There was one young man, Sir Anthony Warham, who paid particular attention to me. He told me I was born to dance, and I felt very happy. However, my father was soon beside me and I sensed he did not like Sir Anthony. He told me afterwards that Sir Anthony was one of those young men of whom young ladies should be wary.
During that visit to London I was to be given a glimpse of court life. On one very important occasion for me my father took me to Whitehall.
What preparations there had been! Marie had been in a state of great excitement. No single hair must be out of place. I must stand very straight or the fall of my skirt would be imperfect. She taught me how to make the correct curtsey when presented to the King. I should have to watch every moment. She wrung her hands in despair several times and then allowed her spirits to be revived; she lapsed into French to remind me that she came from that country which was noted for its elegance, attention to formality and innate awareness of good taste.
She made me quite nervous of the whole affair, but when I was face to face with the King and those dark somber eyes regarded me, it was all so different from that which Marie had hinted at that I told myself that she was not as knowledgeable as she made herself out to be.
I made my curtsey and when he looked at me, I was immediately aware of that famous charm which completely disarmed me.
My father murmured: “My daughter, Your Majesty.”
And he said: “Welcome to my court. It pleases us to see you here.”
“Your Majesty is gracious,” I said.
“It is you, dear young lady, who are gracious to come.”
It was all over in a very short time, but I should never forget it. I was sure that no one else could be like him. He would have stood out among them all even if he were not the King, and this was not entirely due to his magnificent physique, though he seemed to tower above all the other men near him.
I saw him again later, when he was completely absorbed in two ladies who sat one on either side of him and who I learned were Louise de Kerouaille and the play actress Nell Gwynne.
I was a little bemused to see these people, who had previously been talked of so frequently that I had built up images of them in my mind.
Several men talked to me and paid fulsome compliments, which I did not take too seriously, for I had realized that this was the fashion of the day. My father was never far away and I sensed his watchfulness. I was delighted that he cared about me so much. It occurred to me then that I was beginning to be quite fond of him, although, having read my mother’s own account of what he had done to her, I could not forgive him entirely and believed I never would.
It had been a wonderful time, and I returned to Rosslyn Manor feeling that, having had this glimpse of another world, a remote, fantastic world, I would never be quite the same again.
I was right. Life at Rosslyn Manor seemed very quiet after that visit to London.
Amy was delighted to see me back. She said there had been a lot of talk in the servants’ hall about my going. She whispered in confidence that Mistress Galloway was not very pleased about it, for she thought it was an insult to her ladyship.
“But Lady Rosslyn is not aware of what is happening. I understood she could not speak.”
“I don’t know, Mistress Kate. What goes on in that part of the house is a big mystery. Lady Rosslyn is ill, but some say that she is not all that ill and there are times when she knows what is going on. It’s just that she can’t speak…perhaps she can talk in signs, as some deaf people do. Well, all I can say is that I wouldn’t like to be up there. It’s a bit odd to me…with Lady Rosslyn there, and that Francine.”
“Oh, how is Francine?”
“She doesn’t alter. She just goes round in her crazy way.”
A few days later I had a visit from Francine.
This time she came to my room and knocked at the door. When I called “Come in,” she came in, looking triumphant.
“It’s what you said,” she told me. “You said to knock.”
“Hello, Francine,” I said.
“You’ve been to London,” she said.
“Yes, I saw the King.”
She studied me with wide-eyed wonder.
I told her about it, the house, the gardens running down to the river, the boats which used the waterway, the carriages in the streets and the people going into the theaters.
She was fascinated by the theater and I told her about my mother and the days long ago when I used to listen to her saying her lines of the play in which she was to act.
Francine listened, her eyes losing that strange wild look.
I thought she seemed almost normal while she was so absorbed.
I wondered about her. She was living in that secluded part of this ancient house with her grandmother and an invalid. It was no life for a child, really.
She took to waylaying me and she obviously liked to listen to me talk.
Everyone was discussing the plot to kill the King.
I heard of it first when I rode over to see Christobel. James was rarely at home, as he was usually occupied with estate business, but he had heard the news and had mentioned it to Christobel.
“Let us thank God that it was foiled. Think of what would have happened if it had succeeded.”
I was eager to know what it was all about and Christobel said: “Some traitors planned to kill the King and the Duke of York on their way home from the Newmarket races.”
“How terrible!” I cried, thinking of those kindly, though worldly, eyes which had smiled at me in a moment I knew I should never forget. “Imagine if it had succeeded!”
“Well, if the Duke had been killed as well as the King, what then?” I asked Christobel.
“That was the idea. The throne would then have fallen by rights to the Duke’s daughter Mary and, failing her, his second daughter Anne. But I am not sure that that was the idea in the minds of those who plotted this. The King certainly has the people’s affection. They will demand someone’s blood for this. Cold-blooded murder, that’s what it would have been. There must have been several conspirators. The King had to pass along a stretch of road on his way to and from the races and there is a farm in a lonely spot which belongs to a maltster, they say. The farm is called Rye House. Everyone is talking about the Rye House Plot.”
When I went back to Rosslyn Manor Luke was just coming in. He had been doing some business for James. Lately he had begun to busy himself considerably on the estate. It had worried me slightly.
“Have you had an interesting morning?” he asked.
“Well, I have been talking with Christobel about the plot.”
“Plot?” he said. “What plot is this?”
“I believe nobody knows very much about it. It may be that it is only a rumor. You know how these things start. Apparently it was a plan to assassinate the King and the Duke of York near a farm called Rye House.”
Luke had turned away slightly, but not before I saw the hot red color flood his neck.
When he turned to look at me his features were composed.
He said: “The what-house plot?”
“Rye,” I said, looking at him in surprise, for I felt his voice was not quite natural.
I was silent for a moment and then told him what I had heard from Christobel. After a few moments he spoke, his voice sounding rather harsh as he said: “Is that all you know about it?”
“It was James who mentioned it to Christobel. He meets so many people and he had just heard that there had been this plot.”
“Oh, it may well be just one of those stories which go round at times.”
But this was not just one of the stories. It was proved to be true that a scheme had been planned.
It was the time of the Newmarket races, and everyone knew of the King’s fondness for the sport. He invariably traveled to Newmarket at this time; it was his custom to go on the day the races started and to return to London when they were over; therefore it was certain that at some time during these days he wou
ld be passing along that road.
It was a lonely road and what could be simpler for someone who planned mischief than to lie in wait for His Majesty and the Duke, and as there would be no resistance—or very little—the conspirators could achieve their aim with ease.
It might have succeeded but for a rare chance.
A fire had broken out in the house in which the King and his brother usually stayed when in Newmarket, and for this reason they had decided not to wait for the conclusion of the races but to return to London a day early.
The King and the Duke returned safely to London and on the day they arrived a letter which had been sent from one conspirator to another was discovered and the whole plot exposed.
Luck was certainly on the King’s side on this occasion.
I was very frightened at that time, for I had come to know Luke very well and I could see by his demeanor that he was greatly disturbed.
I began to be even more afraid when I discovered the names of some of the conspirators—and the chief of them—Lord Russell, Algernon Sidney and Lord Essex.
My mind went immediately back to that Chelsea garden running down to the river at my father’s London residence. No. It could not have been. They hardly knew him. But they had noticed him, they had talked to him, and now he was obviously afraid.
I wanted to talk to him, to ask him what he knew of this plot, but I could not bring myself to do so, and I tried to tell myself that I was imagining something which did not exist.
And then I heard another name mentioned in connection with the plot: the Duke of Monmouth. That added to my anxiety. I had heard Luke speak of the Duke and I had seen the burning fervor in his eyes. The Duke of Monmouth was not only an ardent Protestant but he was also the King’s natural son; Luke shared with him that burning ambition to be recognized, not as his father’s bastard but as a legitimate son. Monmouth might crave a crown, but Luke’s desire to possess Rosslyn Manor was just as fervent.
What had happened on the night of the banquet? How deeply had Luke become involved?
My thoughts went back to that terrible time when Oates’s men were close at hand and we were afraid for Kirkwell. Kirkwell had been innocent. There was no case against him, but that would have carried little weight against the followers of Titus Oates. This could be different.
If Luke had been guilty of plotting against the King in order to set on the throne that man who had become a kind of symbol to him…that would be considered treason, and treason was punishable by death.
By this time there was no topic of conversation other than the Rye House Plot.
The people, who loved their King and were very grateful to him for bringing merry England back to them after those years of Puritan rule, wanted the conspirators brought to justice.
The ringleaders were soon captured and were sent to the Tower.
Lord Russell seemed to be the chief of the conspirators. He was taken to Lincoln’s Inn Fields and deprived of his head. Thousands were there to witness what they had decided was just punishment for a man who had plotted to kill the King.
Lord Essex, a man noted for his virtue and who could only have been persuaded to join such a conspiracy through his fear of a Catholic monarch coming to the throne, committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell in the Tower.
There was only one of those conspirators who escaped, and that was perhaps the one who hoped to profit most from its success. But the King was, after all, his father, and if, like my own father, he could not bring himself to legitimize his natural children, he could not suppress his affection.
The Duke of Monmouth, although it would seem that he had been as deeply involved as any, having more to gain—for the object of the plot was surely to set him on the throne—threw himself on the King’s mercy and insisted that he had only listened to the plotters with the sole purpose of saving his father’s life.
Did the King really believe that? I could imagine him shrugging his shoulders and telling himself that it was a good thing for a man to believe that which would give him the most comfort. So, with that cynical smile of his, he decided to give his son the benefit of the doubt…if doubt there could be said to be.
Monmouth was excused. He could hardly be pardoned, as so many had lost their lives for their part. He could not appear at court. That would be asking too much of those who had lost a dear one who was certainly no more guilty of treason than the Duke. So Monmouth was banished. He went to the Continent, the natural resort of those forced to leave the country. And I guessed from that distance he continued to view the crown of England with renewed and earnest longing.
As for Luke, as the matter of the Rye House Plot slipped into memory, I noticed the intense relief which came to him.
I knew then that he had not been deeply involved in the plot, for his name had not been mentioned, but I did believe that he had been toying with the idea. Clearly he must have betrayed his feelings to those conspirators, and his championing of the Duke of Monmouth’s claim must have aroused the interest of those men, but by great good fortune he had not quite committed himself so far as to have become implicated in the actual plot.
All the same, he continued to regard Rosslyn Manor with a yearning desire and I feared that that would persist throughout his life.
But perhaps he had learned the folly of such thoughts. Who knew? This experience, which might have brought him to disaster, might have taught him a lesson.
I was aware of the reverberations of the Rye House Plot all through that year. Indeed, it was not until December that Algernon Sidney lost his head.
I was very anxious about Luke. I knew him well enough to realize that he was deeply disturbed, even anxious. The sight of a stranger would have an effect on him which was not lost on me.
One day I burst out: “Luke, were you in any way concerned in the Rye House Plot?”
He looked at me in such a startled way that I guessed my suspicions had had some foundation.
“No…no,” he said.
“Look, Luke,” I said. “You’re my brother. I want to help if I can. I know something happened. I can see the change in you. You remember that time when our father took us to London. You remember the banquet and how we were all in the garden at Chelsea…I saw you with those men…Lord Russell, Algernon Sidney and the others.”
He said nothing.
“Luke,” I persisted, “I am very worried about you.”
He drew a deep breath. “You need not be,” he said. “I did not know that there was to be the Rye House Plot, only…”
“Only?” I queried.
Again that silence.
Then he said: “Well…I must have betrayed that I thought the crown should go to Monmouth.”
I sighed.
He went on: “They did talk to me…Lord Russell and Algernon. They overheard my defense of the Duke’s right to the throne and they agreed with me that it was necessary to keep out Catholic James. The country would never endure his rule, which would mean turning back to the Pope. There would be trouble. The best course for the country to take would be to rid itself of James right away. Don’t look so scared, Kate. They did not tell me of the plot. Do you think they would have told someone they had just met? No. We just talked, and they were sympathetic. They did say that they thought I might be very helpful to the cause…when it came, and they would call me in then. That was all.”
I sighed with relief.
“Do you swear it, Luke?”
“I swear it,” he replied.
“So…they plotted this. They were going to kill the King and the Duke of York and set up the Duke of Monmouth, and then they would remember you. They would call on you as one of their supporters.”
“I think it must have been something like that.”
“And you have been wondering, of course, whether someone might have mentioned your name and then you would be questioned…even though you had no part in the plot. So that was the cause of your anxiety?”
“It is disturbing,” he said,
“when people one has known, however briefly, people one has talked to only a little while ago…and then one hears that they have been beheaded for treason.” “Oh, Luke,” I said. “Do take care. We live in dangerous times.”
Christobel was going to have a baby. She was blissfully happy. So was James. They at least were unconcerned about the Rye House Plot and its aftermath.
James fussed around her, not allowing her to carry anything or exert herself too much. Christobel reveled in it.
“I feel like a queen bee, with all my workers hovering around, and just think what it means—a baby! A child of my own. I cannot wait. I am so impatient. I am just longing for it. James wants a boy, of course. I do not care. I tell him, just to be obstinate, that I want a girl. Why do men always want boys? The egoistic male. They think their sex is superior in some way. I cannot think what gives them such an idea. I thought I had made James understand by now that that is not the case.”
It was wonderful to see her so contented.
She was told she must take regular rests for the sake of the child, and she liked people to come and see her in the morning when she could lie on her sofa and receive her guests.
I would go over whenever possible and Sebastian, Kirkwell and Luke came often.
Luke was taking more and more of an interest in the estate and was often with James learning about it. I believe that somewhere within him was the belief that one day, in spite of everything, Rosslyn Manor would be his. I was getting quite fond of Sebastian. He was unlike any of the others. There was a certain nonchalance about him. He was a good-natured man, content with things as they were. Luke would say, why should he not be? Our father had decreed that Rosslyn Manor should be his one day. Sebastian’s attitude to life was one of happy complacency. A distant connection of the family, he would one day be very wealthy and inherit the title as well as the estate, and this he took as it came, without it seemed any great excitement. He was relaxed. He was as courteous to a serving-maid as he would be to a lady of the court. He was extremely popular. In fact, we all liked him.
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