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

by Holloway Scott, Susan

  He laughed in spite of himself. “There will be that,” he said slowly and with so much guilt that I pitied him. “It will not sit well.”

  “You would truly make such a confession?” I asked, incredulous, yet troubled as well.

  “I will,” he said solemnly, even as he had his hand upon my naked breast. “I must.”

  I couldn’t believe that he’d just done what he had with me, and yet as happy as that had made him, he was already worrying over what his sour-faced priests would tell him. None of the gentlemen I’d known would have shown such a confusing nicety under the circumstances, and I’d no notion of what I should say or do.

  “Do you wish me to leave, sir?” I asked, already beginning to slide away from him. “I wouldn’t wish to put your soul in peril if you—”

  “No, stay,” he said, reaching out to draw me back. “Stay. That is, if you wish to.”

  “You wish me to stay, sir, even if you must confess my presence as a sin?”

  He heaved an enormous sigh—an outward sign, I guessed, of whatever war his conscience was battling. “I will address that in the morning. Now I would wish you to stay.”

  “Very well, sir.” I was happy enough to oblige as I returned to his embrace, curling my slender body against his. “Whatever you wish.”

  “I do wish it,” he said, and now when he sighed again, I was sure that his pleasure had won over his weary conscience. His pleasure, and me. “If I send for you tomorrow night, will you come to me again?”

  “I am your servant, sir,” I said softly, and though his face was turned from mine, I smiled still. “I will come to you. I will come.”

  IN THIS MANNER BEGAN ONE OF the most delicious periods of my life. By day I continued as I had been, in the service of Her Highness as a maid of honor. I received neither more nor less attention from the duchess than I had previously, with my hours spent in the same company of her other ladies and passed in the same banal amusements. Each evening I retired to my room at the same time as the other ladies, yet while they slept their maidenly sleep (or perhaps amused themselves in their lovers’ arms as well), I would wrap myself in my hooded cloak and repair to the bed of my lover, James, Duke of York.

  Just as Nelly Gwyn had jested of Lord Dorset becoming her Charles the Second and the king her Charles the Third, I now had my own James the Second to follow James Grahme. Of course, I never presumed to call him by his given name—not even I would dare such informality—but in my thoughts he ceased to be the duke, or His Highness, and became only James, my James.

  Miraculously, for those first few months in the winter and spring of 1678, no one else seemed to know. Or rather, no one of consequence, for of course my maid Thomson knew, and James’s secretary Mr. Coleman knew, from having once appeared unexpectedly early one morning before I’d left. Since James had felt the unfortunate need to unburden himself, I’d thought his confessor would know, too, but James assured me that he hadn’t named me to the priests. This curious distinction made me laugh, and as I pointed out to James, I should at least be credited for my sins rather than being reduced to no more than an anonymous Protestant whore. He hadn’t seen the humor to it, but had only said solemnly (as he did many things) that he hadn’t wished to disgrace me. Charmingly thoughtful of him, yes, but unnecessary. I’d made my choice, and I was happy with it. I could have been an ungainly, forgotten spinster, or the cherished mistress to a prince; hah, what manner of decision was that to make?

  I knew full well that much of the reason that no one suspected our intrigue was that few would have believed it possible because of my lack of beauty. A royal prince has the loveliest ladies of his kingdom on constant display before him at Court, luscious temptation on a scale that few ordinary men can ever imagine. Certainly James’s brother Charles (for by now I’d come to call the king by his Christian name in my thoughts, too) had enjoyed this bounty, plucking enough damsels to make the most gorgeous bouquet imaginable in his bed. That James should choose me must have been inconceivable. Even the duchess (or perhaps especially the duchess, who was most proud of her own beauty and virtue) must never have dreamed I’d become the drab magpie in her marriage nest, stealing away her husband’s favors.

  No matter. For those few months we were as secret as any lovers could be, a balmy little world of our own making. Yet the coupling was only part of what we shared. Like all the Stuarts, James was a man of endless energy who required little sleep, giving us all the more time to converse and learn of each other, and, before long, to become friends. While many ladies regard men as such unfathomable creatures that friendship is impossible, I preferred their company to most ladies’, and I was honored by the confidences that James made to me. I’d always been plainspoken, and he welcomed that as a bracing counterpoint to all the fawning courtly palaver and priestly driveling around him during the day. It especially interested me to hear how differently James interpreted the same actions that infuriated Father and his associates in Parliament.

  One such concern of James’s that spring was the need for a greater army. He toiled incessantly on this project with Lord Monmouth, his nephew and a gallant young gentleman who, having served under the best generals in the French army, was clever about military matters, if little else. He was also supported by Lord Danby, who likewise believed that a strong army was best for the king.

  I’d listened to Father speak of the dangers a larger army might pose to the country, and of how no single man should have so great a power at his disposal. But to hear James, a large and strong army was a necessity for England, not a threat. He saw it as imperative for maintaining the country’s defenses against foreign powers, for keeping England’s name a formidable one in the minds of her adversaries on the Continent. Further, and most perplexing to me, he saw it as a way to preserve the monarchy, which he believed was sadly deteriorating in his brother’s hands. In James’s eyes, the members of Parliament (like my own father) who confounded him were no better than a pack of dreaded republicans, determined to topple the monarchy and rule themselves as Cromwell had done earlier.

  “But that doesn’t make sense, sir,” I protested one night as he tried again to explain it to me. I was lolling in his bed against the mounded pillows, eating an orange, while he had returned to his paper-covered desk to set down one fleeting thought before it escaped him entirely. “Cromwell was a general in the army, and it was the army that overthrew your father. Yet you perceive a greater army as necessary to preserve the throne. How can there be merit in such a riddle?”

  “Because while Cromwell was a general, he was also a fanatic bent on serving his own ill-formed church and imposing his wrongful beliefs.” The light from the branched silk candlestick before him gave his angular face an impassioned fervor. “If my father had been better able to bring him and his followers more sharply to heel, then there would never have been an insurrection, and my father might have lived and still be ruling.”

  I listened, full of doubt; if his saintly father still lived, he would be an ancient gentleman of nearly eighty years, and no longer much use as a ruler, though I knew better than to point out such a fact to James.

  “Yet there are many Englishmen who say the same of you, sir,” I said, licking the orange juice from my fingers. “That you would wish a greater army so that you might impose your Pope and priests upon those who are already content in their faith.”

  “Oh, Katherine,” he said with despair. “How many times must I explain this to you? To you, and to all the others? I do not wish to force anyone toward the True Church, and I never have.”

  “Then you should inform your duchess, too, sir,” I said. “She tells anyone who’ll listen that she came to England expressly to bring us dreadful ignorant Protestants back to Mother Rome, with you to lead the way to our salvation.”

  “She says that publicly?” he asked, clearly aghast. “To you in her household?”

  “Oh, yes, to all of us, and any others who happen about,” I said, biting into another segment of the sw
eet fruit, “with the entire chorus of her woeful priests chanting their ‘amens’ to every word of it. Not that us Protestants pay her ravings any more heed than they deserve.”

  “But that is not what I want, not what I believe.” In disgust he threw down his pen, ink splattering from the nib across the letter he’d been composing. “You of anyone should know that, Katherine. All I wish is for those of us who believe in the True Church to have the same privileges as the Protestants. I wish us to be able to worship as we please, yet to serve our king and country the same as any other Englishman. Surely you understand that.”

  “It does not matter whether I do or not, sir,” I said, slipping the last of the orange between my lips. “I am only a woman, not a Member of Parliament. But I will venture that you won’t get your standing army unless you can state your case for it more clearly than that, and without a flurry of Jesuits hovering about you.”

  He shoved his chair away from the desk and came to sit on the edge of the bed facing me.

  “What can I do, Katherine?” he said wearily. “All I wish is the best for England and her people, and yet they will not accept that from me, no matter how I work for their behalf. I was fourteen when I last saw my father, fifteen when he was martyred by his own subjects and our country torn asunder by war. I haven’t forgotten, and I pray each night for the strength to make certain such a calamity will not befall England again. What else can I possibly do for them, Katherine? What else can I do?”

  I’d never seen such despair in his face before, or such suffering, and it grieved me so deeply that I’d do most anything to bring him ease.

  “Oh, my dear sir,” I said gently, looping my arms around his shoulders. “Know that you are a good man, a kind man. You must do what is right for yourself, and for England.”

  He closed his eyes, his head bowed. “If only they knew that as well as you.”

  “You must make them know it, sir,” I said. “By your words and your actions. You must make them understand.”

  He groaned and drew me close, seeking solace in my arms. I did my best to comfort him, and did so until we heard the first stirrings of the servants in the palace, and I was forced to leave him alone with his dark thoughts. As I made my way back to my rooms, I wept for him, for us, for his late father, and for England, my handkerchief pressed to my mouth to keep my sobs from waking any others.

  By your words and your actions, you must make them understand.

  Could any advice be more simple, and yet more impossible for James to follow?

  Chapter Fifteen

  ST. JAMES’S PALACE, LONDON

  July 1678

  As summer came, our household removed from Whitehall across the park to St. James’s Palace, as was the habit of the Yorks. I had always liked the older, smaller brick palace to the rambling halls of Whitehall, and I liked it all the more now for the greater privacy it afforded James and me for our intrigue. With fewer courtiers to spy us, we could meet more often, in the palace’s gardens and in other privy chambers.

  James had need of the distraction. The threat of England joining with the Dutch had finally been enough incentive for Louis to end his war and sue for peace. The negotiations dragged on through the early summer, and as they did James and Lord Monmouth did their best to justify keeping the army that had been increased for the sake of the war that had not come. Parliament’s uneasiness increased, fed by James’s large and now-disappointed army waiting idle with no war to fight. As a result, relations between James and the king were strained, and once again the angry murmurings rose about James’s true intentions for the forces.

  The duchess was brought to bed early of a daughter, a weak and pitiful infant who survived only long enough to be baptized Elizabeth before she returned to her Maker. Only the duchess wept and grieved for her. The rest of the Court saw the death as one more lost attempt at a male heir to the throne, one more doomed failure to be blamed upon the Catholic duchess.

  By August, the Court was past ready for its annual recess to the green pleasures of Windsor, far from the worries of London. The last night I spent in James’s bedchamber in St. James’s was hot and still, the windows thrown open for any hint of a breeze from the park, and moon and stars hidden by a gauzy haze. Lying crossways on the bed, I sprawled naked on my back atop the sheets with my heavy damp hair spread behind me, letting my body cool as best it could after the heat of our passion. Beside me lay James, his head propped on his hand as he gazed down upon me, lightly stroking my breasts and belly as was his fond habit after we’d made love. I smiled drowsily at his touch, enjoying the lightness of his caresses. It would be more difficult for us to continue our rendezvous at Windsor, where the duke’s apartments were arranged beside the duchess’s, but James and I had already resolved to meet beneath the trees and forests that were among the castle’s attractions.

  “Katherine, sweet,” he said, resting his hand low on my belly. “Look at me.”

  “You ask a prodigious favor, sir.” With great effort I dragged open my eyes, my smile lazy. His face was close to mine, his forehead and shoulders glazed with sweat by the moonlight. “There. I have looked. Now leave me in happy peace, I beg you.”

  With a sigh that was more a yawn, I began to close my eyes again.

  “No, look at me, sweet,” he said gently. “I wish to see your eyes. Tell me: when did you last have your courses?”

  That made me open my eyes at once.

  “My courses?” I asked, purposefully not answering, though of course I knew the answer. Had he guessed, then? Had he somehow realized the secret I’d not yet wished to admit to myself?

  “You’re too clever for that, my dear,” he said. Thoughtfully he considered my body, pearly white in the moonlight before him. “Nor am I a fool, either. I’ve sired at least a dozen babes. I know the signs well enough. You’ve changed. You’ve ripened.”

  I pressed my hands over my eyes in shame and mortification. Of course I was too clever not to understand what had happened to me, the same plight as had been visited on all women since Eve fell from the Garden. I understood, yet I’d no wish to accept. How could I get with child so soon, after only two months with James? Other women could dandle and sport for months without quickening, but with me his seed had taken at once.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said, my voice muffled. “I’m—I’m sorry.”

  “But I am not.” Gently he pried my hands away from my teary face. “To have you bear my child—how could I regret that?”

  “But now everyone will—will know, sir,” I said, hiccupping as I wept. “This won’t—won’t be our secret any longer.”

  “Ah, well,” he said, his face full of kindness. “It wouldn’t have kept for much longer, anyway. What is your reckoning?”

  “February, sir,” I said. “That is as close as I can guess.”

  “Months away.” He lay his hand again across my belly, appraising it. I’d noted the changes myself: my breasts were larger than they’d ever been and tender at that, and already I’d seen the first swell below my waist. “You’re tall. You’ll carry well. I doubt anyone will guess until after we return from Windsor. Then you will be forced to leave your post.”

  “I know, sir,” I said forlornly. By the very definition, a maid of honor could not be with child. I wouldn’t regret the place itself, but I would very much miss the excuse it had given me to live in the royal household. I’d no doubt the duchess would be furious when she learned, and cast me out, and then—then I didn’t know what would become of me. It wasn’t a question of money, for I’d more than enough to support myself and a child in perfect comfort, and I was equally sure that James would be generous in supporting his child. It was more the loss of friends, position, even family, that could come as punishment to a lady in my circumstances. I didn’t even know if Father would take me back at Bloomsbury Square. Given his unhappiness with the duke, I suspected Father might be every bit as furious as the duchess when at last I’d be forced to tell him.

  “You w
ill be taken care of, Katherine,” James said, as if reading my thoughts. “You’re far too dear to me to part with now, nor would I disown our child.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, weeping, and held him as if we’d never part. In a way, I supposed we never would, now that there would be a child to bind us forever together. Unlike ordinary bastards, those with royal blood were not scorned or abandoned, but recognized and showered with every privilege and honor. I’d only to look at the half dozen or so by-blow dukes that the king treated almost as handsomely as if they’d been born his legitimate sons, and James had done the same with his other bastards by Arabella Churchill. The only difference would be that, unlike Mrs. Churchill, I’d insist that my child was baptized and raised as a Protestant, not a Papist.

  But that—that I’d save to tell James some other time.

  CHARLES WAS A MAN RULED BY his physical restlessness. Just as other men began their days with a dish of tea or chocolate, so the king each day required a lengthy walk through the park with his dogs at a pace so furious that only a few of his gentlemen had the fortitude to accompany him. Later in August, the day before the Court was to shift to Windsor, Charles was engaged on one of these morning walks when he was approached by a man on the edge of hysteria, warning Charles against continuing into the park. This madman (for so we all assumed he must be) vowed that he’d learned of a plot formed by the Jesuits whereby assassins would fall on Charles as he walked beneath the trees and murder him outright. His information had come from a clergyman with the peculiar name of Mr. Israel Tonge, who in turn was informed by another clergyman named Titus Oates.

  As can be imagined, Charles was startled by this grave news, yet thanked the madman with his usual courtesy before continuing on his path undeterred. He emerged from the walk unharmed, and while jesting with his gentlemen, dismissed the warning as only one more slander against the Catholic faith. He barely remembered to put Lord Danby in charge of an official investigation before he left London, and then forgot it entirely.