With All My Heart (27 page)

Sweeping him a quiet curtsy, she took her leave. But at the door something made her turn and look back at the warmly coloured, intimate scene. With a little catch at her heart she thought again how content he looked, with his trusted friends about him and the last cadence of the music still sweet upon the air. Like a good ship that has seen many adventures and weathered many storms and is safe home in port at last.

Still smiling at the absurdity of the simile which had slipped so involuntarily into her mind, Catherine observed John Evelyn, the President of the Royal Society, being ushered in at the other end of the gallery. Charles was invariably kind to him and they enjoyed talking about gardens together; but somehow she wished that the old gentleman had not come tonight. He was of a more austere generation and by some strangely quickened perception she knew how differently that Sunday evening would appear to his critical mind. The gaming table, the French love songs, the pensioned mistresses — and in the midst of them, Charles. And because Evelyn was a man of integrity whose lightest word could formulate public opinion she was vexed with herself for not sitting up longer and giving countenance to the scene.

CHAPTER XXIV

IN THE early hours of Monday morning Catherine’s women shook her awake. “The King is asking for you!” they kept repeating.

“You mean he is taken ill again?” she asked, springing immediately from her bed.

“He has had another seizure.”

“They say he rose in the night and came over giddy in his privy closet and milord Ailesbury and Killigrew, who slept near him, became alarmed and sent for Chiffinch —”

“And first thing this morning, Madame, when Lord Craven went for the day’s password the King could not speak but just pointed to the book in which it is always written —”

“And when his Majesty got out of bed he seemed to stagger. But Bruce says he sat down to be shaved as usual with his knees propped against the mirror, and as the barber was tucking the towel under his chin he fell back into Lord Ailesbury’s arms. His Majesty’s eyes were rolled right up into his head, Bruce said!”

The terrible words buffeted Catherine from all sides as she hurried into some clothes. “They say he is dying,” someone sobbed. But she herself was dry eyed as she ran across the landing. More insistent in her brain even than the suggestion that he might be dying stormed the fact that he wanted her.

Chiffinch’s room was already black with people. Frightened servants crowded the backstairs. Catherine saw Drusilla, the chambermaid, standing there, her pretty face all puckered with crying. Although she had probably never so much as spoken to the King, such was the affection in which he was held that by the looks of her she might have lost father, brother sweetheart and all.

“Make way for the Queen!” some upper servant cried out, and the press of people parted respectfully on either side. Lord Ailesbury, looking gaunt and aged, met her at the doorway and, shedding ceremony, took her cold hands in his own trembling ones.

It was still dark in the King’s room. No one had thought to draw the curtains at the tall windows. Only a few hastily lit candles relieved the heaviness of the panelling with their yellow pools of light. Men, half dressed and tallow-faced, were making up the dying fire and shooing from the hearth a whimpering huddle of their master’s dogs. A white aproned barber stood as if struck dumb by the empty shaving chair, an open razor still in his hand. High upon its stand on the dressing table stood Charles’s long dark wig — a tiling poignantly ordinary and familiar.

But Catherine’s eyes, her mind, her heart went straight to the long, covered figure in the big, dishevelled bed. She could see her husband’s closely shaven head capless against the pillows, and his grey and twisted face. His eyes, beneath half closed lids, were watching the door, patient and imploring as the brown eyes of his spaniels. The fingers of one inert, outflung hand managed to make a small convulsive gesture at sight of her.

Unaware of anyone else in the room or in the whole world, she sank to her knees upon the hard bedsteps, so that her face was on a level with his tortured one. She clasped that piteous hand firmly, trying to pierce his dim consciousness with the assurance that she would never let him go. At first he could not speak at all. He lay with closed eyes and laboured breathing; but she knew by the clinging of those loved fingers that he wanted her and drew solace from their warm contact. And gradually the terrible twisting of his features smoothed itself out, leaving the stern, lined face she knew so well. “It will pass, perhaps,” he muttered thickly. “I am glad — you came.”

“I am part of you, beloved,” she whispered back.

He had spoken and her first terror passed. Someone had drawn back the curtains, a bright coal fire burned upon the hearth and there was grey February light over the Thames. Catherine was conscious of James’s hurried arrival and thankful that Dr. Edmund King was there. “Mercifully, he was here when it happened,” James told her, standing tense and tall across the bed. “He had come to dress the King’s heel, and took the risk of opening a vein.” James kept repeating the information as if it were some kind of talisman, for although he had stood immovable on many a battle deck, before this unexpected calamity he was all bewildered and distraught.

“It is treason to treat his Majesty’s body without consultation, but in a matter of seconds he would have been beyond human aid,” confirmed the little doctor apologetically.

“You seem to be our ever present help in trouble!” murmured Catherine, catching at his hand and remembering how kind he had been when Charles had sent him to her in her own illness.

And then the other physicians with whom he should have conferred were arriving, making a great stir and each anxious to hear exactly what had happened and to try all kinds of drastic remedies. To make way for them Catherine moved to the foot of the bed. Bruce was putting hot pans of coal between the sheets and with her own hands she began to chafe her husband’s icy feet. For hours she knelt there while he was being cupped and bled and purged. Now and again she heard his voice murmuring some reply to the doctors and once she heard him cry out in agony. It was becoming more than she could bear. The room was now hot to the point of suffocation and crowded with bishops and high functionaries and hurrying servants. How Charles must hate all these people staring at his suffering and having the distressed little Duchess of York and some of her own women in the room while he submitted to the intimate indignities of human illness! “Even a sick dog is allowed more privacy!” he had said, when he had ridden hell for leather from Newmarket and cleared her rooms and given her a chance of life. Longing to do the same for him, she looked wildly round. But she had no such authority. “If only they would stop all these exhausting remedies and let him sleep a little!” she entreated, tugging at James’s sleeve as he passed. But James did not understand. He thought that the more remedies they tried the more chance of recovery there would be. Unlike his brother, he was no good at all in sickness.

Towards noon her strength began to give out and when Charles slipped into a sound sleep in spite of them, and Doctor King confirmed her assertion that that would prove the best remedy of all, she allowed her women to lead her away.

The next day he rallied. He even sat up in bed and discussed his symptoms, teasing his friends affectionately for their concern. That remarkable constitution of his was putting up a wonderful fight. A hopeful bulletin was given to the people gathered about the Palace gates. “Trust old Rowley to cheat Death every time!” they told each other, calling him by the coarse nickname that referred to a famous stallion, yet loving him and relying on him as they always had.

But the convulsions returned and although Charles bore it all with fortitude, by mid-week he lay huddled and exhausted; and, knowing that there was no hope, the bishops besought him to consider his soul. For a long time he either did not hear or would not heed them, but lay in delirium sometimes talking disconnectedly in French, so that it seemed that the loving spirit of Minette was very near him — -for Catherine was certain it was to Minette he spoke. But as the hours crept by and a more lucid moment came, Bishop Kenn, that courageous prelate who had often reproved his Sovereign for his sins and been but the better loved for it, managed to make him understand that he must prepare to meet his God. Charles heard the words unflinchingly and, expressing contrition for all his sins, listened reverently to the absolution. But when the elements were laid upon a table that he might take the Eucharist according to the Church of England he muttered that there was yet time, and that he would think upon it. And Catherine, watching him, knew what was in his mind.

“I am sorry,” he said, looking round upon the weary company, “to be such an unconscionable time a’ dying!”

And hearing the gallant words and seeing for the last time a faint suspicion of his old ironical smile, Lord Ailesbury was quite unmanned. “Only last Sunday his Majesty was saying the lead would be on his new house before the week was out,” he reminded Catherine, with the tears running down his honest face, “and now —”

And now all those happy hopes and plans were finished. Charles would never look down that avenue of English trees to Winchester, nor walk the springy, thyme-scented Hampshire hills — nor ever again see his gallant ships! Of all his houses the only one left him would be that house to which beggar and king alike must come — so narrow, so plain and so cold! One which even a merciful God would not let her inhabit instead of him — nor even share ... A long, leaden coffin ...

For the first time acceptance of the truth came to Catherine and she fainted right away.

“Even now, after all these years, I am useless — ignominious — beside his immense courage!” she thought bitterly, as in the comparative coolness of her own room a blurred sense of her surroundings came back to her. And through her weakness strove a strong sense of something she must accomplish before this accursed swooning engulfed her utterly. If she could not do it herself, she must get someone else to do it. But who, of all these kind Protestant women fussing over her? Or of what use to speak of it to Doctor King who had come to order her to bed? Desperately, Catherine’s eyes searched for means. And there, beyond them, alone by the door — neglected for once, and full of apprehension for her precarious future — stood Louise de Keroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth. Louise, who was a woman accustomed to getting her own way — and a Catholic. Louise, who had been her husband’s mistress and to whom she could not bear to be beholden.

But nothing mattered now — except Charles.

Summoning all her remaining strength, Catherine waved her other ladies-of-the-bedchamber aside and, in full view of them, went to her. “The King has refused the final consolation of his Church. He is like to die without any consolation at all unless we can contrive to get him a priest,” she said urgently, without preamble.

“I have been thinking of this same thing, Madame,” said Louise. “And of how the King of France would wish it.”

“Long ago Charles said that it would be — a coming home.”

“Yet there is nothing I can do. It is not seemly for me to go into his bedroom —
now
,” said Louise, with envious bitterness.

“No, it is not,” agreed Catherine, holding to a chair back for support because the very walls seemed to be swaying round her. “But you have much influence with the French Ambassador. I pray you, ask him to speak to my brother-in-law, the Duke. They have only to turn all those people out and arrange for the Host to be carried from my chapel.”

For the first time the Frenchwoman seemed to draw herself from her own personal calculations and to regard the fainting Queen with amazement. “
You
are asking
me
to do this?” she said, with much of her old arrogance.

“I am entreating you,” said Catherine humbly.

There was nothing more she could do for Charles this side of Heaven. The beautiful baby-face of Louise de Keroualle became a blur and faded out of her sight for ever. The chair to which she clung seemed to dissolve like paper and she felt herself falling to the floor at her proud rival’s feet.

Long afterwards, when Catherine came to her senses, she was lying on her bed. As the terrible realization of her grief came back to her she cried out; but her women had withdrawn themselves and someone was laying cool, steadying fingers upon her wrist. For one crazed moment, in her bewilderment, she imagined it to be Charles. And then, as normal clarity came back to her, she saw the brown habit of a priest. “Take heart, dear child; for God, who has been so good to us, will give you strength,” said a voice of rare beauty; and she found herself looking into the face of Father Huddleston. A face so illuminated by spiritual happiness that there was no need to ask from what long desired duty he had come.

Catherine raised herself to meet his look, and peace flooded into her. “It is the perfect ending — that it should be you who have shriven him,” she said softly.

“It must have been meant,” answered Huddleston, his fine hands now hidden in the rough sleeves of his habit as he stood beside her. “It is over thirty years since I first set eyes on him — a likeable, lanky young man in a torn, bloodstained shirt — and fetched him food and clothing and hid him in my room at Moseley. He passed the time reading my books and questioning me and, being in grave jeopardy of death, stood long before the altar there. And now, by God’s grace, the seed has come to flower.” And bending his tonsured head, he murmured “
Finis
coronat
opus
.”

Catherine covered her face with both hands and gave thanks, and for a long time there was silence in the room. “How did Charles take it — when the Duke asked him if he should bring a priest?” she asked at last.

“With the very words you love and mimic, Madame,” smiled John Huddleston. “He said, ‘With all my heart.’ ”

“Oh, Father, what happier words could he have used? And then?”

“Then his Grace ordered everyone to withdraw, save only those two good Protestant lords, Bath and Faversham. He bolted the door himself. ‘Here is he who once saved your body and is now come to save your soul,’ he said, as I stepped through the low door behind the
rouelle
of the bed.”

“And Charles?”

“He caught at my hand and bid me welcome. And then, when he saw one of your priests bringing him the Body of our Lord, his whole face lit up with radiance and, weak as he was, he tried to kneel.”

It was midnight before the doctors let Catherine go to see her husband for the last time. “I have made my peace with God,” he was telling the anxious bishops, with shining eyes. Although he was sinking fast, the paroxysms of pain had passed, and as she knelt beside him he talked to her very tenderly. It was Catherine herself who could say nothing. She was too dazed by grief and gratitude to do more than gaze on him and hold his hand. And after a short while he fell into a peaceful sleep.