The Loves of Charles II (93 page)

It was not long after Frances’s return to Court that all had an opportunity of understanding the depth of Charles’ affection for his distant cousin.

Frances was now even more beautiful than when she had left. Marriage with the Duke had sobered her; she was less giddy; if she still played card houses it was with an abstracted air. The Duke, her husband, was not only besotted, he was indifferent; he had wished to marry her only because the King had so ardently desired her; in fact, Frances had quickly realized that her marriage had been one of the biggest mistakes of her life. She had her apartments in Somerset House, the home of the King’s mother, Henrietta Maria, for she was not invited to take up residence in her old apartments in Whitehall. It was very different being merely the wife of the Duke of Richmond and Lennox and a woman who had offended the King so deeply that she would never be taken back into his favor again. There were fewer people to visit her and applaud all she did. Buckingham and Arlington, those devoted admirers, seemed now to have forgotten her existence. Lady Castlemaine laughed at her insolently whenever they met. Barbara was determined to flaunt her continued friendship with the King, which had lasted nearly ten years; Frances’s spell of favor had been so very brief.

“The King must amuse himself,” Barbara said in her hearing. “He takes up with women one week and by the next he finds it difficult to recall their names.”

So Frances, the petted darling of the Court, the King’s most honored friend, found herself neglected because she no longer held the King’s favor.
There was no point in seeking to please her; for what good could her friendship bring them? It was astonishing how many of those who had sworn she was the most beautiful creature on Earth now scarcely seemed to notice her.

She was beautiful—none more beautiful at the Court; she was far less foolish than she had been, but her circle of friends had dwindled astonishingly and she was often lonely in her rooms at Somerset House. Now and then she thought of returning to the country.

Sitting solitarily, building card houses, she thought often of the old days; she thought of the charm of the King and compared it with the ungracious manners of her husband; she thought of the Duke’s indifference to her and of the King’s continual care.

She covered her face with her hands and wept. If ever she had been in love with anyone it had been with Charles.

She left her card house to collapse onto the table, and went to a mirror; her face looked back at her, perfect in contour and coloring; lacking the simplicity it had possessed when Charles had so eagerly sought her, but surely losing nothing of beauty for that.

She must go to Court; she must seek him out. She would humbly beg his pardon, not for refusing to become his mistress—he would not expect that—but because she had run away and married against his wishes, because she had flouted him, because she had been such a fool as to prefer the drunken Duke to her passionate, but so kind and affectionate King.

She called to her women.

“Come,” she cried. “Dress me in my most becoming gown. Dress my hair in ringlets. I am going to pay a call … a very important call.”

They dressed her, and she thought of the reunion as they did so. She would throw herself onto her knees first and beg his forgiveness. She would say that she had tried to go against the tide; she had believed in virtue, but now she could see no virtue in marriage with a man such as she had married. She would ask Charles to forget the past; and perhaps they would start again.

“My lady, your hands are burning,” said one of her women. “You are too flushed. You have a fever.”

“It is the excitement because I am to pay a most important call … I will wear that blue sash with the gold embroidery.”

Her women looked at each other in astonishment. “There is no blue sash, my lady. The sash is purple, and the embroidery on it is silver.”

Frances put her hand to her head. “Dark webs seem to dance before my eyes,” she muttered.

“You should rest, my lady, before you pay that call.”

Even as they spoke she would have fallen if two of them had not managed to catch her.

“Take me to my bed,” she murmured.

They carried her thither, and in alarm they called the physician to her bedside. One of the women had recognized the alarming symptoms of the dreaded smallpox.

The Court buzzed with the news.

So Frances Stuart was suffering from the smallpox! Fate seemed determined to put an end to her sway, for only if she came unscathed from the dread disease, her beauty unimpaired, could she hope to return to the King’s favor.

Barbara was exultant. It was hardly likely that Frances would come through unmarked; so few people did, and Barbara’s spies informed her that Frances had taken the disease very badly. “Praise be to God!” cried Barbara. “Madam Frances will no longer be able to call herself the beauty of the Court. Dolt! She threw away what she might have had when she was young and fair and the King sought her; she married her drunken sot, and much good has that done her. I’ll swear she was planning to come back and regain Charles’ favor. She’ll see that the pockmarked hag she’ll become will best retire to the country and hide herself.”

The King heard the sly laughter. He heard the whispers. “They say the most beautiful of Duchesses has become the most hideous.”“Silly Frances, there’ll be no one to hand her her cards now.”“Poor Frances! Silly Frances! What had she but her beauty?”

Catherine watched the King wistfully. She saw that he was melancholy, and she asked him to tell her the reason.

He turned to her frankly and replied: “I think of poor Frances Stuart.”

“It has been the lot of other women to lose their beauty through the pox,” said Catherine. “Her case is but one of many.”

“Nay,” said the King. “Hers is unique, for the pox could never have robbed a woman of so much beauty as it could rob poor Frances!”

“Some women have to learn to do without what they cannot have.”

He smiled at Catherine. “No one visits her,” he said.

“And indeed they should not. The infection will still be upon her.”

“I think of poor Frances robbed of beauty and friends, and I find myself no longer angry with her.”

“If she recovers it will bring great comfort to her to know that she no longer must suffer your displeasure.”

“She needs comfort now,” declared the King. “If she does not have it, poor soul, she will die of melancholy.”

He was thinking of her in her little cocked hat, in her black-and-white gown with the diamonds sparkling in her hair—Frances, the most beautiful woman of his Court, and now, if she recovered, one of its most hideous. For the pox was a cruel destroyer of beauty, and Frances was suffering a severe attack.

Catherine, watching him, felt such twinges of jealousy that she could have buried her face in her hands and wept in her misery. She thought: If he could speak of me as he speaks of her, if he could care so much for me if I suffered the like affliction, I believe I would be willing to suffer as Frances has suffered. He loves her still. None of the others can mean as much to him as that simple girl, of whom it was once said: “Never had a woman so much beauty, and so little wit.”

He smiled at Catherine, but she knew he did not see her. His eyes were shining and his mouth tender; he was looking beyond her into the past when Frances Stuart had ridden beside him and he had been at his wit’s end to think of means to overcome her resistance.

He turned and hurried away, and a little later she saw him walking briskly to the river’s edge where his barge was waiting.

Catherine stood watching him, and slowly the tears began to run down her cheeks.

She knew where he was going. He was going to risk infection; he was going to do something which would set all the Court talking; for he was going to show them all that, although he had been cool towards the lovely Frances Stuart because she had flouted him in her marriage, all was forgiven the poor, stricken girl who was in danger of losing that very beauty which had so attracted him.

For love like that, thought Catherine, I would welcome the pox. For love like that I would die.

Frances lay in her bed. She had asked for a mirror, and had stared a long time at the face she saw reflected there. How cruel was fate! Why, she asked herself, should it have made her the most beautiful of women, only to turn her into one of the most hideous! If only the contrast had been less marked! It was as though she had been shown the value of beauty in those days of the Restoration, only that she might mourn its loss. Gone was the dazzling pink-and-white complexion; in its place was yellow skin covered by small pits which, not content with ravaging the skin itself, had distorted the perfect contours of her face. The lid of one eye, heavily pitted, was dragged down
over the pupil so that she could see nothing through it, and the effect was to make her look grotesque.

Nothing of beauty was left to her; even her lovely slender figure was wasted and so thin that she feared the bones would pierce her skin.

Alone she lay, for none came to visit her. How was that possible, who would dare risk taking the dread disease?

And when I am recovered, she thought, still none will visit me. And any who should be so misguided as to do so will be disgusted with what they see.

She wanted to weep; in the old days she had wept so easily. Now there were no tears. She was aware only of a dumb misery. There was none to love her, none to care what became of her.

Perhaps, she pondered, I will go into a convent. How can I live all the years ahead of me, shut away from the world? I am not studious; I am not clever. How can I live my life shut away from the Court life to which I have grown accustomed?

How would it be to have old friends, who once had been eager to admire, turning away from her in disgust? There would be no one to love her; she had nothing to hope for from her husband. He had married the fair Stuart whom the King so desired because he had believed that, the King finding her so fair, she must be desirable indeed. Now … there would be none.

She could see from her bed the boulle cabinet inlaid with tortoiseshell and ivory. It was a beautiful thing and a present from the King in those days when he had eagerly besought her to become his mistress. She remembered his pleasure when he had shown her the thirty secret drawers and the silver gilt fittings. The cabinet was decorated with tortoiseshell hearts, and she remembered that he had said: “These are reminders that you possess one which is not made of tortoiseshell and beats for you alone.”

Beside her bed was the marquetry table, ebony inlaid, and decorated with pewter—another of Charles’ elaborate presents.

She would have these to remind her always that once she had been so beautiful that a King had sought her favors. Few would believe that in the days to come, for they would look at a hideous woman and laugh secretly at the very suggestion that her beauty could ever have attracted a King who worshipped beauty as did Charles.

All was over. Her life had been built on her beauty; and her beauty was in ruins.

Someone had entered the room, someone tall and dark.

She did not believe it was he. She could not. She had been thinking of him so vividly that she must have conjured him up out of her imagination.

He approached the bed.

“Oh, God!” she cried. “It is the King … the King himself.”

She brought up her hands to cover her face, but found she could not touch the loathsome thing she believed that face to be. She turned to the wall and sobbed: “Go away! Go away! Do not look at me. Do not come here to mock me!”

But he was there, kneeling by the bed; he had taken her hands.

“Frances,” he said, in a voice husky with emotion, “you must not grieve. You must not.”

“I beg of you go away and leave me in my misery,” she said. “You think of what I was. You see what I have become. You … you of all people must be laughing at me … you must be triumphant…. If you have any kindness in you … go away.”

“Nay,” he said. “I would not go just yet. I would speak with you, Frances. We have been too long bad friends.”