Royal Harlot (25 page)

“My
daughter,
” I said defensively, holding her the more tightly. “I’ve called her Anne.”

“Anne,” he said, his expression soft with wonder. “A good name, a saint’s name.”

“My grandmother’s name,” I said, not wanting my Anne burdened with his saints. Roger’s mother was a papist, and in the last months it had seemed to me that Roger himself had turned more and more toward the Roman church. His conversation had become peppered with Romish sayings, and he now numbered priests among his acquaintance. I even suspected that he ventured to Mass like the Duke of York, and without telling me, either. With the Declaration of Breda, Charles had vowed that Englishmen were now free to worship however they pleased, but I’d never guessed that freedom would extend to my own husband.

“Anne is a good English name,” I continued. “An
Anglican
name.”

“Of course, of course,” he murmured, too enchanted with the babe to listen to me. “How beautiful she is! Oh, Barbara, I cannot wait to show our daughter to the world.”

“Forgive me, sir,” the midwife sternly interrupted. “But you must take care of a new babe’s health. To parade her about before others and let her be passed from hand to hand, to haul her about amidst the uncleanliness of the city—that, sir, is to put her young life at gravest risk.”

“I’d never do that,” Roger said, chastised. “I only meant to take her with me to Dorney Court, for my mother’s blessings.”

I gasped, horrified, and hugged Anne more tightly in my arms. “What you truly mean by that, Roger, is that you plan to spirit my daughter away to your mother’s chapel and have her baptized as a papist, delivering her soul into the hands of the priests.”

“Hush, madam, hush, don’t alarm yourself,” cautioned Mistress Quinn. “Childbed is a most delicate state for a woman, and ill humors such as these are a hazard for your condition as well.”

“Yes, yes, Barbara, please calm yourself,” Roger said softly. “I’ve no wish to harm you or our child. Nothing will be done in the matter of baptism without consulting you. How could I ever treat my Anne’s mother with so little regard?”

“I do not know,” I said, still on my guard. “But I will tell you this:
I’d
never dare make such a grave decision without consulting her father, and I’d hope you’d do the same with regards to me.”

He smiled again, though I doubted he understood the depth of the truth, or the threat, behind my words. Instead he leaned forward to first kiss Anne’s cheek, then mine.

“Whatever you wish, Barbara,” he said softly. “I know better than to cross you, even on this day when you’ve made me the happiest of men. Whatever you wish, I shall abide by it.”

 
Charles was overjoyed at the news of Anne’s arrival, and promised to call upon us as soon as I was permitted to sit up, and the rigors of my lying-in were lessened. In the meantime, he wrote to me the prettiest letter imaginable, full of tenderness and promises for my future and for our daughter’s, which I carefully saved for her to read when she was older, as proof of her father’s devotion. He also sent as a token to her a handsome rattle truly fit for a princess, a large coral set within a silver handle with numerous bells and much fine engraving. For me came a pair of large, exquisitely matched pearl drops for my ears, all the more memorable for being my first pearls.

I still did not trust Roger in the matter of Anne’s christening. Instead, three days after she was born, I arranged for the Anglican minister of our parish to come to King Street and baptize Anne in the proper faith. It was done with as little fanfare as can be imagined, with her godparents left to be named later. But at least now I could rest easily, knowing her little soul was preserved as a Protestant, and that whatever Romish tomfoolery Roger might attempt would be of no effect.

At this same time, my stepfather, the Earl of Anglesea, perished of smallpox. He was buried beside my mother in the churchyard of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, where I hoped they’d plague one another for all eternity. Like my mother, he left me nothing, his entire estate passing to his decrepit sister, the Countess of Sussex, who never would deign to receive me. I would remember her later, I promised myself, and in a way, too, that would show her who was above, and who was beneath.

But for most of that February and into March, I concentrated on regaining my strength and my form. I’d missed Charles while I’d been away, missed him mightily, missed his wit and his charm, his affection and his lusty skills as my lover. I could but hope he’d missed me as much. Like a warrior who readies himself for battle, I planned my return to court, determined to defy those like Hyde who’d try to keep me away from the king.

April would at last mark the celebration for his coronation on St. George’s Day, nearly a year after his return, and the pageantry and show would be rare indeed. The first uncertain days of his realm were done, the shabbiness of exile forgotten. It was not just Charles who’d been restored to power, but the palaces and churches, the markets and shops and theatres—the life of the entire city had returned with him. Soon guests and dignitaries would begin arriving, adding even more luster to the court.

I could not take part in the coronation itself, of course. Neither my beauty nor the king’s affection for me could accomplish that. Just as in the procession that had marked his return to England, nearly all of the participants would be men, and the few women permitted to watch in Westminster Abbey would be ladies from the highest-ranking families of the peerage.

It vexed me mightily that I was not among them, just as it vexed me that for now my daughter was no more than lowly Miss Palmer. But I vowed that would change. As much as I longed to be again with Charles, I wasn’t returning to court simply to enjoy myself. I was twenty now, and already I’d squandered too much of my youth on idleness. A gentleman can rely on his intelligence, education, and courage to advance himself, but while the surest weapons a lady has in her arsenal are far more potent, they are also far more fleeting. If I wished to make the most of my Villiers gifts, I must use my wit and beauty while I could to advance my station and secure my future. I owed it to my little Anne to settle for nothing less.

Thus when Roger insisted on taking my daughter to his mother at Dorney Court in March, I’d no choice but to agree. In the eyes of the world, he was her father, and had that right. It was better that way, too, I suppose, to have them both away from London now. Besides, the Palmers had even less wish to see me than I them, accepting my excuses so I could remain behind in town. I put aside the crystal cypher heart that Roger had given me at our betrothal, and instead hooked the pearl drops from Charles into my ears, ready for my triumphant return to court.

To court, to Charles, and to battle.

 
One of the first acts that Charles had ordered on his return was to reopen the theatres. Unlike Cromwell, he found no sin in plays or players, and unlike his father, he preferred to venture out and see the public performances among his people, rather than isolated command performances at the palace. Most startlingly of all, however, was how he’d ended the long-held ban of women upon the stage. Now instead of beardless men assuming roles meant for females, women actors in the style of the French theatres played the parts as surely Nature ever intended.

For me, whose life had coincided so completely with the parliamentary locking of the theatres, seeing plays for the first time was both a wonder and a treat, and my enthusiasm had delighted Charles as well. There was no finer entertainment to be had—excepting, of course, the one—than a night spent at the theatre, whether the King’s Company in Vere Street or the Duke’s Company in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

And I found pleasure not only in viewing but in being viewed. Attending plays was the finest way to increase my reputation as the king’s favorite. Though I’d doubted the midwife’s prediction when I’d first heard it, my
accouchement
had indeed added new richness to my beauty, a soft luxuriance that Charles had noticed at once with demonstrative approval. I was commonly called the most beautiful lady at the court; no other came close.

Now even the lowest clerks and apprentices who paid their two shillings to sit on the board benches in the pit recognized me by name, and I’d become better known than any of the high ladies at the court, or the most popular actresses on the stage. In turn Charles fair glowed with pride to have me so noticed, and to know that I was his.

On such a night, soon before the coronation, I’d gone with the king to see a new play by Beaumont and Fletcher called
The Humorous Lieutenant
. The king’s entrance to the royal box was greeted with the usual cheers and huzzahs, and, alas, the usual lower salutes as well.

“ ’Ere, Yer Majesty, ’ere!” The girl’s flushed face was as round as the oranges in the willow basket on her hip as she grinned up at us from the theatre’s pit. Every such chit in the place would come parade below the royal box, flaunting their overripe breasts like more oranges for sale in the hope that Charles would notice them—oh, yes, and the girl herself, too. “Fine, sweet oranges, oh, Yer Majesty!”

Charles could never resist such pleas, and leaned over the rail. “How sweet, lass?”

“Taste f ’ yerself, Yer Majesty!” The girl reached into her basket to choose the most luscious fruit, and gaily tossed it up toward the box.

The king reached out to catch it, but beside him I was the quicker, snatching the fruit like a golden ball from the air.

“The game’s faster than that, sir,” I said as I leaned back once again in my chair and began to peel my prize, digging my thumb hard into the thick skin to make the juice spurt free. “I wonder you didn’t realize it, considering how quick you are in most other matters.”

He laughed, his brother the Duke of York laughed on his other side, and the others in the surrounding boxes and in the pit below laughed, too, the way it always was with the king.

“It’s only an orange, Barbara,” he said, “not the Apple of Discord.”

“It’s mine now,” I said, breaking free the fruit’s first segment, “and that’s what matters most to me. Here, sir, open.”

Obediently he parted his lips, and I slid the crescent-shaped segment into his mouth, brushing my fingers lightly over his lips and mustache for good measure. That, I knew, would put the yearning orange-girl from his thoughts for good. For in the carriage from Whitehall to the theatre, I’d brought him to the crest of delirious pleasure with my mouth before he’d swept up my skirts and pulled me astride his glowing cock, and carried us both to rarest heights of satisfaction. I knew our mingled scents still clung to my fingers from where I’d dipped between our joined selves, and purposefully I mixed that musky scent with the juice of the orange beneath his nose.

He smiled and caught my wrist to hold my hand there while he ate the fruit.

“Which goddess of the three would you be, I wonder?” he asked, his gaze intent upon me. “Hera, Athena, or Aphrodite?”

I grinned slyly and eased my hand free of his grasp so I might slide a segment into my own mouth, lasciviously curling my tongue about it.

“The only proper judgment for King Paris should be that I am the sum of all three,” I said. “That is, the proper judgment if he wishes to ride home again.”

That made him laugh again, even as the overture’s trumpets sounded to begin the play. As the audience’s attention turned away from us and toward the stage, he leaned across and kissed me, his mustache sweet with the juice of the orange.

“You can’t know how I missed you, Barbara,” he said in a rough whisper.

“But I do know, sir,” I said softly, “because I missed you the same.”

“All the goddesses combined in one, and more besides,” he said. “How could I ever wish to let you part from me again?”

 
The parting would come soon enough, and both the king and I and every other Englishman knew it, too. Yet when the first hint of it came, I was still unprepared for the force with which it would strike me.

It came later that summer, after the coronation, after Charles had been formally crowned and declared master of Britain. I had spent a pleasant day and evening with Charles and several others sailing on the river in the handsome yacht that the Dutch East India Company had given to him in honor of his coronation. We’d wearily climbed the river steps near Whitehall, and after a late supper repaired to Charles’s rooms.

He’d stopped to disrobe in his closet while I waited in his bedchamber. My skirts and stockings stank abominably from having been splashed and sprayed by the river’s waters, and I was quick to shed them and the rest of my clothes, leaving them in a sodden pile for Charles’s dogs to investigate with their usual eagerness before the servants took them away. I wrapped myself in a coverlet from the bed and stood before the fire, unpinning my hair and tossing it between my fingers to take the damp from it as well. I turned my back to the fireplace, shaking my hair over my shoulders, and for the first time saw the portrait, propped on a table against the wall.

It was a small painting, dark and poorly limned and framed clumsily in black, in the oppressive Iberian manner. The subject was a woman with heavy, dark features, and fearful eyes ringed with shadows. It was impossible to guess at her body, for she was encased in a black gown so rigid as to be hammered from iron and extending far over her hips in an old-fashioned farthingale. These skirts were so wide that her flat-palmed hands hung over the front, dangling like a scarecrow’s. A wide swath of lace wrapped over her shoulders and breasts like a bandage, and her hair was forced into a style as unyielding as her dress, with stiffened black curls at her cheeks and another clump of hair flattened strangely over her forehead.

It was monstrous attire, on a plain, pinched, swarthy woman. Yet even without a plaque or label, I knew who she was: the Portuguese infanta Catherine of Braganza, soon to be Charles’s bride.