The autumn weeks ahead promise to be the longest of my life and yet, knowing what joy awaits me at their end, the widest smile hardly leaves my face throughout. I am true too to the word I gave to Mary, and Robert and I kiss and sigh but no more, keeping ourselves always within sight of Mother, Mary or Katherine, never tempting ourselves too harshly. Immediately that the bargain is struck, I write to my brother Harry in Ireland with the news and Mother, Elizabeth, Mary and I set about the wedding plans and preparations. The finest tailors of the City come to show us their latest silks, lace and taffetas, some of the fabrics travelled from as far as the end of the Silk Road.
Robert too is to have a new wedding suit of uncut velvet and he even threatens to wear a periwig of the sort now so fashionable on the Continent and which I have seen modelled on the roguishly stylish Lord Broghill and General Montagu. Though I tease Robert for a dandy, secretly I love the modern way he dresses.
We discuss the music with Master Hingston, the ceremony and the feast with Sir Oliver Flemyng, and my jewellery with Father’s jeweller Master Riddell. The wedding will be at Whitehall and Elizabeth promises it will be even grander and more lavish than my cousin Lavinia’s which I had so admired. I remember how Robert danced with me that day, how he hurt me with his jests about my family, how he later teased me in the stables about my own wedding, and all I can do is wonder at the workings of Providence.
But around our busy excitement, government continues. Our position against Spain in Europe still looks precarious as our alliance with France falters. Rumours swirl around London that the Spanish are preparing an invasion force, a new Armada. Faced with this, Father is persuaded to agree to the allied army marching on the town of Mardyke where – we learn to universal great amazement – the opportunistic ‘exiled King’ Charles and his brother, the so-called Duke of York, fight alongside the Spanish against our troops: ‘Our civil war is not ended,’ Father says wearily, his eyes blank over his cup of dark wine. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, our Spanish enemies try to recapture Jamaica but the new governor resists the attack, winning great praise at court. It is a source of wonder to me, and to all, that we should have defeated the mighty Spanish who own most of the New World; that there is a small island somewhere in the far-off Caribbean that is ours. The English are pirates no longer.
In the midst of this a letter arrives from Richard’s house at Hursley in Hampshire to say that he has broken his leg hunting in the New Forest; a piece of news which sends Mother into a frenzy of worry and bundled into a coach out of London on the road to Winchester, her bags packed with letters and cakes from us, and Father’s own physician to accompany her. She returns within the fortnight, comforted that the wound is clean and her eldest boy is not in any danger of his life, though I cannot help but worry that he may not be fit enough to travel up for my wedding.
Dick has been greatly cheered, Mother tells us, by the news she was able to take him that Father has appointed him a member of the new second chamber of Parliament which will sit at its next session. And indeed, the other nominations for this new House of Lords provide Father with his greatest day-to-day preoccupation as he weighs and selects candidates from among the slowly widening circle of public men who will work with his Protectorate. With Dick and John chosen, and with most of the other nominees among those we know, we talk of little else at our family meals in those weeks.
While I am alight with excitement as our wedding day approaches, my darling Mary frets about her own future, though she is too kind to show it to me and too proud to reveal it to anyone else. I know she remains fearful at the prospect of marrying a former royalist and I urge her to approach Father on the subject but she will not, believing herself bound into silent acceptance by her promise for my sake to marry any man of his choice. In the end, she does not have long to wait for a definite answer, as Father reveals to her only a few days later that he has invited the royalist widower Viscount Fauconberg to sail back to England to claim her hand.
Though the match has not yet been announced, the court is buzzing with the rumour. For the Protector to give his daughter away to the heir to such a prominent royalist family – a family which has fought against his own for over a decade – is nothing less than astounding. Father and Master Thurloe maintain that it will be a great gesture of unification that will do much to heal and settle the country, but whispered doubts continue on all sides. As the Venetian ambassador puts it to me: ‘Is the viscount truly reconciled to your side, Principessa? Or is this a royalist plot to place one of the exiled king’s most loyal friends at the centre of the ruling family of his enemy?’
Even Robert is uncertain: ‘It will hardly be a large wedding party on the groom’s side,’ he comments to me when we cannot be overheard. ‘His uncles fought in the uprising against your father only two years ago: one is under arrest and the other is at the exiled court. And Fauconberg’s only relative who fought for Parliament, Black Tom Fairfax, has fallen out with your father, so I hardly think he will come.’
All of this renders me deeply uneasy and I cannot help the dark currents of guilt that pulse through me as I look at Mary’s pinched and nervous face as we wait for the viscount’s arrival. She is too kind, too mindful of my guilt to voice her fears to me. But she does not need to, I know them all: what if her bridegroom is a royalist spy? Worse still, what if she does not like him? What if he is unkind or irritating or horribly unattractive? Or drinks too much, or gambles? Could she ever love him as I love Robert?
Thomas, Viscount Fauconberg, arrives into this storm of conjecture on what, in the time of superstition, used to be called All Hallows’ Eve, only eleven days before my wedding. Rooms are found for him in the Palace of Whitehall and the scene is set for his introduction to Mary in our private family rooms before we sup in the Great Hall. Mary is beside herself with nerves, trying on this dress and that; the blue silk with her set of pearls or the pink taffeta with her ruby necklace? Her maid Anne, Katherine and I try to calm her but there is nothing truly helpful that we can say. Desperate for the first moment of meeting to be over, we hurry to Father’s presence chamber where we find the rest of the family assembled with Master Thurloe hovering by the door. Mother arranges us so that Mary is shown to her best advantage, sitting between herself and Father, the firelight catching her jewels and the line of her collarbone.
We have hardly settled when the door opens and the Yeomen of the Guard announce the viscount, along with Lord Broghill. I inspect the viscount closely: he is young – not above thirty, I would guess – which is a great relief. And his face and figure are not displeasing, though his nose is a little too large for his face, long and hooked above a small mouth. But the eyes are a pleasant brown and the hair deepest black, which is striking against his grey-blue coat and high white collar. It is a fine suit too, with silver brocade and matching buttons, though any man suffers when he stands beside Lord Broghill, who is arrayed in the most expensive vermilion velvet.
‘Your Highnesses.’ The viscount addresses us in a light tenor, going on to exchange pleasantries with my parents and Broghill. His words are polite and his delicate Yorkshire accent noble, though his tone is reserved and I notice that he hardly looks at Mary. She, I see, is blushing furiously while attempting to hold a glass of wine to her lips without her hand shaking. They only come to speak to each other when Father directs us to go in to supper and offers Mary’s arm for the viscount. He accepts her graciously enough, though keeps his head high and his eyes directed ahead as they walk from the room together. He is not a tall man and, I notice as I fall into step behind them, appears to have block heels on his silver shoes. But he is just taller than Mary at least, so I am grateful for that.
I am not seated near them at supper and the viscount makes his excuses soon after the meal, claiming the fatigue of his journey. And so, it is only when Mary and I are next able to speak alone later in the evening that I hear anything of their conversation. Mary does her best to relate it to me behind her hands while we wa
tch Father and Mother play a duet on the virginal with Father’s teacher Master Farmulo hovering behind.
‘I cannot say a word against him,’ Mary says, speaking quickly in her relief to share her thoughts with me. ‘He was perfectly polite. Told me of the sights of Paris he had seen and a little of his native Yorkshire. But … I don’t know. He was very reserved in the manner of his speech. Careful, almost reluctant at times. It fell to me to draw him out and not the other way round. In fact I don’t believe he asked me anything much about myself. Perhaps he is not interested? Perhaps I bored him?’
‘Oh no, I’m sure not, dearest.’ I try to reassure her though I have little to go on. ‘Perhaps he was nervous. And tired, he was certainly tired.’
‘Yes,’ she says with a little sigh of relief. ‘Yes, perhaps that’s it.’
‘I thought him quite handsome,’ I say next, horribly conscious of my own evident self-interest in promoting the man whom I alone am responsible for my sister marrying. ‘And I did like his suit a great deal.’
‘Yes,’ she concedes. ‘But it is so hard to believe that I am to be the wife of this stranger. That we are to spend our lives together, each day and each night …’ She tails off and I know of what she is thinking.
‘It will be quite all right, Mary, I know it,’ I say with more confidence than I feel. ‘Look at the intimacy between John and Elizabeth; look at Mother and Father. Even Charles and Bridget came to closeness eventually. You will find that too as soon as you get to know each other.’
Mary attempts a smile before moving her gaze onto Mother and Father, now laughing together as Father’s rough hands make a mistake in their duet.
I examine her profile anxiously and resolve to do all I can to further Mary and the viscount’s acquaintance over the next few weeks, beginning the very next day. ‘We are going riding tomorrow,’ I remember and whisper to her above the music. ‘I hear your betrothed is a fine horseman and that will be a marvellous thing for you to have in common. Just you wait and see.’
Though I try my best to bring Mary and the viscount together over the coming days, arrangements for my wedding take up a great deal of my time and any spare moments are snatched with Robert. My chief concern in these last days is to rehearse with Master Hingston as the great poet Edmund Waller has composed a masque for my wedding in which I have been asked to take a starring role; something neither I nor any other ladies of my father’s court have ever done before. Indeed, this will be the first masque performed at the palace since before the war. Father takes some persuading to reintroduce an event so symbolic of the Catholic decadence of the Stuart court but he has high regard for the skills of Master Waller who has, after a long period in exile, reinvented himself as a staunch supporter of the Protectorate. Masters Waller and Hingston assure him the piece will be virtuous both in its morals and musical skill and bring him the manuscript, which Father peers at for a full half hour scribbling notes in the margins, before finally, cautiously, he consents. I had half hoped he would refuse as the prospect holds equal parts of terror and excitement for me, my nerves about the performance almost dwarfing those I have for the wedding ceremony itself. Robert teases me for a little girl but, secretly, I think he is as excited to see me sing and dance as I am to be seen, and I take pains to reveal no details of the masque to him so it will be a surprise.
Mary’s engagement to the viscount has still not been formally announced and so I am amazed when she herself suggests they marry at Hampton Court only a week after Robert and me – on 18 November.
‘So soon?’ I ask her. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I am,’ she nods, her face setting in the determined features of Father’s. ‘If it is to be, I would rather it were done quickly. And it will be a smaller affair than yours, it won’t need such preparations. Besides,’ the corners of her lips twitch into the smallest smile, ‘I don’t want you to leave me behind. This way we will begin our new lives together.’
With two weddings now looming, we fall into a frenzy of activity. Mother sends our Master of Ceremonies Sir Oliver Flemyng downriver to Hampton Court to begin planning for Mary’s wedding and he leaves his deputy there to oversee preparations while he hurries back to Whitehall to continue his work on mine. Several of the rooms next door to my own are cleared and prepared for Robert and me to share, and a similar set prepared for Mary and the viscount, and I delight in choosing the furnishings in consultation with the Surveyor of Works, little Master Embree, and the imposing Colonel Philip Jones, the Controller of the Household. We are to have striped wallpaper in our withdrawing room with a pair of velvet armchairs and a full closet of fitted shelves in our dressing room. It all still seems a game of make-believe to me; like preparing a house for dolls.
I only begin to believe it real when the guests start to arrive. Richard manages to make it up to London from Hampshire, his leg still in bandages and his wife Dorothy fussing over him and their small children. Bridget too comes to stay at the palace for the few nights before the wedding, her severe disapproval of our luxuries seemingly softened by the thought of her baby sisters becoming wives. Of my siblings, only Harry is missing as it is decided that he and his family will not undertake the troublesome journey from Ireland for our weddings; his in-laws, Sir Francis Russell, his wife Catherine and son John Russell will represent them instead. The news pains me greatly. Harry has been gone for over two years now and it is hard to believe that the next time we will see our big brother, Mary and I shall both be married women.
A great many of the old nobility also come to court for the wedding: faces who have not been seen in Whitehall since the old king was killed find that the time has come to lay aside their wartime differences and embrace this fresh royal order. With each arrival, I am more and more aware of the greater significance of my wedding than the mere union of my sweetheart and myself. But though this causes me a larger share of nerves than many brides, the truth is that I take great honour in it; delighted at last to play some part in our nation’s history. It will be my day, my contribution.
And finally the day comes. The day which defines the lives of women above all others, and which so many have foisted upon them, but which I have chosen for myself; the beginning of the rest of my life.
The morning dawns blustery with bronze leaves whipped through a pewter sky and I wake with the thought that it will be the last time I do so without Robert. The realisation brings a wide grin to my face which hardly leaves it at any point during the next few days. Staring at the canopy over my head, smelling the smoke from the hundreds of fires throughout the palace that have been lit earlier than usual, I resolve to treasure the happiness that I have fought so hard for and been so lucky to win; to commit each moment to memory. And yet, later, when I come to look back on the days of feasting and nights of joy, I can barely remember a thing: not who I spoke to or what I ate or the words of love we exchanged on our pillows. The whole week passes in a blur as if I am watching another’s life through a latticed window pane.
Katherine brings a breakfast tray to my room and Mary and I share it in bed: rolls still hot from the oven, butter, honey and hot apple juice. Then we bathe and beautify ourselves, laughing and pinning each other’s hair until the arrival of Mother and Elizabeth, fully dressed and commanding, brings a new industry to our endeavours and they paw and preen me, fussing and fluttering until, between them, they lace me into my wedding dress. Katherine brings the full-length looking glass and I gaze at myself in wonder, seeing another woman – a princess, not Fanny Cromwell – swathed in the lightest silver organza which caresses my skin, a bodice of silk brocade studded with pearls glimmering in the morning light. Mother fastens her own pearls around my neck and smiles at me in the mirror. And that is that.
Sliding Robert’s mother’s emerald ring onto my little finger and pausing for Elizabeth to dab her favourite rosewater perfume over me, I leave the room and am ushered along to Father’s outer presence chamber in a daze. I barely notice the courtiers who bow and clap as I pass, nor t
he garlands of winter evergreens that thread through the rooms like a river, leading me to my beloved. I see nothing until Father, waiting for me in fine grey velvet and silk stockings, gold-laced garters glinting at his knees, and then, when the doors to the inner presence chamber are opened for us, Robert. Gift-wrapped in a suit of red velvet edged with gold, the threatened brown periwig nestled on his head, he is pacing around the centre of the room, his whole body limber like a racehorse. He stops when he sees me and we grin foolishly at each other.
The wedding ceremony itself is quick and sober, only our promises to be loving and faithful to each other and then the signing of the register in the presence of selected friends and family and before the Justice of the Peace, Master Scobell, Clerk to the Privy Council. Weddings did not use to be secular affairs of course. Ten years before, when Elizabeth and Bridget had married, marriage services were still performed by clergymen in church. But in the intervening years the Puritan Parliament had come increasingly to the view that marriage was not an elaborate sacrament belonging to the church but a simple experience common to mankind and open to all. Often before when we imagined our weddings, Mary and I would bemoan our luck to be the first generation of brides not to sweep up aisles to sweet singing or to pledge our love bathed in the dappled sunlight of a great east window. And of course anything that our older sisters had done or had which we could not was a source of vexation. But here, on my wedding day, I find I do not care one jot for the ceremony as soon as I see Robert’s handsome face turn to me as Father passes my trembling hand into his.
But if I embrace the new secular style of ceremony, Robert surprises me with his traditionalism, requesting a prayer of blessing on us from one of Father’s chaplains; an indulgence which Father grants. When Jeremiah takes his place before us, his restless limbs swaying as he speaks to God, I have to lower my eyes to avoid meeting his, conscious of the courtship scene we had once played together – something which Robert of course knows nothing of. But I have little time to reflect on the irony of this as the wedding is over seconds later and we are pronounced man and wife. The news is carried from the room and spreads through the court and out into the streets of London where church follows church to peal its bells for us. I do not notice at first with all the windows fastened against the November chill, but as we are ushered out of the Presence Chambers and along to the Great Hall, I catch the sounds and ask Robert to pause and open one of the windows of the gallery so I can hear the peals. We stand together in the window just for a few moments and I close my eyes against the almost painful beauty of the sound of the ancient cities of London and Westminster rejoicing in my happiness.
The Puritan Princess Page 21