Catherine looked at him uncomprehendingly. “But he is — Charles’s.”
James gathered up his hat and gloves to leave her. “I was in Holland. I often saw this Walter woman,” he said contemptuously. “And God knows there were plenty of other men who might have begotten the whelp!”
Catherine would have liked to believe him; but whatever Welsh Lucy’s wantonness, she recognized too well that quirk of the eyebrow and all those small mannerisms which mirrored Charles, and which had always caught at her heart whenever she talked with his eldest son. She knew that the belief growing in James’s heart was watered by growing hatred and was certain that if ever he came into power Jemmie could expect short shrift.
But James’s power was not yet, and although the chief conspirators, Lord Russell and Algernon Sydney, were executed, Monmouth was pardoned.
“Although you have his written confession to everything except murdering you!” commented Catherine, alone with Charles.
“I was obliged to make him write it Jest it might be argued that there was no plot and that I sent men to their death for imaginings as fantastic as those of Titus Oates,” he explained.
“And must we have him again at Court?”
“ ’Zounds, no! He had the impertinence to come back and ask his written confession of me again — persuaded to it, no doubt, by some of his satellites who imagined it might endanger their miserable lives. Even after my repeated assurances that the incident was closed and that no one else would die for it.”
“Might he not have been prompted more by fear lest it should — at some future time — fall into your brother’s hands?” suggested Catherine.
“He could have trusted me to destroy it.”
“And did you give it back to him, Charles?”
“Give it back?” snarled Charles, puffing out his lower lip. “God’s teeth, there is a limit even to my endurance. I told him to go to hell!”
And that was the last time Catherine ever heard him speak of charming, faithless Jemmie. How often he thought of him she never knew. And she was profoundly grateful that at this time of such personal loss and shame his people poured out their love to comfort him.
Ship after ship sailed in bearing indignant letters about the Rye House Plot from his loyal subjects in Virginia, New Plymouth and Connecticut and from true Quaker hearts in the newly founded colony of Pennsylvania. A general thanksgiving service for the sparing of his life was held in the new splendour of St. Paul’s. And the London merchants entreated him to sit to Grinling Gibbons for a statue, which they set up in their fine new Exchange. It seemed that with the few rank weeds of treachery uprooted, a stronger crop of loyalty than ever grew up on all sides to protect him all his days from aught but pleasantness.
And although, for him, amours and adventures were over, Catherine suspected that these were in some ways the happiest days of his life. In mellow mood, accessible to all, he reaped the harvest of mutual kindliness which he had sown. In November he saw to it that the fierce, controversial bonfires of Guy Fawkes Day were forgotten in the wonder of fireworks celebrating her birthday. It was as if he wished to mark the day with some special fanfare of appreciation. And from the Palace windows that hard winter he took pleasure in watching his people making merry with their booths and fairs and skating by torchlight on the frozen Thames. He spent more time trying out all kinds of experiments in his laboratory and attending meetings of the Royal Society, where he listened with absorption to Sir Isaac Newton discoursing on the various orbits of the planets and to Harvey elucidating his amazing discovery of how the blood circulates through the human body.
“I am putting on weight at last,” he announced ruefully, as old Claude Sourceau, his Paris tailor, fitted him for one of those dignified, knee-length coats which so became him. And because of a sore place on his heel, which Catherine was too tactful to suggest might be the beginnings of gout, he now rode about London in a coach instead of taking his afternoon walk — a habit which pleased the citizens as well as herself since it gave them more opportunity to see him and her more opportunity to accompany him.
True, Louise de Keroualle was back in England, together with another old flame of his from France, the Princess Mazarin; but neither of them was young any more and Louise had grown even plumper than herself. And Charles, as always, played the complaisant father to the Castlemaine’s tall sons. But Catherine had long ago schooled herself to tolerate and to forgive. Her love for him had been so screened of all elements of self that she was able to take a vicarious pleasure in all his enjoyments. And if his more sedentary mode of life suggested that he was growing old at least it gave her more of his company. Although she was nearly ten years his junior, the possibility that she might outlive him was something against which she deliberately kept a shutter closed in her mind. And because she had been delicate and he so strong — and life was moving along so delectably at last — living without him was something impossible to contemplate.
But at the beginning of February there came a Sunday evening which she was never to forget. In reality it was no different from any other Sunday evening. Only by contrast with what came after did it seem to hold static the whole glow and security of home — to remain with her as the epitome of all lost happiness.
Charles had come back from Evensong in the royal chapel in a particularly delightful mood, and she had been teasing him about his hearty enjoyment of a goose egg, a dish he doted on for supper. And afterwards they had all gathered in the Matted Gallery, lovely with its panelled walls and elegant portraits and painted ceiling. He had sat by the fire in his highbacked chair, resting his sore heel upon a stool. The two Frenchwomen were seated near him, with the leaping firelight winking on the Princess’s exotic jewels and making an auburn aureole of Louise’s short, curled hair. Some of his more intimate friends, such as Lord Ailesbury and Harry Killigrew, were grouped informally about him with Ailesbury’s son Bruce squatting on the hearth fondling a litter of pups. And in the background a group of courtiers were playing basset at a long table, absorbed and silent save for the occasional clink of stakes and an intermittent burst of conversation as they took up fresh cards.
Catherine sat a little apart with Lady Ormonde listening to the conversation round the fire but saying little, thinking idly what a charming group they made with the rich colours of the ladies’ dresses emphasizing the more sombre outlines of Charles’s relaxed figure. She saw him only in silhouette, the darkness of his wig and clothes relieved only by the whiteness of his cravat and a fall of lace at his wrist as he stroked White Lady, stretched in canine comfort across his knees. He had been telling Hortense de Mazarin about his escape from Worcester, a story which he told with so much humour that no one ever tired of it. The faces of his listeners were alight with tension, sympathy and laughter. “You should have seen me as a crop-headed groom!” he told her.
“And now your people have you pose for a statue as a laurel wreathed Caesar!” smiled the still beautiful Hortense.
“Besides finding it cold to the knees, I am sure that nature never intended me for so formidable a role!” said Charles, with a deprecating shrug.
“The people of Paris were putting up a statue to Louis,” Louise told them, not to be outdone. “Some marvellous Italian sculptor had made it and was bringing it over to France to finish the face from life, but it seems that he and the statue were shipwrecked.”
“Oh, quel malheur!” murmured Hortense. But Charles burst out laughing.
“Why do you laugh?” asked Louise, offended.
“Because I could tell Louis where his lost statue is,” grinned Charles.
“Then why not tell us, Sir,” urged Harry Killigrew. And Catherine, watching the little group of men, saw their firelit faces warm with affectionate anticipation.
“Shipwrecked, i’ faith!” scoffed Charles, folding White Lady’s silky ears across her sleepy head. “When I was last on the Isle of Wight I saw it. My Governor there must have been doing a little privateering again!”
“Oh, Charles!” cried Louise. “You mean that the wretch stole it?”
“Better not ask me how he came by it!” chuckled Charles. “But that is not the best of it. ’Zounds, if Louis could see it now! Robby Holmes has had his own face sculptured on to it — and marvellously ill done it is! He intends it for his tomb, he says. You can have no idea how droll it looks, Killigrew, with my cousin’s elegant body and Holmes’s head on the top of it. For, like me, Holmes is no beauty.”
Even milady of Portsmouth’s patriotic indignation melted among such infectious laughter, and the fireside company went on talking idly of this and that. Catherine had had a letter from Mary, who was beginning to like life in Holland, and Charles was full of plans for spending the summer at Winchester where all was finished save the roof. “By this time next week the lead will be on my new house,” he told them. And presently he sent for one of his singing boys to entertain them with some airs by Purcell and a new love song which Louise had brought from France. Listening to the music, Charles looked rested and content, half drowsing at times, and at others beating time with the hand which was not caressing his little dog. Not wishing either to sit up late or to disturb him, Catherine made a sign to Lettice Ormonde and would have slipped quietly away. But as if feeling her departure Charles turned his head and smiled at her sleepily across the room — as though, for all the music and the people, they two were alone. A year or two ago he would have risen and escorted her formally to the door; but to Catherine that look of friendly understanding meant infinitely more.
Sweeping him a quiet curtsy, she took her leave. But at the door something made her turn and look back at the warmly coloured, intimate scene. With a little catch at her heart she thought again how content he looked, with his trusted friends about him and the last cadence of the music still sweet upon the air. Like a good ship that has seen many adventures and weathered many storms and is safe home in port at last.
Still smiling at the absurdity of the simile which had slipped so involuntarily into her mind, Catherine observed John Evelyn, the President of the Royal Society, being ushered in at the other end of the gallery. Charles was invariably kind to him and they enjoyed talking about gardens together; but somehow she wished that the old gentleman had not come tonight. He was of a more austere generation and by some strangely quickened perception she knew how differently that Sunday evening would appear to his critical mind. The gaming table, the French love songs, the pensioned mistresses — and in the midst of them, Charles. And because Evelyn was a man of integrity whose lightest word could formulate public opinion she was vexed with herself for not sitting up longer and giving countenance to the scene.
CHAPTER XXIV
IN THE early hours of Monday morning Catherine’s women shook her awake. “The King is asking for you!” they kept repeating.
“You mean he is taken ill again?” she asked, springing immediately from her bed.
“He has had another seizure.”
“They say he rose in the night and came over giddy in his privy closet and milord Ailesbury and Killigrew, who slept near him, became alarmed and sent for Chiffinch —”
“And first thing this morning, Madame, when Lord Craven went for the day’s password the King could not speak but just pointed to the book in which it is always written —”
“And when his Majesty got out of bed he seemed to stagger. But Bruce says he sat down to be shaved as usual with his knees propped against the mirror, and as the barber was tucking the towel under his chin he fell back into Lord Ailesbury’s arms. His Majesty’s eyes were rolled right up into his head, Bruce said!”
The terrible words buffeted Catherine from all sides as she hurried into some clothes. “They say he is dying,” someone sobbed. But she herself was dry eyed as she ran across the landing. More insistent in her brain even than the suggestion that he might be dying stormed the fact that he wanted her.
Chiffinch’s room was already black with people. Frightened servants crowded the backstairs. Catherine saw Drusilla, the chambermaid, standing there, her pretty face all puckered with crying. Although she had probably never so much as spoken to the King, such was the affection in which he was held that by the looks of her she might have lost father, brother sweetheart and all.
“Make way for the Queen!” some upper servant cried out, and the press of people parted respectfully on either side. Lord Ailesbury, looking gaunt and aged, met her at the doorway and, shedding ceremony, took her cold hands in his own trembling ones.
It was still dark in the King’s room. No one had thought to draw the curtains at the tall windows. Only a few hastily lit candles relieved the heaviness of the panelling with their yellow pools of light. Men, half dressed and tallow-faced, were making up the dying fire and shooing from the hearth a whimpering huddle of their master’s dogs. A white aproned barber stood as if struck dumb by the empty shaving chair, an open razor still in his hand. High upon its stand on the dressing table stood Charles’s long dark wig — a tiling poignantly ordinary and familiar.
But Catherine’s eyes, her mind, her heart went straight to the long, covered figure in the big, dishevelled bed. She could see her husband’s closely shaven head capless against the pillows, and his grey and twisted face. His eyes, beneath half closed lids, were watching the door, patient and imploring as the brown eyes of his spaniels. The fingers of one inert, outflung hand managed to make a small convulsive gesture at sight of her.
Unaware of anyone else in the room or in the whole world, she sank to her knees upon the hard bedsteps, so that her face was on a level with his tortured one. She clasped that piteous hand firmly, trying to pierce his dim consciousness with the assurance that she would never let him go. At first he could not speak at all. He lay with closed eyes and laboured breathing; but she knew by the clinging of those loved fingers that he wanted her and drew solace from their warm contact. And gradually the terrible twisting of his features smoothed itself out, leaving the stern, lined face she knew so well. “It will pass, perhaps,” he muttered thickly. “I am glad — you came.”
“I am part of you, beloved,” she whispered back.
He had spoken and her first terror passed. Someone had drawn back the curtains, a bright coal fire burned upon the hearth and there was grey February light over the Thames. Catherine was conscious of James’s hurried arrival and thankful that Dr. Edmund King was there. “Mercifully, he was here when it happened,” James told her, standing tense and tall across the bed. “He had come to dress the King’s heel, and took the risk of opening a vein.” James kept repeating the information as if it were some kind of talisman, for although he had stood immovable on many a battle deck, before this unexpected calamity he was all bewildered and distraught.
“It is treason to treat his Majesty’s body without consultation, but in a matter of seconds he would have been beyond human aid,” confirmed the little doctor apologetically.
“You seem to be our ever present help in trouble!” murmured Catherine, catching at his hand and remembering how kind he had been when Charles had sent him to her in her own illness.
And then the other physicians with whom he should have conferred were arriving, making a great stir and each anxious to hear exactly what had happened and to try all kinds of drastic remedies. To make way for them Catherine moved to the foot of the bed. Bruce was putting hot pans of coal between the sheets and with her own hands she began to chafe her husband’s icy feet. For hours she knelt there while he was being cupped and bled and purged. Now and again she heard his voice murmuring some reply to the doctors and once she heard him cry out in agony. It was becoming more than she could bear. The room was now hot to the point of suffocation and crowded with bishops and high functionaries and hurrying servants. How Charles must hate all these people staring at his suffering and having the distressed little Duchess of York and some of her own women in the room while he submitted to the intimate indignities of human illness! “Even a sick dog is allowed more privacy!” he had
said, when he had ridden hell for leather from Newmarket and cleared her rooms and given her a chance of life. Longing to do the same for him, she looked wildly round. But she had no such authority. “If only they would stop all these exhausting remedies and let him sleep a little!” she entreated, tugging at James’s sleeve as he passed. But James did not understand. He thought that the more remedies they tried the more chance of recovery there would be. Unlike his brother, he was no good at all in sickness.
Towards noon her strength began to give out and when Charles slipped into a sound sleep in spite of them, and Doctor King confirmed her assertion that that would prove the best remedy of all, she allowed her women to lead her away.
The next day he rallied. He even sat up in bed and discussed his symptoms, teasing his friends affectionately for their concern. That remarkable constitution of his was putting up a wonderful fight. A hopeful bulletin was given to the people gathered about the Palace gates. “Trust old Rowley to cheat Death every time!” they told each other, calling him by the coarse nickname that referred to a famous stallion, yet loving him and relying on him as they always had.
But the convulsions returned and although Charles bore it all with fortitude, by mid-week he lay huddled and exhausted; and, knowing that there was no hope, the bishops besought him to consider his soul. For a long time he either did not hear or would not heed them, but lay in delirium sometimes talking disconnectedly in French, so that it seemed that the loving spirit of Minette was very near him — -for Catherine was certain it was to Minette he spoke. But as the hours crept by and a more lucid moment came, Bishop Kenn, that courageous prelate who had often reproved his Sovereign for his sins and been but the better loved for it, managed to make him understand that he must prepare to meet his God. Charles heard the words unflinchingly and, expressing contrition for all his sins, listened reverently to the absolution. But when the elements were laid upon a table that he might take the Eucharist according to the Church of England he muttered that there was yet time, and that he would think upon it. And Catherine, watching him, knew what was in his mind.
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