When it becomes clear that the Duke’s sojourn in Brussels – that inn for exiled princes – will not be a brief one, he sends for his carriages, his hunters and his hounds. A few months later, he requests a visit from his younger daughters, and the King agrees, on the strict condition that neither girl is at any time during her stay to enter any of the various cathedrals, churches, abbeys, convents, monasteries, oratories or shrines which have peppered the country since the Spanish laid claim.
‘It is a great pity in a way,’ Anne says to Mrs Berkeley one afternoon, ‘for I am told they are many of them very fine indeed – and now Mrs Apsley has written and asked for an account of them, and I am sorry not to be able to oblige.’
‘But she shouldn’t have too much cause to complain,’ says Mrs Berkeley, ‘not when you are writing her such a good, long letter.’ ‘Oh there is enough to tell her – I have told her already about the ball – Prince Vodemont’s dancing especially and of course those chocolate sweetmeats – and the park – the people here, of their manners and so forth – and although I cannot tell about the churches, I have said . . .’ Anne brings the sheet she has been scrawling over up to her nose and reads:
‘“. . . all the fine churches and monasteries you know I must not see so can give you no good account of them, but those things which I must needs see as their images which are in every shop and corner of the street the more I see of those fooleries and the more I hear of that religion the more I dislike it, there is a walk a little way of which if it were well kept it would be very pretty, and here’s a place which they call the coure where they go round the streets and there is all the company every night like Hyde Park I can give you account of nothing else because I have seen no more . . .”’
‘Well, as you say, if that is all you have seen, then that is all you can tell her of,’ says Mrs Berkeley. ‘But what opinion did you give her of the people, their manners and so forth?’
‘Oh, only that they are very civil and won’t be otherwise except one is otherwise to them.’
‘A fair assessment.’
‘And I have told her that the streets here are clean – that is to say, cleaner than the streets in London, but not so clean as those in The Hague.’
‘Yes, they are quite superlatively clean there, are they not?’
‘They are, and the way my sister Orange writes about them one would think she had cleaned them all herself.’
‘Your sister Orange is such a very conscientious lady. Maybe she has.’
The picture this brings to Anne’s mind, of Mary sweeping a frantic path through the streets of her adoptive capital, while her husband follows with a critical look and white-gloved hand, to check her work, is enough to put her in fits of laughter; she cannot find the words to tell Mrs Berkeley why this particular jest has been so successful, but it is no matter, because the lady seems pleased enough with its effect.
It is so sweet to be alone with Mrs Berkeley, and to laugh. Anne has spent too much of her visit on show, at balls or in the places where the company reminds her of Hyde Park, and if she had not pretended to a headache today she would have had to go out with the Duchess, and Isabella, and Lady Harriet, for stiff talk in French with the stiffer Spanish nobility. She is grateful – for once – to Lady Harriet for asking her no questions and leaving her be – but then, Lady Harriet has altered her manner a little in the last few days where Anne is concerned, so that she is somewhat less like a governess and somewhat more like a courtier. Anne does not need Mrs Berkeley or Churchill to tell her why: the King is gravely ill, and until the Duke has sent back word from his incognito visit, nobody knows who might live, who might be King, and who else might be the King’s daughter.
The difference in Lady Harriet is a good thing, for sure, but Anne is sorry that the Duke is not there: he had promised her at the very least one day’s hunting outside the City, but this looks less likely by the day. Also he has taken Captain Churchill with him, and Captain Churchill has taken his wife Sarah, and as Sarah hopes to be confined in London, she will not be coming back to Brussels. At least Anne still has Mrs Berkeley here to make her laugh, and Mrs Cornwallis, sometimes, to gaze upon.
‘It is a pity that Mrs Cornwallis has gone with the Duchess today,’ Anne says, as she folds the letter, ready for posting. ‘We could have spent a most pleasant afternoon here, the three of us together.’
‘Can we not have almost as pleasant a time with two, Your Highness?’ Mrs Berkeley reaches into her pocket, where she causes its contents to rattle enticingly.
‘What? Dice, Barbara! No! When I think what you won of me yesterday . . .’
‘That does not signify so very much, does it? Your Highness plays for such low stakes—’
‘The Duke will not allow me to play for higher.’
‘Well then . . . or would you prefer that I take up Lady Harriet’s suggestion, and read to you out of The Whole Duty of Man?’
Anne considers this: Sunday reading on a weekday. No.
‘Oh, very well then, Mrs Berkeley. Dice it is.’
The Duke of York and the Prince of Orange
Anne is not to be a king’s daughter just yet; nor is England to go the way of the Spanish Netherlands. The King has rallied, and the Duke is all of a sudden back in Brussels, properly thankful for the restoration of his brother’s health, and loudly victorious over the concessions he has won from him: firstly, that he and his Duchess might spend the rest of their exile in Edinburgh, where he will have the opportunity to exercise stewardship over the unruly Scots; secondly, the King has agreed that the Duke of Monmouth must likewise be sent into exile.
His nephew Monmouth is one of the Duke’s favourite topics. He complains of him to whoever is compelled to listen, be it his wife, his gentlemen and grooms of the bedchamber, Spanish nobility or Flanders Jesuits. Shortly after his return, he and the Duchess accompany Anne and Isabella to The Hague. He says this is so that he might see more of them before they leave for England, but in truth he seems more interested in bending his son-in-law’s ear. The instant they have all sat down to dine, he is straight to it.
‘Yes,’ he insists, ‘the English monarchy is in danger – this is true, all too true – but not from Papists – have I not said, and more than once, that all I ever desired was the freedom to worship?’
‘You have,’ says the Prince of Orange, ‘and – as one would expect – quite a deal more than once.’
Anne feels a sudden tautness in the air and looks up from her plate to find her older sister and step-mother have both gone very still, but the Duke carries on regardless.
‘The monarchy is in danger – as I said – but it is not from Papists, who go on their way the same as before – my brother was too forgiving, I told him he would regret it – the danger is the Commonwealth party, and those Whigs – that call themselves the ‘Country Party’ – and men of the like of Shaftesbury who compelled – nay, all but blackmailed – the King into bringing them into his Council—’
He pauses for a moment, having lost his way. The Prince takes the chance to ask his wife if her sister might perhaps like to take a waffle or two, as he sees she has already tried everything else. Anne’s blush is quite excruciating. The Duke continues:
‘And for their own ends these men make a property of—’
[‘Here he comes . . .’ Anne thinks. ]
‘—the Duke of Monmouth, and they do this to ruin our family, and now things go on so fast, and so violently, and there are so few left about His Majesty with the will or courage to give good advice to him – I tremble to think – if His Majesty and the Lords stick to me, there might be great disorders – nay, rebellion; if he consents to what the Commons will do against me, the monarchy shall be absolutely ruined and our family with it – he shall have reduced himself to the condition of—
[Anne waits for the inevitable arrival of another Duke. ]
‘—a Duke of Venice!’
Having made his point, and quite upset himself on the way, the Duke drains a glass of wine and sets about his pancake as if it were Shaftesbury. Meanwhile the Prince speaks, and with the most dreadful courtesy.
‘A Duke of Venice indeed,’ he says, ‘or perhaps a Stadtholder of the United Provinces.’
The Duke chokes. ‘Oh, of course not – no comparison! No comparison at all! Why if anyone were master of his own house, then surely it were Your Highness.’
‘And how well you do live here,’ says the Duchess. ‘How charmingly well. We have the most beautifully appointed lodgings here, do we not, Anne?’
Anne swallows a bite of waffle and agrees.
‘Beautiful,’ she says, ‘and Mary has shown us such lovely things: her gardens, her porcelain collection, her paintings . . .’ She feels the Prince’s sardonic eye on her, and falters. ‘Some lovely paintings . . . paintings of tulips . . . her tulip paintings . . .’
Everybody is relieved when Mary replies.
‘Believe me, it has been a pleasure to show you how I live, how happy I am – such a pity only that the King has called you away so soon – I was in great hopes of taking you to Honselaarsdijk to show you the gardens there, so much more can be accomplished in the country than we are able to do here – I must confess to being very proud of them.’
‘My wife’s work does us both great credit,’ says the Prince. It is the first time Anne has ever heard him praising Mary.
‘But not at the expense of her health, I hope?’ The Duke’s voice has the anxious, pitying tone he usually adopts when talking to or about his eldest daughter. This baffles Anne, as Mary does indeed have lovely things, great quantities of lovely things, gowns and jewels, exquisitely worked wooden and silver boxes, blue-and-white porcelain vases and flowers from all corners of the earth to arrange in them, and if children could be likewise imported, commissioned, purchased, cultivated in a hothouse or grown from a bulb, no doubt she would have the best of those too.
The Prince leaves Mary to answer. ‘Father, my gardens delight me, and my spirits are better for keeping them.’
The Duke then surprises everyone by taking the hint, and changes the topic, asking the Prince if he has had any good hunting about The Hague this last season. Later, when the Prince and Princess are elsewhere, he will return to another of his favourite activities: harvesting intimate news from Mary’s bedchamber women, who will tell him that the Prince has given Mary no real reason to think she might be with child. When he reaches the English shores, he will write and thank his son-in-law for what has been a perfect visit.