Charles the King (2 page)

“Welcome to England, Madam. And forgive me for coming to meet you dressed like this. I was too anxious to see you to wait for ceremony.”

Henrietta smiled at him, and the eyes which had been swimming in petulant tears, sparkled and a dimple appeared in one cheek.

“I am not as I would have wished myself,” she said. “I had a special gown for you, Sire, and that speech which I fear I shall never make properly now. And I am not wearing stilt heels!'

To the horror of her ladies and the amusement of Charles, she lifted her skirts and showed her small feet in low silk shoes. He had been anxious that she should reach his shoulder; like most men of small or middle height, the King was sensitive; he wanted neither a giantess nor a dwarf, and someone must have repeated the remark to his bride. He blushed, and Henrietta decided that she liked him better every minute. For a moment neither of them spoke; they appraised each other with something close to the candour of children, the inexperienced bridegroom of twenty-five whose whole life had been a struggle against his own shyness and the physical delicacy which had robbed him of his childhood—and the proud, warm-natured, high-spirited girl who had been bartered in a marriage with a man she had never seen for the benefit of England and of France. She had expected a handsome Prince and in that at least she had not been disappointed. No one had bothered to inform her of his character or his tastes; he was a King and she was his wife, and would share his bed and his throne and bear his children. She would count herself supremely fortunate if she even liked him; love was a word used in letters and speeches, and it meant nothing. Nobody took such sentiments seriously. She would be faithful and obedient, provided that he asked nothing beyond the terms in her marriage treaty, and she would enjoy the full sum of the happiness allotted to Princesses on this earth. It had never occurred to her, or been suggested even as a joke, that Charles Stuart might fall in love with her or she might find herself in love with him.

After a moment Henrietta remembered her obligations, and, with an apology, she presented her ladies to the King in strict order of rank. Madame de St. George came first.

“My Principal Lady of the Bedchamber,” Henrietta announced, “and my very dear friend and mentor,” she added as a hint to Charles to be especially gracious. He ignored it; he gave the Frenchwoman his hand which she kissed and then turned away without speaking a word to her. He disliked her, and he never changed his first impressions.

“La Duchesse de Chevreuse, La Comtesse de Touillère, Madame de Lanton, Mademoiselle de Berrand.”

He received them one by one and did not find a single face he admired or a suggestion of a personality he could like. He addressed them in general; he was not going to be overawed by them, or allow them to take his wife away until he had finished speaking to her.

“Welcome to my Kingdom, ladies. I trust that you will be happy here and give your mistress all comfort and devotion, as I shall,” he said, turning to Henrietta. “Come and sit down with me for a few moments, Madam. I was sorry to hear you had such a vile journey.”

“It was a nightmare, Sire. The ship rolled and tossed until I felt sure we should all be drowned—indeed there were times on that crossing when I wished we might be, I was so sick!”

“It soon passes,” Charles said kindly. “The moment you disembark the sickness disappears; I'm not a good sailor either, Madam, so we will do our travelling on land in the future. Are you comfortably lodged?”

Henrietta hesitated; this was not the moment to complain. In spite of her youth she was sophisticated enough to know that her husband was favourably impressed by her, but she felt the disapproval of her ladies, all of whom had grumbled and protested at the conditions at the Castle and knew that she would be accused of cowardice and lack of pride if she evaded the question. Having made up her mind, she was inclined to speak it without any saving tact.

“My lodgings are terrible, Sire,” she said. “They are dark and cold, and I have a most terrible bed with a mattress like a board, and filthy hangings which squeaked in the night; I am sure there are bats in them. We were all too terrified to shake them out and look.”

Charles felt himself reddening. She had a bold and haughty little face, far too set and determined for a comparative child and his discomfort was increased by the satisfied expressions on the faces of her women.

“I am sorry,” he said stiffly. “I thought you occupied the State apartments; there must be a mistake.”

“So I thought,” Henrietta answered. “But it seems that is the name for them. I hope that my rooms in London will not be of the same kind.”

“You will find Whitehall Palace compares with any of your homes in France.”

He stood up and she curtsied; they kissed each other's cheeks with a coolness that delighted the jealous heart of Madame de St. George, and the Queen left the room with her attendants.

Charles followed after a few moments, going to his own apartments, where his valet, Parry, helped him change into a suit of red velvet with a wide collar of fine Belgian lace. Parry had been his servant since he was a boy; he was a gentle, understanding man who was devoted to the Prince. In all the years of his service, Charles had never once rebuked or punished him. Parry would have given his life for the King.

“The Duke of Buckingham is waiting, Sire.”

“Send him in,” Charles said. He felt weary and depressed; he had somehow mismanaged that important meeting with his wife. He had allowed himself to be annoyed by a childish lack of tact and good manners, instead of treating the complaint with indulgence. The Castle was gloomy, and she had probably been uncomfortable and homesick. Steenie would know how to put it right; he understood women.

A few moments later Buckingham stood in the doorway, dressed in green satin with an enormous plume in his hat; he looked like a splendid pagan god.

“Your Majesty! Behold your humble servant returned from France! Must I kneel or may I claim a friend's privilege and embrace you?”

Charles came to him and put his arm round his shoulder. In spite of his depression, he laughed. “You may be many things, Steenie, but you have never been anyone's humble servant! How are you, my dear friend … I'm so glad to see you, I've been as lonely as the devil while you were away.”

“And now I'm back,” Buckingham laughed. “With my mission accomplished and the bride delivered to her husband. How do you like her?”

Charles sat down and pointed to another chair for Buckingham. No other man was allowed to sit in his presence, irrespective of age or rank.

“She is much younger than you said,” he confessed. “When she saw me she mumbled a speech and then burst into a torrent of tears.”

“Nerves,” the Duke suggested. “All women are subject to them. And with respect, most husbands are treated to that on their wedding night. Does she not please you at all? She has beautiful eyes—didn't you notice them?”

“They're magnificent,” Charles said slowly. “She is far prettier than I expected. There's no fault to find with her looks at all. But she has a pert tongue which surprised me; you didn't mention that.”

“Another feminine failing,” the Duke grinned at him. “Alas, Sire, all women have tongues; it's the least useful part of their anatomy. She's spirited and she's apt to think the French created the earth, but she will learn, if you're firm with her.”

“Are you firm with your wife, Steenie?”

King James paid that much respect to the conventions; his favourites had all been allowed to marry if the bride had a good dowry and kept in the background.

“I don't think so,” Buckingham answered. “How could I be when she had so much to forgive—and still has, poor woman! No, Sire, I was never firm with women; I am not interested in moulding their characters. But you must shape Madam a little; believe me, she will love you all the better for it.”

He smiled at the King; he was amused and cynical but not unkind. Personally he thought the bride he had recommended was a spoilt little minx, too thin and unformed to be bed-worthy, with an insufferable sense of her own importance. He hoped that when Charles had recovered from his initial nervousness and inexperience he would have the sense to break her spirit. He would never have advised the marriage except that the Exchequer was dangerously low and she brought a dowry of 800,000 francs, and an alliance with France which would be useful in the war they were about to declare upon Spain.

Buckingham did not like Henrietta, and he knew that the feeling was mutual. He had chaffed her as if they were equals and then ignored her once the treaty was signed and abandoned himself to a violent pursuit of the Queen of France, the same red-haired beauty he and Charles had admired so much two years ago.

He was sitting at his ease now with his own sovereign, but in fact he had left France in the most unfriendly and inauspicious atmosphere, having almost involved the helpless Queen Anne in a scandal which brought her close to divorce and imprisonment at the command of her husband. Buckingham had scandalized everyone by making the proxy marriage and the negotiations leading to it the background for his own well-publicized love-affair with the French Queen, and the young girl who had become Queen of England had conceived a mortal hatred for him before she even sailed for her new home. Her enmity and the censure of her compatriots did not disturb the Duke. She had been bought, part of a settlement of money and a treaty; her purpose was to breed the King's children, and a few minutes of concentration at regular intervals could achieve this. He saw no reason to fear her and therefore he tried to revive Charles' enthusiasm.

“Don't worry about her, Sire,” he insisted. “Everything will turn out well between you; I have a feeling, here, in my heart, that you will be perfectly happy with her!”

“I must be,” Charles answered him. “And I feel that since I'm so much older than she, it will be my fault if we fail to love each other and be happy. I need happiness, Steenie; I'm not like you. I shall never go from bed to bed in search of it.”

Buckingham leant forward and shook his head.

“You say so now, Sire; but you may change your mind. The taste grows on most men.”

“Promiscuity will never grow on me,” the King said.

“Please God you will never feel the need of it,” the Duke answered. “When do you meet the Queen again?”

“We will dine together this evening. Then we go to Canterbury tomorrow, and I have arranged that the second marriage ceremony shall take place there at St. Augustine's. The following day we will proceed to London. I have decided to go by barge; the Plague has broken out in the City and it's unsafe to travel through the open streets. However disappointed she is with Dover, she cannot help being impressed by London.”

“She cannot help being impressed by
England
,” Buckingham said. He was becoming irritated by the King's anxiety over the opinions and feelings of a fifteen-year-old foreigner. The chill in which he had left France had wounded his vanity more than he would admit even to himself. His handsome face grew sullen at the memory. The man who had administered the bitterest snubs at the French Court was a priest who was also a Minister and the dour King Louis' only confidant. Armand du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu, was a cold, polite diplomat with a head of iron and a heart of vinegar. Reputed to have been perversely touched by the voluptuous beauty of the Queen who had inspired Buckingham to so much vulgarity and indiscretion, he had been rebuffed, and he had changed from the admirer into a mortal enemy, pledged to the maintenance of the virtue which had withstood him and to the utter ruin of the Queen's relations with her husband. He was dangerous and clever and Buckingham spoke of him bitterly to the King.

“Like all these Papist priests, Richelieu's a schemer,” he said. “And no friend to this country. He drove the devil's own bargain over the Queen's freedom of religion, and not, I assure you Sire, because he is religious!”

“The terms are not unreasonable,” Charles remarked. “You know very well that I am not a persecutor.”

“No, Sire, but the people and the Parliament are too suspicious of all Papists to allow them any tolerance. If the clauses in that marriage contract are made public, there'll be a most damnable outcry.”

Charles listened to him without answering. He had summoned his first Parliament within a few months of his accession and found them as intransigent as his father had often described. They had been gracious, the elected body of gentlemen, lawyers and nobles and squires, and had made speeches expressing their loyalty and devotion to their new King and the approval of the war he was about to declare against Spain. It was not a war which roused much enthusiasm in the King. His temperament inclined to peace; bloodshed and destruction did not excite Charles.

Parliament's idea was to wage the kind of war which the great Elizabeth Tudor had conducted so successfully against their old enemy. They wanted ships and troops to attack the Spanish ports and capture the treasure ships returning from the Indies. In this way the Catholic oppressors of Protestant Germany would be weakened, and the pockets of the godly in England enriched at their expense. The enthusiasts for war had a sentimental as well as a practical reason for demanding an end to neutrality. The King's sister, Princess Elizabeth, had married the Prince of the Palatinate and was in the centre of the religious conflict. Thanks to the imprudent ambitions of her husband, she had now neither throne nor resting place, and lived in exile in Holland with her three sons, urging her brother Charles to be true to his Protestant faith, and regain what the Prince Palatine's incompetence had lost. But the representative bodies at Westminster, who had been so clamorous in their demand for action, showed a sudden reticence when they were asked to vote the King enough money to equip the ships and the men who were to venture out so gloriously. He had never valued money in his life; he had a natural appreciation for everything that was artistic and rare and beautiful, but he felt nothing of the reverence for actual currency which was shown by many of his Puritan subjects. Charles had been born and educated as befitted a Prince; he was ignorant of other values and inclined to despise men who showed an ungentlemanly interest in trade. Without knowing that he did so, Charles had approached his Parliament with a total lack of sympathy and understanding of their motives or their scale of values. They had screamed for war and action against the Catholic Powers, and he was shocked and disgusted when they avoided their financial obligations. The sum voted was ridiculously small; he knew that Buckingham had fitted out ships and men with money borrowed from place-seekers and from his own income, and that he was sending out a badly-equipped, poorly-trained expedition against the Spaniards at Cadiz. If the Duke failed, the King had no doubt that some of those Members of the House of Commons who had cut him down to the last halfpenny, would be the first to blame the favourite rather than then own meanness. There were times when the new King longed for a full Treasury and a system of revenue which gave the Crown independence of that unnecessary and officious body. He had deliberately made concessions in his marriage treaty with the French which promised toleration to the English Catholics without informing Parliament or any of the Crown Ministers except Buckingham. War between one nation and another was not confused in his mind with the disembowelling of priests and laymen for the crime of practising their religion. Unlike his father, whose beliefs were dictated by policy, unlike most men of enlightened views at his own Court, Charles held his Protestant faith with passionate sincerity. He was unique in his ability to respect the opinions of others without sacrificing any tenet of his own.