Charles the King (6 page)

He stood up suddenly.

“Something must be done. I can't hurt her, Steenie, I can't bring myself to do the things you talk about—I can't take by force what I only want from love and I can't threaten her with punishments I'll never carry out. So what am I to do? Tell me, in God's name?”

Buckingham smiled. Charles was still sick with love, so soft at the core with his emotion for her that he couldn't come to his senses and pummel the little brat until she shrieked for mercy. And this was just as well because the ways of women were inscrutable, and tougher shrews than this petulant minx had fawned on the men who tamed them. He did not want Henrietta to fawn. He wanted her to spit defiance and weep tears of homesickness and woe until she had killed her husband's love completely and driven him to cool his physical thirst at a less dangerous well.

“You could always take a mistress, Sire. That is one alternative to suing at Her Majesty's door. But before you do anything, dismiss her suite. There are over four hundred of these damned French parasites living at Whitehall alone. Without their support she might listen to reason, and I'll be your spokesman if you like.”

If Charles followed his advice, she would never forgive him. And he, Buckingham, would be safe; he would remain the favourite, privileged and inviolate in the King's confidence. And with such a domestic life and such an experience behind him, Charles would be unlikely to remove that trust in favour of another woman. And if an embassy went to France to explain the King's action, then he would be the leader. Having made his plans to blight Charles's chance of happiness, he allowed his mind to stray to his unfinished courtship of the Queen of France, whom he had sworn to see again even at the cost of war. He actually laughed, he was in such a good humour at the neatness of the plot. From the humiliation and ruin of Henrietta Maria whom he hated and the destruction of her life with her husband, the fulfilment of his own desires must surely follow. It never occurred to him that if he saw the Queen of France again, her virtue would hold out against him.

“I will wait until my Coronation. One more month, and then I will do whatever must be done. I cannot go on in this way much longer.”

It was the twelfth of January, the old feast of Candlemas, and on this the morning of the Coronation, Charles knelt alone in the Chapel at Whitehall Palace. There were two tall wax candles burning on the altar before a golden crucifix, and the sun shone outside, streaming through the mellow stained glass high above his head, patterning the floor with the gorgeous reds and blues of the windows. The chapel was very quiet; the noise of the crowds did not reach him; he might have been many miles away from the life and activity of his sprawling Palace, filled with courtiers and officials, and he had gone to the Chapel alone early that morning to spend some time in prayer, like a knight keeping vigil before he received his accolade. He had been King for almost a year, but in his heart Charles felt that the sanctity of Kingship had yet to be bestowed upon him. That moment was to come in the Abbey this morning, when he would be anointed with the holy oil and the Crown of the Confessor placed on his head. He had worn it already in a strange defiance of all precedent when he opened his first Parliament. He was the King and the Crown was only a symbol of the inherent sanctity of his position; the sacramental anointing, the taking of his kingly vows, these were the confirmation of his birthright, the seal put upon sovereigns by God who had appointed them His deputies to rule over men. He believed this. He believed that his degenerate father, slobbering and drunken and perverted, was yet touched with the finger of Almighty power by this mysterious selection. Nothing a King did or was could wash away that solemn oil, or reduce him to the level of other men, however worthy and even superior they might be to the living embodiment of sovereign power. He knelt with his head bowed, his heart and mind concentrated in pure prayer, prayer untrammelled by thoughts of outside things, by worry over the arrangements or the expense which he could ill-afford or even by the anguish of going to his Coronation without his wife beside him. Henrietta would not attend a Protestant service. Obstinate, hostile and irresponsible to the last, she had inflicted this deep wound upon his feelings, but at that moment as he knelt before the altar of his Church there was no thought of her in his mind. He was alone with his God and his responsibilities, alone in the solitude of his extraordinary destiny, a man on his knees to the Supreme Authority, as men would kneel to him all through his life. He prayed for wisdom and for a sense of mercy; in his natural humility he also prayed for strength to govern worthily and to protect the interests of the nation which God had placed under his care. He had put aside his own unhappiness, his own doubts, even his own desires, and he made an almost Christ-like surrender of himself to the demands of his destiny as King.

He had been born for this day, chosen to survive his ailing childhood, to outlive the splendid elder brother who had seemed born to be King, because God had intended him to reign. God, not the Archbishop of Canterbury or the bloodline of the Stuarts or the wishes of the people, God alone had given him the Crown of England and he was responsible to Him for the power and the use he made of it. It was a terrible accounting, a thing unknown to ordinary men, even to those ordained in Holy Orders, for there was no power as close to the Almighty as the power of Kingship.

He had refused the royal purple customary at a Coronation; he wore white, the colour of purity and sacrifice, the symbol of his humility before his only Judge. He was the King, protector of his people, interpreter of their rights and laws, father and guide to all his subjects, champion of the Church established by his predecessors. And to that Church he came for comfort and for refuge, to pray and recollect himself in peace.

At last he rose from his knees and walked slowly back into the main Palace buildings. He went to his own rooms where his gentlemen and nobles were waiting, and one hour later, riding through streets lined with a cheering crowd of people, Charles passed under the windows of his wife's apartments on his way to the Abbey. He did not look up, and though she watched behind the curtains, Henrietta did not show herself or wave. For a moment her heart softened as she saw the lonely, upright figure in the coach. He looked so withdrawn, almost sad, a single man whose weaknesses she had already come to know so well, a shy, uncertain man in many things, travelling to his solemn Coronation, and her eyes filled with tears when she remembered how he had described its meaning for him and begged her to come with him. Spite and the advice of the people she loved and who hated him, had made her refuse, taking refuge in a bigotry which had little to do with real religious feeling. He had not insisted; he had looked at her with an expression of such pain and disillusion that for a moment she was frightened, then he turned away and left her. Everyone else discussed it, and she felt the hostility of the English nobles who considered her attitude a deadly insult to the King and to the whole country, but after that evening Charles had never mentioned it again. She glanced at the skies which had been bright and sunny and were now clouding over with banks of rain. The superstition in her Italian blood stirred at the ill-omen. He should have worn the Royal purple; white was unlucky. White was the colour of mourning.

“I should come away from the window, Madam.”

She turned to the Duchesse de Chevreuse and saw the disapproval on her face. She alone had advised the Queen to go to the Abbey with her husband and at least sit in the enclosure prepared for her, where she could have seen the service without taking part in it.

“Do not let the people see you, it will only aggrevate their feelings.”

“I care nothing for their feelings,” Henrietta retorted. “I care nothing for anyone or anything in this horrible country—I only wish there was some way I could go home!”

“As things are with you and the King, Madam, that wish may soon be granted.”

The Duchesse curtsied and stood back to let the Queen pass. She pulled the window curtains and joined the other ladies who were sewing by the fireplace. She had a devoted husband who had been driven to distraction by her love affairs and her political meddling, but she understood men and the extent to which their patience and their pride could be attacked with safety. The Queen had overreached herself this time. She had quarrelled with Charles, flouted his orders, rebuffed his advances and presumed upon his love and his desire for reconciliation to behave like a spoilt, unfeeling child. But now she had affronted his kingdom and his people, and the Duchesse felt that this was an insult he would not forgive. She felt no longer interested in Henrietta and she would not try and give her good advice when it was always disregarded. She took up her embroidery and wondered how soon she could return to France.

Two months earlier an English expedition under the command of Sir Edward Cecil, seconded by the Earl of Essex, sailed for a rendezvous with a Dutch fleet and set out to attack Cadiz and capture the Spanish treasure-ship which was on its way back from the Indies. Crippled by lack of funds, forced into a hasty embarkation before the levies had been given more than rudimentary training in drill and the use of their arms, the attempt failed miserably. The fleet abandoned Cadiz, losing the treasure ship which sailed round them to safety.

In London, Charles heard the news of the failure of his first venture in war, and the sorry tale of disobedience, indifference and lack of fighting spirit among the troops was soon spreading over London. He sat with Buckingham in his privy Chamber at Whitehall. It was a spacious room with a lovely view over the river Thames; the King sometimes sat for an hour or more watching the traffic of boats passing up and down the great commercial waterway into the City. He loved the river and he particularly loved Whitehall, set in acres of parklands which were stocked with birds and every kind of flowering shrub. The walls of the room were hung with magnificent Flemish tapestries, and he had banished the heavy Elizabethan furniture and replaced it with graceful walnut cabinets, designed by the new Court craftsmen, and tall-backed, slender chairs, cushioned in velvet and brocade. It was a sumptuous room, typical of the fine artistic taste of the man who spent so much of his time in it and had chosen every item himself. He had so often regretted that Henrietta never shared it with him, never sat by the window and watched the busy river boats and the teeming life of his capital passing below them on the tide.

One of his agents in Holland, introduced by his sister the Queen of the Palatinate, had sent him a painting by one of the Italian masters. The Virgin and St. John was one of the loveliest of all Veronese's religious studies and it hung like a jewel upon the wall. The dark, sweet face of the Madonna gazed at him, and he turned away abruptly. The beautiful eyes, full of light and expression, reminded him of Henrietta.

He looked at Buckingham.

“We are disgraced,” he said. “We send a fleet to join the Dutch and the Dutch do what fighting there is while our soldiers run away and their commanders bicker like dogs and come home empty-handed!”

“Sire, you know the cause of it, as well as I do,” Buckingham answered. The disgrace of the expedition was already reflecting upon him, and for once in his life he did not deserve the blame.

“Thanks to Parliament's meanness, the fleet was badly provisioned, the ships were not fitted out as they should have been, and the men were the rag tags of the docks and gutters, ready to sign on for anything that promised money. The first sight of bloodshed and the smell of powder and they ran like the scum they were! That is the truth Sire, if any man can be found brave enough to tell it.”

Charles looked at him. “I can,” he said. “I can tell my Commons and your critics that the fault is not yours, not even the commanders. The fault is the parsimony of men whose hearts are in their pockets! With money we could have sent a proper fleet, properly manned! I shall tell them so!”

“Wait, Sire,” Buckingham interposed. “There's no sense in making enemies in Parliament; I remember that your father used to say they were a cursed nuisance but it was as well to be on good terms with them in case they had to be summoned in a hurry.”

Charles turned away impatiently.

“It is their duty to be on good terms with
me
, Steenie, and I have no intention of pandering to them as my father did.”

“King James was wise,” the Duke began.

“The Wisest Fool in Christendom,” the King said bitterly. “I know; I heard what people called him when his back was turned. What is Parliament? A gathering of members elected for the purpose of assisting the King to govern. Their assistance to me so far has been a refusal to grant enough money to prosecute a war which they demanded and the passing of a Bill which limits my right to the Customs revenue for
one year
instead of for life. That was a precedent which should have warned me of their real attitude towards the Sovereignty of the Crown.”

The total collected from the Customs had always been voted to the King as a matter of course. Tonnage and poundage was the chief means of Royal income, the only independent source of revenue open to the Crown, and without it the sovereign must suffer constant financial embarrassment. The King's personal wealth had steadily diminished since the Reformation, and Charles was in debt as a consequence of the extravagance of Buckingham and his predecessors, and even the money allotted to him by Parliament was whittled away in the process of collection which permitted every intermediary to take a percentage for himself. The whole system was antiquated and corrupt; the City Guilds and the families who had become millionaires through the Reformation controlled the economic wealth of the country, and their representatives were sitting in the House of Commons, doling out a beggarly allowance to the King for the maintenance of every department of his Government. Money is power, and the Commons were no longer a submissive assembly, easily overawed by a peremptory command from their Prince.