The Blast That Tears the Skies (2012) (12 page)

The king and queen stepped onto the raised dais beneath the red canopy bearing the royal arms, sat on their two thrones, and at once the reception resumed its noisy course. It was hard to believe that not far beyond these walls, legions of malcontents were contending with a relentless pestilence to see which of them could overthrow the order represented in that room at that moment. Such, at least, was undoubtedly how Lord Arlington saw it; and to my discomfort, every time I glanced in the direction of that insidious figure, he seemed to be staring directly at me.

Eventually the Quintons could no longer avoid their duty, and made their way across the floor to pay our respects to the Countess of Ravensden. Louise had her back to us as we approached, but I thought I heard – or had I imagined it? – her words to the duchess and Brouncker: ‘…so we agree that all should be done to preserve him, come what may –’

Brouncker seemed to assent but then noticed my approach, placed his hand on the countess’s arm and nodded toward us. She turned, smiling radiantly.

I bowed. ‘Your Royal Highness. My Lady Ravensden. Mister Brouncker.’

Cornelia curtsied deeply to the Duchess, pointedly averting her eyes from the Countess Louise and her self-confessed paramour, Brounker. The chubby face of the erstwhile Anne Hyde smiled graciously. ‘Captain Quinton,’ she said, ‘Mistress Quinton. You are not yet gone down to join my husband’s fleet, sir?’

‘The ship was fitted out late, Madam. But I ache to be at sea under His Royal Highness’s command, and to play my part in his inevitable victory against our nation’s enemies.’

(Then, I could still utter such sentiments in the presence of royalty and even half-believe them. No longer.)

‘Matthew, how unfeeling!’ said Louise. ‘Poor Cornelia, to have her homeland denigrated so!’ My wife was between Scylla and Charybdis: she was perfectly reconciled to the notion of war between her country and mine, but she could hardly launch one of her habitual colourful verbal retorts against our countess in the presence of the heir to the throne’s wife. Louise continued, ‘Dearest Cornelia, in due course I must invite you and our dear good-mother to come and stay with me at Lyndbury. The country air will be so much healthier for you than London now that the plague takes hold, and you will not have to suffer the barbs of ignorant folk who denounce you on account of the land of your birth.’

Cornelia was rarely speechless; now, she was flabbergasted. ‘I … I thank you, My Lady,’ she said, her true feelings constrained once again by the presence of royalty. Brouncker’s expression of distaste suggested that he did not concur with his lover’s tolerance.

‘I, too, intend to join the fleet,’ said Brouncker loftily. ‘Of course, I shall have a place aboard the flagship, alongside His Royal Highness’ – a nod and a smile for the Duchess of York – ‘and pray that my sword will find gainful employ against the enemy.’

‘I am sure, sir, that your presence will be an adornment to the fleet,’ I said as sarcastically as I could. Brouncker and Mordaunt,
Bucking-ham
and Buckhurst, and several score more of them, all cluttering our great ships… God alone knew what would become of them, and of England, if the Dutch got close enough to engage such august sprigs of nobility in hand-to-hand combat.

There was an awkward silence. I got the distinct impression that all three of them wished us gone so that they could resume whatever scheming they were about; and in truth, I was glad to make my bow and depart before my good-sister could raise the uncomfortable subject of our recent conversation, thus forcing me to confess its existence to my wife.

‘To stay with
her
!’ gasped Cornelia as we returned to our friends. ‘In the castle she obtained by murdering her husband!
God in hemel
, I think I would rather suffer the plague!’

‘Perhaps we all shall,’ I said, sniffing the increasingly rancid air. ‘England’s finest begin to stink, my dear, and stench and sweat have ever been known to expedite the pestilence. Perhaps it is all a cunning French plot – gather all our rulers in one room and keep them waiting so long for the Most Christian’s ambassadors that contagion takes hold and wipes them all out.’

Indeed, more and more eyes were glancing ever more frequently toward the great doors at the Charing Cross end of the Banqueting House; doors which resolutely failed to open. More and more half-overheard conversations seemed to contain the word ‘French’, preceded by such terms as ‘tardy’, ‘ignorant’, or ‘fucking’.

At length, even the Comte d’Andelys joined the general humour. ‘My countrymen are unduly late,’ he said in annoyance. ‘I expect the oaf Verneuil has been asleep again.’

‘Verneuil?’ I enquired.

‘The nominal head of our embassy – the Duc de Verneuil. One of the many bastards of Henri Quatre, which of course makes him a sort of uncle to your king. He will be a useful reminder to Charles Stuart of the most obvious tendency he has inherited from his French grandfather, and thus of the consequences of his indiscriminate bedding of Castlemaine and all the rest. The little by-blows all grow up, and have to be given titles, and incomes, and estates, and wives, and so on. Damnably expensive business, bastardy.’ Roger cast another appreciative eye over the lithe form of the king’s mistress. ‘Like so many of our
noblesse de France
, and no doubt like the products of your king’s loins, the great
duc
is decorative but wholly useless. Take him hunting by day, pour wine into him by night, and he will consider the embassy to have been a great success. His august presence will also divert attention from the other ambassador, Courtin – now he’s the man who’ll do all the work. Hard-nosed little cur. Parisian lawyer, the sort who’d convince you his mother was the Tsar of Muscovy if the fee was right.’ Roger stifled a yawn. ‘Ah, at last. Behold, France comes, bringing peace and harmony in its wake – as long as you do what King Louis wants, of course, else we shall rape your women and pillage your land relentlessly.’

Another flourish of trumpets heralded the entrance of the French embassy – and a surprise that drew gasps from several in the throng. For the Duc de Verneuil did not stand alone in the doorway of the Banqueting House. At his side was a minute woman, well into her fifties, clad entirely in black, her garb of choice these last fifteen years. No-one had ever expected to see the tiny woman – Verneuil’s
half-sister
– here, in this building of all the buildings in England; for it was on a scaffold outside one of its windows that her husband’s head was cut off. But it was known that she was about to leave England forever to return to her native France, there to face only death and interment with her ancestors in the vault of Saint Denis. Perhaps at last the time had come to close the most terrible chapter in the history of Henrietta Maria, Queen Mother of England.

As sister and brother advanced into the hall, their respective retinues fell in behind them; and now it was my turn to feel the sudden frisson of shock and confusion that Charles Stuart must have felt a moment earlier.

For at the head of Henrietta Maria’s train was her old friend and closest confidante during her earliest days in England.

My mother.

* * *

The Banqueting House was ever hotter, ever more fevered. Rivulets of sweat ran down the necks of embarrassed ladies; men mopped their brows continuously and cursed the new fashion for periwigs. Fevered in another sense, too, for such occasions were ever the stage for rumours to be traded, liaisons to be made and plots to be hatched. As our little party circulated slowly through the crowded, noisy room, paying respects to and exchanging pleasantries with Sir This and Milady That, it was possible to conceive all sorts of fancies concerning what might or might not be going on around us. Lord Arlington was engaged in a close, secretive conversation with Lady Castlemaine: what confidences about our sovereign lord might they be exchanging, pray? And there was our own Countess of Ravensden, now deep in discourse with the French ambassador, Courtin. Roger had been precise in his description of the man, who differed physically from Arlington in almost every way and yet somehow gave off the same aura of power and menace. My eyes kept straying in that direction, towards the Lady Louise and her paymaster, and as I watched, I noticed something strange indeed. My good-sister had always appeared to me as confident, even arrogant; indeed, that was how she had been such a short time before, during our brief audience with the Duchess of York. Yet whatever the Frenchman was saying to her was having a marked effect upon the Countess of Ravensden. Her unheard responses to Courtin’s words seemed ever more urgent. Her eyes darted toward the king, then toward me, although she seemed to stare through me as though I were invisible. Her expression, usually so serene, so controlled, was imploring and fearful.

Consumed entirely by my attention to the countess and the French ambassador, I missed the fact that all those around me were suddenly hushed. Cornelia nudged me, and I turned abruptly –

To look down.

And then down again.

Cornelia was already deep into her curtsey, Roger and Kit both bowing, as were all the men around us. For directly in front of me was the tiny, raven-like form of Queen Henrietta Maria, my mother by her side.

Belatedly, I bowed.

‘Matthew,’ the Queen Mother said in her heavy French accent, extending her hand for me to kiss it, ‘it has been too long since I saw you last. Your mother tells me you have become quite the seaman.’

‘I – I endeavour to serve His Majesty,’ I stammered in French. My mother scowled reprovingly; Quintons should answer royalty with confidence, she often opined, for were we not noble when they were merely butlers to some obscure Scots chieftain?

‘Your loyalty is commendable indeed, Captain, especially as I am told my son is deeply offended with you.’ The minute face was inscrutable. ‘But if kings forsake thee, queens shall not. I remember and honour the sacrifice of your father in the cause of my late husband. Above all, I still treasure the words you spoke to me at our last meeting, Matthew, and I will not forget that kindness. Be assured of it.’

‘Your Majesty is most kind.’

My thoughts ran back to my previous meeting with the Queen Mother, some three years before, late at night in the ornate and eerie Catholic chapel she had installed in Somerset House: the last vestige of an ancient faith in England, and the faith to which a doting French grandmother had once attempted to convert the young Matthew Quinton. There, illuminated by only a very few candles and in an atmosphere heavy with incense, she had asked me to describe the death of General Colin Campbell of Glenrannoch, whom I had encountered during my expedition to suppress rebellion in the Western Isles of Scotland; the same Campbell whose doings now seemed to be of interest to my good-sister, the Countess Louise.

‘I was not close by, Majesty. The castle was blown up by gunpowder while he was within.’ I had said what I thought she would wish to hear: ‘He must have died at once. There can have been little suffering.’

She had shaken her head. ‘A good death in one sense,’ she replied. ‘But not in another. Colin should have perished in glory on a battlefield, as did your own noble father, not killed by some skulking assassin and a slow fuse.’ She sighed. ‘But you came to know him, Matthew? And … did he speak of the time after my first coming to England?’

This was dangerous ground – the most dangerous of all. ‘He … he endeavoured to explain why he had been banished from the court, Majesty. For being – for being –’
For being your lover, Majesty
; but one cannot say such things to the divinely anointed.

The Queen Mother saw my dilemma. Her expression was curious; an admixture of grief and elation. ‘I understand, Matthew. And your mother? He talked of her part in those days?’

‘Not – not directly, Majesty.’

I do not know if she believed me; I suspect that she did not. But I remember her next words as though she were standing next to me now, this tiny Frenchwoman who had seen and made so much of England’s tragic recent history. ‘It is best forgotten, Matthew. All of it. We were all young, and the young think they know so much. But in truth, we were merely slaves to boundless folly. And folly has a habit of returning year upon year to revisit those who perpetrate it. Ah, poor Matthew. I pray that you, who are young now, do not have cause to regret the folly of those who were young then.’

Thus had spoken this tiny, extraordinary woman. Three years later at the Banqueting House, her attention had turned from me to her compatriot the Comte d’Andelys, who was lavishing upon her the sort of extravagant flatteries that are considered acceptable by our Gallic cousins. At length she turned back to me, inclining her little head towards Kit as she did so.

‘Matthew, pray name this splendid young warrior to me.’

‘Majesty, I name Christopher Farrell, second lieutenant of the king’s ship
Merhonour
in the present expedition. I owe Lieutenant Farrell my life.’

‘Indeed? Then we, too, are grateful to you, Lieutenant.’ The Queen Mother extended her dainty hand. Kit, flummoxed at being in the presence of the nearly divine, stooped and kissed it clumsily. Then Henrietta Maria looked at me curiously. ‘Tell me, Matthew – I take it your current disfavour with my son means that this brave young man has not been presented?’

‘Alas not, Majesty.’ The consequences for others of my gross lèse-majesté were a burden I did not bear lightly.

The Queen Mother looked knowingly at my mother, then at me. ‘Then that is an omission we shall remedy immediately. Come, Lieutenant –
I
shall present you to my son, the king.’

I thought for a moment that Kit Farrell, as brave and phlegmatic a man as ever lived, was about to faint. But as he collected himself and essayed some mumbled thanks, I became aware of movement to my right … of the rustle of billowing satin, caught out of the corner of the eye…

Louise, Countess of Ravensden, was hastening towards us, perhaps calculating that if the Quintons were being favoured by Majesty then she, as the wife of the head of the family, should be at the heart of matters. Or perhaps her interest in the mysterious youthful follies to which the Queen Mother had alluded gave her quite another reason for seeking the royal presence. But before she could reach us, Henrietta Maria frowned.