A Health Unto His Majesty

by Виктория Холт

  “I will not have her.”

  “Catherine,” he said, “you must.”

  “I will not. I will not.”

  “You have said you would do anything to please me. I ask this of you.”

  “But not this. I will not have her—your mistress—in my service … in my own bedchamber.”

  “I tell you I have promised her this appointment. I must insist on your giving it to her.”

  “I never will!” cried Catherine.

  He could see that she was suffering, and his heart was immediately touched. She was, after all, young and inexperienced. She had had a shock. He should have prepared her for this. But how could he when she, in her deceit, had given him no indication that she had ever heard of Lady Castlemaine?

  Still he realized the shock she had sustained; he understood her jealousy. He must insist on her obeying him, but he wished to make the surrender as easy as possible for her.

  “Catherine,” he said, “do this thing for me and I shall be forever grateful. Take Lady Castlemaine into your service, and I swear that if she should ever be insolent to you in the smallest degree I will never see her again.”

  He waited, expecting the floods of tears, the compliance. It would be so easy for her, he was sure. Queens had been asked to overcome these awkward situations before. He thought of Catherine de’ Medici, wife of Henri Deux, who had long and graciously stood aside for Diane de Poitiers; he thought of the many mistresses of his respected ancestor Henri Quatre. He was not asking his wife anything to compare with what those monarchs had asked of theirs.

  But he had been mistaken in Catherine. She was not the soft and tender girl. She was a determined and jealous woman.

  “I will not receive her into my household,” she said firmly.

  Astonished and now really angry, the King turned abruptly and left her.

  Charles was in a quandary. It grieved him to hurt Catherine, yet less than it would have done a week before, for it seemed to him that her stubborn refusal to understand his great difficulty dearly showed that her vanity and self-love was greater than her love for him; he was able to tell himself that he had been deceived in her; and this helped him to act as he knew he would have to act. Charles wanted to be kind to all; to hurt anyone, even those whom he disliked, grieved him; revenge had always seemed to him a waste of time, as was shown by his behavior when those men who had been instrumental in bringing about his father’s death and his own exile had been brought to trial; he wished to live a pleasant life; if some painful act had to be performed it was his main desire to get it over as quickly as possible or look the other way while someone else carried it out.

  Now he knew that he was going to hurt Catherine, for he was sure that to allow Barbara to disclose to the Queen the intimate details of their relationship—which Barbara had hinted she might do, and he knew her well enough to realize that she was capable of carrying out her threat—would result in hurting Catherine more than would quietly receiving Barbara into her household.

  Catherine had right on her side to a certain extent, but if she would only be reasonable, if she would only contemplate his difficulties instead of brooding on her own, she could save them all much trouble.

  But she was obstinate, narrow-minded and surrounded by a group of hideous prudes; for it was a fact that those ladies-in-waiting and duennas of hers would not sleep in any beds unless all the linen and covers had been changed—lest a man might have slept there before them and so would, they believed, defile their virginity.

  Catherine had to grow up. She had to learn the manners of a Court less backward than that ruled over by her stern old mother.

  He would not plead with her anymore; that only resulted in floods of tears; but he was convinced that to allow her to flout him would be folly. It was bad enough to have Barbara flouting him. He had to be firm with one of them; and Barbara had the whip hand—not only because of the revelations she could make, but because of her own irresistible appeal.

  So he made up his mind that if Barbara could be presented to Catherine—and Barbara had promised that she would behave with the utmost decorum, and so she would, provided she had her way—the Queen would not make a scene in front of a number of people; and then, having once received his mistress, she would find there was nothing very extraordinary in doing so.

  Catherine was holding a reception in her presence room, and many of the ladies and gentlemen of the Court were with her there.

  Charles was not present and Catherine, heartbroken as she was, could not prevent her gaze straying every now and then to the door. She longed for a sight of him; she longed to return to that lost tender relationship. She let herself dream that he came to her full of sorrow for the way in which he had treated her; that he implored her to forgive him and declared that neither of them should ever see or speak of Lady Castlemaine again.

  Then she saw him. He was making his way to her, and he was smiling, and he looked so like the Charles he had been in the early days of their marriage. He laughed aloud and the sound of that deep attractive voice made her whole body thrill with pleasure. He had caught her eye now; he was coming towards her and his smiles were for her.

  She noticed his companion then. He was holding her hand, as he always held the hands of those ladies whom he would present to her. But Catherine scarcely looked at the woman; she could see none but him, and absorb the wonderful fact that he was smiling at her.

  He presented the lady, who curtsied as she took Catherine’s hand and kissed it.

  The King was looking at the Queen with delight, and it seemed in that moment of incomparable joy that their differences had been wiped out. He had stepped back, and the lady he had presented remained at his side; but he continued to look at Catherine, and she felt that only he and she existed in that large assembly.

  Then quite suddenly she became aware of tension in the atmosphere; she realized that the ladies and gentlemen had stopped murmuring; it was almost as though they held their breath and were waiting for something dramatic to happen.

  Elvira, who was standing behind her chair, leaned forward.

  “Your Majesty,” whispered Elvira, “do you know who that woman is?”

  “I? No,” said the Queen.

  “You did not catch the name. The King deliberately mispronounced it. It is Lady Castlemaine.”

  Catherine felt waves of dizziness sweeping over her. She looked round at that watching assembly. She noted the smiles on their faces; they were regarding her as though she were a character in some obscene play.

  So he had done this to her! He had brought Lady Castlemaine to her reception that she might unwittingly acknowledge his mistress before all these people.

  It was too much to be borne. She turned her eyes to him, but he was not looking her way now; his head was bent; he seemed absorbed in what that woman was saying.

  And there stood the creature—the most lovely woman Catherine had ever seen—yet her loveliness seemed to hold an evil kind of beauty, bold, brazen, yet magnificent; her auburn curls fell over bare shoulders, her green and gold gown was cut lower than all others, her emeralds and sparkling diamonds about her person. She was arrogant and insolent—the King’s triumphant mistress.

  No! She could not endure it. Her heart felt as though it were really breaking; she suffered a violent physical pain as it leaped and pranced like a mad and frightened horse.

  The blood was rushing to her head. It had started to gush from her nose. She saw it, splashing on to her gown; she heard the quick intake of breath as the company, watching her, gasped audibly.

  Then she fell swooning to the floor.

  The King was horrified to see Catherine in such a condition; he ordered that she be carried to her apartments, but when he realized that only the feelings of the moment—which he preferred to ascribe to anger—had reduced her to such a state, he allowed himself to be shocked by such lack of control.

  He, so ready to seek an easy way out of a difficulty, so ready to accept what could not
be avoided, felt his anger increasing against his wife. It seemed to him that it would have been so simple a matter to have received Barbara and feigned ignorance of her relationship with himself. That was what he himself would have done; that was what other Queens had done before her.

  He knew that he must placate Barbara; he had promised to, and she would see that this was one of the promises he kept. He hated discord, so he decided that he would shift to Clarendon the responsibility of making Catherine see reason.

  He sent for his Chancellor.

  He was not so pleased with Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, as he had once been. In the days when he had been a wandering exile he had felt unsafe unless Clarendon was beside him to give him the benefit of his wisdom and advice. It was a little different now that he was a King. He and Clarendon had disagreed on several matters since their return to England; and Charles knew that Clarendon had more enemies in England than he ever had in exile.

  Clarendon wished to go back to the prerevolutionary doctrine. He believed that the King should have sole power over the militia; and he wished to inaugurate in place of Parliament a powerful privy council who would decide all matters of state.

  The King agreed with him on this but on very little else. Clarendon continually deplored the King’s wish to shape his own monarchy in the pattern of that of France. The King was too French in his outlook; he looked to his grandfather, Henri Quatre, as a model, not only in his numerous love affairs but in his schemes of government. Again and again Clarendon had pointed out that England was not France, and that the temperament of the two countries was totally different.

  They also disagreed on religious matters. Clarendon thought Charles’ policy of toleration a mistaken one. There were many in the Court who sensed the mild but growing estrangement between the King and his most trusted minister, and they were ready enough to foster that growth. Buckingham was one, and with him in this was his kinswoman, Lady Castlemaine.

  Clarendon, as a wise old man, knew that his enemies were watching, quietly as yet but hopefully.

  Still he persisted in his frankness with the King; and although he had been against the Portuguese marriage he now attempted to take the side of the Queen.

  “Your Majesty is guilty of cruelty towards the Queen,” he said; “you seek to force her to that with which flesh and blood cannot comply.”

  Charles studied the man. He no longer completely trusted him. A few years ago he would have listened respectfully and he might have accepted Clarendon’s view; but he now believed that his Chancellor was not wholly sincere, and he looked for the reasons which had impelled him to take such views as he now expressed.

  Charles knew that Clarendon hated Barbara. Was this the reason why he now urged the King not to give way to his mistress’s cruel desires, but to support his wife? How could he be sure?

  “I have heard you say,” went on the Chancellor, “when you saw how King Louis forced his wife to receive his mistresses, that it was a piece of ill nature that you would not be guilty of, for if ever you had a mistress after you had a wife—which Your Majesty hoped you never would have—she should never come where your wife was.”

  “It is good for a man who has a wife not to have a mistress,” said Charles testily, “but if he has, he has, and there’s an end of it. We would all like to be virtuous, but our natures drive us another way. I hold that when such a matter as this arises the best road from it is for good sense to be shown all round. If the Queen had quietly received my Lady Castlemaine there would not then be this trouble.”

  “Your Majesty, I would beg you to please your wife in this, for she is the Queen and the other but your mistress. I can assure Your Majesty that Ormond and others agree with me in this. You should repudiate my Lady Castlemaine and never allow her to enter into your wife’s household.”

  The King was rarely angry, but he was deeply so on this occasion. He remembered the hypocrisy of Clarendon when the Duke of York had married his daughter. Then he had said he would have rather seen Anne James’ mistress than his wife. It seemed at that time he had a little more respect for mistresses, since he was eager to see his daughter one.

  No! He could trust none. Clarendon, Ormond, and the rest urged him to repudiate Barbara, not because she was his mistress, but because she was their enemy. They would have been howling for the destruction of the Queen if they did not think her an ineffectual puppet who could harm them not.

  Then Charles fell into one of his rare moods of obstinacy.

  He said: “I would beg of you all not to meddle in my affairs unless you are commanded to do so. If I find any of you guilty in this manner I will make you repent of it to the last moments of your lives. Pray hear what I have to say now. I am entered upon this matter, and I think it necessary to counsel you lest you should think by making stir enough you might divert me from my resolution. I am resolved to make my Lady Castlemaine of my wife’s bedchamber; and whosoever I find using any endeavors to hinder this resolution, I will be his enemy to the last moment of his life.”

  Clarendon had never seen the King so stern, and he was shaken. He remembered all his enemies at Court, and how again and again when he was in danger from them it was the King who had come to his aid.

  He hated Lady Castlemaine; he hated her not only because she was his enemy but because of the influence she had over the King. But he knew that in this instance, the King’s will being so firm, he must remember he was naught else but the King’s servant.

  “Your Majesty has spoken,” he said. “I regret that I have expressed my opinions too freely. I am Your Majesty’s servant, to be used as you will. I beg you forgive the freedom of my manners, which freedom has grown out of my long affection for Your Majesty.”

  The King, regretting his harshness almost immediately, laid his hand on Clarendon’s shoulder.

  He gave a half-smile. “I am pledged to this. It’s a mighty unpleasant business. Come, my friend, extricate me; stand between me and these wrangling women. Be my good lieutenant as you have been so many times before, and let there never more be harsh words between us.”

  There were tears in the older man’s eyes.

  The charm of the King was as potent as it had ever been.

  Oddly enough, thought Clarendon, though one believes him to be in the wrong, one desires above all things to serve him.

  Clarendon made his way to the Queen’s apartment and asked for audience.

  She received him in bed. She looked pale and quite exhausted after her upset, but she greeted him with a faint smile.

  Clarendon intimated that his business with her was secret, and her women retired.

  “Oh, my lord,” she cried, “you are one of the few friends I have in this country. You have come to help me, I know.”

  “I hope so, Madam,” said Clarendon.

  “I have been foolish. I have betrayed my feelings, and that is a bad thing to do; but my feelings were so hard to bear. My heart was broken.”

  “I have come to give you my advice,” said the Chancellor, “and it is advice which may not please Your Majesty.”

  “You must tell me exactly what you mean,” she said. “I can glean no help from you if you do not talk freely of my faults.”

  “Your Majesty makes much of little. Has your education and knowledge of the world given you so little insight into the conduct of mankind that you should be so upset to witness it? I believe that your own country could give you as many—nay more—instances of these follies, than we can show you here in our cold climate.”

  “I did not know that the King loves this woman.”

  “Did you imagine then that a man such as His Majesty, thirty-two years of age, virile and healthy, would keep his affections reserved for the lady he would marry?”

  “I did not think he loved her still.”

  “He has the warmest feelings for you.”

  “Yet his for her are warmer.”

  “They would be most warm for you if you were to help him in this,” said the Chancel
lor slyly. “I come to you with a message from him. He says that if you will but do what he asks on this one occasion he will make you the happiest queen in the world. He says that whatever he entertained for other ladies before your coming concerns you not, and that you must not enquire into them. He says that if you will help him now he will dedicate himself to you. If you will meet his affection with the same good humor, you will have a life of perfect felicity.”

  “I am ready to serve the King in all ways.”

  The Chancellor smiled. “Then all is well. There is no longer discord between you.”

  “Save,” went on Catherine, “in this one thing. I will not have that woman in my household.”

  “But only by helping the King in this—for he has given a promise that it should be so—can you show that devotion.”

  “But if he loved me he could not … could not suggest it! By insisting on such a condition he exposes me to the contempt of the Court. If I submitted to it I should believe I was worthy to receive such an affront. No. No. I will not have that woman in my household. I would prefer to go back to Lisbon.”

  “That,” said Clarendon quickly, “it is not in your power to do. Madam, I beg of you, for your own sake, listen to my counsel. Meet the King’s wishes in this. It is rarely that he is so insistent. Pray try to understand that he has given his word that Lady Castlemaine should have a post in your bedchamber. Demean yourself in this—if you consider you should demean yourself by so obeying your husband—but for your future happiness do not remain stubborn.”

  Catherine covered her face with her hands.

  “I will not,” she moaned. “I will not.”

  Clarendon left her and her women came round her, soothing her in their native tongue. They cursed all those who had dared insult their Infanta; they implored her to remember her state; they swore to her that she would forfeit all respect, not only of the Court but of the King, if she gave way.

  “I cannot have her here,” Catherine murmured. “I cannot. Every time I saw her my heart would break afresh.”