Royal Harlot (10 page)

It could not last, and it didn’t. When Richard refused to consider a separate commander in chief and tried to keep all the power to himself, as his father had done, then the army council began to meet in secret. In April, two of the most prominent officers—and those who’d been most loyal to the elder Cromwell—General John Desborough and Major General Charles Fleetwood, led a coup that removed Richard as Lord Protector and dissolved the Parliament that he’d called.

The country was now ruled by a Council of State, a republican mask donned by the army. Also brought back to office were the remnants of the Parliament that Oliver Cromwell had long ago dissolved, now ingloriously called the Rump—a name that always made me snort and laugh, no matter how solemnly it was invoked. This Rump was full of supporters for the restoration of the monarchy, and it truly seemed the time was ripening for Charles’s return.

Even so, the Royalists seemed incapable of assembling a suitable force to bring the king back to power. Though other countries—Holland, Spain, Portugal—had sworn to help Charles regain his throne, none of them was offering the armies and funds to make such idle promises real. Since so many other attempts to retake England had ended in disastrous losses, the king’s advisors refused to let him return without this show of force, or any real willingness of the people to welcome and support him.

For this, really, was the greater problem. While most of England had long grumbled into their ale about the weakness of Richard Cromwell and the oppression of life under the Commonwealth, few were willing to give life to those grumbles with real action. Even the noblemen among my friends, men whose families had lost the most in the wars, and who in turn sought to gain the most were the monarchy restored, seemed incapable of so much as raising a regiment from the people on their own lands. Roger’s father had told him long ago that this was not so much from lazy torpidity or disinterest, but because these fatherless young gentlemen simply did not know how such things were done, having grown to manhood deprived of the examples of their elders.

I cannot say whether this was true or not. All I knew was that for whatever reason, Charles remained mired in Brussels with only his Lord Chancellor Sir Edward Hyde and a handful of tattered courtiers for company, while the Royalist cause did little more than plot and plan and send coded letters back and forth among themselves, like harmless schoolboys playing at spies in the attic.

My heady dreams of taking part in the king’s return likewise lay fallow. Roger always had an excuse or reason why my services were not needed, and instead expected me to limit my activities to those of any drudging wife. As unpleasant as my life had been under my mother’s roof, at least there I’d not been expected to attend tediously to the keeping of the house and staff, or to plan dinners for my husband with the cook, or to advise the laundry maid on how he liked the sleeves of his shirts pleated, exactly so. I saw little of the reputed Palmer fortune, either, and when I begged Roger for a new gown or petticoat to cheer my spirits, he’d tell me there was no money to spare on my fripperies, and I was forced to make do with the shabby leavings that I’d brought from my mother’s house. Further, Roger wished me to be content with his company and no other, which only added to my growing unhappiness as his wife. It was as if he’d married me as one woman, and then as soon as we’d wed expected me to change into another.

Little wonder, then, that I was resentful and rebellious, unfortunate qualities in any new bride. When Philip returned to London and wrote to me, I returned his letters with the same fervor as before, and met him, too, as eagerly as if I’d no husband. I
was
the same woman after all; I hadn’t changed a bit.

And though I continued to wear the glass cypher heart that Roger had given me around my neck, I thought of it as a sign of my loyalty to the king, and not to Roger. In a way the crystal heart was a perfect symbol for his love for me: hard, transparent, and without vibrancy or life.

But as is always the case whenever one believes life is cruel or unfair, worse was to come.

In the first week of June, I felt out of sorts and faintly ill, feverish one day and chilled the next. I said nothing to Roger, attributing my malaise to my general unhappiness and little more. Vague distempers and agues were common in London every summer, a part of the place and season. Still, my head and limbs ached and I’d lost the stomach for food, and one morning I felt so weary I could scarce crawl from our bed. When at last I finally did rise and sat at my looking-glass for my maid to dress my hair, she was the one who discovered what ailed me.

“What is this, madam?” she said, frowning down at my shoulder. “A scrape, yes?”

I twisted my head to look down to where she meant, pulling the gathered edge of my smock to one side to bare more of my shoulder. This was no scrape, nor scratch, but an angry red rash spreading beyond my shoulders to my arms and back. The maid drew back, for she knew as well as I what such a rash did signify:

Smallpox.

The maid fled to fetch others, and I staggered back to the bed on my own, weeping into my pillow with suffering, grief, and fear. A sentence of death for a prisoner in the Tower could at least be revoked, but smallpox was never so generous. Nearly all its victims perished, and the few who by miracle survived seldom escaped without faces pitted and ravaged with scars. I was only eighteen, and I knew not which would be worse: to die outright, or to live, yet with my Villiers beauty forever destroyed.

By the next dawn, I was past caring either way. Fever racked my head, and I tossed and whimpered with the pain of it. Afterward I learned that Roger had ordered all the proper curatives. The bedchamber was draped in red cloth to draw out my fever, the windows sealed shut against any breath of draft or chill, the fire kept burning high. He summoned the best physician to my side, who bled and cupped me, and Dr. Harris of our church, who prayed over my delirious self to ease my way from this life to the next.

The first redness blossomed into pimples all over my face and body, which next turned to pustules that oozed and crusted as the first fever relaxed its grip. I saw the long faces of the physicians and understood what was not said in my hearing. They’d abandoned hope. I was going to die. I did not notice when my looking-glass was taken away from the room. When I finally did see its absence, I wept again, realizing how hideously flawed my poor face must have become.

As soon as Roger left me that day, I asked a servant for paper and pen, and wrote as best I could to Philip, begging for him to come to me one last time before I died. I knew he’d had smallpox himself, and thus would be in no risk from visiting me, and I was past caring if his last glimpse of me was one of ugly deformity. All I wished was to see him one final time in this life. I vowed that my last words would be a prayer for his happiness, and that I meant to die as I’d lived, loving him above all other things. I gave this over to the servant to deliver, and prayed for the strength to survive long enough for him to join me.

I would have done better simply to pray for myself, and left Philip from my plea. His message was as faithless as always: he was sorry to learn of the illness of His Dearest Life, and wished for my complete and unscathed recovery, but he regretted that circumstance made it impossible for him to fly to my bedside. I shrieked, wondering what the pretty name and face of this circumstance could be, and hurriedly penned another note, humbling myself further miserably. What did I have to lose, facing death? I swore that if only he’d come to me, I was sure to recover, and further, that I’d then leave Roger and run off with him whenever and wherever he pleased.

To this I received no reply from Philip, and my poor heart ached at such abandonment. I longed for death, to put an end to the torment he inflicted upon me. Yet Fate had determined me for greater things, or perhaps my plain country upbringing had simply made me too strong and willful to succumb. Whatever the reason, my health began slowly to improve. My fever subsided and my strength and appetite returned, and I watched as one by one the scabs fell from my skin.

Best of all came the day that Roger himself brought my breakfast tray as I sat in the bed, propped up by pillows.

“Good day, Barbara,” he said, setting the tray onto my lap. “You look as bright as the morning.”

“You flatter me,” I said, peeking beneath the napkin to see what the cook had sent up for my breakfast. “You’re kind to bring this yourself, Roger.”

He
had
been kind to me in my illness, more kind than I either expected or deserved. I’d freely grant him that, and thank him for it, too.

“It’s no flattery at all,” he said. “You’re my wife. You’ll always be beautiful in my eyes. But likely the rest of the world will agree with me, too.”

He pulled my small tortoise-framed looking-glass from inside his doublet and handed it to me. I seized it, and with shaking hands held it up to my face while Roger drew back the window curtains and let the morning sun fall full upon me.

“It’s clear,” I whispered, stunned. “My face is clear, Roger, without a single pockmark!”

“I told you, you’re as beautiful as ever,” he said softly. “No one will ever know you were afflicted.”

“Not a mark,” I whispered, tears of joy in my eyes as I ran my fingers across my smooth cheeks. I know it must sound as if I were the vainest creature in the world, concerned with my own face and no more. Yet like many women, I was known only by my beauty, even famous for it, and to have that taken from me at so young an age would have left me bereft and lost as to whom I might truly be.

Roger smiled, watching me, and I smiled in return, believing he understood my joy, and shared it.

He understood me, yes, but not the way I’d thought.

“At least my prayers were answered, Barbara,” he said slowly, “if not your own.”

Still giddy with relief, I looked at him over the glass in my hand. “Oh, Roger, you make no sense! Of course I prayed for my deliverance, just as now I’ll make my prayers of thanks for having been restored.”

“So many prayers, Barbara,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “It’s a wonder you can recall them all.”

He pulled out a folded sheet, and to my dismay I recognized it as the second letter I’d written to Philip when I’d been so ill.

The seal was broken, and I could be sure that he’d read the contents. Yet even then my first thought was not of my sworn husband, Roger, but of my lover Philip, and how he’d not come to me because he’d never received my letter. Ah, how willingly I made excuses for Philip, no matter how unworthy he was of my love, and how little in turn I’d spare for Roger!

Now I stared at the letter in his hand, my cheeks no longer flushed with smallpox, but guilt. “How did you come by that letter?”

“Your servants were mine first, and still answer to me,” he said, not so much angry as sad. “So you do recall writing to Lord Chesterfield? You don’t deny it, or blame it on a feverish delirium?”

“Of course I don’t deny it, Roger,” I said uneasily. “How can I, when you’re holding the proof in your hand?”

He tossed the letter onto the bed beside me, as if he didn’t want to touch it any longer. “I suppose I must grant you credit for honesty, if for nothing else.”

I glanced down at the letter without gathering it up. Why should I, when I recalled every fervent word I’d written?

“You knew me before we wed,” I said defensively. “You knew what manner of woman I was.”

“I did,” he said. “But that was before you swore before God to be my wife, and all that entailed. Or have you forgotten that in your lust for Chesterfield’s bed?”

“I didn’t forget.” The letter on the bed now seemed doubly damning, yet still I was too foolishly enraptured of Philip to throw myself on Roger’s mercy, as I should. “How could I, with you to remind me?”

Roger’s lips pressed tightly together, and too late I realized my tart words had cost me whatever tender kindness my illness had inspired in him.

“That is good,” he said. “I’ll see that you’ll have sufficient time to act upon those vows in the coming months.”

I frowned, not liking the sound of that. “What are you saying, Roger?”

“That you are still my wife, Barbara. Not even the drivel you write to Chesterfield will change that.” He bowed curtly. “I’ll send your maid to pack your things. We leave London for Dorney Court in the morning.”

 
As long as I’d known Roger, he’d praised his family’s home at Dorney Court, in Berkshire near Windsor: how felicitous its air, how sweet its flowers, the elegance of the ancient timbers and bricks and the boundless warmth of the hospitality to be found therein. Anyone who heard his rhapsodies would believe it was a woman that inspired him, certainly not a creaking pile of plaster and wood, and I soon realized that I could never hold a candle to the sentimental brilliance of Dorney Court.

I had put off visiting this inanimate rival as long as I could. It was not only the estate itself that I dreaded, so far from my beloved London, but Roger’s mother, who’d continued to live there after Sir James’s death at the end of 1658. She was a papist, given overmuch to dogged prayer. I’d known the old man had despised me and had pleaded with Roger to break with me, but his mother’s hatred ran even deeper. Roger was her only child, and she defended him like a mother lioness does her cub. Through Roger, I learned she blamed me somehow not only for beguiling her son but also as the cause of her husband’s death. No matter what the reputation might be for hospitality at Dorney Court, I’d guessed there’d be none for me, and I was right.

Roger and I came by the river, the best way, he claimed, to see the house the first time. I saw, and I was unimpressed: a rambling, old-fashioned pile from the time of Queen Elizabeth, brick and timbers and plaster and greenery all jumbled together in the mists. Roger often lamented how badly the house had been ravaged by the parliamentary army in the war, and how his father’s collection of rare miniatures and medals had been plundered, but I suspected the estate still looked much as it had for the last century or two.