The French Mistress (54 page)

When at last he decided to retire, I walked with him from my rooms to his, his gentlemen keeping a discreet distance. We paused at his doorway, as we’d done so many times before, and I slipped my arms around his waist to bid him good night.

“My dear life,” he said. “My only Fubs, what would I be without you, eh?”

He kissed me, and I kissed him, and afterward I held him close, my cheek pressed against the wool of his coat so I could hear the steady beat of his heart. I do not know why I lingered like that, or why, when at last I separated from him, I reached up to lay my hand against his cheek.

“Good night, dear sir,” I said, my eyes filling with tears. “Rest well, my love.”

“Why tears for a good night?” he asked, teasing me gently. “I vow you’ve shed enough tears over me to water any forest.”

I shook my head. “Oh, sir, you know how I am,” I said, wiping my eyes. “I cannot help myself, and never have.”

“I wouldn’t wish you otherwise, Louise.” He kissed me again, on my forehead. Then he opened the door to his chamber and a scurry of welcoming dogs, and I returned to my rooms and my other guests.

And that was all.

 

 

It was the thumping on my door that roused me, the frantic gentleman’s voice that could only mean ill tidings. By the time Bette brought him to my bedchamber, I was already nearly dressed.

“The king is taken gravely ill,” the man said, his face ghostly by the light of the candlestick. “You must come at once.”

Without waiting for him to guide me, I ran ahead to Charles’s bedchamber, knowing the way perfectly well. Already a ring of gentlemen and physicians was gathered around him, and already I could tell the worst. The king lay still, far too still for him, his face pale and sweating and his gaze fixed on the canopy overhead.

At once I crouched beside his bed, and was rewarded with a flicker of recognition. Then I was hurried aside by the doctors, intent on doing what doctors do.

Over the next days and nights, I saw the king be given a score of different medicines and treatments, some that seemed so painful that I could not believe he could withstand them. Fourteen doctors tended him, yet not one had any real notion of what to do. The king’s head was shaved, and he was bled repeatedly, once even from his jugular vein as a final measure of desperation.

Nothing helped. Though there were times when he’d rally enough to give us hope, I knew in my heart he was leaving us. Desperate to remain in his dear company as long as I could, I performed every service a wife could, chafing his hands and offering whispers of comfort, and though I wept freely, no one now would fault me for it. The queen was so distraught that when she would appear, she needed to be carried from the room, to be bled herself to ease her hysteria. Most touching of all was my old rival Mrs. Gwyn: for from being ever a commoner, she was forbidden to enter the deathbed chamber, and kept by guards outside the king’s room. Instead she was left to crouch in the hall, sobbing at the same door that would never open for her.

As a duchess, I stayed with the king, believing it my rightful place, until at last his royal family was assembled and brought to say farewell. I stepped back, and through my tears watched as he gave a final blessing to our son, Richmond, now a sturdy young gentleman of twelve years, his last and dearest son. Richmond bent to kiss his father’s cheek, and then turned toward me, his handsome face contorted with suffering. With his tears streaming, he bowed to me with a courtliness that painfully reminded me of his father, offered me his arm, and led me from the room. Young as he was, he understood why it was his duty to do so, and I did as well. No matter how I grieved for Charles, he remained the king, and I did not belong amidst the final royal farewells.

Yet throughout I noticed Charles had steadfastly refused to be given his last rites as an Anglican, claiming that it was too soon or that he was not ready. I remembered back to another such terrible scene, the death of his sister, Henriette, my dear Madame, and I recalled the comfort she’d found in the final ceremonies of the Catholic Church. Could it be that at last Charles wished it, too? I remembered what he’d told me at Windsor, when he’d been so ill with the fever, and how he’d believed that God had been directing him toward the True Church by saving him through Jesuit’s bark. Now that the end was undeniably near, could he truly have decided to preserve his soul in the rightful way?

I crept back to his chamber, determined to do this final duty. Only the Duke of York remained by his brother’s side, and I beckoned for him to join me out of Charles’s hearing.

“Lady Portsmouth,” he said through his own tears when he saw me. “You’ve returned.”

“Please, Your Grace, I must beg your indulgence,” I said. “It is my belief that His Majesty wishes to die in our faith. I beseech you, if you can, ask him. Ask him now!”

He looked at me sharply. “You are sure of this?”

I nodded, and he returned to his brother’s bedside, speaking to him in an earnest whisper I could not hear. It pained me that I could not ask so tender a question of Charles myself, but I knew the awful significance of it, and I knew, too, that as a Frenchwoman, my motives would be questioned. For Charles’s sake, it was his brother and heir who must ask, and when I heard Charles’s voice, stronger than it had been in days, make the final reply—“With all my heart”—I knew I’d followed both my duty and my love.

With a startling efficiency, the one English priest in Whitehall was produced, an elderly gentleman who had known Charles when he was still a wandering prince. Charles greeted Father Huddleston with a cry of joy, and as the old priest murmured the words of conversion, followed by the last rites, I sank to my knees at the foot of the bed and prayed with him, as did the duke. Finally Father Huddleston placed his crucifix into Charles’s hands and wrapped a rosary around them to hold it steady, and said the final prayers for his salvation. With that it was done, and I rose unsteadily to my feet. Charles’s eyes were closed, not in pain, but at rest, and I’d never seen such peace on his face. Long ago he’d told me that I, above all others, brought him peace. Now, at last, I truly had.

“Farewell, my love,” I whispered. “Farewell, my dearest friend.”

I kissed him one last time, his lips already chill beneath mine, and retreated to my rooms. I’d no place as death finally claimed him: that belonged to his wife, his brother, his children. I was no more than his mistress, and a French one at that.

But in the end, I’d gained all I could wish. I’d saved his soul for all eternity, and I’d won his heart for my own.

And how could ever I wish for more?

Author’s Note

Louise de Keroualle may have been the most hated woman in seventeenth-century England. Every pamphlet, ballad, and article from her time blasts her as avaricious, conniving, and deceitful, and she was publicly denounced from pulpits and Parliament alike. She was a Roman Catholic and French, never a good combination to most Englishmen, and she also was quite openly on the payroll of Louis XIV even as she shared Charles II’s bed. Perhaps Lady Sunderland (not exactly an impartial witness) best sums up the general feeling toward Louise by declaring “so damned a jade as this would sell us without hesitation for fifty guineas.”

Yet despite this, Charles clearly loved her. She represented French sophistication and elegance, and a quiet calm in the midst of his raucous Court. Unlike his other mistresses, she was entirely faithful to him, and he was her only lover. While others bemoaned her quick tears and stiff formality, he focused on her soft, accented voice, speaking gently to him much as his French mother once had done. Over and over he defended and protected her, even as she became a growing political liability and his friends and ministers begged him to send her packing. He granted her more honors and more gifts than all of his other mistresses combined, and the dukedom of Lennox and Richmond that he created for their son remains today one of the royal line, and one of the wealthiest in Britain. Louise was the mistress who tended Charles on his deathbed, the one Charles recommended most specifically to his brother James’s care, and the one who, quite possibly, made sure that he died a Roman Catholic.

“I have always loved her,” Charles said among his last words, “and I die loving her.” From a man who had loved so widely, surely that declaration must have brought Louise considerable comfort.

Charles died in his fifty-fifth year, most likely of the effects of chronic kidney disease, though no one now knows for certain. Those fourteen doctors crowded into his bedchamber likely did more to hasten his death than ease it. Fittingly for the king known as the “Merrie Monarch,” he was buried on Valentine’s Day, 1685. By order of the Lord Chamberlain, the duchess of Portsmouth, the duchess of Cleveland, and Nell Gwyn were permitted to wear black mourning in Charles’s honor, but were not allowed to put their households into full mourning: the fine distinction between sleeping with royalty and being married to it. Meanwhile, the entire country plunged into heartfelt mourning. Despite the many crises of his reign, Charles had remained immensely popular with his people, and was much lamented when he died.

Perhaps part of their sorrow was knowing who their next king would be. James II swiftly used up every bit of goodwill that his much-loved brother had left behind with a reign that was marked by dictatorial ill management, egotism, and a determined effort to force England to share his Catholicism. Charles had predicted that James, due to his “turbulent and excessive nature,” would not last four years on the throne. That was almost exactly how long it took before the English people had had enough of James and, in the bloodless Glorious Revolution of 1688, sent him into exile in favor of the Protestant couple of William of Orange and James’s elder daughter, Mary.

James’s rule was also blackened by his ruthless treatment of Charles’s feckless illegitimate son, James, Duke of Monmouth. Under an Anglican banner, Monmouth led a poorly organized rebellion against his uncle in 1686. James crushed the rebellion and its lower-class supporters with all the force of the English army, and after ignoring his nephew’s pleas for mercy, insisted on his execution.

Louise was devastated by Charles’s death. Not only had she lost the one love of her life, but also the center of her world. Overnight, she ceased to be important. James quickly made it clear that her days as a political power and a royal favorite were finished, and that she’d have no place in the diplomacy of his Court. She was only thirty-three when Charles died and still exceptionally beautiful, but in many ways her life was done. She left England in 1685 with her thirteen-year-old son, Lord Richmond, her jewels, several pensions, and a small fortune in gold that had been left her by Charles. It took several ships to carry all the possessions she’d acquired to fill those forty rooms in Whitehall Palace, and the English people were heartily glad to wave her farewell.

Louise lived the rest of her life in France, falling in and out of favor with Louis XIV and losing great amounts of her fortune to gaming. She never married, and the taboret of a
duchesse
that she’d so coveted brought her little happiness. The French nobility that she’d longed to impress had no use for her, and she had few friends. Finally she retreated to the estates at Aubigny that were part of her duchy, and dedicated herself to good works and prayer. Shortly before her death, she was introduced to Voltaire, who marveled at her still-impressive beauty. She died in 1734 at the considerable age of eighty-five, having survived Charles by fifty years.

Charles Lennox, Duke of Richmond, spent his childhood torn between the wishes of his two exceptional parents. He was a favorite among Charles’s numerous sons, and delighted his royal father by riding in his first race at Newmarket at the tender age of eleven. Louise, on the other hand, tried hard to mold him into a model French gentleman with beautiful manners, which was not nearly as much fun. Richmond was raised a Protestant, as were all of the king’s children, though Louise made sure he converted to Catholicism after the two of them returned to France. Louise hoped the young duke would find favor at the French Court, but he preferred England, and as soon as William of Orange had displaced his uncle James, Richmond swiftly returned to London. He once again became an Anglican, wed an English beauty, and took his seat in the House of Lords. He liked to gamble, drink, and ride, and despite his enormous wealth, he found it difficult to keep within his income. Having sired three children, including the son necessary to continue his title, he died before his mother in 1723.

The fortunes of the rest of Louise’s acquaintances were mixed. Charles’s long-suffering queen, Catherine of Braganza, had earned the respect and regard of the English, and continued to live in England as a venerable Dowager Queen until 1692, before finally returning to Portugal, where she died in 1705. Nell Gwyn suffered a paralyzing stroke soon after Charles’s death, and died deeply in debt in 1687 at only thirty-seven. Her close friend and Louise’s gadfly, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, fared even worse, succumbing at thirty-three in 1680 to the effects of chronic alcoholism and syphilis. By comparison, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, lived far longer than his self-indulgent life should have merited, dying in the country in 1687 at fifty-nine.

After more than three hundred years, it’s very hard to find traces of Louise as the woman Charles must have adored. Much of her problem is that while she had allies at the English Court, she had almost no friends beyond Charles, and none who defended her for posterity. The same propaganda that worked so hard to defame her during her life has continued successfully long afterward. Some of the vilest invented slanders have been repeated and reprinted so many times that casual historians now often present them as fact, even if other, more trustworthy evidence refutes it. Where Louise is concerned, the malevolent spirit of Titus Oates never quite died.