At once Barbara was on her feet to curtsy profoundly, heedless of the mayhem doing so created with her half-pinned hair. Head down, she looked backward to see her coiffeuse curtsying as well, brush in her hand, a tortoiseshell comb held between her lips and a look of panic in her eyes.
“Up, up!” Charles extended his hand to raise Barbara then pulled a chair near hers and sat companionably. The girl could finish with Barbara’s hair and be gone, leaving her alone with the king. The coiffeuse made quick work of pinning and curling, perhaps not so perfectly as she might have under a less august eye, then curtsied in a direction halfway between His Majesty and her mistress.
“Go.” Barbara waved a careless hand at the girl and did not think of her again. Instead, she turned to the king. “What news, dear Majesty? How does the king today? Did you swim this morning?”
The king raised an eyebrow. “I beg you will not pretend to care whether I swam this morning, or played tennis, or whether Bacchus’s barking disturbed my morning meetings—at least until you have heard what matters to you.”
“Whatever matters to you matters to me.”
“No doubt,” he said dryly. “You will be happy to know that I have made it clear to the queen that my word is to be her law.”
“As it is for all of us! But how did you do it?
“I ordered her retinue back to Portugal, the lot of them. It will be a hard punishment; in truth, I wonder if I went too far. I recall well enough being lonely in a country not my own. No amount of French kindness was as dear to me as the sound of my own tongue spoken by a friend.”
Barbara was quick to counter. “The cases are not at all the same. You were an exile. She came to England to be queen. Perhaps sending away the Portuguese will speed her learning English ways?”
“There’s a way to put a sunny face upon the matter. Babs, did I not know better I would assume your concern was all for the queen.”
“My concern is all for you.” It was the truth, and yet . . . “Has she given way?”
“Not yet. I would give her a day or two to—” Charles paused. “A day or two to understand the lesson she has learned. She’s a clever girl; I do not expect it to take her long.”
“And I shall have the appointment?” No point in dancing about the subject. He knew what she wanted.
The king smiled down at her. “You shall.”
Barbara flung her arms about her lover’s neck and kissed him, once, twice, and once more.
Charles returned the kisses, then pulled upon one of the long curls the coiffeuse had fussed over, until Barbara’s head came up and her eyes looked into his own. “Triumph becomes you, sweet—everything does—but you will want to be more subtle.”
“Have I said a word against her? It was not I who refused to obey your command.”
“Yet I understand why Catherine would feel an affront, I do.”
Barbara liked this not at all. She preferred to think of herself, and have Charles think of her, as the victim, the devoted lover threatened by a foreign interloper. Her fear that she might be abandoned was real. Why should her joy be any less so?
“I asked it only for the children’s sake, for their future and security.” she protested. “Palmer has gone back to Dorney and does not answer when I write. Were he to repudiate me and my children publicly—I must have some way to provide.”
“He won’t—were he to repudiate you and your children, he would lose the titles he sets such store by. As for . . . od’s fish, do you think I would let you—or little Anne and the baby—starve in the streets? You wound me, Babs.”
Barbara’s lower lip trembled. “I shall not always be beautiful.”
Charles snorted. “Am I now to seek a strand of silver in the grotto?” He slid his hand under the shining fabric of her skirt, up along her thigh. As always, she softened at his touch. “You will be celebrated for your beauty for many years yet.”
He pulled her to him. She abandoned all anxiety, all thoughts of dress or hair or anything but the feeling of his body against her own.
Later, when the king had undone all the good work of her maid and the coiffeuse, they lay quiet, Barbara with her head upon his shoulder and her breath stirring the locks of dark hair that curled damply around his face.
“Barbara—” He hesitated. “You have nothing to fear from Catherine. She’ll never be your match. You could be a generous winner.”
Barbara nodded. If she had won her hand she could afford to be gracious—a little.
“Am I not generous?” Barbara rolled to her side, her face turned from Charles’s, thinking. “I will show you how generous I can be. I think you should hold a ball in the queen’s honor. Without that frightful coven of crows she kept around her, perhaps she’ll show to more advantage!”
The king laughed. “And where will you be during this ball, my dear?”
“Oh, just one lady among the others, Your Majesty.”
“That”—he slid his hand over her shoulder to pull her back facing him—“you will never be. But a ball would be a pleasant thing. I wonder if the girl knows how to dance?”
Barbara smiled, maintaining a mask of good humor, and hurried to turn his thoughts from Catherine. “What will be the theme of this ball, Your Majesty?”
“What would you, Babs?”
She made a play of thinking, her eyes lowered, one finger upon her lower lip. It was a pretty pose, she knew. “The sea? The jungle, and you the lion?”
“If it is to be a ball in the queen’s honor—od’s blood, I barely know the girl well enough to know what would please her. And I do not suppose I can go and ask her now. I expect to hear that she’s taken to her bed in a faint.”
“Is she so sorry a little thing? Like a nun—like a novice!—cloistered away among her ladies?”
“Not her ladies,” Charles reminded her.
Was everything to lead back to Catherine? “Ask one of her English ladies,” Barbara said flatly. “Perhaps—the sun and the stars, would she like that? You must, of course, be the sun, as you are the orb round which we all circle.”
She distracted him with plans for the Great Hall decked out with hangings of celestial blue, and the court dressed as constellations and moons. It would be expensive. But no price was too high, to Lady Castlemaine’s mind, to upstage Catherine and show the court who truly had the king’s heart and ear.
• • •
As was his custom, the king rose early the next day and went to swim in the Thames. Afterward there had been business: an audience with the ambassador from Orange, and an hour in Clarendon’s company discussing funds for the navy. No man was truer or more loyal than Clarendon, but Charles sometimes found himself impatient with the older man’s measured counsel. The fact that the counsel was frequently wise did not take away the sting of what the king felt was near fatherly disapproval. After that meeting Charles had given his steward orders for preparation for a ball in the queen’s honor a week hence. Perhaps that would cheer little Catherine.
Had he been cruel, sending her people back to Portugal? He could not afford to have anyone—particularly his wife—be insubordinate to his will. Still—what had Clarendon said? Any wife put in such a position would feel herself wronged. By the husband who had put her in that position. And by the rites of his own Church and of hers, Charles was her husband.
The king left his offices with no further appointments, thinking he might take some of his gentlemen and go riding. The air—and the activity—would do him good. Charles was aware of a restless urge to be doing, to use some of his abundant physical energy. Almost before he turned, the Earl of Bath was at his side. Bath had been with him for many years, and was like to recognize his king’s moods as well as Charles himself.
“Shall I have your horse saddled, sire?”
The notion was a grateful one, but an idea was nagging at the king. “I will go and call upon Her Majesty first.”
Bath’s expression did not change, whatever his surprise. “Yes, sire.”
Catherine’s dayroom was filled with feminine chatter, which stopped immediately when the king and his gentlemen stepped through the door. The ladies attending her bowed and Charles waved them up again. Lady Suffolk was the first to speak. “Your Majesty, we did not expect—the queen is at—” She paused as if what she had to say was an embarrassment. “She is at her devotions.”
“At prayer or at confession?” the king asked easily. “It does no harm for us to wait, so long as her confession is not overlong.” He meant it as a joke—he doubted Catherine could have much upon her soul to confess. Still, Lady Suffolk made a gesture to one of the servants and the girl left the room to seek the queen.
A few minutes later Catherine arrived, a little breathless, the ladies Buckingham and Suffolk in her wake. She wore a brown dress in the English style; the color did not much become her, but her hurry had put color in her cheeks, which did. Before the king could greet her, Catherine dropped into a curtsy so profound she was nearly kneeling, and said, in Spanish, “My lord king, I beg your pardon for my stubbornness against Your Majesty’s will.”
He had not expected that. Charles reached down to cup her chin in one hand and raise her up. Her skin was warm against his palm, very soft.
“Madam, all offenses are forgotten. We must learn to be better friends, you and I, yes?”
“I should like that, sire.” She smiled, heart in her eyes. “Will Your Majesty sit for a while? Perhaps you will drink a dish of tea with me.”
Tea? Charles could not understand what anyone saw in it, but he had drunk and eaten worse things in his years abroad for the sake of amity. A cup of tea was nothing. “I would be very happy to do so. And—” He thought of his conversation with the steward earlier. “To celebrate this understanding of ours, I have ordered a ball in your honor, six days hence. A masque.”
Catherine’s eyes grew large. “I have never been to a masque. What does one do?”
Charles laughed. Catherine’s ladies, who had withdrawn tactfully to the other end of the room, smiled encouragingly. “One dances and drinks and eats and flirts—ah, Cat, have I shocked you? You need not flirt if you dislike it.”
Catherine blushed, and busied herself with preparing the tea with her own hands, plying cups and pot, hot water, and inscrutable shreds of dark leaf. As she worked, Charles explained the conceit of the ball.
“I must come in costume?” The king could not tell if the idea frightened or pleased his wife. A little of both, perhaps.
“Indeed. Some celestial figure, perhaps. I’m sure your ladies will be pleased to help you.” He switched to English and explained to the ladies what was planned. “I rely upon you ladies to assist Her Majesty—it seems a masque is something quite new to her.”
Charles finished his tea in three sips—the cups were small, and he was thirsty. It had a pleasant astringency he had not appreciated before.
“Madam, I will not take your time—” he began.
The light in the queen’s eyes dimmed. “You must go?” she asked in Spanish. “I had thought—” She stopped.
“Yes?” Charles was wary; what would the woman ask for?
“I sometimes see my ladies playing games with cards. In Portugal this is not the custom, but now I am in England. If I am to become a good Englishwoman, I must learn new pastimes. Would you teach me the cards?”
“Teach you the cards?” It was nothing of what he had expected. Again, Charles felt a moment of guilt. He knew what it was to be in exile, living in a country other than his own. Perhaps Catherine had deserved better at his hands than she had received. “Madam, it would be my greatest pleasure.”
In a moment Lady Bath, who had been talking quietly with her husband, was dispatched for a deck of cards.
“Now, Cat, we will start with something simple. A game I learned in France, called quinze. Each of these pictures has a value, you see.” One by one he took her through the suits and cards and praised her quickness when she caught on at once. I must remember she’s clever, he thought. He shuffled and asked her to cut the deck, then shuffled again, and dealt one card to Catherine and one to himself.
“The first to reach a sum of fifteen, or close to fifteen without going over, will be the winner.”
Catherine pursed her lips, considered, and nodded. “The knave is eleven, the queen is twelve, and the king is thirteen?”
“You have the right of it. Here, let us try a hand.”
It took three hands before Catherine beat him, then beat him again. Her face was lit with pleasure, and her laugh rang out more than once.
“Shall I regret that I have taught you a game at which you excel?”
She mocked dismay. “Would Your Majesty prefer that I lose?”
Charles shook his head. “Never in the world, Your Majesty.” He switched to English. “Since you have proved such a quick learner at cards, perhaps I should be schooling you in English as well?”
“If it please Your Majesty—” she tried in English, the last word so unintelligible that he was hard put not to laugh. “I should like that.”
As they continued to play, and he continued to tease and cajole Catherine into using English, Charles felt an odd contentment. This was comfortable. Despite the servants who bustled or stood in waiting at the room’s periphery; despite the Ladies of the Bedchamber who sat nearby, he felt at ease. Perhaps it was possible for one to be a husband as well as a king.
• • •
The English ladies were fluttering around Her Majesty, chattering so fast that Jenny doubted the poor little queen could understand one word in ten. In the days since the ball had been announced, Jenny had found herself one of a dozen seamstresses sewing brilliants upon the queen’s dress at the directions of the tailor. She felt a proprietary interest in how the dress fit and how the queen appeared, but there was little likelihood that she would be permitted to get close enough to tweak a fold or turn a curl. She contented herself with her work at the clothes press, folding the delicately made point cuffs on one of the queen’s nightshifts.
The new dress was beautiful, styled to make the most of the queen’s figure (unlike the regrettable attempts by her Portuguese tailors to produce “English” dress). And the sweep of brilliants from hem to shoulder would make Catherine look a very celestial being indeed.
Her dress laced up and arranged, the queen settled into a chair so that the coiffeuse could attend to her hair. Marie-France—a fat, ponderous old Frenchwoman with magic in her hands—pulled the queen’s dark hair this way and that, pinning it up with combs studded with brilliants, twisting the hair along her brow and at her temples into clever, pretty curls.
At last, satisfied, the coiffeuse stepped away from the queen, her hands in the air as if to say, “It is all up to God now, I have done my best.”
Lady Bath and Lady Buckingham, the younger of the queen’s ladies, near to squealed with pleasure at the queen’s toilette. Catherine glowed at the praise, and in halting English sent them off to dress themselves. Lady Suffolk had already gone to make her own toilette, and Lady Chesterfield, not one to spoil the young with praise, sat near a branch of candles, pointedly reading from a book of sermons. Protestant sermons.
With the two younger ladies gone, the room was suddenly quiet. Catherine approached her glass and looked at her reflection as if at a foreign landscape. As Jenny watched, the queen’s face clouded and her brows drew together. She turned from the mirror and attempted, in her bad English, to ask Lady Chesterfield for the box in which her hare’s foot and cosmetics were kept.
Lady Chesterfield took a moment to untangle the queen’s meaning, then waved at another servant to find the box. When the girl returned a moment later, Lady Chesterfield opened the box and stared at its contents as if at a loss. Ordinarily it was one of the younger ladies, Lady Bath or Lady Buckingham, who painted the queen’s face, but they had gone to dress. And Jenny feared that near-sighted Lady Chesterfield would make the queen look as dowdy as herself, undoing all the good of the tailor’s exquisite work.
Jenny looked down at her hands. A maidservant does not advise the queen.
Then she heard her name. “Que pienses, Jenny?”
Lady Chesterfield held the hare’s foot in her hand, poised to apply powdered pearl to whiten the queen’s olive skin. The queen’s expression as she regarded Jenny was of one girl seeking reassurance from another. The opportunity Jenny had hoped for.
She took a breath. “Reina querida,” she said in Spanish, “the English fashion is more . . .” Jenny sought the right word. “The style is more subtle. Just a light veil of powder. A touch of rouge. Will Your Majesty permit me to assist you?”
The queen’s face showed no displeasure. Rather, she motioned to Lady Chesterfield, who surrendered the hare’s foot to Jenny. Catherine sat, eyes closed like a child ready to be prepared for her party. Feliciana, barred from her mistress’s lap, danced around Jenny’s feet.
A dusting of rice powder rather than the heavier powdered pearl, a touch of rouge upon the cheeks and just under the brows to draw attention to the queen’s dark, heavy-lidded eyes. Finally, Jenny looked through the patch box and found, to her private delight, a black silk star, and a comet. She fixed the star on the right, below her majesty’s full mouth, and the comet on the left, by her brow. When she had finished Jenny stood back, hands upon her hips.
“Is it well?” Catherine asked.
“It is more than well, Majesty. You are beautiful.”
Turning to the mirror again, the queen observed what Jenny had done. After a moment, she nodded. “If I am to wear English clothes, I must follow the English style in all things.”
Lady Chesterfield had returned to her sermon but looked up sleepily now at the queen, as if she were an unexpected vision. “What is that, madam?”
In answer, Catherine gestured to her gown and her face.
“Very handsome, madam. I am certain you will have an excellent evening.”
Jenny, thinking of all the things that could happen to confound the queen, hoped so as well.
Whitehall--Season One Volume One Page 15
