‘Truly we have all had a surfeit of your sullen faces today.’ Lady Churchill is scolding the Maids of Honour. ‘No doubt our company is dreadfully dull, but you might at least have the grace not to show it.’ The Maids – Mrs Drummer, Mrs Temple, Mrs Talbot, Mrs Nott – hang their pretty heads and say nothing. ‘What? Silence? Is that all? If I were you I would make my submission to Her Highness.’
The Maids exchange frantic looks, then, after some silent agreement has been reached, the boldest of them, Mrs Nott, rises, curtsies to Anne and offers, ‘Please forgive us, Your Highness. We are indeed weary today but we promise to try harder.’ She makes a motion behind her and the others rise and curtsy in their turn.
‘Oh, do sit down again,’ Anne says. ‘I cannot say I blame you for finding us dull today. I am sure you had expected to ride, or play cards as usual.’
She does feel a little sorry for the Maids, but she has endured two successive nights of heavy losses at the Duchess of Portsmouth’s table, and is now in a penitent mood, which her household must share in. Before dinner, she heard the catechism of a couple of the as-yet-unconfirmed younger servants, a task she would usually leave to her chaplains, and now, after dinner, she, Lady Clarendon, Lady Churchill and the Maids are spending a rare afternoon at their work. Lady Churchill is prettifying a child’s smock with point-lace; Lady Clarendon is working an elaborate pattern in fine gold thread onto a piece of satin, the better to adorn the binding of some enormous book or other; the Maids have been given a great, tangled pile of threads that Lady Churchill has discovered in a press, and told by her to make themselves useful and sort it through. It is a task better suited to little girls than to hopeful young ladies, and Anne cannot wonder that they should find it irksome.
‘To tell you the truth,’ she says, ‘to work like this on such a dark afternoon is too much for my wretched eyes – they water dreadfully – and I think perhaps for their sake I should better do something else. If the Maids would have my guitar fetched, and fetch their own instruments too – they that have them – we could have a little music?’
‘A delightful notion, Your Highness,’ says Lady Clarendon, ‘and I should particularly like to hear Mrs Temple sing again – she has such a pretty voice.’
‘Then it is decided,’ says Lady Churchill. ‘You all heard what Her Highness asked of you – now go and do it.’
The Maids curtsy and troop out. Lady Churchill searches in her work bag for scissors, fails to find them, and breaks the thread with her teeth, which are the straightest and the whitest of any lady that Anne knows. ‘Silly chits,’ she says, when she is done.
‘Oh I am sure we were no different,’ says Anne, who is married now, with child, and all of eighteen. She takes her own work up again, and pulls it close to her face, only for the pattern to blur straight away, stinging her eyes and sending the lids into a flutter. So she sets the work down again, and turns a ring on her right hand – the newest one, a mourning ring from Frances Apsley, her Semandra. She is married now to Sir Benjamin Bathurst, Controller of the Denmarks’ household, and has recently been bereaved, first of twin babes, and then of her father.
‘That is a handsome ring, Your Highness’ says Lady Churchill, ‘but it is a pity about the occasion of it – how did you and Lady Clarendon find Lady Bathurst yesterday?’
‘As you might expect, in very low spirits. So many losses one after the other – and now her mother ill too – and you must know she has been disappointed of the hopes she had for another child – I fear she is quite overcome.’
Lady Churchill shakes her head. ‘It is hard to know how to comfort her.’
‘When there is such affliction as that,’ Lady Clarendon says, ‘comfort can come only from God. And then, if she can bear her trouble like a Christian, that will sum to her good.’
‘But I think one’s friends might be some help, Lady Clarendon, or why call them friends at all?’
‘I hope I might help her,’ says Anne, quickly. ‘I could only wish that Lady Apsley might recover her health, and that my poor Frances might soon have a great belly again. I gather my sister has said the same in her letters.’
‘So she is writing more then? Lady Bathurst was wont to complain that the Princess had forgotten her quite.’
‘When she first married the Prince, it was true, she was not a good correspondent, but now it seems . . .’
Anne glances at the door; it is closed, and there is only quiet behind it.
‘. . . she would never say so, but I think she wants for company . . . the Prince . . . is much preoccupied with his armies, and other business . . .’
Lady Churchill favours the door with a glance of her own.
‘. . . which he prefers to discuss with Mrs Berkeley’s squinting sister . . .’
‘Is that what you have heard?’ Anne is whispering now.
‘From Mrs Berkeley. Yes.’
‘He has peculiar tastes, that – Caliban.’
‘Your Highness!’ cries Lady Clarendon. ‘He is your brother!’
‘Her brother-in-law. Might your cousin Monmouth find his way to The Hague? Your sister would be glad of his company – they were always good dancing partners.’
‘No, he is still in Brussels . . .’
‘So your Caliban-in-law will not have him yet.’
‘Lady Churchill! We must pray, Your Highness, that the present troubles will pass, and then the King will be glad to have Monmouth back with him again. He loves him so well.’
‘Too well, perhaps. But I do not think he can have him back while there are still villains enough drinking his son’s health instead of his own – I heard one of the postillions say only yesterday that his brother was in a tavern where—’
A page opens the door and tells them that the Maids have returned from their errand. Anne calls for a little wine, and the conversation turns musical.