Winsor, Kathleen (16 page)

"Bruce!
Aren't you even going to kiss me?"

He
hesitated for only an instant and then his arms went about her with a rough
eagerness which suggested some reluctance within himself to leave her. Amber
clung to him, her fingers clutching his arms as though she could hold him there
by sheer force of superior strength, her mouth avidly against his, and already
her face was wet with tears.

"Oh,
Bruce!
Don't
go! Please don't go—please don't leave me—! Please—
please
don't leave me—"

But
at last his fingers took hold of her wrists and slowly he forced her away.
"Amber, darling—" His voice had a sound of pleading urgency.
"I'll come back one day—I'll see you again—"

She
gave a sudden cry, like a lonely desperate animal, and then she began to
struggle with him, reaching out to grab hold of his arms, terrified. All at
once he seized both her wrists, his mouth caught at hers again for an instant,
and before she could quite realize what had happened he was gone through the
room and out the door and it slammed behind him.

Stunned,
she stood for a moment staring at the closed door. And then she ran to it, her
hand going out to grab the knob.

"Bruce!"

But
she did not quite reach it. Instead she stopped, brought up short by some
hopelessness inside herself, and though for a moment her eyes continued to
watch the door, at last she slumped slowly to her knees and her head dropped
into her hands.

The
Duke of York leaned gloomily against the fireplace. His hands were in the
pockets of his breeches, his good-looking face was sulky, and he stared down at
the floor. Across the room Charles was bent over a table, peering intently into
a pewter pan set on an oil-lamp, in which boiled and bubbled a hundred
different herbs. Now, carefully, he took up a spoon and measured in three
heaping spoonfuls of dried ground angelica, stirring as he did so.

The
brothers were in his Majesty's laboratory, surrounded on all sides by crucibles
and alembics, retorts and matrasses. There were glass and earthenware jars full
of powders, pastes, many-coloured liquids, oil of prima materia. Egg-shaped
vessels of every size and substance lined the shelves. Piles of books bound in
old leather, stamped with gold, stood on the floor or on the tables.
Chemistry—which had not yet secured its divorce from the medieval witch-women,
alchemy—was one of the King's chief interests. Even when he had had to beg a
meal he had not been able to resist paying money out of his meagre store for
almost every new nostrum recommended him by a passing quack.

"How
the devil," said Charles now, stirring the mixture but not looking around,
"did you let her get you into such a mess?"

York
gave a heavy sigh.
"I
wish I knew. She isn't even pretty. She's as ugly as an old bawd. Eyes that pop
and a shape like this—" His hands described an ungainly female form.

Charles
smiled. "Perhaps that's what fooled you. It's my
observation a
pretty woman seldom thinks it's necessary to be clever. Anne Hyde is
clever—don't you agree?" He seemed amused.

James
shifted his weight, scowling. "I don't know what fooled me. I must have
been out of my mind. Signing that damned marriage-contract!"

"And
in your own blood. A picturesque touch, James, that one. Well—you've signed it
and you've had her and she's pregnant. Now what?"

"Now
nothing. I hope I never see her again."

"A
contract of marriage is as binding as a ceremony, James, you know that. Whether
you like it or not, you're married to her. And that child she carries is yours
and will bear your name."

James
heaved himself away from the fireplace, walked across the room and glanced at
the concoction his brother had stirred up. "Ugh!" said the Duke.
"How it stinks!"

"It
does, I agree," admitted Charles. "But the fellow who sold me the
recipe says it's the most sovereign thing for an ague ever discovered—and
London and the ague, you know, are synonymous. This winter I don't doubt you'll
be glad enough to borrow a dose of it from me."

Restless,
discontented, angry, James turned and walked away. After a moment he once more
took up the subject of his marriage. "I'm not so sure," he said
slowly, "you're right about that, sir. The brat may not be mine after
all."

"Now
what've you been hearing?"

Suddenly
James came back to him; his face was serious and growing excited.
"Berkeley came to me two days ago and told me that Anne has lain with him.
Killigrew and Jermyn have sworn the same thing since."

For
a long moment Charles looked at his brother, searching his face. "And you
believed them?"

"Of
course I believed them!" declared James hotly. "They're my nearest
friends! Why wouldn't I believe them?"

"Berkeley
and Jermyn and Harry Killigrew. The three greatest liars in England. And why do
you suppose they told you that? Because they knew it was what you wanted to
hear. It is, isn't it?" Charles's dark eyes narrowed slightly, his face
shrewd. He understood his brother perfectly, much better in fact than James
understood himself.

James
did not answer him for a long moment but at last he said softly, half-ashamed,
"Yes. I suppose it is. But why the devil should I think Anne Hyde is more
virtuous than another woman? They all have a price—"

"And
hers was marriage." The King set the pan off the flame and turned down the
lamp. Then he took his doublet from where it had hung over a chair-back and
slipped into it. "Look here, James—I'm no better pleased than you are with
this business— The daughter of a commoner, even if he is my Chancellor, is no
suitable wife for the heir to the English throne. But
it would raise
a damned peculiar smell all over Europe if you got her with child and refused to
marry her. If she'd been anyone but the Chancellor's daughter we might have
found a way around it. As it is I think there's only one course for you: Marry
her immediately and with as good a grace as you can."

"That
isn't what the Chancellor wants. He's locked her in her rooms and says he'd
rather have her thrown into the Tower and beheaded than disgrace the Stuarts by
marrying one of them."

"Edward
Hyde was a good servant to my father and he's been a good servant to me. I
don't doubt he's angry with her, but one thing you may be sure of—it's not only
the Stuarts he's worried about. He knows well enough that if his daughter
marries you he'll have a thousand new enemies. Jealousy doesn't breed
love."

"If
you say it's best, Sire, I'll marry her—but what about Mam?" He gave
Charles a sudden desperate look that was almost comical.

Charles
laughed, but put an arm about his brother's shoulders. "Mam will most
likely have a fit of the mother that will go near to killing her." "A
fit of the mother" was the common term for hysteria. "She's always
hated Hyde—and her family pride is almost as great a passion with her as her
religion. But I'll protect you, Jamie—" He grinned. "I'll threaten to
hold off her pension."

They
walked out together, James still thoughtful and morose, Charles good-humoured
as usual. He snapped his fingers at a pair of little spaniels asleep in a
square of sunshine and they scrambled to their feet and tore yapping out of the
room, scuttling between his legs, turning to prance on their hind legs to look
up at him.

James's
marriage to Anne Hyde created a considerable excitement. The Chancellor was
furious; Anne wept incessantly; and the Duke still thought he might find a way
out. With the help of Sir Charles Berkeley he stole the blood-signed contract
and burned it, and Berkeley offered to marry her himself and give the child his
name. The courtiers were in a quandary, not knowing whether they should pay
their respects to the new Duchess or avoid her altogether, and only Charles
seemed perfectly at ease.

And
then the Duke of Gloucester, who had fallen ill of small-pox but had been
thought to be out of danger, died suddenly. Charles had loved him well, as he
did all his family, and he had seemed a young man of great promise, eager and
charming and intelligent. It was unbelievable that now he lay dead, still and
solemn and never to move again. There had been nine children in the family. Two
had died on the day of birth, two others had lived only a short while, and now
there remained only Charles and James, Mary who was Princess
of Orange, and
Henrietta Anne, the youngest, still with her mother in France.

But
even the death of Henry could not halt the festivities for long. And though the
Court managed to show a decent face of sorrow in the presence of Charles or
James, the balls and the suppers, the flirtations and the gambling went on as
before, wildly, madly, as though it would never be possible to get enough of
pleasure and excitement.

The
great houses along the Strand, from Fleet Street to Charing Cross, were opened
all day and far into the night. Their walls resounded with noisy laughter and
the tinkle of glasses, music and chatter, the swish of silken skirts and the
tap of high-heeled shoes. Great gilt coaches rattled down the streets, stood
lined up outside theatres and taverns, went rambling through the woods of St.
James's Park and along Pall Mall. Duels were fought in Marrowbone Fields and at
Knightsbridge over a lady's dropped fan or a careless word spoken in jest.
Across the card-table thousands of pounds changed hands nightly, and lords and
ladies sat on the floor, watching with breathless apprehension a pair of
rolling dice.

The
execution of the regicides, held at Charing Cross, was attended by thousands
and all the quality went to watch. Those men who had been chiefly responsible
for the death of Charles I now themselves died, jerking at the end of a rope
until they were half-dead, and then they were cut down, disembowelled and
beheaded and their dripping heads and hearts held up for the cheering crowds to
see. After that their remains were flung into a cart and taken off to Newgate
to be pickled and cured before being set up on pikes over the City gates.

A
new way of life had come in full-blown on the crimson wings of the Restoration.

It
was only a week after her brother's death that Princess Mary arrived in London.
She was twenty-eight, a widow and mother—though she had left her son in
Holland—a pretty, graceful gay young woman with chestnut curls and sparkling
hazel eyes. She had always hated Holland, that sombre strait-laced land, and
now she intended to live in England with her favourite brother and have all the
lovely gowns and extravagant jewels for which she longed.

She
embraced Charles enthusiastically, but she was cooler with James and only
waited until the three of them were alone to speak her mind to him:

"How
could you do it, James? Marry that creature! Heavens, where's your pride?
Marrying your own sister's Maid of Honour!" Anne and Mary had been close
friends at one time, but that was over now.

James
scowled. "I'm sick of hearing about it, Mary. God knows I didn't marry her
because I wanted to."

"Didn't
marry her because you wanted to! Why, pray,
did
you marry her
then?"

Charles
interrupted, putting an arm about his sister's waist. "I
advised him to
it, Mary. Under the circumstances it seemed the only honourable course to
take."

Mary
cocked a skeptical eyebrow. "Mam won't find it so honourable, I warrant
you. Just wait until
she
gets here!"

"That,"
said Charles, "is what we're all waiting for."

It
was not long until the Queen Mother Henrietta Maria arrived—not more than a
week, in fact, after Anne Hyde's son was born. Most of the Court went to Dover
to meet her and they stayed a day, or two at the great old castle which for
centuries had guarded the cliffs of England.

Henrietta
Maria was forty-nine but she looked nearer seventy, a tiny hollow-cheeked
haunted-eyed woman with no vestige of beauty left. What little she had
possessed had gone early, lost in the bearing of her many children, in the
hardships of the Civil Wars, in her grief for her husband whom she had loved
devotedly.

In
repose her face was ugly, but when surrounded by people she was vivacious and
gay, with all the superficial charm of her youth and the delightful manners in which
she had so carefully schooled her children. She was dressed in the
mourning-clothes which she had worn faithfully since her husband's death and
never intended to leave off until her own. The gown was plain black with full
sleeves and high neck, broad white linen collar and cuffs, and over her head
was hung a heavy black veil. She still wore her dark hair in old-fashioned
corkscrew curls; it was her one concession to the love of personal ornament and
pretty things which had been so strong in her.