Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor
And so they watched, and waited. If his hold on Parliament should once slip they would be at his throat like a pack of starving jackals.
"Have you been out Piccadilly to see the Chancellor's new house?" asked someone, when he had gone.
"Judging by the foundations I'd say he'll have to sell England to finish it. What he got from Dunkirk won't build the stables."
"How many more times does the old devil think he can sell England? Our value won't hold up much longer at the present rate of exchange."
The door into the King's private chambers opened again and Buckhurst strolled out with another young man. Two or three others crossed over to speak to them.
"What's the delay? I've been waiting here half-an-hour. Nothing but the hope of speaking to his Majesty about a place for my cousin could have induced me to get out of bed on a morning like this one. Now I suppose he's gone by way of the Privy Stairs and left us all to shift for ourselves."
"He'll be along presently. He's dickering with a Jesuit priest over the price of a recipe for Spirit of Human Skull. Have you got a tailor's bill in your pocket, Tom? If it's illegible enough sell it to Old Rowley for a universal panacea and your fortune's made. He's giving that mangy old Jesuit five thousand pound for his scrap of paper."
"Five thousand! Good God! What can an old man have to spend five thousand on?"
"What do you think? On a remedy for impotence, of course."
"The best remedy for impotence is a pretty wench—" The voices grew temporarily quiet as the King appeared, strolling through the door with his dogs and sycophants behind him. He was freshly shaved and his smooth brown skin had a healthy glow; he gave them a smile and a nod of his head and started on out. The jostling for place began immediately as they streamed along in his wake, but Buckingham already had one elbow and Lauderdale the other.
"I suppose," said Charles to the Duke, "that by tomorrow it will be running up the galleries and through the town I'm a confirmed Catholic."
"I've heard those rumours already, Sire."
"Well—" Charles shrugged. "If that's the worst rumour that goes abroad about me I think it's no great matter for concern." Charles was not inclined to worry about what anyone said of him, and he knew his people well enough to know that grumbling was a national sport, not much more subversive than football or wrestling. He had been home almost five years now, and the honeymoon with his subjects was over.
Leaving his own apartments he crossed the Stone Gallery and started down a maze of narrow hallways which led along the Privy Garden, over the Holbein Gateway and into St. James's Park. He walked so rapidly that the shorter men had to half run, or be left behind, and since most of them had a favour to ask they did not intend to let that happen.
"I think there's time," said Charles, "for a turn through the Park before Chapel. I hope the air's cold enough to make me sleepy."
They had reached the old stairway which led down into the Park when suddenly one of the doors up the corridor to the left burst open and Monmouth came out in a rush. The men stopped and while his father laughed heartily the Duke ran toward them; he arrived breathless, swept off his hat and made a low bow. Charles dropped an arm about the boy's shoulders and gave him an affectionate pat.
"I overslept, Sire! I was just going to attend you to Chapel."
"Come along, James. I've been wanting to talk to you."
James, who was now walking between the King and Lauderdale, gave his father an apprehensive glance. "What about, Sire?"
"You must know, or you wouldn't have such a guilty face. Everyone's been telling me about you. Your behaviour's a favorite subject of conversation." James hung his head and Charles, with a smile he could not wholly conceal lurking at the corners of his mouth, went on. "They say you've taken to keeping a wench—at fifteen, James—that you've run deep into debt, that you scour about the streets at night disturbing peaceful citizens and breaking their windows. In short, son, they say you lead a very gay life."
Monmouth looked swiftly up at his father, and his handsome face broke into an appealing smile. "If I'm gay, Sire, it's only to help me forget my troubles."
Several of the others burst into laughter but Charles looked at the boy solemnly, his black eyes shining. "You must have a great many troubles, James. Come along—and tell me about them."
The morning was cold and frosty and the wind blew their periwigs about, as it did the spaniels' ears. Charles clamped his hat firmly onto his head, but the others had to hold to their wigs—for they carried their hats beneath their arms—or lose them. The grass was hard-matted and slippery, and there was a thin sheet of ice over the canal; it had been an unusually cold dry winter, and there had been no thaw since before Christmas. The other men looked at one another sourly, annoyed that they must go walking in such weather, but the King strode along as unconcernedly as if it were a fine summer day.
Charles walked in the Park because he liked the exercise and the fresh-air. He enjoyed strolling along the canal to see how his birds, in cages hung in the trees on either side, were standing the cold weather. Some of the smaller ones he had had removed indoors until the frost should break. He wanted to know if the cold had hurt the row of new elms he had had set out the year before and whether his pet crane was learning to walk with the wooden leg he had had made for it when its own had been lost in an accident.
But he did not walk only for amusement and exercise; it was a part of the morning's business. Charles had always preferred that his unpleasant tasks be done under pleasant conditions— and there were few duties he disliked more than hearing petitions and begging for favours. If it had been possible he would gladly have granted every request that was made him, not so much from the boundless generosity of his nature as to buy his own peace from whining voices and pleading eyes. He hated the sound and the sight of them, but it was the one thing from which there never could be escape.
Some of them wanted a place at Court for a friend or relative, and there were always a hundred askers for each place that fell vacant. However he chose he left many disgruntled and jealous and the one who got it was seldom as well pleased as he had expected to be. Another would want a grant for a Plate Lottery—royal permission to sell tickets at whatever price he could command for a lottery of some crown plate. Others were there to beg an estate: it was common practice to bear the expense of arrest and prosecution of other persons in the hope that a cash-fine or confiscated property could be begged from the King. Another man wanted to go to sea to fight the Dutch, and he wanted to go as a captain or a commander, though his sea experience had been limited to a crossing from France in one of the packet-boats.
Charles listened to them patiently, tried when he could to refer the supplicant to someone else, and when he could not usually granted the request, though well aware that it might be impossible of fulfillment. And as he walked and listened to the petitions of his courtiers he was often approached by a sick old man or woman, sometimes a young mother with her child, who begged him to touch and heal them. The courtiers resented the intrusion, but Charles did not.
He liked his people and, though he had lived so long out of the country, he understood them. They grumbled about his mistresses and the extravagance of the Court, but when he smiled and stopped to talk to them and laugh with them in his deep booming voice they loved him in spite of everything. His charm and accessibility were potent political weapons and he knew it.
They walked along the Canal that crossed the Park from one end to another and back along Pall Mall, turning down King Street into the Palace grounds. The chapel bells began to ring and Charles increased his rapid pace, relieved that soon he would be where they could pester him no longer. Monmouth was far ahead of them. All along the way he had been running and leaping, calling the spaniels to follow him until now their long ears were soggy and wet and their paws clotted with mud.
Ah! thought Charles, and drew a deep breath as they came into the courtyard which led to the chapel. Another hundred yards and I'm safe!
At that moment Buckingham, who had given his place to others, caught up with him again. "Sire," he began. "May I present—"
Charles threw a quick comical glance at Lauderdale. "How is it," he murmured, "that every one of my friends keeps a tame knave?"
But he turned back with a smile to hear the man out, and stopped just at the chapel doors with the courtiers clustered around him. But the ladies were going in, and his eyes wandered. Frances Stewart came along with her waiting-woman and gave him a wave of her hand. Charles grinned broadly and made a quick move to follow her, but remembered that he was listening to a petition and checked himself.
"Yes," he interrupted. "I appreciate your position, sir. Believe me, I'll give it serious thought."
"But, Sire—" protested the man, holding out his hands. "As I told you, it's most urgent! I must know soon or—"
"Oh, yes," said Charles, who had not been listening at all. "So it is. Very well, then. I think you may."
Gratefully the man started to drop to his knees, but the King gave him an impatient signal not to, for he was eager to get away. And then, just before he entered the great carved oak doors he turned and said over his shoulder, "As far as I'm concerned, you may have your wish. But you'd best make sure the Chancellor has no other plans on that score."
The man opened his mouth again, the smile disappearing in a sudden look of dismay, but it was too late. The King was gone. "Catch him as he comes out," whispered Buckingham, and went on himself.
The chapel was already well filled and the music of the great organ thundered in the walls. Charles did not like going to church and sermons bored him, but he did contrive to please himself while there with some of the finest music to be had. And, much to the scandal of the conservative, he had introduced violins, which he loved better than any other instrument.
He sat alone in the Royal Closet in the gallery—Catherine attended her own Catholic mass—looking down over the chapel. Curtains at either side closed off the portion of the gallery where the ladies sat, though he knew that Frances was there just beside him, so close that he could whisper to her. The young clergyman who was to speak for the day had taken his place and was mopping his perspiring cheeks and forehead with his black-gloved hands, until as the dye came off he looked more like a chimney-sweep than a divine. Titters went up here and there and the young man looked more wretchedly uncomfortable than ever, wondering why they had begun to laugh before he had spoken so much as one word.
It was almost as difficult to preach to the Court as it was to act to it. The King invariably went to sleep, sitting bolt upright and facing the pulpit, as soon as the subject of the sermon had been announced. The Maids of Honor whispered among themselves, waving their fans at the men below, giggled and tried on one another's jewellery and ribbons. The gallants craned their necks back up at the ladies' gallery and compared notes on the previous night's activities or pointed out the pretty women present. The politicians leaned their heads together and murmured in undertones, keeping their eyes ahead as though no one could guess what they were doing. Most of the older ladies and gentlemen, relics of the Court of the first Charles, sat soberly in their pews and listened with satisfaction to the warnings repeatedly given by the pulpit to a careless age; but even their good intentions often ended in noisy snores.
At last the young chaplain, newly preferred to his place by an influential relative, proclaimed the subject of his first sermon before the King and Court. "Behold!" he announced, giving another swipe of his black glove along his cheek, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made!"
Instantly the chapel was filled with laughter, and while the bewildered frightened young man looked out over his congregation, tears started into his eyes, even the King had to clear his throat and bend over to examine his shoe-lace to conceal a smile. A finger poked him gleefully through the curtains, and Charles knew that it was Frances whom he could hear gasping with laughter. But the chapel finally grew quiet again, the terrified clergyman forced himself to go on, and Charles composed himself to sleep.
Frances Stewart had replaced Barbara Palmer as the most popular and successful hostess at Whitehall. The suppers she gave in her apartments overlooking the river were crowded with all the powerful and clever men and pretty women of the Court. Both Buckingham and Arlington were trying to enlist her support for their own projects, for they were convinced as was everyone else that the King could be led through a woman.
Buckingham strummed his guitar for her and sang songs, mimicked Clarendon and Arlington, played with her at her favourite game of building card-castles, and flattered himself that she was falling in love with him. The Baron had no such social tricks at his command, but he did unbend enough to talk to her with a certain air of gracious condescension which was the best he could do toward charming a woman. And when Louis XIV sent his new minister, Courtin, to try to persuade Charles to call off the Dutch War, the merry little Frenchman immediately applied himself to Mrs. Stewart.
"Oh, heavens!" she said one evening to Charles, when he had finally maneuvered her into a corner alone. "My head's awhirl with all this talk of politics! One tells me this and another that and a third something else—" She stopped, looked up at him and then gave a sudden mischievous little burst of laughter. "And I don't remember any of it! If they only guessed how little I listen to their prittle-prattle I warrant you they'd all be mightily out of sorts with me."
Charles watched her, his eyes glowing with passionate admiration, for he still thought that she was the most perfectly lovely thing he had ever seen. "Thank God you don't listen," he said. "A woman has no business meddling in politics. I think perhaps that's one reason why I love you, Frances. You never trouble me with petitions—your own or anyone else's. I see asking faces everywhere I look—and I'm glad yours doesn't ask." His voice dropped lower. "But I'd give you anything you want, Frances—anything you could ask for. You know that, don't you?"
(Across the room one young man, watching them, said to another: "His Majesty's been in love with her for two years and she's still a virgin. I tell you, it's beyond credence!")
Frances smiled, a gentle wistful smile so young and artless that it clutched at his heart. "I know that you're very generous, Sire. But truly, there's nothing I want but to live an honourable life."
A look of quick impatience crossed his face and his eyebrows twisted with a kind of whimsical anger. But then he smiled. "Frances, my dear, an honourable life is exactly what he who lives it thinks it to be. After all, honour is only a word."
"I don't know what you mean, Sire. To me, I assure you, honour is much more than a word."
"But nevertheless it must be one or several qualities you associate with a certain word. His Grace of Buckingham, for instance, over there at the card-table, has quite another definition from your own."
Frances laughed at that, somewhat relieved that she could, for she did not like serious conversations and felt uneasy in the presence of an abstraction. "I don't doubt that, your Majesty. I think that's one subject where his Grace and I think no more alike than you and I do."
"Oh?" said the King, with an air of mild and amused interest. "And has Buckingham been trying to persuade you over to his interpretation?"
Frances blushed and tapped her fan on her knee. "Oh, that wasn't what I meant!"
"Wasn't it? I think it was. But don't trouble yourself about it, my dear. It's an old habit of the Duke's—falling in love along with me."
Frances looked offended. "Falling in love along with you! Heavens, Sire! You sound as if you've been in love mighty often!"
"If I tried to pretend I'd never noticed a woman until you came along—well, Frances, after all—"
"Just the same you needn't speak as though it's a common everyday occurrence!" She tilted her chin and turned a haughty profile to him.
Charles laughed. "I almost think you're prettiest when you're just a little—just ever so little—angry with me. You have the loveliest nose in the world—"
"Oh, have
But suddenly the King glanced across the room and muttered in annoyance, "Good Lord! Here comes Courtin to lecture me about the war again! Quick! Let's go in here!"
He took her arm and though she started to protest he swiftly ushered her through the door and closed it. The room was dark but for the moonlight reflecting off the water, but he led her across it and into another beyond.
"There!" he said, closing the second door. "He'll never dare follow us in here!"
"But he's such a nice little man. Why don't you want to talk to him?"
"What's the use? I've told him a thousand times, England and Holland are at war and that's all there is to it. The fleet's at sea—I can't very well call it back for all the nice little men in France. Come here—"
Frances glanced at him dubiously, for each time they were alone the same thing happened. But after a moment of hesitation she walked to the window and stood beside him. White swans were floating there close to shore in the early spring dusk, and the reeds grew so tall the tips of them touched the glass. The water looked dark and cold and a brisk wind had whipped up the waves. He slipped one arm about her waist and for a minute or more they stood silently, looking out. And then slowly he turned, drew her close against him, and kissed her mouth.
Frances submitted, but she was unresponsive. Her hands rested lightly on his shoulders, her body held taut and her lips were cool and passive. His arms tightened and his mouth forced her lips apart; the blood seemed to vibrate through his veins with the intensity of his passion. He felt sure that this time he could bring her to life, make her desire him as violently as he did her.
"Frances, Frances," he murmured, a kind of pleading rage in his voice. "Kiss me. Stop thinking—stop telling yourself that this is wicked. Forget yourself—forget everything and let me show you what happiness can be—"