The Three Crowns

by Виктория Холт

  Mary sighed. She hated trouble between her father and her husband, and always sought to put their differences right.

  “I can understand his feelings. Dr. Burnet did preach against him.”

  “For which one can only admire Dr. Burnet.”

  “He is a brave man, certainly, and firm in his beliefs. I understand Dr. Burnet, William, but I also understand my father.”

  “You understand his desire to bring Catholicism back to England? You understand the cruel treatment of Monmouth?”

  Mary winced; she could never think of that tragedy without a deep and searing pain; and in spite of her sense of justice and her natural tolerance she felt a sudden hatred for a father who had destroyed one whom she had loved.

  William went on. “And not only Monmouth which is perhaps understandable. Those others, those men who fought for him because of their convictions—what do you think of the justice they received at your father’s hands?”

  “I think Judge Jeffries was to blame and that my father had no real knowledge of what was going on.”

  William gave one of his rare laughs. It was not pleasant.

  “I doubt whether you understand what it is like to be a slave on a Jamaican plantation. Transported from England to that hell. Yet that was the fate of many of your father’s subjects … for what reason? Simply because they hated popery.”

  Mary said: “It was wrong to be so severe. But we must not forget, William, that Monmouth called himself the King.”

  “It might have been that others called him that. But if you wish to excuse your father, do so. I have no wish to listen.”

  “William, I do not excuse him. I …”

  “Then,” said William curtly, “it may be that you begin to understand him?”

  He left her and she thought of Jemmy, dancing with her, teaching her to skate, teaching her so much more than she could ever speak of; and she wept afresh for Jemmy.

  Jemmy dead, bending to the block; and the cruel executioner lifting that once lovely head and crying: “Here is a traitor!”

  “A traitor,” she said vehemently, “to a tyrant!”

  And she knew then that she was beginning to feel toward her father as William wished her to. She was beginning to see him through William’s eyes—libertine, ineffectual ruler, the King who, while he did not declare himself openly a papist, was trying to thrust popery on a country, the majority of whose people rejected it—all that and the murderer of Jemmy!

  Gilbert Burnet came to her in some haste.

  “Your Highness,” he said, “something must be done. The Prince is in danger.”

  Mary grew pale and cried: “Tell me more. What do you mean?”

  “I have spoken to His Highness and he shrugs it aside. You know that the King of France regards your husband as an enemy.”

  “I know all these things. Tell me quickly.”

  “I have discovered a plot to kidnap the Prince when he drives unattended along the Scheveling sands. The idea is to get him out of Holland into France.”

  “And you have told the Prince this?”

  “I have warned him and he says he will know how to take good care of himself.”

  “And he will take no guard with him?”

  “I fear not. He said that what is to be will be and if it is destined that he shall meet such a fate then so be it.”

  “I must go to him at once,” said Mary. “Pray come with me, good Dr. Burnet.”

  Together they went to the Prince’s apartment. William raised his eyebrows when he saw them together; but Burnet detected the faint pleasure which showed in his face when he beheld Mary’s agitation.

  “William, you must take a guard with you when you go on to the sands.”

  “So, you have heard this warning?”

  Dr. Burnet put in: “Your Highness, I am convinced there is a a plot and that you are ill-advised to ignore it.”

  Mary clasped her hands together. “You must not ignore it, William. It would be disastrous if you were forced into France.”

  William looked impatient, but Mary went closer to him and looked imploringly into his face.

  “William, I beg of you, to please me …”

  William shrugged his shoulders.

  “Very well,” he said, “I shall take the guard.”

  Mary paced her apartments in agitation. She would not rest until William returned.

  She sent for Dr. Burnet and asked him to pray with her.

  When they rose from their knees William had still not returned.

  “Dr. Burnet, do you think the plot could have succeeded in spite of the precaution he took?”

  “No, Your Highness. The Prince will soon be back in the Palace.”

  “I shall know no peace until he is.”

  Burnet looked at the Princess intently. He was a man who had little restraint and the intimate friendship he had enjoyed with these two had put him into a position he believed where he could speak his mind.

  “Your Highness,” he said, “your devotion to the Prince is obvious. Yet I do not think there is always accord between you.”

  Mary looked startled and was about to show her displeasure when Burnet said quickly: “If I speak rashly it is because I have your happiness and that of the Prince at heart.”

  “I know this,” she said, and moved to the window. Burnet saw that the subject was closed.

  But he did not intend to let it rest if he could help it.

  Mary said she would pray once more, for the longer the Prince’s absence the greater became her anxiety.

  They were on their knees when the sounds below them told them that the Prince was returning to the Palace.

  Mary ran to the window. There he was riding at the head of the guards. On horseback it was scarcely visible that he stooped distressingly and that he was so slight.

  Mary turned to Burnet. “How can I thank you?” she said.

  “By letting me help Your Highness in every way possible,” was the answer.

  Burnet was in higher favor than ever, particularly with the Princess, and, when they were alone together, with habitual temerity he broached the subject of her marriage once more.

  This time Mary did not feel she could rebuff the man who had saved her husband from being kidnapped, possibly murdered, so she allowed him to speak.

  “I believe the Prince has a great regard for you, but there is something which holds him back from expressing his affection.”

  Mary said frankly: “The Prince has never expressed great affection. I do not believe it is in his nature to do so.”

  To Elizabeth Villiers? Burnet asked himself, wondering whether to mention that lady and then deciding not to.

  “I believe,” said Burnet, “that the Prince is always aware that the crown of Britain would come to you and that in the event you would be the Queen and he merely the Queen’s consort.”

  Mary opened her eyes wide. “Surely the Prince knows that I would never put him into a humiliating position.”

  Burnet was secretly delighted; he believed that he was going to bring about a deeper understanding between the Prince and Princess of Orange which would be a great advantage when, as he hoped, they came to England to depose James.

  “Your Highness,” said Burnet to the Prince, “in the event of James dying or … some other contingency … and the Princess being acclaimed Queen, has Your Highness considered your own position?”

  Even William was unable to hide the depth of his emotion.

  This is the secret, thought Burnet; this is at the very heart of the matter.

  “You can rest assured,” said William sharply, “that nothing would induce me to act as valet to my wife.”

  “Nothing would induce me to believe that she would expect Your Highness to.”

  “When greatness comes one cannot always assess the effect it will have.”

  “But the Princess …”

  William waved a hand. “The Princess has been a docile wife … almost always, and only rarely has she
opposed my wishes.”

  “Almost.” “Rarely.” Those were the significant words.

  So William was unsure of his wife, and it was a barrier between them. He could not bring himself to ask her what position, if she were Queen of England, she would assign to him; and the ministers of England would accept her as their sovereign; they would obey her, and if she said William was to be her consort merely, that was all he could hope for. The decision lay with Mary; and he did not fully understand Mary.

  It was clear to Burnet that this was a question which burned continually in his mind. He was working toward a goal; he had married Mary in order to reach this goal; and now he did not know whether this meek obliging wife would, in one of her sudden moods of firmness, withhold from him that which had come to be the very meaning of his existence.

  “Your Highness, I could put the question to the Princess … with your permission. I could discover what is in her mind.”

  William’s pale eyes seemed to take on new life. He gripped Burnet’s arm.

  “Do that,” he said.

  So once more Burnet sought Mary.

  “Your Highness,” he said, “I have just left the Prince and there is a matter which perplexes him greatly and which I believe is constantly in his mind. Have I your permission to right this matter between Your Highnesses?”

  Mary, looking puzzled, implored him to go on.

  “It is simply this, Your Highness: should you succeed your father to the Crown, what position do you intend the Prince to hold?”

  “I do not understand you. What comes to me, comes to my husband, does it not?”

  “That is not so. You will remember that when Mary Tudor came to the throne her husband Philip of Spain was not King of England. Your Highness, I do assure you that a titular kingship is no acceptable thing to a man—particularly when that is his only as long as his wife shall live.”

  “What remedy do you propose?” asked Mary.

  “Ah, Your Highness, if you would be content to be a wife only and promise to give him the real authority as soon as it comes into your hands, I believe that the differences which are now between you and the Prince would be removed.”

  The differences? He would no longer keep a mistress? He would be the perfect husband she had tried to deceive herself into thinking he was? This had been between them, then, this knowledge that she could one day be a Queen and he only assume the title of King if it were her wish? Mary was excited. She knew William and his pride. That was the answer then. He had avoided her because her position could be so much higher than his. He could not endure to be merely a consort to a Queen; his pride was too great; just as it was too great for him to ask her what she intended to do. It had been between them all those years. She, too blind to see it; he, too proud to ask.

  And so he had turned to Elizabeth Villiers who to him was merely a woman whom he could love—not a Princess who could one day be a Queen and hold his future in her hands.

  Mary, sentimental, idealistic, believed that wrongs could be righted in a moment of illumination.

  She turned to Burnet, her expression radiant.

  “I pray you bring the Prince to me. I will tell him myself.”

  When Burnet brought him to her, assuring him that she wished to tell him herself the answer to the question, she went to William and taking his hands kissed them.

  “I did not know,” she said, “that the laws of England were so contrary to the laws of God. I did not think that the husband was ever to be obedient to the wife.”

  William’s heart leaped in exultation, but his expression remained cold. He wanted a definite statement before he committed himself.

  “You shall always bear rule, William,” she told him.

  Then he smiled slowly.

  She added with a joyous laugh: “There is only one thing I would add. You will obey the command: ‘Husbands, love your wives’ as I shall do that of ‘Wives, be obedient to your husbands in all things’.”

  “So,” answered William slowly, “if you should attain the crown, you will be Queen of England and I shall be the King?”

  “I would never allow it to be otherwise,” she told him lovingly.

  “If you once declare your mind,” Burnet reminded Mary, “you must never think of retreating again.”

  “I never would.”

  “Then,” said Burnet smiling from one to another like a fairy godmother, “this little matter is settled. When James goes, there will be a King and Queen of England.”

  “And the Queen will be a woman whose one desire will be to obey her husband,” added Mary.

  Those were happy days.

  He shared confidences with her; theirs was a happy trinity—Burnet, Mary, and William; and they talked of England as though in a week or so they would all be there. The King and his Queen, who would always see through his eyes and obey him in every way; and Burnet, who would become a Bishop and remain their friend and adviser.

  There was only one question that Mary could not bring herself to put to her husband: “Is it finished between you and Elizabeth Villiers?”

  It would not have been difficult to find out. She could have had her spies who would soon discover the truth; she could have waited in the early hours of the morning to catch him as she had before. But she would do none of these things; she would only believe that she had attained the perfect marriage for which she had always longed.

  William stood in his mistress’s bedchamber looking down at her lying on her bed.

  She grew more attractive with the years, he thought; her wits sharpened and her beauty did not fade, for it was more than skin deep. It was in the strangeness of her eyes, in her sensuous movements, in her low laughter, so indulgent for him.

  “She will obey me in all things,” he told her. “She has said I shall always bear the rule. It is what I have waited to ask her for years and now, thanks to Burnet, she has told me herself.”

  “And she asks no conditions?”

  “She mentions none.”

  “I thought there might have been one.”

  Elizabeth looked at him passionately for a moment; then she rose and gracefully put herself into his arms.

  “To abandon me?” she whispered.

  “It is one condition to which I should never agree,” he told her.

  THE CONFLICT OF LOYALTIES

  There was consternation at The Hague. Mary Beatrice was pregnant. If she bore a son then he would be heir to the throne and if he lived that would be the end of Mary’s hopes of being Queen of England.

  William was in a black mood.

  To have come so far and now be frustrated! It was more than he could endure. The three crowns, which Mrs. Tanner had prophesied would be his, had such a short while before seemed almost within his grasp; and now there was this alarming news.

  If James had a son, that son would be brought up as a Catholic. How could it be otherwise, when he had a Catholic mother and father? The return of Catholicism to England would be assured.

  It should not be allowed to happen.

  William secretly believed that the people of England would never allow it to be.

  The Princess Anne wrote from England, for she too was horrified by the news, so horrified that she simply refused to believe it.

  “The grossesse of the King’s wife is very suspicious,” she wrote. “It is true that she is very big, but she looks better than she has ever done which is not usual in the case of women as far gone as she pretends to be …”

  William read the letter with growing excitement. Envoys were arriving from England with secret messages for him and Mary. There was a rumor being spread through England that there was no truth in the Queen’s pregnancy; that she flaunted it, was over-big and behaved in an exaggerated manner as a pregnant woman as though she was eager to call attention to her state every moment of the day. She was certain that it would be a son. Over-certain some said, as though it had been previously arranged.

  The people in the streets were murmuring again
st the King and Queen. They did not want a Catholic heir and they were determined to prove there was no true one on the way.

  As the summer wore on the tension increased. The Princess Anne, unknown to her father and stepmother, was at the head of those who were determined to cast doubts on the Queen’s true pregnancy. Anne, staunchly Protestant, had grown to hate her father, although she had never shown him that she had. She was looking ahead to the day when she would have the throne. Sarah Churchill was certain that she would, and then ultimate power would be hers—or Sarah’s. Anne was fond of her pleasant weak husband, but it was Sarah to whom she listened, Sarah on whom she doted.

  Mary had no children so after Mary it would be the turn of Queen Anne; and now there was this child—or this supposed child—to oust them from their place.

  Angrily Anne wrote to Mary. “I have every reason to believe that the Queen’s great belly is a false one. Her being so positive it will be a son, and the principles of that religion being such as they will stick at nothing, be it never so wicked if it will promote their interest, makes it clear some foul play is intended.”

  Mary took the letter to William. They pondered on it; he dourly, she anxious because of his disappointment. If she could no longer bring him the throne he craved, she feared she would no longer have the same value in his eyes and she knew that that value had been enhanced when she had promised that he should rule her as well as England.

  “William,” she said, “why should my father pretend that the Queen is with child?”

  “Because,” replied William sourly, “they care for nothing so long as they can bring England back to popery. They will thrust a spurious child on the people—and that child will be a Catholic.”

  “Oh, William … my father would not be so wicked.”

  “Mary, it is time you looked at truth. It is unpleasant, but no good can come of looking away for that reason. Your father is an evil man. Accept that truth and you will suffer less.”

  She turned away from him and there were tears in her eyes.

  “He was so good to me when I was a child. He loved me, William.”

  “You are a fool,” said William brusquely and left her.