The Loves of Charles II (64 page)

“I know what marriage with you has brought me.”

“Come, Roger, why do you not rejoice in your good fortune? How many women are there in the world who can bring an earldom to their husbands?”

“I had rather you remained plain Barbara Palmer.”

“Are you mad? I, plain Barbara Palmer! You fool! I see I work in vain to bring honor to you.”

“It is so easy … so natural for you to bring dishonor on all those connected with you.”

“You sicken me.”

“As your conduct does me.”

“Roger Palmer, I despise you. You stand there, so sanctimonious … such a hypocrite. Do you think I see not the lust in your eyes? Why, I have only to beckon you and you’d be panting for me … dishonor or not…. You fool! Why should you not share in the honors and riches I can bring to us? Do not think that this is all I shall have. Nay! This is but the beginning.”

“Barbara,” he said, “be not too sure. There will be a Queen of England on the throne ere long. Then it may be that the King will be engaged elsewhere and may not come a-supping with you night after night.”

Barbara flew at him, and the marks of her fingers lingered on his cheek long afterwards.

“Don’t dare taunt me with that! Do you think I’ll allow that miserable little foreigner to come between me and my plans?” Barbara spat over her shoulder; she liked to indulge in the crude manners of the street; it was as though it brought home to herself as well as others that she had no need to act in any way other than the mood of the moment urged upon her. “She’s humpbacked, she squints! The only way her mother can find a husband for her is by giving away half her kingdom.”

“Barbara … for the love of God, calm yourself.”

“I’ll be calm when I wish to be. And wild when I wish to be. And I’ll tell you this, Master Roger Palmer—who cannot bend his stiff neck to say a gracious thank-you for the earldom his wife has conferred upon him—I’ll tell you this: the coming of this Queen will make no difference to my relationship
with the King.” She put her hands on her stomach. “In here,” she cried, “is his child. Yes … his … his … his! And by the saints, I swear this child shall be born in the royal apartments of Whitehall. Yes! even if my confinement should take place during the honeymoon of this Portuguese idiot.”

Her eyes flamed. She turned away and paced the floor.

She was eager to tell the King of her plans for lying-in when her time came at his Palace of Whitehall.

Christmas came. Charles had laughingly waved aside the question of Barbara’s lying-in. It was six months away, and he never let events so far ahead cast a shadow over the pleasure of the moment.

Marriage plans were going forward. It seemed very likely that by the Spring the little Portuguese would be in England.

The thought of her excited him, as the thought of any new woman would. That again was an excitement for the future. In the meantime there was Barbara to be placated, and enjoyed.

Barbara was brooding, still determined to be confined in his Palace. He wondered if he had been right to confer a great title on her husband that she might enjoy it. To give a little was to be asked for much. His experience of a lifetime told him that.

Still, there were occasions when he could remind even Barbara that he was the King, and he foresaw that when he had a wife such occasions might occur with greater frequency.

That again was a matter for the future.

So it was a merry Christmas—the merriest since he had come into England, for last Christmas had been overshadowed by the deaths of his brother and sister. It was good fun to revive those merry customs which had been stamped out by the Puritans—the old revelries of Christmas and Twelfth Night.

There was sadness to come in the New Year. His aunt, Elizabeth of Bohemia, who was at his Court, died there, and it was to him that she turned in her last moments.

He was saddened; he was indeed a family man; he could not bear that any member of his family, which had been so tragically torn apart in his youth, should die.

He had been fond of his aunt.

“So few of us are left now,” he pondered. “There is James and Mam and Minette … and Mam is ailing, and Minette has never been strong … as James and I are.”

He wrote to his sister then: “For God’s sake, my dearest sister, have a care of yourself and believe me that I am more concerned for your health than I am my own.”

She understood him as, he often thought, no one else in the world had ever understood him.

She wrote to him that she was thinking of sending him a little girl to be a maid-of-honor to his Queen when she arrived in England. “She is the prettiest girl in the world,” wrote Minette, “and her name is Frances Stuart.”

The Earl of Sandwich was soon on his way to Portugal. Arrangements were being made to receive the King’s bride in England; and there was always Barbara to placate.

He was spending as much time in her company as he ever had.

He was now supping at her house every night, and the whole city was talking of the King’s infatuation for its most handsome woman, which did not diminish even though he was negotiating for a wife.

He but takes his fill of Castlemaine until the Queen arrives, said the people. Then we shall see the lady’s handsome nose put out of joint.

Charles was treated to the whole range of Barbara’s moods during that spring. She would plead with him not to let the Queen’s coming make the slightest difference to her position; she would scorn him for a coward; she would cover him with caresses as though to remind him of the physical satisfaction which she alone could give.

She was determined to bind him more closely to her than ever.

She talked continually of the child—his child—which was to be denied its rightful bedchamber when it came into the world. She pitied herself; she flew into rages and threatened to murder the child before it left her womb.

She demanded again and again that she should have her lying-in at Whitehall Palace.

“That is impossible,” said the King. “Even my cousin Louis would not so insult his wife.”

“You did not think of your wife when you got me with child!” “A King constantly thinks of his Queen!”

“So I am scorned.

“For the love of God, Barbara, I swear I cannot much longer endure such tantrums.”

Then she wept bitterly; she wished that her child had not been conceived; she wished that she herself had not been born; and he was at his wit’s end to stop her doing herself some damage.

But on one thing he was adamant. It seemed likely that her child would
be born just at the time of his Queen’s arrival in England and the child must be born in Barbara’s husband’s house.

“What will become of me?” wailed Barbara. “I see I am of no account to you.”

“You shall have a good position at Court.”

She was alert. “What position?”

“A high position.”

“I would be a lady of the Queen’s bedchamber.””

Barbara, that is almost as bad as the other.”

“Everything I ask is bad. It is because you are tired of me. Very well. You no longer care for me. I shall take myself to Chesterfield. He is mad for me. He would leave that silly little wife of his tomorrow if I but lifted my finger.”

“I will do much for you,” said the King. “You know it well.”

“Then promise me this. I will go quietly to my husband’s house and there bear our child. I will not embarrass you while you receive your wife. And for that … I shall be made a lady of your wife’s bedchamber.”

“What you ask is difficult.”

“Are you a King to be governed? Are you not a King to command?””

It seems that you would command me.”

“Nay! It is that humpbacked, squint-eyed woman who would do that. Come, Charles. Show me that I have not thrown away all my love on one who cherishes it not. Give me this small thing. I shall be a woman of your wife’s bedchamber and I swear … I swear that I will then be so discreet … so gracious … that she will never know that there has been aught between us two.”

He was weary of her tirades. He longed to rouse the passion in her … He wanted to find the Barbara who returned his passion so gloriously when she was in that abandoned mood which made her forget to ask for what she considered to be her rights.

She was near that mood. He knew the signs.

He murmured: “Barbara….”

She leaped into his arms. She was like a lovely animal—a graceful panther. He wanted her to purr; he was tired of snarls. “Promise,” she whispered.

And weakly he answered, for now it seemed that the moment was all important to him, and the future a long way off: “I promise.”

n the apartments at the Lisbon Palace sat Catherine of Braganza, her eyes lowered over a piece of embroidery, and it was clear to those who were with her that her attention was not entirely on her work.

She was small in stature, dark-haired, dark-eyed; her skin was olive and she had difficulty in covering her front teeth with her upper lip. She was twenty-three years of age and not uncomely in spite of the hideous garments she wore. The great farthingale of gaberdine was drab in color and clumsy, so that it robbed her figure of its natural grace; her beautiful long hair was frizzed unbecomingly to look like a periwig and, as it was so abundant, her barber was forced to spend much time and labor in bringing about this disfigurement. But, since this hairstyle and the farthingale were worn by all Portuguese ladies, none thought their Infanta was disfigured by them.

The two ladies who sat on either side of her—Donna Maria de Portugal, who was Countess de Penalva and sister of the Portuguese Ambassador to England, Don Francisco de Mello, and Donna Elvira de Vilpena, the Countess de Ponteval—were very conscious of the disquiet of their Infanta and, because of certain rumors of which Donna Maria had learned through her brother, she was gravely disturbed. Her outward demeanor gave no hint of this, for Portuguese dignity demanded that a lady should never betray her feelings.

“Sometimes it would seem,” Catherine was saying, “that I shall never go to England. Shall I, do you think, Donna Maria? And you, Donna Elvira?”

“If it be the will of God,” said Donna Elvira. And Donna Maria bowed her head in assent.

Catherine looked at them and smiled faintly. She would not dare tell them of the thoughts which came to her; she would not dare tell them how she dreamed of a handsome bridegroom, a chivalrous prince, a husband who would be to her as her great father had been to her mother.

Tears filled her eyes when she thought of her father. It had always been so. Yet she must learn to control those tears. An Infanta did not show her feelings, even for a beloved father.

It was five years since he had died. She had been seventeen at that time—and how dearly she had loved him! She was more like him than like
her clever, ambitious mother. We were of a kind, dearest father, she often thought; had I been in your position I too should have wanted to shut myself away with my family, to live quietly and hope that the might of Spain would leave us unmolested. Yes, I should have been like that. But Mother would not have it. Mother is the most wonderful person in the world—you knew that, and I know it. Yet mayhap if we had lived quietly, if you had never been called to wrest our country from the yoke of Spain, if we had remained as we were at the time of my birth—a noble family in a captive country, a vassal of Spain—mayhap you would be here with me now and I might talk to you about the prince whose wife I may become. But, of course, had you remained a humble nobleman, I should never have been sought by him in marriage.