“Shut my eyes?” repeated Catherine, opening them very wide indeed. There was a suggestion of something hard, half-understood and wholly unfamiliar in the way her mother spoke, which made Catherine feel vaguely uncomfortable. “Did he — for instance — love this Henrietta of Orange whom don Francisco mentioned?” she asked, trying to speak as casually as if she had not been thinking about it for days.
Luiza shrugged the question aside as if it were of small importance. “He may have done,” she said. “But it is neither the clean loves nor the peccadilloes of a man’s youth that signify. Nor, for that matter, the occasional brief fires that may consume him later. We wives in high places have to overlook such things. It is the woman who has become a bad habit that matters. They have a saying in France, ‘The King is what his mistress makes him’. And there is such a woman in England.”
“But surely if he' is going to marry me —” began Catherine, in all the terrible vulnerability of her innocence.
“I am sure that my future son-in-law will behave with dignity and discretion,” Luiza assured her. “When Francisco left London this woman had gone back to her husband’s house. But she is handsome as a goddess, they say, and greedy as a gull. Only quite recently Charles has bestowed some ridiculous title upon her — as a reward for past services, let us hope. Something to do with a casa, I think ... Yes, Castlemaine — that was it.”
“Cas-tle-maine.” Almost soundlessly Catherine repeated the strange, foreign name, lisping the ‘s’ a little with her southern tongue.
“Yes, you will do well to remember it,” approved Luiza.
Uncertainties more terrifying than homesickness and the tumultuous waves were tearing at Catherine now. “But even if I know it, what can I do?” she asked.
“Do?” Luiza turned to look at the proudly dressed ships which assured the survival of her country. At that moment she was more Queen than mother, and success had given her a fantastic sense of power. “What should a daughter of Braganza do but ignore her, and see that she is not received at Court?”
CHAPTER II
THE BRIDE-TO-BE sat bolt upright against her pillows in the King’s house at Portsmouth, horrified at the thought of a strange man coming into her bedroom.
“You say, Madame, that his Majesty wants to come in here?” she asked huskily, her eyes still bright from a slight bout of fever.
“He not only wants to, he insists,” replied donna Elvira, with a sniff indicative of her disgust at the coarse customs of the English.
“He has travelled post-haste from London,” said don Francisco.
“Then why could he not have come five days ago, when I first landed?” demanded Catherine, a trifle inconsistently.
The ageing statesman might easily have attributed her rare burst of petulance to the feverish cold which she had caught aboard ship, and to the horrible crossing which they had all endured. But Catherine had proved an excellent sailor and he knew her well enough to recognize signs of spirited personal affront. “His Majesty had to prorogue Parliament. He sent his brother,” he reminded her.
Catherine’s thoughts flew back to a morning on the sunlit Solent when James, Duke of York, had boarded the “Royal Charles” between South Hampton and the Wight. Tall and. florid in his fair perruque, he had looked much as she had expected any Scot or Englishman to look. She had not been in the least afraid of him. Indeed, because he was shy and awkward, it had been she who had set him at ease: and, obviously, he had liked her. And now, because her nose felt snuffly and she knew she was not looking her best, she almost began to wish that it were uncritical James whom she was to marry — except, of course, that he already had a wife.
“We could say that your Grace is too ill,” donna Elvira was suggesting, quelling the squawking of the excited maids-of-honour with a gesture.
In spite of her own agitation Catherine found herself wanting to giggle at the scandalized expressions on their faces: and all the clatter and commotion of the King’s arrival certainly was very exciting. “But I am not really so ill as all that,” she objected.
“And Charles Stuart always sees through excuses,” added don Francisco, speaking feelingly out of his own recent experiences.
“My poor don Francisco!” Even at so personal a moment Catherine found time to be sorry for him: for had not he, poor man, had to make excuses for a half-paid dowry, explaining away Queen Luiza’s optimistic promises on the grounds that much of the vaunted five hundred thousand had perforce been spent on defence during those days of panic when Spain had risen against them. To Luiza’s business-like mind this might seem a triumphal example of persuasive diplomacy: but to Catherine’s more honest one it seemed the supreme humiliation. “I suppose — since we have not kept our part of the bargain — he could send me back again?” she whispered, remembering that the fleet was still down in Portsmouth harbour.
Her godfather patted her hand encouragingly. “Take heart, dear child,” he whispered back. “Remember the wealth of Tangier and Bombay!”
“Well, if he is coming here at least let me get up,” she implored, feeling that dressed and bejewelled she would have more dignity with which to meet her bridegroom. But the physicians grouped about her would not hear of it, and her ladies were already bumping into each other in their efforts to ensure that her informal toilette was completely modest: and before they could do much about it the door was flung wide and the King was in her room.
Completely unhurried and composed, he crossed to her bedside, and bowing, kissed her hand. Because it mattered so supremely what he was like, Catherine scarcely dared to look at him. All she knew was that the fingers beneath her own were strong and tapering, and that the voice bidding her welcome was deep and pleasant and indolent. She was aware of a little group of gentlemen standing, plumed hats in hand, at a respectful distance: among them York and the Admiral, whose discreet smiles wished her well, and a martial looking cousin called Rupert who was presented to her. And then Charles was enquiring after her comfort on the voyage and Catherine knew that she must answer. Slowly her shy gaze travelled upwards from the rosettes on his shoes. It had a long way to travel, for Charles was even taller than she had supposed. Taller and swarthier. His face was grave between the long folds of a dark, curled wig, and his sombre eyes were quizzing her. “Your Majesty’s admiral was goodness itself,” she said: and heard Aubigny, her Confessor, repeating the words in English.
“And my brother tells me he has already forestalled me in your friendship, boarding the ‘Charles’ in mid-Solent.”
“It would have pained me had he delayed to do so,” answered Catherine, with formal courtesy, bringing herself to smile across the room at James and wondering how two brothers could possibly look so unalike.
“And now I find you sick abed, poor soul! Had they told me I would somehow have made shift to come sooner.”
There was such genuine concern in his voice that Catherine, in gratitude, found herself making a vast effort to recall some smattering of her-hurriedly acquired English. “Already — I become — better,” she pronounced cheerfully: and because everybody laughed and seemed inordinately pleased the pink colour came back into her cheeks.
For the first time Charles smiled, perceiving that she was not just the prim brown sparrow of a woman he had at first supposed. His full, protruding lips parted over excellent teeth, and amusement crinkled the corners of his almond shaped eyes.
“Then your medical gentlemen must admit I am no mean member of their profession,” he laughed, acknowledging their presence with a gracious inclination of his head. And when donna Elvira and other members of her household had been presented to him, he fell to discussing the wedding plans. “I had made arrangements for 'the ceremony to be held here tomorrow,” he told her, through the interpretation of the hovering Aubigny.
“Then I do not have to go to London to be married?”
“I am sure, Madame, you would sooner travel as my wife. And that your mother would wish it so.”
“And the Sac
rament — please, Father Aubigny, ask his Majesty about — the private, ceremony we spoke of.”
But Charles seemed to understand without being asked, and to have no objections. “We can be married privately according to the Catholic faith at once — here, in your room,” he said. “And if you wish, the public Protestant ceremony can wait until you are feeling stronger.”
“No, I would like that too — tomorrow,” declared Catherine, nodding her head vigorously. “Only you must tell me what to do.”
Apparently she was not the little bigot he had been led to suppose, or else she wished very much to please him. “I will always show you what to do,” he promised gravely. “I know only too well what it is like to be exiled in a strange country.” And then — because his kindness seemed likely to make the ever near tears of homesickness overflow — he set himself to tease her back into laughter. “I believe you are relieved that we do not go immediately to London?”
“There are so many people there —” she murmured, with an uneasy feeling at her heart that many of them might be less kind to her than the Stuarts.
“Truth to tell, we are not going there for some weeks. There are usually some cases of plague during the hot weather and before leaving Westminster I bade Parliament have the streets cleaned up before I brought them home a Queen,” he confided. “It is all very well for us bachelors to splash through puddles of water to our saddle girths, but Whitehall is like to become an island if they do not see to it soon. An occasion like this was an opportunity — while they are all so prodigiously set up about the Tangier trade — and Life has taught me to seize my opportunities!”
With a new fluttering of her pulses, Catherine decided that he looked the kind of man who would make the most of all of them. “Then where do we live in the meantime?” she asked.
“I am carrying you off to a riverside palace in the country which I am sure you will like in summer time. An old Tudor building, mighty inconvenient in some ways. A Cardinal built it, but it seems designed for dalliance with its privy gardens and pleached walks. And I shall not be the first of our kings to use it for a honeymoon.”
“And what is it called — this honeymoon palace?”
“Hampton Court.”
Catherine set them all smiling again by her efforts to pronounce the strange foreign name which was to come to mean so much to her.
“Your Majesty will come to fathom our language in time,” the kindly Admiral assured her: and James promised comfortable arrangements for the journey. “Don Francisco de Mello will perhaps do me the honour to travel in my coach?” he suggested courteously. “And our cousin, Prince Rupert of Bavaria, will escort the ladies.”
“They will travel with drawn blinds,” insisted donna Elvira, with an unnecessarily distrustful glance at that attractive soldier of fortune.
James blinked his sandy lashes. “Why, certainly, Madame — if your ladies so desire,” he stammered protestingly. “But England — in May time —”
It was Charles's own month. The month of his birthday and his Restoration when he had brought back merriment to his people with music in the summer evenings and Maypoles on the village greens. And now, two years later, it was to be the month of his marriage — a marriage which did not look like being so much of a prosaic business as he had anticipated. And at no time in his misspent life had he had much recourse to drawn blinds — though ‘More’s the pity!’ some men said. “Everything shall be arranged as you think proper, Madame,” he promised, coming suavely to his brother’s assistance. “And although I must confess myself more impatient than ever to arrive at Hampton, we will break the journey wherever necessary and find lodgings for the night.”
Unfortunately his kindly assurances resulted only in a bobbing together of outlandishly coiffured Portuguese heads and a whispered foreign conversation from which the main outcome appeared to be an urgent desire for “virgin beds”.
“But naturally, my dear Aubigny,” protested James testily. Whereupon it became necessary for the embarrassed Abbot to explain. “My Lord Duke, it is more than that which Portuguese etiquette requires. Donna Elvira would have you understand that many of these maidens committed to her care are the unmarried daughters of exalted families and that in no circumstances could she permit them to sleep in any bed that has previously been lain in by a man.”
If James Stuart — fresh from Whitehall where people chose their beds with far less circumspection — stepped back a pace or two in his astonishment, even the Admiral, upon whose gouty toe he trod, could scarcely blame him. “There will be beds and coaches and baggage carts for everyone,” was all that he could see his way to promise.
Catherine’s eyes were bright now with excitement, not fever. At no shrine that she had ever visited had a malaise been cured so miraculously. “And for my guarde infantas too?” she demanded. “There are seventy-two of them, and we must take them all with us.” Charles, who had travelled so light at times that he had no change of shirt, looked anxiously round the crowded room, amazed that so small a person should need so great an entourage. All these maids, priests and apothecaries; and now some kind of bodyguard, he supposed. “Who are they — these guarde infantas?” he asked cautiously, wondering if now, before his fleet weighed anchor, he could decently ship them back again to Portugal. His people, he knew, were touchy enough about a Catholic marriage, and Rupert’s soldiery would certainly resent some oddly dressed foreign escort.
Catherine wrinkled her short nose in perplexity: but when Charles, tired of all this interpreting and remembering that he could speak Spanish, tried out his question haltingly in that language, her gravity broke up into a ripple of relieved laughter. “So you speak my mother’s tongue? That is wonderful!” she exclaimed. “But they are not who in any language. They are what.”
Then, seeing that her prospective bridegroom looked more mystified than ever, she bade her dressers open a large closet where stood innumerable coffers of a peculiar round shape, each one containing a carefully packed farthingale. Before the astonished gaze of their hosts her ladies proudly lifted some of these bejewelled dresses, each one more gorgeous than the last — and each with a short wide skirt that stood out from the hips as stiff and round as a cartwheel.
At this display of feminine fashion, formality seemed suddenly to shed itself from the situation. With a swift stride or two Charles approached the nearest farthingale and poked with lean, experimental fingers at the wide hooped wires upon which it was stretched. He had watched far more women than he should have being dressed in a variety of garments, varying from a modern Restoration shift to the fashionable abandon of pseudo classic style so beloved of portrait painters. But never had he seen anything like this. “Why the stiff wire, Madame?” he enquired of his bride’s forbidding hook-nosed duenna.
“As the name implies, your Majesty — to guard the Infanta’s virginity,” replied donna Elvira, with folded hands and lowered eyes.
“Oddsfish!” ejaculated Charles. His dark, puzzled eyes travelled over the small figure scarcely moulding the covers of the big bed. “But why seventy-two of them?”
“Oh, they are not all mine!” explained the bride-to-be blithely. “There are at least two apiece for my ladies.”
Charles sauntered back across the room, catching his brother’s eye with mock solemnity. “You heard that, I trust, James!” he remarked. When he turned back to the bed he was still looking stem but Catherine fancied his wide mouth was quivering to a grin. “Does her most Catholic Majesty, your mother, imagine that we English rape our visitors on sight?” he demanded.
But Catherine only looked up at him admiringly. “What is it — to rape?” she enquired politely.
And Charles, who even in his most inglorious moments had always contrived to remain master of any situation, sank down upon her bedside stool, defeated. His Spanish, which he had been so set up about, appeared suddenly to have deserted him. “What were the good nuns thinking about?” he asked in his mother tongue of nobody in particular.
“At least they were capable of instilling faith and hope!” added James, reviewing the plain foreign damsels with distaste, his slower mind still working upon the extraordinary measures for their protection.
But Charles was looking only at Catherine. In the embarrassing beauty of her innocence she had brought him something which, in his wildest hagglings over her dowry, he had not bargained for. Something he had not encountered for many a long day. And he was both humbled and touched. He began to talk to her about the home she had left, and the one she was coming to, trying to set her at ease. And when Charles Stuart took trouble to be kind he had a way of stealing people’s hearts. He began to tell her of the pleasant river which flowed past his palaces, and the way in which it ministered to so many of his pastimes.
“We also live beside a river — the Tagus,” said Catherine. “My mother, my brothers and I.”
“Was it very grievous saying ‘Goodbye’?” asked Charles, who knew all about the grief of partings. At his request she had dismissed most of her people, and his gentlemen had tactfully withdrawn to the window whence they were watching the cheering crowd assembled in the street below. “I, too, have someone I adore, but seldom see. A sister who lives in France,” he said. “And my young brother Henry died of the pox not long before you came. We had all been separated because of — what happened to my father. And Henry and I were just beginning to know each other —”
“Tell me about both of them,” urged Catherine, forgetting how embarrassing it was to have a strange man sitting so casually beside her bed: and when tears trembled on her dark lashes, partly for him and partly for herself, they were brighter than any of the priceless pearls she had meant to wear.
“It was good of your remaining brother to be so pleasant to me,” she said, drying her eyes with the handkerchief Charles offered her. “My mother feared he might show me resentment because he is still your heir.”
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