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

by Holloway Scott, Susan

  “He shouldn’t be making jests about the Fall and temptation to Katherine,” Lady Sedley said primly. “It’s not appropriate for him to speak to a lady her age regarding original sin.”

  Father snorted. “Oh, I doubt any of it was particularly original, considering what is said of His Highness’s forthright manner of sinning. Bitchery, that’s I’ve heard it called.”

  Lady Sedley’s expression grew pained, but I only laughed, and longed for the days when Father had always spoken thus. The royal brothers were always ripe targets for infamy and slander. In his bedchamber His Highness might well behave like a lustful, slavering hound covering a bitch in heat. How would I know otherwise? The two times he’d addressed me, he’d been kind and direct, and no less respectful than any other gentleman at Court.

  Of course, there had also been the way the duke had ogled my legs, and how I’d liked his attention and not bothered to shield my limbs with any decorous haste, but Father and Lady Sedley need not hear of that. Nor need they hear of how he’d looked at me when he’d bitten my apple, or how it had been enough to make my heart race and my knees weaken beneath me.

  No, they need know none of that.

  Father must have finally realized his wife’s unhappiness, for his laughter faded to a smile, and with a sigh he settled back in his chair.

  “Ah, no matter, no matter,” he said, patting the sides of his waist-coated belly contentedly as he always did after enjoying a meal. “His Highness will soon be a bridegroom again, with another young creature leading him through his paces to get an heir.”

  “Has the bride been decided, then?” Lady Sedley asked, clearly relieved that the conversation had shifted to a more suitable subject. “Have you learned that?”

  “Not only decided, but wed,” Father said. “There was talk of nothing else at Whitehall this day. The Italian Princess Mary Beatrice d’Este is the bride. Lord Peterborough himself stood in place for the duke as the vows were said in the lady’s palace in Modena.”

  Still in the glow of the duke’s earlier attention to me, this talk of his new bride did not concern me. I’d seen how it was with royal weddings, how they were affairs of state, not the heart, or even desire.

  “They say she has already begun her passage to England and, with favorable weather, should arrive by Christmas,” Father continued. “Mary Beatrice; that’s our new duchess.”

  “An Italian, and a Papist, from the very lap of Rome.” Lady Sedley shook her head in disgust. “She is niece to the Pope himself, and you know she will take her orders directly from him. That is not what the duke needed, nor England, either. Why not a good Protestant princess?”

  “You forget, my dear, that much of the Continent does follow Rome,” Father said mildly. “Protestant princesses don’t grow on vines, you know. Peterborough did his best, but there were simply none to be had.”

  Lady Sedley shook her head. “But consider the Court as it stands, Charles. The queen is Romish, her ladies are Romish, the duke’s first wife made her conversion before she died, and there’s plenty who think His Highness has done the same.”

  “You’ve no proof of that.” Father had always been tolerant of Papists, seeing no harm in them, despite their silly trappings and rigmarole. I was not so certain. I hadn’t forgotten how the Romish priests had seduced my mother away from Father and me, and perhaps even from her natural wits.

  “I’ve heard the duke now wears a rosary hidden beneath his waistcoat,” my stepmother said with righteous Protestant fervor. “I’ve heard he fingers it whenever he thinks no one is looking.”

  “I didn’t see any rosary about His Highness’s person today,” I said, hoping the conversation would return to more interesting subjects, such as me. “He wore spurs on his boots, but no rosary.”

  But Lady Sedley ignored me as if I’d not spoken at all. “I’ve heard His Highness has had a confessional built within St. James’s. You know as well as anyone that His Highness refused to swear he wasn’t a Papist when the Test Act was passed.”

  “He hasn’t yet,” Father said. Even I knew of the Test Act, passed earlier in the year by Parliament. Designed to sniff out Papists in the military and the government, the Test Act required all who held a position of trust to swear that they were Anglicans, or resign their place. Already scores of Catholics had been forced to give up their posts, including Lady Castlemaine and Lord Clifford, and, of course, the duke himself, who’d been forced to step down from his leadership of the Admiralty—a considerable sacrifice for him who loved the navy and the sea.

  “He hasn’t yet, no, nor will he ever pledge himself as he should to the rightful church,” Lady Sedley said. “He won’t, because he can’t, having given his soul away to Rome. When was the last time he attended services with the king, instead of skulking off among his priests? I can only imagine what plots they’re contriving together.”

  “Oh, Ann, please,” Father said. “Next you’ll be waving the warming pan beneath our bedstead each night to scare away the lurking Jesuits.”

  “Not beneath our bedstead, no,” she admitted reluctantly. “But it’s wise to be watchful when even the king’s latest harlot is a Papist, and a French one at that. And now we’re to have an Italian for our new duchess. Parliament will be in a frenzy. Whatever was His Majesty thinking, to permit such a match?”

  “He was thinking that the lady is young, strong, and healthy enough for breeding any number of princelings,” Father said wearily, motioning for the manservant to refill our glasses. “Poor young miss, to be taken from her home and her family and carried across the sea to wed a man she’s never met! The difference between our customs and her own will be difficult for her, to be sure, but she is only fifteen, and I suppose will soon adapt to English ways.”

  Fifteen, I thought with astonishment, the same age as I. Perhaps that was why Father was showing such sympathy toward the princess, and why, too, he was gazing at me with indulgent tenderness across the table.

  For myself, I’d not paid much heed to the talk of a new duchess, though it had been everywhere in Londoners’ mouths this past summer. The rumors had carried the marks of an old ballad tale: the Earl of Peterborough traipsing about from one royal court to another with his casket of royal jewels (valued, it was whispered, at more than £20,000, the bait for a princess being extravagant) as he tried to find a suitable bride for His Highness. The chance to become Queen of England was not thought to be a sufficient lure alone. Most of the other, more ancient royal families on the Continent considered England to be a mean, poor, uncivilized country, and unworthy of their daughters. Everyone at Court knew that Lord Peterborough had found few prospects, and that his reports to the king had been discouraging; this princess was too old, that one too homely, while another refused to risk her Catholic soul for life in a Protestant land.

  But Mary Beatrice d’Este of the Duchy of Modena had been agreeable, and had agreed. Or rather, most likely her brother had agreed for her. If I’d thought I had too many rules to my life, what must it be like for an Italian princess? Was she truly bound to the Pope, as my stepmother feared, and many other Englishmen with her? It was hard to conceive of so young a lady capable of all the dangerous mischief ascribed to her. Was she in fact beautiful, or had Lord Peterborough exaggerated, as was expected? Before Catherine of Braganza had arrived from Portugal to wed His Majesty, she, too, had been lauded as a beauty, while the truth had proved quite otherwise. Would this Mary Beatrice have rabbit’s teeth, or thin, greasy hair, or be stooped or bent or limping?

  “To the health of Her Royal Highness, the Duchess of York,” Father said, standing as he raised his glass, and Lady Sedley and I did the same. “May she prosper and find happiness here in England, and enjoy the love and loyalty of her people.”

  Solemnly I drank to the new duchess. Through good times and ill, the Sedleys had always been loyal to the royal family, and I’d be no different. I emptied my glass, the wine sweet on my tongue, and thought of how odd it seemed to pledge myself to a la
dy my own age.

  And even as I did, I wondered if the princess would wear emerald-colored stockings that would catch the duke’s admiring eye.

  “AT LAST YOU’VE COME, KATHERINE,” Jane Holcomb said as I climbed into the hackney. “You’re so late, I was sure you’d turned coward and kept away.”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” I said, squeezing next to her while the two gentlemen across from us grinned at me through the murky light of the hackney’s lantern. “One of our maidservants had the toothache and had come down to the kitchen. I had to wait until she returned to her bed.”

  “I’m glad you escaped, Katherine,” said George, Jane’s older brother. “It would have been a sin not to have you with us, tonight of all nights.”

  I smiled, more from excitement than for his sake. Poor George Holcomb; while he professed a great passion for me, I’d found it impossible to return his affection. He was every bit his sister’s equal in empty heads, despite being a student at Oxford. Besides, I suspected much of his ardor was more for my fortune than my person.

  “It’s Guy Fawkes Night, George, and I vow I wouldn’t miss it for anything,” I declared, tightening the ribbons on the velvet mask that covered most of my face. Jane was masked, too. It was safer for ladies at night, and besides, it was much more exciting to be mysterious. “The glorious Fifth of November! Lady Sedley would have had to chain me to my bed to keep me from coming out tonight.”

  I felt a small pang of guilt. Tonight it hadn’t been only my stepmother who’d ordered me to remain at home, but Father, too. Guy Fawkes Night ostensibly honored the anniversary of the thwarting of a long-ago plot to murder King James I, his family, and the entire House of Lords with a sizable charge of gunpowder placed beneath it. A rogue named Guy Fawkes had led the plot, with much assistance from foreign-born Catholics. Though Fawkes hadn’t succeeded in igniting anything, the celebration remained an excuse for fireworks and bonfires and burning straw effigies of Fawkes and the Pope, and general drinking and frolic.

  It was a noisy and thoroughly English holiday, and in past years Father and I had gone together to see some of the most elaborate bonfires. One year he’d even taken me to stand on the roof of Whitehall with the king and queen, the better to view the bonfires scattered at various street crossings around the city, and then we’d gone to watch another, enormous bonfire before Nell Gwyn’s house in Pall Mall.

  But this year would be different. Ever since the marriage of the Duke of York to Mary Beatrice of Modena had been announced, London had been an unsettled place. That unsettlement had ranged from mild disgust with the royal match, to a fearsome hatred for all things and people related to the Catholic faith. All foreigners had been at risk for their very lives, and there were many rumors both of menacing Jesuits infiltrating the city through the bride’s wedding party, and of innocent people chased and beaten in the streets because of their faith.

  The burning of pope effigies that were a customary part of Guy Fawkes Night now held a more ominous edge to them, and some of the bonfire builders were already promising to toss effigies of the Italian princess into the flames as well. Privately His Majesty himself had said that it was just as well the lady had not yet reached England, or he must fear for her safety. That had been enough for Father. If the king (who was famously trusting and indulgent of his people) was concerned that the celebrations might grow out of hand, then Father was certain I’d no place in the middle of it.

  Yet here I was, doing exactly as he’d forbidden. With the blind confidence—and arrogance—of youth, I was sure no ill would befall me so long as I was with my friends. Wasn’t he doing much the same, watching the bonfires with the king and the rest of the Court? I was counting on returning to my bed before either he returned or Mrs. Sedley awoke. It was my usual trick, and one that had worked for me many times before. If they didn’t know I’d disobeyed, then I really hadn’t, had I?

  “ ‘Chained to your bed’; now, that’s a tempting diversion, Katherine,” teased Ralph Walker, George’s friend from school, and the fourth of our party. Another younger son, his family had him marked for the ministry, though I could scarce imagine one less suited to such a calling. “How I should like to watch that!”

  “Watching’s all the diversion you’ll ever have, you dog,” I said, shoving his knee away from mine. “That, and your own five-fingered servant. What lady would have you?”

  “You would, my darling,” he said, sighing as he pretended to be lovesick for my sake, “if you’d but come to your senses. What pretty times we could have in your bed together, my dear Miss Sedley!”

  The others laughed, while I didn’t deign to answer his foolishness. Instead I only rolled my eyes with disgust behind my mask as I took the bottle of wine Jane had passed to me. The wine was smuggled Spanish and rough to the taste, but its heat was welcome on the chilly November night.

  “You know Katherine’s resolved not to take any lover, Ralph, especially not so loathsome a toad as you,” Jane said. “Her maidenhead’s reserved for a husband, and no other.”

  “To have a husband, Janie, I must first be a wife,” I said wearily, for she and I had shared this same conversation a hundred times before, “and I’ve yet to understand the merit in that sorry state. Everything for the man, and nothing left for the lady. An English wife’s little better than a pitiful black African, bound in slavery to the master that’s bought her.”

  “Then why waste your life without the pleasures of love?” Ralph asked, leering at me in the half-light of the hackney. “Bid me sweetly, and I’ll be happy to rid you of that troublesome maidenhead.”

  “Oh, yes, and your own in the bargain,” I scoffed. Jane and I often jested like this, talking bold as if we were jaded courtiers ourselves. “It’s only that I’ve yet to find a gentleman worth the bothering.”

  Now, I’ll grant I was dissembling a bit. In truth I’d begun to dream I’d indeed found such a man, but not that I’d ever confess it to my friends.

  “There’s always a convent,” George said, taking his own turn with the wine. “You could go become a nun like your mother.”

  I went very still, shocked he’d dare say such a thing, even with his tongue loosened by wine. Swiftly I looked to Janie, who was concentrating on something in her lap to avoid my gaze. It had been long into our friendship before I’d confided the truth about my mother, a confidence I now mightily regretted.

  “A plague on your ignorance, George,” I said defensively. “My mother was raised in the Romish faith and follows it still, but she is not a nun.”

  “But she is a Papist.” There was a cruel edge to his voice that I’d never heard before from him. “You can’t claim she’s not, living in a convent as she does. And you’re at least half a Papist yourself, coming from such a mother.”

  “I am my mother’s daughter, yes,” I said warmly, “but I am not a Papist.”

  No one spoke, and worse, they were all looking from the coach’s windows as if the most fascinating sights imaginable lay just outside.

  “I’m not a Papist,” I said again, wishing I didn’t sound quite so desperate. “And to the devil with you all if you believe otherwise.”

  “Oh, be easy, Katherine,” Jane said at last. “It’s of no account.”

  Before I could answer, George softly began to sing the little rhyme we’d all learned as children.

  Remember, remember the Fifth of November,

  Gunpowder, Treason, and Plot,

  I know of no reason

  Why gunpowder Treason

  Should ever be forgot.

  The others began to sing with him, over and over and more and more raucously, until I, too, joined the singing, as the easiest way to restore the good humor to our little party.

  But as we stopped by first one bonfire and then another, I realized my joy in the night was gone. Oh, I drank and sang and laughed with the others, but I couldn’t give myself over to the revelry. I felt different; I felt vulnerable and helpless to defend myself. This year was differ
ent, and the suspicion of all things Catholic that I’d glimpsed in my friends seemed a thousand times worse around the bonfires.

  The last fire we stopped to view was by far the largest, staged at the wide end of the Strand where a Maypole was usually raised. By the time we arrived, the crowd of celebrants was already too thick for us to draw close in a carriage, forcing us to climb down and go the rest of the way to the crossing by foot.

  The pyramid-shaped pyre was nearly as tall as the rooftops of the surrounding houses, and those who’d built it must have been collecting wood and other rubbish for weeks beforehand. Pitch-soaked knots of wood and sticks daubed with tar had been planted deep within, so as to make the fire burn long and bright. Those who’d set the fire still brandished their torches as they danced around the edges, black, devilish silhouettes before the bright flames. The great heat from so large a fire cut through the chill November night, flushing my face with its glow.

  The crowd rumbled with an ominous excitement, made up as it was of mostly men and low women who were likewise mostly drunk. Nor was it a happy, jovial drunkenness, but a mean one, full of vicious oaths and slanders against Papists and the Pope, and how they should be served. Father had been right: this was no place for me, or for any lady. Even masked as I was, I clung close to George and Ralph, as did Jane, and prayed they’d tire of the spectacle soon so we might leave. Not that such good judgment seemed likely. By the dancing light of the flames, the faces of our two gentlemen were as twisted and as ravenous as any of the sailors and apprentices around us.

  Suddenly a great roar rose from the crowd. From one of the side streets, the first of the straw figures was carried forward: a life-sized creation of Guy Fawkes himself in his tall-crowned hat, his straw neck stretched grotesquely as he dangled from his gallows. With more cheers, he was tossed into the flames, the figure quickly falling to pieces as the dry straw was consumed.