Charles the King (14 page)

There was a general laugh which died away when it was noticed that the King did not join in.

“I was not aware that you suffered many qualms, Countess. I am relieved to hear of one at least. Come, ladies and gentlemen. We will return to the Palace.”

The Countess moved to the dressing table at the other end of her room and looked at herself in the glass hanging on the wall. She began to fasten a silk robe, and as she did so she was humming. Behind her, Thomas Wentworth, now a Viscount and first Minister in the Kingdom, was getting out of her bed and searching for his clothes. She heard him come behind her and for a moment they watched themselves in the glass, his face close to hers, his arms around her. It was gratifying to see such a man in love; she had never been in love with anyone herself and she was always interested to observe the weakness it revealed in others. He was the toughest, most ruthless and most hated man at Court, with dozens of enemies and very few friends except that plebian old Bishop Laud, who was now Archbishop of Canterbury, and, of course, the King. No one credited Wentworth with a spot of human feeling or a single human weakness. But then they only saw him in Council where he bullied his opponents and forced his ideas on men who found them too unconventional and far too taxing to put into effect. Wentworth was not lazy like Holland and Newport, that idiotic Mary's husband—how the Queen simpered over her and preached her wretched Popery in the hope of making yet another convert—Lady Carlisle had always hated Lady Newport because she was true to her mistress when her back was turned. Wentworth had more energy and courage than any of them; the trouble was he would not admit that the inertia and stupidity of His Majesty King Charles was the prime obstacle to all his plans for putting a foundation of rock under Whitehall instead of shifting sand.

She unlocked his hands and stood up.

“I hear that the little play at Palace Yard was not what their Majesties expected,” she said.

“No,” Wentworth frowned. He did not want to talk politics, and he was surprised that the woman he loved could rise from his embrace and spoil their hours of happiness by talking about the torturing of a criminal fanatic.

“It was a mistake,” she said. The fire was alight and she stood in front of it, warming her hands. “If the King thought the people would sympathize with Henrietta, he knows better now.”

“I did not see it,” Wentworth said. “Where's the wine?”

“Over there, by the bedside. Pour some for me. Wat Montagu went there and he told me what happened. Two others were sentenced with Prynne for publishing an attack on the Bishops, and Montagu said the people strewed flowers in their path and gave them cups of wine on the way. They stood in the pillory for two hours and preached to the crowd at the top of their voices, and nobody threw a pebble at them. Montagu saw several women dipping handkerchiefs in their blood afterwards as if they were martyrs!”

“Why are you so pleased?” he asked her suddenly. “Why are you always criticizing the King to me when you know I love him? And how can you rejoice to see the Queen humiliated when you behave as if she were your dearest friend?”

“I criticize the King because
I
think he's human, even if you don't. All too human, alas, or he would never make enemies of honest English Protestants for the sake of a Papist, whether she's his wife or not! As for the Queen—your opinion of her is much the same as mine!”

“I think she's a good woman and she loves the King,” he said shortly.

Lucy Carlisle laughed contemptuously.

“You think nothing of the sort. You know perfectly well that she's an obstinate foreigner who won't curb her religion or her habits, and that all she tells the King is to do what he pleases and to the devil with his people!”

She got up and began to walk up and down. Wentworth's abandonment made her careless. He was in love with her and she could have made him beg if she chose; he had knelt and kissed her naked feet only an hour before. She felt suddenly reckless, with an unusual urge to speak her mind.

She came close to him and looked up into his face.

“Thomas, how can you have patience with fools? How can you be content to serve someone you know is so inferior to yourself!”

“The King is not inferior to anyone,” he answered quickly. He wished she would stop and pursue something else. She was not a nice woman, she possessed none of the virtues he had expected of his two wives and she had no moral sense. But she was a source of wonder and fascination to him. He had never encountered a woman with brains before he came to Whitehall. He had associated her political judgment with men, and her amatory talents with whores. But she was a great lady, clever and important and unapproachable, and though he had been her lover for three years, he was still a little overawed by their relationship.

If she hated the King, he preferred not to know it.

“You speak as if you believed that nonsense about the Divine Right of Kings,” Lucy Carlisle said scornfully. “The more I hear of it, the more ridiculous it seems. The king can do no wrong—one step further and we'll be told that the Pope is infallible!”

Wentworth began to redden. The persistent calumny that Charles was inclined to the Catholic Church always infuriated him; no one, except Laud, who suffered from the King's enthusiasm for theology, knew how staunchly Protestant he was better than Wentworth himself. Too staunch to please his critics and deform the liturgy and dogmas of the Established faith. He felt suddenly irritated to hear Lucy Carlisle repeat the accusation.

“You should be ashamed to say that,” he said angrily. “And for your information, I do believe that the King can do no wrong, exactly that! I believe that the sovereign is above all ordinary men and that his subjects owe him absolute allegiance. And that should include you, my dear Lucy.”

He turned away from her and went back to the table and poured himself another cup of wine; he did not ask her if she wanted any. He had come to her because he was in need of relaxation and affection, and, God damn it! because the woman had infected his blood. He loved her and he wanted her and he was prepared to overlook the defects in her nature which gave her a shrewish tongue and a tortuous mind. But there was a limit, and though she thought she knew him better than he knew himself, that limit was criticism of the King. He was not a man who gave his love or his loyalty lightly or transferred either without unhappy self-examination. And he loved Charles better than any other human being; better than his own family, better than the clever and beautiful woman who stood in front of him, her bright blue eyes narrowing with contempt. He did not like to feel a fool; he did not like being called one, or listening to lies and sneers directed against the King he believed to be noble and generous.

“I have a concept of how this kingdom should be governed,” he said slowly. “An ideal, if the word does not offend you. I see that its salvation lies in a strong and absolute monarch and in a loyal Ministry. I have sat in the House of Commons and I know that real liberty and order will never come from them. I have taken my place with the King, and if you care anything for me at all, Lucy, you will not speak against him.”

“Dear Thomas, what a simple soul you are! I thought you had ambition; now I see you are content to sit for the rest of your life at the feet of that arrogant egotist who thinks he is practically God made Man! You may see liberty and all the rest emanating from King Charles but I do not, not any longer. I see him growing more and more unpopular, idling his time away with his paintings and his hobbies and his nauseating marriage. I think he will fall, and I think he deserves to.” She came back and sat down by the fire.

For the last seven years she had been a jealous and irritated witness of a sublimely happy marriage, watching a man who loved his wife so much that he was blind to the charm or virtue of any other woman. And she could not understand it. She had never really cared for anyone; she had indulged in promiscuous affairs with many men, and though her body responded, it was a mechanical response, arid and untouched by emotion. She used her sexual power but in her heart she hated it because it had never brought her happiness or kept a lover at her side for long. And what she had just given Wentworth was not strong enough to wean him from his loyalty to the King.

“I see them together,” she said. “Pawing and kissing and watching the clock …” She turned round quickly and pointed to the bed. “That's where the policy of the kingdom is decided! If she turned her back on him for a single night, he'd abandon every one of your splendid plans, to get her back. He's not a King, he's a besotted fool. By the living God, Thomas, sometimes I find it disgusting!”

Wentworth stared at her. She was not being malicious, she was telling the truth. And the truth showed him the value of the hours they had spent in each other's arms; they showed him the worth of her kisses and the horrible superficiality of her response. He came close and stood over her.

“So you are nauseated by a husband and wife … of all the women in the world, you sit there and turn down your mouth like some prim village virgin at the thought of the King and Queen doing in wedlock what you and I have just done outside it—less than half an hour ago! Good Christ, woman, your sheets are still warm!—Or is it because you have been as false to me in them as you are to the King and Queen!”

She looked up at him and the colour rose in her pale face.

“Warm or otherwise, there's no place between them for a boor, my Lord. I thought you had learnt a few manners by now.”

“I have learnt many things since I met you,” he said roughly, “But, thank God, showing a double face is not among them. As a boor I thank you for the favours you've shown me this evening. As a gentleman, I decline to enjoy them again.”

She stood up and faced him, her pale eyes glittering.

“You may regret this,” she said softly. “You are not so mighty that you cannot fall; and when you do I'll make you a prophecy. You'll find that Their Gracious Majesties are only human after all. Human enough to tire of a servant as I have tired of a lover. And I was tired of you a very long time ago!”

He fastened his sword and found his plumed hat and pulled it on his head. He looked older suddenly, and his eyes considered her with bitter disgust.

“Don't concern yourself with my future, Madam. I was going to tell you tonight; the King has appointed me Lord Deputy of Ireland. I shall be leaving before the month is out.”

“Congratulations! You must have disturbed the King from his art collection and his dandling after his wife too often. So he sends you to Ireland where you won't be able to trouble him and make him take an interest in the dull grind of being King. Congratulations! Ireland has been the grave of better men than you. I hope it buries you alive!”

She went to the door and pulled it open. Her beautiful face was so contorted with rage and malice that he was shocked to see how pinched and ugly she had become.

“Get out,” she said.

“My dear Wentworth. I was afraid you would never find time to come today.”

Laud sat very straight in his chair at the head of the table and smiled at his guest. He had invited him to dine at Lambeth Palace before leaving for his post in Ireland; they often dined together when Wentworth was dismissed from duty by the King. They talked for hours and argued with vehemence about every aspect of the government which concerned them both so deeply. Laud was very proud of his establishment at Lambeth. He had redecorated the Archbishop's Palace and made many improvements to the Chapel which he found bare and ugly, unfit for the worship of God or the dignity of his office. He had replaced the Communion table against the East wall, removing it from the nave where the congregation sat with their feet and elbows propped upon it as if they were in an ale house.

He had ordered the lovely stained-glass windows to be repaired and sent the golden crucifix and altar candlesticks to the King's goldsmith to be mended and made fit for use. He had brought his love of beauty and ritual into the Archbishop's Palace, stripped and disfigured by his Low Church predecessors, and transformed it into a replica of the Lambeth which existed before the Reformation.

He intended to do the same with every Church in England, and the King agreed with him. He was rounder and greyer, and he wore a white linen surplice and long purple robes, with an Episcopal Cross of amethysts on his chest. He was a humorous, obstinate, affectionate old man, and he dearly loved Wentworth.

“Eat up, eat up,” he said. “I've got a new cook from France and the food is like manna from Heaven. I have to tear myself from the table these days.”

Wentworth laughed. “You're like some old Roman friar with a tun belly,” he said.

“Nothing of the kind,” Laud retorted. “I'm a devout and honest Anglican with a healthy appetite. God gave me a stomach and there's no sin in filling it. Friars fast, my friend, and I don't. Though that's not the only difference between us!”

“Some people say it is. You have candles and music in the Chapel and you make your congregation take Communion with their hats off. You're being called a Papist from one end of London to the other.”

Laud's shrewd little eyes twinkled. “I'll make Puritans howl and Papists weep; I've no patience with either. Nor have you; boy, help my Lord Wentworth to some carp—they came from the river today and they're excellent.”

Wentworth began to eat the fish; Laud had finished. He ate as quickly as he spoke; he was always hurrying, talking and gesticulating and bustling from place to place on his short legs, making uncouth little jokes and roaring with laughter at his own humour. He was as blunt and honest and uncompromising as the big Yorkshireman sitting opposite to him; he also had a brilliant theological brain and was a noted Oxford scholar in his youth. His father had been a draper. He washed his hands in a silver basin and dried them on a linen napkin.