‘Has your father spoken to you?’ Robert whispers into my hair as he catches his breath.
I cling onto him desperately, my eyes closed so as to feel every sensation of our embrace. ‘Not yet. Though surely he must do soon now your grandfather has raised your suit with him? If he doesn’t speak to me of it in the next few days I’ll raise it with him. Perhaps with Mother first …’ I add, suddenly baulking at the thought.
Robert nods and I breathe in the spiced leather smell of his hat as its brim presses into my forehead.
‘My father is hopeless,’ he says, ‘but we have a new advocate. My grandmother, the dowager Countess of Devonshire, is made of finer stuff and she has also pledged her support to our cause. And I know your father respects her, whatever her past loyalties to the king.’
‘Good. Speak to Secretary Thurloe too,’ I urge. ‘He is as deeply woven into my marriage negotiations as Father himself; perhaps he can help us.’
‘I will.’
Robert leans back out into the gallery, looking each way. ‘Someone is coming.’ He wastes no more words but kisses me again, clasping my whole body to him, his arms pressed around me with such force that my heels rise from the floor. Breaking away from me he springs backwards, dropping into a deep bow. ‘Keep faith with me, my darling,’ he whispers, before hurrying along the gallery away from me.
Faith, I think, shivering despite the warm breeze that wafts from the open window over my flushed skin, as I am reminded painfully of the loss of Robert’s body wrapped around mine; that is what all of this comes down to. Faith.
CHAPTER FIVE
I know that I am living on borrowed time and that the same interview that Mother had with Mary about Viscount Fauconberg awaits me. But I could hardly have guessed the form it would take the very next morning. Mother and I are sitting together on the long velvet couch in the withdrawing room, she sewing, while I read the latest edition of the government newspaper Mercurius Politicus which features a comment piece by its prolific editor Marchamont Nedham, advocating Father’s kingship.
As I turn a page, Anthony Underwood, whom Robert had once suggested as a suitor for me, comes in from the outer presence chamber to usher in no less a person than Lord Broghill. Lowering my broadsheet, I watch as he bows grandly before us, a great feathered plum-coloured hat sweeping the carpet at his feet to reveal a powdered periwig on his head. I know him to spend profligately on the latest fashions and cannot help but admire the luxurious vermilion waistcoat and matching coat trimmed with lace and ribbon in which Lord Broghill, unashamed of his royalist pedigree, appears before us – Robert would turn the colour of his green coat with envy, I think with a smile.
Knowing him to be a favourite of Father’s, Mother welcomes him warmly and invites him to take a glass of wine with us. As they exchange pleasantries I examine Lord Broghill closely, seeing in his wide smile and assured manner something of the commanding vigour I have heard he expended first as the powerful defender of Irish protestants against the Catholic rebellion before and during the war and then when he came over to Father’s service and governed Scotland as president of the Scottish council in Edinburgh. Lately he has been one of the foremost MPs putting the case for Father’s kingship. My brother Harry, I know from his letters to me, is a great admirer and friend of Lord Broghill’s – both men natural coalition-builders working in parallel in the difficult realms of Ireland and Scotland – and Harry’s judgement carries great weight with me. Nonetheless, I know the man before me to be a shrewd fixer and handler, second only to Secretary Thurloe in his manoeuvrings, and so I keep my wits about me.
‘Your Parliament committee is not meeting with my husband this morning?’ Mother is asking.
‘No, Your Highness. We meet this afternoon. I, indeed, am one of those named to speak today, which is of course a great honour.’
‘How exciting,’ I cannot help saying. ‘Are we permitted to know something of the thoughts you intend to voice, my lord?’
He turns his level gaze to me for the first time and offers me a charming smile. ‘Certainly, Your Highness. I make no secret of my views on the question and would be delighted to share them with you. Many greater minds than mine have already spoken, particularly of the weighty legal arguments for the crown. Yet, as one former soldier to another, I wish to draw your father’s attention to some of the more practical advantages of his coronation, two in particular.’
Languidly, Broghill sits back in his chair and crosses one ankle over the other. He is conceited, I have no doubt, but also shrewd.
‘First, that this would be a selfless act offering far greater protection to those who serve His Highness. It is well known that after the last civil war that beset this nation, the new Tudor King Henry VII enacted an indemnity law safeguarding those who serve one claimant from the retribution of another should he become king. This law would apply once more if your father became king, protecting his subjects and, in so doing, strengthening his support from those otherwise too nervous to openly serve his regime.’
It is a neat point which appeals strongly to me with its evocation of historical precedent. I can see entirely how well this would play with Father’s more cautious subjects, though, narrowing my eyes a little, I cannot help thinking how his foremost advisers, such as Lord Broghill, stood to benefit most from such legal protection.
My face must give away my thoughts, as Broghill continues quickly, after taking a sip of his claret:
‘Lest you think me moved only by my own interest, Lady Frances, I would add my second argument: that taking the crown would also strengthen your father’s hand against the exiled, pretended king, Charles. There are those among the army’s leaders who argue that, conversely, crowning your father would reduce our late civil war from a conflict over the kind of government we have to nothing more than a clash between the rival houses of Cromwell and Stuart; just as the wars between York and Lancaster and all our conflicts before then had been before the new-found understandings and liberties of our own age. And that, furthermore, the House of Stuart is bound to come off better in the fight.’
He pauses there, to let us absorb that unnerving point of view. I glance at Mother for a clue to her thoughts but her face is impassive and she is sitting very still, the index finger she runs under the pearls of her bracelet the only sign of her racing mind. We wait in silence for one moment, then two before Lord Broghill seamlessly picks up his thread.
‘Now I disagree with the army leaders on this. To my mind, were your father made king, it would be madness for the royalists to cast off the blessings of the monarchy restored just to change the occupant of the throne. A restoration of the monarchy vested in the House of Cromwell would take all the wind from their sails. As I plan to put it to your father: there is at the moment only a divorce between the pretending king Charles Stuart and the crown of these nations and we know that persons divorced may marry again. But if one person is remarried to another it cuts off all hope …’
I glance at Mother and see her quite transported by Lord Broghill’s eloquence. I wonder if at last I see a glimpse of her own view on this mighty question, a view she has hitherto guarded jealously, even from her own children. She has told me before, when I have pressed her for her thoughts on Father’s great decision, that she cannot be the support for Father that he needs if she is known to favour one path of the fork in the road before him: ‘He must be able to lean on me whichever he chooses to take,’ she had told me a few days ago as I kneeled beside her in prayer. ‘The Lord will strengthen me to strengthen him.’
It is clear that Mother cannot speak and so I answer Lord Broghill in her stead. ‘Those are fascinating ideas, my lord,’ I say, my flattery genuine. ‘The image you ended with of the marriage and divorce between a ruler and his crown is most striking.’
‘Your Highness.’ He nods in gratitude and I think my words have genuinely pleased him as the smile he offers me warms by the moment. ‘But the fervour of my speech has blown me off course. The marriage I have
come to speak to you and your mother about this morning is a different, though related, one.’
It is my turn to flounder and I look at him in alarm: I know he is married, so of whom is he speaking? Luckily Mother has regained herself.
‘A marriage, my lord?’
‘Yes. I do hope you will forgive my impertinence, but I have come to take a sounding from you both as to an idea I have for a marriage for Lady Frances that might do our nations a great deal of good.’
‘Have you spoken yet to my husband?’ Mother says, sitting a little straighter against the couch as she takes my hand.
‘No, Your Highness. With the great pressures currently weighing on His Highness, I thought I would raise the matter first with you before adding to his burden. It is also somewhat dependent on the outcome of our negotiations with His Highness over the crown.’
‘How so?’ I find my voice, quailing at the thought of yet another thread binding my fate to that of this most intractable question of state.
‘Well, Your Highness, as I have said, my greatest desire is for your father to accept the crown and to nominate his own successor, ideally your brother Richard, of whom I am a great admirer. However, I am a firm believer in having a second and indeed a third course opened before the first is decided on. If we cannot reach an agreement with your father on the new constitution, we are left with the vulnerable state of things as they are. And, in that case, I believe it would be in your power above all others to see off our enemies and set our fortunes in stone. In short, Lady Frances, there is one who, in that situation, would seek your hand above all the riches of the earth: the young king in exile, Charles Stuart.’
Charles Stuart, the son of the dead tyrant king. The prince who escaped our army’s clutches to fly into exile. Our enemy who was crowned by the Scots and lurks now, across the Channel, plotting against Father to take back his throne. I am astonished.
Broghill sets down his glass and edges closer to us, leaning forward in an attempt at reassurance. ‘It is an idea fit to blow cobwebs from the mind, Your Highnesses. A shock, indeed. But think for a moment about what it would mean. It is well known that the young king is desperate to escape his exile and regain his throne; your father and Parliament could set him any terms, any limitations they wished – terms which his father was too stubborn to accept. And, with you beside him, my lady, his heirs in your belly, your father and the rest of the Cromwell family would be untouchable and secured of a lasting legacy: a new and joint dynasty of Cromwell and Stuart, learned of the lessons of the war and uniting all three nations behind it.’
I hardly know how to order my thoughts. The power of Lord Broghill’s vision overwhelms me. All thoughts of Robert are temporarily dazzled by an image of me sitting on the throne beside King Charles II. Me – the mother of all future kings. Me – the youngest of all Father’s children – the one to secure his immortality.
But doubts immediately crowd my mind like steel-edged clouds. What of Richard, whom I would disinherit? What of our new alliance with France, a chief purpose of which was to stop the Stuarts from being able to invade us from their shores? What happens to that if we now simply invite the exiled ‘king’ in? And what of the man himself? How could he and I find any common ground after all the bloodshed of the past fifteen years? And, what is more, what kind of husband would he make when the whole world knows he trails a bevy of mistresses in his wake? I remember back to the previous year when one of his mistresses was captured by Thurloe’s spies and testified to the fact that Charles had fathered children on her and paid her a pension; our whole court was shocked by the scandal, even the most loose-living among us. Could Father really consent to my marrying such a dissolute, godless man even if it did secure the nation’s peace, when he objects so strongly to Robert whose sins are trifling by comparison?
Thinking of Robert leads me to more physical concerns. I summon to mind the portraits I have seen of the young prince, so tall and haughty, his black curls and matching black eyes almost menacing in the assured directness of their gaze, and try to imagine kissing his curling mouth. But my whole body rejects the sensation, sending my senses racing to Robert whose last kiss still burns on my lips. I feel tears pricking the inner corners of my eyes and, for the first time since I entered this palace as daughter to the ruler of England three years ago, I buckle inwardly under the weight of expectations. Somehow, I do not know how, I keep myself still, but Mother reads my wild thoughts and covers my hand with hers.
‘You speak for Charles Stuart in this matter, my lord?’ she asks.
I watch as he weighs his words, anxious no doubt not to blot his copybook with us by admitting to too close a relationship with our bitter enemy, yet needing to legitimise his proposal. ‘I cannot say too much of my interactions with Charles Stuart and his court, Your Highness. But you can rely on his position as I put it to you. But be assured,’ he adds hastily, ‘that whatever I have said today, my foremost, my abiding loyalty is to His Highness and to your family. I will serve you and only you until the end.’
The end. His words ring in my head as I gaze away out of the window and onto the court below. What will the end be? And when?
Still I hear no word from Father. Indeed, I barely see him, as he oscillates from meeting the parliamentary committee to his state bedchamber, where he retreats into convalescence from a terribly sore throat for days on end, the Council forced to convene at his bedside. It is from John, rather than from him, that we learn of the outcome of the last meeting with the committee urging the crown, where Father reaffirmed his reservations about the title of king despite the monumental efforts of the nations’ finest orators and advocates, who had paraded before him for ten days. The committee retreats to Parliament, tail between its legs, to consider Father’s views; the kingship lobby has received a powerful blow but the battle for our constitutional future is not yet over.
And my own war has only just begun. In the coming days, I am assaulted by friends and rivals buzzing with the rumoured match between me and the exiled ‘King’ Charles. I do not know if the rumour-mongering is part of Lord Broghill’s plan or what part his scheme might play in the larger campaign to persuade Father to become king, but I know that I am suddenly at the centre of every room I enter, however much I cling to the walls. The fight I imagined to secure the liberty to choose my own husband – to navigate my own future – is now terrifyingly real. And now that I face the battle, I do not know how to fight it nor see a way through to winning the war. I wonder if I should get word to Robert but I hardly know my own mind and prevaricate too long on what to write to him. As a result, he hears it first from another and Katherine brings me a hasty, agitated note in his familiar looping scrawl asking if it is true. ‘If it is,’ he writes, ‘it is the worst nightmare I could imagine. How can I compete with a king?’
His pain stirs my heart and I go in immediate search of Mother, determined to tell her all. Finding her in the chapel, I wait until she has finished her discourse with Chaplain White and we are alone, before collapsing onto the pew beside her and pouring out my conflicted heart: my passion for Robert, my horror at the thought of marrying anyone else, but my lust for the lasting glory and chance for peace the match with Charles Stuart would grant to me and to us all. I feel my duty to Father and to the country battling with my search for my own happiness – what was the notion Robert had told me the ancient philosophers called true fulfilment? Eudaimonia. But then those philosophers were all men, I think angrily; men who could put fidelity to their own nature ahead of all else. What would they know of a woman being asked to leave the man she loves to marry another for the sake of her country? Words fall upon anguished words like swelling rain as the relief of revealing my feelings sweeps through me.
Mother wraps her arms around me, the layered silk of her wide sleeves bunching against mine, and takes deep rhythmic breaths to still my shudders. I press my face into her neck, sinking gratefully into the skin with its familiar scent of soap, lavender and pearls.
&
nbsp; ‘I wish I could give you more comfort, my dearest,’ she says, her voice soft and singing. ‘But you know that this is how it has always been: we marry at the behest of our fathers. That is what I did, what my mother did and what your sisters have done. Though a kind father, like mine and like yours, chooses wisely and looks for the spark of liking between the bride and groom that promises to grow into a loving flame. But I assure you,’ she continues more fervently as I wipe away tears, ‘I will raise your feelings with your father and do my best for you. Keep faith, my darling, keep faith.’
I think of Robert urging me to do the same and wonder again if this is all I can do. And it is such a vague, unhelpful notion. Where exactly am I supposed to place my faith: in my lover? In my mother? In the Protectorate? In God? I cast my eyes around the white-washed walls of the chapel, pressing my hands together in prayer, asking the Lord to help me. But though I feel his presence, I do not hear his voice the way Father does.
Frustrated with abdicating my faith to others, I decide to place a portion of it within myself and, burying my pride, set about an intense lobbying campaign. The subject is so delicate that there are few I can discuss it with safely, but that still leaves me a few powerful advocates. I go first, of course, to Elizabeth.
I find her in her rooms with Master Hornlock ordering clothes, bedding and blankets for the expected baby. Again, I wait for him to leave and ask her to dismiss her maids before I speak.
‘Oh, Fanny,’ she says when I have laid my head in her silken lap as I used to when I was a child. ‘Can my little sister really be in love?’ Betty seems almost more amazed by my feelings than Mother; and I think, as I have often done before, how much of a mother’s love – and a mother’s disapproval – lies within that of a much older sister. Is it unfair of me to think that Elizabeth feels a part of her own youth remains while I am still a child? Will I ever be able to catch up with her, to make up those magical nine years between us and match her womanly beauty with my own?
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