Minette

by Melanie Clegg

  The first Medici Queen surrounded herself with a sinister court of sorcerers, astrologers and necromancers in her splendid apartments at the Louvre, where my cousin Louis lives now. Someone sneaks into Mam’s bedroom and slips an old prediction written on faded stained parchment into her jewellery box. She finds it coiled around her pearls when getting dressed in the morning and gives a scream of horror before crumpling it into a ball and flinging it to the floor. ‘Nowhere is safe,’ she whispers, peering into the corners of the room with frightened eyes. ‘Not even my own bedroom.’

  Her ladies in waiting hold back their skirts as they move around the crumpled ball of parchment. It’s as if they are scared to let any part of themselves touch it. Later, when they have all gone, I use a discarded linen handkerchief to pick it up and run to my room, where I hide it beneath my bed. I don’t know why but some part of me thinks that if it is hidden then it can’t come true. I think about it all day though and in the end, I fish it out from its hiding place and secretly burn it in my fire, while whispering the Lord’s prayer.

  The ugly words refuse to go away. ‘The beheaded King’s lady will have her head struck off in front of the Louvre.’ Mam can’t stop talking about it. She keeps her head cocked to the side, listening out for the assassin’s dull tread, the whisper of a knife against silk.

  ‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ her chief lady in waiting, the beautiful Duchess of Richmond tells her. ‘It’s just a silly piece of nonsense and even if it isn’t then it can’t possibly mean you.’

  My mother’s eyes are wild and dark. ‘But who does it mean, Mall, if it doesn’t mean me?’

  Shortly after this my brother James, looking very young and eager in his fine new soldier’s uniform, rejoins his regiment, which is under the command of Marshal Turenne himself. No one dares to make jokes about Marie-Anne firing a cannon at him when he comes in all his glory, festooned with medals and royal orders to take our Jemmy away with him. ‘Your boy will make a fine commander one day,’ he tells Mam in his bracing way. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t made a Marshal of France when he is older.’

  Mam sighs despairingly and I roll my eyes anxiously towards the Marshal who shuffles his large feet awkwardly from side to side. He is just trying to be kind, to make her feel better about her son going off to fight. In his eyes there is no finer destiny for a young man than a smoking, blood drenched battlefield and a Marshal’s baton. He doesn’t understand why Mam looks so upset or why she views my brother fighting in the French army as further proof of our family’s shameful failure.

  We leave the Palais Royal after this and spend a few gentle weeks at the small convent Mam has founded on the hill at Chaillot. I love our house there as it has huge windows that let in the sunshine and pretty gardens that overlook the Seine and then just beyond that the grey roofs and church spires of Paris. Mam has invited twelve nuns from the Order of the Visitation to live there and they flit soundlessly about the grounds in their black robes, their pale faces downcast and lips moving constantly in prayer. When we first got the house ready for them, we filled the nuns’ rooms with the loveliest furniture, bright tapestries and colourful religious paintings. Mam was in her element arranging things for them and kept asking me over dinner ‘Do you think the nuns would like flowers beneath their windows?’ and ‘Do you think the nuns would like lavender pouches tucked inside their pillows?’

  It was all for nothing though for no sooner had the sisters arrived at Chaillot but they had pronounced the rooms so lovingly arranged for them far too ostentatious and removed themselves up to the dank, spider infested attics until we’d taken all the offending furniture, tapestries and paintings away.

  I thought they were being extremely ungrateful but Mam just laughed and did as they asked. ‘They are right,’ she said gently. ‘We care too much about worldly things.’ I hid my jewellery that night in case she decided that I could do without it as well. I don’t have much: a pearl necklace that belonged to Mam when she was my age; earrings that were worn by my Aunt Elizabeth as a girl; a pretty bracelet of polished topaz and pearls that my cousin Rupert gave me for my last birthday; a garnet ring that used to belong to my brother Charles and is far too big for even my thumb and a few other trinkets, but it’s all precious to me and I don’t want to lose it.

  I’m a little afraid of the nuns but dare not let Mam know. I remember what Anne-Marie told me about being put in a convent and have a terrible dream one night about being locked in a dark room with them. They hold me back with rattling skeleton hands as Mam, laughing gleefully, turns the key in the lock. ‘Serves you right for not getting a husband!’ she shrieks just before I wake up, covered in sweat and shivering.

  Despite the nuns, our days are bright and lazy at Chaillot. I lie surrounded by Mam’s little dogs on the sweet soft grass and let my fingers trail over the tiny flowers while reading books and eating the apples that fall red and juicy from the orchard at the side of the house. At night we dine on artichokes, fish, cherries and strawberry syllabub. Sometimes Mam lets me have a little of the white wine that Tante Anne sends us from the cellars beneath the Louvre and tells me stories about her own childhood before she was sent away to England to marry my father. I’m glad to be away from Paris, from the mysterious enemy we have in our midst, from the arch looks of Louis’ courtiers and from the squabbling of our own people who have followed us from England into exile.

  ‘We are fortunate to have so many loyal friends,’ Mam reminds us constantly. She’s right of course, but they brought all their squabbles and petty jealousies with them from England instead of leaving them behind as dusty remnants of another, different time. Many of them have been kicking their heels in Paris for years now, becoming increasingly bored, resentful and dull with each passing day. Mam does her best to keep them useful, to find them little jobs but it’s never enough to stop them falling out with each other over things that happened years ago that none of them would care about if they only had more things with which to occupy their time.

  They even have duels sometimes, which is very exciting. Just before I came from England my cousin Rupert challenged the Earl of Bristol, a ridiculous fop with tawny hair and an arrogant swagger to a duel. Mam managed to prevent it but apparently Rupert was furious with her and sulked off back to the Hague shortly afterwards. Robert the Devil they call him in England. He’s a pirate now according to Charles. ‘Privateer,’ Mam says firmly with a cross look at our elder brother. ‘Not pirate.’ Harry and I grin at each other. ‘He’s a pirate,’ we whisper with wistful looks.

  The more fortunate exiles live with us in the Palais Royal. They cram themselves and their families beneath the damp eaves of the palace and at night the staircases and courtyards smell of soup, mutton stew and roasted chicken which they cook in their rooms over the small smoking fireplaces. There are dogs everywhere, running in an immense barking, howling pack from room to room; snarling and fighting in the galleries; snapping at the ladies’ dresses as they walk in the gardens and gnawing at bones on the doorsteps.

  The less fortunate starve in genteel poverty in tiny rented rooms in the Marais or in the winding dark little streets around Notre Dame and trudge every morning to the Palais Royal to hang about our corridors and talk in earnest whispers in the stairwells.

  They talk a lot, constantly in fact, but nothing ever seems to happen. When Lord Jermyn, who is my mother’s closest advisor walks past, they tug at his sleeves or leap artfully in front of him. ‘Is there any news from England?’ they ask hopefully. He shakes his head and their faces fall. There’s never any news.

  We must be kind though, Mam says. Most of these people lost their homes thanks to their loyalty to my father and his cause. Many of them have also lost fathers, brothers and sons in the war. They are not just here because they love us, they are here because, like us, they have nowhere else to go.

  When we return to Paris it is to find Charles getting ready to leave for Spa, where he is to meet with our eldest sister, Mary. ‘I have
been banished from France,’ he says ruefully as I stand in the cobbled courtyard and watch him throwing his belongings up onto a small cart. It’s a hot day and he has impatiently tugged his long dark wig from his shaved head and tossed it onto the cobbles where it lies abandoned and forlorn like a dead animal. ‘Well, not precisely banished. It just sounds better than the truth.’

  While we were sunning ourselves in the garden at Chaillot, Charles and his sombre advisor Sir Edward Hyde had been busy having secret meetings with Louis and Cardinal Mazarin, he of the voluptuously beautiful nieces. ‘They want to come to terms with England,’ Charles says to Harry and me as we help him load the cart with his few belongings. ‘Which means that I am something of an embarrassment to them. Luckily, they haven’t paid my allowance for several months so they’ve got something to bribe me with.’ He shrugs, not seeming at all bothered, but Harry and I are outraged on his behalf. ‘Oh no, it’s not as bad as all that my little ones,’ he says with a laugh as we shout and stamp with annoyance. ‘I got a nice fat pocket full of French gold in exchange for making myself scarce within ten days. Hyde is beside himself with joy for he never stops complaining about my debts.’ He gives a rueful smile. ‘Well, it seemed like a nice fat pocket of gold until Mam produced a list of all the money that I owe her. Did you know that she’s been writing down the cost of every meal that I’ve had here so that she can claim the money back from me?’ He rolls his eyes. ‘My own mother.’

  ‘I can’t believe that our cousin would use you so badly,’ Harry fumes. ‘I want to go to the Louvre and tell him what I think about it. How can he side with Cromwell against you?’

  Charles laughs and hugs him fondly. ‘There’s no need to shout on my behalf, Harry, but I appreciate the offer.’ He throws another sack of bedding up onto the cart. ‘It’s not really Louis’ fault, you know. He may be our cousin, but he’s a king first and foremost and means to be a good one too. I’d probably have done the same thing if I were in his shoes.’

  I don’t believe him. I can’t imagine that my affectionate, warm hearted brother would treat anyone, no matter how inconvenient they might be to him, with such callousness. ‘When will you be able to come back?’ I ask, trying not to cry.

  Charles puts his arm around me and hunches over to rest his chin on the top of my head. ‘I don’t know, Minette,’ he says. ‘It all depends on how long it takes for Louis and Cromwell to fall out.’ He puts his other arm around Harry, drawing him close. ‘Don’t be angry with Louis,’ he says. ‘He came to see me afterwards to apologise. We’re still cousins when all is said and done.’

  I can’t bear it. ‘Take me with you,’ I say, pulling back and looking up at him. ‘I don’t want to stay here without you. I know that you and Mam don’t always see eye to eye but we’ve been happy, haven’t we?’

  He looks at me sadly for a long moment then shakes his head. ‘You’ll be safer here with Mam and Tante Anne, Minette,’ he says. ‘But I promise that one day I will come back for you.’ He crosses his chest most solemnly. ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’

  ‘What about me?’ Harry pipes up. ‘I can’t stay here, Charles. You are the only thing stopping Mam from packing me off to the Jesuits.’

  Charles looks miserable. ‘I can’t, Harry,’ he says, putting the last of his boxes onto the cart. ‘I’ve asked Mam to let you come with me but she won’t let you go. I don’t have enough money to do it without her blessing.’

  Harry curses under his breath. ‘I should never have come here,’ he says. ‘I was happy in the Hague with Mary until Mam started meddling and demanding that I come here instead. It was only supposed to be for a few months, you said!’ His cheeks are flushed with anger. ‘You promised me that I’d be able to go back to the Hague but she’s kept me here for over a year now. Mary tried to warn me how it would be once I got here, that Mam would stop at nothing to get her claws into me and convert me to Papism but I didn’t believe her.’

  Before he leaves, I hear Charles tell Mam that she is to leave Harry alone and not try to turn him to Rome. ‘I don’t think you appreciate how important this is,’ he says and I hear the floorboards creak alarmingly as he paces her closet. Ten steps up to the wall then turn and ten steps back again to her sofa beside the window. ‘If the news reaches England that I have a newly fledged Papist for a brother then they’ll never let me back in the country again and I’ll lose a lot of the support that I’ve been working hard to secure. It’s bad enough that you’ve insisted upon bringing Minette up as a Catholic despite everyone, including my father, telling you not to.’

  ‘How I bring my daughter up is no one’s concern but my own,’ Mam says, her voice agitated and I can imagine her clutching the sparkling jet cross that she wears pinned to her black silk dress. ‘Minette has lived in France all her life and remained closer to me than any of my other children,’ I wince, feeling as Charles must do, the sting in those words, ‘what harm can it possibly do to raise her in my own faith?’

  My brother sighs and again I hear him pace the room. ‘It can do a great deal of harm, Mam, as well you know.’ What he doesn’t say but we all know is that it was our mother’s Catholicism that turned so many people against our father in our own country. ‘And you can forget any plans you might be hatching to marry her to Louis as well. Our Tante Anne would rather cast herself into the Seine than marry her precious boy to the penniless sister of a landless king.’

  Mam makes an impatient noise. ‘This is your Aunt Elizabeth speaking,’ she says with annoyance. There’s a whisper of silk as she gets to her feet and goes to Charles’ side. ‘That it should come to this,’ she says in a low voice that quivers with barely suppressed anger. ‘You care more for your aunt’s opinion than you do mine.’

  Charles sighs and I smile, imagining him rolling his eyes. ‘That’s not true, Mam, but unlike you my Aunt Elizabeth is not blind to the harm that Catholicism has wrought in our country. She has not surrounded herself with fawning advisors who deliberately turn her eyes away from the truth and use her to serve their own meddling ends.’

  ‘Go to her then!’ Mam shouts. ‘If your aunt is so perfect, then go to her! After all, she did such a fine job of raising her own boys, who wouldn’t rather be her son than mine?’ There’s a long silence and I imagine her closing her dark eyes, trying her best to master her temper before it takes hold of her. ‘The children are right - Rupert and Maurice are no better than pirates. Sons to be proud of indeed! And as for the eldest boy, Carl…’

  I shiver. No one is allowed to mention our cousin Carl in Mam’s hearing. He turned against my father during the war and sided with Parliament. While my father was being moved from prison to prison, my brothers were wandering Europe as outcasts and his own brothers were fighting for my family cause, Carl was living in state at Whitehall at Parliament’s invitation and hoping that they’d would reward his loyalty with my father’s throne. Luckily it never happened and after father was beheaded, Carl was packed off back to the Hague and our furious Aunt Elizabeth, who had been sending letters to Mam the whole time assuring her of her abject mortification and fury at having such a son.

  ‘Let’s not talk about this,’ Charles says harshly. ‘I have no wish to think about that poisonous little toad Carl. Not now or ever.’

  There’s another silence and I press myself against the wall, wishing that I were brave enough to run in and fling my arms around them both to stop them fighting. Charles loves our mother, I know that he does, but he’s repelled and frustrated by her too. They can’t spend more than five minutes alone in the same room before they end up shouting and one of them, usually Charles, storms out, vowing never to speak to the other again. It’s worse if Mam cries, which she usually does. Charles can’t stand it when she starts weeping all over him. He hates it that she makes him feel guilty about not being father, about not getting England back, about not being able to provide better for us all.

  ‘What do you want me to do, Charles?’ Mam sounds beaten and her voice is low and wavering
.

  Charles sighs. ‘Mam…’ He sounds resigned and very, very sad.

  Another whisper of silk as she moves back to her sofa. ‘Just tell me what to do,’ she says.

  ‘Promise me that you will leave Harry alone,’ my brother says and there’s a steely note in his voice that I have never heard before. ‘Promise that you won’t try to make a Catholic of him.’

  ‘I had no thought of attempting such a thing,’ Mam says.

  I don’t believe her and nor does Charles for his dark face is grave and worried when he leaves her room a few minutes later. He sees me lurking uncertainly in the corridor and immediately smiles and goes to take my face in his hands. ‘Be a good girl, Minette,’ he says softly. ‘Watch out for your poor brothers.’

  ‘I don’t want to marry Louis,’ I blurt out, forgetting that I wasn’t supposed to be listening at the door.

  Charles laughs and kisses my cheek. ‘You little minx,’ he says. ‘I’ll find a much better husband for you, never fear.’ He saunters down the gallery, raising his feathered hat to all the ladies, blows a kiss to the Duchess of Richmond then turns and waves again at me. ‘A handsome prince,’ he calls, ‘with huge pockets full of money and a beautiful castle with rooms so full of shoes, poets and spaniels that you can hardly move.’

  After he leaves with the ever faithful Ned Hyde riding pensively beside him, I go to his room seeking some little part of him to keep beside me. It is completely bare and I realise with a pang that he had very little to take away. Mam would have cried and bemoaned that a prince who ought to have palaces full of lovely things should own enough to be slung on the back of a horse and single small cart, but instead I just pick up his pillow and hold it to my face, inhaling his scent of lemon and sandalwood. I refuse to cry for if I begin, I will never be able to stop.

  Chapter Three

  Paris, September 1654