When he called up his retinue, they ushered us into a carriage with six fresh horses. A dozen men-at-arms and half a dozen hounds led and flanked us on the Dover Road to London. I couldn’t get there fast enough.
* * *
“Oh, milady,” Prudence cried at my feet at Somerset House. “It is so bad! So very bad!”
Mr. Lee, Richmond’s footman who’d beaten that famous runner in a race, stood at the door of my mother’s Somerset apartment where he had just led my maids through. He wore a look of restrained agitation while they, one weeping and one looking stern, poured out the news.
I hoped my own expression was calm as I struggled to remain composed. “Tell me what the king said when he came into my chambers.”
Prudence pressed a handkerchief to her eyes and sobbed.
Standing behind Prudence’s crumpled figure, Mary straightened her shoulders and spoke for her. “We had no notion you’d gone and thought we were letting you get some extra sleep, what with all the strain lately.” Her eyes shifted to Richmond.
“Go on, Mary.”
She looked back to me. “The king arrived first and we admitted him. He—well, he went plain mad! He tore up that letter you left and cursed so much I thought the walls would crumble. Swore he’d never admit you or my Lord Richmond to court again! Then started searching around your chamber. That’s when Lord Cornbury arrived for his appointment.”
I put a hand on my belly and told myself to stay calm. “While the king was still present?”
Mary nodded. “He walked into your bedchamber while the king was quiet like.” She clasped her hands in front of her. “When the king saw him, he blamed the poor lord for inducing you to marry. He raged at him, not letting him speak at all. I’ve never seen a man so red and angry in all my days.”
Richmond turned from the open window where he’d been standing quietly. He swirled wine in the goblet he held—his own goblet and his own wine that his men had carried with us from Cobham—and took a sip before speaking. “Frances has a missive for the queen,” he said to Mary. “Can you get it to her?”
Mary nodded again.
“Frances.” He looked at me. I went to the writing desk. He was right. The queen would be my first ally. Richmond continued. “Prudence.”
She looked up at him then, as if realizing his status for the first time. Did she also realize this duke was bound by his duty as lord lieutenant to persecute Dissenters if he discovered them? I hoped I’d taught her enough discretion to remain undetected. Protecting Prudence might be the only promise to King Charles I’d end up keeping. She scrambled to her feet, wiped her nose, and curtsied for him.
“Prudence, even if we gain the forgiveness we seek with His Majesty, my wife can no longer live in her chambers at Whitehall.”
Understanding dawned in her expression. “Ye want I should start packing her things?”
Richmond smiled. “My men will help you.”
Mary returned later with a missive sealed by the queen. I took it into trembling hands and read it while Richmond stood before me, apprehension lining his face.
I scanned its words and felt the color drain from my face. The foolscap slipped from my fingers, floated to the floor. He had sworn to her that I’d broken his heart and betrayed every promise I ever made to him. She spoke of fierce anger. She advised me, for my own protection, to stay away.
CHAPTER 57
Cobham Hall
“We expected this. The king’s anger will cool.” Richmond directed the move of my belongings from Whitehall to Cobham Hall and set me up in chambers beside his own. Prudence and Mary hopped to his every command.
He suggested I redesign the bedchamber interiors, and grateful for the occupation, I set myself to the work of selecting beds and buying chairs. The day Richmond presented a cradle to me as a surprise was the first day I didn’t have to force a smile.
I wrote letters to my mother and Lord St. Albans in France, telling them of the wedding. I did not tell them the reason for it. I forced myself not to write to the king. I tucked the quills and foolscap away so I wouldn’t.
The grounds of the estate were my escape. I walked them every day, noticing shoots budding from the earth and green dots emerging on branches. Outside, watching birds busily nesting, I held a hand over my swollen belly as I walked the gravel paths and let the season of rebirth remind me I still have Charles with me. The fluttering response made me smile, and a maternal happiness pulsed into my blood. Sweet one, I thought, and clung to my first accomplishment as a good mother. I’d ensured a legitimate birth.
“I wrote to my Lennox estate that you are with child,” Richmond said at the massive dining table in May.
“Is it not too soon?”
“I dare not wait. I don’t want to give them reason to question the child’s early arrival.”
“Oh, of course,” I answered.
“By the time word of it filters down to London, it would be the proper time to make an announcement. None will be the wiser.”
I accepted his judgment and whatever comfort he offered each day.
Some nights I cried. Richmond, in the adjoining chamber, dared not attempt to comfort me then.
One day, in late May, my back ached so much I stayed in bed. A few nights later I had more trouble sleeping than usual. While I listened to the light spring breeze blowing in my window, I came to realize why. Pain. A tight ache, it came slowly and faded. Only to return several minutes later … worse than before.
I put my hand between my legs and felt that I was dry. I put both hands on my belly and rolled on my side, breathing deep and willing myself to sleep. It didn’t help.
Within the hour I could feel my belly balling up under my hands in intervals. It is a passing sickness. When one of the pains ceased, I slipped from the bedstead to the closestool, gathered my nightdress, and sat. When I finished urinating, I wiped with a linen cloth, then held it to the faint light of the moon. It was covered in a dark smear.
I leaped into bed and lay back down, heart shuddering. No!
The pain returned, the worst yet. It caused me to bend at the middle and cry out softly. I clenched my teeth and turned my face into the bolster. Please, no!
The pain faded and I took deep breaths. I thought of Charles. If only I could send for him, he would know what to do. He would hold me and tell me the baby would be well. He would kiss me and caress me, and the pain of our separation would disappear. All of this would pass. We would be together again and happy. We would laugh at my big belly and damn what the world thought of us.
When my middle clamped again, I balled the covers into my fists and looked at the corner of the bolster in front of my eyes, focusing on a stray thread, focusing through the pain. Let the pain pass. Breathe through it. It will stop again. I could withstand it no more and cried aloud.
“Milady?” Mary’s voice was pitched high.
“Go away,” I said through tight lips. If she went away, if I could fall asleep, we would wake in the morning and all would be well.
She pulled the curtain open. “Do you need a phys—”
“Go!”
She let the curtain fall, and I heard her feet slapping the floor on her way to Richmond’s chamber.
Again the pain subsided and my clenched muscles relaxed. I panted. Rolling over, I stared at the Tree of Life design embroidered into my bed drapery. Scrollwork and vines twined all around me in a symbol of living cheer. An edge of the fabric rustled and lifted in the soft spring breeze, carrying the scent of budding flowers.
Richmond’s voice sounded outside my small prison. “My lady, are you unwell?”
A sudden sharp pain beset me. I grimaced with the effort to keep from calling out. Hot wetness spilled out of me, and I reached down, pulling my nightdress.
Red. Red everywhere. The coppery smell of fresh blood filled my bed space.
“Frances?”
A hateful cramp bit through me, but I reached down to the redness pooling between my legs. I touched it, u
nbelieving, and raised sticky red-black fingers up to my face. No. The baby could not come too early.
The curtains suddenly ripped apart and there stood Richmond, candlestick in hand, behind my bloody fingers. He shouted orders to the maids. Something about his doctor.
“No!” I heard myself say. It was an order, not a cry. “Go away, all of you, and leave me alone!” I rose to my knees, grabbed the curtains, and yanked them closed. Fresh blood gushed down my thighs.
I heard him order the physician anyway, and the maids ran off to fetch him.
An hour later, I was sweating and panting under my coverlet, curled in the middle of my dark red stain. I had allowed Richmond’s physician to examine me. He had shaken his head, given grim news, and I’d commanded him to leave. He handed me a draught to take that would bring down my courses faster. I threw it on the floor.
I wanted everyone out. They had allowed me that. The physician had agreed, saying there was nothing they could do anyway. Richmond was in his chambers. My maids were in the closet. They would check on me, or I would call for them, but they would leave me alone.
Between pains I tried to stay calm, calling on all my powers of control. When they came, I bit the covers, grunted, or cried until they passed again.
When the dim light of dawn lit the Tree of Life draperies, my body betrayed my soul. It wanted to push. I braced my head on the headboard and resisted. Curling up around a bolster, on my side, I squeezed my legs together as tight as I could.
But there was a great, wet release. I moaned, threw the bolster and the coverlets aside. There, floating in blood, lay my tiny baby, still as death. I gingerly tore the sack away. She was no bigger than my hand and made no movement, no stir. Perfectly formed with her large head and thin limbs, she seemed a miniature baby. She looked perfect. Charles’s baby.
I lifted her limp little body and slowly tucked my discarded dressing gown around her. She had no hair, but the brows that arched over her puffy eyes were golden red. There seemed nothing wrong with her besides her small size. Why had she come too soon? It must have been me, my fault, something I did. One, or all, of the many things I’d done wrong.
I wished, so wished, I could go back to Charles and tell him privately, so we could grieve together. But I had forever altered everything, everything, in order to protect this child. Without her I had lost Charles completely. She blurred as my eyes welled.
My tears splashed on her still, quiet face. I delicately reached out and wiped them away, wanting, more than anything, to care for her, do something for her. How could I fail her before she took her first breath? I held her to my body to see what it was like, not wanting to part with her, wanting to feel, know, and have her. I allowed myself to both meet and bid farewell to my daughter.
After a long while there were shuffling sounds in my chamber. “You’ve been quiet a long time now, Frances.”
When I didn’t answer, Richmond slowly pulled the curtains open. His swollen eyes were red and wet. A mirror of my own.
My throat, tight with sorrow and coarse from the strain, only allowed me to whisper. “Please fetch a priest.”
* * *
Armed with money and a mind to bribe important churchmen, Richmond and his chaplain took the baby to London, determined to place her in his vault at Westminster. “It will be a comfort to you someday,” he’d said. “No one need know but us.”
I left that horrid bed and slept in other chambers. Or rather, I stared, tossing, awake and thinking. Time seemed to blur.
“Will ye wash?” Prudence asked.
I refused.
I walked the halls of the great mansion. My bare feet hit cold floors as I gazed, unseeing, at huge portraits of people who had once lived and were now only painted reflections of the past. They were gone, dead, no more.
Mary pressed me. “You must eat, dear.”
I refused.
My mind was wild with broken thoughts, regret, images of her face, longing for Charles. They jumbled together, and I fought to sort them out. But nothing could be changed. All was lost and there was nothing to do. Nothing to do but lie down and not sleep.
At times I bent at the middle while blood and clots spilled between my legs. I drifted near the fringe of unconsciousness when these fits were past, but I jolted awake, clutching empty arms to my chest. Empty arms. A chasm within my arms echoed like my insides. My swollen breasts leaked. Wasted sustenance, too early and too late. I got out of bed because I couldn’t bear to lie thinking anymore.
Mary blocked my way. “You must drink this broth.”
I put the dish to my lips to appease her and choked some down.
“Now you will change your gown.”
“No. I shall go back to bed.”
But there was no rest, and I got up when the maids were asleep. Bare feet on cold floors for hours again, and I suddenly couldn’t stand the house anymore. I had to get away. A side door—soft gravel crunched under me. Breeze, heavy with spring, filled my nose and lifted my ratted hair. Crusted old robe hung to my body—my body?—as feet fell on wet grass.
Lamplight at the mansion faded far behind. I entered utter blackness. On I walked into darkness. No sound but my feet in the grass. Taller grass, the wet drops sprang to my calves and hem. Not high enough to cleanse me, not cold enough to refresh me.
A sudden whoosh of wings and screeching of pheasants and I tripped. I fell to my knees, my hands hit earth. Another pain struck me, clamping and brutal. I called out and held my belly, my soft, hollow, agonizing belly. Wet globs of warmth oozed out of me and trickled down my leg, sticking to my gown and filling the air with copper-scented sorrow.
Finally, it passed, and I collapsed in the tall grass. Something clinked faintly, falling from my pocket. I felt around and closed my fingers on stones and chain; Mother’s old rosary.
Richmond’s hounds bayed in the distance, and I heard faraway voices calling my name. I breathed in the spring air and waited, too weak to move. The dogs would find me soon enough.
CHAPTER 58
June
After Mary fed me and Prudence washed me, Richmond walked me to my chamber. The servants had hastily prepared it with the new bedding I’d ordered from London. Everything was swathed in pale pink damask and gold braid. Fit for a duchess. I felt too unworthy to sleep in it, and Richmond heard my muffled sobs because he came to me, climbed in, and held me.
He had lost much by this, too. He let me cry. At times he swiped his own cheeks. “I know too well the sorrow of losing a child. Of losing love,” he said. We did not talk about what we would do but hovered over unfamiliar ground. Eventually I busied myself with meaningless things. He did not seem to mind when I began to inquire about the posts from London.
“No word from court today, my dear,” he’d say. After one sleepless night, I stared at my untouched plate and asked, “Could you rip the British flag?”
Richmond cleared his throat. “Pardon?”
“Could you tear the flag to make binding strips or would that require seamstress shears?”
He had no answer, of course.
* * *
Richmond clasped my hand with one of his. In the other he held a glass of wine, something my husband was almost never without. “My uncle Aubigny has died in France,” he said. “I could use your help.”
I nibbled fruit from the table in his chamber where we sometimes broke our fast. “Oh?”
“His title and the estate were rightfully mine when he claimed it as an inheritance before the Restoration. Out of my power to dispute it then. I was very young. Now it is mine to reclaim. I shall have to go to France to take possession.”
“It will be difficult for an English duke to prove ownership of French land.”
“Thankfully, my wife knows important Frenchmen.” He gave me a half grin.
“The ambassadors?”
“An excellent start. You will write them?”
“Of course.” I lost the child you would call your heir. I burdened you with another lov
eless marriage. “I shall do all I can.”
He put aside his goblet to hold both my hands. “All will be well. When I get this estate, it will do much to alleviate my debts.” He kissed my palms. “I value you above everything else.” He looked down at my lap. “If we are never restored to favor, perhaps…” He glanced up with pleading eyes. “Perhaps we could make this a real marriage and try for a child of our own?”
This man showed me so much tenderness.
There was an urgent pounding as the door flew open. The steward rushed in without bowing. “Forgive me, Your Graces. The Dutch are sailing along the coast and up the Medway. We must arm against invasion!”
Richmond stood. His chair toppled to the floor. “How close are they?”
“Halfway. Some of the village men rode here to tell you. They and some of your vassals are coming to Cobham to protect it. Everyone is in an uproar.”
“Tell them not to panic.” Richmond moved to his cabinet. “The Admiralty docked the English fleet in the Medway at Chatham this year. Not enough money to man the ships. That’s what the Dutch are after. Not our villages.” He shot me a quick glance, then called out orders. “Go to the armory and start issuing muskets. Order half the horses saddled. I’ll take men to the high ground in the park to get a view of the river. Post guards around the house with the hounds and alert all the servants.”
Payne ran out without another word.
“Damn,” Richmond muttered. “What would possess King Charles to dock the entire navy in one place during a war?”
I sat, hands folded in my lap. The ships weren’t only docked for lack of money. King Charles didn’t expect more war. Because of me, he’d struck an alliance with King Louis through St. Albans. An alliance that had promised to end the fighting. Now, because of me, the entire fleet sat at risk. No … the entire nation.
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