Royal Harlot (34 page)

Without a word he was on me, hoisting my skirts high and entering me without any prelude. I was already ripe with wanting, and the edge of his anger made him take me so fast and hard against the wall that he lifted my feet from the floor, there within hearing of the sounds of the dancing and the servants and the laughter of his courtiers. He shuddered when he spent, his pleasure so great it racked his body, while I bit his shoulder in my passion, my teeth leaving a half ring of bruises on his skin through the heavy broacaille of his coat.

“How was he?” he asked afterward as he fastened his breeches.

“Not you.” I smiled as I let my skirts fall, relishing the sensation of his royal seed on my thighs, no matter with whom I danced this night.

“As it should be, Barbara,” he said, and offered me his arm. “Now take care not to forget it.”

WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON
May 1 6 6 3

 
“You are pleased with the painting, Master Lely?” I asked, my excitement growing as the artist led his assistants into my rooms. “You like it?”

The two assistants carried the picture between them with great care, taking it to stand before the tall windows that overlooked King Street, where the light would be best. Framed and ready to be presented to the king as my gift to him for his thirty-third birthday at the end of the month, the painting was still covered for transporting, its face wrapped in a protective cloth like a bride with her beauty hidden behind a veil.

“My lady, I cannot recall being more content with any picture,” the artist said proudly. “But then, how could it not be a masterpiece, with such a beautiful subject as yourself? My Lady Castlemaine, my muse?”

“Oh, pish, Master Lely, we both know that’s idle nonsense,” I declared, coming to stand before the two assistants. “The real proof’s in the picture itself. Enough waiting, if you please! Show it to me properly, before I come pull that wretched cloth away myself.”

The artist nodded cheerfully, by now accustomed to my ways after so many sittings together. We understood one another well: he claimed to be so inspired by my beauty that he’d begun putting my famously languid eyes on the face of every other woman’s portrait he painted. For my part, I favored him like no other artist with my custom, seeking to have my likeness preserved by his paintings and the engravings he printed and sold from them. But this portrait—ah, this portrait had been a true collaboration, and would do far more than that for us both.

“As you wish, my lady,” he said, unfastening the cords that held the wrapping in place himself. “If you do not agree that this is a most rare and wondrous painting, my lady, then I’ll throw down my brushes in despair.”

“Show me, then,” I ordered. “Show me.”

He smiled, and bowed, and threw back the cloth like a curtain being drawn from a stage. I gasped and pressed my hands over my mouth in amazement. It
was
rare and wondrous, a work of beauty and of genius, too.

It was a dual portrait, of me supporting my little son Charles beside me, and so tenderly drawn that it brought tears to my eyes. At Master Lely’s suggestion, we’d agreed to copy the same composition of mother and child that had been so prevalent among the old Italian painters like Raphael, with me seated and turned to hold my son—a pose only used to show the Madonna with the infant Christ. Likewise I’d purposefully left off my jewels and rich silks, and dressed myself more simply in a loose red robe to signify the Virgin Mother’s passion, draped with a blue cloak to show her role as Queen of Heaven. My head was demurely covered, my hair parted simply in the middle of my forehead; there was no mistaking that I was again with child, too, the eternal Mother. Even my son was painted in the tradition of the young Savior, naked save a white cloth around his loins, and his downy cheek pressed lovingly to my forehead.

It was a beautiful painting, yes, but also a scandalous one. To show me as the Virgin and Charles’s bastard son as the infant Jesus would surely shock a good many persons. And yet as full of irony as it was, in a way the allegory made perfect sense. Wasn’t Charles the leader of the Anglican church, God’s own representative here on earth? And wasn’t I wed to another man who’d never fathered any children of his own with me, much as Mary had been with Joseph?

I was sure that Charles would see all this, and more as well. He’d see the picture of me with our first son and great with our next as testimony not only to my devotion to him but to his own potency. Our son was the perfect image of him, with his dark eyes and black curling hair, undeniable proof that no matter if the queen proved barren, his progeny would continue on this earth. It was also a composition in the Romish tradition, for no Anglican worshipped the Holy Mother as feverishly as the papists.

I’d noted well that the one thing about the queen that continued to impress Charles was her self-conscious piety; she attended to her services and prayer as many as three or four times a day— as good a way as any for passing her time, I suppose, considering how little the king spent with her. His mother was a fervid French Catholic as well, and had tried hard to woo her children to the faith, with the result that I knew Charles continued to have well-hidden leanings in that direction. As it was, he encouraged the most Romish side of the Anglican church, with music, singing, and art within the churches, and he stunned many of his subjects by kneeling to take the Sacrament. Therefore to intrigue and please him the more, I’d begun taking private instruction from a noted Jesuit whom Arlington had recommended to me, with the hope of eventual conversion. This painting was meant as a sign to Charles of the seriousness of my intention, another way of signifying how closely we two were bound.

“You
are
pleased, my lady?” the artist asked with a touch of anxiety as he misread my silent appreciation of the picture. “You still believe it will make a suitable gift for His Majesty?”

I smiled and clapped my jewel-covered hands in appreciation. “I am more pleased, Master Lely,” I said, “more delighted, more overjoyed by this picture than you can ever, ever know. His Majesty will appreciate it as no other gift.”

He bowed again with clear relief, and I looked back once again at the painting. It was an excellent likeness, a gift only I could offer to Charles, a tribute to him as king, to me as his mistress and mother of his children, and to Master Lely’s talent. But most of all, it would set all of London talking in horrified, scandalized whispers.

My smile widened, for I was pleased and content. For what more, really, could I ever hope to ask?

 
In June, after a year of Clarendon’s shilly-shallying, I was finally granted a warrant as Lady of the Bedchamber to the queen. I was permitted a higher status within the court and granted the negligible income that came with the position. Most important, I was formally allowed to have lodgings in the palace—which, of course, I’d already had for some time, thanks to the king’s insistence.

There was never really any question of me performing many actual services for the queen. The primary role of a Lady of the Bedchamber was to keep company with the queen, and, in theory if not practice, to be ready to guard her honor. While I took my appointed turns— divided among a dozen or so of us, all peeresses—accompanying her to her chapel, meals, and other events within the palace, the queen had no more wish for me to be in her intimate company than I did desire to be there. She neither acknowledged my position with her husband, nor took note of the fact that I was great with his child. Nor did I taunt her with it, or mention Charles’s name in any but the most general way. In every way that mattered, I’d won. I could be gracious. Thus I held the title with little of the responsibility: a solution, I believe, that satisfied us both.

But this triumph for me was swallowed up by a much larger misfortune at the same time. Charles had labored long on persuading Parliament to pass his Declaration of Indulgence, softening Clarendon’s restrictions against religious dissenters and keeping his own promises made through the Declaration of Breda. Yet to Charles’s irritation, Clarendon had fought back, marshaling support against the declaration. Clarendon encouraged the malcontents within Parliament who felt that Charles was a spendthrift king, squandering too much of the country’s resources on his own pleasures.

It was obvious to all that Clarendon meant such charges as a direct attack at me, and to a lesser extent at the gentlemen like Arlington, Bristol, and Buckingham who shared the same views of tolerance. I was painted worse than the Great Whore of Babylon, leading the king by his cock to his doom and the country with him. I was portrayed by my rivals and in the newssheets as avaricious and grasping and a cross-tempered shrew, and though these slanders infuriated the king, there was little he could do to counter them.

Worst of all, Clarendon’s supporters in Parliament made the passage of the declaration contingent upon the king’s funds voted for maintaining the court. By doing so, they effectively refused to give him money on which to live unless he withdrew the declaration. The days of an English king being free to rule as he chose and not be choked and tripped by the mean-spirited, small men in Parliament had died with Charles’s father. Humiliated, Charles was forced to agree to their terms and withdraw the declaration.

Such a disaster made for a black, ill-tempered June, turned worse when Lord Bristol foolishly attempted to remove Clarendon from office. The articles of impeachment against the chancellor were too hastily drawn up and filled with illogical holes, so that the judges dismissed the case as having no merit or cause of treason, and further stated that Bristol had overstepped, for one peer could not legally impeach another. Bristol was banished for his behavior, and not only did this ugly scandal show the king and my political friends in an unfortunate light, but it also served to make Clarendon’s position stronger than ever.

Quite naturally, such unpleasantness put the king in the foulest of humors, his customary good nature turning dark and disgruntled. The pleasure he’d had in his birthday celebration—and in the picture I’d given him—was soon forgotten. He resented Parliament’s refusal, and he rankled at how Clarendon continued to treat him like an overbearing governor treats an obstreperous pupil. Not even I could coax him from his unhappiness, and the summer stretched before us as long indeed.

Worse was to come, as it always seems to do. My Wilson, that most excellent spy, was the first to alert me of the whispers around the court. A group of gentlemen, led by my own duplicitous cousin Buckingham, had decided upon a plan to cheer the king and likewise promote their own causes. They’d plotted to replace me in the king’s bed with a more malleable candidate of their own, the luscious Frances Stuart.

As can be imagined, I railed soundly against the ungrateful scoundrels who’d schemed against me in such a fashion. I could scarce believe that these gentlemen whose acquaintance I’d fostered would toss me over with such ease, or that they believed the king would show so little loyalty or regard toward me, especially now that I was once again swollen with his child.

But soon my temper cooled, and I began to plan my defense. I’d no intention of stepping quietly aside and relinquishing my power to another. Instead I would show the court my resolve as well as my cunning as I dealt with this sponsored rival, and prove I’d still a place not only in Charles’s bed but in his life, and his heart.

It was a gamble, yes, but in this game I knew I held all the winning cards.

 
I watched the house of cards grow and grow, each layer of the triangular tower built at the risk of toppling all those beneath it to the floor of my parlor.

“If you add another, my dear,” I said, “then it’s sure to fall beneath its own weight.”

“No, no, it won’t,” said Frances Stuart in a breathless whisper, afraid to scatter her precious tower by a breath of her own wind. “I’ve done this endless times, my lady, and I know just how to place the cards.”

“Indeed,” I murmured, thoroughly bored. I’d cultivated Frances all this summer, and the girl was so simpleminded that it had been easy enough to win her trust. Several times I’d even had her company in my bed—a not uncommon diversion among those of us at court who occasionally wearied of gentlemen—where she’d shown a placid aptitude for such games.

The real trial for me was determining how to survive the tedium of Frances’s confidence once it was mine. Even I had to admit that she was as pretty a girl as had ever come to court, with her golden blond hair, straight dark brows, and tiny bud of a mouth, and having been raised at the French court, she had a rare gift for dressing herself handsomely.

But in her manner she was more like a child of ten than a maid of honor of fifteen. Her attempts at conversation were full of pointless exclamations and other foolishness, and she delighted in conjurers’ tricks and card houses like this one. It was most telling that the gentleman whose company she best enjoyed was Monmouth, simply because he could walk on his hands like a juggler to amuse her.

Yet there was no doubt that Charles was infatuated with her empty-headed self. He would treat her like a doll, feeding her sweetmeats and kissing her with great fondness in full sight of everyone else. She accepted his attentions as docile as a sheep, until he tried to press home his advantage. Surely this was the most foolish part of her entire foolish self: she clung to her virginity like it was made of purest gold, and refused outright every offer Charles made to her. I was certain that if she’d finally granted him the last favor, he would have been done with her within a week. But because she kept him dandling like this, he continued his fascination with what was forbidden.

Not, of course, that I’d encourage her to let him take her. I hadn’t tolerated her all this time to turn him over to my rival so easily as that.

“There now, my lady,” she said, placing another pair of cards with the utmost care. “There, there, see how it stands!”