—you’re not,” I sobbed, unconvinced. He’d already sired at least a dozen children, beginning with the Duke of Monmouth; what would he want with one more now? “You—you don’t want another.”

  He placed his hand over my belly, still not betraying the tiny babe within, his fingers spreading wide as if to protect it already.

  “I’ll grant that I have my share,” he said, “but this one will be special, because it will be yours. Yours, Louise, and mine. Ours.”

  “Ours,” I whispered fiercely through my tears, and slipped my hand over his, over our child. “Ours.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, my heart overflowing. This babe wouldn’t be another careless by-blow. I’d make certain of that. This one wo
uld be special, and be loved above all the others. For how could any child born between Charles and me ever be otherwise?

  The Christmas holidays passed, and New Year’s Day and Twelfth Night as well. The early months of 1672 were unusually free of snow, which was fortunate for the furious pace of the preparations for the coming war. The exact date that Charles and Louis would decide to declare upon the Dutch was still anyone’s guess, but given the pattern of most wars, early spring was most likely. There was a gloomy certainty to the whole affair that seemed to turn all Englishmen into pessimists, predicting grimly that the Dutch would once again triumph; it was all the same, whether whispered at Court or more publicly in streets and in shops. The war loomed on the country’s horizon much like the darkest thundercloud on a summer’s afternoon, and just like a storm, the lightning and the downpour would be upon us all too soon.

  Yet still my life continued, as did everyone else’s as well. At Charles’s request, I sat for my first portrait early in the New Year. Like so many others members of the Court before me, I took my custom to the painting studio of Master Peter Lely, the king’s principal painter in ordinary. Master Lely had become the most popular painter in London not just on account of his skill, which was considerable, but because he’d a rare gift for flattering ladies, depicting their most luscious qualities while softening any flaws, yet still keeping such a true likeness that all who saw his pictures marveled at it.

  I’d admired the many examples of his work that hung on the walls of the palace, and I was eager to see what Master Lely would capture in my face. He in turn was delighted to have me sit for him, for painting the portraits of the king’s mistresses was a lucrative commission. Not only did such public portraits bring more work to his studio, but he would also do an excellent business in making copies of the original painting, both in oils for wealthy collectors and in line engravings to be offered far more cheaply (but widely) by print sellers and other low vendors. It was much the fashion of gentlemen at that time to assemble collections of paintings of the greatest beauties of the day, and Master Peter was sure that, as the newest of Charles’s mistresses, my visage would soon be much in demand.