by Jean Plaidy
Evidently she had succeeded, for on his first night in London the King had sent for her.
She went into his presence and knelt before him. She was fully aware that she had lost none of her beauty since they had last met. Rather had she gained in charm. She was magnificently dressed, and her wonderful auburn hair fell about her bare shoulders. The King’s warm eyes glistened as he looked at her.
‘It is a pleasure to see you here to greet us,’ he said.
‘The pleasure is that of Your Majesty’s most loyal subject to see you here.’
‘Rise, Mistress Palmer.’ He turned to those who stood about him. ‘The lady was responsible for great goodwill towards me during my exile . . . great goodwill,’ he repeated reminiscently.
‘It is the utmost joy to me that Your Majesty should remember my humble service.’
‘So well do I remember that I would have you sup with me this night.’
This night! thought Barbara. This very night when the whole of London was shouting its welcome; this first night when he had returned to his capital; this night when he had received the loyal addresses, the right royal welcome, the heartiest welcome that had ever been given to a King of England.
She could hear now the sounds of singing on the river, the shouts of joy.
Long live the King! A health unto His Majesty!
And here was His Majesty, his dark slumberous eyes urgent with passion, unable to think of anything but supping with Barbara Palmer.
‘So,’ said the King, ‘you will sup with me this night?’
‘It is a command, Your Majesty.’
‘I would have it also a pleasure.’
‘It will be the greatest pleasure that could befall a woman,’ she murmured.
She lifted her eyes and saw one in the King’s entourage who, in spite of her triumph, made her heart-beats quicken.
There was Chesterfield. She hoped he had heard. She hoped he remembered now that he had once laughed at the idea of marrying Barbara Villiers. One day, thought Barbara then, and that day not far distant, Barbara Villiers would be the first lady in the land; for the King was half French by birth and all French in manners; and it was well known that the maîtresse en titre of a King of France was, more often than his Queen, the first lady in the land.
Chesterfield was going to regret and wonder at his stupidity. He was going to realize he had been a fool to think Mary Fairfax a better match. She wondered too how he was faring in his recent marriage, for he had had the temerity to marry again while he was in Holland – marry without consulting her! She wished him all that he deserved. She wondered how the simple little Lady Elizabeth Butler was going to satisfy a man like Chesterfield. If Lady Elizabeth, brought up in the affectionate home of her parents, the Duke and Duchess of Ormond, believed that all marriages were like those of her parents, she was about to be very surprised.
For, thought Barbara, even as she contemplated supping with the King, Chesterfield need not think that Barbara Villiers had finished with him.
The courtiers were looking at her boldly now. The King had brought French manners with him. They did not think it strange that he should openly claim her for his mistress before them all. In France the greatest honour that could befall a woman was to become the King’s mistress.
Charles – and Barbara – would see that that French custom was forthwith adopted at the English Court.
*
Far into the night the revelry continued. Throughout the Palace of Whitehall, which sprawled for nearly half a mile along the river’s edge, could be heard the shouts of citizens making merry. Music still came from the barges on the river; and the lights of bonfires were reflected in the windows. Ballad singers continued their singing; it was not every day that a monarch came home to his capital.
The King heard the sounds of rejoicing and was gratified. But he gave them no more than a passing thought. He remembered that some of those who were shouting their blessings on him had doubtless called for his father’s blood. Charles did not put any great trust in the acclamations of the mob.
But he was glad to be home, to be a King once more, no longer a wandering exile.
He was in his own Palace of Whitehall, in his own bed; and with him was the most perfect woman to whom it had ever been his lot to make love. Barbara Palmer, beautiful and amorous, unstintingly passionate, the perfect mistress for a perfect homecoming.
From the park of St James’s, beyond the Cockpit, he heard the shouting of midnight revellers.
‘A health unto His Majesty . . . .’
But his smile was melancholy until he turned once more to Barbara.
TWO
IN HIS EARLY morning walks through the grounds which surrounded his Palace of Whitehall the King was often a melancholy man during those first few months after his restoration.
He would rise early, for he enjoyed walking in the fresh morning air and at such times he was not averse to being alone, although at all others he liked best to be surrounded by jesting men and beautiful women.
He walked fast; it was a habit unless there was a woman with him; then he never failed to fit his steps to hers.
This was a January morning. There was hoar-frost on the grass and it sparkled on the Palace walls and the buildings which rose from the banks on either side of the river.
January – and seven months a restored King!
He had wandered into the privy gardens where in summer he would set his watch by the sundial; but this day the sheltered bowling green was perhaps more inviting. He would, as was his custom, look in at the small Physic Garden where he cultivated the herbs with which he and Le Febre, his chemist, and Tom Chaffinch, his most trusted servant, experimented.
He was in an unusually pensive mood on this day.
Perhaps it was due to the coming of the new year – his first as King in his own country. Those last months which should have been the happiest of his life were touched with tragedy.
He looked back at the Palace with its buildings of all sizes – past the banqueting hall to the Cockpit. Whitehall was not only his royal Palace, it was the residence of his ministers and servants, the ladies and gentlemen of his Court, for they all had their apartments here. And that was how he would have it. The bigger his Court the better; the more splendid, the more he liked it, for it reminded him sharply, whenever he contemplated it, of the change in his fortunes.
The stone gallery separated his royal apartments from those of his subjects; and his bedchamber – he had arranged this – had big windows which gave him a clear view of the river; it was one of his pleasures to stand at those windows and watch the ships go by, just as, when a small boy at Greenwich, he had lain on the bank and delighted in the ships sailing by.
In the little chamber known as the King’s Closet, to which only he and Tom Chaffinch had keys, he kept the treasures that he had learned to love. He was deeply attracted by beauty in any form – pictures, ornaments and of course women, and now that he was no longer a penniless exile he was gathering together pictures by the great artists of his earlier days. He had works by Holbein, Titian, and Raphael in his closet; he had cabinets and jewel-encrusted boxes, maps, vases and, perhaps more cherished than any – except his models of ships – his collection of clocks and watches. These he wound himself and often took to pieces that he might have the joy of putting them together again. He loved art and artists, and he intended to make his Court a refuge for them.
He was already restoring his parks to a new magnificence. St James’s Park was no longer to be the shabby waste ground it had become during the Commonwealth; he would plant new trees; there should be water works such as those he had seen in Fontainebleau and Versailles. He wished his Court to be as elegant as that of his cousin Louis Quatorze. And St James’s Park should be a home for the animals he loved. He himself delighted to feed the ducks on his pond; he had begun to stock the park with deer; he would have goats and sheep there too, and strange animals such as antelopes and elks which would cause the people o
f London to pause and admire. And all these animals he loved dearly, as he loved the little dogs which followed him whenever they could and had even found their way into the Council Chamber. His melancholy face would soften when he fondled them, and when he spoke to them his voice was as tender and gentle as when he addressed a beautiful woman.
But on this January day, early in the morning, his melancholy thoughts pursued him, for those first months of his restoration had been overshadowed by tragedy.
The first trouble had been James’s affair with Anne Hyde, the daughter of his Chancellor, the man who he had trusted more than any other during the years of exile. James had married the girl and then sprung the news on his brother at a most inconvenient time, falling on his knees before him, confessing that he had made this mésalliance and disobeyed the rule that one so near the throne should not marry without the consent of the monarch.
He should have been furious; he should have clapped them both into the Tower. That was what his ancestors – those worthy Tudors, Henry and Elizabeth – would have done; and they were considered the greatest King and Queen the country had ever had.
Clap his own brother into jail! And for marrying a girl who was so far gone in pregnancy that to delay longer would have meant her producing a bastard, when the child might well be heir to the throne!
Some might have done it. Not Charles. How could he, when he could understand so well the inclination which had first led James to dally with the Chancellor’s daughter (though to Charles’s mind she was no beauty, yet possessed of a shrewdness and intelligence which he feared far exceeded that of his brother) and, having got her with child, the impossibility of resisting her tears and entreaties.
Charles saw James’s point of view and Anne’s point of view too clearly even to feign anger.
‘Get up, James,’ he had said. ‘Don’t sprawl at my feet like that. Od’s Fish, man, you’re clumsy enough in less demanding poses. What’s done is done. You’re a fool, but alas, dear brother, that’s no news to me.’
But others were not inclined to view the matter with the King’s leniency. Charles sighed, contemplating the trouble which that marriage had caused. Why could they not take his view of life? Could they unmake the marriage by upbraiding James and making the girl’s life miserable?
It was a sad thing that so few shared the tolerance of the King.
There was Chancellor Hyde, the girl’s father, pretending to be distraught, declaring that he would have preferred to see his daughter the concubine rather than the wife of the Duke of York.
‘A paternal sentiment which is scarcely worthy of a man of your high ideals, Chancellor,’ Charles had said ironically.
He had begun to wonder about Hyde then. Was the man entirely sincere? Secretly he must be delighted that his daughter had managed to secure marriage into the royal house, that her heirs might possibly sit on the throne of England. There had been whispering about Hyde often enough; a man so high in the King’s favour was bound to have his enemies. He had followed Charles in his exile and had always been at his side to give the young King his advice. Charles did not forget that when Hyde had left Jersey to come to him in Holland he had been taken prisoner by the corsairs of Ostend and robbed of his possessions, yet had not rested until he had effected his escape and joined his King. His one motive was, he had declared, to serve Charles and bring about his restoration; and Charles, believing him, had made the man his first adviser, had asked his counsel in all political matters, had made him Secretary of State in place of Nicholas, and later, when it seemed that one day Charles might have a country to rule, he had become Chancellor. The man had had many enemies who envied him his place in the King’s counsels and affections; they had done all they could to poison the King’s mind against him. But Charles had supported Hyde, believed him to be his most trusty servant because he never minced his words and was apt to reproach the King to his face concerning the profligate life he led. Charles would always listen gravely to what Hyde had to say, declaring that although he was ready to accept Hyde’s advice on affairs of state he felt himself to be the better judge in matters of the heart.
Chief of Hyde’s critics had been Henrietta Maria, the King’s own mother, who traced all the disagreements – and they were many – which existed between herself and her son, to this man.
Still Charles supported Hyde; and only now, when the man declared himself to be so desolate because his daughter was the wife and not the mistress of the Duke of York, did Charles begin to doubt the sincerity of his Chancellor.
He made him Baron Hyde of Hindon, and had decided that at his coronation he would create him Viscount Cornbury and Earl of Clarendon, to compensate him for his years of loyal service; but he had decided he would not be quite so trusting as hitherto.
Poor James! Charles feared he was not the most courageous of men. He was afraid of his mother. Odd how one, so small and at such great distance, could inspire terror in the hearts of her grown-up children. Henrietta Maria had made a great noise in Paris concerning this marriage – weeping, assuring all those about her that here was another instance of the cruelty of fate which was determined to remind her that she was la reine malheureuse. Had she not suffered enough! Was not the whole world against her! Charles knew full well how these tirades had run, and who had borne the brunt of them – his beloved little sister Henrietta, his sweet Minette. So James had trembled in Whitehall although it was so far from the Palais-Royal or Colombes or Chaillot or the Louvre, wherever his mother had been when calling those about her to weep for her sorrows, and the saints to bring vengeance on those who persecuted her. Then there had been his sister, Mary of Orange, who was furious that James could so far forget himself, and who had blamed herself because it was while Anne Hyde was in her retinue that she had first met the Duke.
Poor James! Alas, no hero. Alas, possessing no true chivalry. Terrified at what he had done in bringing upon himself the wrath of his formidable mother and strong-minded sister, he had declared his mistake to the world; he had lent his ears to the calumnies which those who hated the Hyde family were only too ready to pour into them. Anne was a lewd woman, he declared; she had trapped him; the child for whose sake he had rushed into marriage was after all not his.
And so poor Anne, deserted by her family and by her husband, would have been in a sorry state but for one person.
Charles shrugged his shoulders. He did not believe the calumnies directed against the poor girl, but he suspected that if he had, his reaction would not have been very different, for he could never bear to see a woman in such distress.
So the one who had visited the Duchess at her lying-in, when all the world seemed against her, was the King himself; and it was the royal hand which had been laid upon her feverish brow with, as he said, the tenderness of a brother, and it was Charles who whispered to her to have no fear for all would come right for her, since it was the envious enemies of her family who, denigrating its special talents and good fortune, had sought to harm her.
Whither the King went so must the Court go too. How could the courtiers neglect one whom the King chose to honour? ‘Come, man!’ he cried to Hyde. ‘This business is done with. ’Tis a fool who makes not the best of what cannot be mended!’
To James he said: ‘You shame me! You shame our family. The Duchess is your wife. You cared enough for her to make her that. Is your love for her then less than the fear you have for our mother? You know she is innocent of these calumnies. For the love of God, be a man.’
Thus had that most unhappy matter been satisfactorily settled, and it was then that Charles had given Hyde his peerage to show where his sympathies lay.
The next disaster had been the death of his brother, Henry of Gloucester, the younger of his brothers, and the best loved. Death had come swiftly in the guise of the dreaded smallpox; and young Henry, strong and healthy one week, had been gone the next.
Such a tragedy coming so soon after his restoration – Henry had died in September, a few weeks after the troubl
e with James had blown up, and little more than three months after the King’s return to England – dampened all pleasure, and even the sight of his beloved sisters could not entirely console him.
Minette he loved dearly – perhaps more dearly than any other person on Earth – and it was delightful and gratifying to receive her in his own country which had now acknowledged him its King, to do honour to the lovely and sprightly girl who had suffered such humiliation as a poor relation of the French Court for so long. But with Minette came her mother; Charles smiled now at the thought of Henrietta Maria, the diminutive virago, eyes flashing, hands gesticulating, longing to give James a piece of her mind and assuring everyone that she would only enter Whitehall when Anne Hyde was ordered to leave it.
And to Charles had fallen the task of placating his mother; this he did with grace and courtesy, and some cunning. For she was dependent upon his bounty for her pension, and she had been made to know that the obstinacy of her eldest son still existed beneath the easy-going manners, and that when he had made up his mind that something should be done, he could be as firmly fixed in his purpose as that little boy who had refused to take his physic and who had clung to the wooden billet which it had been his custom as a small boy to take to bed with him each night.
