“How can you seem so gay and happy, married to a man whom you do not love?” Frances could not refrain from asking, wondering how much Henrietta’s change from gentle self-depreciation to almost hectic high spirits might be a mask for marital disappointment.
“Because I do not ask the impossible,” replied Henrietta with a sigh. “And surely both you and I have had good training in making the most of what we can get.”
It was so seldom in this sparkling new world that the two of them could talk quietly alone, as they used. And inevitably Henrietta’s exalted status made their relationship more formal. But now, after the departure of Madame de Motteville, who had been sent by the Dowager Queen to try to persuade her daughter to a more sober way of life, Henrietta was resting for a few minutes on the terrace, with only her cousin in attendance.
“Now your various guests have gone I expected to be de trop,” said Frances, looking down into the rose garden where the Duke could be seen strolling arm-in-arm with a remarkably handsome courtier. “But although you have been married only a few weeks, Monsieur seldom comes and sits with you now. And when he does there is always that odious Chevalier de Lorraine.”
Bleakly the bride’s glance followed hers, and, being momentarily without any of her usual animation, she looked much older than seventeen.
“Yes,” she said quietly, before turning to dazzle another approaching group of guests, “here will always be the Chevalier de Lorraine.”
Frances did not fully understand. She disliked the young man instinctively, not only because he never noticed that she herself was pretty or because he so often provoked the Duke to be rude to Henrietta. She would have liked to ask more about him. But the Chamberlain of the household of Madame of France was bowing low and ushering forward some more frivolous visitors who were to help her arrange a ballet. Several of them were Henrietta’s personal friends, and because they were of the younger set she hastened to put them at ease, so that they were soon chattering and laughing, and inevitably the conversation soon turned to the exciting prospect of her eldest brother’s marriage to the Infanta Catherine of Portugal.
“So it is definitely settled?” said the Comte de Guiche, manoeuvring his way through the throng as usual until he could drape his elegant figure over the back of Henrietta’s chair. “At the Countess d’Arblay’s card party last night the betting was on that Princess of Orange. Everyone thought that as he had received so much hospitality in Holland…”
“They should know him better,” said his sister. “Princess Louise refused him when he was a penniless exile. Is it likely that Charles would marry her now?”
“What is this Infanta of Portugal like?” asked Frances, with her insatiable curiosity about other people.
But nobody seemed to know.
“Small and dark,” someone suggested.
“And almost certainly very pious, having been brought up strictly in some Lisbon convent,” put in someone else.
“Charles Stuart will soon undo all that,” sniggered de Guiche behind his hand. And the other young men laughed knowingly.
“Our mother is pleased by his choice,” Henrietta told them reprovingly.
“Because the lady is a Catholic,” said Mistress Stuart, who had come to take her elder daughter back to Colombes. “Have you heard, Madame, when Princess Catherine of Braganza will be sailing to England for her wedding?”
“In the spring, they say, dear Mistress Stuart.”
“And who will be appointed to her household?” clamoured several eager feminine voices.
“She will take her own ladies from Lisbon, of course,” Henrietta reminded them.
“For, poor thing, she will not even know our language,” murmured Frances, only half listening to the blandishments of Monsieur Baptiste, the clever Florentine, who arranged all the King’s classical ballets at Fontainebleu, and saw in her a likely Venus.
“But it is not usual for many of them to stay longer than to see her settled down,” Henrietta was explaining. “The Queen of England must have an English household.”
“Which should mean many handsome new appointments for the wives and daughters of your brother’s ministers,” remarked the Comte de Guiche, offering Henrietta his arm for a promenade.
“And especially for those who have shared his exile, let us hope!” Mistress Stuart told him tartly.
After the good-looking pair had drifted away for a mild flirtation by the water-lily pond, chatter and speculation went on, and Frances found herself listening to it avidly across the amusing ditties with which Monsieur Baptiste was regaling her, and which at any other time she would have been storing up for future use.
“Not only must our new Queen have English ladies-dressers, maids-of-honour and so forth — but since she cannot be very old herself, some of them should be young,” some aspiring English girl was saying.
“Never a dull moment now, at the new English Court, with King Charles and the amusing Duke of Buckingham,” said another yearningly.
“It could be a wonderful appointment…”
“If the Queen herself is kind to serve,” joined in Frances over her shoulder.
“All we know is that she has been strictly brought up. She could be a vixen.”
“The vixen from Lisbon,” mimed the Florentine, trying to hold France’s wandering attention by pretending to scratch at her flawless skin with hands clenched like claws.
But she managed to elude his drolleries, making the excuse that her mother had come for her and that one of the Dowager Queen’s coaches was waiting for them in the courtyard.
As she went indoors the sound of chattering voices died away. The suggestion of other girls’ vague ambitions faded. Her own began to crystallize. A servant brought her cloak to a quiet anteroom. “Catherine of Braganza,” she murmured softly, when the man in the fantastic Orleans livery had bowed himself out. “What a lovely name! She should be kind.”
Frances arranged the hood of her cape as becomingly as possible over her bright hair. She loitered, consideringly. The thought of being in a household where she might be curbed from worldly pleasures again, appalled her, but since too she had been strictly brought up — although not in a convent — surely such a mistress need not be wholly incompatible? And, being alone, she could not forebear from striking an attitude or two before the mirror. “And Mistress Frances Theresa Stuart,” she added, announcing herself with a flourish to the empty room. “Maid-of-Honour to her Britannic Majesty Queen Catherine.”
She and her mother drove homeward in their borrowed coach through the Paris streets in unusual silence. Both, had they but known it, were thinking along the same lines. Frances wanted to be where life was fullest. Deprived of home and husband, Mistress Stuart was growing more astutely ambitious for her children. Neither of them spoke of their hope lest the other should laugh at its sheer impossibility.
But, sooner than lose time, Mistress Stuart almost forced an opportunity to speak of the matter to the Dowager Queen. She approached it circuitously, speaking as tactfully as possible of their mutual anxiety for their daughters’ morals in so lax a Court.
“For their good name rather than for their morals,” corrected Henrietta-Maria proudly. “The serpent tongue of gossip and scandal are too dangerous to be given any encouragement. That is why I asked Madame de Motteville to speak a judicious word of warning to Madame.”
“Your Majesty means because of the King? It must be hard indeed, because there is so little you can do. Whereas a while ago I nearly asked your permission to take my children back to Scotland.”
“You mean before Louis’ marriage, when he was making so much of your Frances?”
“Yes. And when he heard of it, in order to keep her in the country, His Majesty even hinted to me that his intentions were honourable,” Mistress Stuart’s face was softened by a reminiscent smile. “But I am not quite so gullible as that.”
Henrietta-Maria, too, had to smile. “Obviously he was not accustomed to a Scotswoman’s habitual comm
on sense. And I must say your daughter herself acted shrewdly for her tender age.”
“She certainly tried to avoid being alone with him. Indeed, Madame, I am sure she was much relieved when His Majesty suddenly became aware of your daughter’s devastating charm.”
“‘Suddenly’ is the word, dear Sophia. As soon as someone had the heart to see that she had enough to eat and the right kind of clothes! Far from admiring her before, he has said on more than one occasion that he could not understand why his brother wanted to marry the bones of the Holy Innocents.”
“He said that — about our beloved Princess!”
“Milord St. Albans overheard him. When — so meagre was my relatives’ charity — the poor child was well nigh starving. She certainly was thin. And innocent, I hope.”
“And now so much material comfort is thrust upon them that we begin to fear it may destroy their carefully instilled spiritual values.” With calculated effect Mistress Stuart heaved a prodigious sigh. “I have been wondering if I might be doing the right thing, if I might perhaps ask Your Majesty to spare me to take her to England now? If by some miracle a small place might be found for her at the new Queen’s Court?”
Beginning to perceive the object of the eagerly solicited interview, the Dowager Queen rose wearily and placed a kindly hand on her faithful friend’s shoulder.
“Do not worry, dear Sophia. Much as I shall miss you, I shall not stand in your way,” she said. And, crossing the room to her bureau, she picked up a letter. “Had you allowed me more time to read and consider my correspondence from the Lord Chamberlain at Whitehall, I would have told you sooner. I already know that your Frances was one of the first to be chosen to attend my future daughter-in-law.”
All protocol forgotten, Sophia Stuart sank down on an oak chest before one of the long windows. “Already chosen… One of the first…” she gasped.
“To be one of the four maids-of-honour.”
“Because she is a Stuart? Or for her liveliness and beauty, perhaps?”
“Vraiment, elle est la plus belle fille du monde,” agreed Henrietta’s mother generously.
Mistress Stuart slid to her knees to kiss the ageing Queen’s hand. “And Your Majesty will let us go?”
“I will not only let you go, but I will keep your younger daughter in my household and train her to attend me.”
Although Sophia Stuart was overwhelmed with gratitude, she was not the woman to let the grass grow under her feet.
“If Your Majesty would write a letter to King Charles, recommending my Frances…”
But Henrietta-Maria was not a Medici for nothing. Her shrewdness in such matters outran even Scottish common sense.
“Do not ask me. Ask my daughter,” she recommended, rather ruefully. “A letter from his beloved Minette will do your Frances far more good.”
So after the Christmas revels were past and the King of England’s marriage definitely arranged, Henrietta wrote the letter to him with tears in her eyes.
“I would not miss this opportunity of writing to you by Madame Stuart, who is taking her daughter to be one of the maids of the Queen, your wife. Had it not been for this purpose I assure you I should have been very sorry to let her go from her, for she is the prettiest girl imaginable and the most fitted to adorn a Court…” And then, out of her approaching loneliness, she added: “To see Your Majesty again is the thing I most desire.”
“How you will miss her after all these years,” sympathized Madame des Bordes, standing beside the writing-table with a little gold tray of sealing-wax in her hand.
“Yet somehow of late the difference in our ages seems more apparent,” said Henrietta, sealing her letter and sitting empty-handed before it.
“Surely that is only natural, Madame, now that you are married?”
“Yes, of course, dear Borbor,” agreed Henrietta, reverting to the nickname which she had used from babyhood. “But quite apart from that, my cousin is such a strange, incalculable creature. Sometimes she amazes me by the clarity of her insight, but more and more often of late she exasperates me because she will not grow up.”
Widowed Marie des Bordes looked down at her young mistress with tender understanding.
“Few of us mature until we are moulded by suffering,” she said.
“Frances grieved deeply for her father and her lost home.”
“But she has not yet had to meet difficulties in her everyday life, and overcome them,” said Madame des Bordes, knowing all too well the difficulties of her beloved charge’s marriage.
“You are thinking of the Chevalier de Lorraine, and how facing that problem with apparent equanimity has made me seem older.” Henrietta’s words came slowly, it being a subject she never spoke of — not even to her mother, who had been so pleased about the worldly importance of her marriage. “Were I a true Medici, I suppose I should poison him,” she added, pressing her seal down savagely into the hot wax. “But as my blood is diluted with the gentleness of a Scots saint I endure the humiliation of Lorraine’s constant presence, and face the world with a masquerade of gaiety. What hurts me most about Frances,” she added, almost inconsequently, “is not that she will be leaving us, but that she wants to go.”
Madame des Bordes reached for the handbell to summon her mistress’s dressers.
“Your Grace will not miss her so much in a few months’ time, when your baby is born,” she prophesied.
“Please God it is a boy! Particularly now the Queen has one,” exclaimed Henrietta fervently, knowing how her husband, if jealous or frustrated, could darken the whole palace with his vindictive bouts of temper. “If it should be a girl I shall feel like throwing it into the Seine.”
Knowing the Princess’s lifelong struggle against ill health and the revulsion she must feel towards physical contact with her husband, was halfway towards forgiving the wicked petulance of such a remark.
“Yet if the same disappointment were to befall your brother,” soothed Madame des Bordes, who worshipped him, “much as he needs a son, he would love the sweet mite just the same.”
“I believe he would,” admitted Henrietta, rising to kiss her with a shame-faced smile. “But let us hope that Catherine of Braganza will give him a whole string of sons. All as tall and strong and tolerant as he.”
Six
“The Palace here at Hampton Court is old and fascinating,” wrote Frances to her mother, who, now that her daughter’s position at Court was established, was visiting relations in Scotland near her old home. “The gardens are beautifully set out, and all we mayds-of-honour are well lodged. We are not at all grand here, as the King and Queen seeme to enjoy being simple. The Queen is most gracious and kind to me, and has twice asked me if I am homesicke for France, hopeing that I am not. She and the King seems to be very happy…”
Here Frances, who was never to spell correctly or to be a fluent letter-writer, and who, although bi-lingual, wrote more easily in the French language than in English, dropped her quill and read through her letter from the beginning. Surely it was long enough and descriptive enough to please even her mother, who was avid for details of her new life. How could she be expected to sort out and to put down on paper all the new impressions which were now crowding upon her? It was impossible, Frances decided. Such confidences would have to wait until their next meeting, for Mistress Stuart was to live in London with the younger children when the summer was over. It would be some time before Sophie would be old enough to be of any use to Queen Henrietta-Maria.
Frances hastily scrawled an affectionate message to her sister and the little Walter and signed herself: “Your dutiful and loving daughter, F. T. Stuart.”
Gazing dreamily at her name as she had just written it, she fell to wondering how long it would be before that name was altered — a train of thought natural enough, for here at Hampton Court, with the King and Queen still on their honeymoon, love and marriage seemed to be in the very air.
“He is really fond of her,” Frances thought, “and she is madl
y in love with him. That’s not surprising, for he has so much charm, and a kind of ugly attraction; but she is not beautiful at all except for her great eyes and her smile and her dark curls. She is tiny…and those little, fragile hands! Do men usually admire small women?”
Her beloved Henrietta was small, and Monsieur, odd person though he was, had certainly appeared to adore her when he married her, only — it had not lasted. Which had not been surprising to those at Court who were well acquainted with Monsieur. This honeymoon at Hampton Court had already lasted for several weeks, and Charles showed no sign of tiring of his Portuguese bride. When he was obliged to leave for London on business connected with State it was evident that he tore himself away from her with the greatest reluctance.
Sentiment was infectious, and the ladies and gentlemen in attendance at the Palace watched these partings and reunions with sympathetic sighs and smiles.
Frances generously hoped such a state of felicity would continue. Although she was not yet sixteen, now that she was separated from her mother and in an important position as a maid-of-honour, there were intervals in which she felt quite mature, and she told herself that no doubt the King at over thirty was of an age to settle down. The amours which had been so freely credited to him were of the past, and he would be content to devote himself to his wife, who, if not exactly beautiful, was deliciously feminine in her scented silks and laces.
Struck by a passing doubt of her own more robust charms, Frances turned, as so frequently, to her mirror. Her mother had seen to it that she was adequately equipped for her new position, and she was today wearing a pale-yellow silk damask which well became her.
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