The French Mistress (38 page)

“Mrs. Gwyn is welcome to her house,” I said, swallowing back my worries. “Why not, when she is too common to hold a place at Court or lodgings in the palace?”

“She is baseborn,” agreed the ambassador, as if explaining the most obvious fact to a half-wit, “and undeserving of those favors, while you, mademoiselle, are a French lady of rank and entirely worthy, if you’d but bring yourself to fulfill your destiny.”

I resented him lecturing me like this, and in defense my tongue turned tart.

“Why, thank you, my lord,” I retorted. “How pleased I am to learn I am a lady! You know, I feared you’d forgotten.”

He sighed, looking down his thin nose at me.

“Pray don’t be cynical, mademoiselle,” he cautioned. “It does not become you. Nor does this surfeit of pride. Recall instead that this vulgar wench maintains the greater hold on the English king, and all because she has given him one son, and let him fill her belly again with a second.”

I looked at him sharply. “Mrs. Gwyn is with child again?”

“She is, mademoiselle,” he said, “and without doubt the king is the father.”

I looked down at the keys in my hand. When Charles had given these rooms to me, he’d held me close and whispered only the sweetest endearments to me, and promised I’d find nothing but happiness here. Yet now I learned he’d been with his Nelly, finding his own happiness with her in the house in Pall Mall.

“I did not intend to distress you, mademoiselle.” The ambassador leaned closer, his voice full of urgency, not sympathy. “But you must listen to reason. His Majesty’s desires are simple ones. He enjoys lying with young women, for they make him feel younger himself. He enjoys beautiful partners, for they flatter his pride. He sires bastards on his mistresses, for they prove his wife’s barrenness is not the fault of his seed. The simple desires of a man, simply met. Good day, mademoiselle.”

He bowed one final time, set his hat once again on his head, and closing the door, left me alone.

I stared from the window, no longer seeing the garden before me or the darting sparrows at their play.

Charles, Charles, my dear sir! Here I’d believed I was ahead of the race, and instead I’d fallen two paces behind.

Chapter Seventeen

WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON
February 1671

 

 

 

O
utwardly there is no finer life for a man than to be a king. He lives in a great palace and wants for nothing. His every whim and wish are instantly obeyed, and he is surrounded by friends, family, and courtiers who exist to sooth and flatter him. Ordained by God’s wish, he has power and rank, and a secure place in the esteem of the world.

But life was not always as easy for the King of England. Accustomed as I was to how Louis had carefully ordered everything about him, I was astonished by how many conflicts, large and petty, swirled constantly around Charles. To be sure, some of these trials were of his own making, while others were far beyond the hand of any mortal man to change, no matter that he wears a crown. But all did test him, and often made the royal quarters of Whitehall a stormy place in which to be.

Most somber was the death of the duchess of York in March. The wife of Charles’s brother, James, this poor lady was only thirty-three years of age, worn from endless pregnancies and stillbirths and finally consumed by a cancer of her breast. Like the queen, she had failed to give her husband a son, leaving only two young daughters, one being the Lady Anne, who had also served and mourned Madame.

In her final suffering, the duchess had turned her back on the Anglican Church and become a Roman Catholic, and the public outcry was harsh when her conversion became more widely known at her death. Worse still were the rumors that James had joined her in conversion. It was considered unlucky enough that the foreign-born queen was a Papist, but to have James, the only surviving male Stuart heir to the throne, made one as well was perceived as a dangerous sign by Protestant England.

To ease this furor, Charles immediately ordered a Protestant princess be found as a new wife and duchess for his widowed brother. James had chosen his first wife, an unsuitable commoner, without Charles’s permission, and Charles was determined his brother would not err that way again. But James, whose grief was as embarrassingly short-lived as Monsieur’s had been for Madame, insisted that his bride also be young and beautiful, and began his own negotiations with several Catholic princesses. To have his royal will challenged in this way much displeased Charles, as can be imagined, and the quarrels between the brothers were heated.

At the same time, a lesser but very public embarrassment was dealt the king by the duchess of Cleveland. Charles had not broken entirely with this lady and each day dutifully visited their five children at the great house he’d given her near St. James’s Palace. She remained nominally one of his mistresses, and certainly received the income of a lady in favor. But in February she had begun a shamefully blatant intrigue with an officer ten years her junior. John Churchill was new returned from Tangier, with the burnished glow of a warrior to his handsome person, and though he was but twenty, the duchess had fair devoured him, parading him as her lover and making unlovely comparisons between his youthful prowess and that of the older king. Charles’s patience and temper were sorely tested, and it seemed the final break between him and this lady must surely be near.

Nor was Mrs. Gwyn silent. As her belly swelled bigger and bigger with her latest bastard, her insolence seemed to grow as well. Now that Charles had set her in keeping in the Pall Mall house, she aimed next for a title such as Lady Cleveland had been granted. No matter that she’d been born in some low brothel. Now she greedily believed she should be ennobled, raised to at least a countess, and from what I’d heard, she pestered and nagged poor Charles endlessly about it like the small mongrel bitch she was.

But most taxing of all to the king was his contentious relations with the English Parliament. The very notion of a Parliament was new to me, for in France there is no such corresponding body. His Most Christian Majesty ruled the country and in his supreme splendor and wisdom made every decision for France’s welfare. But here in England, the king was forced to share his power with two groups. The House of Lords consisted of gentlemen of the greatest families in the land, at least by their rank worthy of advising the king. The House of Commons seemed sadly lacking in gentlemen of any variety; these rascals were chosen by election, voted to their place by the fancy of every common jack. Together these two Houses formed the Parliament, and no greater pack of scoundrels did ever exist to plague and confound a king. How Charles could bring himself to trust any of them was beyond me, for hadn’t an earlier Parliament voted to execute his own father and remove Charles himself from his family’s throne?

This latest crop of members had been called to London in February, and at once they set to challenging Charles’s plans for a new war with the Dutch. Because Parliament controlled the country’s treasury, Charles was forced to ask them for the funds for building the ships of war that he’d promised to Louis, and for raising and training the troops.

In turn this Parliament fussed and bothered like an old woman guarding her purse on market day, questioning the necessity of every last farthing and quarreling among themselves in their great House beside the river. They did not care about complying with the terms of the new treaty, nor that France had already begun her preparations for war, and at an imposing pace. Why should they, when they openly despised all things French? Nor did they care if they humiliated Charles by denying his requests. In fact they seemed to delight in trying to humble him, acting as if he didn’t always put the welfare of England first in his thoughts, the way any good king should. Further, they began to question whether Charles should have the right to make treaties in the first place, or whether every last tom fool of them could do better.

Of course Charles had already begun to receive the monetary supplements from Louis as stipulated in the Secret Treaty. How exactly these made their way to him from France I never learned; I suppose through Monsieur Colbert or some other trusted minister. But Charles had considered those funds for his exclusive use, not to be spent on the navy or its ships. Nor, for obvious reasons, did he wish Parliament to know he’d accepted a golden gift from his cousin, or what he’d conceded in return.

Thus Charles followed Parliament’s tedious arguments during that long and difficult spring, meeting often with his privy council as well as individual members of the two Houses. He even traveled to the House of Parliament himself to address them, hoping to sway them to the rightful path. Nothing worked. They remained stubborn and quarrelsome and thoroughly vexing.

Finally, in April, Charles decided he’d had enough or, rather, not enough. He prorogued Parliament, meaning he exercised his right to dissolve the session and sent the members back to their distant homes and estates, and as far as possible from the king in London. He was done with their contentious parsimony, but he was now forced to look for other means of funding his new ships. Notified by Lord de Croissy and by myself of these developments, Louis also began to make the most delicate of inquiries regarding whether England would be able to meet her promised contributions for the upcoming war. Swiftly Charles assured him he would, but I doubt even he had any notion of exactly how this would come to pass.

In short, it all made for a thoroughly displeasing time for Charles, who seemed to toil many hours on affairs of state and family with little to show for it. His time was occupied, and I did not see as much of him as I had when I’d first arrived in London last autumn.

Yet in a curious way, this all was to my advantage. With the advice of Lady de Croissy, I was able to find in London many skilled French carpenters, plaster workers, and painters who were eager to work for me to transform my new rooms at Whitehall into a glowing representation of French taste. I’d replaced the dark, old-fashioned paneling (surely there from the days of the last King Henry!) with white plaster trimmed in gold, and hung large looking glasses opposite the privy garden windows to make the room look double its size, and reflect all within in the most cunning fashion. I was exceptionally proud of these looking glasses, and it was only on account of my exceptional connections in Paris that I’d been able to have them sent to me. They were the product of the Royal Mirror Manufactory in the rue de Reuilly, the same company to produce the looking glass for Versailles, and their glittering clarity and size were far beyond any to be found in England, including the mean, dark glasses that Mrs. Gwyn had installed in her house. That they also served to reflect my own beauty over and over and display my person to best advantage was another benefit, and who, truly, could fault me for it?

What I wished most to achieve by my refurbishing, however, was to create a rare sanctuary within Whitehall for Charles. As I saw how tired and wearied he was made by his duties and the demands of others, I determined to make my rooms the one place where he could be at his ease. I’d leave the jugglers and the singing whores to Mrs. Gwyn’s parlor. In my rooms, Charles could recline on the softest cushions while sipping the finest of wines. I acquired an excellent Parisian chef, who could concoct the most delectable of dishes to tempt Charles, and I made sure everything was served to him on the finest porcelain, silver, and crystal, all, of course, of French manufacture. Everything was designed to please him, without any compromise.

Most of all, I made sure that when he came to see me, I, too, was exactly to his taste. I took care to be exquisitely dressed and coiffed and perfumed, and always wore the jewels he’d given me. I spoke to him in French, not only because it was a softer, more gracious language to the ear than the grating harsh sounds of English, but also because, as Charles himself noted, French had been the native tongue of his mother, the late Dowager Queen, and thus bore the pleasantest associations for him.

But it was what I said to him—or more precisely, what I didn’t—that mattered most. I never lectured him on politics, or made demands of him, or slandered others. I listened to all he said, and let him direct the conversation as it pleased him most. In my lodgings, he truly was KING, unchallenged, unrivaled, and absolute.

Was it any wonder, then, that he called on me as much as he possibly could? Or that he fell into the agreeable habit of coming to my rooms nearly every evening that spring, to the neglect of Mrs. Gwyn and her tawdry puppet shows and ale? Or that we would lie sprawled across my bed with the windows thrown open to the early-summer eve and his head pillowed upon my lap, sipping canary wine and listening to the nightingales calling to one another in St. James’s Park?

Yet as sweet as all this was for us, the rough world outside my door was no more agreeable to me than it was to Charles. The expectations from all quarters that I bring my friendship with the king to its inevitable consummation were becoming more and more forceful. Not only did Lord de Croissy and his wife continue to press me on this point, but also Lord and Lady Arlington, whose wonder was so great that Her Ladyship once asked me directly if I preferred the Sapphic way of love, to have put off the king for so long.

That was certainly not true, as Charles himself could attest. As the spring had slipped into summer, I’d permitted him more and more small, delicious liberties with my person, withholding only the final capitulation of my weary maidenhead. But my virginity had become such a source of jeering discussion in London that even the French craftsmen I’d employed had made jests about it among themselves when they’d thought I’d not overhear. In fact, the entire small community of French people who resided in London had come to believe that I was somehow betraying France by not lying with the English king.

I’d heard this from many sources, yes, but I’d not realized quite how widely discussed I’d become until one day early in June, when Bette brought me a small package that had been delivered to my door. I recognized the mark at once as belonging to the Seigneur de Saint-Évremond, and I smiled with pleasurable anticipation. I was glad for the diversion. Charles had spent much of the summer at Windsor Castle with his cousin Prince Rupert and other gentlemen, fishing and riding, and because the queen remained at Whitehall, I did, too. A bit of scandal and innuendo from the seigneur was exactly what I needed after so much time in the exclusive, tedious company of the queen’s ladies.