August 1662
“This will not continue. Send them all home.”
The king had come from the tennis court triumphant, a-muck with sweat. His linen shirt was transparent with it; the cloths with which he had rubbed his face and scrubbed at his hair were now wreathed around his neck. Before Lord Clarendon had caught his eye Charles had looked invigorated, a man enjoying the sun on his face and the scent of dew melting into the early morning air.
All that animal pleasure had evaporated when he saw his Lord Chancellor waiting for him.
Clarendon knew that look of old: When Charles, only a prince, had taken the baser part in some argument or stood out against his father’s expressed wish. When he knew, deep in his honorable heart, that his behavior was shameful. In his own heart the earl had believed—hoped—that Charles would acknowledge the cruelty of taking Barbara Castlemaine’s part and find a way to make amends to the queen. Given enough time and quiet to consider the matter.
But it seemed that time had run out.
“Send them all home,” the king said again. He quickened his pace. Charles was several inches taller than Clarendon, who was no small man. Within a moment, the earl was trotting to match the king’s long-legged stride. He felt the warning twinge that presaged an attack of the gout, but did not slow his step.
“Who, sire?”
“Don’t be coy, Lord Clarendon. That pack of black crows and hangers-on who press around the queen and coach her in this defiance. Those po-faced priests. They keep the girl from English society for their own reasons.” Charles stopped walking long enough that the dogs, loosed from the kennel where they had waited while he played tennis, caught up to them. For a moment his attention was upon the spaniels that surrounded him, demanding a pat, a tug on a silken ear, a chuck behind the jaw. At last he straightened. “Perhaps when there are none of them whispering poison to her she’ll find a more womanly, yielding disposition. Did her ladies coach her in defiance?”
“Coach? What need? Sire, would not any wife in your kingdom, put in such a position, object?”
“She is not any wife—and the sooner she learns it, the better.”
“No, she is not any wife, sire: she is queen. In what light do you expect her to regard my cousin Barbara? As a friend?”
Even in a passion the king was too honest a man to answer yea to that. Still: “I care not how she regards Barbara. It has gone beyond that. Catherine must come to understand that my word is her law,” he finished. “There can be no doubt of it. Send her people home.”
“Have you considered how the Portuguese will regard such a gesture?”
That had been a mistake, Clarendon realized. The king’s face reddened, decisiveness become anger. “Is the king of England to make policy in obedience to the concerns of the Portuguese? I won’t be talked round. Send them all away—let her keep her confessor, the ambassador, and the Condessa de Penalva . . . her cooks, perhaps. But the rest of them, every last one of those black crows and hangers-on, back to Portugal. The girl must learn to be an English queen. Let her begin today.”
Charles fixed his counselor with an expression that brooked no further discussion, whistled for the dogs, and continued across the soft scythed grass of the park at a vigorous clip, surrounded by the cloud of eager spaniels; his gentlemen trotted after.
Lord Clarendon, winded, beads of sweat standing on his brow, looked about him for a friendly bench, even a low tree branch where he could take his ease, catch his breath, and consider if there was any way at all to mend the mess. He saw none. The king’s command, however intemperate, was given. That would not be the end of it—if Clarendon knew Barbara Palmer at all, he knew that once she got what she wanted she would find a new prize to wheedle and pout for. And the king—resolute as he was on the battlefield, he could not stand against Barbara.
And Catherine? The girl had been so compliant, obviously besotted with her new husband, and ready to accede to any of his wishes. Any other of his wishes. “Who would have guessed she had a spine?” he muttered to himself. And how very inconvenient that that spine should show itself just at this moment.
• • •
Although the sun had broken from behind the English clouds to warm the gardens below the queen’s windows and send the scent of verbena, rose, and muguet upward in a fragrant cloud, the queen’s mood, and that of the small court that gathered in her apartments, was still gray.
The queen’s ladies had fallen into two camps. On the left of the room, by the mullioned windows, sat the Portuguese: Dressed in somber colors, the ladies bent over bits of needlework, listening while Father Patrick read from a book of homilies in Portuguese. They made a very virtuous picture, Catherine thought, but not—she felt a twinge of guilt—not an entertaining or even an inviting one. It seemed to her that some of her attendants were intent upon illustrating the benefits of virtuous behavior to the dissolute English. Not just in obedience to the True Church, but in all things. Catherine did not think that a hundred Portuguese could force a conversion of manners upon an entire nation; she was certain that her new subjects would not love her any better for the attempt.
On the other side of the room the English ladies seemed to glow in their bright colored gowns, the lambent fabrics catching the shafts of golden sunlight in a way that Portuguese cloth did not. Lady Chesterfield was reading, the others were playing cards—an English pastime that was incomprehensible to the queen—murmuring and laughing quietly. It was like a garden full of bright, scented flowers, meant for no other purpose than to be decorative.
Catherine sat apart from them all, her dog Feliciana tucked away under her sleeve, snoring softly. She wore one of her English dresses, light green and frothing with point work. Did that make her a bright, scented flower? She hardly felt it. Yesterday she had told Lord Clarendon that she could not yield. That was, as her confessor and her Portuguese ladies had assured her, what a queen must do: Be resolute in the cause of right.
Perhaps she felt uneasy because the cause of right so closely marched with her own will: to rid Charles, and the court, and herself, of Lady Castlemaine. Catherine sighed.
The Condessa de Penalva was at once at her elbow. “Are you tired, Majesty? Would you like a cup of tea?”
Catherine shook her head and closed the book in her lap. “Only thinking, Dona Maria.”
“About what, Majesty?” The older woman frowned.
Catherine shook her head. “It is not important.” It was, but to whom could she say what she was thinking? Her confessor? One of her ladies? De Mello? Almost easier to speak to the girl they had brought from Portsmouth, Jenny. Perhaps the words would come easier in Spanish, with one so far removed from the push and pull of court politics.
“Catarina,” Dona Maria singsonged.
She forgets that I am a woman, a married woman, a queen and not a child, to be spoken to so.
“Dona Maria, if your queen says it is not important—”
Startled, the older woman murmured an apology and effaced herself, only to be replaced by Father Patrick.
“Majesty, if you are troubled—” The priest’s expression was solicitous and speculative in equal measure. Her confessor stood close enough to her that Catherine could see that he had been hasty in shaving that morning and missed a patch on his chin. She blushed at the thought: Being a married woman had made her aware of such things.
“Alteza?” Father Patrick prodded. Highness. But she felt so low.
“I thank you, Father. No.” That was a lie; another venial sin to confess. The priest bowed himself away and Catherine was left again to her thoughts. She could not, or would not, confide in anyone, not to be lectured on what her beloved mother in Portugal would do, or what her beloved husband here in England expected her to do.
It was a private pain, and to whom could she speak of it? No one, except God. And God, surely, would expect her to be a queen first and a woman second.
There was a stir at the door. The Lord Chancellor—the Earl of Clarendon—had arrived, limping slightly, mopping at his forehead with a cloth. Catherine suppressed the impulse to jump to her feet and run to meet him.
When he reached her chair he bowed low. Catherine smiled guardedly and inclined her head. She said, in Latin, “You have word for me, my lord?”
Clarendon sighed so heavily that the ends of his graying fair hair stirred about his face. “I have, Your Majesty, but I fear it will like you not.”
Catherine closed her eyes for a moment, gathering courage. Then: “The king commands that I permit that woman among my attendants?”
She thought she read surprise in Clarendon’s expression. “No, indeed, he does not.”
“If that is so, then I am sure I can countenance any other requirement His Majesty makes of me.”
“I fear—” Clarendon began. “Your Majesty, the king has ordered your retinue to return to Portugal at once. A certain few may stay, but the rest are ordered to sail with the tide. Today.”
Catherine felt a buzzing in her head, the familiar sensation of a hive of bees swarming there inside her skull. “All my retinue? Today?”
Her Portuguese ladies had looked up from their handwork at the sound of distress in her voice. Most understood only Church Latin, but the few who knew more had begun whispering to the others.
“I regret it, madam, but yes. The king has commanded it. One or two confessors may stay, and your chief woman—” he nodded to Dona Maria, who was attempting to quiet the ladies of the Portuguese party. “The cooks, I think, as you are not yet used to our English food. But the rest must go. A ship is being readied.”
The buzzing in Catherine’s head was made worse by a sudden cacophony, as the Portuguese women began to chatter and wail, and their English counterparts to speak amongst themselves. Feliciana, wakened by the tumult, jumped from her mistress’s lap and began to yap. Catherine held herself upright by force of will, eyes closed and one hand to her temple, waiting until she could trust herself to speak.
“If His Majesty has commanded it—” Her voice almost broke, and she felt tears starting in her eyes. How does a queen react to such a blow? With tears or outrage? An upwelling of anger straightened Catherine’s spine and helped her to get her voice under control. At the very least no one should see the hurt that had been dealt her. Mamãe had said: A queen does not weep.
“If His Majesty has commanded it then we must, of course, comply.” She turned to Dona Maria. “Madam, will you help these ladies to pack their belongings? And Father Patrick, will you see to the bestowing of the men?” She turned back to Clarendon. “I trust my people will be given transport to this ship?”
Clarendon, his face redder than it had been when he first entered the room, agreed that all arrangements would be made for the travelers’ comfort. “And I shall tell His Majesty of your ready obedience to his wishes, madam.”
“I should be very grateful, my lord.”
Clarendon bowed. There was what spoke of sympathy in his eyes, but of course he could not speak it.
In the wake of the Lord Chancellor’s departure, the women of Catherine’s Portuguese retinue surged toward her despite Dona Maria’s best attempts to keep them from overwhelming their lady. From the words that Catherine could make out through the churn of noise, some were worried for her, fearful lest this be the first step in an assault against her person. Who would protect her against the English apostates? Others were worrying that Queen Luisa would punish them on their return to Portugal for having so failed their charge. All wanted reassurance, honeyed words, comfort.
It was too much. “Dona Maria,” she implored. The older woman nodded and spread her arms to shepherd the other women from the room. Like a flock of doves being shooed from a pile of crumbs, Catherine thought. The room was instantly quieter, and the pounding in her head lessened. For a few minutes she sat, examining her hands in her lap, trying not to think of what had happened.
From the English side of the room a murmuring arose.
Catherine looked up to find her English ladies watching her. Did they expect some reprisal? No—she realized that most of them appeared as dismayed as she herself. Of course, if one retinue could so easily be banished, any other could as well. It would be dangerous to assume that any of them felt real sympathy for her.
I tried to act a queen. I demanded that I—at least my rank—be respected. Surely a queen demands her due? But, as surely, demanding had availed her nothing.
• • •
When he had walked a mile or so in a circuit around the Privy Garden, Charles’s temper cooled a little. Across the lawn, a lad in livery trotted; half the king’s dogs deserted him to greet the newcomer, who knelt to offer the king a letter. “Steward said you’d want this straightaway, as it come from France.”
Charles thanked the boy and took the letter up, his heart uncomplicatedly lightened for the first time in days at the sight of his sister Minette’s writing. She wrote from Paris to apprise him of their mother’s plans to return to England late in the summer, amusing him with wickedly observant comments upon the queen’s progress in packing her French household in the entire. The king walked and read, chuckling, until he turned the sheet and Minette turned the topic. It had been too much to hope that his quarrel with Catherine had not entertained the whole of Europe; of course Minette had heard. He was startled to find that, so far from taking her brother’s part, her sympathy was all for Catherine. It is said here, she wrote, that the queen is grieved beyond measure, and to speak frankly I think it is with reason.
Charles shoved the letter into his pocket. Quite enough of that. He distracted himself with Babette, who had dropped in front of him, her belly displayed. Silly bitch. He leaned down to ruffle the soft, muscular flesh, and Rogue raced from a tree ahead, his ears pluming out behind him, coming for his share of their master’s attention. Nice to have affection so easily won. He tugged lightly on Rogue’s ears, gave Babette’s belly a final scratch, then stood. The dogs understood that their master’s attention was turning elsewhere and scattered.
By now, Clarendon should have delivered his command to Catherine. How would she take it? With tears, or with that fierce, poignant dignity? He stopped his pacing again. Honesty compelled Charles to admit he had been unkind. But he had had no choice: Catherine had defied him publicly.
The dogs, seeing their master halt, had come racing back and surrounded him, anticipating a change, a new direction.
“None of that,” he told them sternly. “I’ve taken up this course and must stay with it. No one knows better what can happen to a king who lets his queen have the ruling of him.”
He began to walk again, ringing the sundial and starting for the Stone Gallery.
“She shall not have the ruling of me, but when she gives way I shall be kind.”
Rogue, at his heel, sneezed.
• • •
Catherine’s women, tearfully, had taken their leave, promising to pray for her, alone and undefended in this Godless place. Bereft as she felt, Catherine wondered what defense they imagined she would need and what defense they might have supplied. She nodded and smiled and shook her head and smiled again, unable to comfort them.
The perfumer, Dom Abravanel, was apologetic, as if it had been he who was the occasion of this catastrophe. He bowed and kissed her hand and promised to convey her love and duty to her mother, and bowed again and was gone, leaving a cloud of his scent behind him. Dona Maria hovered at the queen’s shoulder, ready to comfort Catherine should she be overcome.
But Catherine sat, receiving homage, patting a hand here, murmuring a comforting word there, dispatching the travelers with more eye to their feelings than her own. It was not that she did not mourn their going, or that she did not feel fully the great loss that her husband and master, her king, had thrust upon her. But what good would weeping and tearing her breast do? She was married, by the rites of her own church.
At last the parade of the departing ended. The queen’s English ladies, perhaps feeling that they would not be welcome, had absented themselves from the chamber. Now one of them—Lady Chesterfield—peered in at the doorway as if to ask if the queen willed that they should return.
Before Catherine could say a word, Dona Maria shook her head. Lady Chesterfield withdrew tactfully.
“Why do you send them away?” Catherine asked. Her voice, to her own ears, sounded unearthly, as if it belonged to another, speaking from far away.
Maria de Penalva looked taken aback. “Why? I thought perhaps Your Majesty would prefer a few minutes to—to think, before those noisy English girls returned.”
Noisy English girls? Lady Chesterfield, at least, was no younger than the Condessa de Penalva herself. Catherine could no longer afford to have a Portuguese and an English faction among her ladies, among any who served her.
“I understand you mean it kindly, Dona Maria,” she began, “but they should not be punished for the decisions of—” She stopped. Could she say for the decisions of my husband? “For decisions in which they have no part.”
Dona Maria pursed her lips before she nodded.
She disapproves. What would she have had me do? I have married England and its king, and must learn to be queen of all.
“Condessa, you have been married longer than I. You can surely tell me: What is the duty a woman owes her husband?”
Dona Maria was not to be caught in so simple a trap. “You know as well as any girl. Your husband is your lord, you his servant. But if her husband acts in error, is it not the part of a good wife to school him in the better part?”
Catherine felt a bubble of hysterical laughter rise up in her at the thought of schooling Charles. She might as easily school the endearing swarm of dogs that followed at his feet. “I sought to school him, as you say, in the unwisdom of installing that—Lady Castelmaine—in my bedchamber, with the results you have seen.”
The Condessa shrugged. “If you say so, Alteza. Perhaps some tea?”
An ungraceful way to end an awkward conversation, but there was nothing graceful about this day. The queen was seized with a restless wish to be up and doing something. “No tea, I thank you. I will . . . I will walk in the gardens.” Perhaps I will meet the king and learn how displeased he truly is with me.
Dona Maria turned as if to summon some of the Portuguese ladies to accompany the queen, then made a theatrical gesture of remembering and called out in her heavily accented English, “The queen would walk in the garden.”
At once, Lady Chesterfield and Lady Bath emerged from the anteroom, as if they had waited a-purpose to hear the summons. They were barely permitted to perform their offices while my people were here, Catherine realized. Perhaps that was unfair.
“The sun is still high, Your Majesty. Perhaps a stole?” Lady Bath spoke slowly.
“Does this hat please you, Your Majesty?”
As the two women, one young, one with threads of gray in her light brown hair, came forward, Dona Maria seemed to fade into the background.
The garden outside Catherine’s apartments was as bright and colorful as the two ladies who flanked her. She closed her eyes for a moment to take in the warmth of the sun and the scent of roses and lavender that rose up. Lady Bath was Catherine’s own age, and chattered in English too rapid for her to follow. She gave up trying to make sense of it, but did not make the mistake of nodding in agreement—that much she had learned, that she dare not agree to anything until she understood it fully.
There was whistling down the path. Catherine’s heart beat faster at the thought that it might be Charles himself. Come to apologize? Come to hear her apology? Without thinking, Catherine quickened her step, only to find a gardener’s boy bustling along with a basket full of flowers, just cut. The moment he saw her, the whistling stopped and he dropped to both knees, head bowed. As if he feared she would punish him for going about his work.
Catherine extended a hand, meaning to pat the boy on the shoulder, but he pulled back, head still bowed. He looked barely ten summers, far too young to be so fearful of her.
“I—meaning no ’arm. Sank you . . .” The words eluded her. “Obrigado.” She lapsed into Portuguese. “As flores ajudam meu coraçao.”
The boy nodded without raising his eyes to meet hers, then turned and fled.
Catherine sighed.
“I think he fears your Catholic enchantments.”
The familiar voice made Catherine turn. Francisco de Mello walked up the graveled walk with his customary energy.
“Godfather, good day,” she said in Portuguese.
“Alteza.” He bowed over her hand and took the place of Lady Bath to her right. “Why is it that the queen needs her heart lightened?” he asked in their native tongue.
“You have heard, Dom Francisco? All—almost all—of my people have been sent back to Portugal by the king’s wish. Because—”
“Quite.” De Mello cut her off.
“Godfather, what am I to do? What would my mother say?”
De Mello pursed his lips—thoughtfully, but without censure. “It is a vexed question, Alteza. Do you mean as a queen, as your mother, or as one woman dealing with another?”
“How would she—”
“She was never so tested, filha. She would expect you to be a wife and a queen, as you are.”
“How?” Catherine had stopped and turned to her godfather, tears in her eyes. Where de Mello might once have comforted her, he did not now.
“Not your mother’s way or mine. Not Lady Castlemaine’s, either. Look beyond today and consider what you wish for tomorrow. You will find your way, querida Alteza.”
“My way.” The two English ladies watched her, puzzled. Dom Francisco smiled gravely. At last Catherine nodded her head, setting her new English curls dancing.
“My way,” she repeated. “Mine alone.”
• • •
When Dom Francisco parted from his goddaughter, it was with a heavy heart. He genuinely loved the girl, and liked her, as well. And he had helped her to this unhappy place. One does not remonstrate with a king, but for a moment Dom Francisco imagined taking the trouble-making Lady Barbara aside . . .
The sun was still some hours before summer dusk, but it slanted from the west over the roofs and parapets of Whitehall, casting a rosy light on the faces of the buildings opposite. The palace was a city in miniature, surrounded by the whole of London. And at the kernel of it, three persons: the king, his queen, and his mistress.
Dom Francisco wanted a cup of wine, and to put his feet up and consider what was to be done, if anything could be done, to lighten the weight upon Catherine’s slender shoulders.
“Dom Francisco.”
De Mello looked up to see Lord Clarendon sitting on a stone bench outside the banqueting house, one leg raised up on a stool, with a bottle and a cup to hand. Would that were I.
“Will you take a cup of wine, sir?”
It was so precisely what de Mello wanted that he dropped onto the bench without ceremony. “By God, yes, my lord, I will.”
Clarendon conjured up one of the serving men to bring a second bottle and another cup. For a few minutes the two men sat quietly, drinking strong wine and watching the play of light over what Dom Francisco knew were Barbara Castlemaine’s apartments.
“A troublesome day,” Clarendon said at last. “How—how fares your lady?”
“Sad. Afraid. Determined to be a good queen and a good wife. But she will miss the friends who came with her.”
“I am sure she will.” Clarendon was casual.
“My queen will be very surprised—and dismayed—to see so many of her daughter’s retinue returned in so summary a fashion.”
Clarendon poured more wine into his cup. “Something had to happen to break the impasse. And to be frank, it did the lady no favor to have so many pap—Catholic hangers-on about her. The people need no reminder that she keeps to her own faith.”
“Perhaps not. I had hoped that marriage would make such distinctions unimportant.” Dom Francisco tossed down his wine and poured himself more.
“Not in England, Dom Francisco. Not after the score of years we have survived. Nor, I suspect, would it be in Portugal. In any case, the queen must be a wife first, and obedient to the law of her lord, before all else. That remains the truth regardless of what rite she follows. I am sure Queen Luisa understands—”
“I am sure my queen is a mother before all else. If Queen Luisa were to believe that your queen has been ill-treated—there is still a substantial portion of the dowry to be transferred to English hands.”
“That, my lord, is a knife that cuts both ways. If the whole of the dowry has not been paid, as you know well it has not, what incentive does England have to keep the queen here? What incentive, indeed, to give aid against the Spanish? If the queen proves intransigent—”
“Intransigent? Was it she who wished to make the king’s harlot part of her intimate court?” De Mello put his cup down on the bench with sufficient force to send wine slopping over the rim.
The Earl of Clarendon pinched his nose with two fingers.
“My lord, I like and admire your lady. I think she will make a queen and wife—if she but learn to choose her battles. My feelings about how—about—about Barbara Palmer—are of no account. The king is my king, and I am his man and will do his will. And you know well that there are many at this court who would work against Queen Catherine because of her faith. She is vulnerable. She must become less so.”
“That, Lord Clarendon, we can agree upon.”
De Mello poured himself a little more wine, gestured to the other man and, upon receiving a nod, poured wine into Clarendon’s cup.
The two men raised their cups in concert, a toast to things neither one would specify. De Mello drank off the whole and tossed his cup to the side.
Then, a little unsteadily (Clarendon’s wine was good), he rose. “This has been illuminating, my lord Clarendon.” He swept a bow, and walked toward King Street, waving for a chair. He would return to his house and write a letter to his mistress Queen Luisa, and let her know that, if she wished this marriage to prosper, and expected the assistance of the British fleet against the Spanish, she should see to the prompt payment of the remains of her daughter’s dowry.
• • •
The apartments Barbara occupied at Hampton Court had been comfortable enough—lavish, by most standards. But her rooms at Whitehall were far finer, as befit her status as the king’s favorite. Even the advent of the little queen had not changed that. Barbara Palmer settled back in her chair and let her hairdresser brush and twist ropes of her thick auburn hair into a knot, pinning them over a wire frame, teasing out individual curls that would drape over her breast.
Motherhood proved a great beautifier: her hair had remained thick and lustrous, her skin was now as clear as alabaster, her lips plump and rosy. Even with a wet nurse to see to the baby, her breasts were still sensitive. The thought of Charles’s hands or lips playing over their white swell made Barbara catch her breath. Her eyes slid closed.
“Dreaming, Barbara?”
As if her thoughts had summoned him, the king stood in the door to her bedchamber, the silken heads of Babette and Rogue peeking from behind his boots.
At once Barbara was on her feet to curtsy profoundly, heedless of the mayhem doing so created with her half-pinned hair. Head down, she looked backward to see her coiffeuse curtsying as well, brush in her hand, a tortoiseshell comb held between her lips and a look of panic in her eyes.
“Up, up!” Charles extended his hand to raise Barbara then pulled a chair near hers and sat companionably. The girl could finish with Barbara’s hair and be gone, leaving her alone with the king. The coiffeuse made quick work of pinning and curling, perhaps not so perfectly as she might have under a less august eye, then curtsied in a direction halfway between His Majesty and her mistress.
“Go.” Barbara waved a careless hand at the girl and did not think of her again. Instead, she turned to the king. “What news, dear Majesty? How does the king today? Did you swim this morning?”
The king raised an eyebrow. “I beg you will not pretend to care whether I swam this morning, or played tennis, or whether Bacchus’s barking disturbed my morning meetings—at least until you have heard what matters to you.”
“Whatever matters to you matters to me.”
“No doubt,” he said dryly. “You will be happy to know that I have made it clear to the queen that my word is to be her law.”
“As it is for all of us! But how did you do it?
“I ordered her retinue back to Portugal, the lot of them. It will be a hard punishment; in truth, I wonder if I went too far. I recall well enough being lonely in a country not my own. No amount of French kindness was as dear to me as the sound of my own tongue spoken by a friend.”
Barbara was quick to counter. “The cases are not at all the same. You were an exile. She came to England to be queen. Perhaps sending away the Portuguese will speed her learning English ways?”
“There’s a way to put a sunny face upon the matter. Babs, did I not know better I would assume your concern was all for the queen.”
“My concern is all for you.” It was the truth, and yet . . . “Has she given way?”
“Not yet. I would give her a day or two to—” Charles paused. “A day or two to understand the lesson she has learned. She’s a clever girl; I do not expect it to take her long.”
“And I shall have the appointment?” No point in dancing about the subject. He knew what she wanted.
The king smiled down at her. “You shall.”
Barbara flung her arms about her lover’s neck and kissed him, once, twice, and once more.
Charles returned the kisses, then pulled upon one of the long curls the coiffeuse had fussed over, until Barbara’s head came up and her eyes looked into his own. “Triumph becomes you, sweet—everything does—but you will want to be more subtle.”
“Have I said a word against her? It was not I who refused to obey your command.”
“Yet I understand why Catherine would feel an affront, I do.”
Barbara liked this not at all. She preferred to think of herself, and have Charles think of her, as the victim, the devoted lover threatened by a foreign interloper. Her fear that she might be abandoned was real. Why should her joy be any less so?
“I asked it only for the children’s sake, for their future and security.” she protested. “Palmer has gone back to Dorney and does not answer when I write. Were he to repudiate me and my children publicly—I must have some way to provide.”
“He won’t—were he to repudiate you and your children, he would lose the titles he sets such store by. As for . . . od’s fish, do you think I would let you—or little Anne and the baby—starve in the streets? You wound me, Babs.”
Barbara’s lower lip trembled. “I shall not always be beautiful.”
Charles snorted. “Am I now to seek a strand of silver in the grotto?” He slid his hand under the shining fabric of her skirt, up along her thigh. As always, she softened at his touch. “You will be celebrated for your beauty for many years yet.”
He pulled her to him. She abandoned all anxiety, all thoughts of dress or hair or anything but the feeling of his body against her own.
Later, when the king had undone all the good work of her maid and the coiffeuse, they lay quiet, Barbara with her head upon his shoulder and her breath stirring the locks of dark hair that curled damply around his face.
“Barbara—” He hesitated. “You have nothing to fear from Catherine. She’ll never be your match. You could be a generous winner.”
Barbara nodded. If she had won her hand she could afford to be gracious—a little.
“Am I not generous?” Barbara rolled to her side, her face turned from Charles’s, thinking. “I will show you how generous I can be. I think you should hold a ball in the queen’s honor. Without that frightful coven of crows she kept around her, perhaps she’ll show to more advantage!”
The king laughed. “And where will you be during this ball, my dear?”
“Oh, just one lady among the others, Your Majesty.”
“That”—he slid his hand over her shoulder to pull her back facing him—“you will never be. But a ball would be a pleasant thing. I wonder if the girl knows how to dance?”
Barbara smiled, maintaining a mask of good humor, and hurried to turn his thoughts from Catherine. “What will be the theme of this ball, Your Majesty?”
“What would you, Babs?”
She made a play of thinking, her eyes lowered, one finger upon her lower lip. It was a pretty pose, she knew. “The sea? The jungle, and you the lion?”
“If it is to be a ball in the queen’s honor—od’s blood, I barely know the girl well enough to know what would please her. And I do not suppose I can go and ask her now. I expect to hear that she’s taken to her bed in a faint.”
“Is she so sorry a little thing? Like a nun—like a novice!—cloistered away among her ladies?”
“Not her ladies,” Charles reminded her.
Was everything to lead back to Catherine? “Ask one of her English ladies,” Barbara said flatly. “Perhaps—the sun and the stars, would she like that? You must, of course, be the sun, as you are the orb round which we all circle.”
She distracted him with plans for the Great Hall decked out with hangings of celestial blue, and the court dressed as constellations and moons. It would be expensive. But no price was too high, to Lady Castlemaine’s mind, to upstage Catherine and show the court who truly had the king’s heart and ear.
• • •
As was his custom, the king rose early the next day and went to swim in the Thames. Afterward there had been business: an audience with the ambassador from Orange, and an hour in Clarendon’s company discussing funds for the navy. No man was truer or more loyal than Clarendon, but Charles sometimes found himself impatient with the older man’s measured counsel. The fact that the counsel was frequently wise did not take away the sting of what the king felt was near fatherly disapproval. After that meeting Charles had given his steward orders for preparation for a ball in the queen’s honor a week hence. Perhaps that would cheer little Catherine.
Had he been cruel, sending her people back to Portugal? He could not afford to have anyone—particularly his wife—be insubordinate to his will. Still—what had Clarendon said? Any wife put in such a position would feel herself wronged. By the husband who had put her in that position. And by the rites of his own Church and of hers, Charles was her husband.
The king left his offices with no further appointments, thinking he might take some of his gentlemen and go riding. The air—and the activity—would do him good. Charles was aware of a restless urge to be doing, to use some of his abundant physical energy. Almost before he turned, the Earl of Bath was at his side. Bath had been with him for many years, and was like to recognize his king’s moods as well as Charles himself.
“Shall I have your horse saddled, sire?”
The notion was a grateful one, but an idea was nagging at the king. “I will go and call upon Her Majesty first.”
Bath’s expression did not change, whatever his surprise. “Yes, sire.”
Catherine’s dayroom was filled with feminine chatter, which stopped immediately when the king and his gentlemen stepped through the door. The ladies attending her bowed and Charles waved them up again. Lady Suffolk was the first to speak. “Your Majesty, we did not expect—the queen is at—” She paused as if what she had to say was an embarrassment. “She is at her devotions.”
“At prayer or at confession?” the king asked easily. “It does no harm for us to wait, so long as her confession is not overlong.” He meant it as a joke—he doubted Catherine could have much upon her soul to confess. Still, Lady Suffolk made a gesture to one of the servants and the girl left the room to seek the queen.
A few minutes later Catherine arrived, a little breathless, the ladies Buckingham and Suffolk in her wake. She wore a brown dress in the English style; the color did not much become her, but her hurry had put color in her cheeks, which did. Before the king could greet her, Catherine dropped into a curtsy so profound she was nearly kneeling, and said, in Spanish, “My lord king, I beg your pardon for my stubbornness against Your Majesty’s will.”
He had not expected that. Charles reached down to cup her chin in one hand and raise her up. Her skin was warm against his palm, very soft.
“Madam, all offenses are forgotten. We must learn to be better friends, you and I, yes?”
“I should like that, sire.” She smiled, heart in her eyes. “Will Your Majesty sit for a while? Perhaps you will drink a dish of tea with me.”
Tea? Charles could not understand what anyone saw in it, but he had drunk and eaten worse things in his years abroad for the sake of amity. A cup of tea was nothing. “I would be very happy to do so. And—” He thought of his conversation with the steward earlier. “To celebrate this understanding of ours, I have ordered a ball in your honor, six days hence. A masque.”
Catherine’s eyes grew large. “I have never been to a masque. What does one do?”
Charles laughed. Catherine’s ladies, who had withdrawn tactfully to the other end of the room, smiled encouragingly. “One dances and drinks and eats and flirts—ah, Cat, have I shocked you? You need not flirt if you dislike it.”
Catherine blushed, and busied herself with preparing the tea with her own hands, plying cups and pot, hot water, and inscrutable shreds of dark leaf. As she worked, Charles explained the conceit of the ball.
“I must come in costume?” The king could not tell if the idea frightened or pleased his wife. A little of both, perhaps.
“Indeed. Some celestial figure, perhaps. I’m sure your ladies will be pleased to help you.” He switched to English and explained to the ladies what was planned. “I rely upon you ladies to assist Her Majesty—it seems a masque is something quite new to her.”
Charles finished his tea in three sips—the cups were small, and he was thirsty. It had a pleasant astringency he had not appreciated before.
“Madam, I will not take your time—” he began.
The light in the queen’s eyes dimmed. “You must go?” she asked in Spanish. “I had thought—” She stopped.
“Yes?” Charles was wary; what would the woman ask for?
“I sometimes see my ladies playing games with cards. In Portugal this is not the custom, but now I am in England. If I am to become a good Englishwoman, I must learn new pastimes. Would you teach me the cards?”
“Teach you the cards?” It was nothing of what he had expected. Again, Charles felt a moment of guilt. He knew what it was to be in exile, living in a country other than his own. Perhaps Catherine had deserved better at his hands than she had received. “Madam, it would be my greatest pleasure.”
In a moment Lady Bath, who had been talking quietly with her husband, was dispatched for a deck of cards.
“Now, Cat, we will start with something simple. A game I learned in France, called quinze. Each of these pictures has a value, you see.” One by one he took her through the suits and cards and praised her quickness when she caught on at once. I must remember she’s clever, he thought. He shuffled and asked her to cut the deck, then shuffled again, and dealt one card to Catherine and one to himself.
“The first to reach a sum of fifteen, or close to fifteen without going over, will be the winner.”
Catherine pursed her lips, considered, and nodded. “The knave is eleven, the queen is twelve, and the king is thirteen?”
“You have the right of it. Here, let us try a hand.”
It took three hands before Catherine beat him, then beat him again. Her face was lit with pleasure, and her laugh rang out more than once.
“Shall I regret that I have taught you a game at which you excel?”
She mocked dismay. “Would Your Majesty prefer that I lose?”
Charles shook his head. “Never in the world, Your Majesty.” He switched to English. “Since you have proved such a quick learner at cards, perhaps I should be schooling you in English as well?”
“If it please Your Majesty—” she tried in English, the last word so unintelligible that he was hard put not to laugh. “I should like that.”
As they continued to play, and he continued to tease and cajole Catherine into using English, Charles felt an odd contentment. This was comfortable. Despite the servants who bustled or stood in waiting at the room’s periphery; despite the Ladies of the Bedchamber who sat nearby, he felt at ease. Perhaps it was possible for one to be a husband as well as a king.
• • •
The English ladies were fluttering around Her Majesty, chattering so fast that Jenny doubted the poor little queen could understand one word in ten. In the days since the ball had been announced, Jenny had found herself one of a dozen seamstresses sewing brilliants upon the queen’s dress at the directions of the tailor. She felt a proprietary interest in how the dress fit and how the queen appeared, but there was little likelihood that she would be permitted to get close enough to tweak a fold or turn a curl. She contented herself with her work at the clothes press, folding the delicately made point cuffs on one of the queen’s nightshifts.
The new dress was beautiful, styled to make the most of the queen’s figure (unlike the regrettable attempts by her Portuguese tailors to produce “English” dress). And the sweep of brilliants from hem to shoulder would make Catherine look a very celestial being indeed.
Her dress laced up and arranged, the queen settled into a chair so that the coiffeuse could attend to her hair. Marie-France—a fat, ponderous old Frenchwoman with magic in her hands—pulled the queen’s dark hair this way and that, pinning it up with combs studded with brilliants, twisting the hair along her brow and at her temples into clever, pretty curls.
At last, satisfied, the coiffeuse stepped away from the queen, her hands in the air as if to say, “It is all up to God now, I have done my best.”
Lady Bath and Lady Buckingham, the younger of the queen’s ladies, near to squealed with pleasure at the queen’s toilette. Catherine glowed at the praise, and in halting English sent them off to dress themselves. Lady Suffolk had already gone to make her own toilette, and Lady Chesterfield, not one to spoil the young with praise, sat near a branch of candles, pointedly reading from a book of sermons. Protestant sermons.
With the two younger ladies gone, the room was suddenly quiet. Catherine approached her glass and looked at her reflection as if at a foreign landscape. As Jenny watched, the queen’s face clouded and her brows drew together. She turned from the mirror and attempted, in her bad English, to ask Lady Chesterfield for the box in which her hare’s foot and cosmetics were kept.
Lady Chesterfield took a moment to untangle the queen’s meaning, then waved at another servant to find the box. When the girl returned a moment later, Lady Chesterfield opened the box and stared at its contents as if at a loss. Ordinarily it was one of the younger ladies, Lady Bath or Lady Buckingham, who painted the queen’s face, but they had gone to dress. And Jenny feared that near-sighted Lady Chesterfield would make the queen look as dowdy as herself, undoing all the good of the tailor’s exquisite work.
Jenny looked down at her hands. A maidservant does not advise the queen.
Then she heard her name. “Que pienses, Jenny?”
Lady Chesterfield held the hare’s foot in her hand, poised to apply powdered pearl to whiten the queen’s olive skin. The queen’s expression as she regarded Jenny was of one girl seeking reassurance from another. The opportunity Jenny had hoped for.
She took a breath. “Reina querida,” she said in Spanish, “the English fashion is more . . .” Jenny sought the right word. “The style is more subtle. Just a light veil of powder. A touch of rouge. Will Your Majesty permit me to assist you?”
The queen’s face showed no displeasure. Rather, she motioned to Lady Chesterfield, who surrendered the hare’s foot to Jenny. Catherine sat, eyes closed like a child ready to be prepared for her party. Feliciana, barred from her mistress’s lap, danced around Jenny’s feet.
A dusting of rice powder rather than the heavier powdered pearl, a touch of rouge upon the cheeks and just under the brows to draw attention to the queen’s dark, heavy-lidded eyes. Finally, Jenny looked through the patch box and found, to her private delight, a black silk star, and a comet. She fixed the star on the right, below her majesty’s full mouth, and the comet on the left, by her brow. When she had finished Jenny stood back, hands upon her hips.
“Is it well?” Catherine asked.
“It is more than well, Majesty. You are beautiful.”
Turning to the mirror again, the queen observed what Jenny had done. After a moment, she nodded. “If I am to wear English clothes, I must follow the English style in all things.”
Lady Chesterfield had returned to her sermon but looked up sleepily now at the queen, as if she were an unexpected vision. “What is that, madam?”
In answer, Catherine gestured to her gown and her face.
“Very handsome, madam. I am certain you will have an excellent evening.”
Jenny, thinking of all the things that could happen to confound the queen, hoped so as well.
• • •
John, Earl of Rochester, took advantage of acquaintance and youth to sprawl in a chair in Lady Castlemaine’s boudoir, watching her apply a patch to her rounded chin with casual skill.
“Have you come only to watch me dress, my lord?”
“Does it displease you, my lady?” Their honorifics had a mocking sound to them.
“’Tis pleasant to have company, I suppose.” Barbara turned from her mirror. “Although that is not the company I would have imagined.”
“This?” Rochester’s tone and expression were all innocence. Perched upon his shoulder, with a tiny paw laced into his master’s fair curls, a monkey dozed. “He hasn’t a name yet. Perhaps you have a suggestion?” Rochester stroked the monkey’s tail, curled across his chest like a plume.
“If he were she you might name her in honor of the queen.” Barbara frowned and turned again to her glass.
“That has an ungracious sound to it. Come, you cannot blame the king for holding a ball for his wife.” His emphasis was light but discernible.
“The ball was my idea,” Barbara said. “I meant to show His Majesty that I can be gracious in victory—”
“So you will be joining the Ladies of Her Majesty’s Bedchamber? Then why so sour?”
Lady Castlemaine shook her head, loosing the chestnut curls at her temples, and took up a silver comb in the shape of a quarter moon. “I am not sour. But I cannot say I like the queen, nor that I think she will be good for the king.”
“Her dowry was good for king and kingdom. For the rest, she seems an unremarkable little woman. No rival to yourself. Is it the queen you dislike, or the fact of her?” Rochester tugged softly on his monkey’s tail and the dozing animal sat upright and began to chitter and look around him. When his master shrugged his shoulder, the monkey took this as a signal to leap to the bed-curtains and hang there, swinging.
“’Fore God, Rochester, if you let that animal befoul my linens—”
“Not for the world, lady.” The monkey could not go far: A fine chain in Rochester’s hand led to a gilded collar round the animal’s neck. But the earl took his time in collecting the monkey, more amused by its antics than Barbara’s outrage. “Do you know, I had a suit made for him, specially for the ball. But I am undecided if I should bring him or no.”
“Oh, do, by all means. Perhaps Her Majesty will like him. Perhaps now all her Portuguese she-monkeys and priests have been sent away, she’ll be seeking a friend.”
Rochester enjoyed the malice in Lady Castlemaine’s tone, but went on: “You never answered me, Barb’ry. Is it Queen Catherine you dislike, or the fact that she exists and—it seems—is not a cipher to be ignored?”
Words broke from Barbara’s lips as if they had been dammed there. “She will do the king harm, I feel it. She’s little and plain and cannot even speak English! The people call her the Catholic whore—”
“When did the Countess of Castlemaine concern herself with the opinions of the people? Catholic she may be, but no whore. There were witnesses enough to the wedding.”
Lady Castlemaine stood and smoothed the cloth-of-silver skirts of her gown, as if that was sufficient to end the subject. For a moment, Rochester felt a little pity for the glorious Barbara. But only for a moment.
“Are you leaving?” He rose to his feet and tucked the monkey under one arm, as one might a hat.
Barbara reached the door as a maid opened it for her. “I am. Do you mean to go attired like that?” She eyed Rochester’s brown doublet.
“No, lady. Clarendon and I”—he indicated the monkey—“I have named him, do you see? We will dress, and see you at the ball.”
“I’m sure that Clarendon will enliven the proceedings.”
Rochester swept a bow. “I shall do my best to see that he does, my lady.”
• • •
The queen and her ladies gone, Jenny spent a few minutes tidying and putting away the patch box and powder. Then she took up the queen’s fine shift and dressing robe and a few other things, and started for the back stairs and the laundry. She wished, for a moment, that she could see the faces of the lords and ladies at the ball when they beheld her little queen—Jenny had developed a proprietary feeling for Queen Catherine—in her spangled and glittering finery. Most had not seen the wan, sickly little thing that stepped onto English soil in Portsmouth, so they could not appreciate how much English fashion and English life had improved her. Jenny was smiling as she went down narrow stone stairs worn by a hundred years of footsteps, the clothes in one arm, her skirts held up with the other. It would not do to fall here.
An unfamiliar servant went past her, carrying, from the smell of it, a pail of night soil. Jenny wrinkled her nose and continued downward. On the next landing she threaded her way through a crowd of manservants, porters or the like, standing about nattering as if they had naught else to do. She was headed for the leftmost stairway; it had taken her a long while to get her bearings here—there were more than a thousand rooms at Whitehall—but she knew her way to the laundry right enough.
“What’s that smell, Rob?” one of the men she saw in the crowd said loudly. “That the smell of a papist, ye think?”
Jenny flushed. She clutched the queen’s robes tighter and kept her eyes down. She could handle one rowdy man, right enough, but six or seven? Best to keep moving.
“Smells like a papist to me, Jack,” another man said. “Like one of them Port-a-gee. Thought they’d sent ’em all packing?”
“Looks like a papist, too,” Jack said. The crowd closed up, and Jenny found herself confronted by one broad chest, then another. “Brown as a nut and black-haired. Only thing I heard is: Them Port-a-gee women, when ye get ’em alone—” He went on with a description so raw that Jenny blushed . . . and lost her temper.
“I’d check my own scent before I talk of anyone else’s,” she snapped. “And speak civil to an honest woman. I’m no more a papist than the Archbishop of Canterbury, born in Portsmouth and as good an Englishwoman as—”
The man nearest her, stocky, with tow hair and smallpox pitting on his cheeks, put an arm out to gather her in. “Now, sweet, don’t be like that. Th’art comely enough for a Port-a-gee—”
Jenny dodged backward, but found herself against the wall. A lick of panic flamed in her. The leftmost staircase was too far away.
“Hal Sudby, ye mind yer hands! Rob, Tim, Jack! What are you lot doing about ’ere?” The interruption had come from one of the cooks, a broad, red-faced woman with winged ginger eyebrows and a starched coif, who stood, arms akimbo, glaring comprehensively at the group. “Ye’re wanted belowstairs—there’s tuns of good wine to be brung up. And you, girl, get about yer business and don’t try your tricks on a bunch of honest lads.”
It was on Jenny’s lips to defend herself, but already the cook had started toward the kitchen, and the crowd of men stepped away. As one of them passed her he gave a great sniff and made an exaggerated gesture of holding his nose. Then he was gone.
Jenny turned to the laundry stairs, still clutching the robes in her arms hard. Her pleasure in imagining the queen’s reception at the ball had quite fled. Honest lads, indeed; her mother had often said one lout in a crowd of good fellows could spell trouble as well as one bad apple in a barrel. She hoped that the queen met with more courtesy at the ball.
• • •
The walls and ceiling of the Great Hall were hung with velvet drapes. Nearest the doors, they were the blue of a midnight sky, spangled with brilliants like stars clustered in the arch of the Milky Way. Dom Francisco de Mello eyed the drapes with delight; whatever could be said of King Charles and his court, style did not lack. As de Mello walked farther in he looked up to see the blue shading to the soft grays of the skies before dawn, then pale rose and the blazing gold of sunrise (with wisps of gauze hung like clouds across a morning sky) and at the farthest reach of the chamber the velvet drapes were the brilliant, clear blue of noon, and the thrones that waited were gilded and set before a spray of golden wire: the sun, de Mello thought with amusement and appreciation. And the king and queen would be the suns around which this celebration orbited.
De Mello looked for the queen, but among the dozens of brilliantly dressed ladies and gentlemen of the court, he did not see his goddaughter. The king—taller than any other man in the room, and nearly ablaze in the cloth of gold and satin of his doublet and breeches, was here—not yet seated. Perhaps he was waiting for Catherine. De Mello watched as the king spoke to this courtier, then the other. He did not stand upon ceremony, this king, and yet—de Mello’s eyes narrowed as he observed King Charles—with all his easy charm, there was a distance and a melancholy a sharp eye could observe.
The king made his way toward the dais and the thrones, looking here and there for someone. De Mello hoped perhaps it was the queen he sought, but then, as he watched, the king’s eye was caught by the tall beauty in cloth of silver, her chestnut hair coiled around and framed by a silver disk behind her head. The moon. Dom Francisco marveled at the audacity of Lady Castlemaine. The moon, to partner with the king’s sun.
Not for the first time, de Mello felt a great sadness for his goddaughter.
The king joined Lady Castlemaine, who bowed very low to her sovereign, but with such a dimpling, laughing eye that it was plain she believed him entirely in her thrall. And the court around her observed this behavior and saw nothing out of the ordinary: Barbara, Countess Castlemaine, captor of the king’s heart. De Mello quelled an impulse to go forward and chivalrously defend Catherine’s place. There was no point. She was queen, yes, but Charles was king, and what he made of the marriage was what it would be.
A servant passed with a salver of cups. De Mello took one and drank deeply.
For a quarter hour he walked through the crowd, smiling and bowing when courtesy required it, aware as he always was of the few who turned away from a greeting from his Catholic self. Where was the queen? Had Catherine’s nerve failed her? A ball in her honor, but one at which Barbara Castlemaine held court? Perhaps as well that the queen stay away.
And then there was a flurry of movement at the door, and a fanfare. De Mello moved forward in the crowd, straining to see who had come.
The figure at the doorway could hardly be his goddaughter. Two of her attendant ladies were behind her, but de Mello had eyes only for Catherine, who tonight wore a gown of velvet so deep a blue that it seemed to capture the light from the sconced torches and candles. Nearest the hem of her skirt, the cloth was patterned with brilliants in the same way as the drapes overhead, and on one side a ray of brilliants twisted into the tail of a shooting star that blazed across the queen’s breast to a brooch of diamonds and sapphires upon her shoulder. Her dark hair was held in place with combs that sparkled with brilliants, and across her head, fixed among her curls, a trail of silver foil and more brilliants ascended to a radiant star.
De Mello gave a private laugh. Barbara Castlemaine might be the moon, but Catherine, Queen of England, had eclipsed the moon and come as a comet.
For a moment Catherine paused, looking out at the court—which, in turn, was looking back at her. Did her heart fail her? Did she step back? Perhaps for a moment. Then, with a smile as bright as her jewels, she began to cross the room. De Mello watched her acknowledge the bows and salutes from the crowd, and ignore the two or three whose scowls were a commentary on her foreignness or her Catholicism. She stopped to raise someone—Lady Bath, one of her English ladies—and kiss her cheek.
Deus, regal as her mother, de Mello thought.
He, and all the court, watched Catherine as she approached her husband. Dom Francisco was pleased to see that, for the moment, at least, the king’s attention was entirely upon his wife.
De Mello thought that Barbara Castlemaine, standing behind the king, did not care for that at all.
When she reached the king, Catherine bowed deeply. He held out a hand, took hers, and raised it to his lips. De Mello could not hear what he said to her, but Catherine blushed and laughed. Her eyes were all for her husband.
And then the Queen of England turned to greet her husband’s mistress.
Catherine inclined her head as she might have done to anyone at all. Had Lady Castlemaine hoped for a scene like that from their last encounter? She was to be unsatisfied. Catherine, standing by her husband’s side, looked patiently at the other woman. The whole room was hushed, all eyes upon the two women before them. Catherine did not speak; she did not smile; she waited until Barbara Castlemaine, slowly, almost awkwardly, dropped into a curtsy.
Catherine nodded again and turned to speak to her husband. The king, de Mello thought, had been surprised, perhaps amused, by his wife’s composure. Lady Castlemaine had not.
De Mello considered how he would describe the scene to his queen when he wrote to her tonight. He had told Catherine that she must find her way, but how had it happened so quickly? Queen Luisa might think there was only one way to be a queen, but she had never imagined the challenges she had sent her daughter to face.
The girl is a queen.
• • •
He could feel Barbara’s eyes upon his back. I shall pay for that, Charles thought. But what would she have had him do? The moment he saw Barbara dressed in garb meant to complement his own, he knew that she meant to put her rival in the shade. But Catherine—he smiled down at his wife, frankly magnificent in her gown and jewels. Who would have thought her capable of carrying off such a toilette?
“Madam, I think we must take our place in the heavens,” he said to her in Spanish. He paused to look over the crowd, gave a salute, and the musicians struck up. At once, couples began to form for the dance.
“Shall we lead them out?” he gestured to the dancers.
She curtsied, then leaned forward to murmur to him, “I have not thanked Your Majesty for your patience in teaching me quinze the other night. May I call upon your patience again in acquainting me with English dance?”
“It would be my honor, lady.”
He led her down among the dancers, who parted to let their sovereign take his place.
At the end of the dance, when the queen stood, laughing with pleasure, he said, “Madam, is it possible you have lied to your sovereign lord?” Charles looked down at Catherine from his full height, a smile in his eyes.
“Lied, sire?’
“You gave me to believe that you required tuition in dance, but the woman with whom I shared a branle has quite a pretty step.”
Warm color suffused his wife’s olive skin. “You are too kind, sire.”
The blush pleased the king. “And your eyes are brighter stars than any you imperson. Now, will you dance again or sit?”
As a king and a man, Charles had long understood his effect upon women—and their effect upon him. But this—he remembered again that this was his wife. This charming girl with stars—and her heart—in her eyes. And he was her husband. As different to be a lover or a husband as to be a prince in exile or a king in his own land. He had, he thought, some things to learn of this.
Catherine was speaking.
“Pardon, lady?”
“I would like to dance again, if Your Majesty will partner me.”
The musicians were tuning up for a country dance. Around them the lords and ladies of the court turned and turned again in patterns of brilliant color.
“It would be my greatest pleasure.” He held out his hand, she put hers in it—more confidently, this time—
From somewhere at the rear of the room a sudden roar of noise brought the music and the dancers to a halt. Impossible at first to see what the ado was, and then half a dozen dogs, his dogs, came tearing through the crowd, being deviled by some sort of imp. Rogue and True, in the fore, tore under the skirts of this lady, into the knees of that fat fellow in a green doublet. And the imp—no, a monkey in a tiny striped red-and-white doublet and a laced hat tied upon its head—leapt from True’s back to the shoulder of the Duchess of Richmond, then on to a torch, where the heat made the creature hiss, rear up, and jump again.
All was chaos. Rogue, True, Amity, Bacchus, even wise old Babette were running through the crowd, baying at the monkey that cowered and gibbered and swung from the cloth that draped the ceiling. The chain that swung from the monkey’s collar caught in this hat, that lace, with each of the animal’s movements. Servants ran from all corners, waving uselessly at the monkey with spoons and staves.
Movement caught the king’s eye from the back of the room. Dear Christ, not another monkey! No, no ape but a young man with fair hair stood there, tucked into the doorway, watching the mayhem of his creating with satisfaction.
The king strode through the tumult toward the doorway, and took the man by the ear like a schoolboy.
“My lord Rochester, I presume that is your monkey, and not a relative?”
Rochester, evidently torn between mirth and apprehension, attempted a bow while the king still held his ear. When that availed him naught, he agreed that the monkey was indeed his.
“You will go and collect your animal—and my dogs, if you will be so good—and remove them from the Great Hall. In fact, I pray you will take the monkey to your own house and leave him there—with yourself. Am I understood?” The king released Rochester’s ear and kept his voice steady by main force; laughing at the boy’s prank would only encourage him.
“I understand entirely, sire. My apologies, sire.” Rochester swept the king a deep bow and charged forward into the Great Hall, making a peculiar clicking noise to get the monkey’s attention until he could grasp the chain and bring the animal to bay.
Charles followed more slowly, watching Rochester untangle the monkey from a shred of velvet from the drapes, then from a lady’s curls it had clenched in its fist. With the beast finally clutched to his chest, the earl gave a sharp whistle to summon Charles’s dogs, and led them away in a ragged parade. In his wake, ladies wept or swooned; some men were laughed, others scolded or bent solicitously over the women.
Which made the king turn to look to his women. Barbara was not to be seen. But Catherine? He sought her among the dancers, saw her not, then looked to the dais. There his queen sat in her gilded chair, her hand raised to her mouth in an attempt to contain her amusement, her expression what he imagined to be a mirror of his own.
It would do, he thought. She would do.