Читать книгу With All My Heart - Margaret Campbell Barnes - Страница 3

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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 while 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 breathtaking 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 Wor-ces-ter, 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 Alfonso told her portentously.

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 it since her husband’s death and made unbelievable sacrifices to bring it out from the bondage of 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, filled with a sudden strong delight.

“Scores of them!” he teased. “You can hardly suppose that the grasping Courts of Europe were completely dumb and indifferent when our sailors took Tangier and Bombay.”

“Oh! For what they could get, you mean?” she pouted, considerably crestfallen.

“Whatever the motive of these ducal suitors, her Majesty had faith—and waited,” explained Don Francisco dryly. “She believed in the destiny of Charles Stuart. 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 with 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 shortsighted 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 Alfonso asked ponderously, “Does it please you, Catalina?”

“It is—a great honor,” 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 bested 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 Alfonso, 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 youself, dear goddaughter,” soothed gray-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 rumors 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 Alfonso 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 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 Alfonso 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 absorbs 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, he seemed to Catherine different, since she 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; or that Charles, who loved children and liked his women piquant, had in consequence become distrait and dilatory; that he had sent someone he could trust to look at her and that, 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. There were 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 returned 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 fervor 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.

And then suddenly everything personal was forgotten in the calamitous tidings that a Spanish army was massing on the border and the great Spanish galleons her brothers were always talking about were harrying the merchantmen from Brazil. The Portuguese merchantmen, hopelessly outclassed, were flying before the wind trying to make Oporto. Defeated in diplomacy, it seemed that by piracy and bloodshed the angry Spaniards would reduce her country to a dependency again and so prevent Catherine’s marriage. And then, just when the galleons were on the point of overhauling the merchantmen and grappling the treasure from their holds, fourteen ships of the English fleet hove in sight and, under the very eyes of their new allies, blasted the enemy out of Portuguese waters.

Never had so great a cheer gone up from the waterfront. Never had disembarking foreigners received so warm a welcome. Mariners who spoke no word of each other’s language embraced like brothers as they tumbled ashore. Every house in Lisbon was hung with flags; the air was rent with salvos and the delirious ringing of convent bells. By day there were bullfights and feastings, and at night barges of musicians and fireworks made a fantastic carnival of the Tagus.

Tears of a divided pride ran down Catherine’s face as she went with her family to welcome the English admiral. No longer would there be need of diplomatic missions and tedious scriveners’ treaties. The great, gallant ships had come for her at last, to take her to be England’s Queen. No royal marriage had ever been more popular with her people, and though the waves might break like mountains out beyond the bar, she would be proud to go.

But first she must bid good-by to Mother Superior and the good nuns, and visit the shrine of her favorite saint, praying a little forlornly for happiness in her foreign marriage. And the last evening, snatching an hour from formality and fireworks, she talked quietly with her mother.

“I leave so much love here,” she sighed. “I beg you, Madame, pray our Blessed Lady that I find some to replace it over there!”

“You are one who needs it as the opening hibiscus needs the sun’s warmth,” mused Luiza. “But it is not given to many women to find love in a royal marriage as I did. You will have to walk very warily, my child.”

Catherine gazed out unseeingly at the conflagration of colored lights that signified rejoicing. “You think—with Donna Elvira—that it will be difficult because King Charles admires other women?” she asked.

“He does more than admire them,” Luiza told her bluntly. “But you must try to bear in mind that he had to waste the best years of his vigorous manhood skulking about Europe, cruelly deprived of his natural inheritance and occupations; and that now, suddenly, every ambitious beauty throws herself at his head. It is better that you should understand this, Catalina.”

For the first time Luiza was talking to her daughter as woman to woman; but she had left it a little late. And it was a far cry from the mature judgment of a woman who had been sure of her husband’s affection to the uncertainty of a convent-bred girl being sent to the most experienced lover in Europe.

There was a long pause during which each of them thought that Catherine understood. “You mean—I must not be jealous?” she faltered.

“I mean that you must shut your eyes.”

“Shut my eyes?” repeated Catherine, opening them very wide indeed. There was a suggestion of something hard, half-understood and wholly unfamiliar in the way her mother spoke, which made Catherine feel vaguely uncomfortable. “Did he—for instance—love that woman Don Francisco mentioned?” she asked, trying to speak as casually as if she had not been thinking about it for days.

Luiza shrugged the question aside as if it were of small importance. “He may have done,” she said. “But it is neither the clean loves nor the peccadilloes of a man’s youth that signify. Nor, for that matter, the occasional brief fires that may consume him later. We wives in high places have to overlook such things. It is the woman who has become a bad habit that matters. They have a saying in France: ‘The King is what his mistress makes him.’ And there is such a woman in England.”

“But surely if he is going to marry me—” began Catherine, in all the terrible vulnerability of her innocence.

“I am sure that my future son-in-law will behave with dignity and discretion,” Luiza assured her. “When Francisco left London this woman had gone back to her husband’s house. But she is handsome as a goddess, they say, and greedy as a gull. Only quite recently Charles has bestowed some ridiculous title upon her—as a reward for past services, let us hope. Something to do with a casa, I think.... Yes, Castlemaine—that was it.”

“Ca-stle-maine.” Almost soundlessly Catherine repeated the strange, foreign name, lisping the s a little with her southern tongue.

“Yes, you will do well to remember it,” approved Luiza.

Uncertainties more terrifying than homesickness and the tumultuous waves were tearing at Catherine now. “But even if I know it, what can I do?” she asked.

“Do?” Luiza turned to look out at the proudly dressed ships which assured the survival of her country. At that moment she was more queen than mother, and success had given her a fantastic sense of power. “What should a daughter of Braganza do but ignore her, and see that she is not received at Court?”