The Queen's Favourites aka Courting Her Highness (v5)

by Jean Plaidy

  “Lady Masham, wake up.”

  It was Mrs. Danvers standing over her.

  “The Queen?”

  “She has passed away.”

  Abigail stood up, feeling sick with exhaustion and anxiety for the future mingling with an overwhelming sense of loss.

  “I will go to her,” she said. Then her mouth twisted into a wry smile. “It’s too late, though. She will never call me again.”

  “Nor any of us,” said Mrs. Danvers.

  Abigail shook her head. “What shall we do?” she whispered. “What will become of us?”

  She went to the bedside and looked down at the Queen and the tears blinded her eyes as she stooped to kiss that cold forehead and slip her hand under the pillow.

  It was gone. She should have known.

  This is the end, she thought.

  Shrewsbury, seated at the Council table, held up the letter.

  “My friends,” he said, addressing his fellow members, “I think we can guess what this contains, but if we do not open it, we cannot be sure.”

  “It may contain her last wish.”

  Shrewsbury smiled at the speaker. “We are in no position for civil war and the people would never accept a papist. If we do not know what her last wish was, we cannot go against it.” He turned to the fire which was burning in the grate and going towards it held the letter up so that all the members of the Council could see it. “Gentlemen,” he went on, “are you of my opinion for the sake of England it is better that this letter remains unread?”

  There was a brief pause, then a voice said: “I am of your opinion.”

  “And I. And I.”

  Shrewsbury smiled. “Unanimous,” he said.

  They watched the paper writhing in the flames.

  Sarah saw the messenger approaching. News from England was always eagerly awaited and she had heard already that the state of the Queen’s health was deteriorating.

  This, she thought, as she hastened to greet the messenger, could be what we are waiting for.

  She knew by the man’s face that it was.

  “The Queen …” she began.

  “Is dead, Your Grace.”

  She snatched the letters from him.

  “Marl!” she cried. “Where are you, Marl? The Queen is dead! This is the end of exile.”

  The end of exile! How right she was! There was no longer need to remain abroad. Soon they would be back where the fields were greener, where everything she loved and cherished would be waiting for her.

  Marlborough took the news more calmly. So much, he pointed out, depended on who was the next Sovereign of England. If it was the Pretender, their chances of returning to Court were small; but if the new King came from Hanover then he would have no reason to feel anything but gratitude towards Marlborough and his Duchess.

  The next days were the most anxious Sarah had ever lived through.

  “I should die,” she told John, “if we could not go back now.”

  They travelled to Calais to be ready to embark as soon as they knew who was to be the new King.

  It was over, thought Abigail. Shrewsbury and his Council had caused the Queen’s letter to be destroyed. They could guess its contents, and were not going to allow a papist monarch to mount the throne of England merely to salve a Queen’s conscience.

  Bolingbroke was not in a position to act. She had seen him and he told her there was nothing they could do. The people, he believed, would soon tire of the German King who in any case showed no eagerness to accept the throne, and then they would be only too glad to turn to James.

  But a papist! thought Abigail. Never! If he would but change his religion …

  No, there was nothing which could save her now. Oxford had fallen—and she would not be long after him. The Queen’s love alone had kept her in her place and now that was over.

  George I had been proclaimed King of England; the people of London were behind him. Marlborough was coming home.

  Abigail sent her maid to tell Lord Masham that she wished to see him.

  Samuel came at once and she went to him and put her arm through his.

  “This is the end, Samuel,” she said. “There will be nothing more for us here.”

  “I know,” he answered.

  “So we will take the children and go away from Court.”

  “It will be a different life for you, Abigail.”

  “I know it is the end.”

  “Or,” he said, “the beginning.”

  She laughed and she was surprised by the warmth in that laughter. “It would depend on the way one looked at it.”

  “Do you remember when we first met?” he asked her.

  She nodded. “We were watching the Duke of Gloucester drill his boy soldiers in the Park.”

  “Neither of us was very important then, Abigail.”

  “We were not. And now it’s Lord and Lady Masham, with a family to keep.”

  “We’ll go to the country. We’ll buy a manor there.”

  “The thought of being a country squire is not distasteful to my lord?”

  “I can imagine in some circumstances it would be very pleasant.”

  “Yes, Samuel,” she said. “So could I!”

  She wondered then whether she meant it. She thought of the joys of Court life, the intrigues and triumphs.

  She would never forget the days when it had been necessary to be on good terms with Abigail Hill in order to get a hearing with the Queen. She would always remember the first time Robert Harley had leaned towards her, endearingly, affectionately and said: “We are cousins.”

  She would never forget him; she would until she died ask herself with a touch of pain whether in other circumstances it might have been so different.

  Revenged she had been, but there was little satisfaction in revenge. She had her sons; her daughter. They would have more children. Perhaps in them she could find the fulfilment she had failed to find in her own life.

  It was over. There remained the country. There was no other choice.

  The Marlboroughs landed at Dover to a salute of guns.

  “Long live the great Duke of Marlborough!” went up the cry.

  Sarah sniffed the air. Oh, how good it was to be back!

  And there was Marl. The great Duke once more! The friend of the new King! The people were strewing flowers in their path; they were to ride through London in their glass coach.

  “This is how it was after Blenheim!” cried Sarah.

  And as the Marlboroughs rode into London, in search of fresh glories, Lord and Lady Masham, with their children, rode out seeking obscurity.

  THE EXILES RETURN

  he Marlboroughs might be back in favour but it was not as it had once been, and Sarah continued to sigh for the old days, when those who craved royal favour knew they must first seek her help.

  The new King was quite unlike the last Sovereign. George had little love for England; he made no concessions to his new people and he lacked the Stuart charm—so strong in Charles II and present even in his brother James and in his nieces Mary and Anne. George was a stolid German, who could not speak English, who had imprisoned his wife on suspected adultery and brought his German ministers and mistresses with him. That one mistress should be excessively fat and the other extremely thin was characteristic of him. He was indifferent to ridicule; he was crude and a boor. But the country was behind him for the simple reason that the alternative was a Catholic.

  In his Court there was no place for Sarah. The King’s German mistresses were quite unimpressed by this blustering quarrelsome woman. Marlborough was useful, of course, but Sarah could not shut her eyes to the fact that the war had had a disastrous effect upon his health.

  But when he rode through the City he was cheered; in fact it was noticed that he received a more enthusiastic welcome than the King; but that was a temporary triumph, and nothing was the same, mourned Sarah.

  The new King delighted her by offering Marlborough his old post as Captain-General of the Arm
y; and when John said that he thought it would be wise to refuse she was overcome with rage.

  “Why! Why in God’s name! Are you mad, Marl?” she demanded.

  “My dearest Sarah, I am not the man I was,” he explained. “I am too old for this most exacting role.”

  “Too old! I never heard such nonsense. You’ll take it. Have we come back to tell the world we are too old! What have we been waiting for all this time?”

  He embraced her and tried to stroke her lovely hair, which always delighted him, but she tore herself away.

  “Marl, what nonsense is this that has got into you?”

  “To be a success, a Captain-General must be strong … alert … capable.…”

  “Oh, be silent. There are times when I could take a stick to you.”

  “I am the best judge of my capabilities.…”

  “So you want to rot in the country?” Her eyes were flashing; her hair had fallen loose about her shoulders. He thought how young she looked, and that her hair had lost scarcely any of the bright gold it had had in her youth.

  She followed his thoughts and shook her head angrily so that the golden strands waved about her head.

  “You don’t age, Sarah,” he said. “Your hair is the same as when we were first married.”

  “Sentimental nonsense!” she cried. “You are offered the post of Captain-General and you talk about hair. Now, Marl, of course you will take it.”

  “Listen, Sarah, I am no longer young. I am ten years older than you. I am not fit for the post.”

  “You will take it,” she said.

  “I will not.”

  When he spoke like that he meant it. There had been occasions during their married life when she had had to bow to his wishes.

  “So you have decided this?”

  “I cannot take a post which I know I am not fit for. Sarah, for God’s sake, accept the truth. We are no longer young. We must adjust ourselves to this new phase of our lives. We have each other.…”

  Again the golden strands were shaken. Then she turned and left him.

  She shut herself in her bedroom and looked at her angry reflection. He would rather stroke her hair than command an army, would he? In a sudden fury she picked up a pair of scissors and cut off strands of her hair so that instead of falling to her waist it scarcely reached her shoulders. Then gathering it up she went with it to his study and threw it all on to his desk.

  Back in her room she looked at her reflection. She seemed different—older.

  Grimly she smirked. “We shall see how my lord Marlborough likes that!” she cried.

  But when they next met he made no comment; and when she went into his study she could find no trace of the hair.

  He told her the next day that, as she so wished it, he had decided to accept the King’s offer.

  Marlborough was once more Captain-General of the Army.

  It soon became clear that the new King, although he had decided to make use of Marlborough’s services, had no great liking for him; and although some court posts were allotted to the family, none came the way of Sarah.

  Mary, now Duchess of Montague, became a Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess of Wales, and her husband was given a regiment. The Earl of Bridgewater, husband of Elizabeth who had died recently, was made Chamberlain to the Prince of Wales, while Henrietta’s husband, Lord Godolphin, was given the offices he had possessed before the fall of his father and the Churchill faction, and Lord Sunderland, Anne’s husband, was made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

  An indication, commented Sarah, that the family was back in favour; and although Sunderland might be furious to be sent to Ireland, at least he had a little more recognition than herself.

  But, she declared, they would soon find they could not do without the Marlboroughs.

  Bolingbroke, realizing the danger of his position on the accession of George, had fled to France and there went into the service of James whom he had tried so hard to bring to the throne. As a result, James made an attempt to gain it in 1715; and then Marlborough as Captain-General, was called in to serve the King.

  Alas, he was showing his age and it was clear even to him that he was no longer fit for the field. Although he directed operations he took no active part, and this more than anything brought home to him the fact that his days of glory were over.

  When the rebellion was at an end, Sarah took him to St. Albans there to nurse him back to health.

  It was at this time that a further blow struck the household. A letter came to the house addressed to the Duke and the Duchess from the Earl of Sunderland to tell them that his wife, their daughter Anne, had been taken ill with pleuritic fever and he thought it advisable if they would come to her bedside without delay.

  When John read the letter he sank down on to a chair and trembled violently so that Sarah, desperately anxious for her daughter, was equally so for her husband. He was in his sixty-sixth year and his had been a life of stress and tension. The death of her daughter, Elizabeth, had shaken him severely, and had put years on him; and now it seemed that Anne, the favourite of all her children, was in danger.

  “I will go to her,” she said, “and you will remain here, you are unfit to travel.”

  John protested. He would go to his daughter and nothing would keep him away.

  While they were arguing, there was a further letter. Anne, Lady Sunderland, was dead.

  Sarah had wept until those about her thought she would lose her reason, and when Sarah wept the whole household knew it; hers was no secret grief.

  “Why has this ill fortune come to us!” she demanded. “What have we done to deserve it? I thought I had endured all the ill fortune in the world when I lost my only son. And now … two daughters … my best loved daughters …”

  She stormed through the house, one moment harrying her servants for incompetence, the next shutting herself into her room to throw herself on to her bed and give way to her grief.

  Anne had been the sweetest member of the household; she had been the peacemaker—and in that family they had needed one. Sarah had loved her dearly because she never argued as her eldest Henrietta and her youngest Mary did; Anne would smile when she disagreed and bow her head, while she kept firmly to her opinions. She had been lovely—a daughter to be proud of. Marl had been against her marriage with Charles Spencer. Dear Marl, the most ambitious man alive and the most sentimental. He had feared that Charles Spencer, who had become Lord Sunderland on his father’s death, was not good enough for their Anne although he was one of the richest men in the country. But she, Sarah, had had her way and the marriage had taken place. Not that she had ever liked Sunderland. Dearest Anne! She had been one of the beauties of the Court—for she surpassed her sisters, and Marl used to say that she and Elizabeth were the ones who rivalled their mother for beauty, although even they could not quite equal her. The Little Whig they called her and the Whigs had toasted her in their coffee houses. And now she was dead.

  “My only son, my two daughters!” moaned Sarah. “Why should I have to suffer like this.”

  Marl had tried to comfort her. “We still have Henrietta and Mary.”

  A hollow comfort! Henrietta and Mary had always gone their own way. Their wills were almost as strong as Sarah’s and they could not be together for long without quarrelling. Those two left out of her family of five! It was heartbreaking.

  There seemed nothing to live for. Even the days when they were wandering about the Continent were better than this.

  Sarah stormed into the bedroom she shared with John and found him sitting in his chair. He did not look up when she entered and she cried: “We’ll have to go to Court. We can’t stay here grieving for the rest of our lives. German George will have to be made to understand what he owes to you. What’s the matter. Are you struck dumb. Marl. Marl!”

  She went to him and the thought came to her in that moment: Why did I think I had reached the ultimate suffering. Then I had Marl, and while I have him I still have what I need to make life
worth living.

  “John,” she cried. “Dearest …”

  But he did not answer; he could only look at her with dull, bewildered eyes.

  She ran screaming from the room, summoning the servants. “Send for doctors. At once! At once! My lord Marlborough is taken ill.”

  It was said that the shock of Lady Sunderland’s death, following so close on that of Lady Bridgewater, had brought on the Duke of Marlborough’s stroke.

  When she realized that although he had lost the power of speech and it was obvious that he could not clearly grasp what was going on about him, he could still recover, Sarah threw off her grief for her daughters and set about nursing him, giving to the task all that energy which she had previously squandered on quarrels.

  Nothing in that household was allowed to interfere with the Duke’s recovery. Sarah was supreme in the sickroom. She insisted that Dr. Garth—a local doctor—take up residence in the house that he might be called to attend the Duke at any time of the night and day.

  The Duke must be kept alive, and it seemed that none dared disobey Sarah—not even the Duke, for he clung to life with a tenacity which surprised everyone, including the doctors.

  “You will recover, John,” Sarah told her husband. “My dearest, you must recover. We have been together so long. How could we be separated now?”

  That was one thing he seemed to understand and each day there was an improvement. His powers of speech began to return and Dr. Garth said his recovery was a near-miracle.

  While Sarah was nursing John she received a letter from the Earl of Sunderland in which he said his wife had written to him when she knew she was dying and he enclosed the letter, for it concerned Sarah.

  “Pray get my mother, the Duchess of Marlborough, to take care of the children, for to be left to servants is very bad for them and a man can’t take care of little children as a woman can. For the love she has for me and the duty I shall ever show her, I hope she will do it and be very kind to you who was dearer to me than my life.”