The Loves of Charles II (74 page)

He, so ready to seek an easy way out of a difficulty, so ready to accept what could not be avoided, felt his anger increasing against his wife. It seemed to him that it would have been so simple a matter to have received Barbara and feigned ignorance of her relationship with himself. That was what he himself would have done; that was what other Queens had done before her.

He knew that he must placate Barbara; he had promised to, and she would see that this was one of the promises he kept. He hated discord, so he decided that he would shift to Clarendon the responsibility of making Catherine see reason.

He sent for his Chancellor.

He was not so pleased with Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, as he had once been. In the days when he had been a wandering exile he had felt unsafe unless Clarendon was beside him to give him the benefit of his wisdom and advice. It was a little different now that he was a King. He and Clarendon had disagreed on several matters since their return to England; and Charles knew that Clarendon had more enemies in England than he ever had in exile.

Clarendon wished to go back to the prerevolutionary doctrine. He believed that the King should have sole power over the militia; and he wished to inaugurate in place of Parliament a powerful privy council who would decide all matters of state.

The King agreed with him on this but on very little else. Clarendon continually deplored the King’s wish to shape his own monarchy in the pattern of that of France. The King was too French in his outlook; he looked to his grandfather, Henri Quatre, as a model, not only in his numerous love affairs but in his schemes of government. Again and again Clarendon had pointed out that England was not France, and that the temperament of the two countries was totally different.

They also disagreed on religious matters. Clarendon thought Charles’ policy of toleration a mistaken one. There were many in the Court who sensed the mild but growing estrangement between the King and his most
trusted minister, and they were ready enough to foster that growth. Buckingham was one, and with him in this was his kinswoman, Lady Castlemaine.

Clarendon, as a wise old man, knew that his enemies were watching, quietly as yet but hopefully.

Still he persisted in his frankness with the King; and although he had been against the Portuguese marriage he now attempted to take the side of the Queen.

“Your Majesty is guilty of cruelty towards the Queen,” he said; “you seek to force her to that with which flesh and blood cannot comply.”

Charles studied the man. He no longer completely trusted him. A few years ago he would have listened respectfully and he might have accepted Clarendon’s view; but he now believed that his Chancellor was not wholly sincere, and he looked for the reasons which had impelled him to take such views as he now expressed.

Charles knew that Clarendon hated Barbara. Was this the reason why he now urged the King not to give way to his mistress’s cruel desires, but to support his wife? How could he be sure?

“I have heard you say,” went on the Chancellor, “when you saw how King Louis forced his wife to receive his mistresses, that it was a piece of ill nature that you would not be guilty of, for if ever you had a mistress after you had a wife—which Your Majesty hoped you never would have—she should never come where your wife was.”

“It is good for a man who has a wife not to have a mistress,” said Charles testily, “but if he has, he has, and there’s an end of it. We would all like to be virtuous, but our natures drive us another way. I hold that when such a matter as this arises the best road from it is for good sense to be shown all round. If the Queen had quietly received my Lady Castlemaine there would not then be this trouble.”

“Your Majesty, I would beg you to please your wife in this, for she is the Queen and the other but your mistress. I can assure Your Majesty that Ormond and others agree with me in this. You should repudiate my Lady Castlemaine and never allow her to enter into your wife’s household.”

The King was rarely angry, but he was deeply so on this occasion. He remembered the hypocrisy of Clarendon when the Duke of York had married his daughter. Then he had said he would have rather seen Anne James’ mistress than his wife. It seemed at that time he had a little more respect for mistresses, since he was eager to see his daughter one.

No! He could trust none. Clarendon, Ormond, and the rest urged him to repudiate Barbara, not because she was his mistress, but because she was their enemy. They would have been howling for the destruction of the
Queen if they did not think her an ineffectual puppet who could harm them not.

Then Charles fell into one of his rare moods of obstinacy.

He said: “I would beg of you all not to meddle in my affairs unless you are commanded to do so. If I find any of you guilty in this manner I will make you repent of it to the last moments of your lives. Pray hear what I have to say now. I am entered upon this matter, and I think it necessary to counsel you lest you should think by making stir enough you might divert me from my resolution. I am resolved to make my Lady Castlemaine of my wife’s bedchamber; and whosoever I find using any endeavors to hinder this resolution, I will be his enemy to the last moment of his life.”

Clarendon had never seen the King so stern, and he was shaken. He remembered all his enemies at Court, and how again and again when he was in danger from them it was the King who had come to his aid.

He hated Lady Castlemaine; he hated her not only because she was his enemy but because of the influence she had over the King. But he knew that in this instance, the King’s will being so firm, he must remember he was naught else but the King’s servant.

“Your Majesty has spoken,” he said. “I regret that I have expressed my opinions too freely. I am Your Majesty’s servant, to be used as you will. I beg you forgive the freedom of my manners, which freedom has grown out of my long affection for Your Majesty.”

The King, regretting his harshness almost immediately, laid his hand on Clarendon’s shoulder.

He gave a half-smile. “I am pledged to this. It’s a mighty unpleasant business. Come, my friend, extricate me; stand between me and these wrangling women. Be my good lieutenant as you have been so many times before, and let there never more be harsh words between us.”

There were tears in the older man’s eyes.

The charm of the King was as potent as it had ever been.

Oddly enough, thought Clarendon, though one believes him to be in the wrong, one desires above all things to serve him.

Clarendon made his way to the Queen’s apartment and asked for audience.

She received him in bed. She looked pale and quite exhausted after her upset, but she greeted him with a faint smile.

Clarendon intimated that his business with her was secret, and her women retired.

“Oh, my lord,” she cried, “you are one of the few friends I have in this country. You have come to help me, I know.”

“I hope so, Madam,” said Clarendon.

“I have been foolish. I have betrayed my feelings, and that is a bad thing to do; but my feelings were so hard to bear. My heart was broken.”

“I have come to give you my advice,” said the Chancellor, “and it is advice which may not please Your Majesty.”

“You must tell me exactly what you mean,” she said. “I can glean no help from you if you do not talk freely of my faults.”

“Your Majesty makes much of little. Has your education and knowledge of the world given you so little insight into the conduct of mankind that you should be so upset to witness it? I believe that your own country could give you as many—nay more—instances of these follies, than we can show you here in our cold climate.”

“I did not know that the King loves this woman.”

“Did you imagine then that a man such as His Majesty, thirty-two years of age, virile and healthy, would keep his affections reserved for the lady he would marry?”

“I did not think he loved her still.”

“He has the warmest feelings for you.”

“Yet his for her are warmer.”

“They would be most warm for you if you were to help him in this,” said the Chancellor slyly. “I come to you with a message from him. He says that if you will but do what he asks on this one occasion he will make you the happiest queen in the world. He says that whatever he entertained for other ladies before your coming concerns you not, and that you must not enquire into them. He says that if you will help him now he will dedicate himself to you. If you will meet his affection with the same good humor, you will have a life of perfect felicity.”

“I am ready to serve the King in all ways.”

The Chancellor smiled. “Then all is well. There is no longer discord between you.”

“Save,” went on Catherine, “in this one thing. I will not have that woman in my household.”

“But only by helping the King in this—for he has given a promise that it should be so—can you show that devotion.”

“But if he loved me he could not … could not suggest it! By insisting on such a condition he exposes me to the contempt of the Court. If I submitted to it I should believe I was worthy to receive such an affront. No. No. I will not have that woman in my household. I would prefer to go back to Lisbon.”

“That,” said Clarendon quickly, “it is not in your power to do. Madam, I beg of you, for your own sake, listen to my counsel. Meet the King’s
wishes in this. It is rarely that he is so insistent. Pray try to understand that he has given his word that Lady Castlemaine should have a post in your bedchamber. Demean yourself in this—if you consider you should demean yourself by so obeying your husband—but for your future happiness do not remain stubborn.”

Catherine covered her face with her hands.

“I will not,” she moaned. “I will not.”

Clarendon left her and her women came round her, soothing her in their native tongue. They cursed all those who had dared insult their Infanta; they implored her to remember her state; they swore to her that she would forfeit all respect, not only of the Court but of the King, if she gave way.

“I cannot have her here,” Catherine murmured. “I cannot. Every time I saw her my heart would break afresh.”

So she lay back and her women smoothed her hair away from her brow and spread cooling unguents on her heated face; they wiped away the tears which she could not restrain.

That night the King came to her chamber.

Clarendon had failed, and Charles no longer felt impelled to pretend he cared for her. She had disappointed him. Her charm had been in her soft tenderness, her overwhelming desire to please. Now she was proving to be such another termagant as Barbara, and not nearly so handsome a one.

They are alike, thought the King; only the method of getting what they want is different.

“Charles,” she cried tearfully, “I pray you let us have done with this matter. Let us be as we were before.”

“Certainly let us have done with it,” he said. “You can decide that quicker than any of us.”

“I could not bear to see her every day in my chamber…. I could not, Charles.”

“You who have talked of dying for me … could not do this when I ask it?” He spoke lightly, maliciously.

She said: “When you speak thus I feel as though a hundred daggers pierce my heart.”

“That heart of yours is too easily reached. A protection of sound good sense might preserve it from much pain.”

“You are so different now, Charles. I scarcely know you.”

“You too are different. I feel I knew you not at all. I had thought you
gentle and affectionate, and I find you stubborn, proud and wanting in your sense of duty.”

“I find you wanting in affection and full of tyranny,” she cried.

“You are inexperienced of the world. You have romantic ideals which are far from reality.”

“You have cynical ideas which shock and alarm me.”

“Catherine, let us have done with these wrangles. Let us compromise on this. Do this one thing for me and I promise you that Lady Castlemaine shall never, in the smallest way, show the slightest disrespect for you; she shall never, for one moment, forget that you are the Queen.”

“I will never have her in my household!” cried Catherine hysterically. “Never … never. I would rather go back to Portugal.”