The King's Mistress (32 page)

Jane felt the tears start to her eyes, and Mademoiselle pulled a silk handkerchief from her sleeve and handed it to Jane before continuing.

“
Ma chère,
you will only make things harder for yourself if you expect him to be true to you. He is a man; he is a king; he is alone and in despair.”

Jane sniffled into the bit of blue silk, feeling silly. How foolish she had been to think that he waited for her, denying himself the company of others. Out of his sight, she had been out of his mind.

“Forgive me for asking, mademoiselle, but you do not have much experience with men, I think?”

“No,” Jane murmured, but thinking what a world of experience she had accumulated in the past four months.

“And you gave him your heart. Natural, under the circumstances. But you must also protect yourself. Do not give him all, as he cannot give the same to you.”

A
T SUPPER THAT EVENING JANE WORE A GOWN OF PLUM-COLOURED
silk, the gift of Mademoiselle d’Épernon, and blushed happily at the compliments she received. It had been so long since she had felt pretty and it was gratifying to see appreciation and desire in Charles’s eyes. After supper she visited with Princess Elizabeth, who brought forth a dozen or so books, begging her to borrow whatever she wanted. Jane glanced with interest at the opening pages of Descartes’ last work,
Passions of the Soul
, with its dedication to the princess.

“‘Passions,’” she translated out loud, “‘are perceptions or sensations or excitations of the soul which are caused, maintained, and strengthened by some movement of the animal spirits, which move the body in all the different ways in which it can be moved.’”

“I hope you will read Monsieur Descartes and tell me what you think.” Princess Elizabeth smiled. “I do so miss my discussions with him. I think my royal cousin Charles is taken by the merit in his philosophies as well, though he baits me by pretending to incline more to Thomas Hobbes and this
Leviathan
he has just published. Hobbes was his tutor, you know.”

Jane felt entirely at home with Princess Elizabeth, who was clearly accustomed to speaking her mind and being taken seriously, even in the company of learned men.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met another lady who so shared my passion for knowledge,” Jane said. “I had the benefit of my brother’s tutor, as we were so close in age, but that is unusual, at least in England, I think.”

“I have been extremely fortunate in that regard. When I was a little child, shortly after my father was deposed as King of Bohemia, I was sent to my grandmother in Berlin. She thought it very proper that young ladies should give serious thought to serious subjects. And later, in Leiden, I received a very complete education. My sisters called me ‘La Grecque’ because of my fondness for the classical languages, and though my mother, too, values learning, I am sure she has frequently despaired that I exhibited more interest in books than in young men. But books, in my experience, rarely disappoint, and young men are so very apt to do so.”

Jane laughed. “I had never thought of it in those terms, but you are right.”

She was feeling quite at home with Princess Elizabeth, and asked a question that had been burning in her mind since she had glimpsed Charles speaking to a dark-haired young woman with a little boy a few days earlier.

“I have heard whispers ever since I arrived about this Lucy Walter. She is the mistress of Lord Taaffe, I gather. But—forgive me if I seem to pry—it seems there is some connection to His Majesty as well.”

Princess Elizabeth sighed. “Yes, you are correct, and I will tell you plainly. Lucy and my cousin were lovers for three years before he went to Scotland, and that pretty boy of hers is his son.”

Of course, Jane thought. The child, with his dark eyes and curls, must be the very picture of what Charles had looked like as a little boy. Princess Elizabeth saw the questions in her eyes.

“They were much in love. She was a likeable girl—even his sister Mary and his mother the queen received her—but of course he could not marry her. There were rumours that he did so, but that is nonsense. Charles knows very well that when he weds he must ally himself with a monarch whose money and power may help him to his throne. He courted my sister Sophie for a time, but it came to naught.”

Jane had seen Lucy with a baby girl, surely too young to have been conceived before Charles left Europe a year and a half earlier.

“And her little daughter?”

The princess pursed her lips. “The child of Lord Taaffe, in whose care Charles left Lucy when he departed for Scotland.”

“Then he is not—they are not …”

“Charles does not speak to me of Lucy, but when her name arises I see in his eyes sadness, guilt, and despair.”

I
N THE DAYS FOLLOWING HER CONVERSATIONS WITH
M
ADEMOISELLE
d’Épernon and Princess Elizabeth, Jane resolved to take the Frenchwoman’s advice, to guard her heart, and observe what she could. She heard whispered references to the Duchess de Châtillon, to Anne Marie Louise, to Betty Boyle, and to Lucy Walter, and thinking about her love for Charles, she felt herself stranded on a small and rocky island in a rough and surging sea. She saw him most days, but always in company, and they had not had an opportunity for private conversation since their last walk.

One afternoon when the temperature had warmed a little, Charles suggested they enjoy the entertainments to be found on the Pont Neuf. Jane happily agreed, but made up her mind to be cautious in his company.

“I have talked so much of myself,” Charles said as they strolled near the river. “Tell me of yourself, Jane. How do you?”

The question took Jane by surprise, but she decided there was nothing to be gained by pretence.

“I don’t quite know, truthfully,” she said. “I was vastly relieved to find you safe, and to reach France myself, of course. And yet now I am here I don’t quite know where I fit in or what I am to do.”

They walked a little way without speaking. Barges, boats, and all kinds of small vessels crowded the waterway, and ahead, the Pont Neuf was bustling. Jane wanted to wrap herself in Charles’s arms, to lose herself in his presence, but she thought of what Mademoiselle d’Épernon had said about holding something of herself back. He was not hers alone. She wanted to ask him about the Duchess de Châtillon and the Grande Mademoiselle, and what they meant to him, but was afraid of the answer, and also felt that to do so would break the spell of their happiness together. Lucy, though—she felt a kinship with Lucy, who had borne the king a child. Was Lucy’s story her own?

“Will you tell me about Lucy?” Jane asked.

“Ah, Lucy.” Charles sighed. “I will tell you as best and as shortly as I can. I met her at The Hague. It was summer—July. She was beautiful and sweet and provided a most welcome haven when I was lonely and in despair.”

As I did,
Jane thought.

“But,” Charles continued, “duty called me away within less than a fortnight of our meeting. My father was yet living, though imprisoned. I had gone to Holland because the English navy had mutinied and come to our cause, and I hoped to make use of that situation. Alas, the naval expeditions came to nothing, and in August, with the defeat at Preston, our cause seemed once more lost.”

They had come to the great arched bridge that led across to the Île de la Cité and then to the other side of the Seine. Stalls selling food and various goods stood on either side, and in the middle courtiers mingled with gowned students, prostitutes, and middle-class families out for a day of leisure.

“Shall we?” Charles asked. “Here, keep close. There are pickpockets about.”

He took Jane’s arm and they plunged into the eddy of bodies.

“I returned to Holland,” Charles continued, “living upon the goodwill of my sister Mary and her husband, William of Orange. Lucy was there. She was with child—she must have conceived almost the first time we lay together.”

As did I, too,
Jane thought.

They came to a bottleneck, where their forward progress was blocked. A fire-eater vied for attention with a fiddler, but neither had drawn a crowd bigger than that gathered to watch a barber-surgeon pulling a tooth from a burly labourer, who was sweating and groaning with the effort not to cry out.

Charles led Jane around the edges of the crowd, and they passed a stall selling wooden legs and another where a man was clipping a large white poodle, which reminded Jane of sheep being sheared.

“My father was murdered in January, not long after I returned to Holland,” Charles said. “And so I was proclaimed king in Jersey and in Scotland, though it meant nothing to my circumstances; I was as penniless as ever. Lucy bore the child—his name is James—in April, and left him in the care of her uncle and aunt to join me in France, then in Jersey, and thence back to the Low Countries once more. But all this time I knew well that it was my duty to my father and to the country to recover my throne. So when Scotland offered help, I was obliged to go. I entrusted Lucy and the child to the care of Lord Taaffe, and when I came to France after I left you, I found that she had borne him a child.”

“Did you not feel betrayed?”

Charles shrugged. “Perhaps it was for the best. I had not—have not even now—the means to properly care for Lucy and our boy. Taaffe does, and for that I am grateful.”

They had come to the place where the bridge crossed the foot of the Île de la Cité, and a bronze statue of a man mounted on horseback soared above them.

“My grandfather, Henri the Fourth,” Charles said. “It was prophesied that he would be murdered if he had my grandmother crowned. Of course he paid no attention, and did have her crowned. And was murdered the next day.”

“How terrible!” Jane said.

“Yes,” Charles said. “But not unusual among kings. Sometimes when I stop to think about how many of my ancestors have been murdered, it seems quite extraordinary that I’ve lived as long as I have.”

“Your father, of course …” Jane said, searching his face.

“My great-grandmother Mary Queen of Scots was executed by her cousin Queen Elizabeth, and her husband Lord Darnley was murdered. Of course it was my grandfather James the First who was the intended target of the Gunpowder Plot. And then of course there is that great teeming nest of the Medici on my mother’s side. Intrigue for breakfast, mayhem for dinner, and murder for supper.”

They leaned against the bridge’s railing and looked back towards the palaces and the Grand Gallery. Paris in all its splendour lay before them, and Jane found it hard to remember that only a fortnight before she and John had been huddled in Marjorie’s cave.

“You have other children,” she said. She knew, but needed to hear it from his mouth.

“Yes. When first I fled England to Jersey, I was much in the company of Margaret de Carteret, daughter of the governor there. She had a boy, also named James. He’s almost six now.”

“They are still on Jersey?” Jane asked, thinking of the campaign being waged even now by Cromwell’s army.

“Yes,” Charles said heavily. “And there is one more I will tell you about, lest you hear it elsewhere and believe that I have withheld the truth. During a brief sojourn to France before I left for Scotland there was a lady—I will not name her, for she has a husband—and she has let me know that the daughter born to her last year is mine.”

Dear God,
Jane thought.
He only has to look at a woman to get her with child.
Suddenly the inquisitive eyes of the dark-haired lady at the home of Sir Richard Browne flashed into her mind.

“It was Betty Boyle.”

Charles stared at her in astonishment.

“It was, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said, and sighed. “You may well hate me now. I hate myself sometimes, to think of the children I have gotten who are so unprovided for.”

And mine would have been another,
Jane thought.

“I don’t hate you,” she said softly. “I’m glad you told me all.”

“I thank you for understanding me,” Charles said. “You have done that from the first, I think. We seem to have almost an understanding that needs no words.”

“I think so, too,” Jane agreed. But what did it matter, if he was not hers and never would be?

C
HRISTMAS WAS DAYS AWAY, AND THE
E
NGLISH COURT GATHERED TO
celebrate the day as best they could, despite the news from across the sea. Scotland had been under occupation since the battle at Worcester, and Jersey, succumbing to the invasion that had been in train when Charles was at Charmouth, had finally surrendered to the Commonwealth, so that now no inch of Britain was not under Cromwell’s rule.

More of the royal family was gathered than had been together in several years, but on Charles’s face and the face of his mother, Jane could see the shadows of grief for those who were not present. The first King Charles, of course, but also Charles’s sister Elizabeth, who had died the previous autumn at the age of fourteen, after long captivity at Carisbrooke Castle. Charles had told Jane that Elizabeth’s birthday was the twenty-eighth of December, and she thought the little girl’s memory must weigh heavily on the queen at Christmastime. The youngest boy, Henry, the eleven-year-old Duke of Gloucester, was still imprisoned at Carisbrooke. The only other living sibling, Mary of Orange, had not thought it fit to travel. Her husband, William of Orange, had died the previous November from smallpox, only eight days before the birth of their son, also named William. And of course Jane knew that Charles must be worried about Margaret de Carteret and their child.

“You see how it is,” Charles said to Jane as they watched servants hanging holly and ivy over a great stone fireplace in the queen’s apartments. “We are as much as we may merry and more than we would sad.”

As the company settled down to Christmas dinner, Jane looked at the faces around the table in the queen’s apartment. Besides the intimate circle she had come to know well, there were also John Evelyn and his wife, old friends and supporters of the royal family, and Charles’s lord chancellor, Sir Edward Hyde, had made the journey from Antwerp and was sharing cheap lodgings nearby with another of Charles’s chief advisers, James Butler, the Marquess of Ormonde. Hyde was clearly in pain from the gout that plagued him, but making a mighty effort to be convivial. Princess Elizabeth’s birthday was the day after Christmas, and the party drank her health, wishing her long life and happiness.