I had no experience of children, so was of little help with the prince. I struggled to change his soiled clothes as he fought with me, I gave in to his every whim to stop the screaming and I slipped him sweetmeats when he refused the bland nursery food he was expected to eat. Despite the criticism and disapproving looks of the other women, I was proud to be my mother’s daughter. Every day I followed her around, listened to what she said and in the evenings, by candlelight, I wrote down everything I could remember.
At night, when Grace brushed my hair, I looked at her reflection in the mirror and told her everything I had seen.
‘My mother manages a staff of eleven as well as servants and footmen … eleven staff, Grace … all for one little boy they call the Prince of Wales.’
‘The Duchess managed a much larger staff at home, both in London and at Powis,’ Grace reminded me. ‘You’re seeing her at work now, that’s what’s different.’
‘All the other women talk about their babies that have died and their sickly children, as if it’s to be expected, but my mot her has six living children, all of us healthy.’
‘Whatever anyone says,’ Grace replied, frowning as the hairbrush caught in a tangle of hair, ‘her skills aren’t miracles or magic but learned and you should go on listening.’
‘And when she’s with the prince he eats his food, does what he’s told and is a happy child. It does seem like a bit of a miracle.’
‘I’ve heard rumours amongst the servants that even the queen struggles to manage his temper.’
‘He’s tiny, Grace, but already so clever. He knows the weakness of every person who cares for him, including me, but my mother never raises her voice to him or punishes him. She expects him to behave and he does.’
‘Perhaps that’s it,’ Grace smoothed a recalcitrant strand of hair into my night-time ribbon. ‘She doesn’t stand for any nonsense. It’s a pity he doesn’t have many other children to play with. It doesn’t seem right that he’s surrounded by all these adults.’
‘The new baby might help, or perhaps not given how jealous he’s likely to be. There are so few children here and we’ve been told to be careful who he plays with. My mother said that the queen is worried that people might seek favours if their child becomes his companion.’
‘My lady, this is not a place for children,’ Grace mumbled through the hairpins between her lips.
‘And not likely to become so in future,’ I laughed, ‘because apart from the queen, and us of course, everyone is so old!’
Mother died just before Christmas, taken from us one ordinary afternoon. I had been playing with the little prince, helping him build a tower of wooden blocks, when a servant interrupted our game and whispered that my father needed to see me urgently in his apartments. Excusing myself to my mother’s staff, I heard the little boy wail at being abandoned. I lifted my skirts to run across the courtyard, fearing news from William or one of my sisters. When I saw Lucy entering the staircase to our parents’ rooms, I knew that it was indeed a serious family matter. We waited together in the anteroom, seeing the surgeon leave and women from the queen’s household hurry past. I felt a low growl of fear from my stomach. Servants arrived with cloths and bowls of water. I noticed Grace, her eyes and lips raw with pain and when she saw me, she stopped and shook her head before being chivvied away by the Countess of Errol.
‘Dear girls,’ said the Countess, taking one of each of our hands in hers as we rose, ‘your father is waiting for you in your mother’s room.’
Father knelt by mother’s bed, his forehead resting on his clasped hands. The shutters were drawn, making the light poor, and there was a smell of dust and lavender. As my eyes adjusted, I saw her lying on the bed, pale and still with a rosary twisted between her fingers. This body looked the same as my mother’s but her eyes were closed, although she was not asleep. She was an absence, an emptiness where my living mother should have been.
‘Father, what has happened?’ Lucy spoke first.
‘She has left us, my dearest children. She’s gone.’
Lucy rested a hand on his shoulder. ‘Poor Mother. She’s at peace now, her work is done. We should be glad she didn’t suffer.’
I felt rage rip through my chest and into my throat, so that when I spoke my voice growled, hoarse and low. ‘She worked too hard. This shouldn’t have been expected of her. You have killed her.’
‘Winifred, please,’ Lucy begged, ‘not now.’
‘But she hadn’t finished being my mother,’ I cried. ‘I haven’t had enough time with her.’
‘She didn’t choose to leave you,’ Lucy’s voice was firm. ‘Go back to our room. I’ll stay with Father, he needs me.’
‘She did choose to leave me,’ I shouted. ‘She chose all of this, instead of me.’ I waved my arm in a futile gesture that included my father, Lucy, these artificial rooms and the vast, cold space of St Germain-en-Laye.,
Lucy pushed me through the door but as we parted, she held me close and I could feel her breath in my ear. ‘It’s God’s will,’ she whispered, ‘you will learn to accept this in time. Go and find Grace and weep.’
After Mother’s death, I heard people talk about her in the crowded stairwells and meeting places of St Germain. The gossips said she should have cured herself, if she knew so much about healing, but her close companions, the women she worked with every day caring for the young prince, wept bitterly and blamed themselves for not urging her to see the physician. But I think Mother knew that her heart was going to let her down and that is why she told no one. Being my mother, she would have understood that nothing more could be done.
In the long nights before the funeral I clung to Lucy and begged her not to leave me. I went with her to stand by our mother’s body in her resting place, a freezing basement barely lit by candles. In our room, we wept and talked until dawn, reminding each other of tiny details from our shared childhood at Powis Castle before Mother was imprisoned. During the day, when Lucy worked for our mother’s replacement, the Countess of Errol, I was excused duties and Grace stayed with me. We walked the miles of garden and forest that surrounded the chateau, the sterile formality of the gardens and dank, decaying, winter forest echoing my emptiness. I felt no sadness, only anger. I had been cheated of the mother I thought would stand by me and help me bear and raise my own children. I had expected to have years of her wisdom and now there was nothing except my memories and a few scribbled notes.
At the entrance to the chapel were two paintings I had passed many times, barely glancing at them but on the day of Mother’s funeral, an ochre light fell across Goliath’s head hanging by the hair from David’s hand. Flooded by memories of my childish nightmares of Mother’s execution, I gasped and wanted to run but Lucy, sensing my anguish, gripped my hand in hers and led me to my seat.
Despite storms in the channel, my sister Mary had managed to reach St Germain in time for the funeral and she stood beside my father at the high alter, supporting him by his elbow. I hadn’t seen him since the day he told us our mother had died. He looked now as then, grey and shrunken. As ever, the chapel was dark since it was winter and little natural light filtered down from the high windows. Above Mother’s coffin was a painting of the Last Supper, with Jesus leaning towards St. Peter as if they were sharing a secret. I stared at the painting, trying to focus on the detail but I couldn’t still my thoughts and sweat and fear ripped through me. As the mass mumbled around me and sacred music from the choir roared and faded, I could think only of Mother’s head rolling from the executioner’s platform on Tower Green.
Following my family back down the aisle, I looked up to the gilded balustrade of the tribune and saw the queen, Mary Beatrice, leaning against the Duchess of Tyrconnel. Without my mother, how would she keep her baby safe from harm?
After the funeral, I ran from the demons in my dreams and through the day I walked for miles with Grace, my head down, my pace fierce, to keep the panic from twisting my heart, my breathing, my hands. It felt as if there was a hole in my chest where the cold winds of January and February had free passage. Lucy and I ate with Father, in private, once a week. He chewed his food in silence, staring at Mother’s empty place, his bald head seeming too small now for his shoulders. Yet, when I stared down into the busy courtyard during the day, waiting for Grace, I saw him cross and re-cross on the king’s business, urgent, erect and still powerful. He had his work and that would save him. Lucy had her faith. What would save me?
Before she died, Mother had remarked on my superficial grasp of our religion and arranged for me to have weekly lessons with Lewis Innes. I enjoyed these as he made no attempt to teach me but allowed me to talk freely, respecting my views as if they were worth serious consideration. He allowed me to be critical of the exiled court and sometimes laughed when I made fun of the ladies who worked with my mother. After Mother died, I found it hard to say any words to Lewis, obsessed as I was with the horrors of death but I went every week and he allowed me to sit in silence and sometimes I was able to cry. It was Lewis who noticed that I wasn’t attending chapel.
‘Winifred, has your faith entirely abandoned you?’
I shook my head and tried to swallow. What could I say to him about severed heads?
‘Do you know there is another chapel in the chateau?’
I shook my head again.
‘Would you like me to ask if you can use it?’
I wasn’t sure. Faith had not helped me in the past and I saw little use for it in the future. Religion had destroyed my family. But I nodded because a refusal might make him suspect that my faith had indeed gone and I didn’t know what would happen if my father was told. I might be sent to the convent with Lucy.
The following week, Lewis took me to part of the chateau I had never visited. Across the staircase from the queen’s apartments, he showed me into a small room, almost like a convent cell, but washed in sunlight. It was the queen’s private chapel. As long as I avoided certain times of day I could worship there, Lewis said. Queen Mary Beatrice liked to pray alone.
I went out of duty, in case Lewis thought I was ungrateful but then I found some peace in the gentle light and I liked to look at the painting of the Virgin Mary and Jesus that hung over the simple alter. I didn’t pray but allowed any terrors that needed to escape to come freely and because I wasn’t trying to hold them down, they slowly lost their power. I had been visiting the little chapel for a month when, one day, I stood up to leave and saw the queen at the entrance. The queen’s ladies frowned at me and I remembered to curtsy.
‘I’m sorry, your majesty, I didn’t know you were expected. I will leave at once.’
The queen was heavy with child, and she sat down on a gilt chair that Lewis had warned me was for her personal use.
‘Wait, Lady Winifred. We have never spoken but I miss your mother every single day and my son has been so distressed.’
‘Thank you,’ I replied, unsure how to address her. ‘I miss her every day too. My family has suffered a great loss.’
The queen nodded as if I had said something important. ‘We have all suffered a great loss. You must come and see me. Speak to the Countess of Almond and arrange it. Come soon, this week if you can.’
It troubled me, the prospect of being in the company of the queen. She might expect me to have my mother’s skills and would be disappointed. However, I soon learned that she was looking for companionship. Although she was fourteen years older than me, she was still young and beautiful and the women of her household were matrons and well past child-bearing age. The queen’s invitation to become one of her household gave me work and I started to heal. The other women feared favouritism and I found myself allocated the most menial of tasks such as writing letters but Mary Beatrice sought me out every day to walk with her in the formal gardens. We would sit by the fountains and trail our fingers in the water and I would listen and laugh while Mary Beatrice talked. It would have been ill advised to raise topics or talk about myself.
‘I’m not worried about having this baby, Winifred. Your mother taught me so much.’ Her eyes were clear and untroubled.
‘What did you learn, your majesty?’
‘Your mother said all that was needed was milk from a woman’s breast and everything being clean. That’s all. If this baby suffers like poor little James, I won’t listen to learned men. Your mother said to keep feeding the baby, no matter how often it might vomit and the sickness will pass. I’ve arranged to have many wet nurses, so even if this baby is sickly too, we will save him.’
Since Mary Beatrice had the same body as other women, I wondered why she didn’t consider that she could feed the baby herself but I would not have dared express such an opinion.
‘You are lucky,’ the queen continued, ‘when you have a baby, you will deliver it in peace and privacy with only a woman present. Do you know that I must give birth in the presence of the court so the legitimacy of the baby is not in doubt?’
The shock of imagining her being exposed during such an intimate act must have shown on my face. Mary Beatrice smiled. ‘I can see you are horrified and you haven’t yet borne a child. When you have, think of me and your sympathy will be all the greater.’ She laughed, her head thrown back, and stood so that we might continue down the central boulevard to the large fountain at the end of the garden.
‘Enough of babies,’ she linked her arm with mine, ‘I have some exciting news. The French court is to visit here in two weeks, so you must help me plan the entertainments. You have been in mourning long enough. It’s time to have some fun.’ It was characteristic of Mary Beatrice to promise too much and I knew that jealousies would not allow me to be involved in any planning, but we walked on, talking about the music and dancing, both of us pretending that it would be otherwise.
I only had a brief glimpse of the Sun King and his wife Madame de Maintenon at the moment of their dramatic arrival through the arched gateway. Like the other ordinary residents of St Germain, Lucy and I had been told to stay in our room since the courtyard was narrow and this was a private visit between the two royal families. We stood at either side of the window and, looking down, saw only the gold top of the Sun King’s coach below us in the courtyard. It was smaller than I had expected with one coachman and two white horses. Louis’ face was hidden beneath his wide-brimmed hat, which was fringed with feathers, and he wore a long wig that curled over his shoulders. He strode across the courtyard towards our queen and took both her hands in his. Madame de Maintenon was helped from the carriage by one of her ladies and for a moment she steadied herself, looking up at our watching faces. A black hood fell from her hair and draped across shoulders covered by a deep blue cloak, lined with white fur. I almost waved.
‘He’s never admitted openly that they’re married,’ Lucy told me, as we saw her pale face scan the ranks of windows. ‘That’s why she’s not the queen.’
‘But that’s awful. If she’s his wife, she should be recognised.’
Lucy hesitated. ‘It’s something to do with the difference in rank. I think she understands and has to accept it. Everyone says he adores her.’
We watched James hurry across to bow to Madame de Maintenon and kiss her ring. I wouldn’t accept it, I thought, regardless of how much I was adored. Our royal household lined the path towards the staircase for the king’s apartments and as the two royal couples passed, the group sank low in greeting like a wave. I saw our father amongst them, standing a little too close to an elegant woman I hadn’t met. Now other coaches swung into the courtyard and one by one deposited the household of the French royal family, their servants and luggage.
‘Have you noticed all the young men, Lucy? Things are going to be very different here, just for a few days.’
Lucy smiled. ‘For some, perhaps.’
I was of too low rank to participate in any of the activities shared by the two royal families but every night there were dances to which I was invited and beautiful young Frenchmen jostled each other to dance with me. Their manners were exquisite, yet their conversation was peppered with sexual innuendo and each night I ran up our stairway to Lucy, my cheeks flushed with more than the exertion of the dance. Lucy no longer had any interest in dancing, being in the process of withdrawing from society to prepare for her entrance to holy orders but in the day she joined me for more respectable and sedate entertainments.
Mary Beatrice’s master of music, Mr Fede, had composed new works in the Italian style and the theatre company presented a ballet by Lully. I sat through these in the pretence of improving my education but really I was hoping to catch the eye of one of the young courtiers, so that we might walk in the gardens and flirt before the evening entertainment.
The departure of the French court made our daily lives even more mundane, especially as we had to make savings to compensate for the money we’d spent on hosting the royal family. Meals were sparse and entertainment was of the most basic, home-grown kind, all too familiar from the tedious Jacobite gatherings held in my sister’s home. Mary Beatrice withdrew into her confinement and didn’t ask me to stay with her, preferring those who had experience of childbirth.
Something else was happening. Our king had disappeared along with the French court and I heard muttering in corners and men stopped talking and stroked their chins if I came too close. My father walked so fast across the courtyard, his legs seemed to be clockwork, but other important men were rarely to be seen, apart from the Earl of Melfort. Soon we learned that there had been a failed attempt to invade England, resulting in the destruction of the French fleet. Nothing was announced or openly discussed, since maintaining a belief that James would be restored to the crown of England was the whole purpose of our existence. But my father, in a careless moment at dinner, revealed that Louis XIV felt he had been misled by false information from St Germain. This was the whispered shame of the exiled court.
One morning, a servant knocked on my door, summoning me to the Earl of Melfort and my stomach felt as if it had turned to liquid. I was escorted to the Earl’s quarters and the manservant waited, clearly under instructions to guard me. The door to Melfort’s room was opened from within by yet another servant and inside was dark and hung with tapestries of Old Testament stories. It smelled of that particular animal odour of sweat and food that hangs around men who are not particular about their grooming. Melfort sat at a table, reading a letter. He did not look up or indicate that I should sit. I stood before him, studying his small mouth, pursed as if he had eaten something sour.
‘This letter is for you.’ He tossed it across the table as if it were soiled. ‘You may read it.’
It was my brother’s handwriting. William began by expressing his sorrow and regret at the death of our mother but I read on with dismay.
‘Your king is about to invade England. He has deluded himself into believing that many will rise to support him but being the fool he is, he has announced his intentions in advance and has issued a proclamation to the people of this country which has only served to rally support around William of Orange. If the invasion goes ahead it will fail. Be warned, my little sister. Your loving brother.’
I felt my skin flush. William’s words rang with the disgrace of having been read first by the man in front of me. These words, which would be regarded here as treason, had come from my brother and I would be included in his treachery.
‘I am sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I knew nothing of an invasion. My brother has views that my sister and I do not share. I am loyal to King James II and the Jacobite cause.’ I looked down at my hands, hoping that Melfort had forgotten my outburst from the previous year.
The Earl’s words were measured. ‘Everything that is received here and sent from here is scrutinised by me. I know every movement, every thought, every single breath that you people make. There are spies here from the English government, the French government, the Spanish government and Rome. Sometimes I think that every fucking soul within this chateau is a spy.’ He spat the word at me. ‘Are you a spy, Lady Winifred Herbert, because if you are, not even your father will be able to save you. People disappear from this chateau with puzzling frequency. They are no loss. A girl like you would not be missed. Do I make myself clear?’
Tears coursed down my face. ‘I am not a spy. You can trust me,’ I whispered, my voice hoarse, my throat tight.
‘Do you have any idea,’ Melfort’s voice rose, ‘what might happen if letters like this got into the hands of a French spy and thence to the French government? We must maintain French support. I saw you dancing with those young fools from the French court. What would you not have done to gain their favour? Would you have passed this letter to one of them if he had asked you for it?’ Melfort stared at me with contempt. ‘Is your brother in the pay of the French?’
I shook my head. ‘He was a prisoner in the Tower of London and he’s lost his title and our estates. He’s bitter but means no harm. He is an angry man, nothing more.’
Melfort placed his hands together into a steeple and rested them against his lips. He looked at me from under his brows. ‘It is lucky for you,’ he said, ‘that you have become something of a favourite of the queen. I question her judgement. Don’t forget, I am watching you. Always.’
A different servant escorted me to my staircase. My limbs were weak and carried me with difficulty up the three flights of stairs. Alone in my room I lifted my gown and stripped away my petticoats. Like a child, I had wet myself.
After my terrifying meeting with Melfort, I hurried to see my father.
‘Elizabeth, you must write to William,’ he advised, ‘and ask him never to contact you again.’
‘Father, I’m Winifred not Elizabeth. Mother’s name was Elizabeth.’
He peered at me. ‘Ah yes, you’re so alike. Nevertheless, write the letter and I’ll show it to Melfort. It will be proof of your loyalty.’
I imagined William’s reaction to reading such cruel words and said, ‘I don’t wish to write to him like that. I came to you to seek your protection.’
‘I can’t protect you,’ my father touched some papers on his desk and I saw his eyes glance eagerly over what was written there. ‘I’m often away with the king or caught up in his affairs. If you write to William as I’ve said and stay in favour with the queen, you’ll be safe.’