Or perhaps not, if I eased him now.
“Might you linger for a bit, Roger?” I asked in a honey’d whisper, standing close to him so the servants wouldn’t be able to see me slip my hand inside the front of his breeches to dandle his cods. “I’m done with the preparations here, and His Majesty and the others won’t arrive for some hours. Surely those fine gentlemen from Windsor could wait as well.”
He groaned and moved against my hand, and I knew I had him when he kissed me with the hunger of a famished man.
“You’re the very devil, Barbara,” he muttered, not bothering to hide his despair. “How could I ever refuse you, eh? How could I ever refuse?”
As the two fiddlers and the flute player finished the jig, I gave one final turn on my toes, and with my skirts held wide I sank to the ground in a deep curtsey, the king’s dogs yipping and prancing around me with excitement. The three brothers applauded and cheered, and Henry, His Highness the Duke of Gloucester, came bounding up to raise me back to my exhausted feet.
“Well done, madam, well done,” he said, giving me a heartfelt embrace to show he’d appreciated my little dance. By then the hour was well past midnight, and we’d all drunk so freely of the sillery and other wines that the boundaries between our ranks had faded quite away.
Besides, it was easy to be familiar with Henry. He was much like Charles, with dark hair and eyes, and a dashing, gallant manner born of his years at the French court with his mother. He was my age, too, within a year of twenty, and with him I felt at liberty to act with the freedom of our youth.
While the fiddlers continued to play, I now looped my arm around his waist and he did the same to me as we stumbled and laughed across the grass toward where the king and the Duke of York still sat. In the guise of supporting me, I felt Henry’s hand slide purposely lower than it should across my rump, but all I did was laugh, and shove him gently away. As pleasing as Henry was to me, I knew my place was with his older brother, and as lightly as I could, I perched upon the king’s waiting knee.
“Oh, come now, Barbara, don’t be shy with me,” Charles said, laughing himself as he pulled me against him. I yelped with surprise, but quickly settled against his chest, a place that gave me special delight. Sitting there, I felt small and protected, like a tiny girl upon her father’s lap, a memory I sadly could never claim for myself. But I also liked the womanly intimacy of such a posture, too, sprawled across my lover’s long, well-muscled legs and knowing his cock lay beneath me. He nuzzled against the side of my throat, his mustache bristling against my skin, and I turned my face to kiss him even as he slipped his hand down into my bodice to fill his palm with my breast.
“You’ve an audience, Charles,” James said, watching us critically over his goblet. When we looked up, he raised the wine toward the next house, as if in a silent salute. I could just make out the shadowy form of my neighbor, his long face pressed to the window glass to gawk at us.
“That’s my own private audience,” I said with a shrug. “My neighbor Admiral Lord Sandwich and likely his secretary Mr. Pepys beside him, pretending that they’re toiling late upon the business of His Majesty’s navy. It doesn’t signify to me. Let them look their fill, if it pleases them so mightily.”
Henry climbed up onto a bench the better to peer back, cleverly cocking his hand over his eyes like a foretopman on one of the admiral’s ships. “Aren’t you afraid they’ll tattle to your husband?”
“No,” I said, and emboldened by the sillery, I wasn’t. “My husband already knows I’m entertaining you here this night.”
“Hah,” James said scornfully, reaching for the bottle on the grass beside him to refill his goblet. “That’s a more forgiving husband than I’d ever be.”
Charles laughed softly. “Mark those words, Jamie, for you’ll be testing their truth as a bridegroom soon enough.”
“You’re to marry?” I asked, sitting upright with disbelief. “Not that fat cow Anne Hyde, I hope.”
“Have you heard the latest verse about her, Barbara, likening her arse to the footman’s box on a coach?” Gleefully Henry hopped down from the bench, ready to make his recitation before us. “ ‘With Chanc’lor’s belly, and so large a rump / That there, not behind the coach, her pages jump.’ Ah, James, what a lovely bride she’ll make, waddling at your side.”
I clapped my hands in wicked appreciation both of his speech and the verse itself. I’d met Anne Hyde in passing and had dismissed her as being as plain, as jowly, and as irritating as her father, and completely unworthy of my acquaintance.
“Enough of your rubbish, Henry!” James barked sourly, leaning out to strike his younger brother before Henry danced back out of reach. “No one said I was to wed her.”
“I said it,” Charles said mildly. “You see, Barbara, it appears my brother here was so cunt-struck with Mistress Anne that he made a secret contract vowing to wed her. Now that the lady’s carrying his child for all the world to see, I say he must honor the contract, and her. There’s some who even say you wed her already in Brussels.”
Furiously James shook his head, his long blond curls tossing against his shoulders. “That’s all Hyde’s doing.”
“No, it’s not,” Charles said, and I could hear the steel beneath his words. “Sir Edward’s so shocked and shamed he’s telling anyone who’ll listen that his daughter belongs in a dungeon at the Tower for treason, with an Act of Parliament passed to order her beheaded. He swears he’ll be the one who’ll propose it, too, he’s that furious with her.”
I tried very hard not to laugh at such a droll scandal, even as James thrashed about in agony and denial.
“What of my honor, Charles?” James sputtered. “What of my name and future? It’s not as if you’ve married any of the wenches you’ve gotten with your bastards.”
“I never made promises to them that I’d no intention of keeping,” Charles said. “This sorry affair is a mistake of your own making, James, and now you must make it right. Soon, too. I hear Anne’s expected to drop your brat in the straw any day now.”
“Poor, poor James,” Henry taunted. “If only you’d waited to pick a beautiful princess for yourself.”
Now Charles laughed, too. “Don’t be so quick, Henry. Wait until you see the highborn ladies paraded before you. You’ll discover soon enough that ‘beautiful’ and ‘princess’ are words seldom used together.”
“Pity you can’t find a crown for Barbara,” Henry said. “She’d make as beautiful a queen as any.”
I smiled, for he’d meant it as only a compliment, yet I couldn’t entirely swallow my own bitterness at the hard unfairness of Fate. I would have made a splendid queen, especially Charles’s queen, but even I knew better than to dream so high a dream as that.
“You forget, sir, that I cannot be a queen since I’m already a wife,” I said as lightly as I could. “Though queens can have whatever they please, even they aren’t permitted a harem full of husbands.”
“Though it would be amusing to see the look on the archbishop’s face if I proposed it,” Charles said. “Ah, well. I suppose I’ll have to settle on one princess soon enough.”
I twisted around on his lap to face him. “Why must you marry, too?”
“Because I’m a king, my dear,” he said ruefully. “I’m not so young that I can wait. Kings need heirs to secure their successions.”
I swept my hand toward his brothers. “What of these fine fellows? Aren’t they your heirs?”
“Can you imagine the outcry if I left England in the care of James?” he asked, a teasing question, but one that masked a serious doubt. Not only was James stubborn, dull, and overbearing—there’d been plenty of English kings with such liabilities—but he also made little effort to disguise his entanglement in the Romish church, and no good Anglican Englishman would tolerate that. “I take great comfort in having James behind me. With him waiting there, no Parliament will dare cut off my head like our father’s.”
Horrified, I swatted his chest. “Don’t
even make jests like that.”
“She’s right, Charles,” Henry said, his good humor abruptly turned somber and serious. “Recall what I swore to Father on the morning he was murdered, that I’d not let them make me king if it meant they cut the heads from my brothers to do it.”
“No one would hold you to such an oath, Henry,” Charles said lightly. “You were only eight when you made it.”
“Old enough to understand,” Henry said grimly. “Old enough to understand it all.”
No one said anything to that, and from respect, even the fiddlers stopped their songs. Henry had been the one brother of the three left in England to say farewell to their father on that fateful January morning, the only one shown the headless corpse by his captors, as proof of the wrongness of kings. Our merriment gone, only the mournful song of the nightingales in the trees overhead filled the silence.
“Well, now, that’s a pretty way I’ve ended our party for the night,” Charles said at last. He kissed me again and set me on my feet before him. “Will you stay here, madam, or come with us to Whitehall?”
It seemed suddenly impossible to remain here by myself, or worse, for him to be alone, either.
“I’ll come with you,” I said, slipping my hand tightly into his. “With you, my dearest sir.”
Later that same month, I lay in my bed in the King Street house, trying to guess the hour of the day without opening my eyes. I’d not stayed out particularly late the night before, but I’d drunk more than was wise. Now my head ached abominably and my stomach was so uneasy that I’d not tried to launch so much as tea or toasted biscuits onto its rocky waves.
My darling Wilson had seen my plight, and without comment had covered my eyes with a chilled cloth soaked in lavender water, left the curtains drawn against the too-bright sun—which, in my situation, most any sun would have been—and thoughtfully set the chamber pot on a chair beside the bed. I lay as still as I could and marveled at how much work it could be not to move.
My only solace came from the knowledge that time would bring relief to the sorrowful results of my self-indulgence, and that by the time the case clock in Roger’s study sounded twelve times for noon I was sure to feel better. I’d gained much experience in such matters this merry summer. Indeed, it seemed that ever since Charles had returned I’d suffered through every morning like this—and how glad I was that Roger went to his offices so early, and never saw me thus, to scold me for it.
I could hear wagons and carriages in the street, enough that it must be broad day. I’d have to listen for the clock’s chime and count the hours to be sure, but if I could—
“Mistress Palmer?” The hinges to the door of my bedchamber squeaked open.
Without moving more than a flinch at the terrible racket of the hinges or raising the cloth from my eyes, I knew it was Wilson.
“What is it?” I asked, my voice hoarse and tremulous. “Must you disturb me now when I feel so ill?”
“Forgive me, madam, but I have only your interest at heart,” Wilson whispered, coming closer to my bed. “You recall I told you of a wise woman who might bring you comfort?”
“No, I do not,” I said peevishly. “I can’t be expected to remember every nattering thing you speak to me, Wilson.”
“As you wish, madam,” Wilson murmured, but I noted, too, that she didn’t leave me. “I’ve brought the woman to you here. Her name is Mistress Nan Quinn.”
“Good day, Mistress Palmer,” said a new voice I took to be this other creature, introduced into my presence without my permission. “If you please, madam, to answer a few questions, so I might—”
“You might not!” I tore the cloth from my eyes, squinting at the pair of them. This Nan Quinn looked to be much like Wilson herself, another square, squat personage past her first youth, who spoke as if the world would wish to hear her. “Wilson, why must you vex me like this? Asking me questions, bringing strangers to my very bedchamber! Can’t you see how poorly I am, how being forced to address you now causes me infinite suffering?”
“But that’s why I’ve come, madam,” the other woman said, her voice low and soothing. “I can help you, madam, and answer your suffering.”
“My suffering is my own doing,” I said. “I know the cause is wine, and I know there’s no cure beyond what I do.”
“But there may indeed be ways to ease your pains and aches, madam,” the woman countered. “I know many such cures.”
“How?” I demanded skeptically. “You’re neither surgeon nor physician or apothecary. Are you a witch, then, to make such promises?”
“No witch, madam, no,” she said in that same soothing voice. “Only a friend who desires to help. Would your maid have trusted me so far if I couldn’t do as I claim?”
That was logic enough, for one of the reasons I so trusted Wilson was that she shared my dislike of fools. Besides, I felt too sick to quarrel.
“Very well, then,” I said, letting my head drop back on my pillow. “I shall answer your questions, if you’ll bring me relief.”
“Thank you, madam,” Mistress Quinn said, respectful enough. “You claim your head aches and spins as if from strong drink?”
“It does, because strong drink was in fact the cause of it,” I said, hoping her other questions would prove less obvious. “Drinking is commonplace in Whitehall.”
“Yes, madam.” She presumed to take my hand in hers, which I permitted, her fingers being cool and gentle. “Yet this distress eases as the day progresses?”
“Yes, yes,” I said. “Surely Wilson’s told you that much.”
“She has, yes,” Mistress Quinn said. “She’s also told me that you’ve pain in your breasts when she tries to lace your stays.”
I glared at Wilson for such a revelation, for I knew the cause of this condition, too. The king admired my breasts enormously, proclaiming them the most perfect he’d ever seen, or held. Yet on occasion during our amorous play, he would caress and handle them with such enthusiasm that the tender flesh would ache afterward. I didn’t think to halt him, for at the time I found his forcefulness only served to heighten my own delight. But when Wilson would try to lace me too tightly—ah, then I’d yelp and squirm.
“Forgive me, madam, but such questions do have their purpose,” she continued. “Do you find that your desire for your husband has recently increased?”
Behind her Wilson coughed. Too pointedly for her station, or my tastes, to be sure, and I glared at her anew.
Indeed, my ardor had increased, but because I’d finally a lover whose appetites matched my own. My husband had nothing to do with it.
“Very well, madam, I shall take the happy glow of your cheeks for a yes.” The woman smiled kindly, and patted my hand with such understanding and encouragement as to make me wary.
“I’ve one final question for you, madam,” she continued, “the last key to your little mystery. Do you recall the date of your last courses?”
My little mystery, indeed. As soon as she asked, I realized the sorry truth for myself, or rather, let myself realize what I’d denied for so long. In the excitement of these last months, I’d lost track of my flowers, and I’d not noticed that they’d not come. Since when, since when: not since the days before the king’s return to London, on the twenty-ninth of May.
I was ill in the mornings, yet voracious the rest of the day and night. My breasts were tender, and swollen, too, though I’d not admitted it to myself. If Wilson were having difficulty with my stays, then it was because my waist was already beginning to thicken, and not from the rich food I consumed at the palace feasts, either.
My eyes filled with hot tears of emotion and dismay. My joyful summer had come at a costly price. I didn’t need a midwife—for that, surely, must be this Nan Quinn’s trade—to tell me that I was seven weeks gone with the king’s bastard.
“What’s this, Barbara?” Roger pushed the door open, looking with concern at Wilson, and Nan Quinn, and me lying in bed with tears on my cheeks. “I come home for a pa
per I’d forgotten in my study and find you abed. What has happened? Are you unwell?”
“Not at all, Roger.” I didn’t doubt for an instant what I’d do next. I’d no real choice. I sniffed back my tears and forced myself to smile as I held my hand out to him. “Only the happiest news. You are at last to be a father.”
Chapter Ten
WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON
August 1 6 6 0
I begged Roger to keep my pregnancy a secret, pleading that it was such early days that my condition might still prove false or premature. Even Mistress Quinn urged this reticence to him. There was no absolute certainty until I could feel the child quicken in my womb, some months from now.
In reality, I knew that above all things Charles must hear such news from me and no one else. The court and London in general was so ripe for gossip and scandal of any sort that if Roger were unable to control his burgeoning male pride, and tell but one of his colleagues or friends, then the tale would spread like fire in driest tinder, with no way to stop its blistering progress.
Yet how was I to tell the king? I knew what I meant to him: that I was so young as to make him feel younger, yet old enough not to be missish. I was a convenient amusement, a beautiful, witty ornament, an amorous adventurer with him in that great bed of his. Because I was another man’s wife, I was his to enjoy without any responsibility.
In short, I was a Villiers, beautiful and fashioned for royal pleasure, to his charming, irresponsible Stuart.
Where would I be without my beauty? How could I amuse him if I were as swollen and heavy as Anne Hyde? What could I offer him like that, when the court was filled with other willing ladies without big bellies?
Worst of all, I’d played my hand every bit as badly as had Lucy Walters, no matter how much I’d pitied or condescended toward her memory. For the sake of discretion, I’d agreed with him to keep our connection between us, and thus lost whatever power and influence I might have gained. I’d become so enamored of the man that I’d let the king slip free.
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