The Puritan Princess

by Miranda Malins

  ‘I do not know what your lady is about, Mistress White, summoning me to meet you in such a clandestine fashion,’ he says wearily.

  I bob a curtsey from a little distance away and let him continue, keeping my face lowered under my hood.

  ‘You can tell her from me that I do not have the slightest interest in which young gentleman her eye has alighted on, nor do I understand her need to inform me in this way,’ he goes on, in a tone trying to convey boredom, though I think I catch a painful edge to it.

  I hardly know what to say; for all my planning of this meeting, I have not prepared my speech, could not have prepared it as it was not until I met Robert again that I expected to know my own feelings. Even now, the clarity of thought I had hoped to gain in his presence does not come; there is no sudden sunshine breaking through the fog. But what there is instead is the pure, physical sensation of his voice, with its familiar drawl, enveloping me like the sudden warmth of a friendly hearth cast over a winter pilgrim.

  I draw towards him and lower my hood, raising my face until my eyes fix on his.

  ‘I apologise for the theatrics, sir, and for the inconvenience caused to you, but I fancy you have been avoiding me of late.’ Looking at him now, I realise how much I have missed him since he has kept his distance from me; how it is only when I am with him, when we talk together, when I meet the conversational challenges he throws down before me, that my own thoughts crystallise and I come fully to know myself. ‘I would not have you prevent me from honouring my word,’ I continue, my head clearing. ‘I promised you in the stables at Hampton Court that I would inform you as soon as I had selected a suitor and so, having done so, I am here.’ I speak clearly, straining every fibre to keep my voice level.

  Robert gapes at me, mouth open, eyes staring in amazement. Moments, minutes seem to pass before I see him regain control of himself, the smallest muscles in his face and hands twitching him back into life. He pulls off his hat and bows, drawing himself up again much straighter than before, his hat hanging limply in one hand.

  ‘Your Highness, I …’

  ‘Hush.’ I put my finger up to his lips, desperate suddenly to prevent him taking a false position as he has done at the start of every conversation we have ever had. I know that if he does, I will lose my bearings just when I can see the pole star.

  I look at the stars now, framing his face as he gazes down on me uncertainly, like specks of candlelight around a mirror. With such a sight before me, I have no more words, no witticisms, only an ageless instinct. Softly, I slide the hand at his lips around the side of his face until my little finger weaves into the hair above his ear. Rising onto my tiptoes, gently, I pull his head down to mine until our lips meet. For one heartbeat, then two, they press together without moving, like bound books pushed up against each other on a shelf. But then Robert opens his lips and I dissolve into him as he brings both arms around me, his hat dropped in the dust, his hands rising up into my hair and down to my waist, shoulders bowing forward over mine. We clench together, joining every last inch of ourselves until I think we have fused like the nearby sculpture of Venus and Adonis, while every night-time sound of the gardens around me is drowned in crashing heartbeats and a thunder in my ears.

  We kiss and explore each other for a seeming infinity until, at last, a mutual need for air pulls us apart. I press a hand to my pounding heart while Robert staggers back a little way, hands balled on his hips while he regains his breath, his eyes never leaving mine. Eventually the power of speech returns to me.

  ‘You were going to say something, sir, before I stopped you. What was it to be?’ I smile at him, my eyes dancing with a heady new-found confidence.

  Robert laughs, shaking his head from side to side like a colt. ‘My lady, I am afraid you took the words from me, I cannot say what was in my mind. Indeed,’ he grins, ‘I cannot recall anything that has ever been in my mind before the last few moments. In this instant, I am not even sure of my own name.’ He reaches for me again then, this time taking my hand and drawing it to his lips.

  ‘You are Robert Rich, grandson of the Earl of Warwick,’ I say, my turn now to laugh. ‘Courtier, drinker, gambler, lover of fine living and shirker of hard work, and the clever, kind man I choose to love.’

  He stops laughing at that, the grinning smile he has pressed to my hand falling away into a look of pure wonder. ‘The man you choose to love,’ he repeats, his voice bewildered as he pulls me towards him and takes my face in both hands. ‘And the man who chooses to love you – Her Highness, Lady Frances Cromwell.’

  Her Highness Lady Frances Cromwell, I think, hoping it is truly me as I have always been and not my exalted status that he loves; if Father can rise so high, he could fall just as low again. But I lose these false thoughts as Robert kisses me gently and I feel his eyes shut tight, his eyelashes flitting against mine like butterflies. Then he moves his mouth into my hair and I feel him breathe deeply.

  ‘I only knew my true feelings this evening,’ I say, marvelling at the speed with which my life has changed. ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘Ah,’ he chuckles with a hinted embarrassment. ‘Much, much longer than that. But you humble me,’ he says, his tone becoming serious again.

  ‘Humble you?’

  ‘It took you a mere matter of hours to act on your knowledge; to seek me out, to take the leap of faith. While I … I have danced around my love for you, played with it, played with you. Darting towards my love, only to spring back from it again. You have your father’s cavalry courage, I see it.’

  The compliment could not please me more, yet the warm smile where his lips have just left mine fades from me as I remember my earlier conversation with Father. I cannot reveal all he said about Robert, knowing his confidence to be of a thinner, softer metal than it first appears.

  ‘We must tread carefully,’ I whisper into his collar. ‘Father and Secretary Thurloe have other plans for me than this.’

  ‘I know,’ he says, stroking my hair in reassurance. ‘I will speak to my grandfather, ask him to approach your father on my behalf. But we have a difficult road ahead of us. The situation will worsen if your father becomes king, making his youngest princess an even more glittering prize than she is now.’ He tightens his grip on me as if, in doing so, he can stop any other taking me from him. ‘But know this my love,’ he says as our heartbeats slow to each other’s rhythm. ‘Now that I have you, I will not let you go without a fight.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mary is astounded when I tell her, though at the brazenness of my actions, not at our love, which she had long suspected. She takes a shameless glee in being proved right, though the laughter we share soon gives way to doubt. Father has spoken to her about his list of suitors, just as he did to me, and so we have drawn together, planning our strategy as if at a council of war.

  ‘But what of Nicholas Baxter?’ I ask her as we sit together sewing, cousin Lavinia and the other young ladies of court who have joined us sitting just outside earshot. ‘I know you have a liking for him.’

  She looks away from me, her eyes straying out of the window, fingers loose on her pattern. ‘I do like him, but that is all. I haven’t spent the time with him you have with Robert, haven’t formed such a strong attachment. And I think now that it is wise I don’t.’

  ‘Oh, Mary,’ I say, leaning forward to stroke her hand.

  ‘No, it is for the best. It is not too late for me, as it is for you,’ she says, looking back at me now, her face set. ‘I have not yet lost my heart and will now endeavour not to do so. All I want,’ her words slow for emphasis, ‘is a contented marriage and children of my own.’

  I look at her full of admiration. She has always been so sensible, so fair and considered, just like Mother and with a maternal streak to match. I have long found an irony in that – that while of all of us sisters, Mary is the one who looks most like Father, she is most like Mother in temperament; a perfect fusion of our parents. I often wonder where their balance lies in me.


  In the following days, we wait nervously for Father or Secretary Thurloe to say more of their plans but, luckily, they and indeed the rest of the court are distracted from any thoughts of us by the war that is to come. After weeks of heated debates, the Council and Father have finally broken the deadlock Signor Giavarina outlined to me and agreed to join with King Louis XIV of France in his war against the Spanish. Charles – the greatest advocate for this policy on the Council – is delighted while the angry lines on General John Lambert’s high forehead speak another story. Thurloe explains another benefit of the alliance to me in a rare unguarded moment as we watch a servant laying a fire while the little secretary waits to regain Father’s attention:

  ‘The French king will have no choice now but to expel the lurking Charles Stuart from France. The “Sun King” can hardly entertain the pretender to your father’s throne now he has allied with him, even if Louis is the young prince’s uncle. And that, at a stroke, removes the threat of Charles Stuart launching an invasion of England from across the Channel.’

  Statements like this still have the power to amaze me: to hear Father mentioned in the same breath as the godlike King of France and Charles Stuart, who was our much-worshipped Prince of Wales when I was a young child. I think of this as I watch Ambassador Bordeaux of France and Father sign a great treaty to cement the agreement. It is an elaborate but intimate spectacle held in Father’s grand state bedchamber, as was the custom of the old Stuart kings, with only the ambassador’s secretary, the Council and Secretary Thurloe and my family to witness it. Never before have I felt so keenly the power of symbols and ritual. Never before have I felt such a princess. Once again, I sense Father take a step closer to the crown.

  I long to discuss all this with Robert, but he is taking care not to be seen too much with me, his longing looks and smiles whenever we are in the same room having to suffice for now. As the days pass and the nights drag while I lie sleepless reliving every moment of our tryst, I begin to wonder if it was in fact a dream, if he does in fact feel for me as much passion in the light of day as he did in the moonlight. Anxiety and frustration build within me, layer after hot layer, and so I feel an odd affinity with Father, whom I notice daily bowing and bending under the increasing pressure of the two lobbies warring over his becoming king. Every day he is subjected to new and more impassioned arguments from all about him as around his rock, a whirlpool of strong feelings rages at the court, in Parliament and the army, and even spilling onto the streets of London.

  God himself is drawn into the debate when the Puritan congregations of the city issue a protestation entreating Father not to accept the crown. This, I see, wounds him deeply, by resting on the greatest fear that Mother tells me keeps him from his bed at night: that the Lord, in granting the New Model Army its victory over King Charles, has spoken against kings and so does not wish him, Oliver – God’s instrument – to go against His judgement. Parliament feels no such scruples, however, and so it is that, tipped off by John, I find myself slipping into the Banqueting House on the last day of March to watch as the members of the House of Commons, with great pomp and ritual, present Father with their new draft constitution engrossed in vellum.

  I strain for a better view as Sir Thomas Widdrington, Councillor and Speaker of the House of Commons, steps forward with the offering.

  ‘We beseech Your Highness,’ he begins solemnly, ‘to assume the name, style, title, dignity and office of King of England, Scotland and Ireland and the respective dominions and territories thereunto belonging; and to exercise the same according to the laws of these nations.’

  I wait, my heart in my mouth, for Father’s reply. Seconds stretch before us all – a bubble of silence in which the whole room could have heard if a pin slipped from my hair. Out of the corner of my eye I catch sight of the black head of Bulstrode Whitelocke as he shifts from one foot to the other. Somewhere, near the middle of the room, someone coughs. Rubens’ divine King James watches in wonder from his heavenly cloud on the ceiling over our heads, waiting to see if the farmer who routed his son’s army on the battlefield and signed his death warrant will now accept his crown.

  At last, Father speaks, his face grave, his tense, strained voice bursting the bubble as if with a rapier.

  ‘Gentlemen, I acknowledge the great importance of what is offered to me as it concerns the welfare, the peace, the settlement of three nations and all that rich treasure of the best people in the world.’

  But it is time he then speaks of, all he asks for. Time to consider the proposals, though he promises a speedy answer. The atmosphere of the room breaks into a fever.

  Is it done? Harry asks in his latest letter, which I find waiting for me in my room. The little secretary, my Lord Broghill and Edward Montagu write highly of the new constitution but I cannot be so certain about Father accepting the crown: the return of kings would not be welcomed here across the Irish Sea …

  No, I scribble back hastily. He stalls, he struggles. We have no choice but to wait. Though there can be few in all these three nations who have more riding on his decision than your little sister …

  Our escape to Hampton Court at the end of that week has perhaps never been so welcome, not least for Father, who has been suffering from debilitating headaches. In the febrile atmosphere that grips the nation, even greater care is taken over the security of our journey and Mary and I do not know until the very last moment the time we are to leave nor whether to dress for travel by barge or carriage. This time we go by carriage and I cannot help but shudder at the huge barriers erected on either side of the road for the last and most exposed mile of the journey through Hampton Wick to the palace. Secretary Thurloe has not been idle since he learned of the many assassination attempts by Sindercome and his fellow plotters. I am pleased that, on this journey, John’s dog Badger has chosen to ride in our carriage rather than his master’s, though the biscuits secreted in my purse may have swayed his choice. Seeking comfort, I bury my face in Badger’s fur.

  I hope too that I will see more of Robert in the relaxed environs of Hampton Court and my wish is granted on Saturday morning when he joins our party to go hawking. This, above all others, is Father’s favourite pastime, and I can almost see the burden of his current deliberations slide from his shoulders as we set off at a trot into the deer park.

  ‘Hawking represents a gentler, nobler time,’ Father tells me as we ride together, the crisp morning air filling our lungs. ‘The time of my grandparents and their parents before them, when England was settled and thriving in its old ways – before the first Scottish king came south and before his son brought in his French wife and her Catholic ways. A time when a gentleman had the leisure to walk abroad in the fields with a hawk on his fist. We had eighty years of peace before Charles Stuart raised his standard against us at Nottingham, did you know that? Was it any wonder none of us knew how to fight? We had forgotten, you see. We had to learn the art of war all over again.’

  Father is flying his favourite bird today – his peregrine falcon, a bird reserved only for kings – and I see him glance back over his shoulder every hundred yards to check on the bird, perching hooded in its corner of the square-framed cage on the back of his falconer. The cadge man, as the falconer is called, walks carefully, picking his feet high to keep the birds on his back from swaying too violently. But still, they call softly to each other; the siren screech of Father’s peregrine falcon, the goose honk of the lesser saker and lanner falcons which will be flown by the nobles among us, and the rapid squeaks of the small merlins reserved for Mary and me.

  Traditionally, these hawking outings are sociable affairs and so, once Father has his falcon on his gloved arm and is suitably distracted, I see nothing amiss in edging my horse towards Robert’s.

  ‘Highness.’ He bows over his reins.

  ‘Sir.’ I straighten up above mine. ‘I trust you are well.’

  ‘I am, my lady, though plagued by bad sleep and the most vivid dreams.’ Robert smiles at me wickedly.


  ‘Dreams, my lord?’ I struggle to keep my tone light, directing my gaze away to where Father’s falcon wings off from his arm in pursuit of prey; it really is a magnificent bird – a gift of rare value from the Prince of East Friesland. ‘Does the same apparition come to you night after night or do you suffer a multitude of dreams?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh, the same,’ Robert says airily. ‘An angel comes to me in a garden and, at her voice and her touch, I find myself spinning into darkness.’

  I blush with pleasure and relief, moving my mare a little closer to Mary’s lest anyone should see my cheeks. ‘How troubling for you,’ I reply over my shoulder. ‘I myself sleep like a baby.’

  ‘I have spoken with grandfather.’ He drops his voice to a whisper, edging his horse after mine. ‘And he has raised my suit with your father.’

  ‘Any luck?’

  ‘Not yet,’ he replies, his playful tone exchanged for one of concern. ‘Your father is set fair against me and told Grandfather so in no uncertain terms. It does not look good. And I do not know what else to do. I have even written to Father, though I hate to ask anything of him. But I doubt anything will come of his interceding, were he to choose to help me; your father holds a low opinion of him too and made that quite plain to Grandfather.’

  I am raised with hope and dashed with despair in the same instant: thrilled that Robert has formally asked for my hand, devastated that Father appears implacable.

  ‘Grandfather will keep trying,’ Robert attempts to reassure me as he sees the alarm in my face. ‘But we must take care. Now that your father knows my intentions he will watch us like one of his hawks.’