The caller announced the lady’s name—Countess of something Catherine did not catch. She forced herself to tear her gaze from Charles to acknowledge the woman. She was a very great beauty, with that cream skin the English so valued, and long, tilted violet eyes. Her hands were very soft as she took Catherine’s hand in hers, and curtsied deeply.
“I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” Catherine said in her heavily accented English, a phrase she had worked to perfection.
The woman straightened. She smiled.
“Your Majesty,” Dona Maria said urgently at her shoulder, “you have just bestowed your blessing on Barbara, Lady Castlemaine. Your husband’s mistress.”
Unmerciful time halted. For the space of hours, days, years, Catherine stared at Barbara, her hand still proprietarily curled in the crook of Charles’s arm, her expansive bosom plump and smooth above her bodice. The extraordinary eyes glittered with triumph.
Catherine could not breathe. The entire court looked on, and she thought desperately that they had all witnessed the queen be tricked by her husband and his mistress. How dare he?
Fury blackened the edges of her vision, making a tunnel through which she could only see the vixen who did not look away, revealing not a thimble of shame. The roaring buzz returned, like a thousand wasps burning up her skin, stinging her eyes, blackening the edges of her vision. She could not breathe, could not move. Someone tittered.
Charles stepped toward her, but she jerked backward, eyes filling with tears of rage and impotence. And as if her humiliation could not be complete enough, she felt her nose gush blood. She raised a hand to halt it, seeing bright red on her fingers, and she thought simultaneously that she wished the blood were Barbara’s, that it would ruin her most beloved gown, and she wanted to slap them both with all her might.
Overcome with emotion, she fainted.
• • •
Charles left Barbara preening amid her admirers and strode to Catherine’s rooms. The dogs trotted beside him, subdued. An uncomfortable sensation made his belly ache. Why could she not have simply given way? First the threat to run home to her mother and now this public display of temper. Why had she forced his hand?
When he was admitted to her rooms, her women were clustered around her, murmuring like doves. “We will be alone,” he growled. Most of them scurried away, cowed by the king, but the old duenna, the Condessa de Penalva, stood fast, a hand on the queen’s shoulder.
He gestured for her to leave as well. “Go.”
Sullenly, she obeyed.
Catherine glared balefully at him, her hair tumbling loose of its curls, the limp strands doing her narrow face no favors. Her bodice was dotted with blood, and he was ever so slightly repulsed.
“What new cruelty have you come to deliver, sire?” She stood, tears pooled brightly in her eyes.
Guilt. That was the acid in his belly. “Come, you’ve caused enough of a spectacle. Have done with this.”
“I will not.” She pressed a cloth to her nose and blood smeared over her cheek. “On the advice of my mother, I had resolved to heal this breach and make all well, but you contrived to trick me, sire!”
He shifted, attempting to dislodge the sorry weight of regret that pooled in his gut. “Perhaps that was badly done—” he began.
“Perhaps?” she repeated, aghast.
Guilt made him harsh. “Enough of this!” he roared. “You were prepared to make peace, so let’s move forward with peace.”
“No, sire.” Her neck stiffened and her chin rose, despite the tears leaking from her eyes and running across her white face. “Do your worst. I’ll not be moved.”
“So be it.”
• • •
Jenny and Mavis sat in their high attic chamber, clothed only in their shifts in the warm evening. The dormer was open to whatever breeze might stir, but though the stars had long risen, there was little movement to cool the room, tucked as it was beneath the western roof.
They shared a heel of bread brought up from the kitchen and a bowl of cherries Mavis had coerced from the cart of a farm lad on his way to town. The fruit was deep red and juicy, the sweetest thing Jenny had tasted in the best part of a month. She missed her family at such times, when she remembered the rituals of cherry picking or apple gathering. But one had to give up something to find something else.
Mavis sat before her, hair loose as Jenny brushed it, then sectioned it, holding it with pins. One by one, she twisted the sections with ribbon and secured them, and gossiped about the dramatic scene at court this morning.
“I feel sorry for Her Majesty,” Jenny said. “Poor wee little thing.”
“Lady Castlemaine has been kind to me,” Mavis countered. “This ribbon she gave me, only for mending a tear in a silk gown, and a bit of lace for me sleeves. She’s bold, that one. Imagine making a fool of the queen!”
Neither of them had been present, but the tale had been told again and again, embroidered and expanded until the original tale that had been whispered to Jenny when the ladies brought their mistress back to her chambers had turned to a cat fight, complete with scratching and biting. “Her majesty was covered in blood when she came back; she bumped her head on the floor when she fell.” Mavis’s hair did not hang right, and Jenny shook her head, taking the pins out to begin again. “It fair broke my heart.”
“Does she love him? The queen, I mean?”
“Who would not?” Jenny said, and slapped a hand over her mouth. They both giggled.
“Well, he is a fine figure, but I would stand William beside him any cockfight.”
William was Mavis’s suitor, a footman with a tumble of dark curls and limpid eyes who ever haunted the yard for a glimpse of Mavis. She had no lack of suitors, with her buxom beauty and good cheer. Only Jenny and Cook knew of the cruel husband, forgotten back in Cranbrooktown.
“William is fine enough,” Jenny conceded, “but I say they’re all the same in the end. I would live my life without a husband to order me about.”
“Aye, that has some appeal. But what of babies? I would not mind babies of me own.”
Jenny shrugged. “There are babies abounding if I wish to give one a cuddle.”
Mavis laughed. “Ye’ve a cold heart, Jenny Martin.”
For a moment, Jenny allowed herself to think of Thom, who had waited to try to steal a kiss only yesterday when he’d delivered a bolt of cloth. For a moment, she was weak, considering his mouth, his deft hands, his deep and twinkling eyes—but no. She had a goal, and she meant to rise on the strength of her own merits. As the whole tangle in the royal chambers so clearly showed, there was no autonomy once a woman took a husband. She would do without.
• • •
On the last night of July, Barbara sat at the head table at Whitehall in a gown of ruby velvet, her hair dressed with pearls and garnets, a heavy brooch of gold and rubies pinned to her breast. Surrounding her were courtiers vying for favor, and sycophants waiting for attention. On the table was spread a feast of tender venison, stewed in a rich gravy dotted with early carrots and the last peas of the season, roasted rabbits glistening with fat, a fricassee of chicken and leeks, and fig pudding. She’d asked for carafes of Burgundy wine to complement the dark flavors, and the company had grown merry on rich food and drink.
Nearby sat Charles, elegantly attired, flirting with her and with a stout matron granted such high status for the evening thanks to a contribution her rich husband had made to the navy.
The queen, flanked by the Duchess of York and Lady Buckingham, wore peach silk, and her hair had been curled precisely to hang around her face in dark sausage curls. Her large dark eyes shone brighter than her jewels, and she studiously ignored the king. He ignored the queen as thoroughly as she ignored him.
Barbara ate ravenously, in high good cheer. The plot to trick the queen into acknowledging her had been rife with possible disaster—and there had been disaster aplenty, though all of the bad luck had fallen on the queen.
Oh, the moment!
Such triumph in the queen’s recognition that she’d been tricked by her king, her face pale, her eyes wide. All dignity fled as her nose began to bleed, and even before she fell, Barbara knew she would faint in her anger. And so she had.
Smiling now at Charles as he offered his cup to be filled from Barbara’s hand, she looked toward Catherine, who made a show of standing haughtily and walking out in defiance. Barbara laughed.
Poor dear girl. What a fool she is.
Smug in her place, she raised her cup. “A toast,” she cried. “To the robust good health of our king!”
“To the king!”
Barbara raised her cup to her lips, secure once more. Let the queen sail away, back to Lisbon. Charles already had his queen, right at his side.
Episode 4: Wit in All Languages
by Madeleine E. Robins
August 1662
“This will not continue. Send them all home.”
The king had come from the tennis court triumphant, a-muck with sweat. His linen shirt was transparent with it; the cloths with which he had rubbed his face and scrubbed at his hair were now wreathed around his neck. Before Lord Clarendon had caught his eye Charles had looked invigorated, a man enjoying the sun on his face and the scent of dew melting into the early morning air.
All that animal pleasure had evaporated when he saw his Lord Chancellor waiting for him.
Clarendon knew that look of old: When Charles, only a prince, had taken the baser part in some argument or stood out against his father’s expressed wish. When he knew, deep in his honorable heart, that his behavior was shameful. In his own heart the earl had believed—hoped—that Charles would acknowledge the cruelty of taking Barbara Castlemaine’s part and find a way to make amends to the queen. Given enough time and quiet to consider the matter.
But it seemed that time had run out.
“Send them all home,” the king said again. He quickened his pace. Charles was several inches taller than Clarendon, who was no small man. Within a moment, the earl was trotting to match the king’s long-legged stride. He felt the warning twinge that presaged an attack of the gout, but did not slow his step.
“Who, sire?”
“Don’t be coy, Lord Clarendon. That pack of black crows and hangers-on who press around the queen and coach her in this defiance. Those po-faced priests. They keep the girl from English society for their own reasons.” Charles stopped walking long enough that the dogs, loosed from the kennel where they had waited while he played tennis, caught up to them. For a moment his attention was upon the spaniels that surrounded him, demanding a pat, a tug on a silken ear, a chuck behind the jaw. At last he straightened. “Perhaps when there are none of them whispering poison to her she’ll find a more womanly, yielding disposition. Did her ladies coach her in defiance?”
“Coach? What need? Sire, would not any wife in your kingdom, put in such a position, object?”
“She is not any wife—and the sooner she learns it, the better.”
“No, she is not any wife, sire: she is queen. In what light do you expect her to regard my cousin Barbara? As a friend?”
Even in a passion the king was too honest a man to answer yea to that. Still: “I care not how she regards Barbara. It has gone beyond that. Catherine must come to understand that my word is her law,” he finished. “There can be no doubt of it. Send her people home.”
“Have you considered how the Portuguese will regard such a gesture?”
That had been a mistake, Clarendon realized. The king’s face reddened, decisiveness become anger. “Is the king of England to make policy in obedience to the concerns of the Portuguese? I won’t be talked round. Send them all away—let her keep her confessor, the ambassador, and the Condessa de Penalva . . . her cooks, perhaps. But the rest of them, every last one of those black crows and hangers-on, back to Portugal. The girl must learn to be an English queen. Let her begin today.”
Charles fixed his counselor with an expression that brooked no further discussion, whistled for the dogs, and continued across the soft scythed grass of the park at a vigorous clip, surrounded by the cloud of eager spaniels; his gentlemen trotted after.
Lord Clarendon, winded, beads of sweat standing on his brow, looked about him for a friendly bench, even a low tree branch where he could take his ease, catch his breath, and consider if there was any way at all to mend the mess. He saw none. The king’s command, however intemperate, was given. That would not be the end of it—if Clarendon knew Barbara Palmer at all, he knew that once she got what she wanted she would find a new prize to wheedle and pout for. And the king—resolute as he was on the battlefield, he could not stand against Barbara.
And Catherine? The girl had been so compliant, obviously besotted with her new husband, and ready to accede to any of his wishes. Any other of his wishes. “Who would have guessed she had a spine?” he muttered to himself. And how very inconvenient that that spine should show itself just at this moment.
• • •
Although the sun had broken from behind the English clouds to warm the gardens below the queen’s windows and send the scent of verbena, rose, and muguet upward in a fragrant cloud, the queen’s mood, and that of the small court that gathered in her apartments, was still gray.
The queen’s ladies had fallen into two camps. On the left of the room, by the mullioned windows, sat the Portuguese: Dressed in somber colors, the ladies bent over bits of needlework, listening while Father Patrick read from a book of homilies in Portuguese. They made a very virtuous picture, Catherine thought, but not—she felt a twinge of guilt—not an entertaining or even an inviting one. It seemed to her that some of her attendants were intent upon illustrating the benefits of virtuous behavior to the dissolute English. Not just in obedience to the True Church, but in all things. Catherine did not think that a hundred Portuguese could force a conversion of manners upon an entire nation; she was certain that her new subjects would not love her any better for the attempt.
On the other side of the room the English ladies seemed to glow in their bright colored gowns, the lambent fabrics catching the shafts of golden sunlight in a way that Portuguese cloth did not. Lady Chesterfield was reading, the others were playing cards—an English pastime that was incomprehensible to the queen—murmuring and laughing quietly. It was like a garden full of bright, scented flowers, meant for no other purpose than to be decorative.
Catherine sat apart from them all, her dog Feliciana tucked away under her sleeve, snoring softly. She wore one of her English dresses, light green and frothing with point work. Did that make her a bright, scented flower? She hardly felt it. Yesterday she had told Lord Clarendon that she could not yield. That was, as her confessor and her Portuguese ladies had assured her, what a queen must do: Be resolute in the cause of right.
Perhaps she felt uneasy because the cause of right so closely marched with her own will: to rid Charles, and the court, and herself, of Lady Castlemaine. Catherine sighed.
The Condessa de Penalva was at once at her elbow. “Are you tired, Majesty? Would you like a cup of tea?”
Catherine shook her head and closed the book in her lap. “Only thinking, Dona Maria.”
“About what, Majesty?” The older woman frowned.
Catherine shook her head. “It is not important.” It was, but to whom could she say what she was thinking? Her confessor? One of her ladies? De Mello? Almost easier to speak to the girl they had brought from Portsmouth, Jenny. Perhaps the words would come easier in Spanish, with one so far removed from the push and pull of court politics.
“Catarina,” Dona Maria singsonged.
She forgets that I am a woman, a married woman, a queen and not a child, to be spoken to so.
“Dona Maria, if your queen says it is not important—”
Startled, the older woman murmured an apology and effaced herself, only to be replaced by Father Patrick.
“Majesty, if you are troubled—” The priest’s expression was solicitous and speculative in equal measure. Her c
onfessor stood close enough to her that Catherine could see that he had been hasty in shaving that morning and missed a patch on his chin. She blushed at the thought: Being a married woman had made her aware of such things.
“Alteza?” Father Patrick prodded. Highness. But she felt so low.
“I thank you, Father. No.” That was a lie; another venial sin to confess. The priest bowed himself away and Catherine was left again to her thoughts. She could not, or would not, confide in anyone, not to be lectured on what her beloved mother in Portugal would do, or what her beloved husband here in England expected her to do.
It was a private pain, and to whom could she speak of it? No one, except God. And God, surely, would expect her to be a queen first and a woman second.
There was a stir at the door. The Lord Chancellor—the Earl of Clarendon—had arrived, limping slightly, mopping at his forehead with a cloth. Catherine suppressed the impulse to jump to her feet and run to meet him.
When he reached her chair he bowed low. Catherine smiled guardedly and inclined her head. She said, in Latin, “You have word for me, my lord?”
Clarendon sighed so heavily that the ends of his graying fair hair stirred about his face. “I have, Your Majesty, but I fear it will like you not.”
Catherine closed her eyes for a moment, gathering courage. Then: “The king commands that I permit that woman among my attendants?”
She thought she read surprise in Clarendon’s expression. “No, indeed, he does not.”
“If that is so, then I am sure I can countenance any other requirement His Majesty makes of me.”
“I fear—” Clarendon began. “Your Majesty, the king has ordered your retinue to return to Portugal at once. A certain few may stay, but the rest are ordered to sail with the tide. Today.”
Catherine felt a buzzing in her head, the familiar sensation of a hive of bees swarming there inside her skull. “All my retinue? Today?”
Whitehall--Season One Volume One Page 13