Читать книгу With All My Heart - Margaret Campbell Barnes - Страница 7

Table of Contents

Things scarcely seemed more hopeful in the morning. Standing in proud dudgeon at her window, Catherine saw the State barge pull away from the palace water stairs bearing Charles to Westminster. He was ever an early riser. She looked at the French chiming clock he had given her and the hours of the day lay heavy as lead before her. Without his gay teasing and his varied interests the galleries and gardens she had loved so much seemed dead. He had been teaching her to dance and she loved it; already the charm of English music was spoiling her for the crude pipes and harps of the few musicians she had brought with her.

Now that Charles was gone there seemed nothing to do.

She sat down and wrote a long, unhappy letter to her mother and then retired in tears to her oratory. “Oh, Mother of Sorrows, why must this have happened to me when I was so happy?” she cried aloud in bewildered desolation. “Is it to punish me because I am wicked enough to find joy with a heretic and for drinking too greedily of earthly happiness?” And then, persuaded by her confessor, she prayed with simplicity. “Help me, dear God, to turn my husband to the true faith, so that if evildoers take him from me now I may find him hereafter!”

Then, calmed and fortified, she drew her dignity about her and walked with her ladies in the garden chatting and admiring the water lilies as if nothing had happened, though her eyes were always covertly upon the winding reach of the river watching for the return of the King’s barge. But she knew that they were whispering together about the night before; and then some busybody amongst them must needs tell her that as soon as Lady Castlemaine could rise from her bed she had taken all the best furnishings from her husband’s house and moved to Richmond.

“Where is Richmond?” enquired Catherine.

“A few miles down the Thames, between here and London,” they told her.

So no wonder Charles tarried. No doubt, even now, his barge lay moored there. Complaining that she felt chilled in this inhospitable climate, Catherine went indoors. During the long, tedious evening while her priests read aloud from the Saints she persuaded herself that Charles must have arranged for the Castlemaine woman to go there, so that he could lodge there every night, no doubt. No use to sit up and wait for his return, Donna Elvira declared. Since the Queen rightly refused to have his paramour brought under her roof, Hampton would see him no more.

But Charles gave them the lie. He was now a married man and his good resolutions, if frail, had been sincere. Whatever his private differences with his wife, he would not have the world point scorn at her. So when Catherine had at last fallen into an uneasy doze she was awakened by his step and felt him clamber into the great bed beside her. Supposing her to be still asleep, he did not speak. They lay in silence back to back and although Catherine lay fuming for many hours, Charles, who had had an extraordinarily busy day, slept soundly; and although she was furious with him for disturbing her, she dared not speak of it, for at least his coming had put a stop to the busy tongues which she herself, in hasty indiscretion, had set wagging.

During the ensuing wretched week never once did he sleep anywhere else; yet they always rose to wrangle, or, worse still, to sulk in silence. More than once he tried to fondle her back to reconciliation, but always her hurt pride rose like a barrier between them. She wanted no other woman’s leavings, she told him. As life became more and more unpleasant at Hampton, he began to spend yet more time away from home. And even though he might have come straight from working with his cousin Rupert in his fine new laboratory, or from an evening at the theater, Catherine was always firmly persuaded that he had come from Richmond.

But there came a day when, outwardly at least, they were forced to smile and speak each other fair, showing a united front to the world. For the summer months were drawing to a close and, since the Court would soon be moving to Whitehall, plans must be discussed for the new Queen’s state entry into the capital and all the various dignitaries and new members of her household must be presented to her.

Being so sore at heart, poor Catherine was very much on her dignity for the occasion. Flaunting her foreign patriotism, she had herself arrayed in one of her bejeweled farthingales so that, sitting upon the dais of the Great Hall—that most English of all places—she blazed bizarrely beside the more somber sartorial perfection of her husband. She would show these arrogant islanders, with their long established line of kings, that Portugal, for all her struggles, was not unaccustomed to the etiquette of state occasions. But when her brother-in-law James presented his ill-chosen wife, Catherine’s dignity dissolved into natural kindness.

Because Anne of York was plain and frumpy, and only Chancellor Hyde’s daughter, Catherine went out of her way to set her at ease, inviting her to sit upon a stool at her side. For the Yorks, she supposed, must have incurred the King’s displeasure too when James married this commoner—hastily, and probably of necessity.

“Did he not even ask your Majesty’s consent?” she asked in a conjugal aside, forgetting their estrangement.

Charles smiled wryly. “James has a genius for doing the most tactless thing at the most inopportune moment,” he said.

“He might have waited until you—until we—” floundered Catherine, realizing the importance of the lady’s progeny, since the Duke was still heir presumptive to the throne.

“I scarcely think so, judging by the promptness with which their daughter Mary made her debut,” observed Charles; but to Catherine’s surprise he treated his bourgeois sister-in-law with every kindness.

With Rupert, the Bavarian cousin, Catherine could never find anything in common; but she was glad to meet again her old friend, Admiral Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, and she was graciousness itself to Chancellor Hyde, remembering how loyal a friend he had been to Charles throughout his exile. Much as she had valued the seclusion of Hampton during the first halcyon weeks of her honeymoon, she was now thankful to see the hall packed with guests because their presence eased the strained relations between her husband and herself.

After the rural life they had been leading, the rambling old Tudor palace seemed alive with a foretaste of the brilliant formality of Whitehall; and Charles appeared to be particularly anxious to make the proceedings a success. With his happy blend of unconventionality and dignity he made a point of presenting the more important of their guests to her himself, helping her to say the right thing by giving her a brief thumbnail sketch of each. But, except for those whom she knew personally, their strange foreign names sounded all alike to Catherine; and, because of a succession of sleepless nights and the difficulties of the language, the seemingly endless line of bowing men and curtsying ladies began to weary her. Their jewels sparkled dazzlingly in the pools of candlelight and many of them were so elegant in the French fashion that, while still smiling automatically, she fell into an inward reverie, regretting that she had not worn one of the charming dresses which Charles had given her. It would have pleased him, and he was being so particularly pleasant to her tonight.

“My friend since boyhood, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham,” he was prompting, as he stood tall and debonair beside her. “And m’lord Albemarle who, as General Monck, of the Parliamentary Army, considered me preferable to Cromwell’s sniveling son and invited me back to take again mine own.”

“The Dowager Countess of Shrewsbury, who stood firm for my father.”

Catherine made a yet more determined effort to concentrate on what he told her and to take in all the ramifications of the British aristocracy, and had the satisfaction of knowing that she was pleasing him by receiving all his subjects so graciously. Somehow she felt that it must be very important, for all present were looking in her direction and she was aware that the little social sounds of discreet conversation and laughter and the coming and going of the servants were no longer breaking the silence of the proceedings. Although the casements of Henry the Eighth’s great oriel windows stood open the evening seemed very airless, and either the warmth from the tall wax candles was becoming oppressive or the guests were crowding closer. Even Charles’s voice seemed to be trailing off, mumbling the names, and he was no longer making pleasantries or bothering to explain who the various people were. Perhaps even he, the indefatigable, was tiring too. Or wanting his supper, more likely.

“Lady Wymess.”

“Sir Charles Berkeley.”

Each of them in turn kissed the new Queen’s hand.

“Lady Barbara Palmer.”

The lovely, auburn-haired creature who curtsied before her rose so gracefully that Catherine smiled at her with real warmth, murmuring her carefully conned words of formal welcome. But at the same moment she felt someone from behind tugging urgently at her elbow. “That is the infamous Lady Castlemaine!” hissed Donna Elvira’s shocked and penetrating voice.

Too late, Catherine snatched away her extended hand. In spite of herself she turned from English guests to her own people. “But he said—Par-mer—or some such name,” she gasped.

“It is her husband’s name,” explained Don Francisco grimly.

No wonder Charles had mumbled and purposely omitted the notorious title! No wonder his whole Court had been watching so intently! He had tricked her—before them all. And now the brazen beauty was grinning at him triumphantly.

It was true that Charles ignored her intimate glance. He was frowning, and motioning her impatiently to join the other ladies who had been presented. And he looked supremely ill at ease.

But realizing what had happened was like a sudden foul blow upon poor Catherine’s heart. As through a mist she saw the next approaching figure—a large dowager in a plum-colored gown—dissolving into a series of plum-colored dowagers; as through a thundering of waves she heard Charles’s voice announcing the lady’s name. She felt her face flame and the blood beating in her ears. With an instinctive effort born of royal discipline, she tried to extend her hand again, only to find it groping for help. Her godfather was beside her, supporting her. “I must make no scene in public. Charles will be furious,” was the last coherent thought in her reeling mind. Mercifully the tension of her brainstorm had snapped; but to her horror she saw great gouts of blood splashing down onto the silver brocade of her dress. Of all ignominies, her nose began to bleed violently. “Charles!” she moaned, calling upon him in the very shame and extremity which he had brought upon her. Diamonds and candles were all running together into one shimmering pool of light, and the great square tiles of the floor were rising up to meet her. Her women began to scream as Don Francisco caught her.

Catherine did not know until afterwards that it was Charles Stuart himself who, shamed and furious, waved aside Portuguese and Englishman alike and carried her through the long galleries and laid her abruptly on their bed. But when she recovered consciousness, although he had sent his own physician with orders to care for her, she took the prescribed sleeping draught without protest knowing full well that her husband would come no more to disturb her.

And his physician was not the only man Charles sent. A few days later a very reluctant Lord Chancellor waited upon her, and it was a very pale, obstinate Queen who received him.

“Do not imagine, milord, that because this shameful trick has been played upon me I will ever receive that woman into my household!” she warned, as soon as ever he was come into her audience chamber.

“And do not suppose, Madame, that I am come to excuse it,” countered Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, with that downright honesty which sometimes made him appear more like a plain country squire than a politician.

Catherine was a little taken aback. She was not to know how unwillingly the poor man had come, or that he had been arguing with Charles on her behalf far into the night. Or that in common with the bulk of the nation he hated the King’s grasping mistress, and deplored the influence she exerted over him. Nor could Hyde in loyalty let her know how he, who so seldom took advantage of the old intimate relationship born in cheap lodgings abroad, had told Charles bluntly that making Lady Castlemaine a lady of the bedchamber was putting an indignity upon the Queen which flesh and blood could not bear.

“Then you appreciate my indignation in the matter?” she cried eagerly.

But whatever Hyde’s personal opinion, Charles Stuart was the raison d’être of his life, whereas this new Portuguese wife was merely a pawn in the political game—useful in increasing the West Indies trade and in curbing the power of Spain. “I appreciate the fact that it lies in your Majesty’s power to do much for both your country and my own by means of a successful marriage,” he answered dryly.

“But surely, in the circumstances, you do not hold me responsible for its success?”

“Our King is not a difficult man to live with,” pointed out Hyde, remembering how often Charles’s cheerfulness had been the one bright spot in infinitely more depressing situations.

“As a man, no doubt you find him so,” countered Catherine. “But I have good reason to resent an affront to our virtuous affections!”

“Good reason? My dear lady, let me remind you that when the Queen Dowager of France, as a bride, complained to Cardinal Mazarin about her husband’s mistresses, there were five of them in her procession, all in the same carriage! Not that I uphold such immorality. But I would ask you—when your esteemed brother gets him a queen do you really suppose that she will find your Court at Lisbon full only of ‘virtuous affections’?”

Reviewing her brothers’ divagations in the light of a more worldly understanding, Catherine was obliged to smile. “But you must admit, milord, that if our marriage be not a success, it is not I who have broken our marriage vows,” she argued.

But with more perseverance than tact, Hyde insisted that she had broken at least one of them. “Surely no woman should refuse to accept into her household someone recommended by the husband whom she has promised to love, honor and obey?”

The specious argument was the last straw. “Since his Majesty has but sent you to upbraid me—” Catherine’s rising voice was choked by angry sobs, and she flounced away from the embarrassed Chancellor to stand with her back towards him by the window. “Love—God help me—I do,” she said, as soon as she had regained sufficient control over herself. “Honor—against my conscience—I cannot. And obey—when it comes to conniving at something which is likely to give opportunity for sin—I will not!”

She stood there tearing her kerchief to shreds and staring out at the desolate English rain, and although he could not see her face, Edward Hyde knew that the tears were pouring as desolately down her cheeks. He was miserably torn between the twin conclusions that he was a brute and that women were the very devil. Aware that he had none of his master’s subtlety in dealing with them, he yet remembered that he had a headstrong daughter of his own who had also made trouble. Perhaps if he were to approach this unhappy, excitable creature as a father rather than as a solemn minister of the Crown....

“Though it is my duty to point out some sharp things which render me ungracious, I do assure your Majesty that it is for your own good,” he said, more gently.

Catherine’s response was instant and generous. She came and sat down and turned to him appealingly. “Indeed, milord, you are welcome to show me my faults,” she said, “for I begin to see that I am little beholden to an education which has so ill prepared me for this worldly life. So I pray you be seated too and guide me to some chance of future happiness.”

Gratefully, because of his gout, the once powerful Earl of Clarendon lowered himself to a chair near hers. “His Majesty has been a bachelor king for two years now,” he said, “and even were he a wheelwright or a farrier for some reason past my understanding women would still throw themselves at his indulgent head. In these matters he takes for granted the freedom of his French cousin’s Court. It is scarcely to be expected that he——”

“He and I have already spoken of these things, milord,” said Catherine hastily. “And my mother warned me that I could not expect him to—have waited for me.”

“I commend your charity and common sense, Madame,” said Hyde, beginning to feel that he was making some headway at last. “And his Majesty for his part would have me assure you that if you will put aside these resentments and meet his affection with good humor as you used, your marriage shall be full of felicity.”

“As you used....” From where she sat Catherine could see the river and the gardens where, for so short a time, Charles had made such ardent love to her. Instead of answering directly she rested her chin upon her palm, studying her companion’s florid, round-cheeked countenance as if she would draw from him some of his many recollections of his master. “You love him very much, do you not?” she questioned quietly.

Hyde looked up in surprise, seeing in her sudden warm gentleness limitless possibilities for holding the King—holding him to the ways which were best for him and for the State which both of them had to steer through all the difficulties of a restored monarchy and the impoverishments and bitternesses which are the inevitable aftermath of civil war. If only she would not be such a bigoted little fool! “You, of all people, should know that it is difficult not to, Madame,” he answered.

In spite of his bluntness, Catherine was beginning to like the man. “Charles says you love him like a disappointed father,” she teased.

“If I occasionally criticize him adversely, it is only to his face,” he blustered truthfully.

With the swift veering of her mercurial temperament, her southern brown eyes were laughing at him. “And always do his bidding, even against your own conscience, milord? Like coming here today, for instance?”

The Chancellor of England puffed out his fleshy lips. It was he who had come to do the questioning. And now this chit was making him speak of matters he had no thought of touching on. “I have great cause to be grateful to him,” he told her ponderously. “There was the unfortunate matter of my daughter, as no doubt you have heard.”

Catherine settled herself back in her chair so that her face was in shadow, her own grievances momentarily forgotten. “Tell me about it,” she begged.

Since formality seemed to be forgotten, Hyde rested his elbows on either arm of his chair and joined his pudgy finger tips together with characteristic precision. “You must know that my daughter was with child by the Duke of York and he married her secretly. I knew nothing of it, but my enemies bruited it abroad that I had encouraged my daughter’s dishonor to advance my own ambition. I do not blame them overmuch. It was what many men would have supposed. It was in my own house that Anne married the King’s heir without the King’s consent. Many a monarch would have had my head off for less!”

“It was a grievous dilemma. What did you do, milord?”

“What I have always done. I went straight to King Charles himself.”

“And he?”

“He was furious, of course. But not with me. It was his brother he was berating. It had lost England a powerful marriage alliance and interfered with the succession. ‘Own flesh and blood as she is, I would to God he had taken her as his whore rather than have done this thing!’ I cried out. I was beside myself. I went down on my knees to the King. As soon as we came home from exile he had given me my fine house, my title, Hyde Park, everything! ‘Your Majesty does not believe what they are saying—Buckingham, Sir Charles Berkeley and the rest of them—that I plotted this thing?’ I beseeched him.”

“And what did Charles say?” Catherine’s beautiful, low-pitched voice came eagerly from the shadows.

“He pulled me to my feet and told me I was almost as big a fool as his brother. ‘Zounds, have I not known you all these years, Ned?’ he said, grasping me by the shoulder. ‘Why in the devil’s name should I believe you changed now?’ And when later on the Duke tried to get out of an unpopular situation by pretending that my foolish wench had enticed him and had had other lovers before him, it was the King who squashed the scandal. ‘What is done is done, and must be stood by and made the best of,’ he said.”

A maxim which, whether right or wrong, it would appear Charles tried to conform to in his own affaires du coeur.

Hyde’s thoughts were back with his narrative. His gaze rested abstractedly upon the long vista of grassy walks which would in time be shaded by Charles’s lime trees. If the good God had permitted—instead of plaguing him with politics—he too would have enjoyed planting a garden.

“One does not forget things like that,” he said, almost as if speaking to himself.

A new peacefulness pervaded the room, much as it had begun to pervade their conversation, so that it was some moments before he realized that the Queen had risen with a sigh and he must perforce scramble hastily to his feet. “I pray you thank his Majesty for his graciousness and assure him of my future obedience and duty. I, too, would willingly go down on my knees to him—begging forgiveness for my peevishness which I do assure you was born only of my passionate love for him,” she was saying with quiet dignity. And Hyde, prematurely elated by such success, perceived that it was none of his carefully prepared arguments which had moved her.

“I will do as you wish, Madame,” he promised; and a subtler man might have left it at that, trusting the rest to Charles’s superior powers of persuasion. But Hyde was a born mentor, and so conscientious that he was accustomed to carrying out instructions to the letter. And there was one thing, and only one thing, which his master wanted carried out at this moment. “But I would point out, Madame,” he added, “that the proof of your promise lies in your acceptance of Lady Castlemaine.”

Catherine had for the moment almost forgotten the woman’s name. But although Charles could never ask too much of her, even to life itself, it was always with the exception of this one thing, which the very quality and depth of her love forbade. The brooding softness of her eyes changed to fire. “Let him keep his mistresses out of my sight!” she cried. “If he still insists upon having his own way in this it can only mean that he hates me and would pour contempt upon me before all the world! And sooner than give in I will charter some small vessel or return to Lisbon with my poor people whom he has so heartlessly threatened to turn out!”

Goaded by her sudden change of mood, Hyde pointed out brutally that there were plenty of his political enemies who would be only too glad to see her go. In vain did he try to make her see that the dismissal of her people after a few months was only the normal diplomatic gambit adhered to in the case of most royal marriages, and not any personal revenge planned by her husband.

“Then why did he taunt me the other night because the whole of my dowry had not been paid?” she enquired, with that maddeningly polite, incredulous smile on her lips.

“Probably because he was exasperated beyond all endurance!” thought Hyde, knowing it to be quite unlike the King. Aloud, he asked her if she did not suppose that Charles, too, had been hurt by her extravagant talk of leaving him. “And for your own sake I would advise you to please him of your own accord,” he advised, preparing to take his leave, “for do you really suppose it lies in your power to resist if the King insists?”

“I will not despair of his sense of decency’s delivering me from the persecution of such a command,” she answered, amazing the poor bewildered man by such courage in the face of such an untenable position.

But Catherine knew that she was cornered. By the time the Chancellor had bowed himself out she realized that she could not even leave the house she was in without the King of England’s consent. Hampton, which had opened to her the gates of such radiant happiness, had now become a prison. Waves of helpless homesickness engulfed her. If only she could talk to her own beloved family! “Do everything to preserve the alliance of our two countries,” her brothers had exhorted her. Yet everything in her upbringing urged her to count self-respect above the temptation to placate. Although her whole married happiness might turn upon it, nothing, nothing would induce her to take her husband’s mistress into her household.

So neither of them would give way, and both of them were supremely miserable. And their quarrel became the main topic of conversation throughout the land. It never occurred to Catherine that Charles, so long his own master, might be absurdly sensitive about being nagged into giving up his own way by a childish-looking little scrap of a wife. Busybodies were not wanting, of course, to tell her that he was supping with Barbara Castlemaine again; but there was no one wise enough to suggest to her that while he plunged into a nightly round of gaiety he might be almost as miserable at heart as his sullen, neglected queen. She only knew that whenever circumstances forced him into her presence he would bow formally over her hand and leave her as soon as the bare claims of politeness permitted, to talk with godless flippancy to all the most harebrained of his courtiers or to flirt outrageously with all the prettiest girls in the room. She knew that he was trying to hurt her. What she found it difficult to believe, as she surreptitiously watched his suave, dark face or overheard his witty comments, was how cynically he was loathing himself. Portuguese Catherine knew him only as the lighthearted lover, so little as another human being; and had no idea how one tender appeal, one show of faith in his better resolutions, could have helped him and brought him back gratefully to her side before the Castlemaine’s possessive wiles and reproaches had recaptured him.

“If only I could go back to the convent!” she cried bitterly sometimes to Donna Penelva, deliberately forgetting those honeymoon weeks when Charles’s initiation into ecstasy had spoiled her for any life but marriage.