“In mid-November?” jibed practical Dorothy Culpeper, shivering in the ill-heated room.
“Far better spend your time seeing if you can find something decent to wear,” advised Mistress Stuart, regarding her small Sophie’s much-mended garments with a new dismay and wondering if she could borrow suitable clothes for her baby son up in the nursery.
“Charles doesn’t have any fine clothes for himself,” his sister reminded them sadly.
“But His Majesty will be going from here to his state entry into London,” said the Dowager Queen, appearing in the open doorway with quiet stateliness. “I pray you,” do as Mistress Stuart says.”
So the young girls in her household spent the next few days furbishing their scanty wardrobes. They pressed lace collars and used their small stock of ribbons for making fresh bows. All grievances born of boredom were forgotten as, with excited laughter, they tried on each other’s garments, all anxious to look their best. And so it happened that Frances was wrapping the young Princess in her own fur-lined cloak when King Charles arrived.
There were no gentlemen in attendance, hungry or otherwise. Only his valet, Toby Rustat. And Charles had ridden in such a blinding hurry that he arrived hours before he was expected, with the consequence that the Dowager Queen had retired early, and he found himself shown by a flurried manservant into a room of giggling girls.
“You must wear it in case you are asked to go out riding. It is beginning to snow, and you do feel the cold so,”
Frances was insisting, although the cloak had been her beloved father’s last gift to her.
“Mais pour moi ton manteau est beaucoup trop long. It hangs on the ground like the train of a bride,” Henrietta was protesting, wrapped to the eyes in the proffered garment.
And so it was that Charles did not immediately see her.
Puzzled by the sudden cessation of chatter, Frances turned. She saw the tall King looking uncertainly from one of them to the other. And when she smiled at his obvious embarrassment, to her horror he suddenly leapt into decisive action, crossed the room in a few long paces and swept her up into his arms.
“Henrietta! Ma chère petite soeur!” he exclaimed in a deep, attractive voice, and kissed her soundly.
Frances struggled to free herself, to move aside.
“No, no, sir! Here is your sister,” she tried to explain, dragging her concealing cloak from the amazed Princess.
The painful moment or two of silence which followed showed him that he had embraced the wrong girl. They all realized that he might easily not have recognised Henrietta, but only Frances guessed how much the perfectly understandable mistake would hurt the sensitive young sister who had been talking so adoringly about him for months. Instinctively, she stepped backwards, trying to hide herself among her companions.
If Charles made any momentarily disappointing comparison between the tall budding beauty whom he had thought to be his relative and the delicate-looking girl who really was, he concealed it very cleverly. He had the wit to rely on frankness and sincere affection.
“My dear, forgive me! It is so long since I saw you!” He looked at Henrietta-Anne more closely, obviously liking what he saw. “But God send it may never be so long again!” And then he kissed her very tenderly and drew her down on a bench beside him. “So that you do not get a crick in your neck by having to look up so far,” he explained.
“I know I am small for my age,” she apologized, setting her disarranged hair to rights. “And although she is nearly two years younger, Frances here is more the height you had expected.”
But Frances had tactfully faded from her side; and, in any case, the King seemed to have forgotten her existence, for Henrietta reached up impulsively and put her arms round his neck. She was part of the family life from which his affectionate nature had been so abruptly torn. And when her eyes shone with such loving happiness, Charles knew that he had found something infinitely precious. Hardened and cynical as the last half of his thirty years had made him, nothing would ever impair his liking for children and young people. And here was one who had suffered grievously through their common misfortunes.
“You came alone?” she asked, almost dazed by happiness.
“Except for good old Toby. It was quicker — and cheaper.”
“Oh, Charles! Have you had enough to eat? You, too, are very thin.” Exploring the tough leanness of his arms, she discovered that his coat was almost threadbare. “And you must let Madame de Bordes mend that tear in your sleeve. She is my femme-de-chambre and so clever with her needle that it will not show.” Suddenly, in the midst of her concern, she burst out laughing. “How odd to be talking about meals and mending like this when you are King of England!”
“But still without a crown, my sweet. It will be good, I warrant you, to have the spending of some of our father’s gold coins again. Best of all, perhaps, to be able to repay some of the loyal folk who have helped me. But do not worry your pretty head about me. A French tailor is taking me on trust and is going to make me some summer clothes in the hope that I may impress my Londoners with your Paris fashions. And I will try to coerce him into sending you some of his best silks for a few new gowns.”
“But, mon cher, I do not really need clothes as you will. We live so quietly here.”
“Then it is high time you enjoyed yourself as our sister Mary does in Holland. And now that our fortunes are mending,” he added cynically, “Cousin Louis will be probably inviting you to Court.”
“If you really think that, then I pray you, dear Charles, send some for my friends here, whom I will present to you.” In her eager loyalty she was about to do so when she remembered a far more pressing duty. “But first you must go to our mother, the Queen,” she reminded him regretfully. “If she had already heard of your arrival…”
He stood up immediately. “Yes, I must wait upon Mam,” he agreed. And if their glances met in an amused, resigned smile, it helped to draw their hearts all the closer.
“I had so much wanted you to tell me about this man Monk,” she said hurriedly. “I shall always pray for him.”
Impulsively he bent to kiss her again before leaving.
“Had it been a century instead of six years since we met, how could I have mistaken you for any other girl?” he exclaimed.
He spoke softly, with intimate contrition, but Frances overheard him, and later in the evening, when all the girls of the Queen Dowager’s household were presented to him, she realized that, for all his charming courtesy, she was just “any other girl” to him.
“Our cousin on the Blantyre side,” he recalled, and picked up a very sleepy Sophie in his arms, and spoke to Mistress Stuart of her recent grief and with understanding appreciation of the long years of privation which all present had suffered for their loyalty.
With his coming a new kind of zest seemed to bring the quiet suburban château to life. He radiated the easy good humour which had once made a rough old Irish peer swear that he would sooner live with his exiled prince on six sous a day than be tasting all the pleasures of the world without him. Even the elder ladies of the household ceased worrying unduly because the fare was plain and the faggots few. Charles listened dutifully to all his mother’s advice, even if he had no intention of taking it. He pleased her immeasurably by creating Master Jermyn, the over-trusted master of her household, Earl of St. Albans. And never once did he refer to his anger when she had tried almost forcibly to convert his youngest brother to her religion after the Parliamentarians had allowed “young Henry Stuart” to come to her from Carisbrooke. The moment of his rarely provoked authority was finished, and never again alluded to, even though at the time her meddling might have cost him all hope of regaining his crown. He had sent for Henry and kept him with him, and it had been the first taste of freedom the lad had ever enjoyed.
Of an evening Charles regaled his mother’s household with such exciting and amusing stories of his almost incredible escape after the Battle of Worcester that they forgot the meagreness o
f the fire or that it was snowing outside. He encouraged Henrietta to play on her harpsichord while he learned from Janton the words of the latest Paris song, and in return taught the delighted girls some rather less respectable ones in English. Especially they loved an odd ditty with which the London ’prentices were forever plaguing every steeple-hatted Puritan. While the apparently innocuous words were all about blackbirds and maytrees, each verse ended with:
“’Tis hoped before the end of June
The burds will sing another tune!”
And these two lines, he explained, were always bellowed with added gusto.
“They know it is the Stuarts who will call the next tune!” cried Frances, clapping her hands and letting a holly wreath with which she was decorating the hall fall upon Madame de Motteville’s unfortunate cat.
The girls were planning a masque which was supposed to be a secret. “Like the one we saw that one time Queen Dowager Anne invited us to the Louvre,” insisted Dorothy Culpeper. Lady Dalkeith had been prevailed upon to write the words, and Janton was to arrange the music. “And Frances must invent the dances,” they decided unanimously.
“We could never emulate those graceful French nymphs,” sighed Frances.
“You know you have been trying to do so in front of the mirror ever since,” laughed Henrietta.
“Well, we can do our best,” agreed Frances, nothing loath. “After all, it must be years since poor Charles has had a chance to enjoy a real Christmas.”
Living in the sheltered atmosphere of Queen Henrietta-Maria’s household, she had little idea of the many disreputable pleasures at which Charles had managed to snatch. And here, at Colombes, he seemed content to forget both passing amours and political anxieties and to rest a while, assured of three meals a day and enjoying the engaging company of his young sister. “Minette” he called her — “My little puss” — and swore that as soon as he found himself back at Whitehall he would send for her and make her learn to speak less execrable English. “Shame on you! And you Exeter born!” he teased, when she talked about General Monk sending a sheep to take him home.
But the Christmas they planned so hilariously was not to be. After little more than a week’s visit Charles received an urgent message advising him to return to Brussels, partly because he was still not too welcome on French soil, and partly so that he might be nearer at hand if events should move more quickly than was expected in England. The snow had ceased, A thaw had set in. Through squelching mud, with borrowed money and his mother’s blessing, he set out on his travels again.
“For the last time, please God!” he prophesied cheerfully, letting Toby fasten a fashionable new cloak across his shoulders but insisting upon adjusting his own saddle girth. “Like I used to do when I was William Jackson, the groom, escaping from Worcester,” he reminded Henrietta, hoping to change her tears to smiles.
For days after he had ridden away, rain lashed desolately on the grey waters of the Seine and against the windows of the château. Most of the Christmas festivities were abandoned, and those which were attempted fell remarkably flat. The much-discussed masque was never performed at all. Henrietta-Anne could talk of nothing and no one save her wonderful eldest brother, so that poor Frances, who had to listen to her, grew distinctly tired of him. And as Twelfth Night passed and wilted wreaths were pulled down from tapestried walls, the deferred retreat to the convent at Chaillot loomed ahead.
But Charles did not forget them. Henrietta received an affectionate little note from him while he was still on his unpleasant journey. And later, from Brussels, although he made no mention of his own important affairs, he wrote commiseratingly of the tedious time she must be passing at Chaillot in the rain, and promised to sit specially for a portrait which he had promised to her beloved femme-de-chambre, Madame des Bordes. And when he ordered clothes for himself from his French tailor, he did not forget to make purchases for her and for her friends.
A large parcel arrived by pack-horse, and Frances and Madame des Bordes helped her to unwrap its welcome contents.
“And, of course, we do need new clothes now, just as he foretold,” said Frances, excitedly spreading out the lovely silks and damasks in the privacy of the Princess’s bedchamber. “Everyone comes to Queen Henrietta-Maria’s salon these days. Gifts of game and venison pour in from King Louis and his mother, and we are all invited to the Louvre.”
“Where you dance like a nymph indeed, so that Louis himself notices you.”
“And where his young brother Philippe cannot take his eyes of sa belle cousine Henrietta-Anne. Heaven preserve the poor love-sick young fop if he ever sees you in that flowered damask!”
They sank down laughing on a chest at the foot of the Princess’s bed, with all the unaccustomed finery spread about them.
“Truly, it is like a dream to have pretty clothes and enjoyable meals,” sighed Frances, happily.
“Because we have never before had them, either of us.”
“You know, when all King Louis’ dressed-up pages were handing round those luscious sweetmeats at the banquet last week it was all I could do to take one languidly like the other guests and not to snatch.”
“Moi aussi,” confessed the youngest Princess of England.
And then their frivolous laughter died away and they sat looking honestly into each other’s eyes. And when Madame des Bordes had gone away on some errand, Frances said quietly: “Tell me, ’Rietta: at the Louvre, surrounded by all that unaccustomed pomp and ceremony and luxury, how do you really feel?”
“Frightened,” admitted Henrietta, after a moment’s thought. “As if most of the people were too grand to be real.”
“But you were born to it. By blood, if not by usage. And even in our poor circumstances your mother has never for a moment let any of us forget it.”
“All the same, I have been overwhelmed — uncertain — sometimes. When my mother expected Louis to lead me out first in the coronto, and everyone could see he wanted to dance with Cardinal Mazarin’s niece, I did not know what I should do. Maman was right about the etiquette, of course, but I found it very humiliating. And when one is not accustomed to being humiliated one goes all proud inside. So I pleaded a strained ankle and danced with no one at all.”
Frances jumped up and kissed her.
“My poor ’Rietta! How dull it must have been for you when the rest of us danced till dawn!”
“You certainly didn’t look overawed,” laughed Henrietta, “with all the fashionable French gallants clamouring to partner you.”
Scarcely more than a child as she was, Frances stood still, staring ecstatically before her.
“Once I stopped talking too much through sheer nervousness it was like coming into an exciting new world. Finding that men liked me, I mean.”
“How could they help it, petite imbécile?”
“They like us both. But how could we know? Hidden away here we scarcely ever see a man who hasn’t a tonsure!”
“You saw my brother a few weeks ago, and he kissed you.”
“And then discovered his mistake and never looked at me again.” Helping Henrietta to spread out a taffeta gown with tiny pink bows down the front of the skirt, she paused to look up searchingly ait her cousin’s contented face. “They do say that he should be a good judge of feminine beauty, because if he sees a girl who attracts him…”
“Who are ‘they’?” enquired his sister, quickly defensive.
“Well, Dorothy and the older ones,” mumbled Frances. “With a bachelor king, of course, these bits of gossip always get exaggerated.”
She was only repeating sedately what Mistress Stuart had said when she herself had been probing for further information on the interesting subject. But she had learned what she wanted to know. She was sure that even his sheltered little sister was not wholly ignorant of his reputation. That it must have penetrated even to the strictly-run, priest-ridden Château.
“As soon as he is really King again I expect he will get married,” prophesied Henriet
ta, as if that would automatically be the end of all such unpleasant rumours.
Frances sank down on a window-seat with hands clasped on her lap.
“And then we shall all go back to Scotland!” she said, as if relating the happy ending of some exciting romance.
“Or England,” said Henrietta, with rather less enthusiasm.
“Well, anyway — for all of us — home.”
“But you cannot possibly remember your home.”
“No. But my father used to tell me about it. And there is a painting of our manor hanging in my mother’s room.”
“I have seen it. A charming turreted house beside a loch.”
Frances scarcely heard her. She was back in her own interpretation of the magic word “home”.
“We used to stand before it, my hand in his. And he would tell me about it — what was behind each pictured window and each garden wall. I think he was not only trying to make it real for me, but wanting to keep every detail of it in his own memory.”
“It must have been much harder for them — for those older ones who loved and remembered,” said Henrietta softly. “They had so much more to give up — for our cause.”
“But at least they have had a real home. One could love a house almost as passionately as a person, don’t you think? And with a family estate one inherits a love that has always been there. There were deep window-seats, and little stools for the children about the hearth. And a wide, shallow staircase — to welcome guests, he said. And copper warming-pans hanging in the firelit kitchen. And a long cool dairy where my mother superintended the maids making butter. And at one corner of the picture you could just see her herb garden.”
It was Henrietta’s turn to survey her friend quizzically.
“But I did not know you cared for domestic things like that.”
“What chance have I had? When my mother and Sophie and little Walter and I go home…”
Henrietta, in real distress, went to her and laid a hand on her arm.
“But, Frances, surely you do not want to leave us? My mother is so fond of yours, especially now that they are both widows. And you and I…of course you must stay at Court with us.”
Lady on the Coin Page 2