The Puritan Princess

by Miranda Malins

  ‘I’m going outside for some air,’ I whisper as I pass her. ‘Please cover my absence if anyone asks for me. Tell them you were just with me and that I have gone to fetch my fan, or to wash my hands. Whatever comes to your mind first.’

  ‘Frances …’ Mary calls after me, her eyes wide, but I do not pause for an instant.

  I hardly notice how heavily I am breathing until I emerge into the summer evening air. There is still some light in the sky as the last of the birds share the twilight with swooping bats. Picking up my skirts I weave in and out of doorways and around walls, hiding my face from the servants who duck in and out of the pantry, until I find myself at the bottom of the staircase. Immediately a hand reaches out and pulls me into the doorway.

  ‘We can still be seen!’ I whisper urgently before we lose ourselves in kisses. ‘It is not yet dark.’

  ‘This way,’ Robert says and quickly he leads me up the stairs and along a passageway. As we go the sounds of the servants banging and crashing around in the pantry and the larders beneath us recede until, passing around a corner and into another corridor, we find ourselves in complete quiet. I have never been in this part of the palace and look around me with a mixture of nervousness and excitement until Robert stops at a door. Glancing to left and right along the deserted landing he opens it and pushes me inside before turning to lock it behind him.

  We are in a small chamber overlooking the court of Scotland Yard, an unmade bed in the centre of the room, a desk and chair beneath the window with a tankard and bowl of apples. Looking around breathlessly I see the familiar clothes, the piles of books, the evergreen coat. I turn back to him.

  ‘This is your room?’

  Robert looks at me and I see for the first time an uncertain, almost embarrassed frown on his beautiful face. I expect him to come forward to me, to take me in his arms, but he stays where he is, leaning against the door as if his back is fastened to it with paste.

  ‘Yes. Presumptuous, I know. But I had to be alone with you just for a few minutes, and this was the safest place I could think of.’

  I continue to look at him while I think quickly; we may never have another chance to be together like this.

  He continues to examine me. ‘I am sorry, Frances, did I do wrong?’

  In that instant Robert looks so young and nervous, so unlike the swaggering courtier that I first knew, that I burst with love for him.

  ‘Thank you for my presents. The ring …’

  ‘It was my mother’s,’ Robert says quietly. ‘I wanted to show you, I wanted you to know that in my heart you are already my wife.’

  Slowly I step forward until I am a few inches from him and reach up to pull the hat from his head. Keeping my eyes on his, I move my hands to his coat and inch it up over his shoulders where it falls to the floor. My fingers find the gold buttons at his waistcoat next and slide them from their fastenings – his chest rising and falling heavily under my hands – until I see the shirt beneath. I slide the waistcoat over his shoulders too and, rising on my tiptoes, thread my hands around his neck to untie his collar. As my lips near his, he takes my face in his hands and pulls me to him for one gentle kiss. Releasing me again, he drops his hands to my bare shoulders and, finding the ribbons at the back of my dress, slides it down until it sinks onto the floor into a stiff pool at my ankles.

  Robert takes a moment to stare at me as I stand before him in my underclothes, my skin prickling under his eyes as my breasts swell above my corset, the thundering of my heart almost bursting my stays. Then the gentle hesitation is gone as he sweeps me up in his arms, his hands moving all over me as if he would feel every single inch of my skin. Shaking, I fumble with his shirt until it loosens and he pulls it over his head to reveal acres of bare flesh. I cannot believe the size of his chest, the breadth of his shoulders. Overwhelmed by longing I reach up for them and Robert stoops to pick me up and carries me to the bed. The sheets smell of him and I turn my face into them, closing my eyes to inhale his scent while I feel his hands at my skirts. Then, suddenly, it is the scent of his neck as his great shoulders rise above me, his hair falling onto my forehead as he kisses me, my hands running up and along the arms that carry his weight, tensed at either side of my head.

  The heavy gathered pearls which normally hang from my neck down into the hollow between my breasts slide to one side of my neck and onto the bed just as I feel Robert’s hand between my legs. I close my eyes and my mind goes blank as he rubs and kisses me so I hardly realise he is slipping inside me until he does it, slowly and smoothly while he presses his forehead against mine, one hand cupping my face. I stiffen in sudden pain and gasp but he covers my mouth with his – half kissing, half breathing in and out in the space between our lips. He moves inside me, gently at first then with more purpose, and though I remain rigid with fear that he will break me, after a time I find myself relaxing with each of his movements as if my body is swelling in welcome to him. With each breath I feel him deeper inside me until he is at the centre of myself. And then I am lost.

  Afterwards, we lie together, sprawled and tangled, staring up at the canopy over the bed. I cannot speak, can barely think. Have we been there for minutes or hours? I look at Robert’s limbs as they lie beside mine and cannot get over the marvel of him. Cannot stop thinking that all the times I have seen him before – have talked with him, danced with him, kissed him – this body, these muscles, hairs and freckles lay beneath his fine clothes, waiting for me to touch them.

  How odd it is, I find myself thinking, that I live among all these men in the palace and I only ever see their faces, their necks, perhaps their hands, uncovered. I had seen my brothers in their undershirts before, and Father too of course, though I was much younger when we last lived together in the intimacy of an ordinary house. So I know that a man’s body differs from a woman’s. But I had never touched one before; never felt the muscle so hard just beneath the skin, the long bones and the coarse hairs, the lump at a man’s throat and the strength in his hands.

  Dazed and overwhelmed I might have lain there all night had Robert not brought us to our senses.

  ‘Darling. We must go back, you will be missed.’

  I know he is right but I cannot bear to get up from this bed, to part my skin from his. A sudden fear floods me like a summer storm: will he still want to marry me now I have given myself to him as all the whores of Surrey must have done before? And how could I compare to them? I close my eyes and turn my face away from him in case he reads my thoughts.

  But he does.

  ‘Frances, my love.’ Robert turns my face back towards him and kisses my eyes. ‘We will find a way to be together again soon, I swear it to you on God’s blood. You will be my wife and I will be your husband.’

  It is exactly what I need to hear and I seize him roughly, pressing him to me as the tears flow freely now. His desire was my only doubt, not any longer the objections of my father. Now I have lain with Robert I have the ultimate weapon in this fight. Though I shrink with horror at the thought of telling my father what we have done – at the damage I would do to my relationship with him – if he leaves me no other choice then I know that I can. He would have to let us marry then.

  Ten minutes later, I slip into the Great Hall to find Master Hingston and his musicians playing a suite of folk songs. Though many faces are turned to the music, the bustle in the room remains and I scan the hall looking for any sign that I had been missed. Seeing Mary sitting with Bridget and Mother in the far corner, I weave through the court towards her, my cheeks burning as I feel as if I am walking naked among them. Surely they can see the change in me? How could I be doing what I was doing only minutes ago and yet no one see it in me now? But I attract nothing bar a nod of the head from Master Thurloe and, as I take a seat beside Mary, I exhale slowly and quietly in relief. She turns her knowing grey eyes on me and raises an eyebrow in question. But I cannot tell even her what has happened, not yet. A volley of laughter takes my eyes across to Father standing with Elizabeth
and holding little Oliver and, as I look at him resplendent in his kingly robes, my skin still tingling from Robert’s touch, I feel a rush of hope for the future – a future of my own making.

  The next few weeks pass me by in a blur of excitement as hot as the July sun. Robert and I meet whenever we can but we have few chances to be alone as we were on the day of Father’s investiture. Still I keep my own counsel though I know I will break and tell Mary soon: I cannot bear to hide my life from her sight. I know she will scold me though and for now, I wish nothing to spoil the dream I am living. And there is something thrilling about the secret that Robert and I share, the knowledge we hold about one another, the meaning behind our locked gazes which no one else can guess. I do not believe we have been discovered yet; though, even blinded by my desire, I am not so foolish as to think that we can hide for ever from all of Secretary Thurloe’s eyes and ears. If he can know what is said at the very dinner table of the ‘exiled king’ Charles – as rumour has it he does – then what chance have we to hide ourselves from his sight living in the same buildings?

  It is possible that our subterfuge is helped by the feverish atmosphere at court where strong feelings match the hot weather. With the parliamentary session ended, all focus returns to government by the Council which meets for the first time under the new constitution in the first week of July. Parliament has required all Councillors to swear an oath of allegiance to the new constitution, or ‘the Humble Petition and Advice’ as it has become known, and this causes great difficulties for General Lambert, who storms and rages and cannot bring himself to swear. It is a bitter pill for Father to swallow from his second-in-command and the architect of the whole Protectorate. I fear our bubble of happiness from Father’s investiture has been pricked for good.

  My brother-in-law Charles Fleetwood explains Lambert’s dilemma to us one evening when he joins us for supper at Hampton Court following a late meeting of the Council.

  ‘Lambert cannot go along with the new constitution,’ he says, his chin drooping low onto his chest above folded arms. ‘He was relieved your father did not take the crown, as I was …’

  John glances at Charles with irritation but Charles appears not to notice and continues.

  ‘… But unlike me, his love for your father and for our family is not sufficient for him to accept the new powers this constitution grants to Parliament and the kingship party over the army.’

  I think back to our conversation out hawking and the distance in Lambert’s voice when he spoke of the war.

  ‘And I suppose you have some sympathy for that argument, Charles?’ I ask. ‘Being so close to your men and the other generals.’

  Charles sighs and runs his thin hands through his fine fair hair. He looks conflicted himself, his arms tense, his tone uncertain. ‘Some sympathy, yes, Frances,’ he says at length, ‘but I would never act against your father or any of your family; you are my own family now.’

  I smile at his words. I am quite fond of Charles in his own prickly way. I know too the great love he bears for Bridget and for Father above all others, though he is not the loving brother-in-law to me that dear John is.

  ‘There are those who say Lambert is ambitious for himself,’ John says, bringing my eyes back to him. ‘That he only stood in His Highness’s way to further his own career.’

  ‘There are others who say Oliver is forcing him out of the Council because he is afraid of what he can do, of his popularity,’ Charles counters, his dark blue eyes – so unusual against his fair colouring – lifted to John in challenge. ‘So you cannot credit what men will say.’

  I shift uneasily as I listen to them for I, a woman outside the two warring camps of the court to which my brothers-in-law belong, can see that any rift between the army, Parliament and Father – whatever the merits on any one side – weakens the Protectorate and endangers us all. Lambert is a powerful friend to Father and would make an even more powerful enemy and I pray that Father can draw on his usual skills at diplomacy to keep him on the Council.

  But my prayers go unanswered. In only a few days Lambert has refused the oath, left the Council and taken himself off to his palatial home in Wimbledon where he claims he will garden and paint and reacquaint himself with his wife and ten children – ‘Only Whitelocke has so many,’ Dick comments wryly. The rift with Father is complete and Father asks Lambert to resign his commission as Major-General in the army: a crushing blow to them both, I am sure, after so many years’ comradeship in adversity. But a man of Lambert’s stature does not quit public life without leaving substantial holes behind him which other men are quick to fill. In the army, this falls to Charles and Uncle Desborough who now, between them, lead and speak for the troops and their officers. And on the Council, to the astonishment of many though not to me, Lambert’s boots are filled by the soft shoes of John Thurloe: ‘the little secretary’ no longer as he is promoted to full Councillor.

  I cannot help but see much of what I have learned of the character of our famous forebear Thomas Cromwell in Thurloe’s incredible ascent: the man of humble birth always working behind the scenes, always the first to know anything, and giving the last word of counsel to Father as Thomas Cromwell had to King Henry VIII. An administrator, a fixer. A secretary. Now a member of the Council in his own right. And this only a matter of weeks after the great ruin of all his plans to make Father king; for I have come to believe more and more that the events that led to Parliament’s offer of the crown to Father were somehow shaped by the little secretary. ‘If this is how Thurloe emerges from disappointment,’ I say to Mary as we take turns in the bath, ‘I would love to see how he handles victory.’

  Then, barely as Thurloe has assumed his new position, he pulls off one of the greatest coups of his other role as the head of Father’s intelligence network. The notorious Edward Sexby – the Leveller former friend of Father’s who was the brain behind Sindercome’s assassination attempt in January – is arrested. Sexby is taken as he boards a boat for Flanders, disguised, or so the press report, as a roughened native of the Low Countries. Though Mother and Mary are pleased at the news, Father feels mostly sadness.

  But it is impossible for Father to remain in low spirits when he has the means to cause so much pleasure. Almost as soon as he had been invested as the new ‘Royal Protector’, as some at court have taken to describing him, Father uses one of the most ancient kingly rights to create hereditary peers to fill the benches of the new House of Lords due to be established later in the year. John is among the first to be ennobled and he and Elizabeth can barely contain their pleasure at this, for all Bridget frowns and pleads for humility. Mary and I tease them of course, calling them Lord and Lady Claypole and dipping curtseys to them, but they take our jests in good humour, especially since Betty is recovering from another bout of the illness that seems to strike her every few years. It had been a trying few months for them, with Elizabeth pale and feverish, but now with her health regained once more, baby Oliver thriving and the older children happy, I do not think I have ever seen the Claypole family in such good spirits.

  Richard too has benefited from Father’s elevation as he is chosen to take his place as Chancellor of Oxford University. Again, we are all bidden to an elaborate ceremony in the Banqueting House where Dick is conferred Chancellor with almost as much regal pomp as Father’s recent investiture. He is pleased in his own quiet way, though admits to me how the post renders him embarrassed for the first time in his life at his own lack of university education. I believe him sincere in his desire to prove himself in the role and know him to be an able administrator. Nonetheless, watching him robed and blessed, I cannot help a stab of jealousy that he who, according to my other older siblings, never loved his books and his lessons the way I have, should be invited to spend his time and efforts in this highest seat of learning. ‘What of us, Mary?’ I ask her that night as we lie together on her bed reading the fortunes in each other’s palms. ‘What do we receive in this embarrassment of riches?’

 
With Parliament dissolved, the new Council established and the summer fighting season upon us, Father’s focus turns to matters of foreign policy. It amuses me to hear him mispronounce the names of far-off places and I reflect with renewed amazement on how this ordinary Englishman, unschooled as princes are in other languages and the finer points of international diplomacy – a man who has never stepped foot on the continent of Europe – now duels and dances with foreign kings across our great vellum maps of the world.

  The handsome General-at-Sea Edward Montagu explains our position to me at supper on the eve of his leaving to rejoin his flagship Naseby. As Father has held this small family supper in his honour, I am thrilled to have been placed next to the gallant sailor who shines in his buffed uniform and sports a continental periwig to rival Lord Broghill’s.

  ‘Your father has tasked me with keeping up pressure on the Spanish in the Channel, Highness,’ he says and the title Highness, light on his tongue as butter, reminds me that Edward Montagu was one of the key members of Father’s Council who had wished him to become king. ‘Our offensive alliance with France against Spain is gathering pace now. On land, our brave Ironsides are showing their mettle to their French counterparts with whom they besiege Spanish-held towns across the Netherlands. While at sea,’ he pauses to beckon forward the servant hovering behind my chair with a treacle tart, ‘my fellow General-at-Sea Robert Blake continues his blockade at Cadiz, where his fleet are ransacking Dutch ships for Spanish bullion and supplies.’

  ‘But has Father not summoned Blake home, General, to collect his reward for his great victory at Santa Cruz?’

  ‘Yes indeed,’ Montagu smiles, showing a set of teeth far better, I imagine, than those of his crew, ‘and his last letter to me signalled his intention to return forthwith. Speaking of letters, I received one from your dear brother this morning.’