Minette

by Melanie Clegg

There’s a gasp and then a ripple of smothered laughter. Later on in the darkness of my bedchamber, I will think of several witty put downs that I ought to have retorted with but at that very moment all I can do is blush red hot with shame, swallow down the tears that threaten to blur my vision then stumble quickly away leaving them all to their mean spirited sniggering.

  As soon as I reach the privacy of my room, I think about Louise in her convent, cheerfully embracing the fate of all superfluous princesses. ‘It was either this or setting myself up on the Amsterdam stews,’ she whispered to me on the day that she left for her new life. I don’t quite know what she meant but her brother, who overheard, gave a snort of laughter.

  I sigh and take my chemise and slide it back over my head until it hides my hair then look at myself in the tarnished mirror that hangs over the mantelpiece, just as I had done as a child when I tried on the nun’s wimple at Chaillot. Could I be happy in a convent? Louise seems cheerful enough but I already know that the nun’s life is not for me. What if I have no choice though?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Colombes, December 1659

  I pull on my heavy red wool cloak and sturdiest boots and go for a walk in the deserted gardens that stretch behind our château at Colombes. I see Mam watching me from her closet window and wave gaily up at her, regretfully abandoning my original mischievous instinct to quickly fashion a snowball and hurl it at the glass she is standing behind. Mam smiles faintly as if she guesses my fell intent, lifts her hand for a second then turns away, presumably to return to her fireside and the fluttering ministrations of her ladies.

  Poor Mam, she’s still feeling the chill as sharply as ever and on most days doesn’t even get out of bed but instead spends her time propped up against a mountain of pillows, taking her meals on a tray and dozing beneath soft duck feather filled silk and velvet coverlets as her ladies in waiting take turns to read to her. She tries to persuade me to live as she does, arguing that I am so delicate that such weather cannot possibly be healthy for me, but I am having none of it. What girl of fifteen could possibly prefer to spend her days in bed when there is a landscape covered in a blanket of soft, untouched snow waiting for her outdoors?

  It’s a splendid day, frosty, sharp and bright. The snow stopped a few hours earlier and the air is heavy and still with only the distant cooing of the doves rustling in their cote to break the silence. I plunge my feet into the soft snow and smile to myself, enjoying the crisp slap of the cold against my cheeks and the way my very breath seems to be snatched away from me by the chill wind.

  I’ve been trapped inside with just my embroidery, virginals and books for company for most of the afternoon and the sun is now starting to descend to the horizon, hanging low in the winter sky so that I have to shield my eyes with my gloved hands as I walk towards it. It’ll be dusk soon, wrapping Colombes in an soft silence punctuated only by the shrill cries of foxes in the garden and the eerie shrieks of owls hunting for prey in the trees around the edge of the lawn.

  I pause beside a statue of Flora, her pretty garlands of flowers incongruous beneath their thick layer of frost and snow. I gaze up into her pale, smooth face and gently reach up to touch one of her cold hands. I remember the court ballet in the summer where I danced as Flora and Marie and Louis scandalised the court by kissing on stage. That seems like a lifetime away now. Louis is still in the south of France and has begrudgingly thrown himself into his betrothal with The Big Nosed Infanta while Marie is far away from court, trapped in a castle in the provinces.

  I’m so caught up in my thoughts of how things used to be that at first I don’t hear the shouts calling me back to the château, finally though they penetrate my thoughts and I unwillingly look back to see who is calling for me. ‘Your Highness!’ It’s Lord Jermyn, no longer as lean and fit as he used to be, puffing his way through the snow and waving his arm to get my attention.

  I sigh and go to meet him. ‘Does my mother need me?’ I ask.

  He nods and I notice that his eyes are shining with something that may very well be excitement. ‘She does indeed, your Highness.’ He offers me his arm and leads me back to the chateau. ‘She has a wonderful surprise for you.’

  I trot obediently at his side into the house and allow him to lead me to the gallery where all Mam’s small and rather ramshackle court are gathered together, drawn from their different corners of the château, where they have made themselves at home with their families and few scant possessions. I’ve known most of these people all my life and shared their joys and miseries just as they have chosen to share my family’s exile. I’ve seen their faces blank with despair after the news of my father’s execution arrived in Paris and quietly jubilant when we learned of Cromwell’s death. Now though they are all aglow with excitement and grin at me encouragingly as I go past, still clinging to Lord Jermyn’s arm.

  ‘My dear!’ Mam rushes forward and takes my hand. Her cheeks are flushed with excitement and her greying hair is escaping from its usually carefully arranged bun at the back of her head. She’s clearly dressed in some haste as her linen chemise is pulled up too high above the neckline of her gown and the pearl buttons at her elbows hang unfastened. ‘The most wonderful thing has happened!’

  ‘What is it Mam?’ I glance uncertainly around the circle of smiling faces surrounding us.

  ‘It’s Charles,’ Mam announces, unable to keep the good news to herself for a second longer. ‘He’s on his way back to Brussels from Spain and decided to break his journey here. He sent a messenger on ahead to let us know that he should be here within the half hour.’

  ‘Charles?’ My voice comes out as a squeak and I blush as everyone laughs. ‘Really? Back in France?’ I haven’t seen my eldest brother for over five years, not since the day Harry and I helped him pile his few sparse belongings on to the back of a cart and saw him off from the courtyard of the Palais Royal.

  Some of the ladies are giggling together in front of the tarnished Venetian mirrors that line one side of the gallery and discreetly pinching their cheeks and lips to make them more red and alluring. Meanwhile, the gentlemen preen themselves too in their own way, by clanking their swords, squaring their shoulders and straightening their long curled wigs. Everyone is on edge and completely agog with curiosity to see my brother, our king again. No one is more pleased though than my poor Mam and I, as we clutch each other’s hands and stare tremulously at the door at the far end of the gallery, willing it to open and my brother to appear.

  Suddenly there’s a commotion outside and we all rush to the windows to see what’s happening below. I push my way to the front and am rewarded by the sight of three capering chestnut horses being led off by Mam’s grooms and a brief shout of masculine laughter cut off in its prime by the front door being slammed shut.

  There’s heavy footsteps on the stairs and the door to the gallery bursts open without ceremony to reveal Charles with two other gentlemen grinning behind him. He stands quizzically for a moment, surveying us all with a frown between his eyes as if looking for someone before giving a shrug and sauntering into the room. I hold my breath as he comes closer, my eyes devouring every detail of his lean dark face. He is much taller and thinner than I remember and there’s a new wariness about his demeanour and tired lines around his always amused dark eyes that were not there before.

  ‘My boy, my darling boy.’ Mam rushes towards him and sinks into his arms, which come out immediately to embrace her, pulling her close and lifting her a little off the ground. ‘How I have missed you.’ Her head comes to midway up his chest and he has to lean down so that she can kiss his cheeks.

  ‘Poor Mam,’ Charles says tenderly, stroking her dishevelled hair. ‘I have been such a disappointment to you.’

  Our mother cries then, clinging to his chest. ‘Never say that,’ she says fiercely. ‘You have been many things to me, Charles Stuart, but a disappointment is not one of them.’

  He smiles and leans down to kiss her again then looks around with that frown between his
eyes again. ‘And where is my little Minette?’ he asks, scanning the faces of all the ladies. He does not look at me and I realise that he has forgotten what I look like and is looking at girls who are much older than I. Silently I slip behind two older women so that he can’t see me.

  His gaze rests for a moment on one of Mam’s pretty ladies in waiting, Mistress Frazer, a blushing redhead with fine blue eyes and soft dimples in her shell pink cheeks. ‘Is this she?’ he asks with a gallant bow, reaching out to take her hand.

  ‘Not I, Your Majesty,’ she demurs with a chuckle, pulling her hand away. ‘You will have to look again.’

  He looks oddly relieved and looks again at the gaggle of young women who have arranged themselves at the front of the crowd. They all smile sweetly, hoping to catch his eye and perhaps take his fancy. Charles frowns as he looks them over. ‘But surely…’ He looks confused, wavers between two plump girls, one blonde and the other a sparkling eyed brunette before finally taking the hand of the blonde, who laughs merrily and shakes her head reprovingly.

  ‘Is my sister even here?’ He asks in despair as everyone laughs.

  I can take no more and so step out from my hiding place. ‘I am Minette,’ I say in a small voice and a second later I am crushed to his chest. I almost weep as I breathe in his once so familiar scent of lemon and rosemary. Oh he is home again indeed.

  ‘Well, of course you are!’ he says and his voice shakes with laughter. He holds me out at arms length and looks me over, his eyes sharp with concern. ‘Isn’t Mam feeding you?’ he asks, circling my thin wrist with his fingers.

  ‘She eats like a horse,’ Mam says a little defensively. ‘I don’t know where it all goes.’

  I smile at him as his eyes crease with amusement again, the sharpness all gone. ‘It’s true,’ I say. ‘This is just the way that I am meant to be.’

  He pulls me to him and kisses my forehead. ‘Five years,’ he murmurs. ‘You were a child when I left, Minette, and now I return to find that you have blossomed into a young lady.’

  ‘We women have a habit of doing that,’ I say with a smile. ‘Of never remaining as you have left us.’

  He laughs with delight. ‘I wish that you could always remain a child,’ he says as he tucks my hand under his arm and leads me back to Mam, ‘for now I am worried that I will soon lose you to a husband.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s very likely,’ I say with a smile. ‘I fear that I will be on your hands for a long time to come.’

  He looks sad then but says nothing, probably because I am right and it hurts him to admit it.

  Charles stays with us at Colombes for almost a fortnight and we spend a great deal of our time together either talking while taking great long walks in the snow covered gardens or relaxing by one of the fires in the evening. I love to sit beside him, clumsily darning his clothes, which are all as sadly patched and worn as my own, as he talks, a glass of red wine held between his long, elegant fingers and his thin face lit up by the fire’s amber glow.

  He tells me about his travels around Europe, about the courts of Holland and Spain (he has seen The Big Nosed Infanta for himself and wasn’t at all impressed although he wasn’t allowed to get very close so could only see her from a distance as she rode past) and the battles he had fought in. He tells me about the strange foods that he has eaten, the pretty ladies that he has paid court to, the lovely houses he has stayed in and the interesting people he has met. It’s not all exciting though, there’s been times when my brother has been cold, slept on stone floors or gone hungry but he laughs them all off and says that if he ever does become king again in England then he will have a better idea than any other ruler before him of how the common man feels when he doesn’t even have a chicken for his pot and a bed to call his own.

  ‘You will be a great king one day,’ I say, clasping my arms around my knees in front of the fire, the mending forgotten on the floor.

  Charles smiles sadly and takes my hand, rubbing it between his own then kissing it. ‘Perhaps I will,’ he says. ‘I’m almost thirty though, Minette and have been in exile for almost as long as you have been alive. I’m not even sure that I have any hope left. I thought that perhaps they would come to me when Cromwell died and then again when his son was pensioned off this spring but they did not and now I do not know what else there is to wait for.’ He sighs and pats my bright ringlets, which tumble wildly about my shoulders. ‘When I was your age, I had already been Commander of our father’s West Country army for a whole year. The war forced me to become a man long before I was ready.’

  ‘Things will get better for us,’ I say, even though I really don’t believe it any more. ‘They have to.’

  He sighs and releases my hand. ‘I wish that they would,’ he says. ‘Sometimes I think that I would be happy to just live as a private gentleman with a house and wife and children of my own. No need to be a king, just happy and prosperous in my own way.’ He takes a sip of his wine and gazes deeply into the fire.

  ‘I would like that too,’ I say loyally, leaning my head against his knee.

  Charles laughs as he strokes my hair. ‘Perhaps we should run away together,’ he says with a sly look across at Mam’s pretty friend the Duchesse de Châtillon, whom he had once taken the most immense fancy to. ‘You can keep house for me and I will spend my days hunting for our supper.’

  I lean back and smile up at him. ‘I should like that,’ I say. ‘Harry could come too and little Jemmy as well.’ Not James though, who has begun to openly defy Charles in every way that he can, or Mary, who quarrelled with Charles many months beforehand and now refuses to help him or Mam either, whose initial delight in seeing her eldest son again soon gave way to the old bitterness, disappointment and recriminations of the past so that they now actively avoid each other about the house and mealtimes are taken in a heavy pall of resentful silence.

  Little Jemmy is not forgotten in the excitement of Charles’ visit though and Mam sends a message to Lord Croft, his governor to bring him to Colombes as soon as is convenient, which turns out to be a few days later when the snow begins to melt away leaving brown sludge and ice in its wake. I feel a little envious when I see how excited Charles is about being reunited with his son but force myself to suppress such ignoble feelings and instead concentrate on how pleased I am that they are to be together again.

  We’re all delighted to see Jemmy again. He’s grown since the last time he was at Colombes last summer and is smartly dressed in a black wool suit with a crisp linen shirt showing underneath. From the top of his curly dark head to his long elegant fingers and then down to his rather over-large feet, it’s obvious whose son he is and everyone smiles and politely applauds as he leaps straight down from Lord Croft’s carriage and rushes without ceremony into his father’s arms.

  ‘My boy,’ Charles murmurs, kissing Jemmy on both cheeks then flinging an arm around the boy’s shoulders. ‘How tall you are getting. You’ll soon be as big as me.’

  Then just as I am beginning to get used to Charles being back with us again, he has to return to Brussels and his own exiled court there, which by all accounts is as down at heel and gloomy as ours in France. I weep and cling to my brother desperately when the time comes for us to part and he hugs me to him, close to tears himself and unwilling to let me go.

  ‘When you first came here and did not know who I was,’ I say suddenly, casting my mind back to that happy evening when he was newly arrived and the days together stretched ahead of us still, ‘you looked relieved when you chose the wrong girl from the crowd.’

  Charles looks confused for a moment then grins, revealing a flash of strong white teeth against his sallow cheeks. ‘So I did,’ he recalls. ‘And why do you suppose that was?’

  I’m perplexed. ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Surely you wanted me to be as pretty as Mistress Frazer or Madame de Châtillon.’

  ‘I wanted you to be yourself,’ he replies, kissing my forehead and pulling me closer. ‘Mistress Frazer and Madame de Châtillon are
indeed both very pretty but you, my sweet Minette, are enchantment personified.’

  I smile against his chest then stand on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. ‘God be with you, Charles,’ I say, crying again. ‘Please come back soon for I do not think that I could bear for you to stay away so long again.’

  ‘I will come back as soon as I can,’ he promises faithfully, still holding on to my hand. ‘Now that I have found you, I have no intention of letting you go.’ He kisses me for the last time and then jumps on to his horse.

  ‘God speed, my son,’ Mam calls in a wavering voice. She’s done nothing but quarrel with him the whole time that he was here but now that he’s leaving, she’s back in her favourite rôle of grieving and adoring mother, which she finds easy enough to keep up so long as none of her sons are actually in the vicinity.

  Charles bows to her curtly from his saddle then gives me one last regretful look before he wheels his horse around in the ice cold sludge of the courtyard and once again is gone.

  Part Three

  The Sleeping Palace

  1660-1661

  Chapter Fifteen

  Colombes, May 1660

  Mam shakes me awake from my sleep, pulls me unwillingly from my toasty warm bed then wraps a thick wool shawl around my shoulders before leading me downstairs by the hand. ‘He’s only just arrived,’ she whispers excitedly, putting a finger to my lips when I drowsily open my mouth to ask what is going on. ‘He must have ridden all night from Calais to get here at such an hour.’ She holds a candle in her other hand and its light casts a waxen yellow glow up onto her pale face, its thinness emphasised by the tight grizzled plaits that swing across her shoulders.

  We go on tiptoe to her little closet, where the messenger waits, mud splattered, half dead from exhaustion but still unable to stop grinning as he bows shakily before my mother and me. ‘I hope you don’t mind me waking you at such an hour,’ he says. ‘I am Edward Progers, your son’s valet de chambre.’ He pulls himself up proudly. ‘He said that he would trust no one else with this duty.’