The King's Mistress

  AT THE END OF JUNE A LETTER ARRIVED IN JANE’S MOTHER’S HANDWRITING. That was not unusual; during the time that John and her father were in prison, her mother’s letters had been her main source of news from Bentley. But for some reason on this day the spidery ink on the white paper set off alarum bells in Jane’s head. She broke the wax seal and read.

  “My dear daughter, it grieves me to tell you that your beloved father died yesterday, on the thirteenth of June. He had been in poor health after his imprisonment, and was taken of a sudden with an ague …”

  The letter fell from Jane’s fingers and her hands flew to her throat. She suddenly felt as though she could not breathe.

  “Jane, dear, what is it?” Queen Elizabeth cried in alarm.

  “My father—dead.”

  Queen Elizabeth, Mary, and Lady Stanhope rushed to her and held her as she wept. But she felt as though there were a wall of ice between her and them, and her mind whirled, disbelief fighting with grief and rage.

  Her father, gone. It could not be. She had longed for home for so long, and though she missed her mother and the rest of the family, now she realised that home had always meant her father, and without him Bentley would seem but a shadow of itself.

  “It should not have been this way,” she cried. “He risked so much and paid so dear. He should have lived to rejoice at the king’s return, with no more thought than to read, and walk, and play with his grandchildren.”

  She thrust herself away from the women and snatched up the letter from the floor. Was there any word of comfort in it?

  “I would have you know that almost his last words were of his dear Jane, and of your courage and the great deeds you have done for England. Others of the neighbourhood have lately been honoured for the part they played. Mr Whitgreaves and Father Huddleston of Moseley and the Penderel brothers of Whiteladies were sent for to London last week that they should receive the thanks of the king at his own hands …”

  IN SEPTEMBER, MARY HAD AT LAST SETTLED HER SON’S AFFAIRS SATISFACTORILY, and her household was in frenzied preparation for their departure to London. The Earl of Sandwich arrived in the Resolution, to conduct the Princess Royal and her entourage to England, and they would depart as soon as the weather permitted. Jane sang as she packed, and ran to ask Queen Elizabeth if she needed help in making ready. But Charles’s old aunt shook her head.

  “The king has not invited me to court.”

  Jane stared at her. “But surely—”

  “No. He has not. And without his invitation I cannot go, for I have no place to live nor means to live on once I got there.”

  “I will write to him,” Jane said, quaking with rage. “You, above all people, must be there!”

  “No, no. Perhaps he has forgotten. I will wait a little longer. He has so much on his mind just now, and I would not be a trouble to him.”

  Jane stared in dismay at the old lady, who would be left quite alone. She took a deep breath. “Then I will stay here with you.”

  With tears in her eyes, Queen Elizabeth embraced Jane and patted her cheek.

  “You are a good girl, Jane. But you must go home to your dear brother and the rest of your family. Loving you as I do, I know how much your mother must long to have you back with her.”

  The bad weather cleared, and the Resolution put to sea, but Jane thought that perhaps they would have been better to wait. Mary and half her ladies were violently ill. The seas were rough, the ship climbing walls of glassy green water and then plunging into foamy troughs, the crew struggling to keep the vessel afloat and on course, battling with the sodden sails, desperately cutting away rigging when a mast came crashing down to prevent the ship from being pulled onto her side. Everyone was wet and cold throughout the voyage, and there was no hope of hot food. Jane was terrified, sure with each violent pitch and roll that the ship would be laid on her beam ends and swamped. Even within sight of land, the Resolution nearly foundered. How unfair it would be, Jane thought, to have survived these last nine years only to perish before she reached England.

  At last the ship lay at anchor at Margate. A boat put out from shore, and as it drew near, Jane saw that it carried Charles and the Duke of York. Their faces were sombre as they climbed onto the quarterdeck, and Jane noticed with a start that beneath their dark cloaks they wore mourning clothes.

  “Jane.” Charles raised her from her curtsy and kissed her cheek. “Pray lead me to my sister. I’m afraid I bear bad news, and she should receive it in private.”

  Jane’s mind seethed with alarm. The king would only put on full mourning for the death of someone very close to him. Who could it be? His mother? Or was it possible that dear old Queen Elizabeth had died at The Hague while Mary was en route to England, and the news had outstripped them? But she only nodded and conducted the royal brothers to Mary’s cabin. Whoever had died, she would learn of it soon enough. Mary had washed and dressed and was managing to stay upright in a chair, but her face was still almost green from the effects of seasickness. She rose with a weak smile on her lips and then froze as she noted her brothers’ sombre attire.

  “Who …”

  She swayed on her feet, and Jane ran to give her a steadying arm. Charles and the Duke of York rushed to their sister’s side and eased her back into her chair.

  “Oh, Mary,” Charles said, stooping before her. “It’s Harry.”

  The Duke of Gloucester, Charles’s youngest brother. Jane’s heart went out to Mary, who had immediately come to love the little brother she had hardly known when he had arrived at The Hague.

  “Smallpox,” Charles went on. “He seemed to rally and be out of danger, and then suddenly he worsened.”

  “No!” Mary’s wail was animal. She started to her feet, arms flailing, head thrown back in wild grief. “No! No!”

  Lady Stanhope took Mary into her arms, Mary clinging to her like a small girl as she sobbed, and Jane was reminded that Lady Stanhope had been with Mary when she left England to join her husband when she was only ten years old, and had been Mary’s governess and the closest thing to a mother she had known since then.

  Perhaps the curse of the Stuarts had not been lifted after all, Jane thought.

  CHARLES AND THE DUKE OF YORK STAYED ABOARD THE RESOLUTION that night, but the royal siblings sat in quiet grief together, and Jane had no chance to see Charles until the next day. He had brought a procession of barges to meet his sister and her entourage, and the convoy set forth up the river to London. Mary stayed below, and for a few hours Jane basked in the warmth of Charles’s welcome.

  “This is hardly the joyful homecoming you pictured, I’m sure,” he said, coming to her side.

  “I’m so sorry,” she murmured, noting the lines of sadness around his eyes. “What desolation, to lose your dear brother, and just when the future holds so much promise.”

  “Yes. A lesson to seize the day, for we never know what tomorrow may bring.”

  The river swept in a great horseshoe-shaped bend, and Charles pointed out the old Palace of Greenwich and the dockyards of Deptford on the south bank. Suddenly London lay ahead. Jane was awed by the sight of the many church steeples rising from amidst the streets of tall houses packed cheek by jowl, stretching away from the riverbank for what looked like a mile or more to the fields and meadows beyond, and the gentle twin hills that Charles told her marked Highgate and Hampstead. The quays teemed with sailors and dockworkers, and vessels large and small plied their way through the sparkling water of the Thames.

  “It’s beautiful!” Jane cried to Charles. She laughed, for the first time in weeks. “Remember when we were in Bristol, and I asked you if London was like that?”

  “Aye, I do,” he said, grinning.

  “I never thought I’d get the chance to come here.”

  “And now that you are, how does it compare with Paris and Breda and The Hague?”

  “A thousand times better.” Jane smiled. “Because it lies in England.”

  THE PALACE OF WHITEHALL SEEMED ENORMOUS,
BUT ODDLY RAMBLING and arbitrary, due no doubt to the fact that it had not been designed and built all at once but rather had grown over the centuries. As they had approached on the river it had more the appearance of a town than a palace. And so it was a town, in a way, Jane thought, with its gardens, kitchens, breweries, bakeries, and butcher shops, its theatre and its tiltyard, its banqueting house and official chambers, and the series of landing stairs along the Thames. The palace’s resemblance to a town was strengthened by the fact that the Holbein Gate stood open, and the street before the palace was choked with the passage of Londoners of every level of society—lords, clerks, army and navy officers, soldiers and sailors, street merchants, whores, and thieves.

  A few days after her arrival, Jane stood in the Banqueting House, where Charles held court each day. It seemed to her that all of England and much of the rest of the world had flocked to London now that Charles was back on the throne. All around her was a press of people. Some she knew from Paris or The Hague, and a few were from near her own home. The previous day, in a solemn ceremony in Westminster Abbey, she had seen the Bishop of Lichfield invested as Archbishop of York.

  “Here’s a fellow countryman of yours, Jane,” Charles called to her. “Mr Izaak Walton, also of Staffordshire. Do you remember I told you that I had given my Garter and my George to Colonel Blague when I was at Whiteladies? Well, they were passed on for safekeeping, and I shall never be able to thank my good friend Izaak enough for restoring them to me.”

  He stuck out his leg to display the Order of the Garter around his silk-stockinged calf, and tilted the George so that its diamonds twinkled in the candlelight.

  “A great pleasure, sir,” Jane said, curtsying to Walton. “I most enjoyed reading your collection of Wooten’s poems.”

  “The pleasure is mine, Mistress Lane,” Walton returned, bowing. “An honour to meet the lady who preserved the life of the king through such perils as he has described.”

  “And that reminds me,” Charles said to Jane. “I am endeavouring to procure you a pension. If it were up to only me, you should have a wheelbarrow of gold before you this minute, but alas, these things must work their way through Parliament. But surely it will not be long.”

  Jane was not the only one who was to be rewarded for her loyalty and help to the king during his long years of exile. Every day he created new earls, viscounts, and baronets, restored lands that had been sequestered, and promised gifts and pensions. And when she had written home to tell her family that she was at last in England, and would return to Bentley after the coronation in January, she had included Charles’s invitation that her brother Richard should come to Whitehall to be a groom of the bedchamber.

  Jane had not been in London a week before she noticed a familiar striking figure making his way towards her through the chattering courtiers in the Banqueting House. Prince Rupert stood head and shoulders above most of the crowd, and Jane thought he was even more handsome than when she had last seen him. She curtsied low, and felt herself flush at the intensity of his gaze.

  “Mistress Lane. I am most gratified to see you. Not only on my own account, but because my mother the queen has entrusted to me a letter for you.”

  With a devilish twinkle in his eyes, he pulled a little square of folded paper from his pocket.

  “Oh, how does Her Majesty?” she cried, breaking the wax of the letter. She had worried about Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia every day since leaving The Hague, and the sight of the familiar handwriting filled her with joy.

  “She was very well when I left her a few days since,” Prince Rupert said, smiling down at her.

  “I am so relieved to hear it. And so grateful to Your Highness for taking the trouble to carry the letter to me.”

  That evening Jane sat down to write to Queen Elizabeth, letting her know that she and Mary had arrived safely, and to give all the news that she had.

  “I have had the honour to receive Your Majesty’s letter by Prince Rupert. Methinks His Highness looks very well. Everybody here seems to look very graciously on him. We are like to have the queen very suddenly here, which many are discontented at.”

  Charles’s aunt had insisted that she wanted to be informed how Charles was rewarding Jane, so with a wry smile, Jane wrote on.

  “The king has done nothing for me but puts me off with good words, but that will not go to market. The princess is very well. She has never been abroad but once, at Hampton Court, and has eat but once in public with the king since she came. I appear not above once a day at court and then I choose my time when there is least company. I pray God bless Your Majesty with all happiness.”

  AS JANE HAD WRITTEN, SHE DID NOT CHOOSE TO SPEND MUCH TIME AT Whitehall, with its press of timeservers and glavering fools. But she did make a daily appearance, and about three weeks after her arrival heard Boswell in whispered conversation with Dorothy.

  “I’ve heard that the duke says the child is not his at all!” Boswell sneered.

  “She’s a fool,” Dorothy whispered. “He’ll never marry her, sure. He must marry some princess to strengthen the family ties to the other royal houses and get a good dowry, not saddle himself with a merry-begotten child.”

  Boswell snorted. “He that doth get a wench with child and marries her afterwards, it is as if a man should shit in his hat and then clap it upon his head.”

  It was surely Nan Hyde they were talking about. So her belly could not be kept a secret any longer, and now the troubles had begun.

  Jane had no sooner got back to Somerset House than she had a visit from Nan’s maid, Nell Stroud, her eyes anxious.

  “My mistress begs that you will come to see her, Mistress Lane, as soon as you possibly may.”

  Jane’s mind began to tally the possible problems Nan was facing.

  “I will come with you now,” she said, “but what is the matter?”

  “Oh, Mistress, I’ll leave it to her to tell you in full, but she’s in the briars right enough.”

  Jane put on her cloak and hat and hurried with Nell the short way along the river to Worcester House, where Nan was living with her parents.

  “Oh, Jane, thank God you’ve come!” Nan exclaimed, breaking into tears as she rushed to Jane and threw her arms around her. She was heavily pregnant now, but her face was streaked with tears and her eyes sunk in shadows. She led Jane to a little table before the fireplace and Nell disappeared to fetch some refreshment.

  “Nan, what’s amiss?” Jane cried, alarmed at her friend’s state.

  “Everything,” Nan said, shaking her head as though lost. “We were married again here in secret a few weeks ago, lest there be any question about our marriage in Breda. James told the king that we were wed, and that if His Majesty did not accept it we would leave England forever. The king was not happy but said as it was done there was naught he could do. He sent my lord of Ormonde and the Earl of Southampton to tell my father.”

  She broke off and started sobbing, mopping her face with a handkerchief that was already sodden and wrinkled.

  “My father declared that he would rather I was the duke’s whore than his wife.”

  “But why?” Jane asked, appalled.

  “Because he fears it will be thought that he seeks to rise above his station, that he has pushed me to James for what he may gain by it. He said—he said he would beg His Majesty to put me in the Tower and cut off my head.”

  “Surely he didn’t mean it?” Jane gasped.

  “He did!” Nan wailed. “They thought he was mad, James said, he was roaring so. He said I was no daughter of his any more, that he disowned me.”

  Jane thought of Lord Capulet railing at poor Juliet.

  Hang, beg, starve, die in the streets

  For by my soul I’ll ne’er acknowledge thee,

  Nor what is mine shall never do thee good.

  “He ordered my mother to lock me up, and she has done so!”

  “But what of the duke? Surely he can make your father see sense?”

  “He—he
—he—”

  Nan was sobbing so hard now that she couldn’t get the words out. Jane gathered the girl into her arms and held her, stroking her damp hair from her face, until the sobs subsided into hiccups and at last Nan could speak again.

  “That is the worst of it, and why I am so afraid! He was coming by night to visit me, secretly. Oh, my mother knew, but my father did not. But now he has not come for more than three weeks! And Nell tells me that Sir Charles Berkeley, that very devil, has poisoned his mind, telling James that the marriage is not lawful because the king did not give his consent beforehand, and moreover that he—Sir Charles, I mean—has lain with me, and sundry other men besides!”

  It grew more and more like a plot from Shakespeare, Jane thought, with Sir Charles acting a very Iago to the Duke of York.

  “But sure the duke does not believe that?” Jane said. “He couldn’t!”

  “But he does!” Nan’s eyes were hopeless. “Or at least he must have come to think it may be so, for I’m told he thinks of throwing me over, of denying that we were ever wed!”

  “But you are, and I was there,” Jane said.

  “Yes, and that is why I need your help. Oh, Jane, I beg you, go to him. Remind him that I am indeed his true and loving wife, and tell him that on my soul I could never play him false and never have. I would rather die, tell him.”

  “I will,” Jane said, anger boiling within her. “He’ll answer to me, I assure you. And that rogue Sir Charles as well.”

  GUILT AND ALARM SUFFUSED THE DUKE OF YORK’S FACE WHEN JANE stomped up to him in his chambers at St James’s Palace.

  “Your Highness,” she began. “I must needs speak with you of your wife.”

  “Here, in here, I p-p-pray you,” he gulped, his stammer rising to trouble him as it always did when he was upset. He ushered her into his privy chamber and shut the door behind them, regarding Jane as he might a mad dog.

  “For shame, Your Highness. For shame, sir.”

  The duke dropped his eyes and drew breath to speak, but Jane carried on.

  “Surely you know better than to believe the damned lies of that cur Berkeley? Nan is true to you, and has been ever since the day you met, I swear upon my life. And if it is true that you are trying to wriggle away from the poor girl, and claim you were never wed, by God I will go to the king and tell him of that marriage in Breda, and of all that went before it.”