The Loves of Charles II (16 page)

“But no!” she cried passionately. “You must not forget. You always remember who we are, and above all you must remember Papa.”

At the mention of his father’s name the little boy was always moved to tears. When he was in bed at night he would make a pact with himself: “I will not think of Papa!” And to his prayers he added “Please God guard me this night and do not let me dream of Papa.”

He was Prince Henry, but no one but his sister Elizabeth ever referred to his rank. To the servants and his tutor he was Master Harry, and his sister, instead of being Princess Elizabeth, was Mistress Elizabeth. It was said that they were to be made to forget that they were Royal Stuarts. Elizabeth was to be taught button-making and Henry shoe-making, that they might eventually become useful members of the Protector’s Commonwealth.

“I would rather die!” cried Elizabeth, and indeed it seemed that if grief and melancholy could kill, Elizabeth would soon be dead.

Mr. Lovel, the little boy’s tutor, whispered to him when they were alone that he was not to be afraid. The Protector’s bark was worse than his bite, and he uttered these threats in order to humiliate the little boy’s mother and brothers.

So, with Mr. Lovel to teach him and to give him comfort in secret, Henry could have borne his lot; but his sister was always there to remind him of what they had lost.

She, who was older than he was, remembered so much more of the glorious days. He scarcely remembered his mother; his father he remembered too well. Charles, James and Mary he had scarcely known, and his youngest sister, Henriette, he had never seen at all. Moreover he was physically stronger than Elizabeth, who had broken her leg when she was eight years old and had remained in delicate health thereafter; she grew paler and thinner, but her spirit of resentment against her family’s enemies burned more fiercely every day.

“Elizabeth,” he whispered to her now, “Elizabeth, do not weep so. Perhaps we shall be happy at Carisbrooke.”

“Happy in prison!”

“Perhaps we shall like it better than Penshurst.”

“Shall we enjoy living in that very place where
he
lived just before … just before …”

Henry’s lips trembled. It would be impossible to forget Papa in the castle where he too had been a prisoner.

Elizabeth said: “They took Papa there before they murdered him, and now they take us there.”

Henry was remembering it all so clearly as they rode along. He was sure that he would have more vivid dreams in Carisbrooke Castle. Perhaps he would ask Mr. Lovel to sleep in his room. Elizabeth would be angry with him if he did so. “You are afraid to dream of Papa!” she had cried scornfully, when he had told her of his fears. “I wish I
could
dream of him all through the days and nights! That would be almost like having him with us again.”

Now the little boy was crying. He remembered it all so vividly, for it had happened only a year ago when he had been ten years old. One day—a bitterly cold January day—men had come to Syon House, which was the prison of his sister and himself at that time, and they said that the children were to pay a visit to their father.

When Elizabeth had heard this she had burst into bitter weeping, and Henry had asked: “But why do you cry? Do you not want to see Papa?”

“You are too young to understand,” Elizabeth had sobbed. “Oh, lucky Henry, to be too young!”

But he was no longer young; he had ceased to be young that very day.

He could remember the sharp frosty air, the ice on the water; he remembered riding beside the frozen river and wondering why Elizabeth was crying since they were going to see their father.

And when they had arrived at the Palace of Whitehall, Henry had felt his father to be a different man from the one he had known before, and in his dreams it was the father he saw on that day who always appeared. Henry remembered vividly every detail of that last meeting. He could see his father’s face, lined, sad, yet trying to smile as he took Henry on his knee while the weeping Elizabeth clung to his arm. He could see the velvet doublet, the pointed lace collar, the long hair which hung about his father’s shoulders.

“So you have come to see me, my children.” He had kissed them in turn. “Do not weep, beloved daughter. Come, dry your eyes … to please me.”

So Elizabeth had dried her eyes and tried to smile; their father had held her tightly to him and kissed the top of her head. Then he had said: “I must have a little talk with your brother, Elizabeth. See, he is wondering what all this is about. He says, ‘Why do you weep, when we are together thus? Is it not a time for rejoicing when we are together?’ That’s what Henry thinks; is it not, my little son?” Henry nodded gravely. “We wish to be with you more than anything,” he had said. “Papa, let us be together now … and always.”

His father had not answered that, but Henry remembered how his arms had tightened about him.

“My little son,” he had said, “grave events are afoot. In these times we cannot say where we shall be from one day to another. I am going to ask you to remember this meeting of ours in the years ahead. I want you to remember what I say to you. Will you try to do that?”

“Yes, Papa.”

“Then listen carefully. These are two things I have to say to you, and although you are but ten years old, you are the son of a King, which means that you have to remember much more than other boys. These are the two things I wish you to remember, and if you are ever tempted to forget them, think of this moment when you sit on my knee and your sister stands there trying not to weep, because she is older than you are. The first: You have two brothers. Never allow any to put you on the throne of England while either of them lives. The second is this: Never renounce the Faith of the Church of England in which Mr. Lovel has instructed you. There! That is what your father asks of you. Will you do these things for me, and if any should try to turn you from the wish to obey me, remember this day?”

Henry put his arms about his father’s neck. “Yes, Papa. I will remember.”

And shortly after that time he had grown up. He had begun to understand. He knew that the day after he had sat on his father’s knee and made his solemn promise, men had taken the King outside the banqueting hall at Whitehall and there, before the eyes of many people, had cut off his head.

That was the specter which haunted his dreams—his beloved father, a father no more, but a headless corpse, those kind eyes glassy, staring and smiling no more.

If he could only forget his father’s death, if he and Elizabeth could only escape from his father’s enemies and join their mother, how happy he might be! He did not mean that he would forget his promise to his father;
that
he would never do. But he would be happy in his love for his mother and his brothers and sisters, and he would then be able to forget that last interview, those brooding eyes, so kind and tender and so heartbreakingly sad.

Perhaps one day Elizabeth would help him to escape as she had helped James. She had reproached James for not escaping before. She had mocked him for his cowardice. “Were I a boy and strong, I’d not long remain the captive of that beast Cromwell!” she had declared. And at last James had escaped and gone across the sea to their mother and brother Charles, who was the King of England now.

After they had been taken back to Syon House following that last interview, Elizabeth had changed. Then young Henry had seen his sister devoid of all hope.

Then to Penshurst where they had lived with the Earl and Countess of Leicester, who had been kind to them but forced to obey the instructions of
the Parliament and treat the two children, not as the son and daughter of a King, but as other children of the household. Henry had not cared; it was Elizabeth who had suffered so cruelly.

And then, when she had heard she was to go to Carisbrooke, she had been stricken with horror. Henry had tried to comfort her. “It is near the sea, Elizabeth. It is very beautiful, they tell me.”

“Near the sea!” she had cried. “Very beautiful!
He
was there. There he lived and suffered before they took him away to murder him. Every room is a room in which he has lived … and waited for them to come for him. He will have watched from the ramparts … walked in the courtyards. Are you blind, Henry? Are you quite callous? Are you completely without sensibility? We are going to our father’s prison. One of the last places he was in before he was murdered. I would rather
die …
than go to Carisbrooke.”

And so she grew paler every day. She begged that she might not be sent to Carisbrooke, but all her entreaties were in vain. “Send them to Carisbrooke!” said the Protector, and the Protector ruled England.

“Perhaps we shall escape as James did … as Henriette did,” Henry whispered to her as they rode along.

“You may, Henry. You
must
!”

She knew she herself never would. She looked to Carisbrooke Castle as the place whither she would go to die.

If she died, pondered Henry, what of one poor little boy, fatherless and alone, cut off from his family?

Mr. Lovel rode up to him and tried to banish his melancholy. Did he not think this island was beautiful? He doubted not that the little boy would enjoy more freedom than he had in Kent. “For, Master Harry, this is an island and the water separates us from England.” Henry was ready to be beguiled; but Elizabeth just stared straight ahead, seeming unaware of the tears which ran down her face.

Then Mr. Lovel began to talk of Carisbrooke, which he said was a British camp at the time when the Romans came to Britain. The land surrounding the castle was then covered with thick yew trees, for the Celtic word “Caerbroc” meant “the town of yew trees.”

Mr. Lovel discoursed pleasantly of the Castle of Carisbrooke, which had faced the winds and storms of the Channel for so many hundreds of years; he told of Fitz-Osborne, the Norman who held the castle on condition that he defended it and the surrounding lands against all enemies, so that it was called The Honor of Carisbrooke. He told of Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, who had left his mark upon it in the reign of the second Richard, and of Lord Woodville who, years later, had enlarged the place. But Mr. Lovel could not continue with the Castle’s history for the simple
reason that it had played a part in the tragedy of Henry’s father. So he came to an abrupt stop and spoke of other things.

Thus it had often been, Henry remembered. There were frequently those sudden terminations of conversation. It was as though people said: “Ah, now we are coming near to dangerous ground; we are approaching that terrible thing of which this little boy knows nothing.”

At last they reached the Castle, and Henry lifted his eyes to the Keep, high on its artificial mound; the ramparts, the barbican and the battlements seemed impregnable as they looked down in arrogance at the cosier Priory. The walls of the fortress were in the shape of a pentagon with five bastions of defense. The little party crossed the fosse and in a short time were in the Castle Yard, where Henry saw the well with a great wheel turned by a donkey in the same way that a dog labored in a turnspit.

The servants came out to see them; they did not bow or kiss their hands. They merely nudged each other and made such remarks as: “Oh, ’tis Mistress Elizabeth and Master Harry come to Carisbrooke.”

Elizabeth looked past them as though they did not exist, but Henry gave them a forlorn smile, for he understood, since Mr. Lovel had told him, that these people did not wish to be disrespectful to the son and daughter of the King; they had to remember that there was now no King and therefore no Prince and Princess; they were all citizens of the Commonwealth, and the Isle of Wight was a part of Cromwell’s England.

He dismounted and walked beside Elizabeth who looked small and frail in the big hall of the Castle; the mourning clothes, which she had refused to lay aside since the death of her father, hung loosely on her form. She would not eat the food which had been prepared for them. Henry tried not to eat, but he was so hungry, and Mr. Lovel pointed out that he could not help Elizabeth by joining in her fast. And very soon Elizabeth retired to her bed and, when she was there, she asked that she might speak to her brother before she slept.

Henry was frightened more than ever when he looked at the pale face of his sister.

“Henry,” she said, “I feel I shall not live long. I should not want to … in this prison. The happiest thing that could happen to me—since our enemies will not let me join our sister Mary in Holland—would be to join our father in Heaven.”

“You must not talk thus,” said Henry.

“Death is preferable to the lives we lead now, Henry. They are a dishonor to a line of Kings.”

“One day my brother will come to England and drive the Beast Cromwell away.”

Elizabeth turned her face to the wall. “I fear our brother lacks the strength of our father, Henry.”

“Charles … !” stammered the boy. “But Charles is now the King. All loyal subjects proclaim him such.”

“Our brother is not as our father was, Henry. I fear he will never live as our father lived.”

“Would it not be better so, dear Elizabeth, since our father’s way of life led him to the scaffold?”

“Our father’s way of life! How can you say such things! It was not our father’s way of life which led him there; it was the wickedness of his enemies. Father was a saint and martyr.”

“Then,” said the little boy gravely, “since our brother is not a saint he will not die as a martyr.”

“It is better to die or live in exile than to do that which is unkingly.”

“But our brother would not do that which is unkingly.”

“He is in Scotland now. He has joined the Covenanters. He has made himself a pawn for the Scots for the sake of a kingdom. But you are too young to understand. I would have lived in poverty and exile … yes, I would have been a button-maker, rather than have betrayed our father.”

Henry could not help being glad that his brother was not like his father. He personally knew little of Charles, but he had heard much of him. He had seen the smiles which came on to people’s faces when they spoke of him. He had his own picture of Charles—a brother as tall as his father had been, with always a song on his lips and a shrug of the shoulders for trouble. Henry had always thought it would be rather wonderful to be with such a brother. He did not believe he would take him on his knee and talk of solemn promises. Charles was jaunty, a sinner of some sort, yet people loved him; he might not be good, as his father and Elizabeth were good, but he would be a happy person to be with.