Another resolve was that she must go to the Louvre to visit Dr. Cosin, for he must know about the baby from herself and no one else. Lord Taaffe went too. Never in his life had he felt more embarrassed but he would not let Lucy go alone.
Dr. Cosin took the news very badly indeed. They were the last couple in the world of whom he would have expected such a thing and he told them so with both grief and anger, his hands shaking so much that he upset his inkpot all over the manuscript of the book he was writing, utterly destroying the very purest gem of all his thinking, whose true lustre he was not able subsequently to recover. He loved Lucy, and of all the young men about the King the one he had most respected had been Lord Taaffe, and he told them that too as they mopped up the ink. And what of the King? That this should happen in his absence was something His Majesty surely did not deserve. He said that too, out of the bitterness and grief of his spirit, and then abruptly pulled himself up.
Was this the way to talk to sinners? Was he not himself a sinner? And was he not to blame for this? These were two members of his own flock and he as their shepherd should have protected them with more constant prayer. And the Queen too was to blame. She should have taken better care of a girl whom she knew to be her daughter-in-law. Lucy had been living all this time with some poor little milliner in a back street when she and her son should have been at the Louvre under the care of himself and the Queen. Mea culpa, he said to himself, mea culpa, and he fell silent, looking down at his clasped hands, composing himself to listen patiently to the culprits’ excuses.
But none came. Surely they were not brazen? He looked up in sharp anxiety, but they were not brazen. There were tears on Lucy’s cheeks and Lord Taaffe’s weather-beaten face had the dignity of his selfless regret. But they were making no excuses and Dr. Cosin suddenly felt humbled by their silence. He himself had always had a particular aversion to the sins of the flesh and in his own youth had been protected from them by the depth of his pride and self-respect, but the founder of his faith had handled such matters gently, reserving the divine wrath for pride, hypocrisy or oppression of the weak. Dr. Cosin had not oppressed the weak as far as he knew, he hoped he was not a hypocrite, but a proud man he undoubtedly was.
When he spoke again it was to say, “I have always been deficient in the abandonment of love, that utmost self-giving that does not count the cost. I have much to learn from you both.” They looked at him in astonishment and he sighed deeply. “But the adversary likes to trip us up with the best that is in us, and that is the human predicament.”
“One cannot go back,” said Lucy sadly.
“No,” said Dr. Cosin. “But we can learn nothing in this world until we have learnt our own weakness.” Suddenly his unwonted gentleness fell from him and he swung back to his usual mood of fierce command. “Lucy, you will now take up residence at the Louvre. It is where you should have been from the beginning.”
Lucy’s mood changed too and she lifted her head to do battle. “No, sir. The Queen would not have me here in my present circumstances.”
“I see no reason why she should be told of them. I insist that you come to the Louvre.”
“Sir, I cannot leave Betje.”
“It is not fitting that Prince James and his mother should be living over a shop in a back street.”
“Sir, I will not leave Betje. She is the best friend I have and she is an excellent midwife.”
“In this very room, Lucy, you wondered if the Louvre would one day be your home.”
“Sir, must all my foolish remarks be remembered against me?”
Lord Taaffe, recovering now from the embarrassment and strain of the last half-hour, could no longer restrain laughter like the neighing of trumpets. Dr. Cosin looked at him reproachfully. “I should be obliged, my lord, if instead of laughing at my predicament you would come to my assistance.”
“Sir, you do not know Lucy as well as I do,” said Lord Taaffe. “Argument is useless. But I can assure you she is living in a comfortable house with good friends. She is happy there and should stay where she is.”
“I bow to your superior wisdom,” said Dr. Cosin drily.
2
Yet Lucy went to live at the Louvre. The early summer brought not only renewed fighting to the streets but also a spell of intensely hot weather and Paris was not salubrious. “A damnable foul stench,” was Lord Taaffe’s description of what his nose encountered when he turned into the street where Lucy lived. The Parisians took the turmoil, heat and smells of their city more or less in their stride but the country-bred Lucy was weighed down with lassitude and her face had an alarming pallor.
Lord Taaffe was now suddenly in a state of temporary solvency for one of the Royalist agents, coming from Ireland, had brought him a gift from his family, a valuable heirloom diamond ring. He sold it and hired a coach and on a day when the streets were quiet took Lucy and Jackie for a drive to one of the fresher parts of Paris. The jolting of the coach was perhaps more tiring than the better air was reviving, but Lucy was so cheered by the sight of green trees, by Lord Taaffe’s presence and Jackie’s joy, that she enjoyed her outing and forgot her anxiety over Betje’s husband. He had not gone to work that morning, feeling very ill, and though the placid Betje described his disease as just a summer indisposition Lucy, though she had not seen him, had felt alarmed.
She remembered her alarm as they turned into the familiar street, and when they drew up at the door and a white-faced Betje came out to meet them she turned cold. “Do not come in!” said Betje.
Taking no notice of her warning Lucy moved impulsively to go to her but Lord Taaffe was too quick. He got out himself and stood in front of the coach door. “What is it, Betje?” he asked.
“My husband,” said Betje. “He has smallpox. I have had it but Lucy has not.”
“I must help Betje,” said Lucy. “I never catch things. Theo, get out of my way.” With her hands on his shoulders she shook him hard but he was an immovable column of obstinacy.
“I will take her somewhere safe,” he said to Betje, “and then come back and collect the things she and Jackie will need until she can come back to you again.”
“I do not catch things and I must help Betje,” cried Lucy, beside herself, and she dug her fingers into Lord Taaffe’s shoulders.
He swung round angrily. “Do not be a fool, Lucy. What of Jackie, the King’s son? What of my child? What effect will a mother with smallpox have on her? If you do not think of the children I do. Let go of me and sit down.”
“He is right, Lucy my love,” Betje called to her. “It is the children you must think of.”
Lucy went limp and sat down. Lord Taaffe jumped in beside her and they drove away. Jackie, affected by the atmosphere, screamed not blue but purple murder. When he had yelled himself silent Lucy said, “Theo, you said ‘her.’ Do you want a girl?”
“Yes,” he said, and grinned down at her, his anger gone.
She smiled back at him. “Do you know, for a moment or two I quite forgot the children. Can you imagine such a thing as a mother forgetting her children?”
“Confronted with poor Betje’s face I am not surprised. But he will recover, Lucy. These Frenchmen are very tough.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the Louvre to ask Dr. Cosin’s advice.”
Dr. Cosin gave it with decision. “I said before and I say again that Lucy and her son should be at the Louvre. Had I been attended to upon the previous occasion much distress of mind would have been avoided.” He reached for a sheet of paper and dipped his pen in the ink.
“Sir, I cannot come here without the Queen Dowager’s knowledge,” said Lucy firmly.
“Certainly not,” said Dr. Cosin, his head already bent over his squeaking pen. “I am writing a short note explaining the circumstances and requesting the honour of Her Majesty’s permission for your move.”
“And I cannot be pa
rted from Jackie. He must not live in the royal apartments and I in another part of the Palace. He has never been away from me and he would scream and be ill.”
“That I am at this moment pointing out to Her Majesty.”
“And the Queen must know about my condition. I will not deceive her.”
Dr. Cosin looked at Lord Taaffe over the top of his spectacles. “My lord, will you be so good as to ask one of the Palace servants to take this note to Her Majesty. My lord will kindly command the servant to wait for a reply.” Lord Taaffe left the room and Dr. Cosin turned to Lucy. “Say nothing to the Queen at present. Recent regrettable circumstances do not cancel out the fact that you are the King’s wife and that your place is here fulfilling your primary duty, the care of the King’s son.”
Jackie had been for some while sitting on the floor happily employed in tearing out the pages of one of Dr. Cosin’s books, also on the floor. He had been not so much tearing as coaxing them out very softly, for he had surprising patience with such employment, but now with a crow of delight he ripped out a page and waved it aloft.
“Jackie, oh Jackie!” cried poor Lucy.
“The matter is of no consequence,” said Dr. Cosin with great and noble gentleness. “Do not chastise the child for the blame is mine that I allow my books to overflow upon the floor.” He peered over his spectacles. “Which book is it?”
Lucy handed it to him. “No matter, a trifling book,” he murmured. But his heart was heavy. A precious page of manuscript destroyed and now this especially valuable book. Service to the Stuarts always had been, and always would be, costly to their loyal servants. There was something about the family, some element of waywardness and unreliability, that could cause great damage to those who served them. He looked at the beautiful child on the floor, gazing up at him, his stifled sob infinitely pathetic. Jackie had been expecting punishment but now he sensed an absence of anger, an aura of tenderness, and judged the moment right for propitiation. He smiled tremulously and extended the royal hand. He was a typical Stuart. Nothing could be refused to the exquisite grace of their pleading.
“There are no lollipops but there is an orange in the cupboard,” Dr. Cosin said brokenly to Lucy. “One of my congregation most kindly gave it to me. I try to keep something there in case the Princess should escape again.”
Lucy took the one orange from the empty cupboard and gave it to Jackie. It was a fine orange and looked in the sunlight as though it were pure gold. She did not know why it was she felt so deeply moved as she placed the orb in the hands of His Royal Highness.
Lord Taaffe came back and it seemed that they waited a long while for the return of the servant with Her Majesty’s reply. Lucy guessed that she had been discussing it with Lord Jermyn and perhaps with Minette’s governess, since the answer had been written by her at the Queen’s dictation. Lady Morton had gone home to see to the estates of her husband, who had died fighting for Montrose, but perhaps some of her kindness had descended to her successor, and Lord Jermyn was an easy-going man. The answer was favourable. It was the Queen’s command that the King’s son and his mother should be accommodated at the Louvre.
Lucy never went back to the rooms over the bakery because Betje’s husband died, and Betje, who had always appeared so reasonable and calm, took a neurotic hatred to the house. Her husband’s illness had exhausted her, her loss had broken her heart, and the fisherman’s daughter suddenly felt an alien in the hot crowded city. But she would not go back to The Hague, she said, until Lucy had no further need of her, and she moved her innumerable bandboxes to the Louvre and was established there as Lucy’s maid.
No permission was asked for this removal and the Palace took it for granted that the beautiful Mrs. Barlow should have her maid with her. Betje however even in grief had her head screwed on the right way. Knowing that the proceeds from the sale of Lucy’s diamond brooch must be dwindling fast, and Lucy be quite unable to pay her a salary, she opened a miniature millinery establishment in an empty room near her bedchamber. The convenience for the hierarchy of the Palace servants was very great. Neither of the two queens ever knew it was there.
Lucy found it hard to keep hold of that serenity of mind which is considered necessary in a pregnant mother. “I must not have another nervous child,” she kept repeating to herself. “Not another screamer like Jackie. I must not have nightmares like I did before Jackie. It is not fair on my child. I must be calm.”
It was not easy for they were in great anxiety for Charles. They heard that the invasion of England was to take place at last and then there was no more news.
3
Charles had been assured that as soon as he crossed the border every Royalist in England would rise for him. The Government, he was told, would be overthrown even before he reached London.
Early in August he marched to Carlisle with his army of ten thousand men, and though the Cromwellian army was dangerously near he was received with joy. Then, as the Queen of Bohemia had warned him, he found that his most dangerous enemies were the ones behind his back. The Covenanting ministers who had followed him from Scotland publicized the fact that he had promised to enforce the Presbyterian faith on all his subjects, with the result that the expected Royalist rising did not take place. The disappointed Scottish troops began to desert. Charles marched bravely on but Cromwell and his army outstripped him and were encamped outside Worcester before he arrived there. On September the third, early in the morning, he and his staff met high up on the cathedral tower to hold their last desperate council of war. They decided to divide the army and attack from two different points. As soon as the King and his cavalry had broken through the Parliamentary lines General Leslie, commanding his Scottish cavalry, would follow on with a second attack.
The charge of the Royalist horse with the King at the head of them was splendid. They broke through the enemy lines and the Parliamentary troops gave way, but the following struggle became desperate and presently Charles knew why. Leslie and his cavalry were not there. The General was sitting motionless at the head of motionless troops. Charles fought his way back to him and cried out, “In the name of God, charge!” But the General and his men remained like carved statues. Charles rallied his men and charged again but his outnumbered and exhausted troops were pushed back against the walls of the city. He would have appealed to Leslie again but an old cavalier stopped him, crying out, “He has betrayed you. You must shift for yourself or you will be delivered up as your father was.”
The battle raged now both within and without the city walls and Charles rode back into the city to a scene of horror. The autumn sunshine shone upon streets piled with dead and wounded men and horses, and blood was running in the gutters. They fought on, the King riding from one broken regiment to another, ceaselessly rallying them, calm with the greatness of his despair. But at last it was over and Cromwell’s army poured into the city. The King was still on horseback, still unhurt, and Wilmot and Buckingham were alive and beside him. A group gathered round to protect him but he refused to fly. They fought their way to a bridge, at the south of the city, and defended themselves there till evening.
It grew dark and still Charles would not fly. “Shoot me,” he said to his friends. “I will not live.” Buckingham and Wilmot pleaded with him. If he was taken prisoner and executed the Royalist cause was lost for ever. Would that be his father’s wish? At last, hardly knowing what he did, he yielded and rode out of the city with his friends to become just one more among the pitiful little groups who were struggling away over the darkening fields towards the refuge of the woods. He did not know when he rode away that two thousand men had died for him that day and that three thousand more, many of them badly wounded and less fortunate than the dead, faced the tortures and miseries of imprisonment.
4
Before the news of that disastrous battle could reach France Lucy’s baby had been born. Jackie’s birth had been hard but this was long-drawn-out and agoni
zing and Betje did not think that Lucy would survive either the birth itself or, when that was over, the collapse that followed. At first she was too tired to want to survive, and she had strange illusions. Sometimes she was floating down the Thames; she could feel the motion of the water and it brought her exquisite peace; she had only to let go and it would take her to the sea from which she had come. Then she would remember that she must not leave her children and she would hold Lord Taaffe’s hard hand and his grip kept her back.
Once she floated apart from her body and looked down upon it from above, seeing it as a tattered garment to which she had no wish to return. But she saw also the minute round red head of her daughter lying beside the body in the bed and in a flash she was back in her body; to feel once more the pressure of the hard little head in the hollow of her shoulder seemed worth the seven heavens. She must not leave the children and after that return to the red-headed baby she did not want to. Her glowing baby had risen in her life like a new spring breaking through the weeping of winter, and was the glory of the world.
In actual fact Mary was not a pretty child. She was small as yet, though healthy and compact. Her face was red, the hard grip of her small hand extraordinary. The difficulties of her birth did not seem to have affected her in any way. She was contented and she cried only when she was hungry; and then with passion. Her likeness to her father was ludicrous. In spite of his anxiety he had laughed at sight of her; and so did everyone else, although they hardly knew why. Just a wrinkled red-faced brat with a little round head as hard as a bullet, but she had something about her, some exquisite promise. “She will always be happy,” said her mother. “And funny and good.” She had not felt that way about Jackie. Mixed with her adoration of her son there was always somewhere at the back of her mind an aching anxiety. But for Mary she had no fears and her love for her was one of pure joy.
The Child From the Sea Page 63