Exit Lady Masham (6 page)

Had he told me that my nose was white, I could not have been more surprised. I liked to flatter myself that my correspondence could boast an occasional happy turn of phrase. "Where have you seen any samples of my poor efforts, Captain?"

"I have the honor of Mr. Harley's friendship. He is your kinsman, I believe?"

"He is good enough not to deny the bedchamberwoman."

"He is proud enough to acknowledge the Queen's friend! Mr. Harley took the liberty of reading me a letter that you wrote him when the court was at Greenwich. It contained a charming description of the Lord Mayor's barge. Mr. Addison could scarcely have improved on it."

I was charmed. I had been particularly proud of that letter. "I blush that Mr. Harley should have made so much of my humble prose. Are you a writer, Captain?"

"I am writing a tragedy."

"Indeed! Is it in couplets?"

"I prefer not to be the prisoner of rhyme. My thoughts disdain fetters. But, of course, I use the heroic meter."

I repressed a smile at the grandeur of his disdain. Mr. Dryden had not deemed rhyme so limiting. "May I ask the subject of your tragedy?"

"I have taken it from the French master, Corneille. It is an adaptation of his tragedy
Pulcherie.
Do you recall the story? No? It is about a Byzantine empress, a virgin, who, having succeeded to the throne in early middle age upon the decease of her younger brother, is urged by her council to marry. Not wishing to share the imperium with any man, she rejects a young prince, whom she adores, for an aged general. Her condition is that the marriage shall not be consummated."

There was a pause as I considered this bizarre plot. "But would that not defeat the purpose of the council? Did they not seek an heir to the throne?"

"Apparently not. The council was less concerned with an heir than with having a man to guide the sovereign in affairs of state."

"But why the condition, then? Would not even a nominal husband have had the same right to guide his spouse?"

"I presume not, under Byzantine law. At any rate, Pulcherie feels that she will be stronger as a virgin monarch."

"I see. It's most interesting. Do you believe it will be a subject of interest to a London audience?"

"Not precisely. My tragedy would appeal to a more select group. Perhaps in a performance here. I see it as a delicate compliment to the Queen."

I stared. "Surely you are not suggesting, sir, that Her Majesty's marriage contains a parallel?"

Masham laughed loudly, even rather crudely. I was destined to become much acquainted with that laugh. "Hardly, after all those stillborn babes! I could be sent to the Tower for such a suggestion. No, I am reflecting on the fact that the Queen likes to preserve the rule entirely to herself, a resolution that the Prince honors and understands. We all know that Her Majesty welcomes comparisons to the great Elizabeth. It is only politically that I consider her a virgin queen."

This, I was to discover, was typical of Masham. He was totally unable to conceive that other persons might view things differently from the way he did. Fortunately, he had so many little projects in his mind that they were rarely executed.
Pulcherie
never grew beyond a single act.

"Do you contemplate a career as a man of letters?" I inquired politely.

"Perhaps not quite a career. A gentleman couldn't very well do that, could he? But statesmen and diplomats today are inclined to the pen. A taste for letters has become very much the thing. Your cousin Mr. Harley collects rare books. Mr. Prior is accounted a first-class poet. Sir Thomas Hanmer is supposed to be editing Will Shakespeare. Mr. Addison and Mr. Steele are received in the greatest houses."

"And Monsieur Racine gave up the stage to become King Louis's historiographer."

"Precisely. You are well informed. Happily for Racine, he did not live to be obliged to record the recent victories of our Captain-General. But to return to a humbler scribe, would you condescend to read some pages from my tragedy and favor me with your words of wisdom?"

"I should be only too pleased."

And so our more intimate acquaintance began. We met daily now, sometimes on the terrace, but more often in Mr. Harley's apartments, where Masham was a regular guest. I never did see any pages of the famous tragedy, for after a bit he seemed to forget all about it. If my reader is surprised that Masham should have been so welcome in Harley's intellectual circle, let me explain that he provided his host with a perfect foil. Masham's laugh was loud, constant and infectious, and he could be pleasantly ribald when he was not quite adequately witty. I was titillated but ashamed when Harley joked about my obvious interest in his "protégé." But he soon waxed more serious.

"What do you say to our young friend as a suitor, Abbie?" he asked me one afternoon on the terrace, where we watched the return of the royal hunt. "He admires you. That is obvious to all."

"Oh, that's just badinage," I said, reddening.

Harley pursed his lips into a small knot and raised his eyebrows. "It's difficult for a woman to tell, isn't it? How they go on, these fellows! But suppose he meant it?"

I felt my mouth go dry. I need not hide from these pages that Samuel Masham's body had already become a magnet to me. Even when I found him foolish, almost ridiculous, I was giddy in his proximity. His perfume and his male odor simply undid me. Impatiently now, I tried to shake off the image.

"What could it come to?"

"Why not to a marriage?"

"To a servant? You dream, Mr. Harley."

"To a royal servant? To a cousin of a secretary of state? To a cousin by marriage of the Captain-General?"

"Without a penny to her name?"

"The Queen would give you something."

"It would never do."

"Think about it, my dear! Just think about it."

Needless to say, I did. In my daydreams, following this colloquy, I was already in bed with Mr. Masham. I did not for a minute believe that he loved me; I knew that he wanted only to be close to Mr. Harley and to the Queen for the purpose of promoting his own career. He meant to subjugate me, to sleep with me, if he could, certainly not to marry me. He had perfectly divined that I was attracted to him; there was an air of near-insolence now in the freedom of his flattery.

"You have reduced me to a sorry state, Mistress Hill! I, who used to be the diversion, even the terror, of half the maids at court, now languish in corners, pouting till my sun appears. But my sun seems to shine on everyone."

"Or on none."

"Spare me a beam! One beam just for myself, enchantress! Give the rest, if you must, to the garish world."

"Captain, I must go to the Queen now."

"Could you not spare a beggar a coin?"

"A coin?"

"A kiss!"

"A kiss! Really, Captain, do you think me so rich as to spare beggars gold pieces?"

"On the cheek, merely, then."

"Captain, I shall be late!"

"And I sent to the Tower. Unless..."

"There! You took it. I did not give it."

This sort of nonsense was froth to him, but it was horribly upsetting to me. I was in such a constant fever now that I could hardly concentrate on my duties, and only my awareness that any loss in royal favor would be followed by the immediate loss of my lover enabled me to keep my mind in any sort of order.

It was a second and more intimate conversation with Mr. Harley that proved my undoing. The next time that the Secretary approached me on the subject of Masham, I told him flatly that I did not propose to be used as a pawn in any man's career.

"His pawn? But, dear girl, you'd be his queen!"

"I don't care, Mr. Harley! I do not wish to be made sport of." And then, to both our astonishments, I began to sob. "It is wretched for a woman to be told a lot of things by a man that he does not mean!"

"What does Masham not mean?"

"All his love and what-not. All his burning and dying and sighing. All my being the sun and moon and such trash!"

"And what makes you think there is no passion behind his words?"

"Because I'm ugly, Mr. Harley! A man like Masham could love only a beautiful woman."

Harley's little eyes became even smaller as he puckered his face into his worldly-wise expression.

"Let me tell you something, my dear. I think you are wise enough to take it in good spirit. You must learn that women know very little about men. You take it for granted that a handsome fellow must have a beautiful girl. That may be true of some of them. But not of all. And certainly not of Masham. Look at your dogs and cats. Do the males care about beauty? They do not even care about age. A mastiff will run after any old bitch in heat. You will forgive an elder cousin his plain language. Masham would have the same rapture with you that he would have with a beauty such as Milady Somerset."

I was shocked, but not angered, by his crudeness. There was something of Pandarus in the way the idea of Masham's brutal and indiscriminate masculinity seemed to tickle him. I recalled now that he was always placing his hand on Masham's sleeve or tapping him on the shoulder. But the effect of his words was still devastating. The notion that in submitting to my would-be lover I might be giving as well as receiving pleasure undermined the last pillar of the wobbly pier of my defenses.

Thus it happened that Masham achieved access to my chamber and person. But the reader may still wonder, despite my preamble, why, at the age of twenty-seven, with a reputation for modesty and good character, and having viewed the antics of the great world from a privileged position, I should have succumbed quite so swiftly to the advances of so typical a seducer.

I have stated my sexual inexperience, my plainness and my resignation to the prospect of a life in which I had no hope of enjoying the rites of love. These were elements in my undoing, but they would not in themselves have overcome my character. What did this, I am convinced, was the habit of daydreaming, of erotic fantasizing, which had occupied so many of my idle thoughts during the long hours alone in my chamber, or strolling in the royal gardens, or simply sitting by the Queen while she read or played cards or dozed. It was the fact that Masham happened to fit so neatly into these that enabled him to prevail in the game that I was at all times perfectly aware he was playing.

And there was yet another factor. I loved plays, both tragedies and comedies, and Mr. Congreve was my particular passion. I was fascinated by his heroes, those superb, foppish peacocks, so magnificently virile despite their airs and drawls, who strutted before the hens, declaiming their "worship" with images of "flames" and "sighs" and "deaths." Their love was like their spread tails, a dazzle of color intended to hypnotize the poor hens, who had only their bit of wit to protect them. The female of the species had two choices in the stage world of Congreve, both humiliating: to yield at the altar and become, soon enough, a betrayed spouse, or to yield without sanction of the altar and become a whore.

It was the game of the male to entice his victim into the second alternative. Marriage, unless it was a question of dowry, was only a last resort. The peculiar fascination of the game, to my eyes, was that it was played with such brutal candor. The words of passion were intended to inflame, not to fool. Women were like the captives of ancient Rome, flung into the arena with weapons not quite equal to the fangs and claws of the beasts loosed upon them, with the choice of being killed or surviving only to be made to fight again. The gallant who took a pinch of snuff as he drawled to Amarinta that he was dying in her displeasure was really telling her that she was already a whore in heart who might as well become one in fact. And in my dreams and fantasies I would be seized by the degrading urge to give in, to become a whore,
his
whore, to be trampled upon, used and flung away on the trash heap, where I belonged.

And, indeed, my triumphant lover entered into my fantasy quite as if it had been reality. He treated me as the French monarch might have treated a conquered province in Germany. He never even suggested that marriage was a possible consequence of his possession. I got my just deserts.

M
y cousin the Duchess used to say that there were women who conceived if a man so much as kissed their fingertips. It seemed I was one of these. After our marriage Masham kept me constantly pregnant, and the brief intimacy that preceded our lawful union proved equally fruitful. I had my first dizzy spells within days after I first succumbed to him.

I awoke immediately from my feverish daydreams. I was not sure that I had not been mad. What was horribly clear, at any rate, was that I had placed myself on the road to certain disgrace, that I had destroyed in one moment the safe and comfortable port that I had miraculously reached after a lifetime of desolation. And for what? A great love? Even at my headiest moment I had not regarded my feeling for Masham in that light. A great pleasure? Well, I have never made love with any other man, but if his performance was the equivalent of Marc Antony's, or of any of the fabled amorists of history, the delights of the body have been sadly overrated. And I do not care if one day Masham
does
read these lines.

My strongest reaction was shame, shame that I had been party to such a sham proceeding, shame of my low excitement at the prospect of my own debasement, shame at the folly with which I had turned from my beneficent mistress to give myself to the first rake that solicited me. On the morning when I first realized my condition, I turned away sharply from its odiously smiling cause. Masham had been waiting for me outside the Queen's door.

"Keep your hands to yourself, sir!" I hissed when he tried to put his arm around me.

"Hey, now, Abbie, what has come over you?"

"That I've been a fool once doesn't mean I must stay one!"

And I swept off, to leave him gaping.

Harley, from whom nothing at court could be long concealed, deduced at once what had happened from Masham's account of my behavior. We were now at Hampton Court, and he bade me visit him in his apartments, which were in the old Wolsey section of the palace, small dark rooms with massive chests, red hangings and linen-fold paneling. I stood by a narrow window, looking bleakly down on the courtyard while he, in his bantering tone, reproached me.