The Loves of Charles II (4 page)

The night was full of terrors. She shifted from side to side on her straw. The hump of linen hurt her back, but she dared not unstrap it. What if the hunchback were surprised without her hump! Had she been foolish in attempting this great adventure? What if she failed now? That virago, Queen Henrietta Maria, would never forgive her for exposing her youngest child to such dangers of the road. And yet there were times when it was necessary to take a bold action. The Queen herself had acted boldly, and because of that was at this moment in her native country where she might work for the King, her husband, instead of being—as she most certainly would have been, had she been less bold—the prisoner of the King’s enemies.

Anne Douglas, Lady Dalkeith, had had to find some way of disguising her tall and graceful figure, and the hump had seemed as good a way as any; and to assume French nationality had seemed imperative since the little Princess could prattle and her lisping “Princess” sounded more like Pierre than any other name. If it had only been possible to make the child understand the danger she was in, how much easier would this task have been! But she was too young to realize why she must be hurried from her comfortable palace, why she must be dressed as a beggar’s child, and that she must be called Pierre. If she had been younger—or older—the journey might have been less dangerous.

Anne Douglas had scarcely slept since she had left the Palace of Oat-lands; she was exhausted now, but even with the others at hand, she dared not sleep. The groom had made her very uneasy. He had said she could trust him, but whom could one trust in a country engaged in a great civil war?

It would have seemed incredible a few years ago that she, Anne Villiers,
wife of Robert Douglas who was the heir of the Earl of Morton, should be lying in such a place as this. But times had changed; and it occurred to her to wonder where the King slept this night or where the Prince of Wales had his lodging.

She had made the decision suddenly.

It was two years since the little Princess had been born. The Queen had been very weak at the time, and before she had risen from her bed news had come that Lord Essex—who was on the side of the Parliament—was marching to Exeter with the intention of besieging the city. Henrietta Maria had written to him asking for permission to leave for Bath with her child; Essex’s reply had been that if the Queen went anywhere with his consent it would be to London, where she would be called before the Parliament to answer a charge of making civil war in England.

There had been only one course open to her—flight to France. How she had wept, that emotional woman! She had cried to Anne: “I must leave this country. If the Parliament make me their prisoner, my husband will come to my aid; he will risk all for my sake. It is better that my miserable life should be risked than that he should be in peril through me. I have written to him telling him this; and by the time he receives my letter I hope to be in France. The Queen of France is my own sister-in-law, and she will not turn me away.”

She was all emotion; her heart was ever ready to govern her head, and this, Anne knew, was in a large measure to be blamed for the King’s disasters; for, oddly enough, although the marriage of Charles and Henrietta Maria had begun stormily, they had quickly understood each other, and with understanding had come passionate affection. The Queen was passionate by nature; frivolous she seemed at times, yet how singlemindedly she could cling to a cause; and the cause to which she now gave her passionate energy was that of her husband.

“Take care of my little one, Anne,” she had said. “Guard her with your life. If ill befall her, Anne Douglas, you shall suffer a thousand times more than she does.” Those black eyes had snapped with fury as she had railed against a fate which demanded she leave her child; they softened with love for the baby and gratitude to Anne Douglas, even while she threatened her. Then, having made these threats, she had taken Anne in her arms and kissed her. “I know you will take care of my child … Protestant though you are. And if you should ever see the light, foolish woman, and come to the true religion, you must instruct my daughter as I would have her instructed. Oh, but you are a Protestant, you say! And the King will have his children brought up in the religion of their own country! And I am a poor desolate mother who must give up her newborn babe to a
Protestant! A Protestant!” She had become incoherent, for she had never bothered to learn the English language properly. Anne knelt to her and swore that, apart from her religion, she would serve the Queen and obey her in all things.

Poor sad Henrietta Maria, who had come to England as a girl of sixteen, very lovely and determined to have her own way, was now an exile, parted from her husband and children. But with God’s help, there should be one child restored to her.

To Exeter the King had come, for he had not received his wife’s letter and believed her to be still there in childbed; he had fought his way through the Parliamentary forces to reach her. It had been Anne’s unhappy task to tell him that he was too late. Her eyes filled with tears now as she remembered him—handsome, even with the stains of battle on him, noble of countenance as he always would be, for he was a man of ideals; and if there was a weakness in that face, it but endeared him to a woman such as Anne Douglas. He was too ready to listen to the wrong advice; he was weak when he should have been strong, and obstinate when to give way would have been wise. He believed too firmly in that Divine Right of Kings which had grown out of date since the reign of Henry VIII; he lacked the common touch of Henry’s daughter, Elizabeth, who had been able to adjust her rule to meet a more modern way of life. Weak though he might have been, a ruler unfit to rule, he was a man of handsome presence and of great personal charm; and it was moving to see his devotion to his family.

With him to Exeter had come the young Prince of Wales, a boy of fourteen then, who had none of his father’s good looks, but already more than his father’s charm. He was rather shy and sweet-tempered. It had been moving to see him take the baby in his arms and marvel at the smallness of her.

Anne wept afresh; she wept for the handsome King who was losing his kingdom, for the Prince, who would be heir to his father’s lost throne, for the baby—the youngest of a tragic family.

“Poor little daughter,” the King had said, “you have been born into a sorry world. You must be baptized at once.”

“What name shall she be given, Your Majesty?”

“Let us call her Henrietta after my wife. But she must be baptized according to the rites of the Church of England.”

And so the ceremony had taken place in the Cathedral of Exeter on a warm July day two years ago; then the King had left for Cornwall where he pursued the war with some success.

Later, when the baby was three months old, he returned to Bedford House in the city of Exeter where she was caring for the child, but only for a brief visit, and Anne had not seen him since. The Prince came to see his
little sister a year later. The child, fifteen months old, was not too young to notice the tall dark boy who made so much of her; she was old enough to crow with pleasure when she saw him, and weep bitterly when he went away. The Prince had had to leave in a hurry because once more the Roundheads were marching on Exeter. Remembering Henrietta Maria’s words, Anne had done her utmost to escape with the child to Cornwall, but her attempt to do so had been foiled. She had been surrounded by spies, and there had been nothing she could do on that occasion but shut herself and her servants up in the security of Bedford House and remain at the side of the Princess day and night.

From her exile in France an angry Queen, knowing that her precious child was in Exeter and that the town was being besieged by her enemies, had raved with fury against fate, the Parliament and that slothful traitress, Anne Douglas.

That was a cruel charge and Anne had suffered deeply. In vain did those about her tell her that she was foolish to attach such importance to the Queen’s reproaches. Did she not know the Queen!

It was said of Henrietta Maria that she regarded unfortunate friends blameworthy, even as traitors were. Anne tried to understand. Henrietta Maria was beside herself with grief, wondering what was happening to her child in a besieged city where there would be little to eat, where death stalked the streets and there would be constant dangers. Henrietta Maria was like a child; when she was hurt she stamped her foot and struck out at those nearest.

Anne had told herself she must remember the Queen’s grief and bear with her.

Sir John Berkeley, who had held the city for the Royalists, deciding they could hold out no longer, had surrendered the city on the condition that the little Princess and certain of her household should be allowed to leave Exeter; so they went, by the Parliament’s order, to the Palace of Oat-lands, and there they had been living for the last months at Anne’s expense as the Parliament refused to grant money for the Princess’s upkeep.

Oatlands, that royal pleasure house built by Henry VIII, had proved a refuge as pleasant as could be hoped for in the circumstances. But, since the day civil war had broken out in England, there had been no lasting peace for any member of the royal family; and there came that day when, leaving the garden and coming through the courtyard to the quadrangle with the machicolated gateway, Anne had met a messenger who brought her a letter from the House of Commons telling her that the Princess must be made ready to leave for London; there she was to join her sister, the Princess Elizabeth, and her brothers, Prince James and Prince Henry, in St. James
Palace, where they would be placed in the care of the Earl and Countess of Northumberland.

Then Anne had made her decision. She would not again incur the anger of her mistress. She had long determined that she would never give up the child to any but the Queen or her family. The wild plan had come to her then. Henrietta Maria had fled to France; why should she not follow her? Surely she could disguise herself more successfully than the Queen had done. A woman with a child … a beggar woman? No! For beggars were sometimes set upon and treated badly. A humble servant and her child would be better; and for company she would take with her French Gaston, who would pretend to be her valet husband; and Elinor Dykes and Thomas Lambert, servants of the household, should come with her.

They would slip out of Oatlands Palace and none should know that they had gone. She would write a letter which should be sent back to the palace by another of her servants whom she would take with her for this purpose, informing certain members of her household whom she believed she could trust; she would give them permission to share the Princess’s clothes and some of her possessions among themselves, and warn them that they must give her three clear days before informing the Parliament that she and the Princess were missing. If they obeyed her, none would know of her flight until the fourth day; and by that time she should be safely on the water on her way to France.

It had not seemed so difficult; but how could she have foreseen the weariness of a gently nurtured lady after tramping the roads for three days; how could she have guessed that the little Princess herself, not understanding the danger, would insist on telling those whom she met on the road that the clothes she wore were not the fine garments to which she was accustomed, that her name was not Pierre nor Peter; but that she was the Princess?

Another day, thought Anne feverishly, and we shall be at sea. Only another day … but here we are in this attic, and the attic walls are like prison walls, for suspicion has been born in the mind of a groom.

They were awakened by a clatter of hoofs in the courtyard. It was dark in the attic; but Anne, starting up, saw a patch of starry sky through the window.

“Tom … Nell! Are you awake?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Hush, Tom!”

“Yes, Nan; we’re awake,” said Nell.

“What was that noise?”

“Only newcomers arriving, I doubt not.”

“It’s late … very late.”

“Can you not sleep?”

“I am thinking of that groom.”

“But he said he was loyal to His Majesty.”

“How can we know whether he was speaking the truth?”

“Do you think he suspected who the child is?”

“I am not sure. But if she had awakened and called herself ‘Princess’ we should certainly have been betrayed.”

They were silent for a while. Then Anne started up again. “Listen! Steps on the stairs!”

“’Tis new arrivals at the inn,” said Tom.

“But they are on the attic staircase. It leads only to us. I am sure they are there. It is the groom. He has betrayed us.”

The next seconds seemed like minutes. Anne held the Princess close against her. Little Henrietta began to whimper in her sleep. Tom was on his feet; the footsteps had stopped and they knew that someone was standing on the other side of the door.

Then there was a sudden nerve-shattering hammering against the wood.

Tom threw his weight against it. “Who’s there?” he demanded.

“It is your landlord.”

“What do you want of us at this hour?”