Royal Harlot (28 page)

“I’ve told you, Barbara, you are on the list of names for the queen to approve,” he said. “Once we’re wed, she’ll be shown the list, and then the posts will be granted. It’s a formality, no more.”

I pressed myself more wantonly against him. “She will agree?”

“She’ll do as I tell her,” he said. “You know me as well as anyone. I’ll not let myself be ruled by any woman.”

“Oh, no, sir, not you.” I was thankful my face was turned away and he so preoccupied, so he’d not see how I smiled at that. I arched my back, and he grunted with the anticipation of pleasure. “But now I believe it’s time to scale Mount Barbara.”

 
To Charles’s credit, he wed the infanta as he’d promised, despite the appalling show she made of her landing in Portsmouth. Though Clarendon and others in her party had urged her to adopt English dress, she and her party had insisted on clinging to the ancient fashions of her father’s court, with stiff, heavy fabrics, outlandish hairstyles that needed hidden wires for support, and wide farthingales that caught the breezes from the sea and threatened to sweep the new queen and her ladies clear back to Lisbon.

At the sight of this black-clad party, the king’s comment to the friends who stood with him on the wharf was so amusingly frank as to be instantly, and often, repeated—“I thought they’d brought me a bat, instead of a woman”—and pleased me enormously. And while he was as determined to behave with honor and bravery toward his bride as any other man upon the scaffold, he could scarce contain his relief when the marriage’s consummation was briefly postponed. Not only was Charles exhausted from his long ride and the bride still feeling the effects of seasickness, but, as he wrote to me in a jovial note, he’d also had his nose shut in the door by the unexpected arrival of “Monsieur le Cardinal.” That made me laugh aloud, and clap my hands as well: to think that Clarendon’s great plans were undone by an inadvertent dribble of monthly blood on the queen’s smock!

Yet somehow the deed was finally done, with hearty sighs of relief all around. The king was observed as being extraordinarily courteous and gallant to the queen, who was said to have fallen at once into moonstruck love. I was not surprised that she’d been dazzled, for the king was by nature a supremely gifted lover, and a tall, handsome one, too.

But the reports I preferred to heed were the ones that spoke of her sallow complexion and deep-set eyes, her shyness, her unappealing frailness, and how her upper teeth thrust so far outward against her lips that she lisped. She’d trouble with English, so even the choicest particles of wit escaped her comprehension. She wore the English clothing given to her without grace, and she shuffled along with an ungainly fear in the kind of high heels that I’d worn as long as I could recall. She was exceptionally pious and kept a trail of priests constantly by her.

Yet even the priests were said to be preferable to her ladies, deemed elderly, ill-humored, and ill-favored, yet so proud that they’d scarce acknowledge their English hosts. They were also said to be oppressively concerned with their virtue, however little tested it might be, and refused to rest their bodies on any bed that had previously been slept upon by a man. Worst—or most amusing—of all was their horror at the habits of Englishmen, who were accustomed to relieving themselves wherever they pleased. This shocked the sensibilities of the Portuguese ladies no end, making them protest that everywhere they looked, even about the palace, they were confronted by the rude sight of outsized English pricks.

My old lover Chesterfield, once again returned both to England and to favor through his wife’s family’s connections with Clarendon— which was of course another black strike against the old man in my mind—had been made chamberlain to the queen, and was much in her company. Yet though Philip knew it was to his good that the queen prosper, he couldn’t help but note in the hearing of others that there was nothing about the new queen that could make the king forget his devotions toward the Countess of Castlemaine. While I recognized this to be in part cunning flattery of the kind so inherent to Philip’s very soul, I also was confident that it was largely true. For how, really, could a plain, priggish creature like the queen ever hope to rival me?

While Charles was thus occupied in Portsmouth and then at Hampton Court, I made sure to show my unwieldy self about London as best I could. I couldn’t afford to retreat the way I had before Anne was born. For my confidence I needed to be observed and remarked, for my beauty to be noted and marveled at, and for word to be carried back to the court that I was neither dejected nor sorrowful that the king had wed.

On the very day of the royal wedding, I had my laundresses wash all my Holland smocks and under-petticoats and hang them to dry on the mulberry bushes behind Whitehall. By so doing, I gave all London a long look at my finest privy linen, bordered deep with lace and point, which was usually seen only by the king. All London noticed, and were so vastly titillated that they forgot the queen.

I’d only one small setback at that time, and I chose to think of it as a temporary inconvenience rather than a lasting wrong. I’d requested a post in the queen’s household as Lady of the Bedchamber, and Charles had agreed that it would be a place both fit and convenient for me to have. He’d added my name to the list presented to the queen for her consideration, and was sure that, in her untutored ignorance of the English court, she’d pass it through among the others without any comment.

But Charles had underestimated his foes in this. The queen might be little more than a stubborn, prattling simpleton, but her mother the Queen Regent of Portugal in Lisbon had excellent spies to advise her, and she’d made the infanta promise never to accept me in either her presence or her court. The queen had at once recognized my name on the candidates’ list and scratched it out as unacceptable to her. Just as surely, Charles had added my name back, and there the impasse stood.

Only the First Lady of the Bedchamber had been chosen, a lady whose other appointments included Mistress of the Robes and Keeper of the Queen’s Privy Purse. By no small coincidence, this lady was my late father’s sister Barbara and my namesake, now fashioned Countess of Suffolk. More given to gentleness than I, she appealed to me to withdraw my name for the sake of Her Majesty’s peace, which I of course saw no reason to do.

Because of me, no further appointments were made to the queen’s household, though many gentlemen and ladies were hovering with hope and trepidation, and everything was made to wait until I relented, which was not likely to happen, or Queen Catherine agreed to humble herself and accept my presence.

And though only a dozen miles or so stood between my house in Westminster and the king and queen at Hampton Court, in these ways I kept my place as surely as if I’d been there among them.

Early in June, I was brought to bed of the son I’d been expecting all along: a fine, strong, lusty boy, with dark curling hair. My labor was not so hard as I’d remembered from the first time, and I was delivered just as the sun was rising, as fair a portent as I could wish. The boy favored his father, especially in his size and in the length of those same limbs with which he’d been kicking me so vigorously.

I named him Charles, and sent word to the king of his arrival.

The king came to me at once, with gratifying haste and without telling his wife, which was more gratifying still. He kissed me with great fondness and delight, and thanked God for my safe deliverance. He delighted in his new son, holding him close in his arms with no regard for what an infant might do to his finery, or with any of the fearfulness that most men demonstrate toward their children. Instead he cooed and sang and kissed the tiny boy, and then sighed and wept with sadness when the time came for him to return to Hampton Court. I could not imagine a prettier scene than to see Charles with our son, nor one more full of love and regard.

I heard from others that that night he could not have praised the child more if he’d been brought to earth on angels’ wings. His pride was fair to overflowing, it seemed, and his courtiers remarked that they’d never seen the king more joyful or content.

The queen, however, did not share his joy, and after the pair had retired, the sounds of their heated argument were clear throughout the palace.

Was it any wonder that I slept more peacefully than I had in months?

 
“My lady, oh, my lady!” Wilson rushed into my bedchamber, her round face contorted with shock and fear. “Oh, my lady, what has happened!”

“What is it, Wilson?” I demanded, sitting upright in my bed. Though it was midday, I was still enjoying my lying-in seven days after my son’s birth, or so I had been until I’d seen Wilson’s face. “Is it fire? Tell me, Wilson, tell me at once!”

“It’s Lord Castlemaine, my lady!” she cried. “He’s taking the babe!”

At once my heart leapt in my breast with fear for my little son. I clambered from the bed and ran through the door to the hall, my smock and my hair flying every which way. I could hear Roger’s steps on the staircase, my baby wailing with fear, and servants shouting. Though my legs trembled with disuse and with fear, I ran barefoot down the stairs after him, fair hurling myself after my child.

Roger was already at the doorway, little Charles wrapped like a hasty bundle in his arms.

“Roger, stop, oh, please, you must stop!” I shouted with growing desperation. “He’s mine, Roger, he’s mine, not yours!”

Roger stopped, his face taut with anger, his mouth an implacable slash of displeasure as he paused in the open door.

“He’s mine, Barbara,” he said curtly. “At least so long as I am wed to you, any child of your flesh is mine by law.”

“No!” I cried, catching at his arm. “You know as well as I that this babe is the king’s, not yours! You said so yourself! Now please, please, return him to me!”

“And I say he’s mine, Barbara.” Roger lifted the child higher from my reach, while tiny Charles wailed as if his heart would break at such ill use, his fists waving impotently at this terrible cruel man who’d seized him from his cradle. “Every judge and law in the country would agree with me. And as I recall, you told me yourself you’d never be sure it was otherwise.”

“Every law except that of a mother’s heart and love!” I cried, anguish and fear wringing tears from my depths as I struggled to reach my son. “Where are you taking him, Roger? What would you do with him?”

“I’m doing what is right for his mortal soul, Barbara,” Roger said. “I’m taking him to be properly baptized in the one true faith of the Roman Catholic church.”

I gasped with horror and shock. “You cannot do that, Roger! The king would not wish it, not for his son!”

“
My
son, Barbara,” he said. “I will do what is right for
my
son, in
my
faith.”

He turned away and passed through the door to the carriage waiting outside. I tried to follow, stumbling on the steps as the carriage pulled away. Broken with grief and loss and exhaustion, I sank to the paving stones, not caring who saw or heard my plight. My face was wet with tears, my smock soaked with the mother’s milk that my poor bound breasts had given down at the sound of my babe’s distress.

“Come, my lady, please,” Wilson said, hurrying to wrap me in a wide shawl. “You must come inside and away from the street.”

“But what can I do?” I sobbed. “He took my babe, my son, my own dear little Charles! What can I do? What can I do?”

Wilson’s jaw was firm with resolution. “We must do the only thing possible, my lady. Lord Castlemaine cannot be permitted to follow this course. We must summon His Majesty.”

KING STREET, LONDON
June 1 6 6 2

 
“He’s a handsome lad, isn’t he?” Charles smiled at his son, sleeping in the nursemaid’s arms as we rode together in the royal carriage. “A fine cross between the two of us.”

“More you than me, sir,” I said, and it was true, too. Little Charles was barely a fortnight old, and already there was something eerily like the king about his face. “You must have looked the same when you were small.”

“Hah, as if I ever was,” he said, chuckling. He drew off his glove and touched his fingers lightly to the baby’s downy cheek. “You know I’ve never been able to be at the christenings of any of my other sons. To see this one now, like this—ah, Barbara, you cannot know what it means to me.”

I’d never seen such tenderness in Charles’s face before, a kind of awe as he gazed down at his son. I was glad that he felt this way for my son, and though it was a wicked thought that ran counter to the good of England, I selfishly hoped that Queen Catherine would never give him a royal prince, so that my little Charles would always have this love undiminished from his royal father.

Now he shifted in his sleep, making a sweet little coo of a sigh that made Charles chuckle.

“He seems to be a peaceful lad,” he said. “Quiet, too, as the best babes are.”

“Not always,” I warned. “He can be the very devil when he’s crossed.”

“This little fellow?” Charles’s black brows rose with his skepticism. “I cannot believe he’d have anything at all to be cross about.”

“Oh, I believe Lord Castlemaine would qualify.” Less than a week had passed since Roger had dared kidnap my son and take him against my will to be baptized by a Romish priest. He’d returned the baby unharmed by nightfall, saying that he’d only done what I’d done to my daughter, Anne. He claimed that if he were to be expected to give these children his name, then he’d a right to determine how they’d be raised in Christ. “You’ve no notion of the heartache he caused me by stealing my son from his very cradle.”

“He’s safe now,” Charles said. “And we’ll put the other matter to rights this day.”

“ ‘The other matter’!” I exclaimed. “You make it sound as nothing. To steal away the son of the Protestant King of England and give his soul to Rome—”

“Hush, Barbara. Please, don’t worry yourself,” he said, resting his hand on my knee to calm me. “We’re putting it all to rights now.”