I glance irritably at the clock on Mam’s red marble mantelpiece. It’s five in the morning. I could cheerfully throttle him but manage to restrain myself. ‘I don’t mind at all, Mr Progers,’ Mam says with a gracious smile as I glower. Even in her nightdress and half asleep with bare feet and her grizzled hair hanging in loose plaits down her back, she is every inch the Queen.
‘His Majesty ordered me to come right away,’ Mr Progers says with a smile. There’s a long pause before he adds: ‘His Majesty, King Charles.’
Mam clasps her hands in front of her bosom and I take hold of her elbow, suddenly afraid that either she will faint or I will. I’m wide awake now, staring at the man to will him on.
‘Did all go according to plan then?’ Mam whispers.
He smiles and gives her another a little bow. ‘It did, Your Majesty,’ he says. ‘His Majesty, along with his brothers, the Princes James and Henry, was received into England with great and universal acclaim.’
‘My sons,’ Mam whispers, turning quite pink with pleasure. ‘My boy.’ Finally Charles has really managed to make her proud. What a pity that he isn’t here to see it.
I look stupidly from my mother to Mr Progers. ‘What has happened?’ I ask at last. ‘Why are my brothers in England?’
Mam smiles and takes my hands. Her thin fingers are chilly and dry. ‘I did not dare tell you before now, in case it all went awry, but Charles sent word to me last week that he was involved in secret negotiations with an Admiral Monck, who was seeking to place him back upon the throne.’
I stare at Mam in astonishment. ‘Does the Admiral have the backing of Parliament for his endeavours?’ I can hardly believe my ears. After all these years of waiting and longing - has it all finally come to an end?
Mam nods excitedly and I see that she is weeping. I put my hand up tentatively to my cheeks but they are completely dry. Perhaps I do not quite believe it yet. ‘Oh, Minette,’ my mother says, clutching my hands to her bosom. ‘They sent a ship to fetch him. They would not have done so if they did not want him back.’
I look at Edward Progers, who is watching us with a smile. ‘Is it true, Monsieur?’ I ask. ‘Did they send for my brothers? Do you swear that they are in no danger?’ Last time Charles went to England, it all ended in disaster with him having to disguise himself as a servant and hide in trees and barns before he could arrange a passage to France and safety.
He laughs. ‘I swear to you on my honour that your brothers are in no danger,’ he says gently. ‘I witnessed their arrival with my own eyes and can testify that never before have I seen such great crowds, such deafening cheers and such heartfelt displays of loyalty.’ He lowers his voice. ‘Parliament even changed the name of the war ship sent to collect him from the Naseby to the Royal Charles.’ Naseby being one of the most devastating defeats of my father’s army and the one that turned the tide of the war against us.
It is enough to make me weep. My mother and I sink to our knees on the floor and put our hands together in prayer. ‘Oh Lord,’ Mam says as Mr Progers, looking a little embarrassed also kneels, wincing a little as he does so, ‘this is your doing and it is marvellous in our eyes.’
‘Amen,’ I murmur, crossing myself fervently. The sun is just beginning to rise and the little red silk walled closet glows in the soft light. Outside I can hear our stable boys shouting greetings to each other in the courtyard while upstairs the maids are beginning to clatter about in their wooden soled shoes, preparing to light fires, shake open curtains and set out our clothes for the morning. Life continues as it always has done and always will but for we three, kneeling together in Mam’s closet, it will never be the same again.
‘I almost forgot…’ Mr Progers produces letters from inside his leather doublet - there’s one for Mam and another for me.
I lift the precious envelope to my face, inhaling Charles’ scent of rosemary and lemon. There’s something else there too now. Musk? Amber? I smile, imagining my brother enjoying a spending spree with his new found wealth, buying feathered hats, silk breeches and embroidered velvet coats before dousing himself with the finest perfumes.
‘I was so tormented with business at the Hague, that I could not write to you before my departure, but I left orders with my sister to send you a small present from me, which I hope you will soon receive. I arrived yesterday at Dover where I found Monk with a great number of nobility, who almost overwhelmed me with kindness and joy for my return. My head is so dreadfully stunned with the acclamation of the people, and the vast amount of business, that I know not whether I am writing sense or nonsense. Therefore pardon me if I say no more than that I am entirely yours…’
I smile to myself and fold the letter against my breast, thrilled beyond measure that even in the midst of his triumph, Charles had thought of me and also amused at his patent horror at all the ‘business’ that now assailed him. What a contrast to all those long years spent with not enough to do. Poor Charles.
After a hasty breakfast, we pile into Mam’s coach and go first to Chaillot to hear the Te Deum sung by the nuns, whose faces shine with honest delight when they are told our news, and then on we go to Paris, there to triumphantly enter the Palais Royal as our people gather about the door to welcome us with shouts and cheers of joy as they carpet the ground beneath our feet with armfuls of sweet smelling pink and white blossom.
The news spreads quickly through the corridors, attics and chambers of the Palais Royal and then across the street to the Louvre and then out into the city where the whisper travels from house to house that the poor King of England is a pauper no longer and that his mother and sister are likewise restored in honour and wealth.
I’m giddy with joy as my faithful Madame de Bordes dresses me in my room, turning me this way and that as she laces my very best pink silk dress and then ties matching ribbons in my hastily ringleted hair. I grin at myself in my mirror, imagining the delight of my sister and brothers, the chagrin of Cardinal Mazarin and downright fury of Anne-Marie. Perhaps it is not altogether nice of me to dwell upon the disappointments of others but I am only human after all and after a lifetime of snubs, insults and mortifications it feels good to finally gain the upper hand.
‘You look like a princess,’ the dresser says to me and I laugh. Finally.
All afternoon long, I sit beside Mam and smile and nod graciously as she receives the compliments of our friends in exile, these people who have been through so much with us with little hope of ever seeing their homes again and who now will be able to return and resume the lives that war and rebellion so brutally interrupted.
Poor little Mistress Stewart, flanked by her pretty daughters, falls to her knees and clutches Mam’s hand to her tear streaked face. She’s so moved that she can barely speak and so Frances, the younger girl, gives a delicate little cough and speaks for her. ‘We’re all so happy to be going home at last,’ she says with a smile.
Home. Mam skirts delicately around my questions about when we will be returning to England as well. ‘After all, there’s no reason for us to remain in France, is there?’ I whisper to her in the pause between morning callers.
‘That remains to be seen,’ Mam hisses back before pinning her smile back on to her face and warmly greeting our next visitors, a scrawny middle aged couple in their patched up and sadly outmoded best silk clothes, both openly weeping with happiness as they approach us. ‘Ah, my Lord and my Lady too, what a pleasure it is to see you on such a happy day as this.’
After a while the news spreads to the last lingering denizens of my cousin’s court, left behind to kick their heels in Paris while everyone else is away sunning themselves in the south of France. Many have departed to their usually neglected country estates while Louis is away but enough remain in the capital for the courtyard of the Palais Royal to become rammed with carriages and sedan chairs when their noble owners hasten to pay their respects to Mam and myself.
If the congratulations of our faithful friends are not wonderful enough, the fawning felicita
tions of Louis’ pampered courtiers are like a balm to our wounded souls, washing away the snubs, barbed remarks and nasty little sniggers that have been our lot for the last dozen years. Mam and I can’t stop grinning as we accept their grovelling praise and simpering smiles. I only wish that Charles himself could be here to see it as I know that he would appreciate it most of all.
‘If only Charles were here,’ Mam whispers to me delightedly, echoing my thoughts. ‘How he would laugh to see them all bow and scrape.’
The best visit of all comes from Jemmy, let out of school for the day to join in our celebrations. He runs straight up to Mam and launches himself into her arms. ‘Is it true, grandmère?’ he asks, scampering all over Mam’s black taffeta lap, his huge dark eyes shining with excitement. ‘Is Papa back in England again?’
Mam laughs and kisses the boy soundly on both plump cheeks. ‘It is true, darling heart.’
He wriggles in her arms. ‘And are we all going to go and live with him now?’
Again that shadowy look passes across my mother’s pale, tired face. ‘Well, that all depends, Jemmy,’ she says cautiously with a sidelong look at me.
‘Depends on what?’ He’s incorrigible, Jemmy. ‘Doesn’t he want us there?’
Mam looks astounded. ‘Of course he wants us there,’ she says reprovingly, ‘but perhaps we have settled into our own lives here. Perhaps there are people who will miss us if we leave.’ Again that sneaky look at me. What is she up to?
After our midday meal, I escape to the gardens and go for a long walk along all of the avenues, which are softly shaded with lime trees and lined with beautiful flower beds tended with loving care by Louis’ gardeners who come over from the Louvre to help out. It’s a fine early summer day and the air is sweet with the scent of roses and the honeysuckle that climbs up the palace walls beneath my bedroom window.
I take off my wide brimmed straw hat and lift my face up towards the sun. Mam hates it when I do this; I have the fine pale skin that most redheads share and she’s forever in a panic that I will add to the freckles that I have somehow acquired in a light sprinkle over my nose over the years. ‘It’s not ladylike to have freckles,’ she keeps telling me. ‘Any more and you will look like a farm girl.’
I don’t care. Mam likes nothing better than being stuck indoors with her tapestry, books and ladies in waiting for company but I prefer to be outdoors with the cerulean blue sky over my head and the soft, sweet smelling grass beneath my feet. Because I was delicate as a child, Mam would like to cosset me and keep me inside with her - she does either does not realise or determinedly ignores the fact that the fresh air makes me even stronger and that if I ever had to live as she does then I would waste away from boredom.
I cock my head to the side and listen to the sounds that float over the garden wall from the busy Rue Saint-Honoré beyond. I can hear the constant rumbling of cart and carriage wheels against the road surface, the shrill cries of the street girls hawking pies, flowers, bread and cold drinks and the muted yapping and snarling of little dogs as they are about by their owners and show their shiny white teeth to the cats who lurk and hiss in the doorway of every shop. These are the sounds of Paris, of home. Will London sound the same?
When I unwillingly go back indoors, there is another letter waiting for me, this time from Philippe who, much to my surprise, has turned out to be a most diligent correspondent. In fact, he writes more frequently than all of my three brothers put together - which has not escaped Mam’s notice either.
‘Another letter from Philippe, my dear?’ she asks with a raised eyebrow and that infuriating secretive smile as I scurry off to my room with his latest missive.
‘There’s nothing to smirk about,’ I grumble at her gracelessly. ‘We’re just friends.’ I can feel myself blushing though. Damn this pale skin of mine, when will it cease to betray me?
Mam would be horrified if she ever saw the sort of thing that Philippe writes to me. Luckily, she has never once asked to actually read any of his letters, content instead to hear my much edited versions of the scurrilous gossip and calumny that he pours without conscience or care onto those pristine sheets of paper. She’d be even more distressed if she knew just how amusing I find it all.
I lock my bedroom door carefully behind me and settle myself comfortably on my bed with a pile of sweet cinnamon biscuits stolen from the dining table before finally opening his letter.
‘My most beautiful cousin,
Imagine Anne-Marie’s rage should she hear me address you as such? She has been an unholy nightmare these last few days, always carping and complaining and pretending to faint then threatening to leave. I have quite had enough of her but cannot say so, as you may imagine, for she is still in mourning for her father, our scapegrace uncle. Louis, as you can imagine, finds it all highly amusing but then he would for he, unlike poor moi, is quite safe now from her clammy clutches. Have you ever had occasion to hold her hand, by the way? It’s really quite alarming how sweaty her palms are and her fingers are as big as sausages. I have nightmares at night about her mauling me like a pile of bread dough.
The reason for Anne-Marie’s pique is a certain gentleman of the bedchamber that she has developed a passion for but who prefers a little something rather less gamey amongst my mother’s maids of honour even though the death of Uncle Gaston has, unbelievably, left our Anne-Marie even more obscenely rich than ever. It’s quite the pickle, as you can imagine. Still, so long as all the sighing and weeping keeps her away from my firm young flesh, I am quite content to let her bend my ear with it all.
We had another sneaky look at Louis’ Infanta yesterday, just long enough to see that her hair is so blonde that it looks dyed, her nose isn’t so much big as bulbous and she has a jaw so big that I wonder if she could possibly dislocate the whole thing and swallow my brother whole. She is as stupid as a plate of mince as well. Louis pretends not to care but I think he must cry himself to sleep at night with the sheer horror of it all. Imagine having to settle for a dough faced little thing like that when one could have had any one of the Mazarinettes to warm one’s bed.
De Guiche was just here. I told him that I am far too busy writing to you to think of anything else and he pulled the most terrible face. He sends his best regards and asked me to remind you to brush your hair more often and practise your dancing, which he says had become rather sloppy before we went away. What a harsh task master he is. You have my permission to ignore him. I always do.
How is Paris without us? It is hard to believe that we have been away for almost a whole year, waiting for our infernal uncle to just hand over his dim witted daughter and let Louis do his business and impregnate her. I shall never again think of Spain without shuddering. The sun here is intolerable. I think I am getting a freckle. Of course, that won’t bother you but then they suit you so well - in fact I would go so far as to say that they enhance your beauty rather than diminish it…’
I sigh and smile. Dear Philippe. I know that Mam is full of all sorts of hopes when it comes to my cousin and me but I can hardly imagine such a thing myself and I suspect that if Philippe does, it is only because he sees me as his deliverance from Anne-Marie and her clammy sausage fingers.
My present from Charles arrives a few days later, a beautiful side saddle covered in finely embroidered leaf green velvet and decorated with gold lace and rich tassels. I squeal with delight when it is presented to me as it is quite the finest new thing I have ever owned. For Mam there is a necklet of pearls very nearly as fine as the one we last saw decorating Marie Mancini’s sallow throat. She wipes away a tear when she opens the pale blue watered silk box that they come in. ‘That boy,’ she murmurs, turning to look at the portrait of my brother as a pert, dark eyed toddler in a lace edged frock that hangs in her closet. ‘My sweet Charles.’
It’s the beginning of a torrent of gifts and English gold that begins to flood across the Channel to Paris from my generous brother who received a gift of £30,000 from the contrite and suitably chastened
Parliament upon his arrival at Dover, transforming our lives and those of everyone around us. He writes to ask me to commission several velvet and silk suits from his favourite Parisian tailor, the rather snobbish Monsieur Sourceau and entrusts me with the selection of the matching ribbons and trimmings and while I am at it, I am to go to the best dressmaker in Paris and order some new silk dresses for myself in the bright spring like colours that he loves to see me in. ‘There has been too much mourning, too much black,’ he writes to me. ‘I should like to surround myself with all the colours of the rainbow from now on.’
Chapter Sixteen
Fontainebleau, July 1660
It’s a glorious day and the great château basks like a contented cat in the sunlight. I’ve always been very fond of Fontainebleau, preferring its ornate façade, turreted roofs and soft, mellow stone to the boring orderliness of the Louvre. To me it is redolent of romantic interludes, dramatic events and whispered intrigue - when I come here I feel as though I am dancing alongside my ancestors, that if I look up quickly enough I will see them gazing down at me from behind the richly swagged and trimmed brocade curtains hanging at the tall windows or vanishing in a whisper of satin and lace through an open doorway.
Mam has no patience with such fancies. ‘Don’t let your Tante Anne hear you say such things,’ she says with a cross look. ‘She has a nervous disposition and can’t abide ghost stories.’
‘I’m not talking about ghosts,’ I huff, but she isn’t listening. We’re hurrying up the elegant horseshoe steps that lead to the main entrance, which is flanked by two rows of handsome, unsmiling footmen, all smartly dressed in red and silver livery, one of whom silently peels himself away and runs ahead of us to announce our arrival to the King.
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