The Loves of Charles II (84 page)

She strode up and down her apartment, kicking everything in her path out of the way. No servants would come near her except Mrs. Sarah, and even she took good care to keep well out of reach.

All thought Barbara might do herself some injury; many hoped she would.

In her rage she tore her bodice into shreds; she pulled her hair; she called on God to witness her humiliation.

Meanwhile Frances Stuart was riding serenely in Hyde Park, and the calash made a very pleasant setting for such a beautiful jewel.

The people watched her go by and declared that never—even in those days when Lady Castlemaine had been at the height of her beauty—had there been such a lovely lady at the Court.

Catherine, watching the game Charles played with the women of his Court, often wondered whether he were capable of any deep feeling. Barbara took lovers shamelessly yet remained the King’s mistress; in fact, he seemed quite indifferent to her amatory adventures which were the scandal of the Court. He seemed only to care that she received him whenever he was ready to visit her.

Frances, after the affair of the calash, had continued to hold back. She had promised nothing, she declared; and her conscience would not allow her to become the King’s mistress.

Catherine was unsure of Frances. The girl might be a skilful coquette—as Barbara insisted that she was, for Barbara made no secret of her enmity now—or she might indeed be a virtuous woman.

Catherine believed her to be virtuous. It certainly seemed to her that Frances was sincere when she confided to the Queen that she wished to marry and settle down in peace away from the Court.

“Your Majesty must understand,” she had said, “that the position in which I find myself is none of my making.”

Catherine determined to believe her, and sought to help her on every occasion.

She pondered often on the King’s devotion to women other than herself. She remembered too the case of Lady Chesterfield. The Chesterfields remained in the country, but news came that the Earl was as much in love with his wife as he had been at Court, and that she continued to scorn him.

Catherine talked of this with Frances Stuart, and Frances answered: “It was only when he saw how others admired her that he began to do so. That is the way of men.”

And I, thought Catherine, admired Charles wholeheartedly. I showed my admiration. I was without guile. He knew that no other man had ever loved me.

Edward Montague was often in attendance. He would look at her sadly when such affairs as that of the calash took place; it was clear that he pitied her. He was invariably at her side at all gatherings; his position as master of her horse necessitated that, but she was sure his feelings for her were stronger than those of a servant.

She often studied Edward Montague; he was a handsome young man and there was surely something of which to be proud in the devotion of such as he; so she smiled on him with affection, and it began to be noticed that the friendship between them was growing.

Catherine knew this, but did nothing to prevent it; it was, after all, a situation she had striven to create.

Montague’s enemies were quick to call the King’s attention to this friendship with the Queen; but Charles laughed lightly. He was glad that the Queen had an admirer. It showed the man’s sound good sense, he said, because the Queen was worthy to be admired.

He was certainly not going to put a stop to the friendship; he would consider it extremely unfair to do so since he enjoyed so many friendships with the opposite sex.

Catherine, seeing his indifference to her relationship with her handsome master of horse, made another of those mistakes which turned the King’s admiration for her to indifference.

Catherine’s great tragedy was that she never understood Charles.

It so happened that, when she alighted from her horse and he took her hand, Montague held it longer than was necessary and pressed it firmly. It was a gesture of assurance of his affection and sympathy for her, and Catherine knew this; but when, longing for Charles’ attention and desperately seeking to claim it, she artlessly asked what a gentleman meant when he held a lady’s hand and pressed it, she was feigning an innocence and ignorance of English customs which were not hers.

“Who has done this?” asked the King.

She answered: “It is my good master of horse, Montague.”

The King looked at her with pity. Poor Catherine! Was she trying to be coy? How ill it became her!

He said lightly: “It is an expression of devotion, but such expressions given to kings and queens may not indicate devotion but a desire for advancement. Yet it is an act of insolence for Your Majesty’s master of horse to behave thus to you, and I will take steps to see that it does not happen again.”

She believed she had aroused his jealousy. She believed he was thinking: So other men find her attractive; and she waited to see what would happen next.

Alas, Charles’ attention was still on his mistresses and Catherine merely lost her one admirer.

Edward Montague was dismissed his office; not on account of the King’s jealousy, but because Charles feared that Catherine’s innocence might betray her into indiscretion if the man remained.

The King’s love for Frances did not diminish.

He was subdued and often melancholy; a listlessness—so unusual with him—crept into his behavior. He had accepted her reluctance at first as the opening phase in the game of love; but still she was unconquered; and he began to believe that she would never surrender.

His feelings were more deeply stirred than they had ever been before. For the first time in his life the King was truly in love.

Sometimes he marveled at himself. It was true that Frances was very beautiful, but she completely lacked that quick wit which he himself possessed and which he admired in others. Frances was just a little stupid, some might say; but that seemed to make her seem more youthful than ever. Perhaps she provided such a contrast to Barbara. She never flew into tantrums; she was invariably calm and serene; she rarely spoke in an ill-natured fashion of anyone; she asked for little—the affair of the calash was an exception, and he believed she may have been persuaded to that, possibly by Buckingham whose head was, as usual, full of the most hare-brained schemes; all she wished was to be allowed to play those games which delighted her. Frances was like a very young and guileless girl and as such she deeply touched the heart of the King.

It was Frances who now adorned the coinage—a shapely Britannia with her helmet on her charming head and the trident in her slender hands.

He brooded on her constantly and wrote a song to explain his feelings.

And while the King brooded on his unfulfilled passion for Frances, state matters were not progressing satisfactorily. He would be called to hasty council meetings and there were long consultations with Clarendon, whose dictatorial manner was often irritating. But, like Clarendon, Charles was alarmed by the growing hostilities on the high seas between the Dutch and the English.

The Duke of York, who had won fame as an Admiral of the Fleet, was growing more and more daring. He had the trading classes of the country behind him; and it was becoming clear that these people were hoping for a war with Holland. The Duke had captured Cape Corso and other Dutch colonies on the African coast, a matter which had caused some concern to the Chancellor which he had imparted to Charles. These conquests, insisted Clarendon, were unjust and were causing bad blood between the two countries. The Duke’s retort to Clarendon’s warnings was to capture New Amsterdam on the coast of North America and immediately rename it New York. He declared that English property in North America had been filched by the Dutch, and it was only seemly that it should be filched back again. Meanwhile there were frequent hostile incidents when the ships of both nations met.

Charles could see that if events continued to follow this course there would indeed be war, for it seemed that he and the Chancellor were the only men in the country who did not wish for it. He himself was very much bound by his Parliament, and Clarendon was fast becoming the most unpopular man in the country. The Buckingham faction had set in progress
rumors damaging to Clarendon, so that every difficulty and disaster which arose was laid at his door. It was now being whispered that the selling of Dunkirk to the French had been Clarendon’s work, and that he had been heavily bribed for his part in this, which was untrue. Dunkirk had been sold because it was a drain on the expenses of the Exchequer which was in urgent need of the purchase money. Clarendon had only helped set the negotiations in motion once it had been decided that the deal should go forward.

So these were melancholy days for Charles. State affairs moving towards a climax which might be dangerous; Charles for the first time in love and denied the satisfaction he asked.

Mary Fairfax, the Duchess of Buckingham, was giving a ball.

While her maids were dressing her she looked at her reflection in the Venetian mirror with a fearful pride. Her jewels were of many colors, for she liked to adorn herself thus and she knew she wore too many and of too varied colors, but she could never decide which she ought to discard. She was too thin, completely lacking the slender grace of Frances Stuart; she was awkward, and never knew what to do with her large hands, now ablaze with rings. She feared though that the jewels she wore did not beautify; they merely called attention to the awkwardness of those hands. Her nose was too large as was her mouth; her eyes large and dark, but too closely set together. She had always known she was no beauty; and she could never rid herself of the idea that brightly colored gowns and many jewels would help her to hide her deficiencies; it was only when she was in the company of some of the beauties of the Court—ladies such as Lady Chesterfield, Miss Jennings, Lady Southesk, Barbara Castlemaine and, of course, the most beautiful Mrs. Stuart—that she realized that all of them, including Barbara, had achieved their effects by less flamboyant means than she had employed.

She was neglected by her husband, the great Duke, but she never resented this; she was constantly aware that she, Mary Fairfax, was the wife of the handsomest man she had ever seen; not only was he handsome, but he was witty, amusing, sought after by the ambitious; and she continually told herself that she was the most fortunate of women merely to be his wife.