The King's Mistress

by Gillian Bagwell

  Jane stared at him. It would never come again. He had said it, so bluntly. In one moment shattering the hopes she had nursed for so many years, though she thought she had let go of them long since. He was smiling, and the smile enraged her.

  “I could have—” she began. She thought of Henry Lascelles, the love shining in his eyes. Of the men she had dismissed from consideration without a thought over the years. Because always it had been Charles who held her heart. “I could have loved someone else. Been happy.”

  “You shall have a pension of a thousand pounds a year. Enough that you need never do anything that you do not want to do, or bind yourself to any man except in love.”

  What a fool she had been. It was all over now, it didn’t matter what she said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before that you didn’t want to be with me?”

  “I did—”

  “You didn’t. All you had to say was, ‘Jane I cannot love you,’ and I would have heard you.”

  “But I did love you,” he protested.

  Jane winced at the past tense, and saw in the same moment that Charles realised what he had said. He opened his mouth to speak, but she waved him silent and turned her back to him, choking on her tears. She felt his eyes on her and she wanted to be gone from him, away from this torture of humiliation. But she could not leave yet. All the rage and hurt and bafflement of the long years bubbled to the surface, hot as molten metal, and would not be stilled.

  “All you had to say was that I should not hope.”

  Her voice sounded unnaturally calm to her own ears. Torrents of pain raged within her.

  “It would have hurt, but I would have survived. God knows I survived worse for you.”

  The long weeks of the walk to Yarmouth, the cold, the exhaustion, the killing of the rebel deserter, the days lying in Marjorie’s cave after the loss of the child.

  “I would have turned my thoughts from you, carved you out of my heart if need be. Why didn’t you tell me? You had so many chances.”

  He threw up his hands helplessly.

  “You knew I could not marry where I loved; I had to put the good of the country first.”

  Jane thought of poor Lucy Walter. Had she been the king’s bride, denied and cast aside when it did not suit him to have a wife?

  “Your purse first, you mean.”

  “Jane,” he cried. “What would you have me do? I needed money, an army to take back my country—and all I had to offer was myself as husband to some princess with a father or brother with the means to help me. I tried to find a wife, God knows, not for my contentment but out of duty, but none would have me. My person alone was not enough, without I had a throne and a crown. And now I am back, now I am king in fact, the choice rests not with me alone.”

  “‘His greatness weighed, his will is not his own,’” she quoted.

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “You think you’re Hamlet?” There was venom in her voice.

  “He wrote it because it was true!” He ran his hands through his hair despairingly. “Jane, I never led you to believe that I could marry you.”

  “Marry me, no, but you said you loved me. Did that not mean anything?”

  “Of course it did,” he said, moving swiftly to her side.

  “What? What did it mean? That you wanted to bed me at that moment but had no thought for me as soon as I was out of your sight?”

  “Of course I wanted to see you.”

  “Then why did you not send for me? Why have I spent these many years—nine years, Charles!—waiting for you to want to be with me as you said you did? I loved you. I love you still.”

  She was sobbing and turned away from him in shame. When she had mastered herself, she went on.

  “There has been no one else for me but you. But for you, there has always been someone else. I tried to tell myself that they didn’t matter to you, that you needed the comfort, that you were sad and lonely and that I was the one you truly loved, and that the time would come that we would be together. But always it was someone else. Poor Lucy—”

  “She was long gone to Taaffe by the time you came to Paris.”

  “The Duchess de Châtillon,” Jane pressed on relentlessly. “Lady Byron, Catherine Pegge, Betty Killigrew—it was always someone else who had your company while I waited, longing for you. And now, now that you can do as you will—”

  “I cannot!” he exploded.

  “You can spend your days and nights with whom you please, whoever you must wed. And now it is still not me—it is Barbara Palmer.” She didn’t try to stop the tears now. “Barbara Palmer! So beautiful, so young. How can I compete? I can’t. I’ve given you my youth and hopes, when you never loved me, never wanted me.”

  “Jane—” He tried to take her into his arms but she shoved him away, eyes blazing.

  “I wish I had never seen you. I wish they had taken you at Worcester and hanged you at Tyburn. I wish England had gone up in flames and the monarchy ended and you suffered in hell for what I have been through for you.”

  She was suddenly aware of the little silk bundle pinned inside her bodice—the watch he had given her when they parted at Trent, wrapped in his handkerchief. She yanked it out and held it up for him to see.

  “Take it back again. ‘Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.’”

  She hurled the watch at Charles, but it sailed over his head and crashed against the wall. Her last sight of him was the anguish in his eyes as she turned and fled, slamming the door shut behind her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THE COACH RATTLED DOWN THE WOLVERHAMPTON ROAD, AND Jane’s heart beat fast as the familiar turnoff to Bentley Hall came into view. The house was unchanged from when she had seen it last, but as she approached it seemed still and empty. Perhaps it was the dogs. There used to be a pack of dogs that set up such a clamour at the approach of any vehicle, animal, or person, but now only two rose from the shadows to give halfhearted barks.

  The door opened, and with a shock Jane realised that the old lady who peered out at the approaching coach was her mother. Her hair had gone completely white, and she seemed stooped, and far thinner than Jane remembered her. And there was John behind her, and Athalia, both grey-haired and sad behind their smiles. She looked beyond them, and realised with an enormous tug at her heart that it was the sight of her father she sought. But he was gone, and she would never again see the love for her in his eyes or smell the comforting scent of his pipe as they sat together in his little library. Tears came to her eyes.

  John helped her to alight, and awkwardly they all began to talk at once, and then all stopped at once to let one another speak, and again began to speak at once. Jane hugged her mother to her, careful at her fragility. Had she always been so small?

  “You’ll be tired,” her mother said. “Your room is waiting for you, just as it was.”

  The memory of her room as it had been on that morning so long ago came sharp into Jane’s mind, and suddenly she wondered why she had not come home so soon as she had landed in England, or indeed as soon as she had known that Charles would take his throne and she no longer had to fear for her life. What magic had she thought that Charles or London held, that they had kept her from the home and the people she loved so dearly?

  “The others?” Jane asked.

  “We’ll have everyone to supper tomorrow,” John said. “When you’ve had a chance to rest. Everyone is fair aching to see you again, Jane.”

  The servants had taken Jane’s baggage upstairs, and she opened the door of her room to the scent of the fir boughs burning in the fireplace. And to the sound of a creaking call she knew so well and had not heard for so long.

  “Jack!”

  The cat leaped off the window seat and came stumping across the floor towards her, his tail held high. She could hear his purring from halfway across the room. She knelt and he came to her, and she kissed his head, stroked the soft white fur of his throat, inhaled the dusty and alive scent as he butted agains
t her cheek.

  “Oh, Jack. I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long.”

  JANE FELT LIKE A STRANGER AT THE FAMILY SUPPER THE FOLLOWING evening. John’s children were all grown. Mary, Anne, and Elizabeth had married and were no longer at home. Thomas, whom she had last seen as a slight boy of eleven, was a tall and strapping young man who had just reached his majority. Grace, Lettice, and her namesake Jane were past twenty-one, though as yet unmarried. Even the youngest girls, Dorothy and Frances, were young ladies. The gathering was so small that there was no need to use the banqueting house; the entire family fit comfortably in the dining room.

  Nurse, the steward, and a few other old retainers were still at Bentley, but so many of the others that Jane had known were gone, and the household now had only nine servants in all.

  “We’ve done far less mining and farming than in the old days,” young Thomas said. “There was no point in the labour as the more we earned, the more we were levied.”

  “But that will all change now,” William said. “Now that the king is back, and we have nothing more to fear.”

  Jane noted with shock that even he, only a couple of years older than she, had a dusting of grey hair at his temples.

  “Many things will change, and for the better, too,” John said. “So many years of hardships are behind us now.”

  JANE STOOPED TO LAY THE APPLE BLOSSOMS ON HER FATHER’S GRAVE. It still looked so new, with the shoots of grass covering the mound of earth a fresher and brighter green than that of the surrounding sod. She sat, not caring for the dirt on her skirts, and with a finger traced the letters of his name, the dates of his birth and death, the edges of the carving in the stone still sharp and clean.

  “I’m sorry, Father,” she whispered. “I wish I had been here for you.”

  The whole orchard at Bentley was a cloud of pink and white blossoms, their sweet scent permeating the air. Nine springs I missed, Jane thought. Nine times the winter-dark branches shooting forth their tiny buds, nine times those buds exploded in riotous blossom, nine times those blossoms showered the earth as the green leaves uncurled, nine times the nubs grew steadily into the heavy fruit. Did you walk here among the trees and think of me and wish me with you? Did you know that every day I thought of you and prayed for you, dear Father?

  She cried, as she had not been able to release herself to cry for her father’s death until now, laying her head upon the sod, her fingers clutching at the cold ground. And when she had finally done, wiping her grimy cheeks with dirt-streaked hands, the question sprang into her mind, as it had done so many times before. Was it worth it?

  NOT LONG AFTER JANE’S RETURN, SHE RECEIVED A LETTER FROM SIR Clement Fisher, welcoming her home and asking if he could visit. Jane thought back to the last time she had seen him, at that birthday supper so long ago, just before Charles had arrived to change her life forever. She was an entirely different person now than she had been then, she thought. Could she hope to explain to Sir Clement what her life had been? Would she need to? After some thought she wrote back that she would be pleased to see him, and a week later she watched from her bedroom window as he came riding up the drive. He was still very handsome, she thought, little changed outwardly from the man she had known almost ten years earlier. She glanced in the mirror. She knew how much she had changed. Would he still find her to his liking?

  “Jane.”

  Clement’s voice was warm and his eyes told her that he still saw beauty in her face and form. She was surprised at how the sight of him stirred her heart. He had aged well, and seemed somehow more solid than she remembered. As he took her hand and kissed her, she felt at home and very safe.

  “Jane,” he said. “And now you are not just my Jane but the heroine of the country, the friend of the king and the darling of the courts of London, Paris, and the United Provinces.”

  “Hardly that,” Jane laughed. “Were I that darling, they would not have let me leave. There is refreshment in the small parlour. Shall we sit there?”

  As they settled before the fire, Jane recalled the evening long ago when Clement had asked her to be his wife. She poured hot chocolate for him, and sipped her own, not sure what to say.

  “Will you tell me of your time abroad?” he asked.

  “There’s not much to say. Or rather, there’s so much that I scarce know where to begin. Ten years …”

  “Yes. Oh, Jane, I thought of you so often in those years. I carried you ever in my heart and longed for your return.”

  Jane was surprised at his words, and moved that he should be so candid.

  “I’m gratified at such esteem,” she said. “But I am not who I was. I fear I must disappoint you, when you find that the woman you have held in your mind’s eye is gone.”

  He looked sad, and Jane spoke again.

  “I do not mean in any way to reject your friendship.”

  “Is it friendship only that you think I offer you?”

  There was love in his eyes, and with a flood of longing Jane realised how she had yearned for love and how little she had received in recent years.

  “What I mean,” she said, “is that I welcome your company more than I knew. And yet I am afraid, I find.”

  “Afraid? Of me?”

  “No, not afraid of you. But of being known by you, perhaps.”

  She thought about the lost child, and the pain, and what Marjorie had told her, that she might never hold a child in her womb again. Could she ever tell Clement that? What if he wanted a child, what if that was his chief reason for seeking a wife? They sat in silence for some moments before he spoke.

  “I would not have you share with me more of yourself than is comfortable for you. Let us begin anew. We’ll get to know each other as the people we are now, rather than who we were before. I’ll take nothing for granted, and hope that with time you may come to trust that you are safe with me.”

  Jane smiled, grateful.

  “Thank you. Once more you offer me more patience than any woman has a right to expect.”

  “But it is not any woman to whom I give it. It is you. Oh, Jane, you cannot know what it means to me to have you here beside me.”

  CHARLES’S CORONATION WOULD TAKE PLACE ON THE TWENTY-THIRD of April. St George’s Day, the feast day of the patron saint of England. Well chosen, Jane thought. There was no day in the calendar that could be more heavily freighted with Englishness, with tradition, with the monarchy stretching back so many centuries. She had a pang of longing that she would not be in London for the event. She could imagine the streets thronged with the rejoicing populace, the church bells pealing, the king’s stately procession to Westminster Abbey, and the ranks of the nobility there to witness the restoration of the monarchy. She thought of Charles bowing his head to receive the crown and smiled to wonder who would place it on his head, and whether whoever it was would have to stand a-tiptoe to reach. A-tiptoe. The phrase jolted words long forgotten into her mind.

  … will stand a tip-toe when this day is named,

  And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

  It was the speech of King Henry V to his outnumbered troops before the Battle of Agincourt.

  We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

  For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

  Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,

  This day shall gentle his condition,

  And gentlemen in England now a-bed

  Shall think themselves accursed they were not here …

  The thought shot through Jane like a bolt of lightning. As those men with Henry upon the field in France, she had been there, side by side in battle with the king. Her king. Her Charles. As Charles had said atop that windswept hill in Dorset, if Shakespeare were yet living, he might have written of it, her place no less in glory than those soldiers of old.

  The dogs set up a furious barking and Jane went to the window to see what had them so stirred up. A coach was coming up the drive towards the house. A coach was an unusual thing in the country, and ce
rtainly a coach such as this, with an ebony-black finish so glossy that the rays of the sun striking it shone as though on a mirror. The old groom Maycumber was hastening as fast as his stiff legs would allow him from the back of the house to meet the strange equipage, and as it turned Jane saw with a shock that the door was painted with the royal coat of arms. Her heart skipped. But as the coach clattered to a halt, a liveried footman emerged, alone. It was not, as she had so wildly hoped for a moment, Charles, come to see her.

  THE ENTIRE LANE HOUSEHOLD STARED IN AMAZEMENT AT WHAT the coach had brought, now spread before them on the long dining table. A pocket watch, worked intricately in gold. A great clock. A gold snuffbox with a tiny portrait of the king decorating its lid. A gold poncet box engraved with the Canton of England and the Lane arms. And what Jane could scarcely look away from, a life-size portrait of Charles, in a heavily carved gilded frame, in full regalia as he must have been for his coronation—a robe of purple velvet trimmed in ermine, the heavy golden orb in one hand and splendid sceptre in the other, and on his head, a heavy crown of gold, adorned with jewels of monstrous size. The crown that she had helped to put on his head.

  Along with the gifts had come a letter from Charles. The king was pleased to provide for each of John’s daughters a marriage portion of a thousand pounds, and John would receive a yearly pension of five hundred pounds. And a title.

  John looked stunned when he read out the letter, to the gasps and squeals of excitement of his wife, daughters, and mother. But he glanced at Jane, and then carefully folded the letter and put it away in the inside pocket of his coat, his expression unreadable. And to the cries asking when he should assume his title, and if they could all go to London when he should do so, he shook his head, and said only, “We’ll see.”

  There was more—a long parchment, heavily weighted with seals and ribbons. John opened it, and then passed it to Jane.

  “You read it. It’s really for you.”