He pointedly turned from me, instead dropping into his armchair. The merriness that usually wreathed his face was nowhere to be found, and his cheeks seemed sunken with misery and carved with lines that hadn’t been there when last we’d met.
“It is bad enough that you’re a whore, Katherine,” he continued, “but I’d never marked you for a coward as well. Why did you not warn me of your intent? Why skulk off without a single word to me, off to Newmarket like some jockey’s trull?”
I looked down at my oversized castor-fur muff, absently swinging it back and forth on my wrists. “Is that true, Father? Would it truly have made it any easier for you to bear if you’d known before?”
“I would rather have heard it from you, yes, than from a score of other spiteful tongues,” he said wearily. “His Majesty himself spoke of it this morning to me, asking if I were pleased to see my daughter in his brother’s bed, with the same good cheer he’d employ to inquire after the weather, damn him.”
To hear Father curse the king shocked me more deeply than hearing him call me a whore.
“Then I was a coward,” I admitted. “I did wish to tell you, but I never could find the words to begin, knowing how unhappy I was sure to make you.”
“Then why do it at all?” he asked. “If you dreaded the words that would make me unhappy, then why didn’t you likewise save me the pain that your actions have caused me? Unless it was not your choice at all. Unless His Grace—”
“It was as much my choice as his,” I interrupted, quick to defend my lover. “There was no rape or ravishment, no matter what you might have heard. He never forced any advantage that I didn’t freely grant.”
“Then why, Katherine?” he asked with despair. “Why would you ruin yourself like this?”
“Because—because he makes me happy, Father,” I said, as truthful a confession as I could make. “I tried to do as you wished, and find a husband who could do as much for me, and I never could find one who pleases me half as much as His Grace.”
“But he is more than twice your age!” he cried. “He is wed to another, with daughters grown and wed!”
“It matters not to me,” I insisted, “for he makes me happy. Isn’t that what you’ve always said you wished for me?”
“But not like this,” he said, shaking his head. “Never like this. To a dull-witted, stubborn prince who would destroy his country for the sake of a misbegotten faith!”
“He’s not dull-witted, Father, and he loves England and her people too well to ever wish them harm,” I said heatedly. “Besides, I’m still of our Church. I won’t be led astray to Rome.”
Father didn’t seem to hear me, or pretended as much. “There is still a breath of hope, of course. Oh, you will be the seven-days’ wonder, to be sure, but at least you limited your intrigue to Newmarket. If you can end it now, before Her Highness returns from the Hague, then your misstep will soon be forgotten. You could travel to Paris, or even to Venice, with time away from England so that the Court will forget you.”
“But that isn’t what I want,” I protested, “nor does His Highness wish to part with me. It’s too late for that, anyway.”
He lowered his chin, likely already guessing the worst, and thus I bravely plunged ahead, armed only with the truth.
“Our ‘intrigue,’ as you call it, was begun long before Newmarket, and before the duchess journeyed abroad,” I said. “The duke has pledged to keep me properly as his mistress as soon as I withdraw from the duchess’s household and our affairs can be arranged. For me, Father, and for my child. Our child.”
“Your bastard, you mean.” He groaned, and closed his eyes. “Merciful heaven, what manner of vengeful punishment is this upon me?”
“It is no punishment at all, Father!” I cried, coming to kneel beside his chair. “You and Lady Sedley are proof enough that the bonds of marriage aren’t necessary for those who wish to be together. The bastard son that you have sired with Lady Sedley—”
“He is my son, Katherine, as surely as you are my daughter,” he said furiously. “I won’t hear my boy tossed in with that sniveling low herd of royal bastards.”
I sat back on my heels, stunned. “But it will be my child as well as the duke’s, and your grandchild, of your own blood. Can you not bring yourself to give your blessing?”
He rose abruptly and crossed the room, as if he could not bear to be near to me. “You have already acted without my blessing, Katherine. I see no purpose to condoning what you have done by giving you an empty blessing now.”
“Because you are my father,” I said from my knees, my heart breaking to hear such cruel words from the man I’d always believed had loved me. “Because despite what I have done to displease you, I am still your daughter, by birth and blood.”
Yet not even that plea could soften him toward me. Instead he opened the door, determined to abandon me for the first time in my life.
“You’ll learn soon enough the consequences of what you have done, Katherine,” he said, looking past me. “When you do, you’ll have need of far greater forgiveness than mine, and may God in his infinite mercy grant it.”
Chapter Sixteen
ST. JAMES’S PALACE, LONDON
October 1678
When I’d left my father’s house in Bloomsbury Square, I believed that the consequences that he had threatened to me were all of his own doing. But as the last of summer slipped into autumn, I realized that being tied to James was far more complicated than I’d realized, and far more dangerous as well.
I had, of course, heard of the presumed plot by the Jesuits to murder the king, and the man Titus Oates who vowed he knew every detail of it. In our first days at Newmarket, Oates and his tale were much discussed, though usually with mocking derision. He’d soon been forgotten in the more interesting rush of racing and frolics, and I do not believe that even James spoke of the man once in our time together.
But in London, Lord Danby had patiently continued his investigation of Oates’s endless accusations and reports. Everything was sworn under oath before a well-respected magistrate, Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, and the testimony swelled to more than eighty separate articles. The names, dates, and insinuations astonished the councilors in charge of reviewing them. In addition to the Jesuits (who were by tradition blamed for most every misfortune that occurred in town, from a falling tea cake to the Great Fire of fourteen years before), Oates accused several Catholic lords and even James’s own secretary, Mr. Coleman, claiming that Coleman, a Catholic himself, maintained an extensive, treasonous correspondence with the French and the Papacy on James’s behalf. Sir Edmund himself warned James, and suggested that if such questionable letters did exist, they should better be destroyed.
Again, no one would have paid much heed to this, let alone read Oates’s endless testimony, but the day after Sir Edmund had finished his duties, he vanished. Several days later his battered and decaying corpse, run through with his own sword, was found in the brush on Primrose Hill. Though most likely the magistrate was murdered by unknown thieves, it did not take long for the rumors to take hold in London. Surely Jesuits must be to blame for the death, for just as surely Sir Edmund must have discovered the details of their murderous plot against the king.
Like a blistering boil that craves the lance for relief, the ever-present sentiments of Londoners against Papists gathered and grew into a hard, painful knot of fear and hatred. Instead of being disregarded, Oates’s testimony was now viewed as purest prophecy. He was called the savior of England and courted by great lords who should have known better, and even given lodgings at Whitehall. With Oates to offer suitable embellishment, Sir Edmund’s death was regarded to be only the first of an impending slaughter of Protestant innocents. Anyone with Catholic sympathies was suspected of being part of the conspiracy, and every Anglican took care to guard their homes and families against the coming invasion of Catholic forces. Gentlemen carried extra weapons in case of attack, and even ladies began tucking small pistols into their muffs a
nd pockets.
In such a climate, Danby’s councilors naturally requested all of Coleman’s papers, and naturally he provided them, including the key for all his personal ciphers. But to the shock of everyone—and most of all to James—Coleman had foolishly neglected to destroy incriminating letters as he’d been warned. Suddenly the most private and delicate of diplomatic correspondence was made public, linking James not only to Rome, but to the French king’s own confessors. Though James at once swore that Coleman had acted on his own and without his knowledge, the damage was done. As soon as Parliament reassembled in October, demands were made in both Houses that James be removed from all government affairs as well as from the succession, and in the Commons there were even preposterous calls that he be banished from the Court for the safety of the king.
To my personal sorrow, my own father was among those calling. His politics had allied him first with the Duke of Buckingham’s old Country Party, and now with the Petitioners, or the Whigs, as they were newly called, a pugnacious term borrowed from the old Scottish Whiggamores. Father found a happy place among these impetuous men, whose leaders included the Earl of Shaftesbury as well as his old friend Lord Dorset. He had even been among those gentlemen trusted with the task of translating Coleman’s French letters into English to be used at his trial.
I could not tell if Father spoke and acted so strongly against James on account of me, or if he might have viewed my fall from grace more kindly if I’d chosen another gentleman. Father didn’t give me the opportunity to ask, keeping his distance from me even in the times when we were both in attendance at Whitehall. I was cut deep by his rejection, and sorely missed his counsel, his wit, and most of all his love.
Through Father’s man of business, I was soon informed that he had also changed his will against me. My once-lavish portion of twenty thousand a year was reduced to six thousand, with an additional ten on Father’s death. The remainder of his estate was divided between Lady Sedley and his son. Father could not be more direct in his displeasure; clearly he believed that since I’d cast my lot with James, I must now look to him for practical support as well as for love.
Such was my life when Mary Beatrice returned from her pleasure-tour abroad. As a Papist, an Italian, a very niece to the Pope, she, too, was instantly suspected and at risk, and the fact that Coleman had often served as her secretary as well did not help her cause. Perhaps because of these much larger concerns threatening her household, she was not informed of my connection with her husband, and to my considerable surprise continued to treat me as she had before, a maid of honor in her household that she seldom deigned to notice.
It was just as well that she didn’t. By the time we’d returned from Newmarket, I’d quickened, and to my delight and wonder I’d felt the first flutterings of the babe within me. The swell of my belly showed now, though the same artful mantua-maker who had once toiled to provide me with a show of plumpness now contrived to mask the reality, and for the present my secret was still mine to keep.
Mine, and James’s. Amidst the turmoil around him, beleaguered on all sides, my visits to his bedchamber late at night had become one of his few remaining comforts. It had also become a place for confidences, for James had taken my father’s rejection as a sign of my true loyalty to him. He now considered me worthy of his most intimate trust, a friend as well as his mistress. How could I not be honored?
“Coleman will become a martyr,” he began gloomily one night in late November as we lay together. “Now that they’ve arrested and arraigned him for high treason, they’ll have no choice but to find him guilty. Parliament won’t accept any other verdict.”
I sighed, bunching the pillow bier behind my head so I could more comfortably see his face and thereby judge his humor. He was not good at dissembling, my dear James, a sorry lack for a royal prince. No matter that he spoke the sentiments proper for a given occasion; his face would always betray his true feelings, which did little to help his popularity. Charles was blessed with so much charm and guile that he’d only to smile whilst juggling even the most blatant falsehood to be praised for his conviction and make his audience as eager as his lapping dogs for more. But James was cursed with innate honesty and a conscience to match, and it was a sad testament to our times that he was often faulted for both.
“You’ll see I’m right, Katherine,” he continued dolefully. “They’ll believe every lie that Oates will swear and not one truth that Coleman will offer in defense of his own innocence. Anglicans may profess to loathe saints, but they’ll make one of Coleman if they martyr him over his loyalty to the True Church.”
“If they do, sir, then Coleman will be a martyr to his own stupidity, not his faith,” I said. “That man was warned with sufficient time to destroy any evidence that will be used against him, and yet he did not do it.”
“He believed in goodness to combat evil,” James said sadly. “He trusted too much in truth.”
“The one who’s trusted too much is you, sir, to let such a fool handle your affairs,” I said bluntly. “His empty-headed behavior has put you at risk, and for what? No, you have done the right thing by swearing you knew nothing of his infernal letters, and shaken Coleman’s dirt from your shoes.”
“But I did know,” he said. “He was only acting upon my orders, for the good of England, and now—”
“Oh, please, please, put that from your thoughts forever!” I cried with genuine concern, sitting upright to confront him. “If you say that before the wrong persons, then you, too, will be put in the Tower for treason, and I—I could not bear that, sir. I could not.”
He smiled crookedly. “You care that much what becomes of me, Katherine?”
“I do, sir,” I said, placing my open hand on his chest for emphasis. I did mean it, too. With each day and night, I had become more and more attached to him as my lover and as my friend, too, until it seemed as if James and our coming child had claimed the entirety of my life. Without my father’s affection, I would need James’s support to weather the coming months and the peril of childbirth.
But for now I gazed at him only with purest affection. “We make for a curious pairing, I know,” I said. “But you’re that dear to me, sir, that I cannot imagine my life without you in it.”
“Hah,” he said softly. “So you are to me, Katherine.”
“Then you understand why I won’t part with you,” I said tenderly. “My own dear sir! Sometimes I believe you’re too good a man for me, let alone for this country, though your enemies will never see it. A small measure of deceit would serve you well.”
That made him laugh. “Am I so honorable as that, that I must go begging like a mendicant for a portion of wickedness?”
“I’ll gladly share some of mine, if it would help.” I leaned forward to kiss him as lasciviously as I could, and he rolled me onto my back to kiss me in return.
“There,” he said. “Am I improved?”
“It’s a beginning,” I said. “Taking an Anglican to your bed will do that. But I vow you may require more.”
He chuckled, sliding his hand along my body, to come to rest upon the rising swell of my belly. By the reckoning of my midwife, I was nearly six months gone, and the babe’s kicks were strong enough that James could feel them, too. Gently he moved his hand until he felt the child respond, his smile broadening with happy wonder. Unlike many gentlemen who showed no interest in children beyond their siring, he had always been a doting father to his three surviving daughters as well as his children with Mrs. Churchill, and he showed every promise of doing the same with our babe.
“You can’t keep on as a maid of honor, Katherine,” he said. “Not like this. It’s past time you resigned your post and moved to more suitable quarters.”
“Not yet, sir, please,” I begged. “This way I can see you most every night. If I leave St. James’s, then you’ll forget me.”
“Nothing will keep me from you,” he declared with reassuring conviction. “I’m weary of feigning otherwise. Everyone kn
ows we dallied in Newmarket.”
“Her Highness does not, sir.” I was not such a fool as to dream of taking his wife’s place, the way that Lady Portsmouth had done when she’d first become Charles’s mistress. But my thoughts were confused where Mary Beatrice was concerned. How could it be otherwise, when I loved her husband and carried his child, yet had pledged my loyalty to serve her as best I could?
“What Her Highness knows or does not know is my concern, not yours,” he said firmly. “I would wish the world to know your place in my life, and in my heart.”
“More justly in your bed, sir,” I said wryly, even as tears of joy stung my eyes. “But best for you to keep matters as they are for now. You’ve trouble enough without adding me as well.”
“You are never trouble to me, Katherine,” he said solemnly, and as he began to kiss me, the babe shifted again beneath his wide-spread hand.
“Now, that’s a brave kick,” he said proudly. “The work of a strong, lusty babe.”
I smiled, though I wondered if he was thinking of all the other lost children he’d sired who’d not been strong and had died before they’d had time to live. Protectively I placed my hand beside his, reassuring myself of my own babe’s liveliness.
“She doesn’t like being jostled by you,” I said. “Faith, you should feel her jump and dance when we swive!”
“ ‘She’?” he asked curiously. “You’re convinced it’s a girl?”
“More likely wishing it so,” I admitted. “You’ve no need of a son from me. Bastard sons grow to vex and bring mischief to their fathers. You’ve only to look at Monmouth for proof of that.”
“Oh, Monmouth,” he said, and his expression darkened. There had been a time when James had been happy to be the favorite uncle to his brother’s oldest bastard. They’d shared a common interest in military affairs, and the younger duke had showed considerable promise. But Lord Monmouth was nearly thirty now, and so restless with ambition that he’d come to believe those Whigs who wanted him recognized as Charles’s Protestant heir in place of James himself.
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