Girl on the Golden Coin: A Novel of Frances Stuart

by Jefferson, Marci

  “Frances, I’m a rake.” He shook his head, turning his gaze to the curtains as if they were foreign and far away. “There is no honor in me, the outcast king who led so many to their doom during the Battle of Worcester, who couldn’t save his own father from execution.”

  “You sent Parliament a blank document with your signature at the bottom to barter for your father’s life. What more could a prince do?”

  “Parliament. They are on the verge of rejecting my Toleration Bill. They have the real power.” He scoffed. “Why would an angel want to fall into the mire of London’s streets with the likes of me?”

  “I won’t fall.” I touched a trembling hand to his face. “Let me lift you.”

  His eyes softened, and he turned his face to kiss my palm. “You could.” He kissed my hand over and over. “You make me want to be worthy of you.”

  He touched his lips to mine. Softly at first, then pressing with more urgency, tongue swooping into mine, carrying me into the fog again. He broke away suddenly and pulled the coverlet up tight around my neck as if to shield me from himself. And then he slipped through the curtains. He would do what he promised, protect me from gossip by telling them all nothing happened. A candle gutted, and I felt a sinking feeling that had nothing to do with the wine. It is unpleasant to trick someone you truly care about.

  * * *

  When I next opened my eyes I was alone in Castlemaine’s curtained bed, and it was very dim but for a dying glow flickering from the direction of the fireplace. I sat up. My head spun, and I rubbed my temple before opening the curtain.

  They were naked on her fur carpets before the hearth. His long dark body twined in her creamy white limbs, moving together in a graceful passion. Her fingers followed a path along his back. He pulled away, inched down to kiss her breast and run his hand down her leg. I pulled pillows over my head and let the wine tug me to sleep again.

  CHAPTER 22

  Whitehall Palace

  A few days later

  With one hand grasping the handle of the queen’s rare blue and white china teapot, and the other cradling its bottom, I tipped it carefully to pour. Steaming water swirled into our dishes, making the tea leaves dance. I inhaled the tempting scent and set the teapot aside. “Every lady at Whitehall drinks tea now. Fashioning themselves after you, my queen.”

  “Becauze they see tea is rich. Not becauze they like queen.”

  “Of course they like their queen. And without you I don’t think we could even get tea in England. Thanks to the trading port in your dowry, we shall soon have an abundance!” I brought a delicate dish to my lips for a brief sip. “King Charles says he is impressed with your English.”

  Her face brightened. “Yes. He like my talk. Though I error much.”

  Silence settled between us. Queen Catherine’s expression slowly fell. “I error with King Sharles many ways. He go with Laydee Casslemaine much.”

  I placed my dish gently on the table. “He shows you kindness before the court and makes the court respect you.”

  She touched one hand to the straight front of her bodice. “No shild yet inside me. King Sharles go with Laydee Casslemaine too much. Our Queen Mother explain me the needs of kings in Eengland. I have come to accept.”

  “You—you accept that the king has a mistress?”

  She pointed to her prayer book, open on a nearby table. “Apostle Paul found contentment even in prison. You read that?” She sipped her tea. “My choices are accept and have peace, or be angry and have hate. Portugal need help from Eengland to be safe from Spain. My duty is being the good wife.”

  I wondered how much she really knew. Had she heard that King Charles spent an increasing amount of time with the irritating Winifred Wells? Did she know how much I struggled with my own attraction for King Charles?

  “But must have shild inside me for King Sharles. For Eengland. For Portugal.” She set her dish down. “You must help. Laydee Casslemaine hate me, but you like me. If King Sharles have you be his mistress … you would speak well of me?”

  Stunned, I sat quiet for a long moment. “Are you asking me to be the king’s mistress so I can make him more favorable to you?”

  She nodded. “I need a shild.”

  “You wouldn’t be angry?”

  “I like Frances Stuart better than Laydee Casslemaine.” She giggled, and I laughed a little, too.

  * * *

  By late February I was ready to make my move. I sat between Wells and Castlemaine at the King’s Theater as Castlemaine grumbled. “Lady Gerard is a wrinkled old prude. I’ll make the king dismiss her from the queen’s train for her foul treatment of me!”

  Wells leaned across me to respond. “She told me the king shows very poor taste in wasting time with you.” She waved her hands, eyes wide with false astonishment. “Though I can’t understand why she would dare insult him to my face, knowing my relationship with the king to be so intimate.”

  Castlemaine shifted in our gallery box and looked as if she would spit venom. Not because of the pretentious Wells, but because her name was being smeared. “Rest assured. The king heard about it from me.”

  I glanced at King Charles in the box to our left. Surrounded by red velvet and silver gilt, he looked thoroughly bored by his own theater company. The whole building had been refurbished from an old Tudor tennis court, and the stage was completely devoid of scenery. The only interesting thing about the production was that women actually played the female roles instead of little men in gowns. Indeed, now that actresses had taken the stage, female characters often donned male disguises, allowing for wild adventures. Theaters were filling with men happy for a glimpse of curvy legs hugged into hose and breeches.

  Finally the poet John Dryden bowed to Castlemaine, flattery for encouraging his first play. She gloated while the audience, seated on benches in the rush-strewn pit below, applauded courteously. She sent her languishing-eye look the poet’s way, and I fancied this was the only applause she’d ever get from the English people in her life.

  * * *

  As soon as we were ensconced in her carriage on our way home, Castlemaine flopped on the tufted velvet cushions and closed her eyes. Prudence had learned from her laundry maids that Castlemaine was pregnant again, and it seemed to be draining her. Dark shadows had settled under her eyes, and she complained constantly about her aching legs. She slipped off her mules. “I knew supporting that poet would pay off.”

  Outside the carriage window, twilight fell on the city of London. I was rarely out of Whitehall Palace walls, much less out after dark. I peeped through the heavy leather curtains. Shops were closed, but the city did not rest. Drunken men and poorly dressed women laughed or fought, and everything smelled of the stench of the gutters. When the carriage jerked to a stop on King Street, I pretended to feel around the floor for the discarded mules, and Castlemaine waved Wells out first. Perfect.

  “My Lady Castlemaine, I was thinking.” I slipped her right shoe on. She yawned into the back of her hand. “Send the king to me. You are so tired tonight. I could … entertain him for you.”

  Her eyes snapped open. “Finally going to relinquish that precious virginity?”

  I pushed the other mule into place.

  “Very well.” She paused. “I’ll make Winifred brush out my hair and stay the night with me. But you tell him I arranged this and that he is to call on me with a full report in the morning.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “Don’t taunt him. You must let him have you this time, or he will grow tired of you.” She motioned to Bennet, who’d come out to greet us. When he leaned in, she said, “When you fetch the king tonight, direct him to Frances Stuart’s apartments.”

  His eyes widened over the black patch on his nose, but he nodded.

  I kissed her, acting as much the silly girl as she thought me to be, and swept out of the carriage, hardly feeling Bennet’s hand under mine.

  Prudence popped up from a bench when I sailed into Castlemaine’s house. I marched
directly through the hall, toward the back.

  “Oh, Frances,” called Wells. “Will you send your handmaiden up to help me unlace this bodice? I want to change into something else before King Charles arrives.”

  I didn’t stop. “Sorry, Winifred. I have a few things to change tonight myself.”

  Prudence trotted at my side. “Milady, is something amiss?”

  “The king is to call on me. Run ahead and have hot diaper towels to wash me, my silk shift, a fresh dressing gown, and chocolate and wine made ready.”

  She sprinted ahead without a question. Sharp girl.

  The dark disoriented me when I walked through the back door into Castlemaine’s private garden, but I kept to the path I’d come to know well. Round the shrubbery, past the fountain, down the walk, and through the gate. In the Bowling Green, pages lit torches that flickered from posts every dozen paces, and I soon turned into the Stone Gallery, almost home. God willing, I would never have to take that path again. And God help me on my new one.

  * * *

  He arrived at my bedchamber without a herald within a quarter hour.

  “Your Majesty.” I dipped.

  “Get up, angelic Stuart. Tell me why Bennet sent me here. Why are you not with Lady Castlemaine? Who brought you all the way to your apartments?”

  Quietly, I crossed to my table and lifted the wine. I poured with steady hands.

  “You should not stalk the palace grounds without an escort. Especially at night.”

  “I had my maid.” I held a goblet out.

  He eyed it, then looked at the raging fire, the lit candles, and, finally, my dark blue silk mantua gown. “I shall provide one of my Life Guards for your express use. You shouldn’t go about alone. Not even for me.” He took a long sip. “Especially not for me.”

  “We went through this. I shall make you better.”

  “Wearing that?” He glanced at my thin silk.

  My cheeks burned. “You said before you wouldn’t have the strength to stop.”

  “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted a woman, but I have never cared about a woman’s virtue as much as yours.”

  “Trust my virtue to be strength enough for both of us. I shall stop you. Some pleasure with me, limited though it may be, will prove you are worthy if you stop when I ask. Then someday…”

  “Go on,” he said, voice husky.

  “Meanwhile, the queen’s apartment is nearby. If you still need physical satisfaction, you can find it with her.”

  He grimaced and I hurried on. “She needs to have your heir, and I cannot give myself to you in that way. This way can please us both, I think.”

  With one quick motion he undid the pin holding my mantua gown together. The doubt disappeared from his face. “People will say the worst even if you are not guilty of it.”

  “Yes.” I paused. “If you were inclined, you could deny everything. They won’t question the king’s word.”

  He pulled the ribbon tie that cinched the shoulders of my silk shift. With its restraint gone, the shift gaped open, fell off one shoulder, and clung to my breast. “They won’t question.”

  My throat tightened. “They will trust you as I do.”

  He stepped to me. “Then come to the bed so I can look at you. Look and not touch since you are not to be soiled.”

  I backed away as he advanced. “Oh, do touch, just a little bit.”

  “Only if you command me, angel, and only if you have command of yourself.”

  The sensations at his hand were slow and consuming. He kept all of his clothes, but I let him see my full nakedness. And when I was completely melted by what he did to me, he pulled away. I could see his hands tremble as he struggled to keep his passion reined.

  “Kiss me again, then go to Queen Catherine. Quickly!”

  “It will be as you ask.” He buried his face in my neck and breathed deep. His last kiss was frenzied and brief. And then he disappeared.

  I pulled the coverlets over my head. Candles still flickered in their sconces. Let them burn. I felt too perfect to move. When I was on the edge of sleep, Mary crept in with a snuffer and extinguished them one by one. My last, most satisfactory thought was that Mary would describe this scene to the Queen Mother. So, I did what candle wax does when the flame is out. It hardens once more.

  CHAPTER 23

  Frances Stuart is a fine woman, and they say now a common mistress to the king.

  —SAMUEL PEPYS’S DIARY

  May 1663

  King Charles stood behind me in my chambers, softly nipping my neck. I leaned my head back on his shoulder and watched us in the looking glass.

  “I love seeing you in just your shift.”

  “I had no time to dress.”

  He laughed, his warm breath melting on my skin. “Why do you think I come to your chambers so early?”

  I sighed and watched his hands caress my shoulders, trying to just enjoy his touch. I shut out the image of him leaving my chamber every night to lie with the queen. I shut out the memory of him laying his hand on Castlemaine’s growing belly when we supped there together in the evenings. I tried to shut out the nightmare of my sister being ridiculed at court if Mother’s past was revealed.

  His hands slipped from my shoulders and cupped my breasts. “I love these moments before the favor-seekers come calling.”

  I sighed deeply, lifting my chest to fill his hands. I wished I could surrender fully to the pleasure this spring morning and forget all the rest: the Queen Mother’s folly and my oath to King Louis. But the thread of worry was stitched too tightly. “They will surely be here soon.”

  He groaned. “Then you must dress.”

  I squeezed his hand. “Prudence,” I called.

  She tied me into white lace petticoats and skirts while the king scooted Miss Ment from a chair and settled himself at the table, exuding Stuart charm at ease. He ate cheese and sipped water purified with a dash of whisky. Things he liked that I kept at the ready. His gaze traced my body as Prudence squeezed me into a corset’s laces, then helped me into a man’s shirt. She fastened the gold button at the top of a red justaucorps and tied a blue ribbon around the lace cravat at my throat—and why not wear a cravat if I was half garbed as a man already? Wearing male garments made me feel strong, like I could risk being bold. With every actress in London causing a stir in breeches, dressing thus was catching on with the court ladies. I turned about for the king to inspect me. “Well?”

  He grinned. “I think I’ll have you wear it for your next portrait with Samuel Cooper.”

  “Another miniature? You like it that well?”

  “I like you best with less to nothing, but you won’t let me paint you so.”

  “The Comte de Cominges,” Mary announced from my chamber door.

  I sighed as the French ambassador swept in and bowed deeply to the king, who nodded. He approached me with a bundle in his outstretched arms. “A small offering to the goddess.”

  King Louis had not communicated with me since my crossing. But he had told me he would send his men with commands, and those men would be ambassadors. How much did Cominges know? He certainly sensed my favor with King Charles. I smiled sweetly. “Do you recognize this?” I touched the gold lace on my jacket.

  “You have turned it into a masterpiece.” He opened his bundle. Today’s gift was a great length of soft white lace.

  “This will be lovely paired with the red silk you gave me the other day.”

  The man’s face flushed. “It is an honor to bestow anything on you.”

  “Prudence,” I called. “Fetch that red and some of the others to lay out.”

  I considered, then threw open my bed curtains and smoothed my coverlet. Cominges’s eyes widened at the intimate softness of my sleeping quarter. Such private spaces were usually kept concealed from anyone other than family members … or lovers. Let Cominges assume King Charles and I were intimate. I hoped he would tell King Louis. I took one edge of the lace from the bundle in Cominges’s hands. “This
is very fine, monsieur Ambassador. Is it from the Netherlands?”

  “You have a good eye, mademoiselle.” Then, with a keen sense of timing, he turned to King Charles and spoke in French. “Your Majesty surely sees the value of trade with a country that produces such goods.”

  King Charles downed the last of his water and whisky. “Fine goods or no, the Dutch drive a monopoly on trade from the East. Some English subjects would wage war for those rights.”

  Cominges responded with a counterargument. I arranged the silks on my bed. I cared not about trade squabbles. I certainly did not care to hear talk of war. I wanted Cominges to tell King Louis I had King Charles’s ear so that he would believe I was keeping my oath to him.

  “Frances,” King Charles called to me, “how do you say ‘inherit’?”

  Some days, when Charles didn’t care for these discussions, he conveniently forgot his French. “Hériter.” I gripped the lace in my fist.

  “Aha, yes,” he said, snapping his fingers. He looked back to the ambassador. “Does King Louis feel his queen should inherit the Spanish Netherlands when the King of Spain dies, despite the waiver they signed in their marriage agreement?”

  “I believe King Louis is seeking a way around that settlement,” said Cominges.

  “There you have it,” said King Charles. “King Louis will move to claim those Netherlands the first opportunity he gets.”

  Ambassador de Cominges was left stammering.

  “Ambassador,” said King Charles, in English now, “I know my cousin. He pretends peace and friendship with the Dutch. But he will change.”

  Cominges turned to me, both helpless and expectant. Normally I would translate, but I dared not translate that. Smiling with gaiety I did not feel, I held lace to my hip and twirled around. “So long as I can still get pretty lace, I care not who claims the land.”

  The ambassador’s features softened, obviously relieved. “Yes, you must always have the best, fair lady. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”