The Countess and the King: A Novel of the Countess of Dorchester and King James II

by Holloway Scott, Susan

  Until, that is, I heard the door to the room open and my father come in.

  “Release my daughter, you damned thieving dog!” he thundered, charging toward us as he drew his sword from its scabbard. “Free her at once, else I cut your prick from your ballocks, as you deserve!”

  “No, Father, don’t!” I shrieked, rolling free of the ensign. I threw myself against my furious parent to stay his sword, knowing he’d not dare harm me.

  My erstwhile gallant had already flown from his chair, and he and his comrade were retreating with an unseemly haste that would have incensed their officers.

  “Forgive me, sir,” he stammered as he grabbed his hat. “I did not intend—”

  “I know exactly what you intended, you damned whoreson!” Father shouted, too tangled with me to employ the sword in his hand. “Leave my house at once, all of you!”

  “Farewell, Katherine,” Jane called, likewise fleeing. She waggled her fingers at me in sympathy and farewell, and smiled to show she’d no hard feelings. “I’ll write anon.”

  “Your letters won’t be welcome here, madam,” Father said curtly. “Go, away with you, back to whatever filthy bagnio that spawned you!”

  “Father, please,” I exclaimed. “She’s my friend, and a lady, a Holcomb, and niece to the Earl of Abercorn.”

  “She could be His Majesty’s own daughter,” countered Father with palpable disgust, “and I’d still damn her as a whore and toss her from my house.”

  From the hall, we heard the servant close the front door after my friends, and with relief I stepped clear of Father. My fear for everyone’s safety had not been an empty one. Like the Duke of Buckingham and the rest, Father wasn’t afraid of brawling and bloodshed. Even now, with my friends gone, his face remained flushed with his fury, the veins in his temples pulsing at an ominous rate. They might have escaped; I’d not be so fortunate.

  But being Father’s daughter, I likewise knew the wisdom of attacking first. Besides, my own temper was already simmering, both from embarrassment at having been so shamed before those I’d wished to impress, and from being interrupted at my pleasurable play.

  “You’d no right to dismiss my friends like that, Father,” I began warmly. “What manner of hostess does that make me, that I cannot—”

  “An empty-headed hostess who invites the worst young jackals into her father’s house.” He shoved his sword emphatically back into the scabbard, and peered inside the nearer sillery bottle. Frowning, he took it by the neck and turned it upside down to demonstrate how thoroughly we’d emptied the contents. “Must you serve my best sillery? I have to pay the devil himself to have it smuggled from France away from the navy ships. You might have poured piss into the glasses, and those dogs would have not known the difference.”

  “The sillery is my favorite wine,” I said indignantly. “If you’d not wished me to acquire a taste for it, then you shouldn’t have given it to me in the first place.”

  He growled, too outraged for lowly words, and thumped the empty bottle on the table. “Where are your wits, Katherine? What should I make of this, to find my house made into a brothel full of drunken soldiers? What if I’d not returned when I had? Where would this have led?”

  “Oh, yes, Father, and where were you?” I demanded, setting my arms akimbo. It did not take much observation to see that he wore the same clothes from the day before, the once-impeccable lace neckcloth now spotted with last night’s wine and his stockings drooping about his ankles, though somewhere he’d met with a barber to shave his jaw clean. “I haven’t seen you since yesterday noon. What brothel were you attending all the night long, that you might recognize another here?”

  “That is none of your affair, Katherine,” he said, warning enough in his voice if I’d but paused to hear it.

  “Is Mrs. Knapp still in your favor?” I demanded, my voice rising shrill. “Or was it Mrs. Hewes again? Faith, Father, there have been so many that I cannot recall them all.”

  He took a deep breath, and to my surprise replied with far more calm than I was showing. “I have been with Mrs. Ayscough.”

  “Mrs. Ayscough?” This was a name new to me. “Which playhouse does she frequent? Is she with the King’s Company, or the duke’s?”

  “Neither,” he said curtly. “She is a most respectable lady, sister to a barrister in Gray’s Inn, and given your behavior here this day, you are not fit so much as to speak her name.”

  I gasped, as shocked as if he’d struck me. In all our frolics together since Mama had left, he had never once taken the part of another woman against me like this. I stepped back from him and folded my arms over my chest, striving to recover. Father would never dally with any sister to a barrister. Surely this must be some jest of his, some perverse contrivance to increase my own guilt. Even the name he’d concocted for this woman—Ayscough—sounded like a prank.

  “If she is so respectable, Father,” I said, raising my chin, “then I do not understand what you see in her.”

  “That is between the lady and me, Katherine.” Though I’d backed from him, he now followed, unwilling to make this any easier for me. “What concerns me now is you, and this scene here today. How did you come to know those two soldiers?”

  “Jane and I met them in the park,” I said, a perfectly harmless explanation. “Feeding ducks by the canal. They seemed agreeable, and—”

  “Have you learned nothing of the world by now?” he asked, incredulous. “Every man is base at heart, whether he is highborn or lowborn, a beggar or a prince, or even an agreeable rascal near the canal.”

  “But you have always told me that I am to be free to find love where I choose, just as you have,” I protested. “You’ve said no one should go against their hearts for love.”

  His expression hardened, which I’d not expected. “I meant that you should wed a gentleman of your own rank or better as you pleased, not give yourself to any snorting young buck who paws the ground before you. Are you still a virgin, or is your maidenhead a memory?”

  I flushed, shamed to be asked such a thing by my own father. In truth I was the most skittish maid imaginable, for all my bold and brazen talk. Among the actresses in the playhouse, I’d seen the consequences of a big belly and a faithless lover who’d fled, and I could not fathom how a moment’s pleasure could possibly be great enough in the balance against so much ruin and suffering. Besides, with my large marriage portion, I knew I was a considerable prize, and I’d no wish to squander my maidenhead for nothing in return.

  “You know me, Father,” I said. “I would never have granted that last favor.”

  “If you grant everything else, Katherine,” he said bluntly, “then most men will think it their right to claim the rest whether you wish it or not, and you will be the one left with a brat in your belly.”

  “I am not such a fool as that!”

  “What woman is?” He grunted. “Perhaps I should just make a match for you now with some dull, honest lordling and be done with it, and give you over to a husband’s keeping.”

  “No, Father, please!” I cried. To be wed to some stranger and taken away off to breed in the country was the sorry fate of most girls of my rank. I’d always smugly believed that, because of Father and my fortune, I’d be saved from such gloomy respectability. “You cannot mean to do that!”

  “What, to make a modest, respectable woman of you? Is that the greatest curse I can cast at my daughter?” He sighed deeply, and I wonder if in that moment he’d any regret for how I had been raised. “I wish you to be happy, Katherine, and I wish you to find the love that will make you so. But I ask that you be a little nicer in your hunting, and take care after your own safety. I have little desire to return home to find you murdered or worse. No more soldiers in my parlor, mind?”

  “No, Father,” I said meekly, kissing his cheek by way of apology. “No soldiers, I vow.”

  “No soldiers,” he repeated with a mournful air. “How neatly you parse that, Daughter! No soldiers, no, which is to say yo
u’ll not give up sailors, jugglers, cutpurses, or rat catchers.”

  For the first time since he’d returned, I smiled, and slyly, too. “You forget all the rogues to be found at Southwark Fair. I could be like Lady Castlemaine, and pluck up another Jacob Hall.”

  “Lady Castlemaine!” he exclaimed, arching his brows with mock horror. Despite her role as a royal mistress, the beautiful Countess of Castlemaine was notorious for her wide taste in lovers beyond the king, and had most recently taken the celebrated ropedancer Jacob Hall into her bed. “Why not choose Messalina herself as your patroness? Lady Castlemaine, indeed.”

  “You must grant that she’s done very well for herself and her children,” I said, teasing yet telling the truth as well. Lady Castlemaine had prospered as a royal favorite, receiving titles, jewels, rich livings, and power from the king in return for her wantonness. I slipped my arm around Father’s waist. “By comparison I am not so very wicked at all, am I?”

  “No, but then, you are still very young, with years to achieve the same degree of infamy, though please God I will not live to see it if you do.” Gently he patted my back as he’d done when I’d been a little child. “Now come, call your maidservant and make yourself ready. We’ll leave in an hour.”

  “Leave, Father?” I asked, surprised. “For where?”

  “Why, for Whitehall, of course,” he said, and winked. “I can’t very well leave you here alone to make more mischief, can I, Kattypillar?”

  There was no better way to describe my Father’s influence upon my life than this. He had begun by chiding me for behaving too wantonly, then had ended with making jests about the most infamous harlot of our time. Finally, by way of a punishment, he was taking me with him to the Court where Lady Castlemaine reigned like another queen. His anger had melted as swiftly as frost before the sun of his indulgent affection for me. I’d been forgiven with the ease of one friend to another, rather than with the severity a parent should on occasion show toward a wayward child. Was it any wonder that, as contrite as I’d been, I’d no real intention of heeding his warning?

  But so it was between Father and me, and as I ran off happily to dress, I considered only how much he must love me, and gave not a thought to the disasters that his indulgence might bring to us both.

  AMONG ALL THE PALACES OWNED BY the royal family, there was no other hall so grand as the Banqueting House in Whitehall. It had been conceived fifty years before as a tribute to the glorious buildings of Imperial Rome, and King James I had sent his architect, Inigo Jones, clear to Italy for inspiration. The hall he’d created was an imposing display of snowy pilasters and gilded volutes, all crowned by three glorious paintings in the ceiling overhead by Sir Peter Paul Rubens. There had been nothing like it at the time in England, and when filled with bejeweled courtiers beneath scores of candles, it remained imposing enough to steal the breath away from even the most jaded visiting Frenchmen.

  At least it did for me. I stood beside Father against the east wall of this grand room and stared upward at its lavish carved walls picked in gold and a ceiling painted to look as if the very heavens had opened overhead. Surely this was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen, made more beautiful by the company gathered beneath the dozens of candles.

  The king prized beauty and youth among his courtiers, and though he would be forty himself this year, most of those closest to him, like Father and his friends, were a good deal younger. Though tonight’s entertainment was nothing so special as a ball or masque, all the ladies in attendance wore costly dress, with plumes in their hair and as many jewels as could be draped over their person. The gentlemen followed their lead, with ribbons tied into their elaborately curled wigs, silken suits of every possible color, and gaudy jewels on their fingers, on the scabbards of their swords, on the ornaments on their doublets, or even as a single dangling earring, after the fashion of the old king.

  I was as elegantly dressed as any of them, especially for a lady my age. The rose-colored silk of my gown brought the same pleasant color to my cheeks, and the full sleeves with their cunningly pinked edges and loops of gold ribbon gave grace to my angular form. Once my heavy dark hair had been drawn back from my face to better show my eyes (my best feature), the locks had been curled with an iron and made to stay with sugar water. I’d fat pearls hanging from my ears and more about my throat, and on my finger was the matching pearl and garnet ring that Father had given me on my last birthday. Fluttering my fan, I felt every bit a part of the Court, a place I was sure I’d been born to be.

  The performers were a small chorus of Frenchmen with several musicians besides, all recently come from Versailles. I’ll grant that their voices were sweet as holy angels’, and on another day perhaps I would have enjoyed their music no end. But it had been months since I’d been inside Whitehall, and I was far too excited to pay heed to mere music, however sweetly sung. What I wished to know was the latest scandal regarding all the grand folk before me, and Father, being Father, was happy enough to oblige.

  “Who is that black-haired lady beside the king?” I asked softly, using my painted fan to shield my words. While most of us stood or sat on benches, the king and queen had armchairs to represent their thrones, set squarely before the musicians. The queen, Catherine of Braganza (how disappointing it was to me that we bore the same saint’s name!), was as always dull-looking and ill at ease, her hands resting awkwardly outstretched on the arms of the chair. With her as queen, it was easy to understand why this was not a court where wedded wives held sway, however highborn they might be. Around the royal couple sat several other favored friends and attendants in chairs, but it was the lady sitting on a cushioned stool to the right of His Majesty that had caught my eye.

  “There,” I said, tipping my chin in her direction. “The lady who’s captured the king’s attention. Who is that?”

  “Ahh, that’s his newest infatuation,” Father said with unabashed relish. “Louise de Keroualle is her name.”

  “What of Nelly?” I asked with surprise. When last I’d seen the actress, not a fortnight before, she’d been basking still in the royal affection, with the king’s curly-haired babe on her knee in the fine new house that His Majesty had leased for her, at the east end of Pall Mall.

  “Oh, Nelly still has her charms for him, there’s no doubt of that,” Father assured me, “but she’s too lowborn to hold his interest forever. The mademoiselle, however, is the daughter of a French nobleman, and the king has always had a taste for French fare.”

  He gathered the fingers on one hand and kissed the tips in a French salute. “The lady was in Madame’s household when he first spied her, and with Madame’s death, Louis himself decided she’d make a pretty gift to Charles. She’s on the palace rolls now as a maid of honor to Her Majesty, but no one is fooled, except perhaps the lady herself, who plays that she’s too fine to do what she must, and that is to be fucked by the king in the name of France.”

  I listened, carefully sorting through so much information. I knew the lady Father referred to only as “Madame” was the king’s youngest sister, the royal princess Henriette, who had been wed to Louis’s brother, Monsieur. Madame had died last summer in Paris, and may or may not have been poisoned; the scandal had been very great, and the king had been devastated by his sister’s death. If this French mademoiselle could console him, why, then this might be the most clever gift that Louis had ever sent.

  “She is very pretty,” I admitted, unable to keep the wistfulness from my voice. The young Frenchwoman’s beauty was perfectly in fashion: she was plump and pale, with round rosy cheeks and lips and sleepy wanton’s eyes. Beneath the king’s hungry gaze, her tight-laced breasts quivered like snowy offerings, her black hair trailing in natural ringlets over her shoulders. “I don’t wonder that His Majesty desires her.”

  “Along with every gentleman in this hall,” Father said, unconsciously smiling himself as he studied the lady. “It was Buckingham’s chore to bring her from France last autumn, and he claims it took a
bottle of brandy every night to make him contain his lust for her, or else he would have despoiled the royal gift before it had even crossed the Channel.”

  While the queen steadfastly listened to the musicians, I watched the king take Mademoiselle de Keroualle’s dimpled hand and raise it to his lips, his dark gaze fair smoldering with desire. She in turn did no more than grant him the most tremulous of smiles. It was a pretty sight to see him strive to woo her with such elegance, romantic enough to make me sigh with sympathetic longing. Would that some gentleman would gaze at me like that!

  “Why doesn’t she permit His Majesty to be her lover?” I asked my father, mystified. “He is the king. He is most charming and agreeable. He’ll grant her everything she could ever want.”

  Father shrugged. “The king wishes he knew that answer, too, considering that’s the only reason she’s here. Perhaps she’s frightened of Castlemaine’s wrath. God knows I’d be.”

  I searched about for the infamous countess. “There she is, Father, beneath the window. She doesn’t look very wrathful to me.”

  “You’ve never seen her in a rage, throwing crockery and shrieking like a harpy.” Father shuddered dramatically. “It only proves how gifted she must be in other areas that the king’s put up with her for over ten years.”

  I thought it was easy enough to see why. Tall and voluptuous, Lady Castlemaine had a presence that the Frenchwoman never would, and that much enhanced by the ransom of sapphires around her elegant throat. Though the countess was no longer alone in the king’s affections nor was her beauty the freshest, being nearly thirty and having borne a half dozen children, she still maintained her place at Court and in the king’s heart. She was secure enough that even now she did not cling to the king’s side, but wandered freely about the room. Yet as fascinated as I was by her, it wasn’t her jewels that had caught my eye.