Royal Harlot

by Susan Holloway Scott

  “Experience does breed confidence, sir,” I said breathlessly as I shrugged myself free of my bodice and my stays after that. I was rather touched by his insistence that they not see me undress, considering how we both realized a good number of those same gentlemen had known me far more intimately than that. “And in our case, a good many children as well.”

  He laughed as I pulled my smock over my head and stepped free of my gown and petticoats, standing before him in only my stockings, garters, and high-heeled shoes. My waist was thickening and my breasts full, for I was once again with child. This would be my fourth child, with little Henry scarce six months old. But considering how the king himself was the reason that I was more often in this condition than not, I remained confident in my beauty regardless.

  “My shirt, if you please,” I said, smiling wickedly as I held out my hand.

  “In a moment,” he said softly, his heavy-lidded gaze studying me with relish. “How far do you mean to take this with Frances?”

  “As far as she’ll let me.” I laughed, in truth as excited by the prospect as he. “Isn’t that what most bridegrooms do?”

  His eyes glittered with both desire and amusement. “Do you mean to succeed with her where I’ve failed?”

  “I mean to try,” I said. “But I expect you’ll want to witness our consummation, won’t you?”

  “How else will it be considered a proper union?”

  I laughed again, my head tipped back. “You can’t know how weary I am of her simpering empty virtue.”

  “So am I.” He reached for me, and I stepped backward, away from his hand.

  “I should save myself for my bride,” I said coyly. “I wouldn’t wish to disappoint her.”

  “Don’t disappoint me first.”

  “Hah,” I said, backing farther away. “You, sir, should know the advantages of patience.”

  “You’re a fine one to lecture me,” he said, chuckling as he followed me. “As long as I’ve known you, Barbara, you’ve never demonstrated a thimbleful of patience. I’d wager fifty guineas that if I touch you now, you’re already flowing dew.”

  “I’d not take such a vulgar wager from you, sir.” I’d reached the end of my escape, bumping against the door of a tall cupboard behind me.

  “And why not?” he asked, coming to stand over me. “Are you afraid you’d lose your stake?”

  “No, sir,” I said, looping my arms around his shoulders to kiss him. “I’m certain of it.”

  He took me then with pleasurable leisure, standing against the cupboard, or rather I took him, for it amounted to the same. I’d no doubt that the others in the privy chamber knew what we’d been about, too, for when we finally returned, they greeted us with calls and cheers that seemed even more raucous and untoward than earlier.

  Now, and at last, I was dressed in a shirt, doublet, hat, and breeches that belonged to Charles, everything comically oversized and drooping around me. Somehow Frances had been persuaded to shed all but her smock as well, her golden curls unpinned to fall down her back. They’d even tied white ribbons into the lace that edged her smock, as a true bride would have.

  With what I hoped was true swaggering male bravado, I took my place at her side while Buckingham solemnly opened a prayer book before us. In honor of the Roman faith that Frances and I now incongruously shared, my cousin had gotten a priest’s cassock and an oversized crucifix from somewhere, and the sight of his most Anglican face pretending to Rome was riotously blasphemous. In the gutter of the book—held upside down, I noted—he’d even placed a pair of pinchbeck rings for us to be blessed as he intoned who knew what in reverent Latin. He was an excellent mimic and could capture anyone’s voice that it pleased him to mock, and now as he imitated one of the queen’s most pompous priests, there was not a person in the room who was not laughing, tears sliding down our faces.

  When he’d finished, I slipped one ring on Frances’s finger and she did the same to me. Her cheeks were flushed with far more excitement than I’d expected, and though she giggled like the foolish goose she was, when I leaned forward to kiss her, she kissed me back.

  After that we were swept into the king’s own bedchamber, a place I’d visited so many times that it felt like my own. Frances’s blue eyes were round as the moon, and I wondered what manner of nonsense she’d heard did occur there—certainly much more scandalous than what was happening this night.

  “Time to cut your maiden ribbons, sweetheart,” Buckingham declared, now having shed his priestly role for his more usual one as Frances’s pimp. “Best to do everything we can to ease that maidenhead of yours.”

  With a pair of oversized shears, he snipped every bow and lace on her smock, even cutting the drawstring at the neckline so she was forced to clutch the linen to her breasts to keep from displaying herself to the company. I, however, had no such qualms, cheerfully doffing my doublet, hat, and breeches, my secrets boldly apparent through the fine Holland of Charles’s shirt. While the others began to sing bawdy songs, I hopped into the enormous bed beside Frances, who’d pulled the coverlet demurely up under her chin as she sat against the bolsters. Her face was so flushed, her smile so fixed, that I suspected they’d already given her strong liquor to drink for courage.

  The sheets smelled familiarly of the king, and of me.

  “Here’s your wedding posset,” Buckingham announced, thrusting a two-handled tankard into my hand. “Drink up, you two, and fortify yourselves.”

  I drank first of the sugary sack, then passed it to my bride, who, to my amusement, gulped it down as if it were mother’s milk. If she weren’t in her cups now, she would be soon after that.

  “You must toss your stocking now, pet,” I said kindly, slipping my arm around her shoulder. She was trembling, the little goose, whether from the posset, fear, or excitement, I couldn’t say. “Whoever catches it will be next to wed, you know.”

  She reached under the sheets to pull off her stocking, wadding it into a ball that she hurled into the crowd. Fitzhardinge caught it, unrolling it to press the toe to his nose, then his lips, finally waving it over his head like a trophy.

  “Hah, you’ll not have Elizabeth Mallet,” I called gleefully, naming a twelve-year-old heiress that I knew Fitzhardinge was clamoring to woo. “I’ve already claimed her for my cousin Rochester.”

  “The devil you have, my lady!” Fitzhardinge draped the stocking round his neck. “Your cousin’s only seventeen. Mistress Mallet will need more from a husband than that.”

  That earned a chorus of scornful hoots and laughter that, of course, I couldn’t help but answer.

  “My cousin’s an earl, Fitzhardinge, and a gentleman, which makes him already thrice the man you are,” I crowed. “And at my special request, His Majesty has already given his approval of the match.”

  “Quiet now, both of you!” the king ordered, his voice rising so strong that all others fell silent, chastised. “We’re here to see these two fairly wed, not bicker over some distant pimply children. Now kiss your bride, fair young sir.”

  “I’ll kiss her once for you to view,” I vowed, “but I’ll not attempt the rest until the curtains are drawn, from fear of unmanning myself before so many virile witnesses.”

  The king laughed. “Fair enough,” he said. “I’ll draw them myself, once you seal your troth with a kiss.”

  I tucked my hair behind my ears so my face could plainly be seen, and gently turned Frances’s face toward mine to kiss. So it was fear she felt: I could taste it on her tongue along with the posset, and I touched my palm gently to her jaw to calm her. She slid down the pillow-bier as if she were made of wax and melting, and I pursued her, leaning half over her to kiss her, much to the delight of the others. My eyes shut, I heard the scrape of the curtain rings along the metal rod, and the howling, disappointed protests of those who’d wished for more of a show.

  “We’ll leave them for now,” the king was saying, all jovial teasing. “With such youngsters, it’s best to let them fumble their way wit
hout an audience.”

  “Are they gone, my lady?” Frances whispered when we’d both heard the chamber door closed. With the bed-curtains drawn around us, we were snug in the shadowy bed, as if in a second room within the larger.

  “For now,” I said, my elbow cocked so I could rest my head on my hand beside her. “You’ve no reason to be frightened, you goose, not of them.”

  She looked a most delectable little creature, there in the shadows with her fair hair spilled out across the pillows. I understood entirely why Charles was so beguiled with her. Yet surely I’d been born a squalling infant with more wit than she showed now at sixteen, and more sense of the world as well.

  “You will not . . . consummate me?” she asked anxiously. “I will still be a virgin, my lady?”

  Delectable, yes, but her empty-headed foolishness irritated me and had no place at this court.

  “With what exactly shall I do the odious deed, Frances?” I asked. “This was a mock wedding, and I your mock bridegroom with only a very mock cock to take your very real maidenhead.”

  “Then you will not harm me?”

  “No,” I said, the truth, and slipped my hand beneath the sheet to find her. “I’ll only grant you the same sweet pleasures we’ve shared before.”

  She smiled then, and wriggled closer beside me. “Very well, my lady. Should I please you, too?”

  But though by pleasing her I pleased myself, she fell fast asleep before she could return the favor she’d promised, her breath sweet and cloying from the surfeit of sherry. Not that I cared overmuch, for I knew what else lay ahead. I tossed back the coverlet, eased the bed-curtains apart, and padded quickly across the floor in my stocking feet and billowing man’s shirt to the small door that led to the king’s infamous back stairs.

  This passage was ordinarily overseen by Will Chiffinch, the Page of the Bedchamber, who used it to squire in every manner of secret visitor, from actresses to couriers from King Louis. Now I’d hoped to employ Chiffinch myself to find Charles without being seen by the others still carousing in the privy chamber.

  Yet as I reached for the latch, Charles himself stepped from the shadows and caught my wrist. I gasped, my heart racing from being so surprised.

  “Oh, sir, how you startled me when—”

  At once he pressed his hand over my lips to silence me. Drawing me with him, he went to the bed to gaze upon the sleeping girl. Her gown was rumpled and still pulled high from our earlier play, with most of her lovely young limbs and body arranged unwittingly for our full admiration, like the most wanton of antique nymphs. She was sixteen, her body unmarked by childbirth or usage, and I could not help but compare it unhappily to my own. I would be twenty-four in the autumn, a vast age for a lady in my position, and this girl before me only served to remind me of how much I’d sadly changed.

  “Temptation incarnate,” whispered Charles hoarsely. “She is willing, then?”

  I looked down at Frances, my thoughts as tumbled and disordered as her smock. This was temptation, the kind of temptation of the flesh that I seldom resisted, nor wished to. The girl was the worst kind of fool to have let herself be drawn into this court, let alone this bed, and fiercely I told myself that she deserved whatever now came her way. There was also an unsavory small part of me, fed by vengeful jealousy and regret, that did wish somehow to punish her for her unthinking sin of being younger and fresher than I was myself.

  And yet, though few would believe it, I was not so hardened as that. I would not condone a rape. The little goose had trusted me, and besides, she built endless card castles for my children to topple.

  “No,” I whispered. “She remains intent on preserving her cursed maidenhead.”

  “You are certain?” he said, lust making his voice sharp. “You cannot persuade her?”

  I shook my head. “She is a fool, yes, but that’s not reason enough to ravish her against her will.”

  Roused by our whispers, Frances stirred and woke. It took but an instant for her to realize her situation, and with a small cry she started upright, frantically grabbing for the coverlet to hide her nakedness.

  “Hush, Frances, be calm,” I said swiftly. “You’re safe, and unharmed.”

  “That’s true, my dear,” the king said with undisguised regret. He reached out to stroke her cheek, and instinctively she turned toward his caress. He had that power with women; I’d seen it far too often. “Though I warrant you’re wondrous fair to look upon.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, her tremulous smile proof again that flattery is the surest path to a woman’s ruin. “That is, thank you, sir.”

  I sat on the edge of the bed beside her and took her hand in mine, the way I’d done scores of times before.

  “Your beauty is rare, Frances,” I said, my voice coaxing velvet as I gently stroked little circles into her palm with the tips of my fingers. “So rare that you tempt the king, just as you’ve tempted me.”

  “But I cannot—”

  “Hush, hush, we know of your vow,” I said, soothing, coaxing, wooing her to follow my lead. “But just as you and I have discovered ways to . . . amuse one another, so it could be with His Majesty, too, the three of us together.”

  Now she was the one who was tempted, drawn by the same wicked novelty of it. I caught her glancing toward the king, standing there with his arms folded over his chest, so very great and manly, and I knew she’d agree.

  “That is all, my lady?” she asked, her fingers twining restlessly into mine. “The same . . . amusements?”

  “The same, dear Frances,” I whispered, smoothing her tangled hair back from her face, her shoulders, her breasts. “Except with two of us, the pleasure will be twice as great.”

  Twice as great, aye, twice as great. The next morning the court spoke of nothing else but how the king had awakened between his two favorite beauties, and that the young maid of honor was a maid no more. By the next nightfall, every tavern and coffeehouse in London was full of the king’s prowess, and my lubricity. By the end of the week, the French ambassadors had made sure to report the shocking tale of our latest debauchery to Louis, and the French court as well.

  Yet only we three knew the truth: That though Frances Stuart left the king’s bedchamber with both her vow and her maidenhead still intact, her innocence had been reduced to a tattered memory. While I would not condone him lying with her, I did it not from respect for her sacred pledge but from knowing I could never watch him love another woman in my presence. And, finally, that though I could not bear to watch him with her, I’d no such qualms about her watching me with him.

  Let them talk, I thought, and with my usual brave insolence I walked beside the king through St. James’s Park the next day. I wore the jewels he’d given me for all to see, a curling plume in the crown of my hat, as he kept my hand tucked fondly in the crook of his arm. Let them talk, for it would matter not to me.

  But to my bitter sorrow, how soon—too soon!—I’d learn that even talk could come with a price, and a steep one at that.

  By strange coincidence, that summer of 1664 the three of us ladies— the queen, Frances Stuart, and I—each sat for our portraits.

  Her Majesty chose as her painter the Dutchman Jacob Huysmans, a favorite of the queen’s dour Catholic circle, and with little patronage among us courtiers who aspired to a likeness with fashion and wit. As he did with so many of his ladies’ portraits, Master Huysmans decided to depict the queen as a shepherdess dressed preposterously in pink-and-white satin whilst guarding her flock: a most insipid depiction, dark and ill drawn, much like the queen herself.

  Frances likewise sat for Master Huysmans, but instead of a simpering shepherdess—which would, in truth, be much to her character—she chose to dress herself as a gallant gentleman gone riding. Her fair hair was loose and fluffed like a periwig, and her woman’s form covered completely by a buff leather waistcoat and breeches. One hand rested on the hilt of a sword, while the other held a military baton.

  No one knew what to make of
this strange ambiguity, nor did either the artist or the sitter offer any explanation for its conceit. When I first saw it, I wondered myself if it meant in some way to refer to our mock “wedding.” Suffice to say that it did not serve Miss Stuart’s beauty in any way, nor did even the king wish to add such a picture to his collection, which was, perhaps, given her continued reluctance with him, exactly what she’d planned all along.

  As for me, I returned once again to the studio of Master Lely. I know he often protested that he could never capture my beauty, no matter how he labored, yet still I found his brush the most flattering of any, and surely the number of prints that the master’s studio sold of me afterward was testimony to his talents.

  This time I decided not to hide behind any role but to be shown as myself. Though I was close to my time for my fourth child, I asked Master Lely to narrow my waist for this picture as if I’d already given birth. My gaze was confident, my smile slight, as if pondering a rare secret. I wore gold silk satin, and all my favorite pearls, gifts from Charles. It was Master Lely’s notion to have my hair arranged in the style of Venetian ladies of a hundred years before, in their portraits by the Italians Titian and Tintoretto. My hair was drawn up on the back of my head in a kind of coronet, then cascaded loosely down my back, and was threaded throughout with more of my pearls. I looked more regal than any queen, more an elegant consort than a concubine.

  Yet most who saw this picture first noticed not my hair but the jewel at my breast: a heavy gold cross set with cabochon stones such as was worn only by French ladies and Roman Catholics.

  In early September, I was brought to bed of another daughter, a pretty babe with a profusion of black curly hair like her father’s. For her father, too, I named her Charlotte. She was styled with the surname Fitzroy, the traditional heraldic way of signifying her sire. (My sons Charles and Henry were likewise Fitzroys, with only my first daughter called Lady Anne Palmer, after my husband.) The birth was an easy one, and within two weeks I was entertaining once again at King Street, staging a supper for the French ambassador and his wife. Though it was my house, Charles sat at the head of my table and played the host, a distinction that was much noted.