Royal Harlot (41 page)

That made him wince, though I was too furious to care. “A thousand pounds reward for the name of the author. That should work with impoverished students.”

“What should work better is a good dose of the plague,” I said. “They’ll never be caught, any more than those men in the park. They’ll all preserve the names of their confederates among themselves, no matter the reward you offer.”

Restlessly I went to stand before the grate, watching the flames lick through the crumpled, curling paper. A small looking-glass hung over the fireplace, and as I looked up from the flames I was confronted with my own face, angry and weary and wounded, too, all at the same time.

“Look at me,” I said miserably, unable to turn away. “Perhaps they are right. Perhaps I
am
so old and cross that I truly do deserve to be ducked.”

He came to stand behind me, his reflected face beside mine in the glass. “You’ll never deserve that, Barbara. You’re as fair today as you were when I first met you.”

“You’re full of ash and straw if you believe that,” I said forlornly, rebuffing his gallantry. “I’m twenty-five, sir, and by Twelfth Night I will have born you five children in as many years. Is there any wonder I look as I do?”

“Beautiful,” he said softly, pushing aside my curls to kiss the nape of my neck. “That is how you look to me.”

“I don’t know if I can bear it much longer,” I said, the weighty discomfort of the child within me making me pity myself. “The insults, the faultfinding. It’s worn on me, sir, and I can’t tell you the times it’s frightened me, too.”

“It does do that, yes,” he said. “You’ve only to recall what it did to my father in the end.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know what you meant, Barbara,” he said, more firmly this time, and far more firmly than I expected. “And the way that I see it is this. You have two choices. You can stay at the court, and turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to your critics. Or you can retreat to the country, and live there for the rest of your days. Within six months’ time, none will recall who you are, or were, or call you any name other than ‘my lady.’ And
that
is your choice.”

That was what he said, but what he was telling me in truth was altogether different. I’d no right to complain or whine or be fearful. I received plenty in return to compensate me for such trials. More important, it was not my choice whether I remained at court, but his, and I’d do well to remember the difference.

A year ago, he would never have spoken so plainly to me, and I thought uneasily of my future, and my children’s.

Was it any wonder, then, that I turned swiftly to face him, my voice full of sweet protest. “But I do not wish to leave you, sir.”

“Then stay,” he said, more royal order than suggestion as he lowered his mouth to mine. “Bear it bravely, Barbara, the way I do, but stay with me, and do not go.”

“Yes, sir,” I whispered just before he kissed me.
“Yes.”

MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD
January 1 6 6 6

 
I began the new year as happily as any woman can, standing at a baptismal font with a new babe in my arms and his loving father standing proudly at my side. George Fitzroy (a king’s name if ever there was one!) had been born at Christmas, a healthy, squalling lad like his older brothers. In a time when most women sorrowfully buried half the number of children that they bore, with likewise half of all husbands losing their wives in childbed, I was in this regard supremely blessed by God and good fortune. Every one of my children lived to embrace their majority, graced with the same robust strength and health that Charles and I each enjoyed throughout our lives.

But as I kissed the tiny boy in my arms on that cold January day, neither Charles nor I could have known that George was to be the last of his sons born to me.

While most of the court had finally returned to London, I’d remained at Oxford, awaiting George’s birth, and to the queen’s chagrin, the king had stayed with me. He’d been in no hurry to go back to his blighted city, and really, why should he have been? He could as easily rule from Oxford as from London, and enjoy the healthier air to be found here, as well as hunt and ride as much as he pleased. And, of course, he’d be with me.

As I’d predicted, no one had come forward to claim the reward offered in regards to the libelous note against me. And as I’d likewise expected, the entire town had known of it and its contents. I paid them no heed, or tried not to, and concentrated instead on keeping my place with the king. It was in a way an idyllic time for us, away from the press of London. He’d more time than usual to play with our children, and our suppers together were less centered on the intrigues of the court than on events of the nursery: one-year-old Charlotte sprouting her first tooth, or two-year-old Henry laughing as he toddled after the dogs, or little Charles, now three, delighted by sitting between his father’s arms as he rode on horseback.

But just as all bad times must pass, so must the good, and with considerable reluctance we returned to London in February. With the winter frosts, the plague had finally run its course and the constant tolling of church bells had ceased. People were once again to be seen in the streets and on the river, going about the business of their lives, but there was no doubt that the city had been changed by such a sweeping scourge. By kindest estimates, at least a quarter of London’s people had perished, and though most had been among the poorer sort, their absence was still noticeable. There were fewer crowds to be seen in the markets, theatres, churches, and other public places, while certain shops remained forever shut and boarded, their owners dead.

And though the plague itself may have subsided, the gloom and pessimisms that so much death had brought to the town could not be so easily dissipated. The war with the Dutch continued to drag onward, accomplishing nothing, and was widely viewed as an outlandish waste of both money and men. Yet sentiment against the French was also growing, until it seemed that war with them, too, would be inevitable, leaving Spain as England’s only ally. The Spanish ambassador spent so much time striving to influence me and thereby the king that I might have well given him a room in my lodgings if he’d been more handsome and his breath less foul.

But I was glad for the bribes he was willing to offer. Thanks to Parliament, the king’s generosity could only go so far. My establishment and my habits were costly ones to maintain, my expenses high. I was also an avid gamester, like much of the court, and I enjoyed the excitement of laying sizeable wagers to give teeth to my play. On a night when Fortune smiled my way, I could win as much as ten thousand pounds at the table, yet of course my detractors were quick to report only my losses to the same tune. Though I’d taken care to forge a sound acquaintance with Baptist—called Bab—May, the gentleman who’d newly replaced Falmouth as Keeper of the King’s Privy Purse, even that source had its limits.

But I’d found others. To anyone outside of court, the notion that every place and bit of influence has its price may seem a curious practice, but I assure you, that is how much of the court, and the world, continued onward. A title, an officer’s appointment, even a cleric’s living: all of these were in my power to favor, and to sell. My beauty had come from my Villiers blood, true, but I’d come to appreciate the shrewdness I’d inherited from my Bayning ancestors with their roots in trade and the City. I could guess the value of most everything, both intrinsically and for how dearly another would pay for possession.

Thus I could set the price of securing, say, an Irish peerage at one thousand pounds but the place as a maid of honor to Her Grace the Duchess of York at only a third of that. I understood that a goldsmith would charge one sum for a set of finely wrought rings, but that the value of the same pieces would drop substantially if the owner were forced to offer them in exchange for a debt of honor. Conversely, if those rings had at one time slipped over His Majesty’s finger, then they’d absorbed the glow of his royal self, and for that their value doubled, or even tripled.

Yet even such petty amusements could bring little light to that grim spring and the summer after it. Once again the sun was bright and distressingly hot, as it had been last summer, and once again, in early June, we heard the thunderous sound of the great guns firing in the distance, the sign of another momentous battle at sea. And once again, the battle fought off Sheerness lasted for four days, with grievous loss to lives and ships, and seemingly nothing to show for it.

The news from the fleet seemed to bring back Charles’s grief over the death of his old friend Falmouth. He was subdued and quiet, his thoughts his own, and while some like Clarendon approved this change as a favorable sign of suitable sobriety and dignity in a monarch, I knew him better than that. Yet when I tried to cheer him from his doldrums as any dear friend would, he snapped at me like an intemperate dog, making my own hackles rise in return. We couldn’t continue for long with so much hostility bubbling unaddressed between us, and we didn’t.

It came late one July afternoon. I was sitting with the queen and her other ladies in the long parlor that overlooked the park. The room was too warm for comfort, a last tedious hour in company to be endured before we could retreat to our own rooms and prepare for supper. At least then we’d have the amusing company of the gentlemen, and not just the queen’s sad-faced priests. I sat on my cushioned stool near the windows, too bored for anything else, while Pompey stood nearby and fanned me.

“Lady Castlemaine,” the queen called suddenly, in her peculiar lisping English. “You will show that regard to me, will you not?”

“Your Majesty.” I’d been too lost in my own lassitude to be paying much heed to her conversation, and now realized belatedly she’d been addressing me. “You know I always hold you in the highest regard.”

“That was not my question, Lady Castlemaine.” She looked at me smugly, pleased with herself for catching me out. Though she’d never acknowledged either my pregnancies or the five children that had resulted, she’d noticed now that for the first summer since the king’s restoration I wasn’t with child; she’d read far more into this than there was to read. These empty assumptions had made her bold with me, addressing me like this with more directness than she’d previously dared.

Not that I cared overmuch for her opinions one way or the other. Melancholy or not, the king still came to me, and if I hadn’t conceived another child with him as soon as I’d delivered the last, as I had the past five years, then that was a blessing to me, not a disgrace. The king still had plenty of other arrows in his quiver.

“Forgive me, madam,” I said now, making a show of suppressing a drowsy yawn. “I did not hear your query.”

The queen raised her chin in puppy-dog defiance, her words snagging on her jutting front teeth. “I did not ask any query of you, my lady. You were only to agree.”

I leaned forward on my stool, and smiled slowly while Pompey’s fan continued to blow gently over me.

“Forgive me, madam,” I said. “But I never agree idly.”

Behind the queen one of the other ladies tittered nervously, and the queen’s sallow cheeks flushed. “The king has a cold.”

“An annoyance, madam, but of no lasting danger.” I touched my fingers lightly to my cheek to remind her of the size and value of my pearl earrings, an admiring gift from her husband. “His Majesty is a strong and vigorous gentleman in his prime.
Most
vigorous.”

“The king’s health is always important to me, Lady Castlemaine,” the queen insisted. “I believe that he contracted his cold from coming home so late from your house through the Privy Garden.”

“But he never stays late at my house, madam,” I protested softly. “Not at all.”

“Not unless four in the morning is early, and not late,” whispered one of the younger maids of honor to another beside her, who promptly hushed her.

“Then where is the king, my lady, if not at your house?” the queen demanded peevishly. “Where else would he be at that time of the night?”

“Where, madam?” I stretched my arms luxuriantly, enjoying myself. “Ah, I wonder that, as his wife, you do not know.”

The queen’s little fingers clutched the arms of her chair. “Tell me, my lady. Tell me!”

“As you wish, madam,” I said easily. “You see, by the time His Majesty leaves my house, madam, I am
so
thoroughly tired,
so
weary and spent, that all I can consider is the peace of sleep. But as after even the richest banquet, a plate of common cheese or fruit is a final nicety, so the king will often choose to end his night in a certain Southwark brothel, where—”

“Silence!” Of a sudden, the king came striding into the room, his expression black as thunder. In unison we all rose and made our curtseys, not daring more. I wasn’t sure how much he’d overheard of my little speech, but clearly what he’d heard had been enough.

“Your Majesty,” the queen murmured, unsure of whether she was to enjoy a rare triumph or not. “How good to have you join us.”

But Charles saw only me. “You’re a bold, impertinent woman, my lady, to speak so to Her Majesty.”

I stared at him, stunned he’d address me with so little regard before the others, and I felt my face glow with my anger. I felt all the little tensions and squabbles that had been simmering between us these last months gather and swell in my chest, filling me with an anger to rival his.

“Your Majesty,” I began, my voice clipped and taut at such grievous use. “Her Majesty had asked me a question, and I did but answer in—”

“No more, Lady Castlemaine, no more,” he shouted at me, his face livid with fury. “I won’t have such foul talk at this court before my wife.”

“You’ve had a great deal more than talk of me, sir, and I—”

“Silence!” he roared. “You will leave my court at once, my lady, and you will
not
return until it is my pleasure for you to so do.”