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

by Holloway Scott, Susan

  What always surprised me, however, was how those same sly remarks so delighted a devoted Catholic like James. The more outrageous my remarks were, the more loudly he would laugh, even if all the other Papists around him pointedly did not. I told him that Lord Tyrconnel and Lord Arundel, the Catholic peers he’d chosen as counselors, were dull-witted, self-serving fools whose counsel would cost him his crown. I even made sport of Lord Sunderland, and how readily he’d changed his pew at morning prayer for a more comfortable one at mass. James had roared at that. While James’s reaction had always pleased me in the past—for what born comedian doesn’t relish an audience?—now it made me uneasy. I was like the jester of ancient courts, permitted to say what no one else dared. But how far could I take the privilege before I’d blunder too far and James would cease to be amused?

  Lord Rochester only smiled and told me to be easy, that I was doing exactly as I should to please the king, even as I pointed out the foolishness of the Papists. With his approval, I continued as I was, and resolved to worry no more. But I could not entirely put aside the hazard of my situation: I was supported by Lord Rochester and the few other Protestants who remained at Court, while on the other side stood Lord Sunderland as Her Majesty’s champion, with Father Petre and her army of other priests and Catholics besides.

  Of course, with every mocking remark I made at the expense of rosaries or confessionals, the queen hated me a little more. But even her hatred had a curious feel to it, entirely directed as it was at what I said and not for being her husband’s mistress. It was Lady Rochester who finally explained this mystery to me one night outside the palace’s supper room, where we’d just observed the queen sweep past me as if I did not exist.

  “It makes perfect sense,” the countess said, her quiet solemnity a match for her husband’s. “The queen doesn’t fault you for lying with His Majesty because she doesn’t realize that you are. Instead she believes that His Majesty is intriguing with Mrs. Grafton.”

  “Mrs. Grafton?” Mrs. Grafton was one of the queen’s current maids of honor, a sweet-faced girl of complete innocence, or so I’d believed, and I felt the sharpest pangs of nascent jealousy. But now I understood the vicious contempt that the queen had showed earlier toward this poor young lady, much as she had once done to me. “Does Mrs. Grafton have designs on His Majesty?”

  “Oh, not at all,” Lady Rochester said easily. “She’s such an empty-headed ninny that I doubt she could make a design upon a kitten, let alone a king. That is why I chose her, you see.”

  Confusion must have shown on my face, for with a knowing smile she continued. “To divert the queen’s suspicions from you, I whispered to her that His Majesty was bedding Mrs. Grafton. The more the pathetic little creature denies it, the more the queen believes it’s so, and punishes her for it. A great convenience to us.”

  “Very great, my lady,” I murmured, yet the unconscionable cruelty of this deception appalled me. Even after so many years at Court, I could still be stunned by what highborn people would do for power. I’d felt the sting of Mary Beatrice’s vengeful hand against my cheek myself and I pitied the bewildered Mrs. Grafton.

  “The girl has no family to speak of, of course,” the countess continued, “and thus she will bring us no trouble. But then, what is the chit’s honor compared to keeping you secured in the king’s favor?”

  “Indeed, my lady,” I said, and smiled. “But I must wonder if you’ll show me the same lack of regard if I fail to be as useful as you and His Lordship hope.”

  She smiled evenly, outwardly as unperturbed as I. But I didn’t miss the slight twitch of her nose or the disdain in her eye, and I knew what she thought as clearly as if she’d spoken it aloud: that she was wife of one peer and the daughter of another while I was but a brash, vulgar whore, and in any other circumstances, she’d not deign to take any notice of me all.

  “We all have our own usefulness, Mrs. Sedley,” she said at last, “and we all serve the king to the best of our abilities.”

  “How true, my lady,” I said, and smiled once again. “How fortunate for me that His Majesty can satisfy me so pleasurably even as I serve him!”

  Her Ladyship’s smile froze, and she swiftly excused herself, scuttling away to avoid contamination from my whorish self, I suppose.

  But while I’d purposefully intended to shock Lady Rochester, what I’d said to her was also the truth. No matter the motives or machinations that had brought me back to the palace, James was delighted that I was there, and the more of my company that he had, the more he sought, as if he’d never enough. Over and over he told me so, and showed me his fondness in countless little ways as well, both before others and alone in his bedchamber. It was almost as if we were new lovers again, instead of an ancient couple of nearly seven years’ standing.

  Though I tried my best, I cannot say if by year’s end I had managed to make James think more kindly toward the Church of England, or softened his heart toward his Protestant subjects. At least I could say I’d done no harm, and after the bloody rebellion in the summer and the disastrously aborted Parliamentary session in the fall, the winter seemed blessedly calm.

  But I’d no doubt that James’s hard royal heart had gentled even more toward me. For my twenty-eighth birthday, he presented me with a ruby ring surrounded with pearls and a new team of matched grays for my coach. For Christmas four days later came a pearl bracelet, and a much grander gift of several valuable estates in Ireland. Even more generous were the two additional incomes he’d settled on our daughter, Lady Katherine, giving her a fortune to match her title and blood. I recognized it for what it was, generosity born of devotion. Louise de Keroualle had been right about such tangible gifts signaling the degree of a king’s devotion. I had never loved James more, and here was the proof that he cared for me as well. It did not matter then that more and more of his subjects were regarding him as a cold and heartless tyrant. When he lay in my arms, I knew otherwise. Together, James and I had love: true, lasting love, and peace.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON

  January 1686

  Open it,” James ordered, smiling with anticipation of my response. “You’ll be pleased, I’m sure.”

  I grinned, and held the box in my hands another moment longer. It wasn’t the usual shaped leather box that held jewels, his favorite gift for me. This box was wide and flat and made of polished wood with silver clasps and hinges, and when I shook it gently, I could hear nothing within.

  “It’s empty, sir,” I teased. “You tell me you are giving me what I most deserve to have, and it’s an empty box.”

  “It’s not,” he said. “I can promise you that. Open it, Katherine, please. I wish to see your face when you do.”

  No other man would wish the same, and suddenly my eyes swam with tears of happiness as I gazed at him on the bed beside me. “Thank you, sir,” I whispered tenderly. “Thank you.”

  “Here now, no weeping.” His brows rose with surprise. “And why thank me, when you’ve yet to see what’s within?”

  “Because what you give me cannot be put in any box, sir.” I sniffed back my tears, knowing how they disturbed him, and looked back down at the box in my hands. I slipped the latch open and slowly opened the lid, then gasped—not with joy, but dismay. The thick parchment sheet was covered with writing so decoratively formal as to be unreadable, with heavy silk ribbons threaded through one side. All that was wanting was the thick wafer of wax, stamped with the Great Seal that would give importance to everything else, and if he’d proceeded as far as this, then that, too, would come soon enough.

  “Oh, sir, no,” I said, staring down into the box. “Please no.”

  “Yes, Katherine,” he said proudly, ignoring my response. “I tell you, it’s only what you deserve. Countess of Dorchester, Baroness Darlington. That’s what those letters of patent make you, and past time, too. Now you can hold your head as high as any lady.”

  “I already do, sir,” I said. “I don�
�t need a scrap of parchment and sealing wax to do so.”

  “I say you do,” he insisted. “You have been loyal to me through every weather and sea, Katherine, and have loved me without doubt or question. For those merits alone, there is no other lady who is more dear to me. Consider this as your reward.”

  “But I do not wish such a damnable reward, sir!” I cried. “Once, perhaps, I would have wanted to be recognized with such an honor, but not now. Can you not see that, sir? Can you not understand all the misfortune that will come of this?”

  “No misfortune will come.” He took the box with the patent and set it to one side on the bed, and instead took my hands in his and kissed me. “You are my dear friend, yes, and the mistress of my heart. But you should also be recognized and honored by others for your devotion to your king, and the regard that king holds for you. Even Rochester agrees with me.”

  “Lord Rochester agreed, sir?” My despair sank even lower. Likely His Lordship saw this title as only one more prize for the Protestants, a sign of glorious favor to be waved smugly before Lord Sunderland. He might even have suggested it. He would have thought nothing of what it could do to me.

  “He did,” James said. “He saw to the letters himself once I ordered it. But I should have done this for you long ago, sweet. My brother never waited so long with his ladies.”

  “That is because Madame de Keroualle and the others wished to be peeresses, sir, while I wish only to continue as we have.” I shook my head, already imagining how swiftly this would topple the carefully built house of political cards on which I was balanced. “If you insist on this, sir, then I will instantly become a personage at Court who cannot be ignored. Her Majesty has been able to pretend she knows nothing of me, of us, because I didn’t signify. But if I am a countess, I must make my fealty to her, and she must acknowledge me and how I came by this title, and how by favoring me, you have broken that impossible oath you swore to her, and oh, sir, it will not go well for either of us.”

  “It will go exactly as I order it,” he said firmly. “I am king, not my wife. If I say she must receive you as Lady Dorchester, then she will. It’s your due, Katherine, and I won’t have you scorned by anyone.”

  Alas, as was too often the case, my fears proved much better predictions than his certainty. In the next days, James must have gone to the queen and told her his purpose regarding me, and likewise how he expected her to accept it. Overnight it seemed as if everyone at Court knew of my impending title, though I mentioned it to no one. I suppose part of me still hoped that James would see reason and withdraw the letters before they were passed for the seal.

  But once James decided on a course, no argument would ever dissuade him, and so, too, it was with this. Every Protestant congratulated me warmly on my coming good fortune, while every Catholic looked coldly on me with contempt. I was rumored now to be officially named James’s mistress, much as Lady Portsmouth had been Charles’s maitresse de titre after the fashion of the French Court, and that soon I’d be installed in her suite of rooms. I knew none of it was true, but the queen—ah, the queen must have believed every word of it, and more besides.

  If James had believed that Mary Beatrice would be as meekly resigned to my ennoblement as Catherine of Braganza had been to titles that Charles had given to Lady Cleveland and Lady Portsmouth, then he was most grievously disappointed. I never learned what occurred between the two of them alone. Knowing her Italianate temper and her Romish fervor and his innate stubbornness, I can but imagine it was a fearful, raging discussion. What I did see, along with the rest of the Court, was Mary Beatrice’s public performance that began on 19 January, the day my title was scheduled to pass the Great Seal.

  Already diminished by the wasting illnesses that had plagued her for years, the queen made herself even less attractive by appearing at the royal table dressed as plainly as a novice of her own perverse faith, without any jewels or paint and her hair drawn severely back from her face. She did not greet James as she took her chair, nor did she speak to him or any of her ladies during the meal. The only one graced with her conversation was Father Petre, who stood behind her to whisper his poisonous words into her ear. She ate nothing that was presented to her, nor drank any wine, pointedly waving it all away untouched. As soon as she could, she rose and left the table, forcing her ladies and priests to leave hungry and hurry after her.

  “Now, that was worthy of the tragic stage,” Lord Rochester observed dryly beside me. “I suppose Her Majesty hopes to punish the king this way, but so public a display will not sit well with him, or any man, for that matter.”

  “That won’t be the end of if, my lord,” I said uneasily, not sharing his confidence. “You’ll see. God only knows what she’ll contrive next.”

  “Let her, then,” Lord Rochester said. “She’ll only displease the king more. Mark how grim he looks now.”

  James did in fact look grim, even sour, and mightily discomfited by his wife’s untoward departure. But he also seemed determined to ignore it, turning toward the gentleman beside him to begin a fresh conversation. As the gentleman replied, James searched the room until he found me, standing beside Lord Rochester. His entire expression changed, softening, as likely mine did in return, and when he smiled at me, it was so clear a mark of favor that others in the room remarked it with a murmur of wonder. I flushed, feeling at once pleasure that he’d singled me out, and misery that he’d done so.

  “There now, madam,” Lord Rochester said with brisk satisfaction. “You see exactly where you stand.”

  But though I smiled back to James, I was not reassured. “I see nothing, my lord,” I said to the earl, “nothing beyond that damnable, cursed patent.”

  He laughed. “You will feel otherwise once you hear yourself called Lady Dorchester.”

  I only shook my head. “Would that it were as simple as that, my lord,” I said softly. “Would that everything were as simple.”

  BEING PROTESTANT, AS WELL AS THE subject for the queen’s ire, I did not witness her next skirmish in the war against me, or rather, as the Papists perceived it, the war for the king’s soul. But there were plenty of others who knew of it as soon as it occurred, two days after I had become Lady Dorchester, and I heard of Mary Beatrice’s outrage in such detail that I felt as if I had indeed seen it for myself.

  Gathering every priest and Jesuit to be found in the palace into her rooms, she summoned James. He told me he’d expected her to capitulate to his demands and to act with the obedience of the Christian wife she claimed herself to be. But as soon as James entered her chambers, he saw that no surrender would be forthcoming. Instead Mary Beatrice sat in her armchair, ringed round with her Papists, who at once fell to their knees at the sight of him, babbling as one in Latin. Father Petre dared to address James directly and without permission, speaking for all his brethren when he told the king sternly that I was not only a blight on his soul, but that I alone stood in the way of all their designs to promote their faith in England. He pointed dramatically to the queen, saying that James’s seed would never find sweet purchase in her womb to produce a Catholic heir to the English throne as long as he dallied with me. The queen then sobbed as if she’d been struck, and wailed her accusations at him for being a cruel and faithless husband.

  “You cannot imagine how I felt to hear that, Katherine,” he told me later that night. He sat beside me on the bed, but without undressing, making it clear he wished to talk and nothing more. “To hear her shriek like that, with Father Petre explaining it all. I felt cursed. There is no other way to explain it. I felt cursed, and damned.”

  “Which you are most certainly not, sir,” I said indignantly. “No Anglican among your subjects would accuse you of that.”

  He made an unhappy grunt. “You say that because you’re one of them.”

  “I say it because it’s the truth,” I insisted. “If there is any fault for your lack of an heir, it should go to Her Majesty, not to you.”

  This was true. After conceiving at
least once a year since her marriage, the queen had been too sickly to produce any further proof of her fertility for the past two years.

  But James didn’t answer, his expression far too thoughtful for my tastes, nor did I miss how his gaze wandered away from me toward the Italian painting of a sad-eyed Madonna that he’d recently had hung not far from his bed.

  “I do not know, Katherine,” he said heavily. “If I have offended the Almighty Lord by my alliance with you, then He could well have challenged me by making my wife barren. Then she told me that if I did not send you from England, she would cease to be my wife and queen, and instead retire to a convent.”

  I slipped my fingers into his to reassure him, and myself, too. “What did you say, sir?”

  He groaned. “I’d been caught by surprise, Katherine, and was willing to say most anything to ease her and silence their criticisms.”

  “Oh, sir.” I could already guess the rest. “What did you tell them?”

  He looked down at our clasped fingers, unable to meet my eye. “I told her that I’d granted you the title by way of breaking with you decently, and that I wouldn’t see you again.”

  “Yet you bid me come to you again tonight, sir,” I said softly. “You were true to me.”

  “I could not help being otherwise, Katherine,” he said with unmistakable sorrow. “I have tried before to leave you, and I cannot do it, no matter how strongly I am urged by those who support me.”