A Want of Kindness

by Joanne Limburg

  Your affectionate friend,

  Lady Anne

  Friday eleven a clock, St James’s

  I wish that I could see you today we are all most melancholy since the Duke spoke to Mary yesterday. She must have the Prince of Orange whether she will or no she weeps in her closet I will weep too to see her go out of England but if I only know that you love me still I can endure even that. My head aches I must take a cordial.

  Your affectionate friend

  Lady Anne

  Anne in Flames

  ‘Now, nephew, to your work! Hey! Saint George for England!’

  With this, the King draws the bed-curtains, and Mary and her new husband disappear from view. His Majesty has been the most cheerful member of the party from the start, perhaps the only truly cheerful member. The groom is taciturn, the bride distraught. Her father can barely hide his displeasure at giving his daughter away to a Protestant prince, while her step-mother, who looks as though she might give birth before the ceremony has even finished, cries incontinently all the way through. Anne, who is sorry to see her sister unhappy and married to a sour-faced Dutchman who will take her away to Holland, cries a little too. She thinks it must be the crying that is making her head ache so.

  But the headache is still with her the following day, and now she has a backache to go with it. She wishes she were not sitting on a stool, but she is in the Banqueting Hall, watching the Prince and Princess of Orange receiving congratulations and compliments upon their marriage, and precedence dictates that a stool it must be. The noise around her is at high tide, with a showy swell of music and compliments from the visitors, and from the courtiers a murmuring, whooshing undercurrent which washes in and out of her head and makes the ache worse. Seated on her stool behind the main players, she can hear exactly what the Court is muttering behind its doffed hats and its fans today: what an ugly brute the Prince of Orange is; what an absurd pair they make, she so tall and stately, he so short and hunched; listen to his asthmatic wheezing; mark his sour face; such a deplorable lack of courtesy towards his bride. Oh, but he is a great General; there will be no more costly wars with the Dutch. Did you see the jewels he gave her? Forty thousand pounds’ worth – how well they will become her; such sport it is to watch the maids and mothers pulling hair and clawing eyes to get their places in her Court . . .

  The afternoon wears on, the rich colours on the backs of the bowing aldermen shout up to the swirling pigments on the ceiling, which chorus their acknowledgements, while the streams of voices clash together and make whirlpools in Anne’s hot head: an honour to present to your Hunchback our gift of asthma; your most gracious sour face; our absurd felicitations. When she arrives back at St James’s she is put straight to bed.

  Next morning she wakes to a sore throat, a quite unbearable thirst and the news that she has a new brother.

  ‘He is made Duke of Cambridge, Your Highness,’ Danvers tells her, as she offers a sip of cordial. ‘A fine boy, likely to live—’

  ‘—and the Prince of Orange’s face is all the sourer for it,’ says Martha Farthing, with satisfaction. She is Anne’s old wet-nurse, and a Catholic; she and Danvers disagree about many things. Today they are especially at odds over the question of who should nurse Anne.

  When Dr Scarborough arrives, he looks into Anne’s face and settles the question with one word: Farthing has already had smallpox and Danvers has not, so it is Danvers who has to withdraw, scattering tears and promises of prayer as she leaves.

  The doctor gives other orders: the fire is stoked up as high as it can go, the bed and the windows are dressed in red cloth; sweet handfuls of rosemary are thrown onto the fire and add their flavoured smoke to the sweating air. Swaddled in the heaviest bedclothes the household can muster, Anne is roasted like mutton; tiny new flames erupt all over on her skin. She sleeps when the little fires allow her to; her mouth and throat are now so sore that she cries; she does not wish, for once, to eat anything.

  After a while, when candles have been lit and then snuffed, and the thin winter sun has crept around the room, and departed, and the candles have been lit again, Anne wakes from shallow, pimpled sleep to hear raised voices outside the door: Lady Frances, and Dr Lake.

  ‘. . . must attend Her Highness.’

  ‘But Dr Lake, shall you then carry your fever to your other charges, to Lady Isabella and the little Duke?’

  ‘I told you, I am here on Dr Compton’s authority. We do not know how busy and zealous your Mrs Farthing has been—’

  Anne’s nurse, who saw her charge waking and has come over to her with a glass of cordial and a wet cloth, pauses in her ministrations.

  ‘Mrs Farthing has always kept her religion to herself, but if Dr Compton wills it, then . . . only pray keep a prudent distance.’

  ‘Your servant, Madam,’ Dr Lake replies, and, without scratching or knocking, bursts into the room, prayer book first. He and Mrs Farthing stare each other down for a moment, then she drops a curtsy and leaves. Now there are only four in the room: Anne, Dr Lake, smallpox and God. The chaplain’s face appears around the corner of a red swathe, like that of some tortured soul bobbing to the surface in a lake of fire. It makes its compliment and says how delighted it is to hear she is a little stronger today.

  ‘Thank you, Dr Lake. My backache is quite gone, thank God, and Farthing says my pox are yet few. I have had a little broth this morning.’

  ‘Splendid! Mrs Farthing is diligent, I am sure . . .’

  The face comes a little closer and the voice drops.

  ‘. . . but has she said anything to – discomfort you?’

  ‘No, Sir – only that when I ask for something cool to drink she says I may not.’

  ‘And she is quite correct: you must sweat out the fever, Madam. I meant – has her conversation been such as to make you . . . uneasy?’

  ‘Not at all. She has told me so many droll tales of me and my foster sister as babies, though today she complained of—’

  But Dr Lake is not interested: he cuts Anne off, and she is glad in a way, because it hurts so much to talk.

  ‘Have you prayed at all, Madam, since you were ill?’

  ‘I have said the Lord’s Prayer twice, and told the Lord in my heart that if I live I shall give to the poor.’

  Neither of them speaks for a moment – there is nothing but the crackling of the fire, and a scuffling on the other side of the chamber door – and when the chaplain starts again his voice has lost the urgent edge it had before.

  ‘In that case, Madam, I take it that you understand the danger you are in?’

  ‘Well enough, Sir.’

  ‘I shall kneel now, Your Highness. Pray with me, if you can.’

  He begins, ‘Remember not, Lord, our iniquities . . .’ The words are comforting, familiar. Slowly, her eyes close.

  When she opens them again, her first thought is that all Dr Lake’s prayers have availed nothing, and she is in Hell. There is nothing to see or feel but flame. She makes as if to scream and no sound comes out, but she has managed to rouse a tormentor, a she-devil, whom the flames part to reveal. She reaches her terrible hand out towards Anne’s face and she screams again. Another tormentor comes, a giant in dark robes, who roars ‘PLETHORIC!’ and orders one of the lesser fiends who follow him to stab her in the arm, so that more flame pours out of it.

  When the fiends have withdrawn, she tries to pray for God to deliver her, and for forgiveness, but instead of sound a ribbon comes out of her mouth with the words on. The tormentors appear again, and now they are also vomiting the printed ribbons that say ‘Crisis’and ‘Quite disordered’. This is her existence for some portion of eternity: she burns.

  Anne’s Skin

  After several weeks have passed, a miracle occurs, in that Danvers and Farthing finally agree on something: Anne is now fit to leave her chamber. Once the Duke has called Dr Scarborough in, and he has agr
eed with both women, only in costlier language, the swaddling tedium of the sickroom is at last unwrapped, and she is allowed to visit the Duchess in her lodgings.

  Wishing to dress as the occasion deserves, Anne waves away the nightgown that Danvers brings her and orders her to bring the new green skirt and bodice, that has the ribbons down the front. She apprehends her folly as soon as Danvers starts lacing her in, when the stiff material at once begins to chafe at scabs through her chemise, but this is the decision she has made, and she will not allow it to be a wrong one, so she stands up as straight as she can, bites her lip and itches.

  Mary has yet to see this new green costume, but she is sure to admire it when she does. Of course she will be there: she sent a message every day that Anne was ill, to ask how she went on, so she must be eager to see her recovered. It is cheering to know that Anne’s sickness has not, after all, robbed them of the chance of a proper farewell before Mary leaves for Holland. It is true that nobody has said that Mary will be with the Duchess, but Anne can only assume that this is because it goes without saying.

  So when she arrives, and Mary is nowhere to be seen, her disappointment is too great to be hidden.

  ‘Oh, but they told me you were in such good spirits,’ said the Duchess, as they sit down at the tea table. ‘Whatever is the matter? Does your head ache again?’

  ‘No, Madam, I am quite better – it is only that I was in such great hopes of seeing my sister today.’

  The Duchess looks up at Mrs Jennings, who is in attendance, and asks if she might pour the tea.

  ‘You must not vex yourself about your sister, Anne; she escaped the sickness, and is quite well.’

  ‘I know that: I received many kind messages from her.’

  The Duchess and Mrs Jennings exchange glances again. Sarah looks a question at the Duchess, who shakes her head and turns back to Anne.

  ‘The Duke will be here soon, Anne,’ says the Duchess, and she says it as if it were the answer to the Mary-riddle, so it can make no difference to the conversation that it is not. The subject will be changed. Sarah finishes pouring the tea and the Duchess bids her sit with them. Anne takes her dish up in both hands. Nobody corrects her. She looks up from her first warm sip to see that the Duchess is smiling at her.

  ‘You look so well, Anne . . . hardly any scabs at all, and such as there are on the small side, I think.’

  She looks to Mrs Jennings for confirmation.

  ‘Indeed, Your Highness, it could have been very much worse – I think the Lady Anne will quite recover her looks.’

  The word ‘scabs’ has drawn Anne’s attention back to a patch of skin just beneath the top of her stomacher, where the itching and chafing are at their worst. There is nothing she can do; she draws the inside of her cheek between her upper and lower teeth, bites down just a little, and holds it there; the itching starts to fade, which is just as well, as the Duchess and Sarah have not quite done with their scabby discourse.

  ‘I have an excellent receipt from Lady Peterborough,’ the Duchess is saying, ‘for a water to get away the signs of the pox. It is for lime quenched in white rosewater – you may wash with it at your pleasure, and afterwards anoint your face with pomatum made of spermaceti and oil of almonds. I shall have the Duke’s apothecary make up both, Anne, and send them to your rooms.’

  ‘That sounds an excellent remedy, Your Highness,’ says Sarah, ‘though I believe there is another that might also work very well – I heard one of the Queen’s women saying she had used it on her daughter. You take spermaceti, again, and twice so much virgin’s wax, then you melt them together, spread them upon a kid’s-leather mask. You lay this mask on the face, then keep it on for a night and a day.’

  ‘I do not think,’ says the Duchess, looking at Anne’s face, ‘that you at all like the sound of that, do you Anne?’

  ‘It does not sound . . . pleasant.’

  ‘Perhaps not, Your Highness,’ says Sarah, her voice pulled a little too tight, ‘but it works.’

  Anne cannot think of a reply, and is spared the bother of trying, because the Duke is announced. She curtsies, and her convalescent knees complain. Then her father embraces her. There is nobody with him. She hears her voice come out wavering, like an ill-played recorder.

  ‘Sir, I had thought you would have my sister with you. Where is Mary?’

  ‘Let us sit, my dear . . . good . . . I wanted to tell you this myself – I trust you will bear it patiently: your sister Orange is in Holland – she sailed a fortnight ago.’

  ‘Then the messages she sent . . .?’

  ‘I had them feigned – I hope you can forgive me for that – I did not want you upset while you were still in danger. I thought it best that you should think your sister here.’

  ‘But she was not here.’

  ‘No, she was not.’

  Anne’s Heart

  If Anne could see inside her own heart, she would find that it is, like the Palace of St James’s, built for games of hide and seek. That it is to say, at first sight, it might seem to consist solely of its well-appointed public chambers, its State apartments, but were she to look longer, look harder, she would perceive that the greater part of it – privy chambers and passages, staircases and closets – lies behind, and is no less vast for its neglect.

  This is what she might see, if she could, or if she chose to. As it is, she sees nothing, so when Mary slips as it were through a ruelle, into some dusty closet, she does so unregarded.

  Part II

  Anne’s Maternal Line

  Between the smallpox and the Prince of Orange, Anne’s old circle is quite broken up. Three of the four Villiers sisters follow Mary to Holland, while their mother Lady Frances succumbs to the fever. A few weeks later, the Duke of Cambridge dies too, so the Prince is once more allied to the heiress apparent of England, and can be the better pleased with his bargain.

  The death of Lady Frances has particular evil consequences. The first of these is the Duchess’s dream and the muttering that follows it. Her vision, as she repeats it to her Catholic ladies, who repeat it to other, Protestant ladies, one of whom repeats it to Anne, is as follows:

  ‘Oh, such a terrible thing! Lady Frances Villiers appeared to me, in some anguish, and so I heard from her own lips that she was now damned, and suffering in the flames of Hell. Of course I was incredulous at first – such a virtuous and prayerful lady as she was – but then she bid me take her hand, and I did, and – mercy! – it seemed so extremely hot that it was impossible for a body to endure it.’

  The second is Lady Harriet Hyde. With Lady Frances dead, and – according to some at Court – consigned to that part of the Inferno which God and the Pope reserve for Protestants, the Duke and Duchess set about appointing a new governess for the Ladies Anne and Isabella. Anne’s mother’s family, the Hydes, step forward, and push for their interests, as they have been doing most successfully ever since her grandfather Hyde arrived at Court out of Wiltshire, dragging his green lawyer’s bag behind him. This most capable man, after many years of graft, was pleased to drag his green bag all the way to the Lord Chancellor’s office, before his daughter outdid him, by promoting herself into marriage with the Duke. Now they are both dead, but her Uncle Laurence, envoy to The Hague and very much alive, has spied another vacant office adjacent to royalty, and proposed his wife for it. To Anne’s horror, the Duke agrees.

  There is no smell of the green bag about Lady Harriet. She is an Earl’s daughter, one of the Court beauties whose portraits hang in a succulent row in Windsor, and though it might be fifteen years since Lely painted her, she still knows how to look at a page and make him blush.

  It was Anne’s own mother, the first Duchess of York, who commissioned the paintings, though she had the good sense not to propose herself as one of the sitters. She knew that she was no beauty. Anne knows how much she resembles her mother in person and habit, for Mary has told
her often enough. So there is really no need for Lady Harriet to entertain the seamstresses with stories of the late Duchess’s stoutness at every one of Anne’s dress fittings, or to comment on the Duchess’s overeating at – so it seems – every other meal, or to call to mind the shocking sums she was wont to lose at gambling every time Anne has company, and calls for cards.

  Lady Harriet does not play cards very often. She prefers to spend her time with such as Mr Evelyn and Lady Dorothy Grimes, and one might as well, as Mrs Jennings has it, take tea with a parcel of sermon-books. Dr Lake seems to enjoy Lady Harriet’s company very much. When he calls, and Anne cannot very well be elsewhere, she offers to play the harpsichord for them: that way she need not listen to the pair of them flapping their dusty mouths about; nor will they trouble her with their questions, generally the sort which appear on first sight to have neither a right nor a wrong answer but which then turn out to have both.

  Today she could wish for a louder, ruder instrument – a trumpet or a drum, something that could drown them out. She would rather not listen to talk of grieving fathers, or little dead dukes.

  ‘Did you see him, Dr Lake? I never did, but I’ve heard everywhere that when he was born he looked more than likely to live, and live in good health.’

  ‘I did’, says the chaplain, ‘and he was a fine boy. Even when they opened him, even after he was dead of the fever, they found his entrails still perfectly sound.’

  ‘So do the physicians think that his case was mismanaged?’