Whitehall--Season One Volume One

by Liz Duffy Adams

  She had done her duty, she thought, and brought desperately needed military succor to her people. What though the king’s countenance was saturnine, heavy in repose, and not altogether handsome? Might God not reward her piety with the same happiness her parents had known? And children, of course—healthy sons and handsome daughters to secure the throne of England.

  A gust of wind blew athwart the ship, snatching the knot of ribbons pinned to her hair and sending it flying over the ship’s rail. Dõna Maria cried out in real horror and ladies screeched like sea birds. They were astonished when Catarina de Braganza, Infanta of Portugal, began to laugh aloud.

  • • •

  Barbara Palmer, Countess of Castlemaine, reclined naked in a luxuriously rumpled bed, lit by a single candle and a flood of moonlight. Her mass of chestnut hair, released from its usual ornate confinement, rioted across the linen bolster; one hand rested on her swelling belly. She was the very picture of satiated bliss, an English rose at the height of youthful bloom. Through half-closed eyes, she gazed across the room at the tall man who stood naked at the window, looking out at the midnight garden.

  His thirty-two years sat lightly on him, though here and there on his moon-silvered skin, a scar gleamed, the kind got in war. His olive complexion, courtesy of his Italian grandfather, was far from the English pink-and-white ideal, and his long face, with its wide mouth and curling lips, was generally considered imposing but rather ugly. Barbara, however, found his every atom erotic. He was the brilliant Minotaur who did not rend her, dangerous as he might be to others. He was the King of England, and he was hers.

  A church bell began to toll, and then another. Three spaniels, curled up together on the edges of the puddled curtains, woke and began howling. Startled, Barbara leaned up on one elbow, but before she could speak, there was a knock at the door.

  “Be still,” he said to the dogs—who quieted, but came wriggling up to him to be soothed with a stroke and a tug on their ears—and then called out, “Enter!” A young page came in, looking as though he’d been rousted from sleep to bring the note he handed over with a little bow, quite unabashed at the nakedness. The king read, and nodded at the boy.

  “Tell Lord Clarendon I’ll set off as soon as may be. Now back to bed with you, Ned.”

  The boy grinned and bowed again, and hurried out, not without a sidelong glance at Barbara, who was sitting bolt upright.

  “What is it about?” she asked.

  Charles II looked back at her from the window. “It seems I am about to be married.”

  They looked at each other as the bells rolled on. She couldn’t read his face. She dropped her gaze and bit her lip. Then she threw back her shoulders and cast him a smile brimming with love, valor, and wry humor. The candlelight fell full upon her face; she knew when she was in her light as well as any actress might.

  “Well, darling,” she said. “I hope you aren’t going to be fanatical about it.”

  A risk, a calculated risk. He might take this moment to turn serious; Barbara never knew when that side of him might emerge. He stared at her, his dark eyes widening. Then he tipped his head back with a shouted laugh, and came striding back to her bed.

  • • •

  The candle guttered out with a hiss, a puddle of wax with a smoking wick, and Barbara woke curled with her back to Charles. While they had sported, the treacherous English weather had sent clouds scudding in to cover the moon, and now the day was dark, with a steady hissing rain. Turning, she saw him awake, one arm behind his head, gazing across the room at nothing.

  She said, “Are the cares of married life oppressing your spirits already?”

  He laughed shortly under his breath, then sobered. “Can’t help wondering what I’ve let myself in for. A pious little Infanta. Doesn’t even speak English.”

  “So much the better. She’ll bring all that lovely Portuguese gold, and lovely little legitimate heirs—and you won’t even have to talk to her.”

  She had meant to make him laugh again. But he reached out and palmed her belly, looking serious.

  “You know I would legitimize your children if I could. Our children,” he corrected himself.

  “They are legitimate,” Barbara said. “Legitimate little Palmers, with generous royal titles.”

  “It’s both the most and the least I can do. Thank goodness your husband is the complacent sort.”

  “He ought to be; he’s well rewarded.”

  In fact, though she didn’t want Charles to know it, she worried that Roger’s complacency was growing threadbare. He’d been making discontented noises of late, bemoaning her absences and his equivocal position, though he should have known how it would be when he agreed to the arrangement.

  As the only child of a viscount she might have looked higher for a husband. Sadly, the Villiers family fortunes had fallen during the years of Charles’s exile. They’d married her off to Roger—respectable enough, a wealthy lawyer—three years since, briskly if not brilliantly.

  But Barbara was the beauty of the age, and not one to be satisfied with a dull country estate and a dull bookish husband. Roger should be honored that his wife had become the unofficial queen of a glittering court. In fact, he had been honored. Scarcely a year ago, the king had made him Baron of Limerick and Earl of Castlemaine. It was unfortunate that the title could only be inherited by Barbara’s children. It was rather too obviously Charles’s way of looking after his own, and left Roger torn between pride—after all, he was a Royalist, and it was something to be recognized by the king he’d championed—and humiliation. Which, to be fair, could not be comfortable.

  But Roger’s hurt pride, she reminded herself, was an old worry. This morning, she must confront the more present worry of her lover’s new wife.

  She cupped Charles’s hip as he turned to her, ran her thumb along the curve of the bone, smiled sleepily. No wife, she thought, could hold more sway over a man’s soul, heart, and bed than a mistress such as she. Surely a rich little foreign Papist was no real threat. And yet . . . there were those bells, quiet now, but still ringing in her head.

  She said, “I daresay a wife will prove no more difficult to manage than a husband. Or a good deal easier, I should think.”

  Charles bit the corner of his lip. “I believe she’s exceptionally good-natured. Trained up to be mild and biddable.”

  “Unlike me?” Barbara teased.

  “Oh, you’re biddable enough for my taste,” he tossed back, “when you’re bid to do what you wanted at the first.”

  She laughed, a low murmuring sound. Pulling her in closer, he went on talking, his breath warm on her neck. “She’s had a monstrous sheltered life. Raised among a pack of nuns, I understand. Never set foot out of Lisbon before. I don’t want to offer her any insult. Or shock her into fits, for that matter.”

  Barbara shrugged. “Oh, well. Even in pious Portugal I don’t imagine they expect kings to be chaste.”

  Charles went still.

  Damn. She’d struck a wrong note.

  He detached from her under the pretense of sitting up and reaching for the wine. He drank, then set the cup down again and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Curled near the foot, one of his dogs—she refused to learn their names, she would have banned them from her presence if Charles would go anywhere without them, the damnable, shedding, barking, slobbering creatures—raised her head. The other two, sleeping on the floor, sat up with a little scrabbling of claws and watched Charles attentively, ready to follow him.

  Barbara reached out and touched his shoulder. “Going so early, my darling?”

  “She’s landed at Portsmouth. I must go.”

  She let her fingertips slide down his back. All of his scars were in front, of course. He wasn’t a man who hesitated. If he really wanted to go, he’d have been up and dressed by now.

  She lay back again, letting the bedclothes fall away from her body. “Of course. Of course you must go. Poor thing, the weather off the coast has been vile; it must have been
a nasty crossing. She’ll be as sick and bedraggled as a little wet . . .” She thought better of saying rat. “Well. I should think she’d be glad of a little time. As a woman. To look her best.” Such as it is, she thought but didn’t say. According to the Spanish ambassador, she was a dark, ugly, dwarfish creature, though he was undoubtedly prejudiced.

  “And speak of the weather,” she went on, “only listen to the rain! The roads will be dreadful. Mud up to the horses’ knees, I should think. I hate to think of you struggling through it all the way to Portsmouth; it will take you days and days. You’ll get there just as soon and far fresher if you wait till it’s dry.”

  At the word wait, Charles gave a little shake and sat up straighter, as though resisting temptation. “I know, I know,” she said hastily, “how can you wait? You’ll be as restless as a dog who hears the hunting horn, now you know your duty calls you to Portsmouth.”

  He half turned his head. “Call me a dog, do you?” he said.

  She heard the humor in his voice, but did not take up the joke. “After all, it’s not as though James weren’t already there to greet her and honor her and make her comfortable. And it’s not as though she’d expect you to be at the dock whenever the winds chose to deliver her—you’re the king, not an idler with nothing better to do than wait upon women! And . . .”

  “And?” He turned right back around to look at her, and seeing her yawning, widened his eyes in mock offense.

  The yawn turned into a laugh as she raised both arms above her head lazily, showing her breasts to advantage—naked, warm, and ripe. “Forgive me, darling, you don’t let a girl get much sleep!”

  He reached out his hand to her.

  “And,” she said, playfully capturing his hand in hers, “Tom Killigrew has a new comedy up this afternoon. He’ll be grieved if you miss it. Honestly, what are the odds? Why mire yourself on the road when you can ride dry and quick tomorrow? Or the next day?”

  He growled, “Ned you seduce me from my duty, wanton thing?” But she saw the look in his eyes, and knew she’d won. She let her heavy lids lower, and looked at him under her lashes with the most tender sincerity.

  “Never, my dear, never. Even if I could.”

  And he was back in her arms, his weight pressing her into the bed, and all was well. As he knew from her first pregnancy (with little Anne, safe with her nurse), Barbara’s swollen belly was no impediment to love. She kissed him, digging her fingers into his hair and taking advantage of his distraction to nudge the spaniel bitch off the bed with one foot.

  I will not let her take him, she thought as his mouth moved warmly from her lips to her neck. The little Portuguese may have the title, she may have the rank and place and honors, she may have his marital duty and his royal heirs. But she won’t have his love. I swear I will hold that for my own.

  • • •

  A month after setting sail from Lisbon, the Royal Charles sailed into the harbor of Portsmouth. The sea, if not exactly calm, seemed still as a pond after the long, stormy crossing. The Infanta’s household, weak and weary from seasickness and terror, rose from their cots and helped their mistress prepare to greet her royal bridegroom.

  In the Infanta’s cabin, ladies in wide farthingales bustled about like bees, laying out their mistress’s clothing. The atmosphere was redolent of sickness and the scented pastilles burnt in the faint hope of sweetening the air. Catarina sat in the center of the room in her shift and loose gown, her rosary in her lap, while her barber dressed her hair over its wire frame and a waiting-woman brightened her sallow cheeks with cochineal. She was still queasy, but she was in England, thank God. She was more than ready to see this new country where she would be queen.

  Her hair finished, she rose to be dressed. Dõna Maria, yellow and tottering, but determined to do her duty, gestured to one of her ladies to bring forward the black-and-white Portuguese gown the Infanta had worn to leave Lisbon.

  “What is this?” Catarina exclaimed, astonished. “I had chosen the white silk English gown, with the silver lace!”

  Dõna Maria’s thin brows rose disapprovingly. “Your Majesty is pleased to jest. That gown is quite unsuitable.”

  Her tone was tight, confident, disapproving. Catarina had heard it all her life, from Mother Superior and the royal nursemaids and from her mother.

  Almost she acquiesced, out of habit and affection. And then she lifted her chin. “Since my mother caused this gown to be made, she must have thought it suitable. It is an English gown, after all, and I am an English queen.”

  There. That caught something of her mother’s tone, she thought. Courteous, a little surprised that she should be forced to say anything so obvious. Dõna Maria stared at her, then primmed her mouth and lowered her eyes to sign her complete, if reluctant, obedience. It was a look Catarina had never seen directed at her, and she was forced to tighten her own lips to keep herself from apologizing. She was a queen now; she could not allow herself to be treated like a child, even at the price of defying one who had been a second mother to her, combing her hair and comforting her sorrows and hearing her catechism when her queen mother was occupied with state matters.

  The tense silence drew out, and then her duenna said, “Her Majesty will wear the white and silver. Though,” she went on stubbornly, “I still cannot think it seemly.”

  Later, when Catarina examined herself in the dressing glass, gowned and jeweled as befit a Queen of England, she thought Dõna Maria may have had the right of it. Her reflection stared back at her, pinched and sallow, thin shoulders and narrow chest uncomfortably at odds with the low neck of the English gown. And the stiff, wired wings of hair that so exactly echoed the lines of a farthingale were not suited to loose, billowing skirts.

  Charles would not see her truly, she feared. And she was too uneasy, both in body and in spirit, to see him. It would be a meeting of two dolls, not the meeting of minds and souls she had dreamed of as the Royal Charles tossed and groaned through stormy seas.

  Time enough for true seeing once we are truly wed. Today is for history. Tomorrow will be for us.

  After some time, Lord Sandwich was announced, and her heart quickened, wondering if he heralded the arrival of the king. But as soon as he entered, she knew he bore bad news. Their faces were like glass, these English. They were bluff and eager, blundering through the formal measures of her mother’s court like mastiffs, well-trained, but with incomplete control of their tails and paws. Just now, he looked like a mastiff standing over the shredded remains of a costly pillow.

  “Good morning, Your Majesty. I’m afraid I must tell you—that is—I regret to say it but the fact is, His Majesty—well, the short and the long of it is—the king’s not yet here. Delays. Affairs of state, you know. And we were such an unconscionable time at sea—” He broke off, uncertainly.

  Only the training of the convent and her mother’s court prevented Catarina from betraying her disappointment. “Did you not send a messenger from the Isle of Wight?”

  “He hardly will have reached there in the time,” Lord Sandwich said. “The roads are mired, Your Majesty. Rain, you know, mud thick as anything. But it won’t be long—say, three more days, or indeed perhaps less, for His Majesty to prepare himself and travel here by coach. But his brother is here, the Duke of York, you know—he’s come aboard, and begs you to receive him.”

  Catarina raised her hand. “Thank you, Lord Admiral. Let him approach.”

  Sandwich bowed and disappeared, leaving behind him a shocked silence, which broke into a spate of excited whispers cut short by the Dõna Maria’s minatory glare. Catarina had time to say a Paternoster and a Credo before the door opened and a troop of impossibly tall gentlemen in cloth of gold doublets poured into the cabin.

  The tallest of the gentlemen stepped forward, very handsome, with long, light-brown curling hair. He removed his feathered hat and knelt. She stood, took his hands to raise him to his feet, and, feeling very bold, presented her face for the kiss her godfather the Conde de Ponte had s
aid the English used in greeting. The duke grinned, kissed her hand with a flourish, and began to speak. In English.

  Catarina had very little English. She and her future husband had at least two languages in common—Spanish and Latin—and her mother had not thought it necessary for her to acquire another. She would have her household to speak to, Queen Luisa had said, as well as her godfather and his servants, and Father Patrick was an able translator. Privately, Catarina had thought she would like to learn something of her husband’s native tongue, and would have done so during the journey, had Father Patrick been well enough to teach her. Still, she understood a few words here and there: “His Majesty,” “wife,” “sister.”

  To her great relief, Dom de Mello stepped out of the bright throng. “If you will allow me, Your Majesty?” he said to her, then spoke in English to the Duke of York, who flushed scarlet.

  “I crave your pardon, madam.” Her new brother-in-law’s Spanish was serviceable, if oddly accented. “I was explaining that my sister Catherine must save her first kiss for her husband, His Majesty the King, who is even now in London, awaiting the news of her arrival. For my own part, I welcome you to your kingdom, and tender the good wishes of my wife. Lady Anne is in the country just at present, awaiting the birth of her child. Yet I trust we will contrive to make you tolerably comfortable.” He smiled under his thin mustache. It was a charming smile. “His Majesty is most anxious that you feel yourself at home.”

  The English name stood out from the surrounding Spanish like a rock in a stream: Catherine. That was who she was now. Catherine, sister to James, Duke of York. Wife of the King of England. Catherine. She would not forget.