The Loves of Charles II (8 page)

The War of the Fronde had started. It was typical of Parisian humor that the war should be so named. A law had recently been passed prohibiting young boys from gathering in the streets of Paris and attacking each other with the
fronde
(a sling for stones) then so popular. These games of stone-slinging had on more than one occasion proved fatal and there had been public concern. So it was that, during the heated discussions in the Parliament concerning the taxes about to be imposed by the hated Cardinal Mazarin, the favorite of the Queen-Regent, the President of the Parliament had begged the assembly to consider the terms which Mazarin was proposing. The President’s son—he was de Bachaumont and known throughout Paris as a
bel esprit
—had said that when his turn came to speak he would
“frondera bien l’opinions de son père.”
This
bon mot
was taken up and repeated; and
Frondeur
was adopted as the name of those who would criticize and “sling” rebellion against the Court party.

So, during those months, Paris was in danger; and the French throne seemed about to topple as had that of England. Henrietta Maria’s pension had not been paid since the war started; she had run short of food and wood, and now that the winter was upon her suffered acute discomfort; yet, soothing her little daughter, putting her arms about her and cuddling her in an attempt to keep her warm, she was not thinking of what was happening immediately outside her windows but of her husband who was about to face his trial in London.

“Mam,” said the little Princess, “I’m cold.”

“Yes, little one, it is cold, but perhaps we shall soon be warm.”

“Cannot we have a fire?”

“My love, we lack the means to light one.”

“I’m hungry, Mam.”

“Yes, we are all hungry, dearest.”

The Princess began to whimper. She could not understand.

“Holy Mother of God,” murmured the Queen, “what is happening to Charles?”

Anne, who was now Lady Morton as her husband’s father had recently died, came into the room. Her lips were blue, her beautiful hands mottled with the cold.

“What is it, Anne?” asked the Queen.

“Madame, Monsieur le Coadjuteur is here to see you.”

“What does he want of me?”

“He asks to be brought into your presence.”

The Coadjuteur was at the door; this was not a time when Queens should be allowed to stand on ceremony, and he was master of Paris.

Henrietta Maria did not rise; she looked at him haughtily.

But Paul de Gondi had not come as an enemy.

He bowed before the Queen, and she looked into the face of the man who was temporarily king of Paris. It was a dissolute face though a strong one. Paul de Gondi, who from childhood had wished to be a great power in the land, had been destined for the Church. His uncle had been Archbishop of Paris, and it was intended that Paul should succeed him. But Paul, having no vocation for the Church, had tried to prove himself unsuitable for the office by riotous living and frequent dueling. Finding himself unable to avoid acceptance of the archbishopric he decided to become a learned man and rule France as Richelieu had done. First he had set about winning the people of Paris, and having done this with some success he found himself in his present position of power.

But when he looked at the poor suffering Queen of England, stoically shivering by the bed of her daughter, and thought of what was happening to her husband and other children, he was filled with pity for her.

“Madame,” he said, “you suffer much.”

“Monsieur le Coadjuteur,” she replied, “if you have news for me, pray give it—I mean news from England.”

“That I cannot give, Madame, but I can give some comfort. I can have food sent to you—food and firewood.”

She said: “Monsieur, if you know anything, I beg of you give me news.”

“I have no news. But it shall not be said that I stood by and allowed the daughter of Henri Quatre to starve.”

Henrietta Maria shrugged her shoulders. “It is six months since I received my pension, and no one would supply me with food and the means to keep my apartment warm because I could not pay.”

“But this is terrible!”

“I keep my little daughter company. It was too cold for her to rise today.”

“Madame, I shall myself see that your daughter does not have to stay in bed for want of a faggot.”

“What can you do, Monsieur?”

“First I shall have comfort sent to you; then I shall put your case before the Parliament.”

“The Parliament!” Henrietta Maria laughed aloud and bitterly. “Parliaments do not love kings and queens these days, Monsieur.”

“Madame, the Parliament will not allow it to be said that it denied food and firewood to a daughter and granddaughter of Henri Quatre.”

The Queen wept a little after he had gone.

“Why do you cry, Mam?” asked the little girl. “Was the man cruel to you?”

“No, my sweetheart. He was not cruel; he was kind.”

“Then why do you cry?”

“There are times, dearest, when unexpected kindness makes us cry. Ah, you look at your poor Mam with those big black eyes and you wonder at my words. But there is much you do not yet know of life. Yet you are learning; you are learning fast for a little one.”

Paul de Gondi was as good as his word. That very day firewood and food were brought to the Louvre, and a few days later, at the instigation of de Gondi, the Parliament ordered that 40,000 livres should be sent to the Queen in memory of Henri Quatre.

In memory of Henri Quatre! Henrietta Maria could not help comparing her father with her husband. She could not remember her father, yet she had heard much of him; she had seen pictures of that great man, depicting the full sensuous mouth, the large nose, the humorous eyes and the lines of debauchery. She remembered stories she had heard of the stormy relationship between her father and mother; she had heard of the continual quarrels and the ravings of her mother whose temper she knew to be violent. She could imagine that angry temper roused to madness by the cynically smiling King; she knew that many times her mother had struck him, and she had heard how such blows reduced him to helpless laughter in spite of the fact that she was, as he himself said, “terribly robust.” He had been called the ugliest man in France, but people would always add “and its bravest gentleman.” They had loved him as they had loved no other King; the lecher (who, at the time of his assassination in his fifty-seventh year had been courting Angelique Paulet, a girl of seventeen) had declared, old as he was,
that conquest in love pleased him better than conquest in war—and he was the most popular King who had ever ruled France.

This ugly man, this cynic, without any deep religion, ready to turn from the Huguenot faith to the Catholic faith (for “was not Paris worth a mass?”) was the hero of France; and even after his death those who had rebelled against the Court remembered him, and for his sake would not let his daughter starve.

When he had been stabbed by a fanatical monk, all France had mourned him; his assassin had died the horrible death which the nation demanded as the penalty of such a deed. And yet in England a good and noble man, religious, faithful and striving to act in a manner he considered to be right, might die and the people would cry: “God’s will be done.”

It was February of that tragic year. There was a little more comfort in the bare rooms of the Louvre than there had been during previous months. But a worse tragedy overhung the palace; the servants knew of it; Anne knew of it; but there was no one who dared speak of it to the Queen. So they kept her in ignorance.

Henrietta Maria, during those weeks, was subdued yet determined to be hopeful.

“I often wonder why there is no news,” she would say to those about her. “But good it is that there should be no news. I know the people love the King, my husband. Perhaps they have already released him from captivity. Oh, it is a sad and wicked thing that he should be a captive. So good … so noble … the best husband any woman ever had. No child ever had a more kindly father. How happy we could have been!”

Towards the middle of February she would wait no longer. Paul de Gondi had shown his goodness to her; he would not deny her in her great need. She would ask that a messenger be sent to Saint-Germain where there would certainly be tidings of her husband.

Then they knew that they could withhold the truth no longer.

Anne asked Lord Jermyn, the Queen’s most faithful adviser, to break the news to her. “For,” she said, “you will do it better than any of us could. You will know how to soothe her.”

He went to Henrietta Maria in her apartments. With her was the little Princess, Anne Morton and Père Cyprien de Gamaches.

Jermyn knelt before the Queen.

She said at once: “You have news from England?”

He lifted his face to hers; his lips quivered, and she knew, even before
he spoke. A blank expression crept over her face; her eyes were mutely pleading with him not to speak, not to say those fateful words.

“Madame, dear Madame, on the 30th of January, the King, your husband, laid his head upon the block …”

She did not speak.

“Madame,” resumed Jermyn, his voice broken with a sob. “Madame … Long live King Charles II.”

Still she did not speak. Anne placed her hand on the shoulder of the little Princess who was looking at her with wondering eyes, and gently pushed her towards her mother. The Queen, putting out her hand, reached for her daughter and held her fast to her side; she still looked blankly before her and said not a word.

The little Princess was bewildered. She was five years old; she lived in the great Palace of the Louvre, but the vast rooms were deserted and there was war in the streets. She could not understand her mother’s sudden passionate embraces, the great floods of tears and what seemed to her the incoherent ramblings. Her mother had changed. She wore somber widow’s mourning; she was constantly in tears; she referred to herself as
La Reine Malheureuse;
and little Henriette would cry with her, not knowing why she cried.

“Ah, you do well to weep!” the Queen would say. “Do you know that but for you I should not be here now. I should be with the Carmelite nuns in the Convent of the Faubourg Saint-Jacques; that is where I yearn to be, to pray for strength to help me bear this burden of living. Ah,
ma petite
, I pray that you will never feel as I do. I pray that you will never be beset with doubts as your poor mother is this day. There are many who say I brought him to this—that good and noble man! They say that had he never attempted to arrest the Five Members seven years ago, civil war would have been averted.
I
urged him to do that. I did not believe that any would dare oppose the King to the extent of going to war. I believed that we could govern without a Parliament. Oh, my little Henriette, have I, who loved him, brought him to the scaffold?”

Henriette did not know what to answer; she could only take her little kerchief and wipe away her mother’s tears.

And now her mother had gone away to stay with the nuns, and she could only feel relieved because of this. She was left to the care of dear Anne Morton and Père Cyprien. But these two were beginning to cause her some anxiety; and their teachings often seemed to be contradictory. She was conscious
of some vague strife between them, of triumphs enjoyed by one to the discomfiture of the other; and in some way, which she herself did not understand, she was involved in their polite warfare.

“I wish my brother would come,” she often said to herself. “All would be well if he were here.”

She thought of him constantly; he had always been kind and loving; he was so big and clever, yet not too big and clever to make a little girl feel she was of some importance to him.

And then, one day, he came to the Louvre.

He had grown up since she had last seen him; he was a young man of nineteen now. He was taller, but he still had the same luxuriant black hair and humorous eyes.

When he came into the apartment Lady Morton and Père Cyprien both fell on their knees, but Henriette ran to him and flung herself into his arms.