“His justice,” Maitland spits angrily. “The king knows nothing of justice. I am God’s instrument, and I will not let his work go unfinished, Mrs. Strathern.” Maitland reaches through the bars and seizes her wrist with his bony fingers. He remains surprisingly strong, with a grip tight enough to hurt as he pulls her closer. “I will be free, I tell you, with your help or without.”
His eyes lock on Hannah’s. In them she sees his rage, his resolve, his madness. Hannah wrenches her arm away and steps back, shaken. She should have known better than to stand so close to his cell without a guard present. “You will never be free, Mr. Maitland. I will post your letter, as your sister deserves to know where you are, but more than that I cannot do.” She shakes her head. “No matter where you are, you will never be free of what you have done.” She picks up her medicine case. “God have mercy on your soul.”
She turns away and walks past the shadowed cells with their sad occupants, many of whom she has treated in the past months. So much pain. Not every sickness can be cured, but she is able to ease the suffering of some. And her own suffering? Her hand instinctively cradles her rounded belly. Her past can never be forgotten but she has discovered, to her solemn delight, that its sorrows can be diminished.
She walks past the warden’s office, through the vestibule, and then outside, where Edward waits for her in the warm spring sunlight and the sweet, rain-freshened air.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The Devlin Diary is a work of fiction based on two real events: the signing, in May 1670, of a secret treaty between Charles II and Louis XIV, and the death of Henriette-Anne, Charles’s sister and Louis’s sister-in-law, a month later.
In May 1670, Charles and Henriette-Anne met at Dover for a long-anticipated reunion. Unbeknownst to the few hundred members of their courts, who were kept busy with feasts and fetes, the king’s ministers Lord Arlington and Sir Thomas Clifford and the French ambassador Colbert de Croissy worked behind the scenes to ratify the articles of a treaty between England and France that had been the subject of clandestine negotiation for more than a year. Because of her close relationships with both her brother and Louis XIV, Henriette-Anne had been instrumental in bringing about the rapprochement between the French and English kings. For months prior to their meeting, Charles and Henriette-Anne had exchanged coded letters (all the important participants were assigned three-digit numbers) in which they’d discussed the salient points of the agreement. In short, Charles and Louis agreed to wage war on the Dutch (breaking England’s existing treaty with Holland) in exchange for England’s receiving a subsidy from France of 3 million livres tournois. In addition, Charles agreed to publicly announce his conversion to Catholicism “as soon as the welfare of his kingdom will permit,” for which Louis would pay another 2 million livres, half to be paid three months after the exchange of ratifications and half three months later.
After ten days of festivities, Henriette-Anne returned to France, to her husband, and to her palace at Saint-Cloud. (Henriette-Anne had a dazzling variety of names: Henriette, Henriette-Anne, the Duchesse d’Orleans, Madame, as she was known in the French court, and Minette, as she was affectionately called by her brother; for clarity’s sake, I have chosen to refer to her only as Henriette-Anne or the princess). She was indeed trapped in an unhappy marriage to Philippe, Duc d’Orleans, Louis XIV’s brother. The duc was a homosexual who loved dressing up in women’s clothes and jewelry; unfortunately, these were his least objectionable traits. He was also childish, cruel, domineering, jealous, and vindictive; he enjoyed parading his lovers in front of his wife and seemed to be happiest when she was miserable.
Henriette-Anne had been ill during her time away, but when she was stricken with excruciating stomach pains on the morning of June 29, she was the first to believe she had been poisoned. She even believed she knew the instigator: her husband’s favorite, the Chevalier de Lorraine, whom Louis had banished from the court (the French king was fond of Henriette-Anne, and often dismayed by his brother’s treatment of her). Henriette-Anne’s agonized sufferings and the speed of her demise—she was dead less than twenty-four hours later—reinforced this belief. A postmortem was performed the next day by a group of English and French doctors, who attributed Henriette-Anne’s death to cholera morbus; but one onlooker declared that he did not approve of the way the autopsy was carried out, “as if the surgeon’s business were to hide the truth rather than reveal it.”
The results of the postmortem did little to squelch the rumors of poison, which spread quickly through the French court and then to London. Charles was reportedly so grief-stricken at the news of his sister’s death that he collapsed and spent the next few days in bed, an unusual event for such a vigorous man. The news of an English princess dying in suspicious circumstances in France was more than enough to inflame English sentiments, already volatile, against the French. This was hardly in keeping with Charles’s aims; he wanted instead to turn the people against Holland. Henriette-Anne’s death was a political liability, and it placed the newly minted agreement in jeopardy.
No one knows Charles’s true feelings on the subject, but within a few weeks he appeared reassured by Louis’s assertions that there had been no foul play. And there was simply too much at stake to make an issue of it (although his dislike of his brother-in-law never waned). Charles, Arlington, and Colbert de Croissy took the lead in quashing the rumors, and the loss of the closest link between Charles and Louis did not affect the pact they had made. But Charles soon realized that if he wanted to make war on Holland he needed the support of all his ministers, not just Arlington and Clifford. The Duke of Buckingham was sent to France on a fool’s errand. For the next few months he negotiated a treaty with France that he wrongly believed to be completely of his own doing, while Arlington and Colbert de Croissy laughed behind his back. It was nearly identical to the previous treaty, except that it did not include any references to Roman Catholicism. The new treaty became known as the traité simulé. It was signed by all five of Charles’s ministers—the infamous Cabal—three of whom were never aware of the earlier agreement. A few months later, in March 1672, Charles declared war on the Dutch, hostilities which cost England much but gained them little. As Charles never did announce his conversion (although, on his deathbed, he requested a Catholic priest, who performed last rites), the secret treaty remained a secret for one hundred and fifty years. In 1830, Dr. John Lingard published his History of England, which included the entire text of the secret treaty, generously provided by the sixth Lord Clifford of Chudleigh.
When Thomas Clifford resigned his office in 1673 in the wake of the Test Act, he took the most politically sensitive documents, including the secret treaty, to his estate at Ugbrooke. (Arlington, who also resigned following the Test Act, was apparently uncomfortable having such incriminating papers in his house.) In 1930, a century after Lingard, another historian, Keith Feiling, discovered a wealth of additional papers at Ugbrooke, which included correspondence between Louis XIV and Charles II, a letter from Henriette-Anne to Clifford, copies of the secret treaty in both English and French, and a signed copy of the secret article, which together make a fascinating narrative of seventeenth-century political intrigue. These documents are known collectively as the Clifford Papers, and they are now in the possession of the British Library, not in the Trinity College archive, where I have placed them.
Even though most historians believe that Henriette-Anne died from acute peritonitis, suspicions about her untimely death have never been completely vanquished. (The Duc d’Orleans’s second wife, Elizabeth-Charlotte, Princess Palatine, was firm in her belief that her predecessor had been poisoned.) Certainly there’s enough mystery surrounding these events to allow generous room for speculation and invention.
The Devlin Diary blends real and imagined situations along with real and fictitious characters. Hannah Devlin, Edward Strathern, Jeremy Maitland, Madame Severin, Theophilus Ravenscroft, and each of the murder victims are fictitious; Louise de Keroualle, L
ord Arlington, Sir Thomas Clifford, and Ralph Montagu are real, as is Dr. Thomas Sydenham and, of course, Charles II, although most of the events in The Devlin Diary in which they are involved are entirely fictional. It is true, however, that Louise de Keroualle was stricken with gonorrhea passed to her by the king (although this happened in 1674, two years later than in the narrative), from which she suffered terribly. Eventually she was cured, or at any rate was no longer acutely ill from the disease. But Louise never conceived again, even though she remained the king’s mistress until he died in 1685. Dr. Sydenham was in reality a forward-thinking physician of the time who helped nudge the theory and practice of medicine toward a more enlightened age. Anyone familiar with seventeenth-century scientist and architect Robert Hooke will understand that Theophilus Ravenscroft, while a fictional character, is not only Hooke’s nemesis but also his doppelganger. Ralph Montagu was known to be a “ruthless gallant” who used women to get ahead. It’s true that after the death of his first wife, he courted the very wealthy but certifiably insane Duchess of Albemarle by posing as the emperor of China. With her money he rebuilt his Robert Hooke–designed house, which had been gutted by fire in 1686. Montagu House, which stood in what is now Bloomsbury, was bought by the British government in the 1750s and used as the first home of the British Museum.
I am indebted to numerous sources for assistance in replicating the world of Restoration-era London and present-day Cambridge. For general English history and insights into seventeenth-century London, I found the following books to be most helpful: 1700: Scenes from London Life by Maureen Waller (Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000); A History of London by Stephen Inwood (Macmillan, 1998); The Diary of John Evelyn edited by John Bowle (Oxford University Press, 1985); The English: A Social History 1066–1945 by Christopher Hibbert (W. W. Norton, 1987); History of the Royal Society by Thomas Sprat (London, 1667); The Illustrated Pepys edited by Robert Latham (University of California Press, 1978); Intelligence and Espionage in the Reign of Charles II, 1660–1685 by Alan Marshall (Cambridge University Press, 1994); Ladies-in-Waiting: From the Tudors to the Present Day by Anne Somerset (Knopf, 1984); The Literary and Cultural Spaces of Restoration London by Cynthia Wall (Cambridge University Press, 1999); The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century by Peter Linebaugh (Verso, 2006); Restoration: Charles II and his Kingdoms by Tim Harris (Penguin Books, 2005); Restoration London by Liza Picard (St. Martin’s Press, 1998); The Shorter Pepys edited by Robert Latham (University of California Press, 1985); and The Weaker Vessel: Women in 17th Century England by Antonia Fraser (Knopf, 1984).
The following biographies brought the people of the time to vivid life: Aubrey’s Brief Lives edited by Oliver Lawson Dick (David R. Godine, 1999); The Cabal by Maurice Lee, Jr. (University of Illinois Press, 1965); Charles II and Madame by Cyril Hughes Hartmann (William Heinemann, Ltd., 1934); The Curious Life of Robert Hooke by Lisa Jardine (HarperCollins, 2004); Dr. Thomas Sydenham, 1624–1689 by Kenneth Dewhurst (University of California Press, 1966); The Forgotten Genius: The Biography of Robert Hooke by Stephen Inwood (MacAdam/ Cage, 2003); The Lives & Times of the Duchess of Portsmouth by Jeanine Delpech (Roy Publishers, 1953); Lord Rochester’s Monkey: Being the Life of John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester by Graham Greene (The Viking Press, 1974); Louise de Keroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth in the Court of Charles II by H. Forneron (Scribner & Wellford, 1888); Nell Gwyn: Mistress to a King by Charles Beauclerk (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000); Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration by Antonia Fraser (Knopf, 1979); and Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self by Claire Tomalin (Knopf, 2003).
The following books provided the sometimes comic and frequently gruesome details of seventeenth-century medicine: The Admirable Secrets of Physick & Chyrurgery by Thomas Palmer, edited by Thomas Rogers Forbes (Yale University Press, 1984); Blood & Guts: A Short History of Medicine by Roy Porter (W. W. Norton, 2003); Culpeper’s Complete Herbal & English Physician Enlarged by Nicholas Culpeper (Meyerbooks, 1990); The Early History of Surgery by W. J. Bishop (Barnes & Noble Books, 1995); English Medicine in the Seventeenth Century by A. W. Sloan (Durham Academic Press, 1996); Heal Thyself: Nicholas Culpeper and the Seventeenth-Century Struggle to Bring Medicine to the People by Benjamin Woolley (HarperCollins, 2004); John Hall and His Patients: The Medical Practice of Shakespeare’s Son-in-Law by Joan Lane (The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, 1996); Opium: A Portrait of the Heavenly Demon by Barbara Hodgson (Greystone Books, 2004); Opium: A History by Martin Booth (St. Martin’s Griffin, 1996); Quacks: Fakers and Charlatans in English Medicine by Roy Porter (Tempus, 2001); Women as Healers: A History of Women and Medicine by Hilary Bourdillon (Cambridge University Press, 1988); and Women Healers: Portraits of Herbalists, Physicians and Midwives by Elisabeth Brooke (Healing Arts Press, 1995). Forensics and Fiction by D. P. Lyle, MD, provided helpful answers to a few tricky medical and forensics questions.
My memories of present-day Cambridge were greatly enhanced by A Concise History of the University of Cambridge by Elisabeth Leedham-Green (Cambridge University Press, 1996); Trinity College: A History and Guide by G. M. Trevelyan (Trinity College, 1967); Central Cambridge, A Guide to the University and Colleges by Kevin Taylor (Cambridge University Press, 1994); and The Making of the Wren Library edited by David McKitterick (Cambridge University Press, 1995).
The Whitehall Palace Plan of 1670 by Simon Thurley (London Topographical Society, 1998) and Whitehall Palace: An Architectural History of the Royal Apartments, 1240–1690 by Simon Thurley (Yale University Press, 1999) were indispensable guides to a place that no longer exists.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’ve received a great deal of help and support during the writing of this book. My sincere thanks go to Keith Moore at the Royal Society for the wonderful tour of the Society library and archives; to Rhianna Markless and Liz Hore at the National Archives at Kew Gardens for their research assistance; to Dr. Rod Pullen at Trinity College, for finally agreeing to speak to me; to D. P. Lyle, MD, for his fast answers to my forensics questions; to Clay Bowling for his excellent mechanical illustrations of a seventeeth-century building project; to Jonathan Smith of Trinity College Library and Phillipa Grimstone of the Pepys Library for their assistance; to Briana Baillie and Cynthia Phillips for their helpful comments; to DeAnn Hughes, Howard Hughes, Nancy Oliver, and Nick Lyster for their generous hospitality and for making our stay in London so much fun and so memorable; to dream agent Mary Evans, for always being the sweet, calm voice of reason at the other end of the line, and for her unwavering belief; to Maggie Crawford, for being the kind of editor all writers hope for: smart, dedicated, tireless, and full of good ideas; to Louise Burke and everyone at Pocket Books for their understanding during a difficult time; and to Julie Wright and everyone at Simon & Schuster UK for their support. A special thanks to my assistant, Birgit Kaufman, for taking such great care of us. And, always and forever, my love and gratitude to Brian Beverly, for everything.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christi Phillips is the author of The Rossetti Letter, which has been translated into six languages. Her research combines a few of her favorite things: old books, libraries, and travel. When she’s not rummaging around in an archive or exploring the historic heart of a European city, she lives with her husband in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she is at work on her next novel, set in France. Visit her website at www.christi-phillips.com.
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