With All My Heart
Authors: Margaret Campbell Barnes
© Margaret Campbell Barnes 1951
Margaret Campbell Barnes has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1951 by Macdonald & Co. (Publishers) Ltd.
This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
For MICHAEL my son who was killed in battle
‘Je maintiendrai’
How do I love thee? ...
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
... I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
*
from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s
“Sonnets from the Portuguese”.
WHEN CATHERINE of Braganza first came home from the Convent where the good nuns had educated her, even the strict Court etiquette of Lisbon could not quite subdue her spirit or stifle her warm heart. By the time she was two-and-twenty she was both devout and desirable — and quite incredibly innocent.
Most of her friends, who were daughters of Portuguese grandees, had made good marriages whilst still in their ’teens. They came to the Palace sometimes to show her their babies. Catherine coveted the babies, but was not even betrothed. She remembered that there had been some talk of it when she was small and her parents, beset by Spain, had been most anxious for her to make an alliance with Great Britain. But Charles the First had not considered her important enough for his heir: and soon afterwards some of his subjects had shocked Europe by cutting off his head, and the young prince had become a penniless exile.
And so Catherine had loitered contentedly enough through the sheltered years, thankful not to have to leave home but shamed sometimes because of her spinsterhood. “It cannot be because I am ugly,” she decided, peering into the fabulously carved mirrors imported from her family’s Eastern possessions. “My nose may be too short and my mouth a thought too wide; but even Mother Superior, who abhors vanity, said at the
Festa
that my hair was lovely.” Unlike many princesses, Catherine had sense enough to realize that, even in her most becoming farthingale, she was no breath-taking beauty. What she did not realize was that her big, sherry-brown eyes held all the allure one small woman can possibly need, because naturally she herself could not watch them sparkling with animation or softening to compassion.
And in the end she found that her marriage had waited upon far more momentous matters than the degree of her good looks.
“The English monarchy has been restored,” her mother told her impressively, after summoning her to a family conclave.
“And the poor exiled prince has gone home at last!” said Catherine, before she and donna Elvira, the duenna of her ladies, were well risen from their sweeping curtsies.
“So you have heard, my dear Catalina?”
“Yes, Madame. My ladies can talk of nothing else, can they, donna Elvira? It seems to them so romantic the way he went back and fought for his crown at some place called Worcester, and then had to escape all over again. We made the Abbot Aubigny, who has been in England, tell us about this second landing. All the church bells were ringing, he says, and the people laughing and dancing again!” Catherine’s dark eyes were sparkling: for when you have nearly been married to a person, even if he did not want you, it is difficult not to take an interest in what happens to him.
“He is King Charles the Second now,” said don Francisco de Mello, their Chancellor, watching her with unusual intentness.
“And I am sending our good Francisco to London,” her elder brother, King Alphonso, told her portentously.
And something in the way her younger brother, don Pedro, was looking at her made Catherine begin to understand why so much interest was being focused upon her. Her gaze came to rest upon her capable mother, who really ruled their small kingdom — who had ruled since her husband’s death and made unbelievable sacrifices to bring it out of bondage from the Spanish yoke. “Then, after all ...” Catherine began unsteadily.
“Yes,
after
all
!” confirmed Luiza of Braganza, smiling at her with eyes full of pride, yet moist with the sorrow of approaching parting.
“How fortunate that we did not accept the other proposals!” remarked young don Pedro.
His sister swung round towards him with a stiff swaying of hooped skirts, betraying her pretty ankles. “Then there
were
other men who wanted to marry me?” she exclaimed.
*
“Scores of them!” he teased. “You can hardly suppose the grasping Courts of Europe were completely dumb and indifferent when our sailors took Tangier and Bombay.”
“Oh! For what they can get, you mean?” she pouted, considerably crestfallen.
“Whatever the motive of these ducal suitors, her Majesty had faith — and waited,” explained don Francisco drily. “She believed in the destiny of Charles Stuart even when the cautious mother of Henrietta of Orange spurned his advances and called him a penniless adventurer. Your mother, my dear, is a very astute woman.”
The Dowager Queen preened herself like a triumphant little pouter pigeon in her Chancellor’s approval. “The British are very like ourselves — a seaboard race nurtured upon tradition. Like us, they cannot live beneath a drab tyranny for long! So when the mothers of the disappointed dukes said to me nastily, ‘Is it not high
time
your daughter married?’ I forbore to tell them what short-sighted fools they were. I waited for the alliance that could consolidate the strength of our country — the alliance your dear father always desired.”
They all crossed themselves devoutly and Alphonso asked ponderously, “Does it please you, Catalina?”
“It is a great honour,” she answered, sinking to a stool at her mother’s feet because the firmness of her familiar world seemed suddenly to be cut from under her.
They went on discussing the matter at length although she, whose whole life it concerned, was too dazed to listen.
“Six of our ships the cursed Spaniards sunk last month!”
“They’ll be sailing up the Tagus with their new three-decker galleons next — and
then
God help us!”
“If we had this new, strong alliance they would never dare — not after the way England basted their vaunted Armada!”
“No. But how are we to make sure of England? What plums does
she
pick out of it?”
“Some of our possessions, perhaps,” suggested don Francisco. “They have been too busy fighting each other during their disastrous Civil War: but now — being a seafaring nation — they will want to expand.”
“It is true that they want trade. But above everything else Charles Stuart himself must want ready money,” said Luiza shrewdly. “His family was ruined during the Commonwealth. Even their plate and pictures were sold. He will have nothing but what his upstart Parliament cares to grant him. And as long as he has only that, he will be but a puppet king.”
“Money?” repeated Alphonso, caressing his mean little moustachios. “He can scarcely expect much of me after our long struggle with Spain. The sum which
our
Parliament voted —”
“By careful economies I have saved the bulk of it
for
my
daughter’s
dowry
!” interrupted Luiza firmly. “Five hundred thousand pounds sterling you can offer Charles Stuart, Francisco.”
Successful as their foreign trading had been, the Braganzas had had no idea there was so much in the royal coffers. To them the bargain seemed as good as made. “The only pity is that the man is a Protestant,” summed up handsome don Pedro.
At sound of the hated word Catherine came out of her abstracted trance. “Marry a heretic!” she cried, remembering all she had heard of them in her Convent.
“Do not distress yourself, dear goddaughter,” soothed grey-haired don Francisco. “None of us will let you go without promise of full religious freedom. You will have your own private chapel and confessor.”
“But what about her children?” asked don Pedro, who loved her dearly.
“It is regrettable, of course. But England is a Protestant country —”
Queen Luiza hastened to lay a comforting arm about her daughter’s shoulders. “Charles Stuart’s mother, Henrietta Maria, is an ardent Catholic. Also the youngest daughter who has always been with her in France. And now I hear rumours that his brother, the Duke of York, may be converted. It is often like that in these mixed State marriages,
Catalina
querida
. You will probably be allowed to keep your daughters and some of your younger sons in the faith.”
In her optimistic enthusiasm she spoke as if Catherine were sure to produce the proverbial quiverful, and Alphonso began making tentative plans for a proxy wedding in Lisbon Cathedral.
But the sagacious old Chancellor felt it his duty to point out one unavoidable embarrassment. “In the event of the negotiations going through, I make no doubt the Pope will grant the necessary dispensation,” he said. “But I would remind your Majesty that his Holiness has never yet brought himself to offend mighty Spain by acknowledging Portugal as a separate Kingdom. Consequently in all documents from the Vatican our dear Catherine will be referred to simply as the Duke of Braganza’s sister.”
“Oh, not to be thought of!” cried Alphonso, the new young Portuguese King.
“It would debase us utterly in the eyes of England!” protested don Pedro.
It was, in fact, a contingency which even the practical Queen Dowager had not taken into consideration. Her daughter’s prestige was dear, but Portugal came first. She drew a deep breath and rose from her chair. “Then there can
be
no proxy wedding,” she decided.
They all stared at her aghast. Even Alphonso and Pedro, who were no better than they ought to have been, would almost as soon have sent their cherished sister to walk alone among the brothels on the waterfront. And donna Elvira raised her skinny, shocked hands to Heaven — hands in which lay responsibility for the morals of every young girl at Court.
“Madame, I beseech you!” she exclaimed. “Send our Princess unwed to some strange man! An unprotected virgin!”
“You and I would be there — protecting her,” pointed out don Francisco, with a gleam of tolerant amusement. “To say nothing of a whole retinue of priests and ladies.”
“But even so what could we
do
— in a barbarous island where they behead their kings?”
“Oh, come, come, dear lady,” grinned don Pedro. “Since this regicide Cromwell died they have at least admitted the error of their ways by inviting their sovereign back. And from all we hear he is a fine, cultured man.”
“And a notorious profligate!” snapped the outraged duenna.
Knowing there was truth in what she said, the Braganzas remained silent. The idea of delivering Catherine unwed to
any
foreign country was utterly unconventional. But, whatever their individual feelings, there was one emotion which predominated in all of them — a patriotism capable of triumphing over much greater things than prudery. The kind of patriotism which devours and directs and unifies a people whose whole existence is one heroic fight for national freedom. And as a matter of course their own personal safety and desires had always been subordinated to it.
It was the Unprotected Virgin herself who accepted the sacrifice. “I am willing to go — just as I am — for Portugal,” she said simply.
To go, leaving these loved ones, would in any case mean desolation, although it had always been her recognized destiny. To go without married status or consecrated contract was frightening. Yet somehow, although Charles Stuart was a heretic and someone had just called him profligate, Catherine knew at the back of her mind that nothing, nothing would have induced her to go unwed to any of the unspecified ducal suitors, trusting to their marriage arrangements when they met her.
But in spite of her courageous willingness there was so much delay in settling the negotiations that the poor girl began to wonder if even now, with the wealth of Tangier and Bombay and an attractive dowry as bait, the restored King of Scotland and England considered her important enough. She was not to know that Vatteville, the Spanish ambassador to that country, who had never in his life set eyes on her, had whispered through the anterooms of Whitehall that she was both sterile and deformed. And that Charles, who loved children and liked his women
piquante
, had in consequence become distrait and dilatory. That he had sent someone he could trust to look at her and finally, when Vatteville, given the lie about her looks, had had the effrontery to threaten war if a Portuguese marriage went through, Charles — in one of his rare rages — had dismissed him from the Court of St. James and sent him back bag and baggage to Spain. But there were so many ugly things about human nature that Catherine had yet to learn. All she did know was that it seemed a long time before her godfather came back to Lisbon.
But when at last he arrived he brought letters to her mother and to herself, and on hers Charles had written in his own fine hand, “To my Lady and Wife, whom God preserve!”
“So you
see
, Madame!” she could not refrain from chanting triumphantly, as she waved the imposing looking document beneath donna Elvira’s sharp, disapproving nose.
“He is dark and ugly as a Spaniard,” commented that disgruntled lady, looking at the miniature which don Francisco had also brought.
There were days full of dressmakers and dowry discussions and the selection of a suitable retinue: followed by a great fervour to sail while the dreaded Bay of Biscay was still relatively calm. But still Charles did not send for his bride. His ships must go and garrison Tangier first, Francisco de Mello explained. But as the autumn days passed and all the gorgeous dresses were packed and the seas grew rougher and rougher, Catherine could have wept with mortification.