The Wondering Prince

by Jean Plaidy

  Thus it had often been, Henry remembered. There were frequently those sudden terminations of conversation. It was as though people said: “Ah, now we are coming near to dangerous ground; we are approaching that terrible thing of which this little boy knows nothing.”

  At last they reached the Castle, and Henry lifted his eyes to the Keep, high on its artificial mound; the ramparts, the barbican and the battlements seemed impregnable as they looked down in arrogance at the cosier Priory. The walls of the fortress were in the shape of a pentagon with five bastions of defense. The little party crossed the fosse and in a short time were in the Castle Yard, where Henry saw the well with a great wheel turned by a donkey in the same way that a dog labored in a turnspit.

  The servants came out to see them; they did not bow or kiss their hands. They merely nudged each other and made such remarks as: “Oh, ’tis Mistress Elizabeth and Master Harry come to Carisbrooke.”

  Elizabeth looked past them as though they did not exist, but Henry gave them a forlorn smile, for he understood, since Mr. Lovel had told him, that these people did not wish to be disrespectful to the son and daughter of the King; they had to remember that there was now no King and therefore no Prince and Princess; they were all citizens of the Commonwealth, and the Isle of Wight was a part of Cromwell’s England.

  He dismounted and walked beside Elizabeth who looked small and frail in the big hall of the Castle; the mourning clothes, which she had refused to lay aside since the death of her father, hung loosely on her form. She would not eat the food which had been prepared for them. Henry tried not to eat, but he was so hungry, and Mr. Lovel pointed out that he could not help Elizabeth by joining in her fast. And very soon Elizabeth retired to her bed and, when she was there, she asked that she might speak to her brother before she slept.

  Henry was frightened more than ever when he looked at the pale face of his sister.

  “Henry,” she said, “I feel I shall not live long. I should not want to … in this prison. The happiest thing that could happen to me—since our enemies will not let me join our sister Mary in Holland—would be to join our father in Heaven.”

  “You must not talk thus,” said Henry.

  “Death is preferable to the lives we lead now, Henry. They are a dishonor to a line of Kings.”

  “One day my brother will come to England and drive the Beast Cromwell away.”

  Elizabeth turned her face to the wall. “I fear our brother lacks the strength of our father, Henry.”

  “Charles … !” stammered the boy. “But Charles is now the King. All loyal subjects proclaim him such.”

  “Our brother is not as our father was, Henry. I fear he will never live as our father lived.”

  “Would it not be better so, dear Elizabeth, since our father’s way of life led him to the scaffold?”

  “Our father’s way of life! How can you say such things! It was not our father’s way of life which led him there; it was the wickedness of his enemies. Father was a saint and martyr.”

  “Then,” said the little boy gravely, “since our brother is not a saint he will not die as a martyr.”

  “It is better to die or live in exile than to do that which is unkingly.”

  “But our brother would not do that which is unkingly.”

  “He is in Scotland now. He has joined the Covenanters. He has made himself a pawn for the Scots for the sake of a kingdom. But you are too young to understand. I would have lived in poverty and exile … yes, I would have been a button-maker, rather than have betrayed our father.”

  Henry could not help being glad that his brother was not like his father. He personally knew little of Charles, but he had heard much of him. He had seen the smiles which came on to people’s faces when they spoke of him. He had his own picture of Charles—a brother as tall as his father had been, with always a song on his lips and a shrug of the shoulders for trouble. Henry had always thought it would be rather wonderful to be with such a brother. He did not believe he would take him on his knee and talk of solemn promises. Charles was jaunty, a sinner of some sort, yet people loved him; he might not be good, as his father and Elizabeth were good, but he would be a happy person to be with.

  Elizabeth put a thin hand on his wrist. “Henry, your thoughts stray. You do not give your mind to what I am saying. Here we are in this terrible place; here, in this room, our father may have paced up and down thinking of us all … our mother and brothers and sisters—all scattered, all exiles from the land we were born to rule! Henry, I cannot live in this Castle, I cannot endure these great rooms, these stone walls and … the spirit of our father. I cannot endure it.”

  “Elizabeth, perhaps we could escape.”

  “I shall soon … escape, Henry. I know it. I shall not be here long. This prisoner of Cromwell will soon elude him.”

  “Perhaps we could slip away from here. Perhaps there might be a boat to take us to Holland. I should have to dress as a girl, as James did….”

  Elizabeth smiled. “You will do that, Henry. You will do it.”

  “I should not go without you. This time you will come too.”

  “I have a feeling you will go alone, Henry, for there will be no need for me to go with you.”

  Then she turned her face to the wall and he knew that she was crying.

  He thought: What good can come of crying? What good can come of grieving? They say Charles is always merry, that he does not let his sorrows interfere with his pleasures.

  Henry longed to be with his gay brother.

  Then, realizing how callous he was, he took his sister’s hand and kissed it. “I’ll never leave you, Elizabeth,” he said. “I’ll stay with you all my life.”

  She smiled then. “May God bless you, Henry,” she said. “You will always remember what our father said to you, won’t you?”

  “I will always remember.”

  “Even when I am not here to remind you?”

  “You will always be with me, for I shall never leave you.”

  She shook her head as though she had some special knowledge of the future, and it seemed that she had, for a week after her arrival at Carisbrooke Castle, Elizabeth developed a fever which, mingling with her melancholy and her desire for death, robbed her of her life, and from then on there was only one young prisoner at Carisbrooke Castle. He found a way out of his loneliness in dreams, and those dreams were always of his family. He fancied that his mother came to sit by his bed each night; he could almost feel her good night kiss upon his brow.

  One day, he told himself, I shall be with them all.

  In reunion he would come to perfect happiness, and looking forward to that happy day he forgot he was a prisoner.

  In her mother’s apartments at the Louvre, Henriette sat with her governess, Lady Morton, who was teaching her to make fine stitches on a piece of tapestry, when Queen Henrietta Maria came into the room. Anne Morton was glad it was a needlework lesson; Henrietta Maria was suspicious of all that was taught the Princess and was apt to fly into a passion if she heard the governess say anything which she might construe as “heresy.”

  Lady Morton often thought of her own children in England who surely needed her; it was four years since, disguised as a servant, she had fled from England with the Princess on her back, and in those four years she had thought constantly of her own family. She knew she was fighting a losing battle against Henrietta Maria and Père Cyprien; they were determined to have this child for their Church, and they were succeeding.

  But now Henrietta Maria had not come to talk of religion to her daughter and the governess. She burst in dramatically, for Henrietta Maria was dramatic by nature. Her black eyes were almost closed up with weeping; she was carelessly dressed and her tiny gesticulating hands betrayed her despair even more than the signs of grief on her face.

  This was indeed La Reine Malheureuse.

  She came straight to the Princess and, as little Henriette would have knelt—for the Queen was stricter in her observances of etiquette here
in exile than she had ever been in her own Court of Whitehall—she lifted her in her arms and, bursting into bitter weeping, held the child’s face against her own.

  Henriette remained passively unhappy, patiently waiting for her mother to release her. There was new trouble, she concluded. It seemed to her that there was always trouble. At such times she longed more passionately than ever for her brother Charles, for whatever the trouble he never mourned about it; he would more often laugh at it with a lift of the shoulders; and that was how Henriette wanted to meet trouble when it came to her.

  At first she was terrified that this bad news might concern Charles. He was in Scotland, she knew; her mother railed about it at great length; she had sworn that Charles had gone to Scotland without her consent; she was angry because Charles was now a man who could make his own decisions, no longer a boy to be guided by her. “His father listened to my advice!” she had cried when he had gone to Scotland. “He never will. Your father was a man with experience of ruling a kingdom. This is a boy who has never been acknowledged King by the English; yet he flouts his mother’s advice.”

  Henriette began to pray silently that the trouble did not concern Charles.

  “My child,” cried Henrietta Maria, “you have lost your sister Elizabeth. News has come to me that she has died of a fever in Carisbrooke Castle.”

  Henriette tried to look concerned, but as she had never seen Elizabeth she could scarcely grieve for her; moreover she was delighted that it was not Charles who was in trouble.

  “My daughter … my little girl!” cried the Queen. “What will become of us all? There is my son … my little Henry, left now in that Castle where his father suffered imprisonment before his murder. When shall I see my son Henry? What evil is befalling him in that place with his enemies about him? Oh, I am the unhappiest of women! Where are my children now? Am I to lose them as I lost my husband? My son Charles pays no heed to his mother. He goes to Scotland and makes terms with the Covenanters. He fritters away his time, I hear, in dicing and women …”

  “Mam,” said Henriette quickly, “what does it mean to fritter away his time with dicing and women?”

  The Queen, as though suddenly aware of her daughter, gripped her so firmly that the little girl thought she would be suffocated. “My little one … my precious little one! You at least shall be saved for God.”

  “But Charles and his dice … and women?”

  “Ah! You hear too much. You must never repeat what you hear. Lady Morton, you stand there weeping. That is for my little Elizabeth … my little daughter…. What will become of us all, I wonder? What will become of us …?”

  “Madam, I doubt not that one day King Charles will recover his kingdom. There are many in England who long to see him on the throne.”

  “But he has made this pact with the Covenanters.”

  “Mayhap they will help him to regain his kingdom.”

  “At what cost, at what cost! And my little Elizabeth … so young to die. We made plans for her at the time of her birth … my dearest Charles and I. Oh, I am the most unhappy of women. What would I not give to hear his voice again … to have him here to share this burden with me!”

  “He had too many burdens in life, madam. This would but have added to them.”

  Henrietta Maria stamped her foot. “It would not have happened had he been alive. They have not only killed their King but their King’s daughter.”

  “Madam, you distress yourself.”

  “You speak the truth, Anne. Prepare the Princess for Chaillot. I must go there at once. Only there can I find the comfort I need, the fortitude to bear the blows which God would seem to delight in dealing me.”

  The Princess turned to her mother. “Mam, may I not stay with Nan?”

  “My dearest, I want you with me. You too will wish to mourn for your sister.”

  “I can mourn here, Mam. Nan and I can mourn together.”

  Henrietta Maria forgot her grief for a moment. She looked sharply at Lady Morton. What did she teach the little Henriette when they were alone? Père Cyprien had said that the child asked too many questions. It was perhaps time Lady Morton went home; she had her own children. A mother should not be separated from her own in the service of her Princess.

  “Nay, child, you shall come with me to Chaillot. You too, shall have the comfort of those quiet walls.”

  “Madam,” said Lady Morton, “if you would care to leave the Princess in my charge …”

  Henrietta Maria narrowed her eyes. “I have declared she shall come with me to Chaillot,” she said firmly. “Lady Morton, you have been a good and faithful servant. I shall never forget how you brought the Princess to me here in France. The saints will bless you forever for what you did. But I fear we trespass too much on your generosity and your loyalty. I often remind my daughter that you have children of your own.”

  Henriette was looking into her governess’s face. Lady Morton had flushed slightly. The Queen had touched on a problem which had long given her cause for anxiety. It was four years since she had seen her family and she longed to be with them; yet she had never asked that she should be allowed to go home. She had felt it her duty to stay in France and do battle with Père Cyprien over the religion of the Princess Henriette.

  The Queen and Père Cyprien were determined to make a Catholic of her; yet Lady Morton knew that it had been her father’s wish that she should be brought up in accordance with the tenets of the Church of England. She could not have understood how Henrietta Maria, who wept so bitterly for her husband, could work against his wishes in this way, had she not understood the nature of the widowed Queen. Henrietta Maria was a Catholic first; and anything else took second place to that. Lady Morton knew that she would have beaten the little girl whom she now fondled so tenderly, if the child had shown any signs of refusing to accept the Catholic faith. Moreover Henrietta Maria had always been able to believe what she wanted to believe, and now she was able to assure herself—in direct contradiction of the facts—that the child’s religious teaching had been left in her hands. And as Anne Morton looked at this fervent little woman with the snapping black eyes, she wondered once more whether Charles I might not still be alive had he married, instead of the French woman, the bride from Spain who had at first been intended for him.

  Now there was a subtler meaning behind the Queen’s words concerning Lady Morton. Was she thinking of dismissing her? It would seem so. She wanted Père Cyprien to take over the education of her daughter completely; she wanted no heretic to have a hand in it. Henrietta Maria would wave aside the valiant part Anne Morton had played in bringing her daughter to France; she would forget that which she had vowed never to forget, for it would be in the name of the Holy Catholic Church. She would forget her gratitude to Anne as she had forgotten the wishes of her husband whom she continued to mourn. Henrietta Maria was a tornado of emotions; and Lady Morton had to make up her mind whether her duty lay with her own children or with the Princess.

  Henrietta Maria was watching her slyly, guessing her thoughts. Even in that moment of grief for her daughter Elizabeth, she would not swerve in what she called the battle for the soul of Henriette.

  “And now,” the Queen was saying, “we shall prepare for Chaillot. There we shall mourn together, dearest. Lady Morton, prepare the Princess. You will not accompany us, of course.”

  The Princess was led away, thinking sadly of the rigorous life at Chaillot, of the solemn nuns in their black garments, of the hard wood on which she had to kneel for so long, of the cold rooms and the continual ringing of bells. And what if Charles should come while she was there and go away again without seeing her?

  She mentioned this to Anne, who said: “But he is in Scotland. He cannot come so soon. You will doubtless be back in the Louvre before he is again in Paris. Moreover …” She paused and Henriette had to urge her to go on. “It is nothing,” she added. “I know nothing.”

  Henriette stamped her foot—a habit learned of her mother. “I will not have you s
tart to tell me something and then stop. You do it often. I wish to know. I wish to know.”

  Then Anne Morton knelt down so that her face was on a level with that of the Princess. Anne was near crying, Henriette saw; she put her arms about her neck and kissed the governess. “Anne, are you crying for Elizabeth?” she asked.

  “Not only for her, my darling. For us all.”

  “Why for us all?”

  “Because life has become so hard for us.”

  “Are you thinking of your children in England?”

  “Of them … and of you … I pray we shall soon all be in England.”

  “Do you think we shall?”

  “Well, suppose the Scots helped your brother to regain his throne, and suppose he was crowned in London, and suppose you all went home …”

  Henriette clasped her hands. “I will think of that, Anne. All the time I am at Chaillot I will think of that. Then the time will pass quickly perhaps.”

  But the time at Chaillot did not pass quickly. There was more bad news.

  The Prince of Orange, who was the husband of Henriette’s sister Mary, died, and there was more shedding of bitter tears. In vain did little Henriette try to comfort her mother. “But this is not so bad, dear Mam, is it? Not as bad as Elizabeth’s death. Elizabeth was my own sister and your daughter, but the Prince is only the husband of Mary …”

  “My child, you are but six years old, yet you have already known more sorrow than many know in a lifetime. This is a sad thing … in a way it is sadder than the death of Elizabeth for, my love, Elizabeth was but a little girl … a prisoner. We loved her dearly and her death hurt us in one way; but the death of your other sister’s husband touches us more closely. Now that he is dead, your sister has not the same power, and there are men in her country who wish to be friends with Cromwell.”

  “The beast Cromwell?”

  “The beast Cromwell!” Henrietta Maria spat out the words, and the Cromwell in the Princess’s mind was an ape-like figure with terrible teeth and a crown on his head—her father’s crown. “They are friends of the beast, so they will not offer the hospitality to your brothers that they have received in the Prince’s day.”