For as long as I can remember, Cromwell has lurked in the background of our lives. The murderer of our father - who even though he did not actually lift the axe himself was just as culpable as if he had stabbed him to death with his own hands; the faceless schemer who had tried his best to turn Harry against our mother; the terrible bogeyman, the mere mention of whose name was enough to frighten me into good behaviour.
It used to amuse me to think of the reports of my doings floating across the Channel to Cromwell, whom I am told took a great interest in my activities at the French court. According to Mam it drove him wild with chagrin that I was being raised Catholic and more French than English in my manners and appearance. ‘He can’t bear to think of anyone enjoying themselves,’ Mam said. ‘And he wishes we were all dead like your Sainted Father.’
Well now he’s the dead one and we’re still alive. It feels strange though to know that he is no longer there, watching over us from afar.
For days afterwards, the court line up outside the Palais Royal, waiting their turn to congratulate Mam on death’s defeat of the man that she regards as her greatest enemy. I look down from my window at their heads, barely resisting the temptation to drop sweetmeats into their elaborately curled and pomaded wigs as they wait to get in.
First in line, of course, are Tante Anne, Louis, cousin Edward, Anne-Marie and Philippe who arrive en masse in their most splendid clothes to pay their respects to Mam. I stand behind her chair with the Duchess of Richmond and watch as they kiss her hands and murmur their congratulations. They couldn’t be more pleased, more reverent if she’d gone to London in disguise and stabbed Cromwell to death in his sleep with her own hands. It doesn’t matter that death is the true victor here, as far as everyone else is concerned, it’s Mam for having waited so patiently for his demise, for having outlived him despite everything.
Armand de Gramont comes with them and lurks at the back of the room, twiddling a gold dagger between his fingers and smirking as Philippe dances forward to kiss Mam’s cheeks. ‘You must be so pleased!’ he says. ‘Isn’t it all just simply thrilling?’ Armand sniggers then blows me a kiss when I give him what I hope is a severe look.
We were wrong though if we thought that Cromwell’s death would make any difference to our lives. At first Mam was on tenterhooks, every day expecting a letter or, even better, official deputation inviting us back to England and confirming Charles’ position as rightful king but it soon becomes clear that nothing has really changed at all and that no letters or deputations will be arriving in Paris.’
You said that everything would change now,’ she hisses at Lord Jermyn as we sit down to supper at the end of another disappointing day. ‘You said that they would beg us to come back, that Cromwell was all that stood between my son and his throne.’
Lord Jermyn sighs and flutters his long fingers. ‘Give them time, Your Majesty,’ he soothes. ’They have proclaimed Cromwell’s son his successor but we all know that it won’t end well.’
‘Is the son another evil murderer?’ Mam asks dully, waving away the footman trying to offer her some wine. ‘Another malcontent?’
Lord Jermyn smiles and shakes his head. ‘By all accounts he is a pathetic, mewling youth with nothing much to say for himself and none of his father’s qualities.’ Mam shoots him a cold look and opens her mouth to interrupt but he carries on regardless. ‘I wager he’ll be out of office by the end of the year if not sooner.’
A note arrives during supper. Mam takes one look and passes it to Lord Jermyn, who crumples it between his long pale fingers and leaves it on his plate. ‘We could have been kinder to the poor girl,’ is all Mam says before an uneasy silence falls over the table.
Later, when they have gone, I linger behind for just long enough to pluck up the scrap of paper and hide it in my sleeve before sneaking out to the long gallery to read it in the light cast by one of the coloured glass lanterns that hang from the walls.
‘I beg to inform Your Majesty that Mrs Barlow, the mother of James Crofts, has this evening passed to a better place. Mrs Barlow has been living in Paris since summer in hopes of seeing her son and it appears had contracted a disease that is not unusual to females of her profession. I will make sure to write to His Majesty to inform him of this sad news.’
The girl at the gate. I remember her wild, desperate look as Mam ignored her and dragged Jemmy into the house, the way she had shrunk into herself as her boy vanished from view and the door slammed shut behind them forever.
Chapter Eleven
Fontainebleau, April 1659
The entire court is crammed into the enormous ornately painted hall where once my poor great grandmother, Queen Mary of Scotland had danced as a girl in cloth of gold with sapphires and rubies in her curling auburn hair and once again I am peeping around a silver embroidered purple velvet stage curtain which smells faintly of tallow candles, smoke and stale perfume as I wait to make my first appearance dressed as Flora in the King’s ballet.
On the front row I can see Mam, dressed in her usual shimmering black taffeta with her favourite pearl necklace, a last abiding vanity retained from her former life, around her neck. Beside her sits Tante Anne, also dressed in black but in her case soft velvet with beautiful lace tumbling over her shoulders and sapphires pinned to her bosom. In her left hand she holds an ostrich feather fan studded with diamonds which she absent mindedly strokes against her right arm as behind her, Cardinal Mazarin leans forward and whispers intently into her ear.
On Tante Anne’s other side is my cousin Anne-Marie, who hurt her foot while out hunting the previous day and so cannot dance, her part as Athena being taken at the last minute by Françoise de Rochechouart. Mademoiselle de Rochechouart is much smaller in every way than my cousin and so her gauzy, spangled robes had to be quickly taken in at great expense, much to the court’s amusement as Anne-Marie doesn’t like to be reminded of her ever increasing girth. The offending foot, too horribly swollen and bruised for a shoe and so clad only in a scarlet stocking with gold leaves embroidered up the side of the stocky calf, rests on a small silver stool in front of her and every now and again she gives it a cross look.
Their carefully plucked and painted faces, illuminated and given an odd yellow glow by the candles that line the edge of the stage, are all turned towards us as they wait, impatiently in Tante Anne’s case, for us to begin but as I stand there, as always the hidden observer, it seems to me that they are the performance, not I. As I watch, Mam turns her head to say something to the Cardinal and he smiles and nods most charmingly only to pull a face and waggle his eyebrows mockingly at my cousin as soon as she looks away.
‘Your mother’s pearls are beautiful,’ a low Italian accented voice says behind me and I turn to see Marie Mancini standing there, tucking a small book into the folds of her pale pink gauze dress which is pulled in around her slender waist with a criss crossing gold cord and decorated with blooming pink and white silk roses. She sees me staring at the book and smiles, her otherwise rather plain face, which is too thin and boney for true prettiness, suddenly lighting up to become beautiful. ‘Apparently I read too much,’ she whispers confidingly. ‘According to my sisters anyway. They say that I should be Athena instead of Venus in this masque as I am so bookish and perhaps they are right.’
I smile back but my brain is telling me to careful, to remain on my guard for the Mancini girls are not my friends. I can’t help it though; there is something so incredibly disarming about Marie despite her plainness and the sharp way that she observes us all. ‘My mother is very proud of her pearls,’ I say after deciding that it’s safer by far to ignore the rest of Marie’s remarks. ‘They are all she has left after selling the rest of her jewellery off to fund the war and support my father.’ I think as always that it must have been at least a small shameful relief to Mam when the news came that Our Sainted Father was dead and she wouldn’t have to send all her money to England any more. I don’t say this, of course.
‘She is a very gallant lad
y,’ Marie agrees with a nod. ‘We all think so.’ She turns her great dark eyes on to me. ‘My sisters are madly envious of you, you know’ she says.
‘Me? Why?’ I’m frankly astonished. The Mancini girls and their blonde, haughty cousins, the Martinozzis have never treated me with anything but disdain if not outright hostility.
‘Can’t you guess?’ She smiles secretively and pats a limp rose at her shoulder back into place. ‘They want everyone to treat them like princesses but you are the real thing, aren’t you and despite everything, no one ever forgets that.’
Despite everything. She means my poverty of course, and the disgrace which all we Stuarts share. Cromwell’s death almost a year ago has done nothing to change the fortunes of my family - if anything it’s made things worse because with each passing month, the hope that Charles will be asked to return and claim his throne fades away even more. At least when Cromwell was alive and well there was no point hoping but now, well, it’s just an embarrassment really.
‘Do you remember that time I walked underneath your balcony and you called for me to come up and see you?’ I blurt into the silence that falls between us. ‘I couldn’t because of…’ Because of Mam, I want to say but that wouldn’t be polite.
Marie nods and again there’s that secretive, almost sly smile. ‘I remember,’ she says with a nod. ‘You should have come up.’
‘I wish that I had,’ I murmur fervently. I rub my arm, recalling Mam’s firm grip as she tugged me around the corner, away from the luxurious temptations of the Mancini apartments.
Marie takes my hand in hers and leans forward so that I can breathe in her sweet, spicy amber scent. ‘We should be friends,’ she whispers.
I look at her in surprise then blush with something approaching shame as I imagine how I must appear to the popular and much sought after Mademoiselle Mancini. Admired and envied I may well be and, undoubtedly, a princess, the real thing in fact, yet still I have not a friend in the world.
‘The Mancini girls are out for whatever they can get,’ Mam’s voice warns me. ‘They are desperate to get their hooks into poor Louis and will stop at nothing to get their way. Be careful around them.’
Marie laughs as though she hears Mam’s warning too. ‘You’d be right not to trust me,’ she says with disarming candour, ‘but I think we could both do with a friend right now.’
‘You need a friend?’ I repeat, staring at her. Whenever I have seen Marie Mancini, she is surrounded by a circle of admirers both male and female and hardly wants for company.
She holds my gaze and nods. ‘Now more than ever.’ She waves her hands in front of her face, a gesture redolent of exasperation and also confusion. ‘I know how it must seem to you but believe me when I say that I am just as alone as you are.’
I don’t really believe her but I force myself to smile and nod. ‘Of course we can be friends,’ I say as if I have never wanted anything more in my life. Perhaps I haven’t.
The ballet begins and we grin at each other as Louis, dressed as Apollo in cloth of gold with glittering dust in his long chestnut brown hair, skips out and begins to dance surrounded by a dozen court ladies dressed as nymphs with heavy black kohl around their eyes. One of them misses her step and I hear Tante Anne click her tongue against her teeth in irritation. ‘Your handsome cousin,’ Marie whispers, her wine and violet scented breath hot against my neck. ‘Any other man would look completely absurd prancing about in such a way but only Louis could command respect while doing so.’
I snigger, delighted by this lese-majesté, but then abruptly stop when Françoise de Rochechouart appears beside us, a gold helmet, part of her Athena costume, tucked under her slender arm and a mischievous gleam in her hazel eyes. ‘Anne-Marie has been looking daggers at me all evening,’ she says by way of a greeting.
‘Who can blame her?’ Marie says with a careless laugh. ‘You look so much better in that costume than she did.’
Françoise gives a smug smile and smooths down her silver pleated tunic. ‘It’s not hard though, is it?’ she says in a low voice and we all laugh. In my case rather guiltily as I know Mam would be disappointed to see me gossiping like a chambermaid, as she would put it, with the other girls but I don’t care what she thinks as for the first time ever I am having fun with people my own age and I feel oddly brave too, buoyed up and given confidence by my new friendship.
‘I’m thinking of changing my name,’ she continues. ‘Françoise has never really suited me.’ She looks down pensively at her silver embroidered robes and with a frown rubs with her finger at a small stain. ‘I was thinking of Athénaïs. What do you think?’
Marie laughs. ‘I think it’s utterly pretentious,’ she says.
Françoise laughs too. ‘That’s what my sister says.’ They both look at me and I realise that I am expected to give an opinion.
‘I like it,’ I say. ‘The name Françoise is far too commonplace for someone as beautiful as you.’
Françoise sighs and looks pleased. ‘Do you really think so? I’ve always felt like I have completely the wrong name - have you never wanted to choose your own? It’s always seemed so unfair to me that something so important, that forms people’s first opinions of you, is left in the clumsy hands of our parents.’
‘You would prefer that we remain nameless until we reach the age of reason and can choose our own?’ Marie says with an arched eyebrow.
‘Naturally.’ Françoise shoots her an amused look from beneath her heavy eyelids. ‘Have you never thought that perhaps there is a name that suits you better than Marie?’
Mademoiselle Mancini grins. ‘I once rather fancied changing my name to Zénaïde.’ She gives Françoise a sly look from beneath her long dark eyelashes. ’I was very young at the time though and soon outgrew such notions.’
Françoise grins. ‘Oh shush.’
The stage manager gives a discreet cough. We’ve missed our cue and Louis is casting irate looks towards the side of the stage as he dances, wondering where we are. Françoise gives a little squeal and trips straight out on to the stage, followed by Marie and then finally and more hesitantly, me.
Unable to hide his annoyance, Louis steps out towards the audience and raises his arms to the heavens before giving a speech praising the beauty of his trio of goddesses who have stepped down from Olympus to dance with him. Mam clasps her hands together proudly when he gets to me, eulogising my ‘nimble feet, happy temper and complexion of sun sweetened honey and roses’ and I see Anne-Marie shoot her then me a furious look. If there is anyone on earth who hates the war more than my own family, it is surely Anne-Marie who must curse it daily for having brought me to France.
The music steps up a tempo and everyone applauds as we circle Louis then step up one by one to dance with him. I am first to partner the King and we move together slowly, mirroring each other’s movements. ‘Smile,’ he hisses at me as I bite my lip and frown with concentration, worried that I will make the wrong step and ruin everything. ‘At least pretend to be enjoying yourself.’
Françoise is next and she shoots Marie a flirtatious look over her thin shoulder as she takes Louis’ hand and allows him to lead her through the complicated dance. She hasn’t had time to learn the steps but you’d never guess it from the graceful way that she and Louis circle each other, their arms open as if about to embrace. Françoise gazes up at Louis adoringly but his attention is elsewhere and he barely glances at her. He must be the only man over the age of fifteen at court who isn’t mad for beautiful Mademoiselle de Rochechouart - a fact that she clearly finds completely perplexing for as she gazes up into my cousin’s darkly handsome face, there’s a small frown between her lovely hazel eyes.
Her turn is over much sooner than she would like and Louis is beckoning Marie forward, an unmistakable warmth in his gaze. As Marie and Louis dance towards each other, their eyes fixed on the other’s face, I glance across at Tante Anne and see that her expression is stony with disapproval. Cardinal Mazarin leans forward again and puts his ha
nd on her shoulder, a gesture that is meant either to reassure or restrain. He glances momentarily at me, his thin eyebrows arching in irritation and I quickly look away. Even his own niece, Marie won’t do for his precious King and nor will I. Mazarin has much bigger fish to fry than either of us.
They move together and then lightly kiss, which isn’t in the script. Anne-Marie goes purple with rage and Mam’s eyes widen and go from Louis to Marie and then to me as I feel my cheeks go hot with embarrassment. Everyone at court knows that Mam and Tante Anne want to marry me to Louis and now here I am, standing aside like a spare limb as they dribble all over each other in plain view and the audience giggles and whispers to each other behind their hands.
There’s a brief distraction as Philippe and his friends dance onto the stage, dressed as shepherds and pirouetting as they go so that the long green and white ribbons they wear at their wrists and knees fly around them. As he passes me, I feel Armand de Gramont’s fingers gently stroke the small of my back. ‘You’re too good for him,’ he whispers.
We stay in our costumes afterwards - luckily it’s a warm, sultry evening and before long the gardens of Fontainebleau resound with laughter and squeals as grinning satyrs with wild hairy legs chase nymphs in gauze dresses and delicate gold sandals across the lawns and around the clipped hedges. I remain beside my mother and watch from the terrace, half afraid and half longing to join in. A masked man in a shepherd costume dances close at one point and laughingly tries to take my hand to drag me off to join in the fun but Mam shoos him away.
Later on there is a feast and as Louis and I lead the other guests in, I can hear Anne-Marie grumbling with pain and annoyance as two page boys half carry, half propel her into the dining hall, huffing and puffing as they struggle. I also hear Mam and Tante Anne whispering to each other - my aunt’s voice is raised in complaint and Mam’s is soothing. I wonder what they are saying to each other and glance quickly up at Louis but he gives no sign of having heard anything. Not that he ever would anyway - he prides himself on his inscrutability and frequently chides his mother and Philippe for their love of eavesdropping and gossip.
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