What interested me the most, however, was how John Churchill and his wife, Sarah, swiftly shifted themselves from the Yorks’ household to that of the new Princess of Denmark. When I asked John why he had done this, he offered a roundabout explanation about Sarah’s long friendship with the princess and the value of their new posts. I told him I didn’t believe it, and with a sigh he then told me what must have been nearer the truth: that by joining the Denmarks’ household, he could be more at ease as a Protestant, yet remain in the duke’s favor. It was his usual form of loyalty tailored and stitched to serve his own needs, and that—that I believed.
But still I uneasily wondered about the deeper reason behind why John wished to distance himself from James in this fashion. To my mind, an ambitious man like John Churchill would stand to gain much more from remaining with the Duke of York. After the Rye House Plot had been discovered, James’s popularity with the people had risen dramatically. There is no better way to increase the value of something than to threaten to take it away, and so it was with both Charles and James among their subjects.
Which leads me to the second great spectacle at Court that fall, one that was far more sordid, but likewise far more discussed than the Denmarks’ wedding. During the summer, justice had been meted out briskly to all the Rye House conspirators. To no one’s surprise, only Lord Monmouth remained at large and in hiding, despite the order for his arrest. James fussed and fumed about this, and with good reason, too. If Charles truly wished his natural son in the Tower, then he would have been found. No man could hide that completely in London, especially no one as gaudy as Monmouth.
One evening in late November, most of the Court were gathered in the king’s chambers for Charles’s couchée, his last informal audience of the day before he retired to his bed. I sat close to James in perfect contentment on a cushioned stool beside him; Mary Beatrice was not in attendance, still recovering from bringing forth yet another stillborn infant. Despite the presence of several foreign ambassadors, Charles was at his most comfortable ease, laughing and jesting with James and the other gentlemen around him while Louise played his hostess, making sure the wine flowed freely.
Without either warning or announcement, the chamber door flew open, and Lord Monmouth ran into the room, followed closely by a pair of guards. With his face contorted in deepest emotion, His Grace cast himself down at the feet of his father and uncle with such force that he slid toward them across the polished stone floor. Wherever he had been in hiding, he’d managed to find a barber and a tailor, for he was as gorgeously dressed and arrayed as ever, down to the jewels on his fingers—hardly a convincing presentation for true penitence.
“Forgive me, Father, I beg you, please!” he cried, wailing like a street crier as the guards stood over him with their pikes in readiness. “I have never wished harm, not to you or my uncle. May I die at this moment if I ever so much as thought otherwise!”
He raised his face from the floor long enough so show that he wept, large, rolling tears on his cheeks. It was a curiously unpleasant sight, a full-grown gentleman like the duke groveling and debasing himself before his father and uncle, and neither Charles nor James was touched by it.
Charles motioned for the guards to step back. “Why have you come here, Monmouth?” he asked sharply. “You were forbidden the Court even before there was a warrant on your head. I should let these men take you directly, so that you might be put with those villains who are your friends in the Tower.”
“But they are not my friends, sir!” Lord Monmouth insisted. “They are false companions, traitors who inveigled me unwittingly into their plot. I beg you, sirs, you must believe me!”
Charles made a rumbling sound of disgust, a growl that Monmouth would have done well to heed.
“It was your own choice to keep such company,” he said. “You should scarce be surprised to find yourself charged with complicity.”
“How can I be faulted if they spoke their plan in my hearing, sir? How can my ears be blamed for what their false tongues did speak?” Beseeching, His Grace pressed his palms together, and when he saw no change in his father’s face, he turned toward James, where I could have told him he’d find even less sympathy. “Please, kind sir, know my good wishes for your continued health, and be merciful!”
“Once you were a soldier, Monmouth, and fought with bravery,” James said curtly. “Now you act as the lowest coward, without even the honor to stand by your own words or companions, however treasonous they are.”
“But, sir, I meant no treason, nor harm!”
“Every act you have committed these last two years has been treasonous,” Charles said wearily, “and we are done with it.”
He nodded, and the two guards seized His Grace by his brocaded shoulders, dragging him to his feet. He groaned, stumbling as if he were too overcome for his legs to support him, and let himself be drawn away from the chamber and to the Tower.
It was a spectacle indeed, as were the stormy glances exchanged by Charles and James. Neither spoke, and none of the rest of us who’d stood witness dared speak, either. If the king had finally lost patience with his much-indulged son, what, truly, was there left to say?
But later, when James and I had retired to his rooms, he found a great deal more to speak regarding his wayward nephew, and none of it was good.
“I have never seen such a craven, despicable performance as that,” he said as he jerked his arms from his coat. “Fah, that such a wretch shares my blood!”
I hurried to help him with his coat before he tore it in his anger. “As long as I’ve known His Grace he has been the same. There’s far more of his mother’s low blood in him than any Stuart.”
“Oh, his mother,” grumbled James, turning to let me play his manservant and unfasten the lace-trimmed stock around his neck. “If only my brother had not been led by his cock where that whoring wench was concerned.”
I unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and tugged the hem free of his breeches. I liked undressing him in this way, as if discovering him anew each time, and he liked it, too, having me touch him in unexpected small ways. I slid my hands inside his shirt, up along his flat belly and over his chest, and was rewarded with a low grunt of pleasure.
“Monmouth’s mother is long in her grave, sir, may she rest in eternal peace,” I whispered, “and she needs be of no concern to you.”
He closed his eyes. “Would that her bastard son were in his grave, too, so as not to vex me.”
“Oh, sir, you cannot mean that,” I said, even as my fingers bumped into the gold crucifix, replete with ruby stigmata, that he always wore around his neck, a secret mark of his Catholicism hidden by his shirt. “To wish your own nephew’s death—”
“He has already wished mine, and my brother’s as well,” he said. “He has acted on that wish, too. Now my brother must do his duty, and punish Monmouth as he deserves. He must die, Katherine, as is meet. For all our sakes, he must be punished.”
That made me shudder. I had gone to watch men die at Tyburn—who had not?—but I had never seen a peer lose his head on Tower Hill, let alone one that was known to me.
“His Lordship is a fool, sir, his vanity fed by the villains who would lead him,” I said. “With Shaftesbury gone, how much further wrong can he do?”
“There will be others who’ll rise up to take Shaftesbury’s place,” James said with gloomy conviction. “An ass never wants for someone to seize him by the halter and lead him. You’ll see. Halifax could well be next.”
“Lord Halifax likes his own place too well to risk it to Lord Monmouth.” I’d observed the thorough dislike that James bore Lord Halifax, and decided that it came from James’s unfortunate suspicion of any gentleman he perceived as being more clever than he was himself: a most unfortunate suspicion, considering how that would include at least half the peers and most of the Commons besides.
“Still and all, sir,” I said. “I do not believe Lord Monmouth is clever enough to be as wicked as you paint him, nor wic
ked enough to merit his death.”
“How much more wicked does he needs be, if not a murderer?”
“Some would argue, sir, that you are to blame for leaving the door open to him.” I thought again of that gory, golden crucifix, glittering there beneath the vulnerable hollow of his throat. “If you were not a Papist, then he could not present himself to the people as the Protestant princeling.”
He grunted again, reaching inside my dressing gown to find my breasts. “Some would say that you speak too plain of things that do not concern you.”
I began to unbutton his breeches, slowly, knowing exactly how to tempt and inflame him. It was not by my touch alone, but by words, too, the right words. I didn’t need worldly beauty for this, only wit, buoyed by love.
“Some would say that I do not speak plainly enough to you, sir,” I said. “Some would say I must say more, for your own betterment.”
“Some would be wrong,” he said with a catch in his breath. “Ah, Katherine, please.”
“Some being your fellow Papists, sir, your priests and confessors and learned Jesuits,” I whispered, reaching up to breathe each word into his willing ear as I eased his breeches from his hips. “Some who tell you I’m Satan in a woman’s guise. Some who warn you that each time you kiss me, and lie with me, and lose yourself in the willing flesh of my body, you put your soul in further peril. But some are wrong, sir, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” he gasped, pushing against my hand. “Yes.”
“Some can never know what binds you to me, and me to you.” My whisper was ragged and tattered as he caressed me in turn, my delight rising with his. I’d long ago learned how it was with him: the more he felt that I was the seductress, then the more innocent he was of whatever carnal sins we committed, and the more eager, too, he was for them. “But how could they know, sir? How could they?”
He shoved me back onto the bed by way of his answer, and kissed me hard, and when he mounted me I claimed him with the same ferocity.
Some could say whatever they pleased. He would never give me up, nor, truly, would I ever wish it otherwise.
AS MUCH AS JAMES MIGHT LONG for Charles to sacrifice Lord Monmouth to the fullest punishment that he deserved, it was not to be. Though clearly Charles’s patience was at an end, in his heart he still did love his wayward natural son too much to see him executed.
But Lord Monmouth would tax even the most devoted parent. First he offered a full confession to his part in the plot, which Charles joyfully accepted as a sign of his son finally showing a hint of responsibility. But no sooner had Charles accepted the confession than His Grace recanted and changed his story entirely in a shambling, stammering mess that was sadly more typical of his true character. When James furiously pressed for a full prosecution, Charles had no choice but to step in once again, and this time not merely send his son from England, but to banish him, making it clear that if he dared come wandering back, he’d face trial.
Even in banishment, His Lordship found mischief. Arriving in Holland, he somehow convinced the Prince of Orange that he’d come as an honored visitor, not as an outcast and outlaw, and so was welcomed by the Dutch accordingly. Both Charles and James interpreted this as a willful insult by the prince rather than a misunderstanding, and relations between the two Protestant countries were strained further on account of it.
Perhaps because Lord Monmouth had been so troublesome, the trials of the other gentleman-conspirators in the autumn of 1683 were quick, with Charles and James together participating in the interrogations. There was to be no gentle banishment for these defendants: Algernon Sydney was executed on Tower Hill in November, and William, Lord Russell, was beheaded in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Both became immediate martyrs for the Whigs, and Lord Russell’s insistent declaration at his trial that there were times when it was a man’s right and obligation to resist his government by force was called a brave rallying cry by the Whigs, and a dangerous threat by a deluded republican to the Tories.
As a prominent Whig, my father attended the executions, proudly standing where he could not be overlooked. With him were several of his closest friends from the last Parliament, including Lord Dorset, and together they hoped their presence would both comfort Lord Russell’s distraught family and show the Tories that they were not afraid.
“I did not see you there, Katherine,” Father said to me when I went to dine in Bloomsbury Square the following week. It was just the two of us, Lady Sedley having gone to visit her sister. “There were plenty of other Tory ladies gawking in their carriages, treating the death of an excellent gentleman as an idle amusement and no more.”
“I do not like executions, Father,” I said firmly, not wishing to quarrel over politics with him. “You know that. And if there were Tory ladies there to gawk, then several years ago there were also Whig ladies gathered around the entertainment of poor old Lord Stafford with his neck on the block. Whig martyr or Tory, I won’t make a frolic from anyone’s suffering like that.”
Father glanced at me shrewdly, helping himself to another serving of the fish. “I’m surprised old Jemmy didn’t force you to attend.”
“Oh, Father, enough,” I said. “Can’t we speak of something else? The weather? Your new play? That ill-mannered dog you bought for your son?”
“We could, but we won’t,” he said cheerfully. “We see you so seldom these days, Daughter, that when you do honor us with a visit, I believe we should let your presence dictate our conversation. So why weren’t you there beside old Jemmy, ready to glory in the bloodshed?”
“His Grace the duke had a reason for being there—to see justice served,” I said, pointedly using James’s title instead of Father’s flippant “old Jemmy.” “I know that if someone had tried to kill you, Father, you’d wish to be there when the table was turned.”
“The table wasn’t so much turned for Russell as overthrown,” Father said. “But I’ve no doubt Jemmy found it all most gratifying. Which of us Whigs will be next, I wonder?”
“None, I should hope,” I said firmly. “It would be very gratifying to His Majesty and the rest of us if we could have a spell of peace without any plots or conniving from either party.”
“Oh, indeed,” Father said expansively, sitting back in his chair so the servant could clear away his plates. “Peace is always desired foremost, even if it comes at the price of an Englishman’s liberty and freedom to speak his thoughts aloud.”
I set my wineglass down on the table with a thump. “Having a strong monarchy does not seem to have hindered the freedom of your speech, Father.”
Father folded his arms over his chest. “Of course it wouldn’t, Katherine,” he said with bitterness I’d not expected. “Unlike my old brethren from the Commons, no harm shall ever come to me, not so long as my daughter whores for her Tory master.”
“I didn’t come here for this, Father.” Briskly I began to rise from my chair, prepared to leave, when he caught my arm to stop me.
“Sit, Katherine,” he ordered, and when I tried to pull away, he held fast. “Sit. Sit. Damnation, but I vow you would try the temper of one of your duke’s saints.”
“Or your wife’s,” I countered hotly, trapped by his grasp as we jerked each other back and forth. “Your true wife. My mother. Or in your rants against Tory popery, have you forgotten your wife languishes still in a Romish nunnery?”
He released my arm at once, sinking back into his chair with a low hiss of irritation. I stood for a moment longer, rubbing my forearm where he’d held it, the two of us glaring at each other like a pair of squabbling cats in the back alley.
To Father’s credit, he was the first to back down. He rose from his seat, motioning gracefully toward my chair with a courtier’s practiced flourish, and willed his expression into impassive blandness.
“Forgive me, madam, I beg you,” he said with an evenness that astonished me. “I spoke in distress, and from passion. If you were not so damned dear to me, I would not be moved to speak so strongly.”
> “No, Father, I should be the one asking forgiveness, as is proper for a child to her father.” I sighed wearily, my anger spent. “I should not have said what—what I said.”
“But we each of us spoke the truth, Kattypillar, didn’t we?” he said sadly. “We cannot help it, and where has it gotten either of us, I ask you?”
“It—it has gotten us here.” Slowly I sat again in my chair, my heavy skirts settling stiffly around me. “Quarreling before the last remove. How wickedly ill-bred of us.”
“Ill-bred, but Sedley bred, too.” He motioned to the servant with the next dish who’d been hovering uncertainly in the doorway as we’d quarreled. “There is no help for that, whether Tory or Whig.”
“Nor will it keep you from your dinner, Father,” I said, unable to resist one more small jibe as a roasted duck was set before him—if in fact it was a jibe, or simply an observation. “Nothing keeps you from that.”
“No,” he admitted, gazing down with satisfaction at the fowl, glistening in its juices. “True enough. Which should prove to you the seriousness of what I say next.”
To my shock, he pushed aside the plate with the waiting fowl, and instead reached across the corner of the table to lay his hand over mine.
“You’ve chosen a dangerous course for your life, Kattypillar,” he said. “Oh, I know you claim the duke brings you happiness; that must be between you and His Highness. But to the greater world, he is a stern, perplexing gentleman, even a frightening one, and the more power His Majesty gives him, the more hazardous your own place at his side may become. Over these last years, His Highness has been in favor, and out of favor, and now is in it again. Like a clock’s pendulum, England may well swing back against him, and where will that leave you?”
“I’ll be well enough, Father,” I said firmly, though I was touched beyond measure by his concern. “His Grace will see to that. Besides, my place is far better than that of most wives.”
But Father only shook his head. “To be a royal mistress may seem a fine, glorious pastime now, but what when His Highness tires of you? He is only a man, and in time he will look to another for love and amusement, and what then? I would never wish you to become another Jane Shore, cast off to wither and die in shame.”
The Countess and the King: A Novel of the Countess of Dorchester and King James II Page 39