by Jean Plaidy
Roger said: ‘The press in the streets is growing worse.’
Barbara did not answer. She never bothered to state the obvious.
‘The King is worn out with the journey,’ went on Roger. ‘All that bowing and smiling . . . It must be wearying.’
Barbara still said nothing. All the bowing and smiling! she thought. Tired he might be, but he would be content. To think it had come at last. To think he was here in London!
But she was afraid. When she had last seen him he had been a King in exile, a very hopeful King it was true, but still an exile. Now that he had come into his own, her rivals would not be merely a few women at an exiled Court; they would be all the beauties of England. Moreover he himself would be a man courted and flattered by all . . . It might well be that the man with whom she had to deal would be less malleable than that King who, briefly, had been her lover when she had gone with Roger to Holland.
That was but a few months ago, when Roger had been commissioned to carry money to the King who was then planning his restoration to the throne.
Charles had looked at Barbara and had been immediately attracted by those flamboyant charms.
Barbara too had been attracted – not only by his rank but by his personal charm. She had been sweetly subdued and loving during those two or three nights in Holland; she had kept that fierce passion for power in check; she had concealed it so successfully that it had appeared in the guise of a passion for the man. Yet he was no fool, that tall lean man; he was well versed in the ways of such as Barbara; and because he would never rave and rant at a woman, that did not mean that he did not understand her. Barbara was a little apprehensive of his tender cynical smile.
She had said: ‘Tomorrow I shall have to leave for England with my husband.’
‘Ere long,’ he had answered, ‘I shall be recalled to London. My people have been persuaded to clamour for my return, just as eleven years ago they were taught to demand my father’s head. Ere long I too shall be in England.’
‘Then . . . Sire, we shall both be there.’
‘Aye . . . we shall both be there . . .’
And that was all; it was characteristic of him.
She was faintly alarmed concerning the changes she might find in him; but when she held up her mirror, patted the ‘favourites’ which nestled on her brow, smiled at her animated and beautiful face, she was confident that, she would succeed.
Roger, watching her, understood her thoughts. He said: ‘I know what happened between you and the King in Holland.’
She laughed at him. ‘I pray you do not think to play the outraged husband with me, sir!’
‘Play the part! I have no need to play it, Barbara,’ said the little man sadly. ‘If you think to fool me with others as you did with Chesterfield . . .’
‘Now that the King is returned it might be called treason to refer to his Majesty as “others”. You are a fool, Roger. Are you so rich, is your rank so high that you can afford to ignore the advantages I might bring you?’
‘I do not like the manner in which you would bring me these advantages. Am I a complaisant fool? Am I a husband to stand aside and smile with pleasure at his wife’s wanton behaviour? Am I? Am I?’
Barbara spun round on him and cried: ‘Yes . . . Yes, you are!’
‘You must despise me. Why did you marry me?’
Barbara laughed aloud. ‘Because mayhap I see virtues where others see faults. Mayhap I married you because you are . . . what you are. Now I pray you do not be a fool. Do not disappoint me. Do not tell me I have made a mistake in the man I married, and I promise you that you shall not come badly out of your union with me.’
‘Barbara, sometimes you frighten me.’
‘I am not surprised. You are a man who is easily frightened . . . Yes, woman?’ shouted Barbara, for one of her women had appeared at the door.
‘Madam, the King wishes to see you.’
Barbara gave a loud laugh of triumph. She had nothing to fear. He was the same man who had found her irresistible during that brief stay in Holland. The King was commanding that she be brought to his presence.
She took one last look at herself in her mirror, assured herself of her startling beauty and swept out of her apartment to the presence of the King.
*
Barbara had learned what she wanted at a very early age, and with that knowledge had come the determination to get it.
She never knew her father, for that noble and loyal gentleman had died before she was two years old; but when she was a little older her mother had talked to her of him, telling her how he had met his death at the siege of Bristol for the sake of the King’s Cause, and that she, his only child, must never forget that she was a member of the noble family of Villiers and not do anything to stain the honour of that great name.
At that time Barbara was a vivacious little girl and, because she was a very pretty one, she was accustomed to hearing people comment on her lovely appearance. She was fascinated by the stories of her father’s heroism and she determined that when she grew up she would be as heroic as he was. She promised herself that she would perform deeds of startling bravery; she would astonish all with her cleverness; she would become a Joan of Arc to lead the Royalists to victory. She was a fervent Royalist because her father had been. She thought of Cromwell and Fairfax as monsters, Charles, the King, as a saint. Even when she was but four years old her little face would grow scarlet with rage when anyone mentioned Cromwell’s name.
‘Curb that temper of yours, Barbara,’ her mother often said. ‘Control it. Never let it control you.’
Sometimes her relatives would visit her mother – those two dashing boys of another branch of the family, George and Francis Villiers. They teased her a good deal, which never failed to infuriate her so that she would forget the injunctions to curb her temper and fly at them, biting and scratching, using all the strength she possessed to fight them; this naturally only amused them and made them intensify their teasing.
George, the elder of the boys, had been the Duke of Buckingham since his father had died. He was more infuriating than his brother Lord Francis, and it became his special delight to see how fierce she could become. He told her she would die a spinster, because no man would marry such a termagant as she would undoubtedly become; he doubted not that she would spend her life in a convent, where they would have a padded cell into which she could be locked until she recovered from her rages.
Those boys gave her plenty of practice in control. Often she would hide from them because she was determined not to show her anger, but she soon discovered that she enjoyed her passions and, oddly enough, the company of her young relatives.
When Barbara was seven her mother married again and Barbara’s stepfather was her father’s cousin, Charles Villiers, Earl of Anglesey.
The marriage startled Barbara because, having always heard her father spoken of with reverence, it seemed strange that her mother could so far forget his perfections as to take another husband. Barbara’s blue eyes were alert; she had always felt a great interest in the secret ways of adults. Now she remembered that her stepfather had for some time been a frequent visitor, and that he had seemed on each occasion always very affectionate towards her mother. She reasoned that her father, whom she had thought to be perfect, must after all have been merely foolish. He had become involved in the war and had met his death. The King’s Cause had gained little by his sacrifice; and his reward was a tomb and the title of hero, while his cousin’s was marriage with the widow.
Barbara told herself sagely that she would not have been as foolish as her father. When her time came she would know how to get what she wanted and live to enjoy it.
The result of this marriage was a move to London, and Barbara was enchanted by London as soon as she set eyes on it. It was Puritan London, she heard, and not to be compared with merry laughter-laden London of the old days; but still it was London. She would ride through Hyde Park with her mother or her governess in their carriage, and she wo
uld look wistfully at the gallery at the Royal Exchange which was full of stalls displaying silks and fans; she would notice the rendezvous of young men and women in the Mulberry Garden. ‘London’s a dull place,’ she often heard it said, ‘compared with the old city. Why, then there was dancing and revelry in the streets. A woman was not safe out after dark – not that she is now – but the King’s Cavaliers had a dash about them that the Puritans lack.’
She was eager for knowledge of the world; she longed for fine clothes; she hated the dowdy garments she was forced to wear; she wished to grow up quickly that she might take her part in the exciting merry-go-round of life.
The servants were afraid of her, and she found it easy to get what she wanted from them. She could kick and scream, bite and scratch in a manner which terrified them.
Occasionally she saw George and Francis. George was haughty and had no time for little girls. Francis was gentler and told her stories of the royal household in which he and his brother had spent their childhood, because King Charles had loved their father dearly and when he had been killed in the Royalist Cause had taken the little Villiers boys into his household to be brought up with the little Princes and Princess. Francis told Barbara of Charles, the King’s eldest son, the most easy-going boy he had ever known; and he talked of Mary who had been married to the Prince of Orange, after she was almost blind with weeping and hoarse with begging her parents not to send her away from Whitehall; he told her of young James, who had wanted to join in their games and from whom they had all run away because he was too young. She liked to hear of the games which had been played in the avenues and alleys of Hampton Court. Her eyes would glisten and she would declare that she wished she had been born a man, that she might be a king.
There came a time when Francis ceased to visit her and she knew, from the way in which people spoke of him, that some mystery surrounded him. She insisted on getting the story from the servants. Then she learned that Francis was yet another victim of the King’s Cause.
Lord Francis had lost his life, and his brother the Duke, who had lost his estates, was forced to escape to Holland.
Seven-year-old Barbara, keeping her ears open, heard that Helmsley Castle and York House in the Strand, which had both been the property of the Villiers family, had passed to General Fairfax, and that New Hall had gone to Cromwell.
She was infuriated with those Roundhead soldiers. She would thump her fist on a table or stool. Her mother often warned her that she would do herself some injury if she persisted in giving way to the rage which boiled within her.
‘Do we stand aside and allow these nobodies to rob our family?’ she demanded.
‘We stand aside,’ said her mother.
‘And,’ added her stepfather, ‘we keep quiet. We are thankful that the little we have is left to us.’
‘Thankful, with Francis dead and George running away to hide in Holland!’
‘You are but a child. You do not understand these things. You should not listen to what is not intended for your ears.’
It was a long time after that when she saw George again; but she heard of him from time to time. He fought at Worcester with Charles, the new King, for the old King had been murdered by his enemies. Barbara was ten years old at that time and she understood what was happening. She cursed the Roundhead soldiers whom she saw lounging in Paul’s Walk, using the Cathedral and the city’s churches as barracks or for stabling their horses, walking through the capital in their sombre garments, yet swaggering a little, as though to remind the citizens that they were the masters now. She understood George well, for he was very like herself – far more like her than gentle Lord Francis had been. George Duke of Buckingham wished to command the King’s army, but the King, on the advice of Edward Hyde who had followed him to the continent, had refused to allow him to do so. Buckingham was furious – like Barbara he could never brook frustration – and was full of wild plans for bringing the King back to his throne. He was too young for the command, said Hyde; and at that time Charles had agreed with all that Edward Hyde advised. And Barbara heard how Buckingham would not attend council meetings in the exiled Court, that he scarcely spoke to the King; how his anger turned sour and he brooded perpetually; how he refused to clean himself or allow any of his servants to do this, and would not change his linen.
‘Foolish, foolish George!’ cried Barbara. ‘If I were in his place . . .’
But George, it seemed, was not so foolish as she had thought him. He suddenly ceased to neglect himself, for the Princess of Orange, the King’s sister Mary, had become a widow and George had offered himself as her second husband.
Barbara listened to the talk between her mother and her stepfather; moreover she demanded that the servants should tell her every scrap of gossip they heard.
Thus she discovered that Queen Henrietta Maria had declared herself incensed at Buckingham’s daring to aspire to the hand of the Princess. She had been reported as saying that she would rather tear her daughter into tiny pieces than allow her to consider such a match.
Yes, George was a fool, decided Barbara. If he had wished to marry Mary of Orange he should have visited her in secret; he should have made her fall in love with him, perhaps married her in secret. She was sure he could have done that; he was possessed of the same determination as she was. And then he would have seen what that old fury, Queen Henrietta Maria (who, many said, was responsible for the terrible tragedy which had overtaken her husband King Charles I) would do!
Then for a time she ceased to think of George when she met Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, who came on a visit to her stepfather’s house. She had heard much talk of him before his arrival.
He was clever, it was said; he was one of the wise ones. He was not the sort to talk vaguely of what he would do when the King came home; he was not the sort to drink wistful toasts to the Black Boy across the water. No, Chesterfield would look at the new England and try to find a niche for himself there.
It seemed he was finding a very pleasant niche indeed, for he was betrothed to none other than Mary Fairfax, the daughter of the Parliamentarian General who, next to Cromwell himself, was the most important man in the Commonwealth.
Mary Fairfax was her father’s darling and, good Parliamentarian though she might be, was bedazzled not only by the handsome looks and charming manners of the Earl, but by the prospect of becoming a Countess.
So this was one way in which a member of the aristocracy could live comfortably in the new England.
Barbara admired the man before she saw him, and he showed on the first day under her stepfather’s roof that he was not indifferent to Barbara. She would look up to discover his eyes upon her, and to her surprise she found herself blushing. He seemed to sense her confusion. It amused him; and she, telling herself that she was furious with him for this, knew in her heart that she was far from displeased. His attention was reminding her that she was not a little girl any longer; she was a young woman; and she fancied that he was comparing her with Mary Fairfax.
She would ignore him. She shut herself into her own room; but she could not drive him from her thoughts. She saw the change in herself. She was like a bud which was opening to the warmth of the sun; but she was not a bud – she was a woman responding to the warmth of his glances.
He came upon her once on the staircase which led to her room. He said: ‘Barbara, why do you always avoid me?’
‘Avoid you!’ she said. ‘I was not aware of you.’
‘You lie,’ he answered.
Then she turned and tossed her long hair so that it brushed across his face, and would have darted up the stairs; but the contact seemed to arouse a determination within him, for he caught the hair and pulled her back by it; then he laid a hand on her breast and kissed her.
She twisted free and, as she did so, slapped his face so hard that he reeled backwards. She was free and she darted up the stairs to her room; when she reached it, she ran in and bolted the door.
She leaned against i
t; she could hear him on the other side of it as he beat on it with his fists.
‘Open it,’ he said. ‘Open it, you vixen!’
‘Never to you,’ she cried. ‘Take care you are not thrown out of this house, my lord earl.’
He went away after a while, and she ran to her mirror and looked at herself; her hair was wild, her eyes shining, and there was a red mark on her cheek where he had kissed her. There was no anger in her face at all; there was only delight.
She was happier than she had ever been, but she was haughty to him when they next met, and scarcely spoke to him; her mother reprimanded her for her ill-manners to their guest; but when had she taken any notice of her mother?
After that she began to study herself in the mirror; she loosened her curls; she unlaced her bodice that more of her rounded throat might be shown. She was tall, and her figure seemed to have matured since that first encounter. When she was near him she was aware of a tingling excitement such as she had never known before in the whole of her life. Feigning to avoid him she yet sought him. She was never happier than when she was near him, flashing scornful glances at him from under her heavy lids; it amused her in the presence of her mother and stepfather to ask artless questions concerning the beauty and talents of his betrothed.
She saw a responsive gleam in his eyes; she was wise enough to know that she was but a novice in the game she was playing; she knew that he stayed at her stepfather’s house for only one reason, and that he would not leave it until he had captured her. This made her laugh. Not that she would avoid the capture; she had determined to be captured. She believed that she was on the point of making an important discovery. She was beautiful, and beauty meant power. She could take this man – the betrothed of Mary Fairfax – and drive everything from his mind but the desire for herself. That was power such as she longed to wield; and she had learnt from those moments when he had touched her or kissed her, that surrender would be made without the slightest reluctance.
