The King's Mistress (41 page)

Jane recalled when she had first seen Lord Wilmot, that rainy night in the kitchen at Bentley, when he had come to plan Charles’s escape and to convey in advance the king’s thanks for the risks she was undertaking on his behalf.

Little did I know,
she thought. That night had changed her life. Would she go back and do it differently if she could? Surely if she had known what lay ahead of her, she would never have had the courage to set forth. But what if she had not? Almost certainly Charles would have been taken, imprisoned, beheaded.

“Do you think we shall ever be able to go home again, Henry?” she asked, striving to make her tone far lighter than she felt.

“I don’t know.”

He shook his head, and Jane noticed for the first time that there were grey hairs among the chestnut, and that lines channelled his forehead and cut from his nose to his mouth.

“There were stirrings in England, and we got messages imploring the king to come once more, that this time a rising might be successful. Ormonde went to England—in disguise.” He laughed grimly. “For all the travelling in disguise there has been, king and court might well set themselves up as a company of players.”

Jane had a sudden and vivid image of Lord Wilmot, his great bulk balanced with careful dignity on his horse, a hawk on his wrist the only concession he would make towards a disguise, when she had caught sight of him with John away across the fields as she and Charles had set out on their journey so long ago.

“The king pawned his George to pay for Ormonde’s journey.” Henry shook his head in sorrowful disbelief. “Ormonde had some difficulty, but returned with encouragement, saying that he thought His Majesty might safely land at Yarmouth.”

Yarmouth. Jane could smell the salt in the air as she had first smelled it when she and John had neared the coast after that long and desperate journey.

“But—” Henry began.

“There is always a ‘but’, it seems.”

“And this ‘but’ is the same there has been for so long—not enough men, not enough money, not near the certainty of success if we should chance an invasion.”

“And no one wants another Worcester.”

“No.”

T
HE YEAR DID NOT SEEM LIKELY TO IMPROVE
. L
UCY
W
ALTER WROTE
begging Jane’s help. Her boy had been wrested from her in Brussels by some piece of trickery, she said. Jane stared at the tearstained letter in disbelief. What Lucy claimed—that the boy had been snatched while her attention was distracted—seemed unbelievable. But when Jane questioned Colonel O’Neill, he only seemed to confirm Lucy’s story.

“It had to be done,” he said. “The wench has been growing a greater thorn in His Majesty’s side every year, and the boy couldn’t be permitted to stay with her, running barefoot and wild in the streets.”

“But he’s her son!” Jane cried.

“And the son of the king. He’ll be better off in Paris with his grandmother the queen.”

The deed was done, and though it broke Jane’s heart, she didn’t see how she could help Lucy to get her son back. She wrote to Queen Mary, urging that Lucy be allowed to visit her boy, but received no reply.

Her anger at Charles’s treatment of Lucy hardened into cold bitterness at the news that Charles’s mistress Catherine Pegge was with child again.

E
ARLY IN 1658 THE
D
UKE OF
Y
ORK CAME TO VISIT HIS SISTER
M
ARY
at Breda, bringing with him Harry Jermyn, the nephew of Henry Jermyn. The older Jermyn had long served Queen Mary in England as vice chamberlain and master of the horse and had remained with her as her secretary since she had been in France, and there were rumours that she had secretly married him.

Nan Hyde and the duke were so much in each other’s company that surely Mary would have known that something was afoot between them, Jane thought—had not Mary been as much with Harry Jermyn. The Princess Royal had been widowed as long as she had been a mother, Jane reflected, watching Mary laugh with Jermyn over supper—more than seven years. Perhaps love was in the air as spring began to creep over the frozen ground and canals.

The duke and Jermyn had not been at Breda three weeks, however, when Mary received a letter from Charles that had her more furious than Jane had ever seen her.

“He declares that there are reports in Paris that I have married Harry Jermyn, and tells me he is calling Harry back to him, to still the rumours!” Mary raged. “‘What I advise you in this matter proceeds purely out of that kindness which I will ever have for you,’ he writes, the hypocritical devil!”

But Jermyn could not defy the king’s command, and departed for Brussels, leaving Mary just as bereft and tearful as was Nan Hyde at being parted from the Duke of York, who went to Antwerp to join Charles, ready for another possible invasion of England.

Once more it seemed that success was at last within Charles’s grasp. Spanish forces battled on his behalf against the united might of France and Commonwealth England. The dukes of York and Gloucester were in at the thick of the fighting, and even Charles led a charge at Mardyke. But with the loss at the Battle of the Dunes in June, once more hope slipped away.

“The king is in even a worse case than he was before,” Henry Lascelles told Jane when he came to visit her for her birthday. “Cromwell’s navy is blockading the Spanish ports so they are bottled up and cannot help. The King of Spain has told His Majesty he would not be welcome in Spain, and of course any hope of help from France is now lost.”

“But what of action on his behalf in England?” Jane asked. “Surely his friends at home have not given up?”

“Perhaps not given up,” Henry said, shaking his head. “But the risings in England this year were put down as soon as they were begun. One great difficulty is that Cromwell’s spies are many, and have insinuated themselves everywhere, even into the Sealed Knot, to which His Majesty gave credentials, so that scarce can those loyal to the king make a move but it is already known in London.”

I shall never be able to go home,
Jane thought, and suddenly she was weeping.

“Oh, Henry,” she cried against his shoulder as he held her hard, “had I known that I was banishing myself from England forever, I never should have had the courage to do as I did. I want to go back to Bentley. I don’t care what happens.”

“Jane, Jane,” he murmured. “I would go with you myself to make sure you got safely back, did I think you would not still be in danger. Your poor father and uncle and John are prisoners still. If you went back you would certainly be arrested.”

Jane could not stop the tears. The long years of loneliness and disappointment stretched behind her. First she had lived on the memory of the passion that she had shared with Charles, sure that someday she would be at his side once more. As the years had gone by, the long separations broken only by letters, all that had kept her going was the hope that someday—surely not too far off—she could go home and take up her life. And now it began to seem that perhaps even that would never be.

Henry held her, letting her cry out her despair until there were no more tears to come.

A
ND THEN CAME A THUNDERBOLT
. O
N THE THIRD OF
S
EPTEMBER, THE
seventh anniversary of the Battle of Worcester, Oliver Cromwell died.

“The king was playing tennis at Hoogstraten when he heard of it,” Henry told Jane, having ridden hard to bring the news to Mary’s court. “He went white, and then flushed red, and then sank to his knees in prayers of thanks. And then ordered wine and supper, and was in better spirits than any had seen him in years.”

“I should think so!” Jane cried, laughing and weeping at once. “Oh, Henry, it’s a miracle!”

Henry glanced at Jane and then away, and coughed uncomfortably.

“He’s asked to marry his cousin Henrietta Catherine. If he’s to have his throne, he’ll need a queen.”

“Of course,” Jane said, her voice sounding distant to her own ears. She knew Charles must wed some royal bride now. And yet it was hard, to have such joyful news followed so soon by the stark reminder of what she had known all along and had tried to put from her mind. Willing away the tears, she smiled at Henry.

“I knew it must come, Henry. The king values my—friendship. That is enough.”

O
NLY THREE WEEKS AFTER
C
ROMWELL’S DEATH
, L
UCY
W
ALTER DIED
destitute and distraught in Paris, where she had followed in hopes of being allowed to see her son. Jane had always felt that Lucy lived in some shadow world parallel to her own—what might have happened if she had borne that child she had lost on the heath—and Lucy’s death shook her to the core. Poor Lucy. She had loved Charles with her whole heart, it seemed, and he had sailed off to Scotland in pursuit of his crown. She—helpless and alone with his child—had taken refuge where she could—first in the bed of Lord Taaffe and later that of Thomas Howard. And for that—that pitiful instinct for survival, that desperate gamble to buy herself time until Charles might take her back—for he had jollied her along with letters, little gifts, and the promise of a pension which had never been paid—she had been ridiculed and reviled, accused of living a life of open depravity. And the final cruel indignity—she had been kept from seeing her boy and had been treated like a mad dog.

And it was Charles who had made it so. Jane had tried not to see that, had told herself that it was Hyde, it was Taaffe, it was O’Neill, it was Princess Mary, Queen Mary, the Duke of York—anyone but Charles. But now she faced the truth. He was king, poor though he might be, and he had hidden in the shadows and watched as his first love, the mother of his child—his wife, if Lucy was to be believed—had been humiliated and broken.

Quite the Machiavelli, Your Majesty,
Jane thought.
Perhaps only the fact that I lost that child prevented me from receiving such treatment at your hands.

I
N THE AUTUMN
J
ANE RECEIVED A LETTER FROM
J
OHN
. H
E AND HER
father and uncle had finally been released from prison. Her heart broke at the news that her father was weak and ill after his long ordeal. She longed to sit with him, to hold his hand and read to him as he had read to her when she was a little girl, to love him and comfort him in whatever time he had left. But John warned very clearly that it would still be dangerous for her to return.
But soon,
she murmured to herself,
perhaps now it will not be long before I can go home.

And yet the time was not yet, it seemed. Sir George Booth’s rising in England was defeated. France and Spain ended their war, and the dukes of York and Gloucester, now without military careers to pursue, came to stay with their sister Mary. Mary’s mother-in-law, the Princess Amelia, declined to marry her daughter Henrietta Catherine to Charles, still a king without a country, and he languished in Antwerp, his poverty as grinding as ever.

J
ANE FOUND THE WINTERS IN
H
OLLAND NEARLY UNBEARABLE
. The cold seemed a living thing, gnawing its way into her bones and making her joints ache. No sooner had the sun risen, it seemed, than it began to set, the blue shadows creeping across the frozen canals as the sky darkened into interminable night.

So Jane was happy when on a cold evening in Breda in late November 1659 she heard Nan’s laughter from a little parlour. She could use some cheerful company, she thought, and went to investigate. She found Nan with the Duke of York and his friend Sir Charles Berkeley, gathered before the hearth, where a fire crackled and glowed.

“Oh, Jane!” Nan cried, beaming. “I was about to go to find you! Come join us in a glass of wine.”

The Duke of York handed Jane a glass, toasted her health, and said, with a conspiratorial glance at Nan, “Will you excuse me for but a moment, Mistress Lane?”

“Of course, Your Highness,” Jane said, baffled.

Nan drew her down to sit on a low bench before the fire, and Sir Charles sank onto a stool, his long booted legs thrust out before him.

“Where is Her Highness?” Nan whispered to Jane, glancing at the door.

“Mary? Why, she’s gone to bid little William good night, and is probably still in the nursery.”

“Good,” Nan giggled, leaping up as the Duke of York returned with a black-clad priest, closing the door behind them as they entered. “This won’t take long. Come, Jane, stand up with me.”

She pulled Jane to her feet, and before Jane had a chance to realise what was happening, the priest had produced a
Book of Common Prayer
and was reading the marriage service.

“But—” Jane began to object, but the duke raised a hand to stay her.

“It is quite all right, Mistress Lane. I am of age and free to wed where I love.”

“Please, Jane?” Nan pleaded, tears coming to her eyes. “We haven’t long! If Mary finds out she’s sure to make trouble. Oh, Jane, I’ve waited so long!”

Jane stared at Nan, clutching the duke’s hand. It was unbelievable. The Duke of York was going to wed Nan Hyde, surely without the knowledge or permission of the king, and come what might. And who was she to object? Jane thought. Let Nan have her happiness.

“Yes, of course I’ll stay,” Jane said.

“And you won’t tell?” Nan begged.

“No,” Jane said, a black weight settling on her heart. “I won’t tell.”

A
YEAR AFTER
L
OUISE LEFT
T
HE
H
AGUE
, Q
UEEN
E
LIZABETH’S DAUGHTER
Sophie, known since her marriage as Sophia of Hanover, came to visit Mary’s court for Christmas. She was a beautiful girl, bloomingly with child, and she brought with her the seven-year-old Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, nicknamed Liselotte, the daughter of Sophie’s brother the Elector of Palatine.

Queen Elizabeth glowed with happiness as she held her little granddaughter on her lap, and the rest of the court was just as charmed by the smiling fair-headed child.