The King's Mistress

by Gillian Bagwell

  Lucy’s stark pain and honesty were unsettling, and Jane’s heart went out to the girl, who looked at her so wretchedly and with such trust.

  “I know he cares for you,” she said. “And of course for your boy.”

  Lucy nodded uncertainly, as if weighing the truth of the statement.

  “I would go home at once if I could,” Jane said. “You have family there who would help you?”

  “I have family. What they could or would do for me I know not, but at least I would be in England. It’s warmer there.” She shivered, and Jane glanced at the snow falling outside the window.

  “I will write to His Majesty,” Jane said. “And urge him to find a way to do more for you.”

  “Thank you,” Lucy murmured. “Perhaps he’ll listen to you.”

  THAT NIGHT JANE REREAD CHARLES’S MOST RECENT LETTER.

  “February 5, 1656. My dearest Jane: In my affairs I am able to send you some better hopes than I could ever yet do. In Spain the war is declared against Cromwell, and I look every day it should be so in Flanders, and I believe I shall find my account very well in this change. If the things I look for fall out, our ill fortune will forsake us, and then we shall be happy together. Your most affectionate and constant friend, Charles R. P.S. I have given O’Neill a note for you to keep the mill going; it should have been more if I had had it.”

  “My dear Charles,” Jane wrote to him. “I share your joy and hopes for happier times than you have seen of late. I hope that perhaps your better prospects will mean that you might find a way to provide more for the care of Lucy and your son. She is most sad and fearful, looking like a dog that expects to be whipped. Money would help her greatly, but I think it would lighten her soul just to know that you are thinking of her.”

  Charles wrote back, sending money for Lucy, and exultant at the promises he had recently received from the Spanish officials in Brussels.

  “At first I found them dry, yet at last they began to be very free with me and have promised a monthly allowance of three thousand crowns for me and fifteen hundred for my brother James. The Spanish ports will welcome my cousin Rupert and other English privateers, and best of all, Spain will provide arms and men in the cause of restoring me to my throne.”

  Mary was displeased, though, by Charles’s alliance with Spain, the hereditary enemy of the United Provinces.

  “He has promised not only that all Royalists in foreign armies shall now join the Spanish army, but that he will withdraw his Irish soldiers from their service in France and give them to Spain, who shall use them to fight against France,” she stormed. “The Duke of York is furious.”

  Well he might be, Jane thought, as he had prospered and flourished by serving in Louis’s army, and he now must resign from that service or find himself allied against his brother. Moreover, Charles’s mother and sister Minette still made their home at the Palais Royal. What a tangle of royal cousins ruled Europe, and what complications arose from their disputes and alliances.

  The Duke of York arrived at The Hague a few weeks later in a cold fury.

  “The Duke of Gloucester has gone to join the Spanish army already!” Nan whispered to Jane, happy to have her lover nearby and enjoying the drama unfolding around her. “But James says he won’t go to the king, no matter what!”

  Jane noted Nan’s casual use of the duke’s name. Things must be moving along apace in their secret romance. Close though she was to Charles, she would never refer to him to another person as anything other than “His Majesty” or “the king”.

  By May Mary’s temper had cooled, she had repaired the breach between her brothers, and the Duke of York accepted a command with the Spanish forces. But, almost as if to assert that she would not be limited by Charles’s alliances, Mary journeyed to Paris to visit her mother. Of course Jane and Nan were with her, and so was the Duke of York.

  In private with Jane, Nan spoke of practically nothing but the duke, her descriptions of their secret meetings growing more rapturous by the day.

  “I think he will marry me,” she confided to Jane one night, looking out over the moonlit Seine and breathing in the sweet scent of blossoms on the summer air.

  “Nan, he can’t!” Jane cried. “The king will make him marry some princess. I beg you keep hold of yourself. You wade so blithely into very deep waters, and I fear the waves will close above your head.”

  But Nan only shrugged, and Jane knew that further words would be wasted.

  Jane visited her old friend Mademoiselle d’Épernon, and their stroll in the gardens of the Tuileries brought back memories of her walks with Charles when she and John had first arrived in Paris, now almost five years earlier.

  “One hears that your handsome king is courting his cousin Princess Henrietta, the Princess of Orange,” Mademoiselle said, with a sidelong glance at Jane from under her parasol.

  “Yes,” Jane said, keeping her voice level. “One does hear that.”

  “It is not to the liking of the queen his mother,” Mademoiselle giggled. “Of course she wishes for him to have a Catholic bride.”

  “Nor of the Princess Royal,” Jane said. Mary had made quite clear what she thought of the possibility of Charles marrying the hated sister of her dead husband.

  “I think His Majesty will follow his own counsel,” Jane smiled, “though certainly Her Majesty may wish otherwise.”

  A breeze fluttered the leaves in the trees around them, and threatened to blow away Mademoiselle’s wide-brimmed hat of pale straw trimmed with blossoms and ribbons.

  “And what of this Mistress Hyde?” she asked, clamping a hand to the top of her head. “She has many suitors, yes? Sir Spencer Compton, and the Viscount of Newburgh. But one also hears that perhaps she looks higher. As high as a duke, perhaps?”

  This was not good, Jane thought, that stories about Nan and the Duke of York were circulating freely at the French court. During Mary’s previous visit, Charles’s mother had not taken much trouble to disguise her displeasure at her son’s being so much at Nan’s side. His sister Mary would certainly not like a serious intrigue between her lady-in-waiting and her brother. And as Jane had tried to tell Nan, Charles would not be pleased if James entangled himself deeply with her, when he was a valuable pawn in the marriage market with European royalty.

  “Oh, Nan is young and delights in the attention,” Jane said breezily. “It means nothing. If I were to lay money on who Mistress Hyde might wed, I should wager on Sir Spencer Compton. Do you not see the way he looks at her?”

  “Most true!” Mademoiselle cried delightedly, and to Jane’s relief, she began to gossip about intrigues among the French courtiers. Perhaps that red herring drawn across the trail had worked, Jane thought.

  WHILE IN PARIS, JANE WAS SHOCKED TO LEARN THAT LUCY WALTER had indeed gone back to England with her children, and that she had been arrested and imprisoned in the Tower.

  “Her captors questioned her, but did not keep her long,” Boswell pronounced, “apparently coming to the opinion that she knew nothing that would be of use to them. Now she has crept back to Brussels, but Thomas Howard has forsaken her, and now she’s little better than a common whore.”

  “And what is she to do, pray?” Jane cried. “She must keep herself and her children fed and housed, and without help from the king, she has no choice but to seek male protection and support, wherever she may find it.”

  She wrote again to Charles, who had moved his court to Bruges, begging that he might find some way of providing for Lucy and her children. He responded that he would do so, and urging her to do what she could to get his sister Mary and brother James to leave Paris, their presence there growing more awkward by the day as France was on the verge of entering into an alliance with Cromwell.

  Sir Spencer Compton had gone to join Charles, and Jane had guiltily included in her letter a gossipy reference to his infatuation with Nan Hyde, seeking to keep Charles off the scent of Nan’s romance with the Duke of York, and Charles wrote back jovially, “I will try w
hether Sir S. Compton be so much in love as you say, for I will name Mistress Hyde before him so by chance, that except he be very much smitten it shall not move him.”

  Jane read with relief that he found life in Bruges much more bearable than anyplace he had settled in his exile. Thanks to generous patrons, he was living in a pleasant house with a garden in back sloping down to the canal. The burghers treated him with great courtesy, and he had been made patron of the guilds of Saints George and Sebastian, for archers and crossbowmen, respectively. He had formed his own regiment of guards, had put another under the command of Lord Wilmot, as well as a regiment of Irish under Ormonde and one of Scots under Middleton, and the latter, he wrote, in their “right Highland apparel”, caused amazement in the town.

  But as the months wore on, and Spain failed to come through with its promised support, the tone of Charles’s letters changed to one of despair. He had not the money to pay his soldiers, and they grew disorderly, and begged and starved. His supporters lacked their most basic necessities, and he was powerless to help them.

  “Nothing would lighten my spirits more,” he wrote, “than being able to relieve the wretchedness that envelops those that attend me so loyally. We are all cold, hungry, and shabby. Lord Norwich chanced to singe his coat by the flame of a candle, and as it is his only coat, he had no remedy but to cut off the blackened part and wear it still. Another of my followers was distraught with efforts to get money for the care of his sick wife and child, and my helplessness to do anything for the poor fellow cast me low indeed.

  “The truth is, this scurvy usage by the Spanish puts me beyond patience, and if I were with Don Juan, I would follow your counsel and swear two or three round oaths. I am so vexed with the delay I see is like to be in obtaining of money, and consequently my not being able to get from hence until that be, that I have lost all patience, and give all men that have or shall have to do with money to the devil.

  “I am no better now with the money promised but not paid by Spain than I was with that promised but not paid by France. I cannot choose but think of the Irish footman that would needs leave his master to seek a better. His master asked him, ‘But what if you cannot find a better?’ to which he answered very discreetly, ‘Why, faith, then I will come to thee again!’”

  Whatever money Charles found to spend on the desperately important matter of intelligence, he was always outspent by Cromwell. The possibility of assassination was a constant threat. And Charles felt deeply betrayed when the Duke of Buckingham, who had been raised like a brother to him, returned to England and married the daughter of the Parliamentary general Fairfax.

  Spain was at war with France, but would not allow Charles to go to the front, and kept him sitting in Bruges, while the dukes of York and Gloucester gathered glory about them in service of the Spanish.

  In June of 1657, when it was reported that the dukes had been slain or taken prisoner, Nan Hyde was in a state of collapse until they arrived safe in Bruges. Then she went into further panic at the rumours that the Duke of York might marry Fatima Lambert, the daughter of another Parliamentary general, or even one of Cromwell’s daughters, regaining her composure only when the duke arrived at The Hague and assured her he had refused both matches.

  Jane marvelled first that the duke was apparently truly in love with Nan and second that the depth of their relationship had somehow not become widely known. She was extremely uncomfortable knowing their secret and keeping it from Mary of Orange, from Elizabeth of Bohemia, and from Charles.

  And a further resentment crept into her mind, push it down though she would. Over the years since she had come to Mary’s court, she had forced herself to put out of her thoughts any idea that Charles might marry her, or even that he could marry her. It was true that the Duke of York was not the king, but until the day might come that Charles had a legitimate son, the Duke of York was heir apparent, and could someday be king. If Nan could hope to wed him, why could not Jane keep her hope alive?

  And that discontent brought to mind the vexed problem of Lucy Walter, who wrote distraught letters to Jane, claiming that Daniel O’Neill and Lord Taaffe were trying to take away her son, accusing her of ridding herself of two more bastard children, of the murder of a serving maid, of being mad. And that Taaffe, who held her allowance, would not give it to her.

  Jane confronted O’Neill.

  “She must have means to live. How can you—can the king—be so callous to the girl?”

  “No one wishes her harm, Mistress Lane. But every idle action of hers brings His Majesty upon the stage in a most discreditable light. Perhaps you can advise her to give up the boy and take herself someplace quiet. Then shall she have all she needs.”

  Towards the end of the year Lucy returned to The Hague, and looking like a grey-faced wraith, crept out of a shadowed corner as Jane approached.

  “I beg you to speak to the king for me,” she wept, clutching at Jane’s hand. “All I want is to keep my boy, and I will never make trouble for him.”

  Jane didn’t see how Lucy’s wanting to keep her own son with her was causing trouble.

  “Why do they want to take him?” she asked. “What trouble could you do?”

  Lucy fixed her with haunted eyes, and glancing down the empty corridors, drew Jane close to her, huddled against a cold stone wall.

  “I could tell the truth,” she whispered.

  “The truth?”

  “That I am his wife.”

  The shock hit Jane’s stomach like a blow.

  “Wife?” Her voice was barely above a silent breath. “Of …”

  “Of Charles. Of the king.”

  JANE LAY STARING INTO THE DARK THAT NIGHT, UNABLE TO SLEEP. Was Lucy to be believed? She did truly seem to be on the edge of madness. Perhaps her fevered brain had seized on the idea that Charles had married her and she had convinced herself it was true. Or perhaps she knew it was not true, but wished it so, or said it in the vain hope that it would give her some purchase on the tilting, slippery deck her world had become.

  But what if it were true?

  Charles had met Lucy when his father, though imprisoned, yet lived, when the chance of his becoming king, or even of returning to England, probably seemed far off. He had loved Lucy, had been happy with her. He had told Jane so himself. And Jane suddenly recalled Elizabeth, the Princess Palatine, telling her that Charles’s sister and mother had liked and accepted Lucy. Accepted her. As his wife?

  And if she was his wife, of course Charles’s men would try to control her, to quiet her. For now that he was king, and desperately needed a way to take back his throne, Lucy Walter could only stand in the way of his acquiring a bride who would bring him the gold and armies he needed. And of course they would want to take Lucy’s son from her, lest he catch her contagion and come to believe himself to be the king’s rightfully gotten son and heir.

  The thoughts made Jane’s head spin, and the emotions raised by the thoughts were overwhelming, for if Lucy’s tale was true, then Charles was a far blacker character than Jane could bear to think him.

  “DEAR JANE,” WROTE CLEMENT FISHER IN THE AUTUMN OF 1657. “Each time I write to you, I wish so much that I had good tidings to send you, and each time I am saddened that my words must bring nothing but disappointment. Your father and brother and uncle are still imprisoned, with no word of when they may gain their release.

  “As you no doubt know there have been more risings, but each has been put down, and I do not think it is putting it too strong to say that the king’s supporters here are heartbroken, for our hopes of seeing him on the throne seem to grow ever more dim, though we pray for some extraordinary act of Providence.

  “The only bright spot in the gloom is that Cromwell has decided not to have himself crowned, though that is little enough.”

  Clement. Jane wished she could look into those bright blue eyes and feel their warmth. She was feeling more lonely than ever lately, far from home and with little hope that she could return anytime soon. And her
loneliness was not comforted by thoughts of Charles. She had not seen him since they parted in Düsseldorf more than three years earlier, and she had heard from many sources that Catherine Pegge, an English lady in Bruges, was with child by him.

  She would have been angry, except that when Charles wrote to her, his letters were so bleak that they broke her heart.

  “I am not only without money but have been compelled to borrow all that I have spent these three months. Meat, candles, coal, the very washing of my ragged shirts, all is upon credit, and I content myself with but one dish at my meals.

  “I need not put you in mind of the season of the year and how soon winter will be upon us, and you will easily believe I am in some pain for the preparations which ought to be ready against that time. Every week brings me letters from my friends in England, to know against what time I will expect them to be ready and what they may depend on from me; and if this winter pass without any attempt on my part, I shall take very little pleasure in living till the next.”

  PRINCESS LOUISE DISAPPEARED FROM THE PALACE ON A SNOWY morning in December. The first alarm and fear for her safety was quelled only slightly by the discovery of a letter she had left. Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia stood staring at the letter in disbelief, and looked up to Jane with desolation in her eyes.

  “She has gone. She has deserted me.” She seemed to totter on her feet, and Jane rushed to guide her to a chair.

  “Surely not, Your Majesty?”

  “Yes. She writes, ‘It has pleased God to discover to me the surest way of salvation, and to give me to know that the Catholic religion is that only way. I have been obliged to withdraw from Your Majesty from fear of being desired to receive the sacrament against my conscience.’”

  Jane thought of Charles’s aunt as a warship under full sail, gun ports lifted and cannon at the ready, and she had never seen her appear less than in command of herself, but now the queen let the letter drop to the floor and clung to Jane, weeping.