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

by Holloway Scott, Susan

  “Exactly so, sir,” I said gently. “I’d not wish our child to be another Monmouth. A daughter would be much safer.”

  “Not if she favors her mother,” he teased, but the sadness remained in his eyes.

  I lay my palm against his cheek to soothe him. “Nothing will come of Monmouth’s desires, sir. You know that. Your brother has made it clear enough that he’ll never give way.”

  “But what if he does, Katherine?” he asked, his pale eyes bleak. “He already has warned me not to attend the admiralty board and to keep away from the committee for foreign affairs. I know, too, that to please Parliament, he is considering further sanctions against Catholics. What if we’re all swallowed up by the poison of Oates and Danby and the others, and Charles has no choice but to abandon me?”

  “He won’t,” I said fiercely. “He is your brother. He is the king. His will can overrule all the others combined.”

  Yet even as I spoke, I began to doubt my own certainty. The arrest and sacrifice of Coleman would not long appease Oates and his followers, nor stop the madness that was threatening the Court and the country. What if for their sake and for peace, Charles decided another, more meaningful sacrifice was necessary? What if he chose to placate Anglican England over his Catholic brother?

  And what then would become of James, and our child, and me?

  AS ALL AT COURT HAD EXPECTED, yet dreaded, Edward Coleman was found guilty of plotting to murder His Majesty, and in the first week of December, he was carted to Tyburn Hill and executed, still protesting his innocence. He was right. The infamous letters had proved indiscreet, but not treasonous, and certainly not sufficient to merit conviction. It had been the testimony of the monstrous Oates that had killed Coleman more surely than his executioner.

  But instead of quelling public fear, Coleman’s conviction and death seemed only to feed it. Emboldened, Oates made ever more preposterous accusations, including attacking six venerable and aged peers, gentlemen whose lives had been conducted without any stain, as being conspirators simply because they were Catholic. Now, too, Oates acquired an accomplice in a new and equally disreputable witness, one Captain William Bedloe. While Oates himself had hesitated at naming any of the royal family or their households, Bedloe had no such qualms. Soon he’d accused the king’s own physician, Dr. Wakefield, of accepting a Jesuit bribe to poison His Majesty. He claimed that not only had the queen herself been party to this ridiculous plot, but that James, too, had been a willing witness to the various meetings that had taken place.

  It didn’t matter that Charles himself did not believe a word of this nonsense, or that he swiftly and efficiently defended the terrified and thoroughly innocent queen. He couldn’t do the same with his brother. In the minds of most Londoners, James was now irrevocably tied to the worst of the accusations as well as to the more nebulous fears of popery, the French, and a too-powerful monarchy. But instead of standing above the gossip and accusations, as those around him begged him to do (for in this I was hardly alone), James insisted on wallowing into the mud to try to defend himself, which only made the suspicions around him grow more believable, yet also impenetrable. Many Members of Parliament agreed: why would the Duke of York take such a difficult stance unless he was truly guilty, with onerous, traitorous secrets he feared would in time be revealed?

  Yet it was my own secret, not any of James’s, that finally was revealed shortly before Christmas Day, and the same week as my twenty-first birthday. Despite my careful dress, I was now too far advanced for my pregnancy to be unobserved, and I was likewise slow to rise from my curtsies. I volunteered nothing of my condition, and gave out no hints as to the gentleman responsible, which only increased the curiosity of the other ladies at Court. I knew they all guessed it must be James’s and counted the months after Newmarket, though none dared speak his name aloud before Mary Beatrice.

  One afternoon, however, I sensed that one lady or another must have finally confided her suspicions to the duchess. As was our household’s habit, I was among her ladies gathered in her parlor for our usual occupations of stitching, reading, cards, music, and conversation. Yet when I went to take my customary place within the warmth of the fireplace—mine by rights on account of being, at nearly twenty-one, the oldest of the maids of honor—Mary Beatrice stopped me, and in a voice as chilly as the December day, bid me sit at a distance from her. Though surprised, I could hardly protest on account of her rank and mine below it, and I went to shiver on my remote stool beside the ice-covered window, as sure a sign of disfavor as any.

  For many days, Mary Beatrice had been working a complicated needle-piece in the Italian manner, which required scores of tiny garnet beads to be threaded on the needle and stitched into place. Previously she had taken the greatest care with the basket of beads in her lap, for they were costly and impossible to replace. But today she had scarcely gathered up her frame when she knocked the basket from her knee, sending the tiny beads to bounce and scatter willy-nilly across the floor around her. The other ladies all exclaimed with concern, and at once dropped to their knees to begin retrieving the wayward beads. But just as swiftly, Mary Beatrice stopped them and requested they return to their stools and chairs.

  “Mrs. Sedley,” she called to me, her usually gentle eyes now hard against me. “Here is a task for you. Gather up these beads for me, so I might continue my work.”

  I rose, and curtsied my acquiescence, as again I’d no choice but to obey. Carefully I knelt on the floor, my silken skirts settling around me. Bending farther to gather the tiny beads was nearly impossible with my much-thickened waist to impede me, but slowly I began, determined to finish the odious task without faltering or complaint. No one spoke, a rare, uneasy silence among so many ladies, and I could feel every one of them watching me, some with sympathy, some gloating at my discomfort. I cannot venture how long it took me to gather the beads, nor what thoughts passed through Mary Beatrice’s head as I crawled about at her feet. Perhaps she was ashamed of the humiliating cruelty of her order, or perhaps nothing but jealousy raged behind her masklike face the entire while. All I knew for certain was that her stony silence continued as I dropped the last bead into the basket and at last rose clumsily to my feet, more like a lumbering bear than a lady.

  I curtsied as best I could with the basket in my hand, and as she took it from me, I had a terrible dread that she might purposefully drop it again, and again make me gather up the beads. Instead she set the basket on the table beside her and turned back to me, her mouth taut, her gaze fixed on mine. Then, with shocking speed, she struck her hand across my cheek with a ferocity that knocked my head to one side and shook my wits and very nearly toppled me from my feet.

  “I dismiss you from my service and from this household,” she said curtly, her words echoing through the thrumming in my ears. “You will leave your lodgings here by this night, and not return.”

  Somehow I curtsied. Somehow I rose again and backed from her presence and from the room. Somehow, too, I made my way through the palace’s halls to my lodgings with my head high and my step measured, and past the other courtiers who stared curiously at the blossoming mark Mary Beatrice’s blow had doubtless left on my cheek.

  My maid Thomson was not so restrained.

  “Oh, mistress, your face!” she cried with alarm, rushing to me as I entered my rooms for what would be the final time. “How has this happened, mistress? What has befallen you?”

  At last I touched my hand to my cheek, wincing as I felt the pain and swelling. I was certain my pale face would be bruised, and I was equally certain that I’d not cover the mark with paint or powder, but wear it proudly when I entered the palace on the following day. Now I smiled through my pain, and even laughed with a light-headed relief that worried poor Thomson all the more.

  But the ruse was done, and at last I’d earned what I’d longed for most. I was no longer a lowly maid of honor. I was instead the recognized mistress to His Highness the Duke of York and the mother of his coming child. Now I’
d have my place, and I’d have power with it, but most of all, I’d have James. Was there any wonder, then, that even in that shaken, troubled Court, I felt my life had begun anew?

  I TOOK A SMALL, NEAT HOUSE for myself in King Street close by the palace, a house that I later learned was only several places removed from the one where the Duchess of Cleveland had begun her similar career with Charles twenty years before. The irony of that was wonderfully delicious to me, as was the swiftness with which I was given new lodgings in Whitehall. To be sure, they were not nearly as grand as the suite of thirty rooms that Lady Portsmouth possessed, but they were an open acknowledgment of my new role, which pleased me as well.

  To be true, these lodgings were nearly the only acknowledgment. James was not like his brother, who fair trumpeted the name of a new favorite. When the Lady Portsmouth, then but a lowly, untitled maid of honor herself, had finally capitulated to Charles’s seduction, her ravishment had been nearly as public as Bartholomew Fair, complete with a mock wedding ceremony between her and Charles and scores of drunken courtiers as eager witnesses. James was far more reserved, and would likely prefer to perish than subject himself or any lady to so public or lascivious a performance. There would be none of Charles’s public fondling or great smacking kisses before a gaping Court, nor would I ever expect James to drape me with crown jewels borrowed from the state treasure in the Tower, as Lady Cleveland had once demanded of her royal lover.

  James’s regard for me was much quieter, in part because I was now within weeks of my time. Though I was too large for dancing, I still attended the balls and other frolics that marked the Christmas holidays and the New Year of 1679. I dressed myself as extravagantly as I could, and no longer made any attempt to disguise my belly. Instead I flaunted it proudly as a mark of favor that outshone any mere jewel or other bauble, and when James came to sit beside me, I took care to amuse him with my conversation and make him laugh aloud at my observations and witticisms, enough that others around us remarked on the obvious pleasure he took in my company.

  I knew we were a curiosity, worth much marveling and comment. Royal princes, even modest ones like James, were expected to choose as their mistresses the rarest beauties of their kingdoms. That I was plain confounded every expectation, and even Charles made a pointed, unkind jest about how James’s mistresses (meaning me and Arabella Churchill) were so unattractive that his confessor must have chosen us for him as a form of penance.

  My old nemesis Lord Dorset was quick to be inspired by my situation as well. This time he called me Sylvia, not Dorinda, but I was doubtless his target just the same, and with his pen managed to slander not only me, but James, too:

  SYLVIA, methinks you are unfit

  For your great Lord’s embrace;

  For tho’ we all allow you Wit,

  We can’t a handsome Face.

  Then where’s the Pleasure, where’s the Good,

  Of spending Time and Cost?

  For if your Wit be not understood,

  Your Keeper’s Bliss is lost.

  Another couplet was even less flattering to James:

  Poor Sedley’s Fall, ev’n her own Sex deplore,

  Who with so small Temptation turn’d thy Whore.

  I didn’t care. In James’s eyes, I was beautiful, for my cleverness, my daring, my spirit. I’d only to look across the room to where Mary Beatrice, far my superior in loveliness and rank, sat neglected among her ladies. I was the one James desired more; I was the one whose company he sought, despite the mockery of the Court and the displeasure of his wife and priests. I was the one, and I’d never been happier.

  Though I was not so greedy for material gain as other mistresses, James was as generous as he’d promised he’d be. For my birthday, he gave me a splendid pair of earrings, emeralds and pearls, and for Christmas, four days later, the pendant and necklace that matched. Once I’d taken my new house in my own name, he’d been quick to see that the holding was paid by his accounts, and he likewise let me know that I could spend whatever was necessary to make both the house and my new palace lodgings more pleasing and agreeable to my tastes, and to provide as I saw fit for my lying-in. I could, of course, have done this from my own funds, for though Father had diminished my inheritance, I was still a lady of wealth, and now, to my droll amusement, I’d also my pension from having retired as a maid of honor. But it delighted me to have James look after me and my expenses, another way he showed his devotion.

  In the curious way of fate, I learned of his largesse by a most unexpected messenger. Colonel James Grahme, my first love, had once again returned to Court, and as a reward for his good service abroad in the duke’s name, he and his wife and growing family had been granted lodgings in St. James’s, and the plum post of keeper of the privy purse. As keeper, he oversaw the ducal household’s private expenses, of which I was now one.

  James Grahme came to me himself to share the details of my new prosperity, and I welcomed him with the warmth of an old friend. Strange to realize that six years had already passed since we’d first met and parted, six years in which I had left my innocence behind and become a woman grown and far wiser in the world. The wounds he’d once given my maidenly heart had long since healed, and I was now able to be glad that he’d found love and contentment with his wife, just as I had with James.

  Yet our reunion, made as it was amidst the dust and refurbishing of my new house, was not without its awkwardness.

  “Let me study you properly, Katherine,” he said, standing apart after our first embrace in greeting. “I vow you’ve grown more handsome by the day.”

  “Which is to say I’m still but a shadow of handsomeness compared to you,” I said. He was near to thirty years now, his earlier military gallantry replaced by a gravity befitting his station as a gentleman, a husband, and a father, yet his visage remained as ripe with manly charm as I’d recalled it. “Faith, but you’ve always been a lovely man to gaze upon.”

  He flushed beneath his soldier’s weathered cheek and smiled in the way I’d not forgotten. “I see you’ve not changed either, Katherine, and will always speak your thoughts plain.”

  “I will indeed,” I said, laughing. “Which is why I will ask you what is so clearly perplexing you at present.”

  His eyes flicked down over my belly, a gesture that had become all too familiar to me.

  “What is it, my dear colonel?” I asked. “Can you perceive the imprint of a crown glowing like a beacon from within my womb?”

  “I’m surprised, that is all,” he admitted. “I’ll speak as freely as you do, and confess I’d never thought such a fate for you.”

  “Faith, that’s a fine judgment to make of me,” I exclaimed, surprised by his candor. “That I’m too plain to be a royal mistress?”

  “Not at all,” he said quickly. “What I intended was not that you are too plain, but rather that you are too clever for His Highness. However does he keep pace with you?”

  “He doesn’t,” I said, and grinned with amusement and a certain relief. I might be well done with loving James Grahme, but I still didn’t wish to be unlovely in his memory. “But by some miracle, we please each other, and that is sufficient.”

  He nodded, and now I blushed at how thoroughly he was searching my face. “You are happy, then? You are content? I’d never wish otherwise for you.”

  “I am,” I said softly, and without thinking placed my hand across my belly. “I am happy with His Highness.”

  He nodded again, though I’m not sure he entirely believed me. “Then I am happy, too,” he said. “It’s good to find you here. The Court is not a garden where true friends flourish.”

  “Faith, no,” I agreed. “No matter how much golden dung is spread about, more weeds will grow here than in any other plot in England.”

  He laughed, but his smile soon faded. “I didn’t intend a jest, Katherine. A friend is a precious thing to have in this place, and I pray that you will consider me one to you.”

  “I will, and thank you f
or it.” Touched, I kissed him lightly on his cheek as a pledge of that friendship he offered. He was right: true friends were few at Court, a treasure not to be squandered, especially in the perilous times that bubbled and swirled around us.

  LIKE ALL WOMEN CLOSE TO THEIR TIME, I had let my thoughts focus most closely on my coming babe and the trial of childbirth that lay before me, like some perilous dragon that must be vanquished before I could reach the happiness that I knew lay beyond. Just as men perished in war, women perished in childbed, and though I was healthy and as prepared as I could be, I was still more afraid than I would admit.

  Thus I will perhaps be forgiven that I’d paid less attention than I should to the misfortune that continued to threaten the Court and James with it. If the venomous accusations of Oates and Bedloe were not bad enough, in late December came worse news, this time from France.

  The English ambassador to the French Court, Ralph Montague, had shown the supreme stupidity of seducing the young daughter of Lady Cleveland and Charles, and the indiscretion had instantly cost Montague his post. Waspishly, he had decided to retaliate, and introduced before the Commons his own collection of foul letters, signed by the king, that proved Lord Danby had accepted large gifts of gold on behalf of His Majesty for proroguing Parliament to oblige French policies. These letters only fed the suspicions and madness that already existed in the House, and overnight Lord Danby was transformed from the gentleman who’d first given credence to Titus Oates to the most prominent victim of the plot. He was charged with treason, and convicted by an outraged Commons. To save him from a final conviction in the House of Lords, Charles was left with no choice but to dissolve Parliament in early January and call for a new election.

  It was a momentous decision, indicative of the peril Charles believed he faced. This Parliament had been first elected in 1661 in the welcoming flush of Charles’s restoration to the throne and had, until now, been largely his friend. Now only the tiniest morsel of that goodwill remained, with only suspicion and ill will in its place.