Exit Lady Masham (3 page)

Lady Anne now looked baffled. "I suppose because he made himself king. Is that right?"

"Papa made him king!" Lady Mary exclaimed.

"There was, it was true, a revolution, a glorious revolution," I interjected hastily, to mute so dangerous a topic. "And King James, the father of Princesses Mary and Anne, abandoned his kingdom and fled with his son to France. So it became necessary for Parliament to change the succession. And Parliament provided that the Princess Mary and her husband should reign jointly."

But Lady Mary was not inclined to concede such power to mere legislators. "You forget, Mistress Hill, that King William himself, like his wife, was a grandchild of Charles I. His mother was a Stuart princess!"

"Pardon me, Lady Mary, I do
not
forget that. It is perfectly true that he himself was next in line to the throne—
after
his wife and her sister. But it was Parliament that put him ahead of Anne. Otherwise, would Anne not have become queen when her sister died?"

"And a jolly good thing it would have been," Lady Anne retorted. "At least she has the
name
for a queen."

"Anne, you're such a silly!" her sister exclaimed. She turned on me sharply now. "I still think you're wrong, Mistress Hill. I don't care for King William, because he's always been horrid to Papa, but it was Papa, and not Parliament, that made him king!"

"Very well, Lady Mary. Let us examine your thesis. You maintain that King William is sovereign, independently of Parliament? Sovereign, that is, in his own right?"

"Certainly."

"Then if he were to marry now..."

"He's too old!" Mary interrupted. "And too ugly!"

"He's not yet fifty," I pointed out. "And as for his looks, I think it should not be difficult to find a willing bride for the King of England and Stadtholder of the United Provinces. So let me at least suppose His Majesty may marry and have a son. Who would succeed him?"

"Why, the son, I suppose."

"But that's just where I suggest you are wrong, Lady Mary. The Princess of Denmark would become queen,
de jure,
like her late sister."

Both girls at this condescended to show a mild surprise.

"That would be funny, wouldn't it?" Lady Anne surmised. "The King's sister-in-law coming ahead of a Prince of Wales!"

"And
now
do you see what I mean? Parliament has provided that Princess Anne shall take precedence over any issue of King William by a second marriage."

"I suppose that's only fair," Lady Mary commented. "Anne, after all, should have been queen since Mary died."

"Had Parliament not decided otherwise."

"I declare, Mistress Hill, you sound like a roundhead!"

"But she's right, girls, she's quite right! You have a smart teacher."

I jumped up to greet Lord Marlborough, who had just entered the room. He walked slowly to where his daughters were sitting, smiling amicably, and ran his long fingers through Anne's curls.

"But, Papa, you must admit it's all nonsense!" Lady Mary retorted. "Parliament jumping in to provide that people should rule who have no proper blood claim!"

"Well, it happens I had something to do with that nonsense, Mary. It was the only way we could persuade the Princess of Orange to come over and take King James's place. Oh, she was adamant! Her William had to rule with her and succeed her, and that was that!"

"It seems to me it was a stiff price, Papa."

"We should all be bowing to the Bishop of Rome, my girl, if it hadn't been paid!"

"I don't know about that," Mary observed with a toss of her head. "But I
do
think it was a mistake to give all those horrid commoners the idea that they could fiddle with precedence. In the old days, if you had to get rid of a king you killed him. And kept on killing his heirs until you found the one you wanted!"

Lord Marlborough burst out laughing. "Is that your definition of the divine right of kings, Mary? I never heard it put quite that way before!"

Lady Mary jumped up to stamp an imperious foot. "Well, isn't it better to settle these matters with your peers and not go begging to burghers?"

"My, my, one would think that you issued from a long line of dukes and not a yesterday's earl!"

"Never mind, Papa. You
will
be a duke. And I don't forget we owe your peerage to King James and not to Dutch William."

"Are you a Jacobite then, lass?"

"Yes! And proud of it!"

"After all, Papa," exclaimed Lady Anne, with a sly wink at her sister, "isn't King James our uncle?"

"Your uncle, child? How is that?"

"Well, isn't he the father of Aunt Arabella's children? And doesn't that make him our uncle?"

The girls always treated their father in this familiar fashion. They did not hesitate to fling in his teeth that his sister had borne four bastards to James II. They knew that their mother ruled him, and even though they also knew that she would vociferously take his side in any intergenerational dispute, they still believed that a man who could be bested by one woman could be bested by another.

"I think that should conclude today's lesson," my lord exclaimed, and the girls hurried from the chamber, not because they had been dismissed, but because they were eager to leave class. Their father remained.

"Let me ask you something in private, Mistress Hill," he said now in a graver tone. "You have become a close observer of our household affairs. Would you be able to enlighten a worried husband as to the cause of his wife's distemper? For three days now Lady Marlborough has maintained a total silence at meals."

I confess to my reader that this simple question created one of the high emotional moments of my life. That this great, good man, this brave, handsome man, this friend of monarchs, should be reduced to asking a plain, red-nosed governess to help him find the cause of his domestic misery filled my heart to bursting.

"You are silent, Mistress Hill. Forgive me. I have embarrassed you."

"Oh, no, my lord! Not in the least. I think perhaps Lady Marlborough may be grieved that you seemed not to notice the anniversary of your first child's demise."

"Ah," he murmured softly. "So
that
is it. Poor little Henriette. Our first Henriette. What day, do you know, did the dear babe depart this world?"

"The seventeenth, sir."

"The seventeenth, just so. Three days ago. Thank you, Mistress Hill."

"If I may offer a suggestion, sir, why do you not bring Lady Marlborough a trinket that
would
have been ready on the seventeenth—had some wretched shopkeeper not botched the job?"

The grave eyes glittered. "Such as?"

"Well, you might have one of the miniatures of the child reset. And bring it to her tomorrow."

"Or this afternoon!" he exclaimed, jumping to his feet. "Bless you, Mistress Hill!"

And so began a curious relationship between my humble self and the great Earl. It became a silent pact between us that I should warn him of any reason I had to suspect that his spouse was displeased with him. Sometimes, of course, Sarah, who was not renowned for her diffidence, would announce in ringing tones to her husband—and to any of the household that happened to be within hearing—just what it was that had aroused her anger or suspicion. But at others she would retreat into sullen silence, and it was this that he dreaded most of all.

Other women were the most usual cause of Lady Marlborough's wrath. The Earl had only to be decently civil to a not ugly female, or simply to comment on her appearance, and his wife would flare. It was certainly no compliment to one of my sex to have been selected by Sarah to work in Holywell House!

"But I don't even remember
which
of the ladies at dinner was Mrs. Bartlett," Lord Marlborough might protest to me.

"You don't recall the redhead, my lord?"

"Oh,
that
one. My wife should be casting comedies at Drury Lane. She has an eye!"

But my reader may not be so much interested in the scraps of conversation with which I attempted to keep the great man abreast of his wife's suspicious imaginings as in what was going on in
my
poor mind and heart. What did I feel when I found myself alone with Lord Marlborough, discussing a matter of the deepest personal concern to him?

I cannot say that I fell in love with him. I would not have dared to.
Can
one fall in love with a god? Of course, we read in mythologies that mortal women had such experiences and got turned into trees or cows because of the gods' attentions. I should have been quite happy to be turned into any bit of flora or fauna for the privilege of being for a single day the welcomed tenant of Lord Marlborough's heart, but I did not have the temerity to dream of such a thing. I knew that even as a young penniless officer he had been able to lure the Duchess of Cleveland, reigning beauty of her day, from the very bed of the "merry monarch" and sire upon her a babe that Charles II had reared as his own bastard. How could such a titan, even had he not given his whole heart to Sarah, cast a moment's glance at the likes of me?

Cousin Sarah's imagination, however, at least in this respect, was more copious than my own. She could step into her husband's shoes and fancy him sniffing after every female on the premises, including the poor governess. And then, in her own oddly democratic fashion, she would not scruple to use the same weapons against the governess that she would have used against another Duchess of Cleveland.

Sarah appeared one morning at the doorway of her daughters' classroom, erect and menacing, when her husband and I were having one of our talks.

"Will you leave us, Lord Marlborough!" she called out harshly. "You have no business that I wot of in the children's room!"

At which the bravest man in Europe rose and fled. Had he not been John Churchill, I might have used the term "scuttled." But always a tactician, he covered his retreat by leaving a morsel that the hungry predator could be counted on to devour before going after him.

"Well, Mistress Hill, is this how you repay my kindness? Is this your thanks for being saved from the pox?"

"I do not follow you, milady."

"What do you think you're doing with my husband, hussy? Do you want to find yourself pregnant and back in the streets?"

"Surely Your Ladyship doesn't accuse Lord Marlborough of seeking to debauch his wife's poor kin?"

The passionate injury in my tone gave even her a moment's pause, and she reappraised me now with a candid stare. "Well, you're no beauty, that's sure. But one can never tell what may strike a man's wayward fancy. King James ran after all the plainest faces in court. It was a known thing. Oh, I don't underestimate any female, Hill, when it comes to His Lordship! Tell me, then. What was he talking to you about?"

I decided that the truth was my only hope. I told my stony-faced, intently listening cousin the whole little story of her husband's concern and of my reassurances. As each episode that I related was recognizably accurate and as the only inference to be drawn was one highly flattering to herself, she was in the end somewhat mollified. But she was very definite in her resolve that these colloquies should be discontinued.

"I shall tell Lord Marlborough that he is to have no further private parlance with you. Look to it, girl! If I catch you again, out you go! For now, it's very well. I accept your story." She paused as she looked about at the scattered books and papers. "What a mess here! Clear it up, child. Clear it up!"

M
y little talks with the Earl of Marlborough were forgiven (if there was anything to forgive) but certainly not forgotten by his watchful spouse. Sarah decided that I had better be removed from temptation's way, but as she was always scrupulously fair (by her own exceedingly prejudiced lights), and as she recognized that I had been guilty of no breach of duty to her, she was determined that I should not suffer in salary or position by my change. She decided to place me in the household of the Princess of Denmark, and thus it was that I became a bedchamberwoman to the future Queen of England.

I had no personal acquaintance with the Princess until some time after her succession, which took place only a year after my employment. Her household, of course, was a very large one, and my position in it was lowly. In a less exalted milieu I should have been considered a chambermaid, but royalty sheds dignity over the most menial tasks. At Versailles, I have been told, a duke is not ashamed to bring a prince his chamber pot. Princess Anne was dressed, and her face and hands washed, by ladies of title. I saw her frequently, for I had regular duties to her wardrobe, but I never approached her person. She struck me as a solid, stolid, rather sullen-looking woman of middle age, very intent on the minutiae of her hourly existence, who never seemed to look beyond her immediate presence at the great world about her. Yet she had beautiful sad eyes that seemed to view her servants and courtiers with a faint apprehension, perhaps even a faint distrust.

It was enough for me to know that this woman had lost seventeen babies for my heart to forgive her any distaste that she may have manifested for the obsequious humanity that pressed so closely about her. Her husband, Prince George, would have been almost an attractive man had he been more lively and less stout. Unlike his wife, he was cordial to all, but one received the impression that he did not distinguish between the people at whom he grinned. He looked very much what he was reputed to be: a prince of small mind and kind heart who sought only to keep out of the way. His sole function had been to supply an heir to the throne, and he had been made painfully aware that he had failed, though presumably through no fault of his own.

The Princess and her late sister, Queen Mary, had quarreled bitterly over the former's stubborn refusal to dismiss Lady Marlborough, whom Queen Mary had hated, and this quarrel had led to a great reduction in the honors and perquisites of the Denmarks, and even to the withdrawal of their guards, but after Mary's death it had not been feasible for King William, sickly himself, to treat the heir apparent so contemptibly, and there had been some revival of their splendor. When the great day came, and Princess Anne found herself sovereign at last, there was no attempt by her household to disguise their rejoicing. In the course of the next year I found that I became as familiar with the palaces of Kensington, Windsor, Greenwich and Hampton Court as I had been with Holywell House or St. James's. But that has been the story of my life: either hovels or castles—with very little in between.