Her Portuguese ladies had looked up from their handwork at the sound of distress in her voice. Most understood only Church Latin, but the few who knew more had begun whispering to the others.
“I regret it, madam, but yes. The king has commanded it. One or two confessors may stay, and your chief woman—” he nodded to Dona Maria, who was attempting to quiet the ladies of the Portuguese party. “The cooks, I think, as you are not yet used to our English food. But the rest must go. A ship is being readied.”
The buzzing in Catherine’s head was made worse by a sudden cacophony, as the Portuguese women began to chatter and wail, and their English counterparts to speak amongst themselves. Feliciana, wakened by the tumult, jumped from her mistress’s lap and began to yap. Catherine held herself upright by force of will, eyes closed and one hand to her temple, waiting until she could trust herself to speak.
“If His Majesty has commanded it—” Her voice almost broke, and she felt tears starting in her eyes. How does a queen react to such a blow? With tears or outrage? An upwelling of anger straightened Catherine’s spine and helped her to get her voice under control. At the very least no one should see the hurt that had been dealt her. Mamãe had said: A queen does not weep.
“If His Majesty has commanded it then we must, of course, comply.” She turned to Dona Maria. “Madam, will you help these ladies to pack their belongings? And Father Patrick, will you see to the bestowing of the men?” She turned back to Clarendon. “I trust my people will be given transport to this ship?”
Clarendon, his face redder than it had been when he first entered the room, agreed that all arrangements would be made for the travelers’ comfort. “And I shall tell His Majesty of your ready obedience to his wishes, madam.”
“I should be very grateful, my lord.”
Clarendon bowed. There was what spoke of sympathy in his eyes, but of course he could not speak it.
In the wake of the Lord Chancellor’s departure, the women of Catherine’s Portuguese retinue surged toward her despite Dona Maria’s best attempts to keep them from overwhelming their lady. From the words that Catherine could make out through the churn of noise, some were worried for her, fearful lest this be the first step in an assault against her person. Who would protect her against the English apostates? Others were worrying that Queen Luisa would punish them on their return to Portugal for having so failed their charge. All wanted reassurance, honeyed words, comfort.
It was too much. “Dona Maria,” she implored. The older woman nodded and spread her arms to shepherd the other women from the room. Like a flock of doves being shooed from a pile of crumbs, Catherine thought. The room was instantly quieter, and the pounding in her head lessened. For a few minutes she sat, examining her hands in her lap, trying not to think of what had happened.
From the English side of the room a murmuring arose.
Catherine looked up to find her English ladies watching her. Did they expect some reprisal? No—she realized that most of them appeared as dismayed as she herself. Of course, if one retinue could so easily be banished, any other could as well. It would be dangerous to assume that any of them felt real sympathy for her.
I tried to act a queen. I demanded that I—at least my rank—be respected. Surely a queen demands her due? But, as surely, demanding had availed her nothing.
• • •
When he had walked a mile or so in a circuit around the Privy Garden, Charles’s temper cooled a little. Across the lawn, a lad in livery trotted; half the king’s dogs deserted him to greet the newcomer, who knelt to offer the king a letter. “Steward said you’d want this straightaway, as it come from France.”
Charles thanked the boy and took the letter up, his heart uncomplicatedly lightened for the first time in days at the sight of his sister Minette’s writing. She wrote from Paris to apprise him of their mother’s plans to return to England late in the summer, amusing him with wickedly observant comments upon the queen’s progress in packing her French household in the entire. The king walked and read, chuckling, until he turned the sheet and Minette turned the topic. It had been too much to hope that his quarrel with Catherine had not entertained the whole of Europe; of course Minette had heard. He was startled to find that, so far from taking her brother’s part, her sympathy was all for Catherine. It is said here, she wrote, that the queen is grieved beyond measure, and to speak frankly I think it is with reason.
Charles shoved the letter into his pocket. Quite enough of that. He distracted himself with Babette, who had dropped in front of him, her belly displayed. Silly bitch. He leaned down to ruffle the soft, muscular flesh, and Rogue raced from a tree ahead, his ears pluming out behind him, coming for his share of their master’s attention. Nice to have affection so easily won. He tugged lightly on Rogue’s ears, gave Babette’s belly a final scratch, then stood. The dogs understood that their master’s attention was turning elsewhere and scattered.
By now, Clarendon should have delivered his command to Catherine. How would she take it? With tears, or with that fierce, poignant dignity? He stopped his pacing again. Honesty compelled Charles to admit he had been unkind. But he had had no choice: Catherine had defied him publicly.
The dogs, seeing their master halt, had come racing back and surrounded him, anticipating a change, a new direction.
“None of that,” he told them sternly. “I’ve taken up this course and must stay with it. No one knows better what can happen to a king who lets his queen have the ruling of him.”
He began to walk again, ringing the sundial and starting for the Stone Gallery.
“She shall not have the ruling of me, but when she gives way I shall be kind.”
Rogue, at his heel, sneezed.
• • •
Catherine’s women, tearfully, had taken their leave, promising to pray for her, alone and undefended in this Godless place. Bereft as she felt, Catherine wondered what defense they imagined she would need and what defense they might have supplied. She nodded and smiled and shook her head and smiled again, unable to comfort them.
The perfumer, Dom Abravanel, was apologetic, as if it had been he who was the occasion of this catastrophe. He bowed and kissed her hand and promised to convey her love and duty to her mother, and bowed again and was gone, leaving a cloud of his scent behind him. Dona Maria hovered at the queen’s shoulder, ready to comfort Catherine should she be overcome.
But Catherine sat, receiving homage, patting a hand here, murmuring a comforting word there, dispatching the travelers with more eye to their feelings than her own. It was not that she did not mourn their going, or that she did not feel fully the great loss that her husband and master, her king, had thrust upon her. But what good would weeping and tearing her breast do? She was married, by the rites of her own church.
At last the parade of the departing ended. The queen’s English ladies, perhaps feeling that they would not be welcome, had absented themselves from the chamber. Now one of them—Lady Chesterfield—peered in at the doorway as if to ask if the queen willed that they should return.
Before Catherine could say a word, Dona Maria shook her head. Lady Chesterfield withdrew tactfully.
“Why do you send them away?” Catherine asked. Her voice, to her own ears, sounded unearthly, as if it belonged to another, speaking from far away.
Maria de Penalva looked taken aback. “Why? I thought perhaps Your Majesty would prefer a few minutes to—to think, before those noisy English girls returned.”
Noisy English girls? Lady Chesterfield, at least, was no younger than the Condessa de Penalva herself. Catherine could no longer afford to have a Portuguese and an English faction among her ladies, among any who served her.
“I understand you mean it kindly, Dona Maria,” she began, “but they should not be punished for the decisions of—” She stopped. Could she say for the decisions of my husband? “For decisions in which they have no part.”
Dona Maria pursed her lips before she nodded.
She disappr
oves. What would she have had me do? I have married England and its king, and must learn to be queen of all.
“Condessa, you have been married longer than I. You can surely tell me: What is the duty a woman owes her husband?”
Dona Maria was not to be caught in so simple a trap. “You know as well as any girl. Your husband is your lord, you his servant. But if her husband acts in error, is it not the part of a good wife to school him in the better part?”
Catherine felt a bubble of hysterical laughter rise up in her at the thought of schooling Charles. She might as easily school the endearing swarm of dogs that followed at his feet. “I sought to school him, as you say, in the unwisdom of installing that—Lady Castelmaine—in my bedchamber, with the results you have seen.”
The Condessa shrugged. “If you say so, Alteza. Perhaps some tea?”
An ungraceful way to end an awkward conversation, but there was nothing graceful about this day. The queen was seized with a restless wish to be up and doing something. “No tea, I thank you. I will . . . I will walk in the gardens.” Perhaps I will meet the king and learn how displeased he truly is with me.
Dona Maria turned as if to summon some of the Portuguese ladies to accompany the queen, then made a theatrical gesture of remembering and called out in her heavily accented English, “The queen would walk in the garden.”
At once, Lady Chesterfield and Lady Bath emerged from the anteroom, as if they had waited a-purpose to hear the summons. They were barely permitted to perform their offices while my people were here, Catherine realized. Perhaps that was unfair.
“The sun is still high, Your Majesty. Perhaps a stole?” Lady Bath spoke slowly.
“Does this hat please you, Your Majesty?”
As the two women, one young, one with threads of gray in her light brown hair, came forward, Dona Maria seemed to fade into the background.
The garden outside Catherine’s apartments was as bright and colorful as the two ladies who flanked her. She closed her eyes for a moment to take in the warmth of the sun and the scent of roses and lavender that rose up. Lady Bath was Catherine’s own age, and chattered in English too rapid for her to follow. She gave up trying to make sense of it, but did not make the mistake of nodding in agreement—that much she had learned, that she dare not agree to anything until she understood it fully.
There was whistling down the path. Catherine’s heart beat faster at the thought that it might be Charles himself. Come to apologize? Come to hear her apology? Without thinking, Catherine quickened her step, only to find a gardener’s boy bustling along with a basket full of flowers, just cut. The moment he saw her, the whistling stopped and he dropped to both knees, head bowed. As if he feared she would punish him for going about his work.
Catherine extended a hand, meaning to pat the boy on the shoulder, but he pulled back, head still bowed. He looked barely ten summers, far too young to be so fearful of her.
“I—meaning no ’arm. Sank you . . .” The words eluded her. “Obrigado.” She lapsed into Portuguese. “As flores ajudam meu coraçao.”
The boy nodded without raising his eyes to meet hers, then turned and fled.
Catherine sighed.
“I think he fears your Catholic enchantments.”
The familiar voice made Catherine turn. Francisco de Mello walked up the graveled walk with his customary energy.
“Godfather, good day,” she said in Portuguese.
“Alteza.” He bowed over her hand and took the place of Lady Bath to her right. “Why is it that the queen needs her heart lightened?” he asked in their native tongue.
“You have heard, Dom Francisco? All—almost all—of my people have been sent back to Portugal by the king’s wish. Because—”
“Quite.” De Mello cut her off.
“Godfather, what am I to do? What would my mother say?”
De Mello pursed his lips—thoughtfully, but without censure. “It is a vexed question, Alteza. Do you mean as a queen, as your mother, or as one woman dealing with another?”
“How would she—”
“She was never so tested, filha. She would expect you to be a wife and a queen, as you are.”
“How?” Catherine had stopped and turned to her godfather, tears in her eyes. Where de Mello might once have comforted her, he did not now.
“Not your mother’s way or mine. Not Lady Castlemaine’s, either. Look beyond today and consider what you wish for tomorrow. You will find your way, querida Alteza.”
“My way.” The two English ladies watched her, puzzled. Dom Francisco smiled gravely. At last Catherine nodded her head, setting her new English curls dancing.
“My way,” she repeated. “Mine alone.”
• • •
When Dom Francisco parted from his goddaughter, it was with a heavy heart. He genuinely loved the girl, and liked her, as well. And he had helped her to this unhappy place. One does not remonstrate with a king, but for a moment Dom Francisco imagined taking the trouble-making Lady Barbara aside . . .
The sun was still some hours before summer dusk, but it slanted from the west over the roofs and parapets of Whitehall, casting a rosy light on the faces of the buildings opposite. The palace was a city in miniature, surrounded by the whole of London. And at the kernel of it, three persons: the king, his queen, and his mistress.
Dom Francisco wanted a cup of wine, and to put his feet up and consider what was to be done, if anything could be done, to lighten the weight upon Catherine’s slender shoulders.
“Dom Francisco.”
De Mello looked up to see Lord Clarendon sitting on a stone bench outside the banqueting house, one leg raised up on a stool, with a bottle and a cup to hand. Would that were I.
“Will you take a cup of wine, sir?”
It was so precisely what de Mello wanted that he dropped onto the bench without ceremony. “By God, yes, my lord, I will.”
Clarendon conjured up one of the serving men to bring a second bottle and another cup. For a few minutes the two men sat quietly, drinking strong wine and watching the play of light over what Dom Francisco knew were Barbara Castlemaine’s apartments.
“A troublesome day,” Clarendon said at last. “How—how fares your lady?”
“Sad. Afraid. Determined to be a good queen and a good wife. But she will miss the friends who came with her.”
“I am sure she will.” Clarendon was casual.
“My queen will be very surprised—and dismayed—to see so many of her daughter’s retinue returned in so summary a fashion.”
Clarendon poured more wine into his cup. “Something had to happen to break the impasse. And to be frank, it did the lady no favor to have so many pap—Catholic hangers-on about her. The people need no reminder that she keeps to her own faith.”
“Perhaps not. I had hoped that marriage would make such distinctions unimportant.” Dom Francisco tossed down his wine and poured himself more.
“Not in England, Dom Francisco. Not after the score of years we have survived. Nor, I suspect, would it be in Portugal. In any case, the queen must be a wife first, and obedient to the law of her lord, before all else. That remains the truth regardless of what rite she follows. I am sure Queen Luisa understands—”
“I am sure my queen is a mother before all else. If Queen Luisa were to believe that your queen has been ill-treated—there is still a substantial portion of the dowry to be transferred to English hands.”
“That, my lord, is a knife that cuts both ways. If the whole of the dowry has not been paid, as you know well it has not, what incentive does England have to keep the queen here? What incentive, indeed, to give aid against the Spanish? If the queen proves intransigent—”
“Intransigent? Was it she who wished to make the king’s harlot part of her intimate court?” De Mello put his cup down on the bench with sufficient force to send wine slopping over the rim.
The Earl of Clarendon pinched his nose with two fingers.
“My lord, I like and admire your la
dy. I think she will make a queen and wife—if she but learn to choose her battles. My feelings about how—about—about Barbara Palmer—are of no account. The king is my king, and I am his man and will do his will. And you know well that there are many at this court who would work against Queen Catherine because of her faith. She is vulnerable. She must become less so.”
“That, Lord Clarendon, we can agree upon.”
De Mello poured himself a little more wine, gestured to the other man and, upon receiving a nod, poured wine into Clarendon’s cup.
The two men raised their cups in concert, a toast to things neither one would specify. De Mello drank off the whole and tossed his cup to the side.
Then, a little unsteadily (Clarendon’s wine was good), he rose. “This has been illuminating, my lord Clarendon.” He swept a bow, and walked toward King Street, waving for a chair. He would return to his house and write a letter to his mistress Queen Luisa, and let her know that, if she wished this marriage to prosper, and expected the assistance of the British fleet against the Spanish, she should see to the prompt payment of the remains of her daughter’s dowry.
• • •
The apartments Barbara occupied at Hampton Court had been comfortable enough—lavish, by most standards. But her rooms at Whitehall were far finer, as befit her status as the king’s favorite. Even the advent of the little queen had not changed that. Barbara Palmer settled back in her chair and let her hairdresser brush and twist ropes of her thick auburn hair into a knot, pinning them over a wire frame, teasing out individual curls that would drape over her breast.
Motherhood proved a great beautifier: her hair had remained thick and lustrous, her skin was now as clear as alabaster, her lips plump and rosy. Even with a wet nurse to see to the baby, her breasts were still sensitive. The thought of Charles’s hands or lips playing over their white swell made Barbara catch her breath. Her eyes slid closed.
“Dreaming, Barbara?”
As if her thoughts had summoned him, the king stood in the door to her bedchamber, the silken heads of Babette and Rogue peeking from behind his boots.
Whitehall--Season One Volume One Page 14