The Three Crowns

by Виктория Холт

  She went with it to William who, when he had read it, regarded her sternly.

  “I see,” he said coldly, “that you are inclined to listen with credulity to your father.”

  “William, he is a very uneasy man.”

  “Let us hope he is. He should be, after his villainies.”

  “William, he never intends to behave badly. He sincerely believes …”

  William interrupted her. “Am I to understand that you are making excuses for your father?”

  “I would wish that you could understand him.”

  “I would wish that I had a wife of better sense.”

  “But William, of late …”

  “Of late I have tried to take you into my confidence. I can see that I have been mistaken.”

  “No, William, you are never mistaken.”

  He looked at her sharply. Was that irony? No, her smile was deprecating; she was begging to be taken back in favor.

  He relented very slightly. “Because this man is your father you are inclined to see him as he is not. You should write to him and say that you can do nothing, for the Prince is your husband and your master and you are therefore obliged to obey him.”

  “Yes, William,” she said meekly.

  “In all things,” he added.

  Monmouth was prepared to spend the winter at The Hague. James wrote furiously to his nephew; William ignored his letters; instead he gave orders to his wife.

  “I wish you to entertain the Duke of Monmouth. There is no reason why we should not give a ball. Please see to it.”

  Mary was delighted. A ball! It would be like old times. “Yet how shall we know the latest dances?” she cried. “But Jemmy will know them. I must have a new gown.”

  William eyed her sardonically. She had not grown up as much as he had thought. Now she looked like that girl who had delighted him when he had first seen her—vivacious, gay, a typical Stuart, as he was not, perhaps because he was half Dutch. Mary was like her uncle Charles in some ways and to see her and Monmouth together made one realize the relationship between them.

  They were two handsome people. Monmouth had always been startlingly attractive and so was Mary now that she was in good health and preparing to lead the kind of life she had enjoyed in England.

  She was beginning to believe that this was one of the happiest times of her life. William was growing closer to her and allowing her to share confidences; she knew what was going on in England and every day there would be a conference between them. How she would have enjoyed these if her father’s name was not constantly brought into the discussions and she was expected to despise him! But since she was beginning to believe the stories she heard of her father’s follies, even that did not seem so bad.

  Then there was Henrietta—what a dear friend she had become! Monmouth declared that she was his wife in the eyes of God and although Mary had loved the Duchess of Monmouth dearly, she had to accept Henrietta; for Henrietta was not the frivolous girl who had danced in Calista but was a serious woman with a deep purpose in life which was to give Monmouth all he desired and to live beside him for the rest of her life. Henrietta’s feelings for Monmouth were like those Mary held for William. They were two women determined to support their men.

  Then there was Jemmy himself. It was impossible not to be gay in Jemmy’s company. Whatever great events were pending, Jemmy had always time to play. He could dance better than anyone else and he was very fond of his dear cousin, Mary.

  She believed that he understood her feeling for William and that he was sorry for her. She did not resent pity from him because she was so fond of him, and because she felt so close to him that she could accept from him what she could not from almost anyone else.

  There were times when his beauty and grace enchanted her; when she saw him and Henrietta together she found herself thinking that Henrietta must be the luckiest woman in the world. She looked forward to those evenings when Jemmy taught her the new dances.

  “Do you remember Richmond?” she asked him.

  And he smiled at her and said: “I shall never forget dancing with you at Richmond.”

  Again she caught herself comparing William with Monmouth; and she stopped that at once.

  They are so different! she assured herself. Each admirable in his way.

  Then more severely: William is the idealist. He would never have indulged in all the pranks Jemmy indulged in. Jemmy was wild in his youth as William would never be. Jemmy might be handsome and charming but it was William who was the great leader.

  She thought of Jemmy’s wild past, how again and again his father had stepped in to save him from disgrace and disaster. She remembered poor Eleanor Needham who had left court when she was seduced by him and about to bear his child. Now she had five of his children; the Duchess had six and Henrietta two. Thirteen children that she knew of and there were probably others—and she had not one. How could she possibly compare William and Jemmy!

  There was Elizabeth Villiers.… She shut her mind to that affair. She saw Elizabeth frequently but she had convinced herself that that trouble was over. William had too much with which to occupy himself; he simply had not time for a mistress. It was over. It was to be forgotten.

  She was dining in public nowadays which was something she had not done for a long time. William no longer wished her to live like a recluse, and he was always anxious that people should know that they were in accord.

  One day while she sat at table a dish of sweetmeats was placed before her and as she looked at them idly she saw a small fat hand descend on the dish and pick up handfuls of the sweetmeats.

  She gasped with surprise and a pair of blue eyes were lifted to her in fear. They belonged to a small boy who had seen the sweetmeats placed there and had found them irresistible.

  “Your Highness, I pray you forgive him …” The boy’s terrified nurse had seized him; she was trying to hold him and stay on her knees at the same time.

  Mary smiled. “Come here, my child,” she said.

  The boy came.

  “So you wanted the sweetmeats?”

  He nodded. “They are very nice.”

  “How do you know until you have tried them? Come, sit here beside me and eat one now.”

  He looked a little suspicious until Mary signed to the nurse to rise. Then the boy sat down and ate one of the sweets.

  “Is it good?” asked Mary.

  “It’s the sweetest sweetmeat I ever tasted.”

  “Well, won’t you try another?”

  He did, and Mary, watching the little round head with the flaxen hair, the golden lashes against a clear skin, felt a great emptiness in her life. If he were but my son! she thought.

  She talked to the boy and he answered brightly while his nurse stood by marveling at the success of her charge; and when Mary reluctantly let him go she told him that whenever he wished for sweetmeats and saw them on her table he should present himself because she would prefer to give them to him than that he should attempt to steal them.

  When she danced with Monmouth that evening, he having seen the incident with the child, said: “Mary, do not be too grieved that you have no children. You will … in time.”

  She flushed. “Sometimes I think not, Jemmy.”

  “But that is not the right attitude.”

  She could not tell him that William rarely gave her an opportunity of having a child and that she had begun to fear that he was incapable of begetting one which would live. Perhaps Jemmy understood that though, for he was very worldly wise.

  She always tried to make light of her misfortunes and she was now afraid that her treatment of the little boy that day had made many understand the void in her life and feel sorry for her.

  “You who have so many should know. But I believe, Jemmy, that you often had them when you had no great wish to.”

  “The perversity of life,” he remarked. “But, Mary, do not grieve for the children you never had … to please me.”

  “There is little I woul
d not do … to please you,” she said.

  He pressed her hand and it was love she saw in his eyes. Her own responded.

  Jemmy was devoted to Henrietta and she to William; but there was love between them for all that.

  Monmouth had changed the dour Court of The Hague; he had changed Mary’s life. Often she wondered how she could ever go back to live as she had lived before—almost like a prisoner! Rising early, spending much time in prayer and with her chaplain, sewing or painting miniatures when her eyes permitted, being read to, and her greatest diversion of course—playing cards.

  She wondered why William had allowed this change. Was it because he wanted to show the world that he allied himself with the Protestant cause? The troublous matter of the succession in England was in fact one of Catholic versus Protestant. Her father would never have been so unpopular if he had not shown himself to be a Catholic.

  But whatever the reason, the change had come; and when in December Monmouth told her that he was returning to England for a secret visit to his father, she was melancholy.

  “I will be back,” he told her. “Needs must. I am still an exile.”

  So he and Henrietta returned to London that December; and Mary was melancholy, wondering when she would see them again.

  It had been a bitterly cold January day and it looked as though it were going to be a hard winter. Mary had slipped back to the old routine, rising early and retiring early.

  On this particular evening she had decided to retire early as she intended to be up at a very early hour that she might take communion. Anne Trelawny and Anne Villiers, who was now Anne Bentinck, were helping her to undress when a messenger came to the apartment.

  The Princess is to come at once to the Prince’s chamber, was the order.

  Anne Trelawny said indignantly: “The Princess has already retired.” Anne Trelawny, indignant because her mistress was not treated with the respect due to her, was often truculent to the Prince’s servants.

  The messenger went away and came shortly afterward. “The Prince’s instructions. The Princess is to dress and go to his chamber at once.”

  Even Anne Trelawny had to pass on such a message to her mistress and when she heard it Mary immediately dressed.

  When she presented herself at her husband’s apartments she gave a cry of pleasure, for Monmouth was with him.

  “You are back sooner than I had hoped,” she cried.

  Monmouth embraced her.

  “And how do you find events in England?”

  “Much as before,” answered Monmouth. “Your father is determined to have my blood. My father is determined that he shan’t.”

  “And so you are to stay with us for a while?”

  “I throw myself on the hospitality of you and the Prince.”

  “You are welcome,” put in William. He looked at his wife. “There should be a ball in honor of our guest,” he added.

  She smiled happily.

  This was a return to all that she had begun to miss so much.

  Observers were astonished by the behavior of the Prince of Orange, in particular the French Ambassador, the Comte d’Avaux, who reported to his master, the King of France, that he and Monmouth stood for Protestantism. He did not know what they were plotting together, but it might well be that should Charles die they would make an attempt to put Mary on the throne.

  Mary, he reported, was sternly Protestant, adhering to the Church of England; she was a woman he did not understand; she seemed to form no fast friendships with anyone about her; she was completely the dupe of the Prince. And yet she was not a stupid woman; one would have thought she had a mind of her own. In fact over the affaire Zuylestein she had shown she had. He was following events closely, for William was throwing her constantly into the society of the Duke of Monmouth, who had not a very good reputation.

  Orange was determined to fête Monmouth; he had given him free access to his private cabinet at any time—a privilege accorded only to one other person, his faithful friend Bentinck. It was a strange state of affairs and the French ambassador could only guess that he wanted the world to know he stood firmly for Protestantism.

  Meanwhile Mary and Monmouth were constantly together.

  A frenzied excitement seemed to possess them both. He was thinking that if they had married him to Mary he would have realized his ambition and become King of England. She was happy as she used to be in those long-ago days at Richmond. She loved to dance, laugh, and chatter without wondering whether what she said would be considered stupid. With her cousin she could be carelessly gay, she could talk with abandon; she could laugh and sing and dance.

  “Dear God,” she thought, “I am so happy.”

  “There should be theatricals,” said Monmouth, “as there used to be in the old days.”

  “I should love that!” cried Mary, and then wondered what William would say.

  But William made no objection. “Let there be theatricals,” he said.

  So they played together—she, Monmouth, and Henrietta. William was a spectator—aloof but coldly indulgent, sitting there close to the stage watching. She could not act freely when she thought of him there. But it was at his command.

  Because of the hard frost there was skating, and Monmouth expressed his pleasure in the sport.

  “The Princess should skate with you,” William said.

  “But, William, I have never skated.”

  “Then learn. I doubt not the Duke will teach you.”

  “It will be a pleasure,” Monmouth told Mary.

  And so it was, after the first misgivings. How she laughed as she leaned against him, iron pattens on her feet, her skirts tucked up above her knees. Many times she would have fallen, but Jemmy was always there to catch her.

  The French Ambassador was horrified. A most undignified sight, he commented. The Princess of Orange would only have so demeaned herself at the command of her husband, he was sure.

  “We can depend upon it,” he wrote, “that this fawning on Monmouth can mean only one thing. Orange and Monmouth are planning an invasion of England and Orange wishes the world to know that the heiress to the throne is with them in this plot.”

  Everywhere Mary went there was Monmouth; there was no need, William implied, of a chaperone. He trusted his dear friend.

  “What a gay life you lead here in Holland,” said Monmouth one day.

  “It has only been gay since you came,” she told him.

  He kissed her on the lips for he was deeply moved. She stood very still and said: “Jemmy, have you ever wanted a certain time of your life to go on and on …?”

  He answered, “I have always been one to believe that the best is yet to come.”

  “But Jemmy,” she cried, “what could be better than this?”

  He took her arm and they sped over the ice. It was firm and strong at the moment; but a little change in the weather and the change would set in. That was inevitable. He felt it was symbolic but he did not call her attention to this.

  She was charming, his cousin. They should have married them. But he loved Henrietta, and Mary was bound to William; thus their emotions were continually checked and they were safe from disaster.

  But they were so happy together … and life might have been very different for them both.

  A feverish excitement caught them. That evening they rode on sleds to Honselaarsdijk where there was a ball in honor of Monmouth.

  William insisted that Mary and Monmouth lead the dance; his asthma prevented his taking a part; but he sat, watching them; and he saw his wife’s excitement and he thought: she has honored our guest but she must never forget who is her master.

  Shortly after the Honselaarsdijk ball, came that day of mourning which Mary had always observed throughout her life. The thirtieth of January—the day of the execution of Charles the Martyr.

  “There will be no dancing today,” she told Anne Trelawny, as she dressed in her gown of mourning. “Today I will pray for the soul of my grandfather and we will pas
s the time in sewing for the poor.”

  “It will do you good to have a rest from all the gaiety,” replied Anne, “although I must say you don’t look as if you need it.”

  “I could dance every day of my life,” replied Mary.

  “The Duke has done you the world of good. It seems strange that …”

  Anne dared not utter open criticism of William before Mary, who was well aware that her friend did not like her husband.

  During the day William came to her apartment. She rose delighted to see him and as was their custom her maids hurried away and left them together. She was astonished to see that William was more gaily dressed than usual—not that his garb was ever anything but somber; but she thought he must have forgotten what the day was.

  “I like not that gown,” he said curtly.

  “Oh, it is dull is it not, but fitting to the day, I believe.”

  “Change it at once. Put on a brightly colored gown and wear jewels.”

  She stared at him in astonishment. “William, have you forgotten what today is?”

  “I have made a simple request and I expect it to be obeyed.”

  “William, it is the thirtieth of January.”

  “I am well aware of that.”

  “And yet you suggest I wear a bright color … and jewels!”

  “I do not suggest, I command.”

  “I cannot do it, William. It is our grandfather’s day.”

  “Enough of this folly. Put on a bright gown. You are dining in public today.”

  “But, William, I never do on this day. I spend it in seclusion.”

  “Do you mean that you will flout me?”

  “William, anything else I will willingly do, but always this has been a day we observed.”

  “Let me hear no more of this nonsense. I shall expect to see you differently dressed and ready to dine with me in public.”

  He left her and when her women came back they found her silent and bewildered.