“And I suppose that — since I cannot deny the letter — Oates made his point?” questioned Catherine.
“The Court was certainly impressed, your Majesty. And that was the first time I heard the King speak. ‘I suppose it did not occur to Sir Richard, who is so wily, to close the door?’ he asked almost casually, and for the first time during that tense session a titter ran round the crowded benches.”
“Ah!” breathed the rest of the Queen’s household in relief. But Catherine said nothing; for she knew that often before, in the days when the King had looked upon it all as an amusing farce, he had made remarks like that; and yet, when the Judge had summed up, had been obliged to let these fanatical bloodhounds have their way.
“Oates pretended not to hear and proceeded pompously with his indictment,” went on Huddleston. “He affirmed on oath that he heard the two men’s voices urging some matter, and then a woman’s voice exclaim, ‘I will no longer suffer such indignities to my bed! I am content to join you.’ The King’s face was white and inscrutable, and you could have heard a pin drop in the Court room, Madame. And then that arch-fiend went on to pretend that he had heard it arranged that the physician should prepare the poison and you, the Queen, should administer it.”
“God in Heaven!” cried Lady Ormonde. “Did no one in that assembly strike him down?”
“The learned Counsel, with a great show of impartiality, asked him how he knew it was the Queen who was within, and on this point he was able to satisfy them, having bribed some witnesses from your Majesty’s household. And then the King rose and asked the Judge’s permission to cross-examine Oates; and it seemed that even Shaftesbury and Buckingham were all for it, supposing his Majesty to be concerned for his own safety.
“ ‘You stood by the ante-room door and were able to overhear a part of the conversation taking place within?’ he began. And Oates agreed that it was so.
“ ‘Surely, since these regicides were plotting such wickedness in secret, it would have been scarcely possible to hear so much with the door merely ajar?’ said his Majesty.
“ ‘Pairhaps it was raither wider, Sir,’ agreed Oates, in his insufferable drawl. ‘Although aye regret that aye could not see the parties consaimed.’
“ ‘Only a part of the room?’ suggested his Majesty.
“ ‘Quaite so.’ agreed Oates, falling into the trap.
“ ‘Then perhaps you will be good enough to describe to the Court what you saw.’
“It was then that Oates began to be ruffled. ‘I haive little consairn for such trifles,’ he hedged loftily.
“ ‘But you would have noticed the position of the window. Or some picture hanging on the wall, perhaps? Come, come, man, you have an amazing memory for detail when it suits you. I advise you to exert it now.’
“There was steel in the King's voice and for the first time it appeared to dawn on Oates that he was dealing with an adversary. He became flustered. Almost vindictively he began to describe a room with rich furnishings such as he was familiar with at Whitehall, even mentioning a portrait of some woman by Sir Peter Lely, and some of the gentlemen present, who knew your Majesty’s more austere taste in such matters, began to grin.
“ ‘And the woman's voice you say you heard?’ pursued the King, changing the subject to his victim’s evident relief. ‘How would you describe that?’
“ ‘Oh, high-pitched and shrill with anger,’ answered Oates glibly.
“ ‘Strange!’ marvelled his Majesty. ‘For my wife's voice is exceptionally low and pleasant.’ And as a ripple of laughter went round, he marvelled still more that any man could hear a private conversation across two rooms and a passage — unless of course the Almighty had endowed him with ass’s ears! ‘For, as many present who are really acquainted with Grosvenor House can. testify, it is unlike Whitehall in this, that the ante-room is separated from the Queen’s private apartments by a large audience chamber.’
“It was as good as a play,” chuckled Huddleston. “And by the time the King had finished pulling the evidence to pieces there was no case left against your Majesty. ‘From where you say you were standing, Titus Oates, you could have seen naithing — naithing at all — except a large window and a cushioned seat benaith it!’ he summed up, mimicking the wretched man’s affected way of speaking, until the whole place was in an uproar of delight. And when his Worship dismissed the case, and this murderous perjurer would have slunk away, his Majesty called sternly for the Captain of the Guard and sent him under escort to the Tower.”
“To the Tower!” echoed the Queen’s women, clapping their hands.
“And so strange is human nature,” Huddleston told them, “that the people waiting outside, who only yesterday seemed to venerate him as the saviour of the nation, booed him thither through the streets.”
Catherine sat in a happy daze, murmuring heartfelt thanksgiving. “And Sir Richard?” she asked presently, feeling that she would never forgive herself about that ill-advised letter.
“I left him with the King, Madame.”
But almost immediately Richard Bellings himself appeared. Too moved for speech, he knelt at the Queen’s feet and pressed her hand to his lips while she, with an arm about his shoulder, kissed his forehead. He had been her friend and Secretary since the first days of her marriage and it would have been terrible to have lost him.
“Father Huddleston tells me you have just parted from the King,” she said, as soon as either of them could speak.
Bellings rose to his feet and the two men smiled at each other with quiet understanding. “His Majesty was charging me with a very happy duty,” he said. “He has sent me to fetch you home.” And when Catherine stared uncomprehendingly, he added, “He entreats your Majesty to come back to your old apartments in the Palace, beside his own.”
To go back. To be near him and sec him every day. Until that moment Catherine had not known how hard her self-imposed exile from him had been. “When?” she asked faintly.
“This very day, Madame. In order that all the world may see you live beneath his protection. That who touches you touches him, he said. He blames himself in this matter because, seeing your Majesties parted, evilly disposed persons supposed it safe to attack you.”
“But it was I — You and Father Huddleston both know that I had good reason —”
“The King only waits to welcome you. For the rest — can you not trust him to put no further humiliation upon you?” urged Father Huddleston gently.
“He is sending men and carts for the transport of your goods,” Richard Bellings told her. And when her ladies had dispersed joyfully to their preparations, and only Father Huddleston remained, he knelt on a stool beside her. “Madame, it is not easy to speak of these things, but you should know that when these extremists, despairing of a Protestant heir, pretended to have found the marriage lines of Mistress Lucy Walters, the King denied it. ‘I have never in my life been married to any woman but the Queen,’ he vowed, and because of the persistent rumours to that effect which Monmouth’s boasting has stirred up, he intends to repeat it in a kind of public manifesto. And when Shaftesbury and some of the bolder spirits urged him, in spite of it, to take advantage of his brother’s exile and proclaim the Duke of Monmouth his heir, he was furious. ‘Even loving my son James as I do,’ he declared, ‘I would see him hanged at Tyburn first!’ ”
“Oh, Richard, perhaps these trials were sent to force his hand,” murmured Catherine. “It is wonderful to see him — cease to let things slide. But how do you think? Would it not, perhaps, ease things for him if, after all, I were to go into some convent? For his sake, I would do it even now.”
“Of what use would it be since he has already refused to divorce you?”
“They wanted that? And he would not do it?”
“They urged him in Parliament. They thought that for the sake of a son he would be only too glad.”
“And milady of Portsmouth hoped it!”
“If she did, Madame, she must have been grievously
disappointed. ‘If my conscience would allow me to divorce a virtuous woman, it would also allow me to put her to death,’ he told the Commons. ‘And if you think I have a mind for a new wife, all I have to tell you is that I will not suffer an innocent woman to be wronged!’ ”
“Oh, Charles! Charles! How often you have wronged me in the flesh, who will risk so much to keep faith with me in the spirit!” thought Catherine, after they were both gone. Was this, then, the “whole of marriage,” of which Maria had spoken? The ending which was worth so much bitterness and striving at the beginning?
In a shining cloud of happiness, while chattering women packed her clothes and menservants moved to and fro with her furniture, Catherine finished the letter to her brother. “The King releases me from all trouble by the care which he takes to defend my innocence,” she wrote. “Every day he shows more clearly his goodwill towards me, and thus baffles the hate of my enemies. I cannot cease telling you, dear Pedro, what I owe to his benevolence, of which each day he gives better proofs, either from generosity or from compassion.”
Even then Catherine could not bring herself to believe that it was simply from love.
But once she was back at Whitehall, her husband treated her with such tender affection that many a wit laughed and said she might well have been his mistress. He took her everywhere with him. To Newmarket, to Windsor, to Oxford. And while at Oxford, where a new Parliament was sitting, he finally outwitted the trouble makers.
“The Commons are trying to follow up the Test Act with an Exclusion Bill which will debar James from the succession,” he told her. “But before I see that done I will dissolve them.”
“But without Parliament to vote supplies what will you live on?” she asked, ever practical.
“We must economize,” shrugged Charles; at which she smiled, knowing only too well his efforts at economy, but feeling certain in her own mind, that because of that secret agreement made at Dover, he had other resources to draw upon and so preserve his independence.
And going into her bedroom a week later she found the King’s valet standing like a sentinel at the foot of her bed, and no one else present but Charles.
“Whatever is Toby doing here?” she asked in amazement.
“Looking after my clothes as usual,” said Charles, looking both amused and elated.
And noticing that both of them seemed as pleased as schoolboys perpetrating some practical joke, she crossed briskly to the bed and jerked back the closely drawn curtains. And there on her pillow was the Crown of England with all her husband’s State robes spread across the coverlet. “Charles, are you crazy?” she exclaimed. “Or has your friend Colonel Blood been busy again?”
With a hand still on a fold of the tapestry, she turned to him for some explanation; but before answering her he strode to the door and locked it. “My dear,” he said, with comical diffidence, “loath as I am to inflict yet more hardships upon you, I could find it in my heart to wash you a very severe headache this afternoon. So severe that no one — not even Lettice Ormonde — will be allowed in here. Everyone knows that you do have such migraines, do they not?”
Catherine nodded. She would do anything for him, within reason. “But why?” she asked.
“Because today I am going to dissolve Parliament and, as you know, I cannot do so except in full robes and regalia.”
And then, seeing how mystified she still looked, he drew her gently to the window seat beside him. “Listen, sweet, for I have very little time in which to explain,” he said. “I have been in consultation with my ministers this morning here in Merton College and they are in full agreement with me that it is the only thing to do in order to save any semblance of power to the Monarchy. For today the Commons are hoping to pass this Exclusion Bill; and if they should succeed then — goodbye James!”
And so you will go down to them in your robes?”
“Oh, no, my dear. Forewarned is forearmed. That would give them just the advantage which they had over my father when, hard pushed, he tried to do the same thing. I shall walk down to Christchurch in the pleasant sunshine, as usual. Lest there be any tattle, a sedan chair has been ordered to your backstairs to take some of your dresses to the fullers. And after dinner Toby will fold all this sumptuous velvet and ermine into an inconspicuous bundle and take it through the side streets with drawn blinds. After all, my dear, it is our turn to hatch a plot!”
“But the Crown?” asked Catherine, looking at its jewels scintillating in the sunlight.-
“I will baud the braw thing richt warily upon my twa knees, Madame,” promised Toby, as imperturbably as though he were accustomed to carrying it about in hackney vehicles.
“And when he has dressed me I will take my seat in the House of Lords and send Black Rod to summon the Commons,” said Charles. “And they will come crowding eagerly to the bar assured that I have sent for them to say I have given in at last, having so poor an opinion of me that they cannot believe I would ever face poverty sooner than not be master in my own house!”
“And then?” asked Catherine.
“Then I shall make a brisk little speech which will be reported in all the news sheets. About the necessity of unity to restore the vigour of the country, and so forth. About how the eyes of all Europe are upon us and these disputes only gratify our enemies and discourage our friends. I shall finish up by pointing out that I have always done everything possible to keep my people in peace and religious toleration and that, by taking this unexpected action, I hope to leave them so when I die. And, having said my say, I shall send them about their business, wishing with all my heart that you could see their faces!”
“And after that?”
Charles rose from her side and walked to the window, looking out at the lanes and spires of Oxford, but seeing with his mind’s eye the whole realm. “After that,” he said on a satisfied sigh, “though it will have taken me twenty years and more — I shall be King.”
Catherine could not see his face, but after a few moments he roused himself from his long, deep thoughts and turned to her with all the cheerfulness imaginable. “But I must be going — to dine pleasantly in hall, while you mope here with a migraine. I pray you tell your women not to disturb you; and Toby, who will hide behind the hangings, knows just what to do with those gee-gaws. Like the solicitous husband I am, I will send you some special dish from my table, and because you are an angel of complaisance I shall regret that you cannot be with me this day.”
But Catherine had no regrets. Pleasantly, it passed through her mind that even Jane Lane had had no adventure with him that she need now envy. Jane, in whose capable little hands the Crown of England had once rested ... “And you are stupid and doting enough to tell me all this?” she teased softly.
It was Charles’s turn to look puzzled.
“After what happened — when your father shared the same secret with his wife.”
Remembering what he himself had told her, Charles chuckled. He put a finger beneath her chin and tilted up her laughing face towards his. Because of Toby’s presence he did not kiss her. Only his dark eyes, between their smoky lashes, grew grave and tender. “God knows I am a sinner,” he said, “but at least I have the grace to value aright the gifts he vouchsafes me!”
CHAPTER XXII
WITH THE removal of Titus Oates and the suppression of his supporters, sanity and tolerance gradually returned. Shaftesbury, knowing his day was done, betook himself abroad; and young Monmouth for once had the sense to keep in the background, enjoying the popularity he always enjoyed in the West of England. The tide of public opinion had turned, and people ran beside the King’s coach, cheering him wildly in the streets. Peace and prosperity, with something of the good-humoured May Day spirit of the first days of his Restoration, took possession of the country.
But this time it was a quieter, more settled sense of well being. Having suffered much and lived in fear, men thought more soberly. There were none of the extravagant excesses that had been the natural outcome of Pur
itanical suppression during the Commonwealth. In this a less scandalous Court set better example than before. Besides which, people were heartily tired of persecution, so that Anglican and Anabaptist, Catholic and Quaker made shift to live amicably side by side — which was what Charles had always hoped that he would live to see. And it was entirely with his blessing that the Nonconformist son of James’s friend, Admiral Sir William Penn, set out with a staunch following of Quakers to found a new colony along the shores of the Delaware river, just as the thriving settlement of New York had grown up beside the Hudson.
A new London — so recently but a dream on paper — had risen phoenix-wise from the ashes of the old, to be the wonder of all foreign visitors. Below bridge, beneath the shadow of a domed St. Paul’s, foreign shipping and the King’s fine merchant Navy thronged the Pool. When Dutch William would have drawn England into war, Charles would have none of it; and instead of being used for military embarkations, the busy wharves of London were a link with America, Bombay, Guinea, the East Indies and a score of other places, while merchant adventurers sailed out to explore the Northern regions and the South Seas.
At long last Charles was free from political worry and had leisure in which to indulge the varied interests which had always made his life so full. Often that summer he was at sea, navigating his own ship as he loved to do, scudding over a choppy Channel or visiting Sir Robert Holmes who, as Governor of the Wight, had built himself a fine house within the walls of Yarmouth castle; and, while there, riding to Carisbrook to see the place in which his father had been imprisoned and where his lonely little sister Elizabeth had afterwards pined to death.
For the Queen it was a happy year, because Charles had suggested to Louise de Keroualle that she might benefit from a holiday at home in France. And on his return to the mainland he took Catherine to the races, to visit the hospital at Greenwich for his wounded soldiers and to Winchester; journeying leisurely through the hot summer weather to see the fine house Wren was building for him upon the hills. “This County of Hampshire begins to grip my heart,” he told her, standing upon the thyme-sweet turf.
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