Exit the Actress (54 page)

“Will King Louis be generous?” I ventured.

“My cousin Louis is shrewd and knows he has to offer considerable terms to tempt me into Catholicism,” Charles said solemnly.

I instinctively looked around to make sure no one had heard. The king laughed. “You think there are Protestant spies lurking under the bed? By the way, before I forget, de Croissy, the new French ambassador, is stopping by tomorrow morning. Would you ask Mrs. Lark to make some of her yellow butter cakes?”

“He’s coming
here
?”

“Why not? We shall have a little court in Newman’s Row.”

I thought of my untrained, noisy servants banging up and down the stairs, my utterly unfinished building site of a house, and my indulged, unruly menagerie. “We shall certainly have an informal court in Newman’s Row.” I giggled. “State visits to my house, good God.”

“Come and see the best part,” the king said, waking me in the night and handing me my robe. “Slippers, too—it is chilly.” We crept up the backstairs in our nightclothes, trailed by the sleepy dogs. He led me up through the house, past the servants’ bedrooms, and up a little crooked attic stairway.
Lifting up a hatch, he handed me up to a rooftop beyond. It was an English garden in miniature, with potted orange trees, climbing roses, pink cabbage roses, larkspur, sweet-william, white lilac, and an ivied trellis railing running along the perimeter.

“Charles!”

“Here.” He tugged my hand, too impatient to let me discover his magical garden myself. “Look.”

It was a telescope, protected by a tiny three-sided wooden gazebo. We spent the rest of the night looking at the starlit sky.

Mrs. Chiffinch told me this morning that the queen knows of this house. We were in the morning room discussing colours and fabrics for the bedrooms when she abruptly delivered this news.

“But she is not angry,” Mrs. Chiffinch reassured me, seeing my horrified expression. “She has come to understand that there will always be some woman, and it is easier for her if it is you.”

“But I was her friend,” I said miserably, setting down the heavy book of fabric swatches.

“Yes, you were, and you behaved badly in that respect, but of all of them, you are the only one who does not urge him to divorce the queen. Unlike Castlemaine, your ambitions stop at his heart. You love him for his own sake, and she of all women can understand that.”

I am shaken. I had not expected sympathy. She is right. I do not want to destroy his marriage. She is the queen, as I could never be. There is room for us both.

“To the left, Lark,” Charles instructed. “Tie it just there.”

We were in the back garden training pink climbing roses to grow over the new curved arbour gate that Grandfather, Charles, and Lark had just finished building.

“About Madame’s letter,” said Monsieur de Croissy, the new French ambassador who was pacing about the garden, trying to draw the king into conversation.

“And then if we start the other batch growing from this side, Your Majesty?” Lark asked, holding up a pretty vine. “It should knit together by summer’s end.”

“Very good!” the king said enthusiastically, his bare hands covered in fresh dirt. “What do you say, sir?” he asked Grandfather, who was sitting in the cool shade of the peach tree. “Another slimmer trellis over the garden door?”

I looked up from my bed of creamy cabbage roses to watch the king working so happily in the company of my family.

“Lark!” Mrs. Lark called from the kitchen door. “Oh, begging your pardon, Your Majesty,” she said, upon seeing the king. “I just finished a fresh pitcher of sweet lemon water; it’s a new recipe, with honey and touch of mint, and I was going to test it out on Mr. Lark.”

“You must try it out on us, Mrs. Lark! It sounds delicious!” the king said, wiping his hands on a clean cloth.

“With some butter cakes,” Mrs. Lark determined. “With lemon-sugar icing.” She was already heading back into the house.

She returned and, spreading out a snowy cloth, laid out a pretty afternoon collation of cakes, cold coffee, and sweet citrus juices. We ate in the slanting sun and talked of this and that: the law banning blood transfusions in France, the newest plays, the stylish new cutaway jackets, and the next shipment of imported lace—everything but government, politics, and the king’s family.

Charles is spending most of his days here. He does not care to publicly mourn with the court. He is quiet and thoughtful but not sad. It was a complicated affection, he tells me. He does not miss her but regrets that he did not heed his sister’s pleas and visit their ailing Mother. “I was not at the deathbed of either of my parents,” he told me, “but then my father did not die in a bed.” He picked up a Venetian glass ball and held it up to the
afternoon sun. “Did you know I sent a blank letter? Just my signature and nothing else.”

“Blank letter?”

“To Cromwell, from the Hague. Any terms. I left it blank to show that I would sign my name to
any
terms that would spare my father’s life.” He looked at the blue glass ball in his hand as if he was surprised to find it there.

When I asked about his mother, his description was, at best, unflattering: “She was opinionated, stubborn, and nothing I did pleased her. She has been determined to be miserable every day since the death of my father.” He broke off, hearing his escaping bitterness. This was a man who had trained himself to experience only the sweet side of everything. “But, my God…,” he said thoughtfully, as he looked out the window to the meadow beyond, “did she love him.”

Every so often he breaks the quiet with random anecdotes pulled from his past: how she charged him per meal during their penniless exile, how she fed his dogs free of charge, how she passionately loved her husband but never understood her adopted country. He replays his life over and over.

He worries for his sister, now the last member of his immediate family left in France, and is forever urging her to visit, although having just risen from childbed, she cannot. Her grief for her mother is genuine. “There is no one Minette could not love, including our mam,” he said after reading her letter. I just sit by him and stay quiet: It is all I can do.

Note
—I asked Rose to sew some mourning clothes for me and the staff, and she has already sent over a stunning black striped satin gown: black on black, very elegant.

Charles and I have returned to the quiet of the country. He was loath to go to one of his official residences for fear of all the fuss and ceremony, so we slipped away here. The Larks accompanied us, and each day we take all the dogs, a duck or two if they are inclined, and Molly on a long walk by the river.
Charles is teaching me to fish, although I try not to catch any—it seems cruel. Charles is much preoccupied with his sister’s well-being and happiness and, I suspect, with the brewing treaty betwixt the two countries. I do not try to divert him but let him know that I am here at the end of the path.

Clean linen again this month. Hold still. Trust. Hope. Another month, and I tell him.

“This won’t work if you stay on the bank, Nell!” Charles called out, lazily floating in the shady water. Ruby and Scandalous looked at me in alarm, concerned that if I go in, they might be required to jump in and rescue me. Charles’s spaniels, all accustomed to water sports, flung themselves into the water with abandon.

“Sit, stay,” I told them. “But how does it
work
?” I asked, buying time on hard ground and watching the dogs swim round their master.

“Out! Out!” He herded them onto the bank. “Well, we are largely composed of humours that float, and so, on the whole,
we
float.”

I put my bare toe into the river. It felt cold, but then
he
looked warm, and the dogs, now shaking off the water and stretching out in the sunshine, looked warm, and so it must
be
warm. “On the whole?” I asked sceptically. “Ruby, sit.” I did not want her going in the water.

“Well, the odd man here or there doesn’t float, but most do. In any case I am right here to save you. Just go, all at once! No hesitation! One, two, three! There’s my brave girl!” he whooped as I ungracefully tumbled in on my bottom.

I rose, sputtering, to the surface, shocked by the cold—it was
not
warm at all. Laughing, he caught me in his arms and held me securely as I caught my breath. It was an exhilarating feeling: the chilly weightlessness after the bright day’s warmth. Just then Molly jumped in after me and paddled in circles around us. This was too much for the dogs, and they all began to bark, alarming Molly, who only paddled faster.