Royal Harlot

by Susan Holloway Scott

Now even the lowest clerks and apprentices who paid their two shillings to sit on the board benches in the pit recognized me by name, and I’d become better known than any of the high ladies at the court, or the most popular actresses on the stage. In turn Charles fair glowed with pride to have me so noticed, and to know that I was his.

  On such a night, soon before the coronation, I’d gone with the king to see a new play by Beaumont and Fletcher called The Humorous Lieutenant. The king’s entrance to the royal box was greeted with the usual cheers and huzzahs, and, alas, the usual lower salutes as well.

  “ ’Ere, Yer Majesty, ’ere!” The girl’s flushed face was as round as the oranges in the willow basket on her hip as she grinned up at us from the theatre’s pit. Every such chit in the place would come parade below the royal box, flaunting their overripe breasts like more oranges for sale in the hope that Charles would notice them—oh, yes, and the girl herself, too. “Fine, sweet oranges, oh, Yer Majesty!”

  Charles could never resist such pleas, and leaned over the rail. “How sweet, lass?”

  “Taste f ’ yerself, Yer Majesty!” The girl reached into her basket to choose the most luscious fruit, and gaily tossed it up toward the box.

  The king reached out to catch it, but beside him I was the quicker, snatching the fruit like a golden ball from the air.

  “The game’s faster than that, sir,” I said as I leaned back once again in my chair and began to peel my prize, digging my thumb hard into the thick skin to make the juice spurt free. “I wonder you didn’t realize it, considering how quick you are in most other matters.”

  He laughed, his brother the Duke of York laughed on his other side, and the others in the surrounding boxes and in the pit below laughed, too, the way it always was with the king.

  “It’s only an orange, Barbara,” he said, “not the Apple of Discord.”

  “It’s mine now,” I said, breaking free the fruit’s first segment, “and that’s what matters most to me. Here, sir, open.”

  Obediently he parted his lips, and I slid the crescent-shaped segment into his mouth, brushing my fingers lightly over his lips and mustache for good measure. That, I knew, would put the yearning orange-girl from his thoughts for good. For in the carriage from Whitehall to the theatre, I’d brought him to the crest of delirious pleasure with my mouth before he’d swept up my skirts and pulled me astride his glowing cock, and carried us both to rarest heights of satisfaction. I knew our mingled scents still clung to my fingers from where I’d dipped between our joined selves, and purposefully I mixed that musky scent with the juice of the orange beneath his nose.

  He smiled and caught my wrist to hold my hand there while he ate the fruit.

  “Which goddess of the three would you be, I wonder?” he asked, his gaze intent upon me. “Hera, Athena, or Aphrodite?”

  I grinned slyly and eased my hand free of his grasp so I might slide a segment into my own mouth, lasciviously curling my tongue about it.

  “The only proper judgment for King Paris should be that I am the sum of all three,” I said. “That is, the proper judgment if he wishes to ride home again.”

  That made him laugh again, even as the overture’s trumpets sounded to begin the play. As the audience’s attention turned away from us and toward the stage, he leaned across and kissed me, his mustache sweet with the juice of the orange.

  “You can’t know how I missed you, Barbara,” he said in a rough whisper.

  “But I do know, sir,” I said softly, “because I missed you the same.”

  “All the goddesses combined in one, and more besides,” he said. “How could I ever wish to let you part from me again?”

  The parting would come soon enough, and both the king and I and every other Englishman knew it, too. Yet when the first hint of it came, I was still unprepared for the force with which it would strike me.

  It came later that summer, after the coronation, after Charles had been formally crowned and declared master of Britain. I had spent a pleasant day and evening with Charles and several others sailing on the river in the handsome yacht that the Dutch East India Company had given to him in honor of his coronation. We’d wearily climbed the river steps near Whitehall, and after a late supper repaired to Charles’s rooms.

  He’d stopped to disrobe in his closet while I waited in his bedchamber. My skirts and stockings stank abominably from having been splashed and sprayed by the river’s waters, and I was quick to shed them and the rest of my clothes, leaving them in a sodden pile for Charles’s dogs to investigate with their usual eagerness before the servants took them away. I wrapped myself in a coverlet from the bed and stood before the fire, unpinning my hair and tossing it between my fingers to take the damp from it as well. I turned my back to the fireplace, shaking my hair over my shoulders, and for the first time saw the portrait, propped on a table against the wall.

  It was a small painting, dark and poorly limned and framed clumsily in black, in the oppressive Iberian manner. The subject was a woman with heavy, dark features, and fearful eyes ringed with shadows. It was impossible to guess at her body, for she was encased in a black gown so rigid as to be hammered from iron and extending far over her hips in an old-fashioned farthingale. These skirts were so wide that her flat-palmed hands hung over the front, dangling like a scarecrow’s. A wide swath of lace wrapped over her shoulders and breasts like a bandage, and her hair was forced into a style as unyielding as her dress, with stiffened black curls at her cheeks and another clump of hair flattened strangely over her forehead.

  It was monstrous attire, on a plain, pinched, swarthy woman. Yet even without a plaque or label, I knew who she was: the Portuguese infanta Catherine of Braganza, soon to be Charles’s bride.

  Clutching the coverlet around me, I stared down at the small, ugly portrait. I knew the reasons for such a union, and the complicated terms of the marriage settlement that made it so desired by both countries. They were hardly secret, not with Sir Edward—now raised to Lord Chancellor Clarendon—boasting to all about how much he’d achieved by arranging the match. I knew that the union would give Portugal a strong ally against Spain and secure the Braganza throne. I knew it would deliver both Tangiers and Bombay into English hands as new possessions of the crown, as well as trading rights throughout the Mediterranean.

  I knew the other reasons, too, the ones based less on politics and diplomacy. I knew Charles needed a wife to get his heirs, just as I knew the infanta had been reserved for him since they’d both been children. And perhaps most important of all, I knew the Portuguese were willing to send nearly half a million pounds to England, hard money that the country desperately needed.

  I knew all of that, yes. But when I looked at that portrait, my only thought was how this woman would take my place in the king’s bed. She would be the one he’d make cry with pleasure now, and the one who’d be revered at his side. She’d take his seed and bear his sons, this short, dark, ugly virgin who was three years older than I.

  “Ah,” Charles said, coming to stand behind me, his gold brocade dressing gown fluttering around us both. “Were you admiring my bride?”

  I swung around to face him. In my fury, I raised my hand to strike him, but he caught my wrist to stop me, holding my hand impotently over my head.

  “Mind your temper, Barbara,” he warned mildly. “Smite the King of England and you go straight to the Tower.”

  I tore my hand free of his grasp and stepped backward, rubbing my wrist where his fingers had gripped me. “She is an ugly Iberian dwarf. I don’t know how you can bear to have her hideous picture in your chamber.”

  “I decided I should grow accustomed to her visage now, before the lady herself arrives early next year.” He sighed wearily. “I am sorry, my dear, but you know I have no choice in this marriage. Kings are not like other men.”

  “No, they are not,” I said furiously. “Kings are infinitely more cruel.”

  “What is cruel is that I must wed her at all.” He sighed again, looking at the p
ortrait. “Clarendon swears she’s a sweet-tempered nature.”

  “Oh, yes, which is to say that I have not.” I rushed to the picture and snapped the frame facedown on the table. “There. What a considerable improvement.”

  He folded his arms over his chest, the deep-cuffed sleeves of the dressing gown giving him wings like an avenging angel. “Don’t test me in this, Barbara, because you will not win.”

  “How can you say that, sir, when I have lost already?” I burst into tears, my hands twisting miserably in the coverlet. “She—she will have you, and I—I shall be left with nothing.”

  “Hush, hush, it’s not like that.” He drew me into his arms, into the enveloping folds of gold-colored silk. “The country expects me to take a wife, and I must obey.”

  I rested my cheek familiarly against his shoulder, letting my bitter tears fall where they might. “What if the country likewise expects you to honor your vows to her?”

  “The country expects me to sire an heir or two. That’s the extent of the country’s expectations.”

  “You don’t know that, sir,” I said unhappily. “The country might very well expect you to be faithful to her, and cast me away.”

  “Hah,” he said. “They already wish me to do that, and I haven’t heeded them, have I? Why, there’s parsons speaking sermons against you from their pulpits, warning me of the perils of adultery before I’ve even seen my bride.”

  “They do hate me for that.” I sighed against his shoulder. “The priggish bastards.”

  He grunted, too thoughtful to be amused. “I do believe my father was entirely faithful to my mother.”

  I’d not expected that, and I pushed back to search his face. “And I am frequently unfaithful to my husband. What of it?”

  “You are not my mother, Barbara.” He paused just long enough. “Thank God.”

  I slipped my hand inside the silk to find his bare chest. “You will not forget me then, sir?”

  “We’ve been through far too much for that, Barbara, haven’t we?” He settled his hands at the narrowest place on my waist. “I don’t know if I could give you up even if I wished it.”

  “I would never want you to try,” I said, unable to keep the sadness from my voice. “Never.”

  “No.” He began to tug on the coverlet, pulling it relentlessly lower across my breasts. “What can I offer you as a pledge, eh?”

  I looked up at him through the haze of tears still beaded on my lashes. “You’ve been generous from your own pocket, sir, but if I were to have a title, and an income of my own, why, then I would have full reason to be at court, no matter what your queen might say.”

  “A wise notion.” He nodded, even as he continued toying with the coverlet. “I’ll have Clarendon prepare the warrant, and arrange with Southampton in the Treasury for an income to support it.”

  I caught the coverlet in my hand, keeping it in place to stop his progress. “Clarendon won’t do it, and neither will Southampton, not for me.”

  “They will if I order it,” he said firmly, and now I’d more hope that it would be done. We weren’t finished with this topic, to be sure, nor was the pain caused to me by his coming marriage any lessened, but for now I was content with the ground we’d made tonight.

  “Thank you,” I said softly, beginning to loosen my grip on the coverlet. “For me, and for our daughter. You are kindness itself, sir. But there is one more matter I must share with you.”

  “I know what you must share, madam,” he said, his gaze dark with wanting as he began to unwrap the coverlet in earnest. “Come, to the bed with me.”

  “I’m late,” I said bluntly, for there was no other way to say it. “My flowers.”

  He sucked in his breath. “How late?”

  “Enough.”

  “Enough,” he repeated, considering. “When?”

  “Next spring. I should guess at the time of your wedding.”

  He groaned. “Yet because it is you, Barbara, I am glad.”

  “As am I.” I raised my arms to loop around his neck, letting the coverlet drop between us as I kissed him. “Because, sir, it is you.”

  “Rest your head upon your hand, madam,” Master Lely said, studying me critically from behind his easel. This would be an important picture for him, one that could bring him much credit and fame. “Turn your head a fraction, if you please, so the light from the windows can catch the sapphire color of your eyes. There! That is the pose exactly.”

  I held still then, as frozen as December ice, while the painter’s long brush began to fly across the canvas, sketching in the beginnings of the picture. It had been one of Charles’s first acts as king to name the Dutchman Peter Lely as his Principal Painter, with a pension of two hundred pounds a year to go with it. As his father before him had employed Master Van Dyck to record the major personages of the old court, so now Charles had Master Lely. This artist was not a young man, having passed sixty years, and like so many of us, he had survived, even prospered, with a variety of patrons. Charles could recall being painted by him as a child with his brothers and sisters, while during the Commonwealth Lely had painted the Lord Protectorate himself. And now, at Charles’s suggestion, he was to paint me as well.

  I’d had my miniature limned twice before by Mr. Cooper, but this was the first time I’d sat for a full portrait. While most ladies had pictures that showed only their heads and shoulders, or perhaps to their waists, Charles had requested Master Lely paint me in my entirety. The resultant canvas was very large, and on its stretchers alone, without a frame, it must have stood taller than Charles himself—the perfect size for a wall at the palace, and I imagined with amusement what the new queen would make of being confronted each day by this large copy of me.

  “Do not smile so broadly, madam,” the painter scolded, the long-ago remnants of his Dutch accent still clotting his words. “You are to look sweetly melancholy, not as if you’re laughing at a dancing bear at the fair. There is no such creature as a jolly Magdalene.”

  Contritely I recomposed my features. I’d worked too hard with the painter deciding the intricate symbols of this painting to ruin it now. The best fashionable portraits were not simply representations of features and form, but held deeper meanings and undercurrents, and this one would be no exception. I wore the rich undress favored by Master Lely, more of a bed-gown of heavy white satin, clasped together with a sapphire broach, with a kind of satin cloak of my favorite blue draped to fall over one shoulder. Much of the cream-colored skin of my breasts and shoulders was finely displayed in this attire, especially with the bed-gown slipping carelessly off one shoulder. I wore no extra petticoats beneath my skirts, so that the white satin draped and clung brazenly to my well-shaped legs. The first pearl drops that Charles had given me at Anne’s birth hung from my ears, now joined by his latest gift, a necklace of more costly fat pearls around my throat. All that had been chosen to reflect my worldliness, while the pose itself was to be more spiritual.

  I would be shown seated on a velvet-covered rock in a wilderness, to be added later, with my hair long and unbound to my waist like a true penitent. My head was supported by my hand, a romantic pose suggesting melancholy and reflection. But what most viewers of this picture would see and understand was how it harkened to the penitent Saint Mary Magdalene, a wicked woman saved by the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ. If I were viewed as the Magdalene and Charles then as Our Lord, why, the irony of the painting would be clear as day.

  When I’d described what Master Lely and I had planned to Charles, he’d laughed aloud at the scandalous double meanings. I was sure the pious new queen would recognize them, too, just as she’d understand how I’d been portrayed as a Protestant saint, without all the tawdry trappings of the Romish church to which she’d such devotion. And how I wished I’d be able to see her shock when she noticed that first gentle swelling of Charles’s babe beneath my painted white satin!

  “Madam, your smile!” the painter said again with exasperation.

  “Fo
rgive me, Master Lely, forgive me,” I said dutifully. But it was so hard not to smile, really. Master Lely had told me that engravers were already clamoring for a portrait of me to copy and sell to the world. That sorry picture of the infanta that I’d seen in Charles’s bedchamber—and had since banished—had likewise been copied, with engravings of it springing up everywhere like toadstools after rain. She might be queen, but my portrait was bound to outshine hers, just as my beauty would, and it delighted me to consider how many more people would appreciate Master Lely’s rare talent than the heavy-handed work of the anonymous Portuguese daub who’d painted the new queen’s portrait.

  “Madam, please!”

  “Oh, Master Lely, I’m sorry!” I exclaimed. “I vow it will not happen again.”

  Once again I forced myself to look sad. But oh, how vastly hard it was to appear penitent when in my heart I believed I’d done nothing— nothing—that needed forgiving.

  Chapter Twelve

  KING STREET, LONDON

  December 1 6 6 1

  As the year had progressed, I’d spent less and less time in my husband’s company, and he did not appear to wish to spend any more time with me than I did with him. He often returned to Dorney Court, to his mother and the country tedium that pleased him so. He busied himself with both his parliamentary and legal responsibilities, and likely a good many other affairs that I’d no interest to hear.

  He also was devoted to my daughter, Anne, my lovely, innocent cuckoo in the Palmer nest, and he continued to believe that he was her sire. This was well enough with me, for never did a child suffer from too much love. Besides, my own days—and nights—were so full that I’d little time to spare myself on her welfare. I didn’t fault myself, for I knew that my role at the palace was far more important to Anne’s future security than hiding myself away in the nursery at King Street to warm her caudle and change her soiled clouts.

  Yet even the most pliant willow has its point when it will bend no more, and snap in two, and so toward Christmas Roger’s long-bowed complacency finally broke.