The Loves of Charles II (140 page)

With the coming of the new year there was a change at Court.

A small party on horseback came clattering through the streets. The leader of this party, wearing jacket, plumed hat, and a periwig, was Hortense Mancini, Duchess Mazarin. Her great eyes seemed black but on closer inspection were seen to be a shade of blue so dark as to resemble the color of violets; her hair was bluish-black, her features classic, her figure voluptuously beautiful. She was known throughout Europe as the most beautiful woman in the world, and all those who saw her believed that she was justly described.

She had brought with her a few of her personal servants—five men and two women—and at her side rode her little black page who prepared her coffee.

She drew up at the house of Lady Elizabeth Harvey, who came out to greet her and let her know that she was delighted to welcome her.

The citizens of London saw her no more that day. They stood about in the keen frosty air telling themselves that, the woman being so beautiful, and the King’s reputation being what it was, she could have come to England for one purpose only.

They waited now to witness the discomfiture of Madam Carwell, as they had called Louise since her arrival in England. They refused to try to pronounce Kéroualle. Louise was Carwell to them, and no fine English title
was going to alter that. It would please the Londoners to see her neglected whom they called The Catholic Whore.

Here was another foreigner, but this woman was at least a beauty, and they would be glad to see their King lured from the side of the squint-eyed French spy.

Louise was worried. She believed that she had lost her hold on the King. She knew that that hold had largely been due to the fact that she had not been easy to seduce. She could not, of course, have held out any longer; to have done so might have made the King realize that he did not greatly desire her.

The sickness which she had contracted had not only taken its toll of her looks; it had left her nervous, and she wondered whether she could ever regain the health she had once enjoyed. She had grown fat and, although the King had nicknamed her Fubbs with the utmost affection, she felt the name carried with it a certain lack of dignity. She was beginning to fear that had Charles been less indulgent, less careless, she would have been passed over long ago.

She did not believe that he did half those things which he promised he would do and which she was commanded by the French King through Courtin, the French ambassador, to persuade him to.

He would look at her with that shrewd yet lazy smile and say: “So you would advise that, Fubbs? Ah, yes, of course, I understand.”

She often heard him laugh uproariously at some of Nell Gwyn’s comments and frequently these were uttered to discountenance herself. And now this most disturbing news had reached her. Hortense Mancini was in London.

There was no one in England whom she could really trust. Buckingham, her enemy, was in decline, but for how long would he remain so? Shaftesbury hated her and would want to destroy her influence with the King, since he was anti-Catholic and she had heard through Courtin that he was planning to expunge all popery from the country. It might have been that Shaftesbury knew of that secret clause in the Treaty of Dover concerning the King’s religion; if so, he would know that she had her instructions from Louis to make the King’s conversion complete and public as soon as she could.

She was trembling, for she had lost some of her calmness during her illness.

She decided that there was only one person in England who would help her now, and that the time had come for her to redeem those vague promises which she had held out to him. She dressed herself with care. In
spite of her increased bulk she knew well how to dress to advantage and she had taste and poise which few ladies at Court possessed.

She sent one of her women to Lord Danby’s apartments with a message which was to be discreetly delivered and which explained that she would shortly be coming to see him, and she hoped he would be able to give her a private interview.

The woman quickly returned with the news that Lord Danby eagerly awaited her coming.

He received her with a show of respect.

“I am honored to receive Your Grace.”

“I trust that in coming thus for a friendly talk I do not encroach on your time.”

“Time is well spent in your company,” said Danby. He had guessed the cause of her alarm. “I hear that we have a foreign Duchess newly arrived among us.”

“It is Madame Mazarin … notorious in all the Courts of Europe.”

“And doubtless come to win notoriety in this one,” said Danby slyly.

Louise flinched. “I doubt it not. If you know aught …” she began.

Danby looked at his fingernails. “I gather,” he said, “that she does not wish to live in the Palace, as Your Grace does.”

“She comes because she is poor,” said Louise. “I have heard that that mad husband of hers quickly dissipated the fortune she inherited from her uncle.”

“’Tis true. She has let His Majesty know that she must have an adequate income before taking up her apartments in Whitehall.”

Louise came closer to him. She said nothing, but her meaning was clear to him: You will advise the King against providing this income. You, whose financial genius enables you to enrich yourself while you suppress waste in others, you, under whom the King’s budget has been balanced, will do all in your power to prevent his giving this woman what she asks. You will range yourself on the side of the Duchess of Portsmouth, which means that you will be the enemy of the Duchess Mazarin.

Why not? thought Danby excitedly. Intrigue was stimulating. Discovery? Charles never blamed others for falling into temptation which he himself made no attempt to resist.

He took her hand and kissed it. When she allowed it to remain in his, he was sure.

“Your Grace is more beautiful than before your illness,” he said; and he laughed inwardly, realizing that she, the coldest woman at Court, was offering herself in exchange for his protection.

He kissed her without respect, without affection. He was accustomed to taking bribes.

Hortense received the King at the house of Lady Elizabeth Harvey.

She had guessed that as soon as he heard of her arrival in his capital he would wish to visit her. It was exactly what Hortense wanted.

She lay back on a sofa awaiting him. She was voluptuously beautiful and, although she was thirty and had led a wild and adventurous life, her beauty was in no way impaired. Her perfect classical features would remain perfect and classical as long as she lived. Her abundant bluish-black hair fell curling about her bare shoulders; but her most beautiful assets were her wonderful violet eyes.

Hortense was imperturbably good-humored, lazy, of a temperament to match the King’s; completely sensual, she was widely experienced in amatory adventures. She had often been advised that she would do well to visit England, and had again and again decided to renew her acquaintance with Charles; but each time something had happened to prevent her, some new lover had beguiled her and made her forget the man who had wished to be her lover in her youth. It was sheer poverty which had driven her to England now—sheer poverty and the fact that she had created such a scandal in Savoy that she had been asked to leave. The last three scandalous years had been spent in the company of César Vicard, a dashing, handsome young man who had posed as the Abbé of St Réal. When the letters which had passed between the Duchess and the
soi-disant
Abbé had been discovered, they, completely lacking in reticence, had so shocked those into whose hands they fell, that the Duchess had been asked to leave Savoy.

So, finding herself poor and in need of refuge, Hortense had come to England. She knew no fear. She had faced the perilous crossing in the depth of winter, and with a few servants had come to a completely strange country, never doubting that her spectacular beauty would ensure for her a position at Court.

Charles strode in, took her hand, and kissed it while his eyes did not leave her face.

“Hortense!” he cried. “But you are the same Hortense whom I loved all those years ago. No, not the same. Od’s Fish, I should not have believed then that it was possible for any to be more beautiful than the youngest of les Mazarinettes. But I see that there is one more fair: the Duchess Mazarin—Hortense grown up.”

She laughed at him and waved him to be seated with a fascinating easy
gesture as though she were the Queen, he the subject. Charles did not mind. He felt that he should indeed forget his royalty in the presence of such beauty.

The long lashes lay against her olive skin. Charles stared at the beautiful blue-black hair lying so negligently on the bare shoulders. This languid beauty aroused in him such desire as he rarely felt nowadays. He knew that his bout of sickness had changed him; he was not the man he had been. But he was determined that Hortense should become his mistress.

“You should not be here,” he said. “You should come to Whitehall at once.”

“Nay,” she said, smiling her indolent smile. “Mayhap later. If it could be arranged.”

“But it shall be arranged.”

She laughed. There was no pretence about her. She had been brought up at the French Court. She had all the graces of that Court and she had learned to be practical.

“I am very poor,” she said.

“I heard that you had inherited the whole of your uncle’s fortune.”

“’Twas so,” said Hortense. “Armand, my husband, quickly took possession of it.”

“What! All of it?”

“All of it. But what mattered that? I escaped.”

“We have heard of your adventures, Hortense. I wonder you did not visit me before.”

“Suffice it that I have come now.”

Charles was thinking quickly. She would ask for a pension, and if it were large enough she would move into Whitehall. He must see Danby quickly and something must be arranged. But he would not discuss that with her now. She was Italian, brought up in France, and therefore, indolent as she seemed, she would know how to drive her bargain. It was not that he was averse to discussing money with a woman; but he feared she would ask too much and he be unable to refuse her.

He satisfied himself with contemplating that incomparable beauty and telling himself that she would be his mistress all in good time.

“We should have married,” he said.

“Ah! How it reminds me. And what an enchanting husband you would have made! Far better than Armand who forced me to fly from him.”

“Your uncle would have none of me. He did not wish to give his niece to a wandering prince without a kingdom.”

“’Twas a sad thing that you did not regain your kingdom earlier.”

“I have often thought it … Now, having seen you, I regret it more than
ever, since, had I been a King with a country when I asked for your hand, it would not have been refused me.”

“Marie, too, might have been a Queen,” said Hortense. “But our uncle would not let her be. Think of it! Marie might have been Queen of France and I Queen of England—but for Uncle Mazarin.”

Charles looked into her face, marveling at its perfections, but Hortense’s dreamy thoughts were far away. She was thinking of the French Court where she had been brought up with her four sisters, Laura, Olympia, Marie, Mariana. They had all joined in the ballets devised for the little King and his brother Philippe; and her uncle, Cardinal Mazarin, and Louis’ mother, Anne of Austria, had ruled France between them. All the Cardinal’s nieces had been noted for their beauty, but many said that little Hortense was the loveliest of them all. What graces they had learned in that most graceful Court!