A Want of Kindness

by Joanne Limburg

  Anne lifts up her eyes to the Pentland Hills, which seem to her to be on a godly scale, to have something biblical about them: if any still, small voice were to prompt her, she would catch it murmuring from that side. What is worst in her now – that she cannot, in her heart, wish her own, kind step-mother – her own father – a healthy son, or that she must now play the hypocrite, act the seeming friend?

  ‘I too hope that God will comfort you,’ she says, and nothing more.

  The Duchess gives her a long, a too-long, sideways look. The red, the tell-all red, goes creeping up Anne’s neck.

  ‘Tell me,’ says the Duchess, at long last, ‘how are you finding your rehearsals for the play – your Mithridates? You are to play the King, are you not? Is it much trouble to you, to remember so large a part?’

  ‘Not too much. I have, thank God, a good memory for such things.’

  ‘Would you then recite a little for me now? If you please.’

  A speech unfolds itself in Anne’s head: a vision of Mithridates. So she begins:

  ‘After that heavenly Sounds had charm’d my Ears,

  Methought I saw the Spirits of my Sons,

  Slain by my Jealousy of their Ambition,

  Who shriek’d, he’s come! our cruel Father’s come!

  Arm, arm, they cry’d, thro’ all th’enamel’d Grove.

  Strait had their Cries alarm’d the wounded Host

  Of all those Romans, massacred in Asia:

  I heard the empty Clank of their thin Arms,

  And tender Voices cry, Lead Pompey, lead.

  Strait they came on, with Chariots, Horse and Foot.

  When I had leisure to discern their Chief,

  Methought, that Pompey was my Son Ziphares;

  Who cast his dreadful Pile, and pierc’d my Heart:

  Then, such a Din of Death, and Swords and Javelin

  Clatter’d about me, that I wak’d with Terror,

  And found my self extended on the Floor.’

  Anne has been speaking in the stage voice that Mrs Barry taught her so many years ago. The ladies have heard her clearly, and applaud. The Duchess does not join them, only she smiles, a little.

  ‘Ziphares. Is that not the name you use to write to Mrs Apsley?’

  Anne blushes again: she cannot imagine how the Duchess knows this; she would rather not imagine.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And she is your love, your Semandra?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It is a strange affectation, this pretending to be lovers. I am not at all sure I like it, but I know it has been quite the fashion at Court – but I would never have written to the Countess Davia that way – I would not even have known the kind of words to use.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh Anne, there is no cause to blush so. I know what a good girl you are!’ Then she laughs, and it comes to Anne, too late, that her step-mother has been making sport of her. The Duchess’s humours are so changeable: she cannot begin to keep up with them.

  What Anne Learns from Sarah Churchill

  Sarah Churchill arrives from London, to be reunited with her husband and to wait on Anne. One of her first duties is to accompany her to the Grassmarket to watch the latest executions of the Covenanters. When justice is being meted out to those who would swear oaths and take up arms against their King and his Church, it is only right that royalty should be present. This is a State occasion, a public show, and Anne is there to be seen; her carriage is placed just that bit too far away from the scaffold for her to witness whatever happens on it.

  Mrs Churchill, on the other hand, whose eyesight is as keen as her tongue, sees everything: the arrival of each condemned man, drawn backwards into the square on an open hurdle, so that he might be more easily spat upon; his slow, trembling progress up the ladder, on the last climb of his life; the expression he wears as he says his last words and makes his peace, before the napkin is put over his face, and he is turned off the top rung. When the last of the three malefactors’ heads has been hacked off and shown to the crowd, Sarah tells the driver that Her Highness is tired, has done her duty, and must now be taken home. As she sits down, Anne sees that she is crying.

  ‘My dear Mrs Churchill!’ she exclaims.

  ‘Is Your Highness so astonished to see me weep?’

  ‘Not astonished, only—’

  ‘You think me too soft-hearted, perhaps, that I should weep for the sufferings of traitors?’

  ‘I know your heart to be good. It would grieve me if you felt you could not tell me what is in it.’

  ‘Then I will speak plainly. To my mind – not Mr Churchill’s, you understand, but to mine – only because they would not lie about their beliefs to save their skins – for that they suffered the cruellest death, for that they were tortured—’

  ‘Tortured?’ Anne thinks of Mr Foxe’s book, of Thomas Tomkin’s sinews bursting in the candle flame. ‘How?’

  ‘You really do not know, do you? Do you ever ask questions of anyone but me?’

  ‘The Duke does not discuss business with ladies – and it is not our business – the Duchess talks of other matters – and I speak with Lady Harriet as little as I might.’

  Besides, she does not say, she usually knows better than to ask questions – of other people, God or herself – if she suspects that she might not like the answer. It is not the least curious effect of Mrs Churchill’s company that she should find herself ashamed of this.

  But now she has been provoked into asking a question, and Mrs Churchill answers it, with a full account of a device she calls the Spanish Boot, its ingenious design, and its gruesome employment.

  ‘And if that is not torture,’ she finishes, ‘then I do not know what else to call it.’

  While Sarah has been speaking, Anne has taken her right hand out of her muff and moved it down to her pocket, and what she has found in it is both familiar and comforting.

  ‘No,’ she fumbles, ‘what else, what else after all . . .’

  ‘And now if I may, Your Highness, I would like to put a question to you.’

  ‘Certainly you may.’

  ‘Thank you. I know that the Duke does not discuss business with you – which is all very proper, of course – but you must know a little of it, something of where he goes and what he does?’

  For a moment Anne considers withdrawing her leave for the question.

  ‘A little,’ she says, ‘but only a little.’

  ‘He must be up at the castle quite often, I imagine?’

  ‘Yes, and often with your husband.’

  Sarah scowls at this for some reason, but continues.

  ‘And when he is at the castle, does he go to see the prisoners?’

  ‘I do not know what he does there. It is his work, it is the business of

  State; I do not know what he does. Mrs Churchill, I have some comfits in my pocket. Would you care for one?’ Sarah accepts one, mercifully, and stops her mouth with it. When her teeth break the shell, the sound is like cracking bone.

  The Duchess’s Health

  O Lord, I must confess my weariness after tonight’s ball, and my unwillingness to do my duty and pray before I sleep; I will not neglect this office, only forgive me if I do not say all that I ought – when I am tired all through like this, it is as if there is a fog inside my head, that not even the sincerest desire of mine to speak can penetrate.

  But I must speak with you, even if it were not my duty, because I find I am troubled in my heart. Ever since I came to Scotland there has been more and more an uneasiness between myself and the Duchess. I hope I do what is right by her as her daughter-in-law, that I render her all due respect and service – certainly whatever she asks of me, I do, and I do not complain. I cannot help that I am dull company for her but I do bring Mrs Berkeley and Mrs Churchill with me when I am with her and I do
not think that anyone could find them dull, so even though I do not divert her much I am sure they must.

  No, I do not neglect my duty to her – in speech or in deed but I fear that perhaps I do not always honour her in my heart – and I fear too that sometimes what is in my heart must show in my face, for at times there is that in her manner towards me that suggests this might be so. I am troubled by this tonight because she did not join in the country dancing and when I asked what the matter was, she replied that she was not yet recovered from her riding accident, but she would not meet my eye when she said so, and I do not wonder at this, because although at the time she was thrown and dragged and taken up unsensible, her wounds when examined were not so bad as had been feared, and I have seen her walking this sennight or longer without the difficulty she had before. If she does not ride now it is only because her mother wrote and begged her not to lest the next accident prove a fatal one – so what I am saying is, I do not think she was quite telling me the truth as to the cause of her indisposition. She certainly looked out of sorts this evening, but I have to say, she seemed unwell in the way of women when they are breeding – and even in the way I have seen her before when she was with child. Indeed I am almost quite sure that she is with child, and that she is keeping the news from me on purpose, and I wonder what she thinks of me, that she should use me like this.

  Lady Peterborough’s Nephew

  In May, the same sea that was so good to Anne and her ladies on their passage north proves treacherous against the Duke, as he sails back to Edinburgh from London, ready at last to fetch his wife and daughter home from exile. His ship strikes a sandbank; neither Catholic nor Protestant prayers can prevent it from sinking. With Colonel Churchill’s help, the Duke contrives to save the strongbox with his memoirs in it, but by the time he has accomplished this vital task, it is, regrettably, too late for most of the men: over a hundred of the Gloucester’s company are lost, and a score of the Duke’s own staff. To his great distress, his favourite hound Mumper is also among the drowned.

  When the Duke brings the news to the Duchess and Anne, they are caught between thankfulness and sorrow. Another ship from the convoy, The Happy Return, is quite unharmed and ready to carry them home. The Duchess, whose condition is now plain for all to see, is taken on board like a piece of delicate statuary, in a special chair worked by pulleys. Anne and the other ladies follow in the usual way – except for Lady Peterborough, who has lost her nephew in the shipwreck, and has begged that she be allowed to travel in another ship, lest she discomfort the Duchess with her excessive weeping.

  Their passage is long, but not too rough; besides The Happy Return is a proper, big ship, a fourth-rate, steadier than the yachts they have had to travel in before. Despite this, Mary Cornwallis is sick for most of the journey; Mrs Churchill watches her contemptuously, and sometimes condescends to pass her bowl. The Duchess is sick too, but with better reason: she is sure that the child will come in August, although the doctors say September, and not a moment sooner.

  Charlotte Mary is born in August, as the Duchess expected, but the doctors declare her premature, and as she lives only a few weeks, it would seem that they are correct.

  What a Good English Princess Knows about Protestant Dissenters

  Whereas the Papists would have the King become the puppet of Cousin Louis and his Pope, the dissenting Nonconformists would have him beheaded and replaced with another Cromwell. When a man wishes to cast a slur on a Catholic – or indeed any king of any denomination, or one of his Tory supporters – he might accuse him of the promotion of tyranny; if he seeks instead to blacken the name of a man who professes Nonconformist beliefs, or Whig ideas, or both, then he calls him Republican.

  It is now the summer of 1682, and nobody gives any credence to the Popish Plots anymore: in these times the greatest threat to Crown, Church and Country comes from the wrong sort of Protestant. Any Whig who is not an outright Republican must necessarily be of Monmouth’s party: in either case he will not recognise the succession that God has ordained – he would certainly have away with the Church too, if he could.

  Thank heaven that Shaftesbury is in the Tower. Then thank God that, through His grace and guidance, the King has found a way to pack the Commons with Tories. And when you are done with your thanksgiving, remember to ask God to speak to the Duke in his heart, so that he will be moved to keep his promises, and always stand as Defender of the Faith, even if the Faith is not his.

  The Princess and the Poet: a Romance or All-pride and Naughty Nan: a Comedy

  This is an account of what came to pass one summer, when the Court with all its pomp and gaiety took its leave of that noisome, dusty town where it usually resided, and came joyfully to the verdant woods and sweet air of Windsor. There was then at Court a Princess of the Blood, a girl of seventeen, and if she was neither among the most beautiful nor the wittiest of the maidens who graced the castle that summer, still she was not without a certain plumpish, rosy comeliness of her own, and not so lacking in wit that she was unable to appreciate it in others; she had besides a voice of quite singular charm, that the King himself had often had occasion to remark. She was destined, as princesses are, for a Marriage of State, to a prince of another realm – and, indeed, there were some who said, at seventeen, that it was somewhat irregular, and not a little unsatisfactory, that she had not been brought to such a condition long since – but, owing to a certain recent instability in the government of the Kingdom, and consequently in its relations to other Kingdoms, it was still by no means certain to which prince, of which realm, she was to be allied.

  This question, of which prince, was a contentious one: her cousin Louis, King of France, was of one opinion; her cousin (and brother-in­law) William, the Dutch Stadtholder, was of another; each seeking, through her alliance, to enhance his own interests, and thereby to damage his opponent’s. Her father, the Duke, tended rather towards the French King’s view of the matter; her uncle, the King, although properly wary of Cousin Louis’s imperial ambitions, and sensible of the fear and hatred which his people felt for that Papist Despot, had been for some years, secretly, in receipt of certain monies from the French King, which had at times been all that stood between him and ruin, and knew that Louis was waiting for some sign of gratitude in return, and would not wait for ever; at the same time, he could not ignore his Protestant nephew, against whose well-drilled Dutch fleet his own had a habit of coming off worst – though, if truth be told, he had long since wearied of William’s ill-tempered letters to him, and of his interference, overt and covert, in the affairs of his own Kingdom, and itched to disoblige the impertinent whelp.

  The Princess, meanwhile, wished only to be married: she had had her fill of being a maid, and had no ambition to become an old one. With great longing and some jealousy, she watched young ladies of lesser degree as they were courted, wooed and won, and burned to be in their place. Whenever she could, she would retire to her closet with the dearest companion of her bosom, one Mary Cornwallis, to peruse love poetry, and romances, and certain other works of a bawdier kind – which, regrettably, this Mrs Cornwallis often had about her person, on purpose to show her royal mistress – indeed, anything which treated of that subject, of what passes between men and women when they are amorously inclined. Mrs Cornwallis was also able to oblige the Princess with tales of her own adventures, of which, since she was a very well-favoured maiden, and none too nice in her conduct, there were a great many (and if she was inclined, now and then, to exaggerate their number or their significance, given her great and sincere desire to please her audience, she can hardly be blamed).

  When these two ladies were apart – even for so short a space of time as an afternoon – to prevent their passions cooling, they were wont to write each other letters in language so heated and overripe, and in every way so unfit for maidens to employ, that any scribe would blush to set it down. All the same, it might fairly have been said that the whole fervid business represen
ted nothing more than the silly games of a pair of foolish chits barely out of the nursery, and was perfectly harmless sport, were it not for the appearance in the tale and in the game of a third player, this one a gentleman – and whether he is the villain of this tale, its hero, or merely a buffoon, I will leave the reader to decide.

  The Earl of Mulgrave, having come into his inheritance at a very tender age, had, at the age of four-and-thirty, long been used to all the advantages provided by a great title and a great estate; nature had, besides this, blessed him with a handsome face and a quick wit; he was a Gentleman of the Bedchamber to the King, and – thanks to the good offices of a certain lady who was at the time great with both men – Knight of the Garter; he was a noted soldier, and had commanded an expedition for the relief of Tangier; he was a poet, too, the author of many satires. Haughty, arrogant and quarrelsome, he was the object of many others. The Earl of Rochester himself had dubbed him ‘All-Pride’. These faults of character, however, did little to prevent his being the perfect object of a young maiden’s fancy. And such, for the Princess, he was.

  It could be that she blushed a little deeper than usual when he made his bow to her; perhaps, when she stood up to dance with him, her eyes shone especially bright. Whatever the cause, the following facts soon became apparent to this quick-witted and gamesome gentleman: firstly, that the Princess was a charming innocent, as yet un-wooed; secondly, that her eager eye had fallen on him (as well, he thought, it might); thirdly, that in Mrs Cornwallis he would find an able and most willing go-between. What his ultimate intentions might have been remains the subject of much dispute, but it is certain that it must, at the very least, have amused him to respond to the entreaties he read in the Princess’s bright eyes and flushed cheeks, for he wasted little time in slipping the first of many little notes, along with a most generous gratuity, into Mrs Cornwallis’s hand.