Minette

by Melanie Clegg

  I look at him warily waiting for the inevitable barbed comment to come. This is how Louis and his courtiers have always dealt with us, subduing us with a pat then delivering a slap, muting me with a compliment then making me cry with an insult.

  But the handsome young Comte only sighs, adjusts the rose behind my ear then stands back to judge the affect. ‘You both have the happy ability to surround yourselves with beauty and live gracefully, whatever the circumstances,’ he says at last.

  ‘What is your mother like?’ I ask impetuously. I’ve seen his mother, the Duchesse de Gramont, striding around court, where she is one of Tante Anne’s closest friends. She’s a distant figure, tall and energetic with grey streaked black hair, a supercilious smile and loud, harsh laugh. She reminds me of Anne-Marie although to my knowledge, Madame de Gramont has never fired a cannon from the Bastille despite looking exactly like the sort of woman who would do so without a moment’s hesitation.

  Her son gives a sad little sidelong smile. ‘Not like yours.’

  Philippe steps out onto the terrace and gives a little moue of annoyance when he sees us together. Armand takes a step back and favours me with an apologetic look. ‘Here comes trouble,’ he murmurs before quickly kissing my hand and strolling away without a backward glance.

  ‘What on earth did you find to talk about with the Holy Innocent?’ I hear Philippe squeak as they walk away across the lawn, their high red heels sinking into the lawn. ‘Louis says she’s dull as a whole pack of nuns.’

  The Comte laughs. ‘Oh, I don’t know about that. I’ve met some pretty lively nuns in my time,’ he says.

  We have another visitor a few days later but they arrive unannounced so there’s no time to change into our court clothes to receive them. The carriage come to a noisy halt outside while we are sitting together in Mam’s little upstairs closet, which overlooks the front courtyard. I look at Mam curiously but she won’t meet my eyes and begins to self consciously pat her greying hair in the nervous way that I know so well. She’s been keeping secrets from me again.

  ‘Who is that, Mam,’ I ask, getting to my feet and going to the window. ‘I didn’t think we were expecting visitors today.’ The carriage is being taken to the stable and already I hear the bustling sounds of a new arrival in the hall below, including, confusingly, the high pitched voice of a young boy.

  Mam cocks her head to one side and listens before giving a heavy sigh. ‘That must be little Jemmy,’ she says before getting to her feet and going to the door. ‘There was a letter yesterday…’ she adds vaguely, leaving me behind as she steps out into the corridor then hurries to the stairs.

  ‘Little Jemmy?’ I chase after her. The name means nothing to me. The only ‘Jemmy’ I know is my brother James and surely… I stop short, my mouth falling open in astonishment when I catch sight of the boy being led by the hand by Lord Jermyn’s up the marble staircase to my mother. The dark haired, dark eyed boy with an impish expression who is the very image of my brother Charles in the portraits that I have seen of him as a child.

  ‘You poor baby,’ Mam exclaims in English as, all hesitation and nervousness gone, she runs forward to take the boy from Lord Jermyn and hug him to her bosom. ‘So you are little Jemmy are you?’ She sighs and kisses his cheek. ‘I would know your handsome face anywhere.’

  The boy looks up at her warily then gives a broad grin. ‘At your service, milady,’ he says in a peculiar accent that reminds me of my sister Mary’s - not quite English but not Dutch either.

  ‘This is her Majesty the Queen, Jemmy,’ Lord Crofts, my mother’s master of guards, a stern faced but not unfriendly man gently corrects him.

  The boy turns down his long lashed eyes but a mischievous smile lingers around his lips. ‘Yes, Lord Crofts,’ he says before looking up at Mam again. ‘I hope that Your Majesty will forgive me.’

  ‘There is nothing to forgive,’ Mam says, still gazing at him rapturously, drinking in his fine features, his full lips, the bright flash of his white strong teeth against his swarthy skin. ‘And I beg that from now on you will call me grandmère for that is what I am.’

  ‘Grandmère,’ he tries it on his tongue then gives one of his quick, bright smiles. ‘My first French word,’ he says and Mam bends down to kiss him again.

  ‘The first of many,’ she says before turning and beckoning me forward from where I shyly stand at the top of the stairs. ‘And who do you think this is, Jemmy?’ she asks almost roguishly.

  He looks past her to me and his dark brown eyes widen. ‘An angel?’ he asks and everyone laughs.

  Mam smiles. ‘This is your Aunt Henrietta-Anne,’ she says. ‘Did you know that your father has a little sister?’

  I offer Jemmy my hand and he bows low over it. Someone has clearly taken the time to teach the boy some courtly manners. Perhaps Charles himself. I look at him curiously, wondering what sort of father my elder brother makes. A fond one, no doubt. Doting even. Lucky boy.

  We all go in to dinner together and Jemmy sits very proudly in between Mam and Lord Crofts, who appears to be in charge of him. When his attention is diverted elsewhere by the arrival of a sumptuous pile of light as air profiteroles stuffed with chocolate cream and scattered with candied violets, I catch Mam’s eye and whisper: ‘Where is his mother?’

  Mam looks cross then shrugs. ‘How should I know?’ she whispers back before relenting. ‘She’s in Holland somewhere I believe.’ She gives another careless shrug as if it really doesn’t matter but I’m not so easily fooled.

  I look at Jemmy, so handsome and lively as he crams cakes into his mouth and gives little cries of delight. His mother must surely adore him so why isn’t she here with him now? ‘Does she know that he is in Paris?’ I ask at last.

  My mother looks cagey. ‘Charles was concerned about the boy’s education so he arranged for him to be removed from her care.’

  ‘Removed from her care?’ I repeat incredulously as Mam hisses at me to keep my voice down. ‘Do you mean that he was kidnapped?’

  She looks annoyed. ‘No, not kidnapped.’ She won’t meet my eyes and crumbles her bread nervously on to her plate. ‘Not precisely.’

  And then it all comes tumbling out: Charles had tired of Mrs Barlow, the boy’s mother and when she started consorting with other gentlemen and then, worse, attempting to blackmail my family by claiming that she and my brother had secretly married before Jemmy was born, he decided to take action and arranged for the child to be snatched away while Mrs Barlow was distracted. A low mean trick if ever there was one.

  ‘You must not blame your brother, Minette,’ Mam whispers as I sit and scowl. ‘He acted for the best and only because he thought that Mrs Barlow was a bad influence on his son.’ She turns a fond eye on Jemmy, who has moved on to a meringue heaped with cream and strawberries and is completely oblivious to our conversation. ‘You can see for yourself what a clever child he is and yet he apparently barely knows his letters and has clearly not been educated in a manner that befits the son of a king, even an illegitimate one.’

  ‘Poor Jemmy,’ I say, leaning across the table to hand him another meringue, this time filled with cream and chocolate sauce, which he accepts with delight. ‘Where is he to live? Here with us? Or in Paris?’

  ‘Charles has asked Lord Crofts to be the boys’ governor until he is fully grown and he will reside with he and his wife at their house near the Palais Royal when he is not at school. I am to make all the main decisions about his residence and education but it is Lord Crofts who will oversee the boy and ensure that he is well cared for.’

  I sigh, remembering Harry. This might not end well for Jemmy.

  ‘I have arranged for him to go to school at Port-Royal just outside Paris,’ Mam continues. ‘It is eminently suitable in terms of distance and prestige and I have heard that the education to be gained there is quite superb and perfect for a young man of Jemmy’s future standing.’ I must have looked at her with surprise at this point because she somewhat testily added: ‘No matter what t
he unfortunate circumstances of his birth may have been, I will never forget that he is my grandson or the honour that is due to him.’ She looks at him across the table as he licks his long fingers clean of meringue crumbs then, with a self conscious look up at Lord Crofts, carefully dabs the chocolate sauce from his chin with a napkin. ‘I love him already in fact. Don’t you?’

  I smile and nod. ‘He is like Charles come back to us,’ I say, because that is what Mam wants to hear.

  Lord Crofts often brings Jemmy out to Colombes to visit us and Mam and I look forward with unaffected delight to seeing him. He even stays the night sometimes and is given a little bedchamber next to mine which Mam decorates with particular care with a soft woollen blanket made by the nuns of Chaillot on the bed and a painting of his father as a little boy, proud and unsmiling in a tiny suit of polished black armour, over the fireplace. He is a light sleeper and at night I hear his stockinged feet quietly roaming about the house as he sneaks down to the kitchens in search of pie and cakes and then out to the terrace where he sits and swings his legs as he eats his feast. In the morning he is heavy eyed and sleepy over his breakfast and later on I find him asleep on the lawn, one hand tucked beneath his head while in the other there is a crumpled letter from his father.

  The boy chatters to us in English with a few Dutch words mixed in here and there. I do my best to teach him French and soon every mealtime becomes an opportunity for a lesson as I point to ‘la confiture’, ‘la pain’ and ‘l’oeuf’. He’s bright as a button, our little Jemmy, and it doesn’t take him long to pick up enough French to be able to talk to us. My mother’s look of delight when he first politely says ‘Je vous aime, grandmère’ is worth any amount of effort.

  In the afternoons I take him swimming in the pond. ‘You are an English boy, Jemmy,’ I whisper to him even though he doesn’t quite understand me. ‘All English boys can swim.’ I smile remembering the summer when Harry taught me and wondering where he is now. There hasn’t been any letters for a while and I’m worried about him although I tell myself that I would know in my heart if he were dead.

  Mam is fascinated by the boy’s mother and asks him questions: can she dance? Is she pretty? Does she speak French? Does she play any musical instruments? He answers as best he can but I can tell he is confused and all this talk of his mother makes him sad and withdrawn. Mam tells herself and anyone that will listen that he doesn’t miss her, but he does, I can tell.

  We take Jemmy out one day in our carriage to visit a neighbour and on our return to Colombes, a young woman that I have never seen before, dressed in a blue silk dress and with a straw hat perched on her tumbling dark curls is standing beside the tall black and gilt gates at the end of the drive. She is clearly waiting for someone and I stare at her curiously as we rumble past. She steps away from the dust kicked up by our horses and stares with wild blue eyes into the carriage. I think I hear her cry out as if in pain.

  ‘Who is that?’ I ask Mam in some alarm. ‘We should stop and see what she wants.’

  My mother shakes her head and nervously pulls Jemmy closer to her side.

  When the carriage comes to a halt outside the house, I see the woman running towards us, lifting up her heavy skirts which I can see are ringed with mud and waving her hat in the air to attract our attention. ‘Jemmy!’ she calls faintly. ‘Jemmy! Look at me!’

  Mam gives a nod to her guards then hustles Jemmy, who looks desperately over his shoulder as he goes into the house. ‘Minette,’ she orders sharply. ‘Come inside at once.’

  I ignore her and stand rooted to the spot as the guards run towards the woman who has stopped now and is watching us with an expression of mingled despair and annoyance on what must have once been a pretty face. They put their hands on her arms and are shaken off. They try again and shout in her face. She looks at me then, defeated. ‘Tell Jemmy…’ she calls to me but the rest of her words are carried away by the wind. I nod though and raise my hand.

  Her shoulders bow and this time when they take hold of her arms there is no resistance as she lets them lead her back to the gate, which is firmly closed in her face.

  Later on, Jemmy comes to me in my room and asks if I spoke to ‘the lady’. I nod, looking around to make sure that Mam is nowhere near. ‘She said that she loves you,’ I whisper.

  He doesn’t say anything but gives a small tight nod then turns and walks away out of the room. I expect to hear him crying that night but there is no sound at all.

  We return to Paris shortly after that and Jemmy starts at school, coming to see us in his new smart uniform with his usually unruly dark hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. He is pleased as punch to be a proper school boy at last and solemnly promises to make us all proud, ‘especially my father,’ he says artlessly, his eyes shining with an adoration that I know only too well. ‘For he said that if I am a good boy and learn my letters then he will reward me with whatever I choose.’

  ‘And what will you choose, Jemmy?’ I ask gaily but he only looks sly and will not answer.

  And then a few days later comes the news that we have longed for but never dared dream would ever happen. I was first to see the horseman as he tore into the courtyard of the Palais Royal then leapt from his horse onto the cobbled courtyard. The grim set of his expression immediately reminded me of the other messenger that had come one cold winter’s day nine years ago to tell Mam that her husband, our Sainted Father, had been murdered and I felt my heart plummet into my stomach with dread.

  Please God not one of my brothers.

  I jumped down from the window seat and ran along the empty gallery to my mother’s closet, where I knew she was writing her letters, covering the paper in her looping slanting handwriting before dusting it down with sand to seal the ink. Mam spends most of her mornings writing letters which then fly out all over the world, beseeching, imploring and justifying. ‘I can’t do nothing,’ she says when Lord Jermyn advises her to stop and rest. ‘I can’t let them forget about us.’

  I burst into Mam’s room without knocking, startling her so much that she gives a cry of alarm and crushes the nib of her pen on the paper, splattering ink in an arc across her words. ‘What is it?’ she cries, her face going pale.

  I feel sick. ‘I don’t know,’ I say, making her frown in annoyance. ‘There’s a messenger.’ I look wildly behind me just as the man, mud splattered, grimy, grey with exhaustion and stinking of horse and brandy looms up behind me.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ he says, bowing to my mother, who has now shoved her chair back and is standing up, her fingers digging into the polished pale wood of her desk.

  ‘Not my boys,’ she whispers brokenly. ‘Oh God, anything but that.’ She sways a little and I run to her side to take her arm, terrified that she is about to faint. I feel her pulse beating like a hammer in her slender wrist.

  He shakes his head, releasing a cloud of dust into the lavender and amber scented air and we both relax and sag against each other in relief. ‘Cromwell is dead.’

  ‘What?’ Mam is upright again and I look up to see her staring at the man in shocked confusion. ‘Is this really true? How did it happen?’ What she means is, was he assassinated? Can we take one small nugget of hope, that we still have supporters ready and willing to act on our behalf, from this news? ‘Was he..?’

  He shakes his head, cutting her off and Mam lets out a deep sigh. ‘Alas, no, Your Majesty,’ he says apologetically. ‘He died in his bed at Whitehall after a short illness.’

  ‘That hardly seems fair,’ Mam murmurs. She begins to tremble and gently I help her sit down in her chair again as the Duchess of Richmond quickly pours her a glass of wine from the carafe sitting on her desk, splashing it on the floor in her haste. ‘He dragged my husband out and executed him in public like a common criminal. Where is the justice in that? That man ought to have been hung, drawn and quartered for his crimes.’ Her cheeks are red now with anger and I can tell that she is on the verge of hysterics. I look around wildly for Lord Jermyn, who is the only
person who can calm my mother when she is like this but for once he is not in his usual place, lounging by the fire with his dogs.

  ‘Given time…’ the messenger begins lamely. He is backing away towards the door, obviously frightened by my mother’s rising temper and I can’t help but sympathise with him.

  ‘Time?’ Mam spits out, her voice shrill. ‘Almost ten years have passed since my husband was murdered, sir. Do you not think that time enough to avenge him?’

  At last, Lord Jermyn appears at the doorway with a gaggle of flustered looking ladies in waiting at his heels and the messenger and I exchange a probably unwise look of relief. He has never seen my mother at her hysterical unreasonable worst but he has glimpsed enough in this brief interview to realise that he is hopelessly out of his depth.

  ‘Your Majesty?’ Jermyn strides to Mam’s side, looking accusingly at the messenger as he does so, which makes the poor man shrink even further into himself. ‘What has happened? Are you unwell?’

  ‘Cromwell is dead,’ I blurt out before Mam can say anything.

  That checks Jermyn and he looks sharply down at me, his thin eyebrows drawn together while behind him the ladies in waiting exchange shocked looks and hide gasps of surprise behind their painted fans. ‘Is this true?’ he turns on the messenger, who looks as though he wishes the earth would open up and swallow him whole. ‘Is he dead?’

  The man nods. ‘He is, my Lord.’

  Lord Jermyn whirls around to take my mother’s cold hands in his own. ‘This is a miracle,’ he says to her as she stares at him. ‘Our greatest enemy is no more. Surely that means that our exile is almost at an end as without Cromwell to lead them, the Commonwealth will soon fall apart.’

  Mam’s eyes are bright with tears now. ‘Oh Harry, do you really think so?’ she whispers. ‘I have no wish to go back but my children…’

  He nods and lifts her hands to his lips. ‘I will write to Charles this afternoon,’ he says urgently as the women flutter around them both, rubbing lavender oil into Mam’s temples and making soothing noises over her bowed head. ‘We must decide how to act.’