The Countess and the King: A Novel of the Countess of Dorchester and King James II

by Holloway Scott, Susan

  “Why, Father, look,” I murmured with studied amazement. “She’s with a soldier.”

  She was, too, a young ensign not much different in age or appearance from my own gallant from the canal. This one had golden hair, made more startling by how darkly browned he’d been made by some distant sun. His conversation with the countess appeared both animated and flirtatious, and pleasing to them both.

  “A soldier,” Father repeated in disbelief, though when he glanced my way I saw that he was trying not to laugh. “Oh, Katherine, Katherine. When I warned you not to follow after her, I’d no notion she’d be the one to copy you instead.”

  I smiled, but not quite so merrily as Father himself did. To be sure, it was only a jest, yet I understood the bitter irony at its core. Lady Castlemaine would never follow me. My inheritance would grant me more independence than most women would ever have, but in our world of the Court, the only real fortune for a lady was her beauty. The queen was unlovely, and sat alone. Louise de Keroualle was lush perfection, and the king worshiped her. By such reckoning, Lady Castlemaine was as rich as Croesus, whilst I would always be no more than a beggar rattling the poor box.

  Though Father loved me dearly, he was but a man, and as thick-headed and callous about such matters as every other of his sex.

  “It would seem Her Ladyship is tired of him already,” he blithely continued as we watched the young officer part with the countess. “I vow he must not have been deemed sufficient to worship at her altar. Poor young pup! He must learn that a goddess like that can choose whomever she pleases. Ahh, but here’s real choice, Katherine. That fellow in green, addressing her now: that’s the French ambassador, doubtless ready to produce another sizable bauble in return for her influence over the king. They say she’s still the most powerful woman at Court, perhaps in England, and there’s the proof.”

  If Lady Castlemaine’s rare beauty was the proof of power and success for women at Court, then I’d no wish to watch any further. Instead I let my gaze follow the gold-haired ensign as he made his way through the crowd, his hair glinting in the candlelight. Suddenly he stopped before an equally fair-haired lady, each smiling at the other in happy greeting.

  “Who is that, Father?” The mean and grudging part of me hoped the officer had slighted the countess for this other lady, who had a long nose and longer face, and none of the countess’s beauty. “Do you know her? The lady in silver, there, with the ensign.”

  “There? That’s Mrs. Arabella Churchill,” Father said with a weary disdain to show he didn’t believe Mrs. Churchill was quite worth his time for gossip. “As plain as turned dirt, that one, yet she’s still the duke’s favorite.”

  “The duke?” I asked. “Which duke?”

  “His Royal Highness the Duke of York,” Father said. “The king’s brother. Mrs. Churchill has been his mistress for years and years now, since she first came to Court as maid of honor to Her Highness. Now he keeps her in a house in St. James’s Square, so she’s done well enough for herself. She’s borne the duke two bastards, including a son last summer, which is more than Her Highness seems able to do. But then, it’s never the Stuart seed that’s at fault, is it?”

  I studied Mrs. Churchill with fresh interest. Of course I’d heard of her. Who in London hadn’t? She had succeeded in holding the duke’s interest far longer than any of the others, including his wife. Still, it wasn’t surprising that I’d not seen her before. The two royal brothers each maintained separate courts—the king at Whitehall Palace, and the duke at St. James’s Palace, on the far side of St. James’s Park—with entirely separate households, chapels, and staffs, down to their own treasurers, secretaries, and attorney-generals. Because Father was attached to His Majesty, we were naturally more often at Whitehall than St. James’s. The St. James’s Court was quiet now, Her Highness having only recently given birth to another daughter, to the disappointment of all who’d hoped for a male heir. That would explain Mrs. Churchill’s presence here instead.

  As for the Duke of York’s having seduced her when she was his wife’s maid of honor, that I knew, too. His Highness was infamous for poaching among the younger female attendants (Mrs. Churchill had been fifteen when he’d first seduced her), and I’d come to realize that that had likely been Father’s unspoken reason for forbidding me to join the Yorks’ household long ago. Yet even with so much of this knowing-knowledge, I remained fascinated by how homely Arabella Churchill had succeeded in an arena without any of the womanly arsenal possessed by beauties like Lady Castlemaine.

  “As plain as dirt,” Father repeated. He took two glasses of wine from a passing servant’s tray and handed one to me. “No, to liken her to dirt is to do disservice to the great mother earth. Rather Mrs. Churchill is plain as sand, without color or form or moisture to her.”

  “Has she a pleasing wit?” I asked. “Can she make him laugh?”

  Father drank deep of the wine. “Faith, I wouldn’t know. How could I, when confronted by the horror of that face?”

  “Then His Highness must love her,” I said, the only explanation I could conceive. I had myself spoken to His Highness just the once, but I recalled him as having blue eyes and a deep voice that had spoken to me in a kindly manner. “Love. That’s why he’s kept her so long, Father. He loves her. The poets say that love is blind, and so it must be with the duke.”

  Father screwed up his mouth as if he’d swallowed a foul-tasting draught. “If the poets say that of Mrs. Churchill, then they’re not only blind, but piss-poor at their craft as well. A true poet dedicates himself to beauty, Katherine, beauty and nothing else.”

  I sighed, and resigned myself to abandoning this particular battle. I’d get no further answer from Father now, not when he’d seized upon a subject so thoroughly that he couldn’t let truth interfere with his declarations. Besides, there was no denying that Arabella Churchill was plain, far more plain than I, which, being thirteen, I found selfishly heartening.

  “Then tell me, Father,” I said, beginning anew. “If that is Mrs. Churchill, then who is the officer who is making her smile?”

  Father frowned and drank more as he studied the pair, likely offended that any gentleman could bring himself to speak to the lady. Then suddenly he brightened, his whole face lighting with revelation.

  “I know who he must be, Katherine,” he exclaimed. “Mark the likeness, though in him it is far the more comely. He must be her brother John, new returned from defending Tangiers against the corsairs. A pretty, brave fellow, and a good friend to Lord Monmouth as well. Surely he’s one who should be able to defend himself from Lady Castlemaine.”

  I watched as Ensign Churchill kissed his sister’s cheek and then departed, slipping out through one of the several doorways. With a sister who was the duke’s mistress and a friend who was the king’s bastard son, he was bound to do well at Court. I was sorry to see him go. He was, as Father said, a pretty, brave fellow, and if he’d remained, I would surely have contrived somehow to meet him.

  “No soldiers, Katherine,” Father cautioned, following my gaze. “If for no other reason than because their lives are notoriously short. That fellow will likely be posted off to some distant war or other, and be dead before Christmas.”

  I sighed with melancholy. Father was right about soldiers, but it seemed such a waste that one as handsome as Ensign Churchill would be doomed to perish so soon.

  “Hah, those yowling Frenchmen are done at last.” Father set his empty glass on a nearby volute and offered me his arm. “Come along, pet. There’ll be proper music for dancing now. Show me what I’ve paid that dancing master to teach you.”

  I danced with Father and several other older gentlemen besides. With good intentions, Father forced several young whelps close to my own age to dance with me as well, doubtless hoping I’d find one to my liking. I did not. They might have been the sons of peers and most suitable candidates for a respectable match, but one had a face covered with raging pustules, another was so shy he could scarce raise his gaze
from his shambling feet, and the last was half a head shorter than me, and wiped his nose on his velvet sleeve.

  “You’re very quiet, sweet,” Father said later, as we rode in our coach through the quiet streets for home. “You must be ready for your bed.”

  “I am,” I said, and yawned mightily for emphasis. I wasn’t tired, not really, but all that I’d seen that evening had given me much to ponder about my future and what I wished from my life, and I wasn’t in the humor for more conversation.

  “Then I’ll leave you at the door,” he said, “so you might go upstairs directly.”

  “Why?” I asked, sitting upright. “Where will you be going instead?”

  “I promised I’d call on Mrs. Ayscough,” he said. “I won’t be long.”

  Though it was dark in the coach, I didn’t need to see his face to know he was lying and when I rose tomorrow morn, he’d not yet be home.

  “I must introduce you to her,” he continued, his voice too full of cheerfulness for the hour past midnight. “You will like her, I think.”

  I would not lie in return, and we passed the rest of the way in silence.

  Chapter Five

  GREAT QUEEN STREET, LONDON

  September 1671

  While I had already observed how the great gentlemen at Court were far more devoted to their mistresses than to their wives, there was one area in which the royal wives always attracted their husbands’ attentions. Queens had but one true purpose in their lives, and that was to produce a male heir to secure her husband’s throne. An additional son or two was preferable, as a guard against the perils of sudden illness or accidents. Such misfortunes were common enough; my own father, born a younger son, had only come into his title and fortune because he had survived a virulent dose of the measles, while his older brother had not.

  But while the king had sired numerous sturdy bastards with numerous mistresses, his homely Portuguese queen had given birth to nothing but empty hopes, and after seven years of marriage, her womb was considered inhospitable and barren. Thus the importance of the Duke of York had increased: not only was he himself next in the line of succession, but his two young daughters, the Lady Mary and the Lady Anne, were next after him. Yet despite the famous rule of old Queen Bess, daughters were no one’s choice for a monarch. Sons were what was required, strong, healthy sons. In ten years of marriage, the Duchess of York had suffered through eight pregnancies and had produced several sons, but they had been mean and sickly babes, and none but the two daughters and one weakling infant son, the pitiful Duke of Clarence, had survived.

  In February, the duchess had been delivered of yet another unwanted daughter, to the discouragement and disappointment of both the king and the duke. But Her Highness was done with disappointing. Soon after Father and I had seen Mrs. Churchill at Whitehall, the Duchess of York died of a cancer of the breast, a cruel, wasting illness that plagued her for many months before killing her.

  Because of the foul nature of her corpse (leastways that was the reason given by the palace, even though no one believed it), her body was not mourned in public state, as was the custom for royalty. Instead, within three days of her death she had been interred in Westminster Abbey with next to no ceremony, attended by neither her husband nor her brother-in-law. Her Highness’s death was no more than a passing inconvenience to the king, who callously decreed that her mourning must not interfere with the celebrations for his own birthday on 29 May. Thus it was not considered worthwhile to bother draping the palace in black, or even putting the households into mourning. No one grieved or missed her, because, poor lady, no one had loved her.

  Even before she was buried, the talk of the Court was not her death so much as the rumor that on her deathbed she had converted to the Romish faith. That she had done so with the duke beside her was more scandalous still, for there were already whispers that His Highness was being seduced by the Papists away from the Anglican Church. Protestant England would never tolerate a Catholic king, and the duke’s unsettling inclinations were blamed on his dead duchess, one more failure to accompany her to her grave.

  It was imperative that the duke remarry. Both the last daughter and the sad little Duke of Clarence had perished soon after their mother, and the question of the succession was more pressing than ever. All agreed that His Highness must wed a fertile Protestant princess who would lead him away from Rome, and with unseemly haste the search was begun across the Continent for a suitable bride. In the meantime, the St. James’s household was left in disarray without a mistress. The former duchess’s attendants were either pensioned off or found new places with the queen while the two surviving princesses returned to their nursery in Richmond, with the freshly widowed duke said to be quite happily wallowing with his dogs in his unkempt bachelor quarters.

  Yet even a death that brings little sorrow can cast a somber pall, and the spring and summer that followed the duchess’s death were quieter seasons than usual. Father took me with him to Kent to see to his properties there and to escape the heat of London. As was customary, the king took much of the Court with him first to Windsor Castle, and then to Newmarket for the fall races. That he also took Louise de Keroualle with him with the intention of finally claiming her elusive maidenhead was also widely discussed to considerable amusement, a far more pleasing subject than the sordid circumstances of the Duchess of York’s death.

  While I continued to entertain myself with my own friends and Father with his, I couldn’t deny that he’d changed. When he was in London, we went about together to many of the same taverns and playhouses and entertainments at Court as before, but there was an undeniable difference to him that made me uneasy for being unexpected.

  It wasn’t just Father. Many of his favorite companions had altered their ways as well. Nelly Gwyn had quit the playhouse for good, and was huge with another bastard by the king. Lord Buckhurst was said to be willingly entangled with the beautiful, widowed Countess of Falmouth, and unwillingly mired in legal battles with his own parents regarding his inheritance. Lord Rochester had likewise buried himself in the country with his wife and children, attempting another of his frequent (and unsuccessful) cures for too much wine and, it was whispered, the pox.

  I wondered if Father had likewise made a similar vow. Oh, he was outwardly as merry and witty as ever, particularly in the presence of the king, but he didn’t drink as deeply as he once had, or behave with the old abandon. I doubted there’d be any more debauched escapades with Lord Rochester or Lord Buckhurst that involved drunkenness, actresses, and public nakedness. Instead Father spent more time attending to his seat in the House of Commons and at his desk in his library, reading and writing. Whenever we went out together, he now pushed me toward callow young gentlemen of his choosing, not mine, striving to point out the merits of each with embarrassing enthusiasm. Though he was scarcely thirty, Father had begun to seem old to me, and rather dull.

  I was convinced the fault (or the reason, if I were to be less pessimistic) was to be laid at the feet of the mysterious Mrs. Ayscough. Once or twice more, Father had raised her name to me in conversation, and each time I had refused to discuss her. I’d never had such qualms about his other mistresses. He’d always shown a fondness for actresses that were cut from the same cloth as Nelly—jolly and vulgar and kind. There hadn’t been a one that I’d disliked.

  But Mrs. Ann Ayscough seemed different. To begin with, she’d lasted longer than the others. She never seemed to accompany him out among his friends, or, for that matter, with me. Instead she and Father seemed to spend quiet evenings in each other’s company and no more, a most curious circumstance for a gentleman as gregarious as my father. From what little I could surmise without asking outright (which I’d no intention of doing, unwilling as I was to show any interest in her), she truly was that most rare and fearsome of creatures among our Court-bound society: a respectable, sober, modest lady. In short, she must be as unlike me as was possible, and I did not trust her at all. For the first time, I was relieved wh
en Father was off to join the king at Newmarket or on an autumn progress, because it meant he was not being beguiled by the (surely!) cunning Mrs. Ayscough.

  If I had been older, or more experienced, or less blinded by my own attachment to Father, perhaps I would have realized the foolishness of ignoring the lady’s very existence in the hope that she would simply fade away, like smoke above a chimney.

  But she did not. And to my sorrow, that drifting smoke was nothing compared to the hot flames that would rise up from beneath it to scorch me forever.

  “YOU PICK WHERE WE’RE TO DINE, FATHER,” I said as we climbed into the coach. “I don’t care, so long as I’m with you.”

  Father smiled, reaching down to pull the hem of my petticoat from being caught in the coach’s door by the servant. It was the kind of small, watchful service he’d done for me when I was younger and in his care, and the gentleness of it touched me. I was nearly fifteen and no longer the child I’d been; there was something about the hazy September afternoon that made such changes seem both inevitable, and poignant, too. The sun still had the golden warmth of summer, but the days were shorter now and the nights had the first chill of autumn. The blooms of July had wizened and turned brittle in our garden, and the leaves in the trees were beginning to trade their green for shades of yellow and red.

  “I thought we’d visit the Folly one last time before summer’s done,” Father suggested, as if to read my thoughts. “There won’t be many more days like this before they shut for the season.”

  “Oh, the Folly!” I exclaimed with happy anticipation. “You could not choose better.”

  The Folly had always been one of my favorite resorts in all of London, made all the more special because it was only open during the warmer months. Half playhouse, half eating-house, the Folly was a low wooden building that stretched across three barges floating in the river. It was of course well moored, so as not to suddenly drift away downriver with a hall full of outraged diners clutching their spoons and tankards.