Charles the King (25 page)

“What will you do then?” Henrietta asked him.

“I shall refuse to surrender my power over the army. If Parliament persists I shall send you to Holland with our daughter and raise my standard for war.”

The following day he made a state entry into London, and the fickle London crowds pressed round his horse and cheered him loudly. And now there were two rival mobs, prowling the London streets. Charles was not alone as he had been a few short months ago. When the King had found friends among the young gentry and nobility, and army officers began returning from the Continent, hoping for action in England; and they filled Whitehall, talking and boasting and wandering out in search of Puritans distinguished by their sober clothes and close cropped hair. And some wit among the Royalists nicknamed them Roundheads, to the amusement of the Queen and her ladies.

Roundheads. The apprentices and sailors and dock-workers took up the name with pride, and shouted the insult Cavaliero, at the elegant gallants with their flowing hair who surrounded the King with swords at their sides, hoping for trouble. Cavaliero. It was a foreign word, and therefore doubly insulting, connoting Spain and Popery and oppression of the people. English tongues shortened and Anglicized it until it became a round gracious word and not an epithet. At Whitehall and in Royalist society throughout England, it became the fashion to rejoice in the description Cavalier.

Puritans and Cavaliers insulted each other in the streets and sometimes came to blows, and in the last few weeks of the year 1641 families were already dividing in loyalty to the King or Parliament. Fathers and sons quarrelled bitterly and brothers ranged against each other and went off to train with rival bands. War was coming and Christmas was celebrated sadly in the homes of Royalists and Puritans alike. Charles and Parliament were irreconcilable; he would not surrender his right to command the army and Pym would not put such a weapon into his hands on the pretext of subduing Ireland. And then, in the first week of January, the end came. It came as Charles returned from a hunting expedition at Greenwich. As he crossed the Great Hall to go upstairs to his apartments and change for dinner with the Queen, Lord Falkland, his new Secretary of State, hurried across to him and stopped him.

“Forgive me, Sire, I must see you immediately. I've had a message from Lord Holland.”

Charles hesitated for a moment, frowning. Holland, once his old friend and Henrietta's favourite, had voted against him in the Lords and expressed his sympathy with Pym. He had been bitterly angry with Holland, who he now saw as a spineless opportunist, hoping to come out on the winning side.

“No message from Holland is of interest to me,” he said curtly. “I cannot see you now, sir, or I shall keep Her Majesty waiting.”

“You must see me,” Falkland went so far in his agitation that he caught the King's arm. “It is desperately urgent, Sire. It concerns the Queen. I beg of you, let me come to your rooms now. I can speak to you while you're dressing.”

“Very well.” Charles looked down at the hand which was laid on his sleeve and Falkland stepped back in confusion.

“Be good enough never to do that again. You may follow me.”

In his own rooms he stood while Parry took off his hunting coat, and one of his grooms of the Chamber brought him a bowl of water and a napkin in which he leisurely washed his hands. Falkland stood watching him, not daring to speak first. Charles sat down in his shirt and breeches and glanced up at him.

“Well, what is it?”

“I must see you alone, Sire,” Falkland said. “I told you it was desperately important, I cannot discuss it with you in front of witnesses.”

“I have no secrets from Parry, the rest of you gentlemen may leave for the moment.” His three attendants bowed and backed out of the room. He turned to Falkland. “Proceed, my Lord. What is this message from Holland that's so secret and so vital it cannot wait for half an hour?”

“Holland was at Pym's house this afternoon,” Falkland said. “He heard something that horrified him so much that he sent a message to me at once, begging me to warn you.”

He saw the King looking up at him with surprise and he paused. For a moment he did not know how to put it into words.

“They are going to impeach the Queen for Treason,” he said at last.

For a moment Charles stared at him without speaking or moving. During that minute he thought quite seriously that he had misheard. His mind refused to register, he saw Falkland standing in front of him, his usually remote face pale and contorted with anxiety, and very slowly, Charles got up and came close to him.

“Repeat that, if you please,” he said.

“They are going to impeach the Queen,” Falkland said again. The King had changed colour, he was so white that the Secretary of State was alarmed, and a curious light flickered in his eyes, a flash that reminded the unimaginative peer of lightning. There was not a sound in the room. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the valet Parry standing with the King's velvet coat in his hand, his mouth slightly open.

“Impeach the Queen …” Charles spoke very slowly and carefully. And then suddenly his voice rose as Falkland had never heard it in his life.

“Impeach my wife! Good Christ above, Falkland, are you standing there and telling me this thing and expecting me to believe it?”

“It is the truth, Sire. Holland wouldn't lie. Whatever he is, he wouldn't say such a thing unless it was true. He always loved the Queen and he risked his own life sending me the message. He knows she is in mortal danger.”

“Don't you dare say that! Don't dare speak of the Queen in such a way.” Charles stepped very close to Falkland and he reached out and caught him by both arms. “No man in England can touch my wife, do you hear? No man in the world, without answering for it with his life …”

“It is the Queen's life which is at stake, Sire,” Falkland's voice was low. “They are going to charge her with inspiring the Army Plot and encouraging the rebellion in Ireland. If they can find one witness to testify against her on either count, they can do to her what they did to Strafford. She is only the Consort, she hasn't the Sovereign's immunity from English law.”

Slowly Charles released him; his hands were trembling. The Army plot. He could remember Goring and Jermyn standing side by side in Henrietta's Privy Chamber at Whitehall, explaining the details of the intrigue she had instigated, and then her answer to his question when he returned from Scotland and asked her if she had communicated with the Irish rebels … ‘By word of mouth and by letter … other people's letters of course …'

She had committed herself so deeply that if the evidence came to light, Parliament would have a better case in law against her than anything on which they had convicted Strafford. He could think no further and he closed his eyes. They knew what she had done; Pym had spies everywhere, spies in the Army, spies at Whitehall, spies even in his Council. Someone had betrayed Henrietta, and if she were ever to face a public accusation, witnesses would be found to come forward and condemn her. It was still inconceivable to Charles—a part of his mind, the part which regarded himself and all connected with him as beyond the reach of any law but his own will, refused and rejected the possibility with outraged scorn. Three years ago he would have dismissed Falkland and ordered the arrest and execution of every man responsible for the idea, but now he knew it was beyond his power. Parliament had taken his judicial rights, dissolved his Courts, imprisoned his judges. Parliament commanded troops who would come to Whitehall and take the Queen by force, and he knew with absolute certainty that the time had come when they would not hesitate to demand her life of him as they had demanded Strafford's. In moments of crisis he had always been calm, and at that moment when everything he loved better than life itself was threatened, he mastered his anger and his panic and confounded Falkland by saying quite quietly, “Very well, my Lord. Let us discuss this as calmly as we can. What must be done?”

“Strike first, Sire! Impeach the impeachers … Accuse them of Treason. They've been constantly treating with the Covenanters all during the late war—we can find dozens of witnesses to prove it. On no account have the Queen's name mentioned in any of it, or she and you will be lost. Accuse them and arrest them before they can bring their motion against her in the House.”

Charles looked at him coldly. He had once liked Falkland. It was unjust, but human, that he would never like him again because he had not sprung to Henrietta's defence and echoed the cry of rage and anguish in Charles' own heart by calling for war against her enemies on her account alone. As if Falkland had seen into his thoughts, he added, “You must believe this, Sire. You cannot make Her Majesty the issue. The Consort is not sacred in law, as I told you. Two Queens were executed in the reign of Henry VIII, and your own grandmother the Queen of Scots was beheaded on a charge of Treason against the State, and she was an anointed Sovereign. Your only plan is to strike at Pym and his fellows with their own weapon. Otherwise you will bring Civil War upon your country for the sake of your wife, and however much you love her, I tell you truly, it's not a cause which will make Englishmen unsheathe their swords against each other.”

Charles was looking at him with obvious anger and he stopped. His conscience was clear. Nonetheless, he went down on his knees in front of him.

“I beg of you to listen to me,” he said. “It is the only way.”

“Do they imagine,” Charles said slowly, “that I would deliver my wife to them to be tried like a common criminal? Don't they know I will defend her honour and her safety with my own body?”

“Of course they know that,” Falkland said. “They know that such an attempt will mean war and that is obviously what Pym wants. He wants you to defend the Queen by force against the laws of England. Then he will have the right on his side and rally the people to him. Then he will destroy you as well as her.”

“You're very shrewd, my Lord,” Charles answered. “Take aim at what a man loves most and he will stand in front of it and make himself the target. So be it. This has been coming for many years, and I tried to avoid it by every means in my power. Now I have no scruples. In attacking my wife, who is blameless and absolutely sacred to me—they have relieved me of all responsibility for what must happen now.”

“If you succeed in seizing them,” Falkland said earnestly, “if you can prove them traitors and discredit them all, you can behead your enemies and cripple Parliament with the same blow. And now is the time to do it. London is against you, but most of England is sick to death of Pym and Parliamentary tyranny. They will support you, so will three quarters of the House of Lords, I swear to it! If you act quickly, you will be King again and there will be an end of all your troubles!”

“I will act quickly,” Charles promised. “Parry, my coat! And not one word of this must reach the Queen—I won't have her distressed.”

For the first time his voice shook.

If he arrested Pym and the others, Falkland thought he might succeed without a national conflict. In Charles's opinion he misjudged. He misjudged the temper of the bitter London crowds and the antagonism of the Puritans whose creed had widely infected even the educated and aristocratic classes. If he imprisoned and executed their leaders they would still not be leaderless, Charles did not believe that for a moment. It would still be war.

He turned to the silent Secretary of State.

“We will draw up a list of names this evening,” he said. “I will have Edward Herbert move the impeachment in the Lords tomorrow and I will go down and arrest them myself.”

Chapter 10

To the surprise of the Countess of Carlisle, the Queen suddenly decided to change her dress. She had dined with the King early that afternoon, and the Countess had noticed how tense and preoccupied he looked through the long formal meal. At the end he took Henrietta into his Privy Chamber without any attendants and they remained shut up alone for nearly an hour. Something had happened or was about to happen and the Countess could not discover what it was. She presumed it was detrimental to the King until she met the Queen outside his door and saw Henrietta suddenly transformed. She had been listless and irritable all that day, but when she came into the ante-chamber, the Countess saw that she was smiling and animated; there was a flush of excitement in her thin face and she turned to them all and said gaily, “Come, ladies, the sun is shining. We will go for a walk this afternoon.”

And then when they returned to her apartments she decided to change from the pale pink dress she wore, into a new gown, lately arrived from her favourite dressmaker in France. It was yellow satin, encrusted with pearls and green tourmalines, a rich and splendid dress which she had never had occasion to wear.

The Countess helped to undress her and while Henrietta stood in her petticoats, she said lightly, “You must be feeling better, Madam. You certainly look better than I've seen you for a month or more.”

Henrietta smiled; it was a dazzling smile full of triumph and it made Lucy Carlisle freeze with suspicion.

“Better? I never felt so well in my life.”

“Is that why you wish to wear your best gown?” Lucy questioned. “Is it a celebration, Madam?”

“It is indeed,” the Queen said. “Newport, fetch me some fresh slippers, I'm tired of these.”

Lady Newport went to the shoe closet and the Countess said gently, “If you're celebrating, Madam, won't you tell us what it is and let us join in it too?”

“Dear Lucy, if only I could …” Henrietta held her breath while the Countess and a tirewoman laced in the bright golden dress at the back. She longed to confide in her friend, she was so excited that she could hardly contain the news. When Charles told her what he was going to do that afternoon, she had thrown her arms round his neck and kissed him and told him to go down and pull the rogues out by the ears. All her doubts and frustrations were gone. At last, at last he had stopped waiting and temporizing and shown himself capable of the kind of action she would have taken in his place. She had always loved him and now her resolute spirit rejoiced in being able to admire him wholeheartedly.