The King's Mistress

by Gillian Bagwell

  Other pictures would show the king changing into his disguise as Will Jackson at Whiteladies, sheltering in the woods near Boscobel, hiding in the oak tree with Colonel Carlis, and riding on the Penderels’ mill horse. The five Penderel brothers, along with Thomas Whitgreaves and Father Huddleston, had sat for Fuller when they visited Whitehall in June, and he showed Jane the painting of them escorting Charles through the dark woods.

  The paintings brought back vividly to Jane’s mind her travels with Charles, the days when they had been as close as two people might be. She longed for that closeness again, and on a whim, decided to go and see him.

  She made for the king’s privy chamber. Perhaps she would be fortunate enough to find him alone. She was pleased to see that no one waited in the outer chamber, but just as she was about to give her name to the guard, the door to Charles’s room opened, and a richly dressed young woman and a little girl stepped out. Charles kissed the woman on the cheek before he saw Jane, and she noted his look of guilty surprise as his eyes met hers. The woman turned to see who was coming, and Jane recognised her as Betty Killigrew Boyle, who had been made Viscountess Shannon in September. She had been one of the ladies-in-waiting to Charles’s mother in Paris, and another of his lovers. And the little girl by her side, with her near-black ringlets and shining dark eyes, was unquestionably Charles’s daughter. The two women stared at each other for a moment before bowing coldly, and then the viscountess swept past Jane and away, her heels clicking on the marble floor.

  “Jane,” Charles said. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  He seemed a little awkward. Quite polite, as he might be to a stranger. Not the Charles she had hoped to find. Not her Charles.

  “No, Your Majesty,” she said. “I just—I have just been admiring Mr Fuller’s paintings and wanted to compliment you.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, pulling out his pocket watch and tilting it to catch the light. Jane thought of the watch he had given her on that morning when they parted at Trent.

  “Good, aren’t they?” Charles smiled vaguely in her direction. “I’m sorry, Jane, but I’m late for Edward Hyde. Perhaps we can talk later?”

  “Of course, Your Majesty,” she said, curtsying, and managed a smile as she left him.

  That night, Jane could not sleep, and stood staring out a window of the darkened palace. She could just discern the ripples in the river below, shining in the moonlight. She thought she had never been so lonely in her life. Seeing Charles’s little girl that afternoon had made her think once more of what would have happened had she borne that lost baby. Would she have received a title, as Elizabeth Killigrew had? Would Charles pay any more attention to her? Or would she feel as cast aside as she now did, only more so, with a child to care for and no prospect of a husband, either in the person of the king or someone else?

  The face of Clement Fisher rose to her mind, and she suddenly longed to see him. He was still unmarried, she knew. But perhaps there was someone, someone he had contracted with but not yet wed. After all, it had been nine years since they had seen each other last. Well, that was just one more thing she would learn when she went home. In January, after the coronation. Not very much longer now.

  THE COURT, STILL MOURNING THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, was preparing for a subdued Christmas. Jane’s brother Richard had come, and she scarcely recognised him from the fire-breathing young man she had last seen a few days before the Battle of Worcester. It warmed her heart to have him with her at Whitehall, among the ever-growing sea of strangers.

  She had not yet received further news of the promised pension, but she was overjoyed to learn that Parliament had voted her a gift of a thousand pounds to buy herself a jewel. She would be glad of the money, but had no intention of spending so much on a jewel when it might let her live in independence and comfort for many years.

  She was just sitting down to write to inform Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia of her good news when Dorothy darted into her room, looking terrified.

  “Have you heard? The Princess Royal is taken ill.”

  Mary had never been quite well since they had arrived, but Jane had put it down to grief over her brother’s death, distress at having been forced to leave her son William behind at The Hague, the dreadful voyage to England, and then the protracted stress over the Duke of York’s marriage.

  “You mean more ill than she has been?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes.” Dorothy blinked, on the edge of tears. “A raging fever, and red spots all over.”

  Jane’s heart stopped. Red spots sounded very like smallpox. Jane hurried to Somerset House, where a group of black-gowned doctors gathered, looking like a flock of ravens. By that night, Mary was worse, out of her head with delirium. The next afternoon Mary seemed somewhat improved, but Jane thought she had better write to Queen Elizabeth.

  “I believe Your Majesty will hear the hot alarum of the Princess Royal’s being in great danger of death, which indeed this morning was sadly apprehended by many. But because Your Majesty should not be frighted at what news perchance you may hear, I have just now been with her and God be praised she is much better. The doctors do not yet know whether it is the pox or the measles, but I fear it will prove the smallpox.

  “Let it be what it will, I am confident the trouble about her brother’s business has thrown her into it. The duke is much at Worcester House with his wife and is as all people say very fond of her. She takes an abundance of servants, and ’tis said great lords’ daughters are offered her to be maids of honour to her. I confess I am now glad Your Majesty is not here, for all things go very cross. The queen has deferred her journey a week longer because of the princess being not well.

  “The Parliament has given me a thousand pounds this week. I will not fail to write Your Majesty word how the princess does by the next post. I pray God bless Your Majesty.”

  Mary’s doctors decided that it was not measles she had, but smallpox, which had so recently carried off the Duke of Gloucester, and all of London seemed to hold its breath, hoping for news of Mary’s recovery but fearing the worst. Charles sent his mother and sister Minette to St James’s Palace to be out of danger of contagion, but visited Mary daily himself, sitting by her bedside as she grew weaker.

  Jane returned to Somerset House to see Mary again the day after she had written to Queen Elizabeth. Mary’s room was stifling, a fire burning on the hearth and heavy coverings over the windows, and a whimper of misery came from the figure beneath the bedclothes.

  “Your Highness,” Jane said softly as she approached the bed.

  Mary’s eyes flickered open. They were bright with fever, and her face seemed to have aged ten years. Flat red spots flared on her face, her forearms, and the palms of her hands.

  “Jane,” Mary murmured. “Don’t touch me. I would not have you ill.”

  She closed her eyes, as if the effort of keeping them open was too exhausting. Jane sat beside the bed, horrified at Mary’s condition.

  “Is there anything I can do, Your Highness, to make you more comfortable?”

  The faintest of smiles crossed Mary’s face.

  “My little William. Make sure that the king cares for him as he ought, champions my son as I have done in dealing with the stadtholders. Ask my aunt Elizabeth of Bohemia to never let him forget me.”

  “Oh, Your Highness, surely you will recover to see your son again,” Jane murmured, her heart breaking at the thought of William, just turned ten, being orphaned.

  Mary shook her head, her eyes closed once more, as if gathering her strength to go on.

  “Tell Nan Hyde I’m sorry I have not been more kind to her these last weeks. I know she loves James, and he must love her to have withstood what he has on her behalf.”

  Her eyes opened again, burning into Jane’s.

  “And thank you, Jane. For what you did for His Majesty. I know that you have suffered these years, and I can never thank you enough, for without you surely he would not have come safe away from England, nor w
ould he now be back in London, and truly king.”

  “I would do it again a hundred times,” Jane said, wondering if it were true.

  “What courage,” Mary said. “Never forget, Jane, what you have done for England.”

  THE NEXT DAY MARY SEEMED TO RALLY, BUT ON CHRISTMAS EVE SHE died, and the stunned court greeted the first Christmas after Charles’s restoration with renewed sorrow.

  On the twenty-ninth of December, Jane walked behind Mary’s coffin to Westminster Abbey, flanked by Lord Ormonde and Edward Hyde. As was the custom, the king was not present, and the Duke of York served as chief mourner.

  The funeral was conducted by the Reverend Gilbert Sheldon, as had been the christening of Nan Hyde’s son. He was a man of the generation of Jane’s parents, who was also from an old Staffordshire family, and listening to his accent made Jane acutely homesick. Very soon now, she would go home. There was no reason for her to be in London once the coronation was done.

  Except … The word whispered at the back of her mind. Except what? Except to feel once more Charles’s love, to know that she was special to him and that their days together had not been forgotten.

  ON THE FIRST OF JANUARY, JANE WENT WITH NAN HYDE TO WHITEHALL, where the Duke of York presented her formally as his wife to his mother, Queen Mary, who, with as much grace as she could muster, embraced the new duchess and kissed her cheeks.

  A little later, Nan’s baby Charles was created Duke of Cambridge, though what should have been a joyful celebration seemed almost an afterthought in the gloom following Mary’s death.

  The next day, Queen Mary and Minette set out for Paris, and Charles and his brother James were left to themselves, all that remained of the royal family that had returned so hopefully to England.

  Twelfth Night brought to a close the Christmas season that had started with such joy and ended in such grief. In the Banqueting House, Jane chatted with Dr Sheldon, exchanging memories of Christmases long past, of Morris dancers with antlers stepping the horn dance of Abbots Bromley. He knew her parents and John, and Jane was sure she must have met him when she was small.

  “Will you go home now, Mistress Lane?” Dr Sheldon asked.

  “Very soon,” she answered. “I tarried here so that I might attend the coronation, but now …”

  “Yes, now with the loss of the Princess Royal that must be put off for some time.”

  “Until after Easter, I am given to understand,” Jane said.

  And now there really is no reason for me to tarry here, Jane thought.

  Except …

  She pushed the thought from her mind.

  JANE HAD RECEIVED A CHRISTMAS GIFT OF A DOZEN BOTTLES OF wormwood wine from Queen Elizabeth. They had been dispatched before the queen learned of Mary’s death, and arrived with a letter full of good wishes for the new year. Jane had just sat down to write back to Charles’s aunt, when Dorothy rushed in to inform her that word had come that Minette had been taken ill on the voyage back to France. Jane’s first thought was what terror that news would strike into the heart of the poor old queen, already distraught over the loss of her favourite niece, and she bent her head and prayed before she took up her pen to write her letter. I must give her the news but not alarm her, she thought. Not until there is need for her to be alarmed.

  And please, God, let there not be the need. Let there not be another blow to one who has withstood so many.

  “I have yesterday received Your Majesty’s gracious present of wormwood wine, which is extremely good,” she wrote. “Which in all humbleness I do present my duty and humble thanks for.”

  And now for the difficult part, she thought.

  “Here is no news that I know can be pleasing to Your Majesty,” she wrote on, “but yet after so many and great afflictions that Your Majesty has had, I hope nothing will have cause to afflict you more. This morning news is come that your niece has the measles a-shipboard and that the queen is returned to Portsmouth. I would give anything that I were with Your Majesty.”

  I can’t leave it like that, she thought. Give her something to distract her. She smiled, thinking of the old queen’s most recent letter, full of indignation that Nan Hyde should have been made Duchess of York.

  “I have this morning been to wait on the duchess,” she wrote. “She lies here, and the king is very kind to her. She takes upon her as if she had been duchess this seven year. I wish Your Majesty did but see how perfectly I am mortified, but no one lives that is more Your Majesty’s most humblest most obedient servant than I am and will ever be.”

  Jane reread the letter and sighed. She wanted to beg the queen to embark for England now so that at least she would be among family and friends, but she could see the proud old head shaking her refusal. When the king invited her, then she would come. Can I tell her that I love her? Jane wondered. She dipped her pen in the ink bottle and held it over the paper, hesitating, but could not quite summon the courage to write those words.

  “Madam,” she wrote, “for God’s sake, have a great care of yourself, for if Your Majesty should come to harm that loss were never to be repaired. God in His infinite mercy protect you.”

  JANUARY HAD COME AND GONE, AND THE CORONATION WOULD NOT take place until April, and yet Jane had not gone home to Bentley. What held her there? she asked herself. Nothing.

  Except …

  On the twenty-fifth of February, almost nine months to the day since Charles had returned to London, Barbara Palmer gave birth to a daughter. The baby was called Anne Palmer, but no one thought that Barbara’s husband was the father.

  Jane tried to tell herself that the news didn’t hurt, but it did, to her very soul. Whitehall echoed with the whispers, and Charles strutted amidst the crowds of courtiers. Like a rooster among the hens, Jane thought. And as at The Hague, when she had first seen Barbara Palmer, she was consumed with a helpless despair. She had given nine years of her life to the preservation of the king, nine years that had taken her from youth, with possibilities still before her, to this hell in which it seemed that her choices had slipped away while she was not looking.

  It is past time I go home, she told herself. How much evidence do I need that Charles has forgotten me, if indeed he ever cared for me at all?

  She had thought that she could not feel more miserable, but the next day she found that she could.

  “James tells me that my father has been most industrious to find a wife for the king,” Nan Hyde said, smiling, as Jane brushed her hair, “and that the choice has been made.”

  Jane stopped, brush in hand, blinking her astonishment. Of course she knew that Charles must have a queen, but she had not known that the search for a bride had begun in earnest, much less that the matter had been settled. Most of all it hurt that she had heard of it from someone other than Charles.

  “There were three quite good possibilities,” Nan went on, happy to have the rapt attention of everyone within hearing. “The Princess of Denmark, the Infanta of Portugal, and the sister of the Prince of Parma. But—though it’s still secret, so do not breathe a word—it’s to be the Portuguese princess.”

  Jane felt the blood rushing to her face. There was a roaring in her ears and she could no longer hear Nan’s voice. She longed to grapple Nan around her throat and choke the simper off her face. She clapped a hand to her mouth, whether to keep herself from vomiting or screaming, she did not know.

  She turned and fled from Nan’s presence, ignoring the questioning cries behind her. She was almost to the king’s privy chamber before she knew where she was going. She stalked past the guards at the door before they had time to stop her. Charles was alone with Edward Hyde.

  “I must needs speak to Your Majesty. Now.”

  Hyde gaped at her.

  “Well, Charles?”

  The king paused only a moment before dismissing Hyde with a wave of his hand. Jane waited, but barely, before the door closed behind him.

  “How dare you!” she shouted. It wasn’t a very dignified beginning, she knew, but she
was past caring.

  “What have I done?” Charles asked, blinking.

  “You are to be married! And you have not even the consideration to tell me yourself!”

  The thought flitted across her mind that at last she was alone with Charles, as she had not been in seven years, and that this scene was nothing like what she had hoped for.

  “You know I must marry. I need an heir.”

  “But you—you—how can you do this to me?” Jane knew the words were absurd, made no sense, but there was no stopping them. “After what I have given you?”

  “I can never repay you, Jane, for what you did for me. For England.”

  For you, she thought. It was all for you, once I knew you. I love you, not England. The you with the laughing eyes, and the strong arms that held me, and the mouth that crushed mine in the heat of your passion. My lover, the father of that babe lost so long ago. Not the king, not this stranger who sits here before me.

  “Go home, Jane.” His words were soft, but they hit Jane like a blow. “You see how it is here. I am always at the centre of—of something. Some dispute, some urgent business, some suit for money or honours. During our time together, I could be myself, but I fear me I will never have such leisure again.”

  “You have time enough for Barbara.”

  Charles spoke so quietly that Jane could scarce hear him.

  “You’re better than that, Jane. You deserve better. You would not be happy with balls and card games and supper parties and the constant backbiting that has only just begun but now will never leave off. You long for discourse that will stretch your mind, for experience that will test your strength and courage, and for attention from a man that is constant and whose fire never dies. I cannot give you that. I wish I could, but I know myself too well.”

  Jane felt her heart tearing in two. She was drowning in a lake of her own blood deep within her breast. She should leave, before she made a worse fool of herself, but she could not.

  “But before?”

  “Before was a time out of time, a place that had no place, when you and I were all there was except the burning need to find my way to safety. That time is gone, and what we had will never come again.”