Royal Harlot (32 page)

My returning smile was as radiant as my golden shawl. As it should be, I thought happily, and with endless relief.

As it
must
be.

 
By the end of 1662, there was much in my life to please me. I suspected I might once again be with child by the king, a circumstance that pleased him mightily, for he was a doting father and found enormous contentment in our children.

The queen, however, still showed no signs of conception, a subject that was much studied and discussed among the Ladies of the Bedchamber. Anticipation grew each month, yet each month hopes were dashed again by the unwelcome advent of her flowers, whether showing on her smock or sheets. Though she’d been sent to Tunbridge Wells to take the waters, a sure cure in most cases, nothing changed. The whispers were already growing that she was barren, and more, that Clarendon had somehow known this yet had nonetheless urged the match because he’d greedily wanted claim to Tangier and Bombay, territories that seemed of little value to most Englishmen.

My house in King Street remained a center for important gatherings, and we’d successes to claim, too. When the office of secretary of state came open, it was filled not by one of Clarendon’s cronies, as he’d expected, but by Arlington. He’d had to give up the privy purse, of course, and that post was handed to Sir Charles Berkeley, another friend of my King Street suppers. The king was well pleased with the new appointments, for these gentlemen were more agreeable in their persons and beliefs to him than Clarendon ever could be.

Encouraged by these gentlemen, Charles had also agreed to a Declaration of Indulgences to be introduced into Parliament for consideration. If this declaration succeeded, it would serve to nullify the more intolerant restrictions of Clarendon’s Act of Uniformity, aimed at hobbling Protestant nonconformists and Catholics in their worship. What pleased me most, however, was how it would also serve to blacken Clarendon’s eye again.

While the warrant for my new place as Lady of the Bedchamber had yet to be confirmed—with Clarendon again delaying the process, just as he had with my title—Charles proceeded with granting me lodgings within the palace, my first rooms at Whitehall. I was given the apartments above the Holbein Gate, recently vacated when the Duke of Ormonde gave up the court for Ireland. There were few lodgings more convenient in the palace, nor more pleasantly situated, than these: through one set of windows I’d a splendid view of the garden and river and the balmy breezes that rose from them, whilst on the other side I could look down on the guards on sentry duty and see exactly who was entering or leaving the palace.

With Sir Charles holding the privy purse—and now opening it wide to me at the king’s request—I was able to refurbish everything to a nicety. I took special care not only with my bedchamber but with the nursery as well. Charles came often to play with our children, tossing them high into the air and letting them pull on his hair and mustache.

Roger kept to his word, and kept to Paris, and to Venice, and did not trouble me again.

It had been a good year, yes, and I’d precious little cause for complaint or remorse. Yet like every confirmed gambler, I could take no lasting pleasure in my good fortune, but must always look ahead to the next hand, the next trick, the highest stakes that might bring the greatest reward of all.

 
Although winter was slow in arriving, by Christmas the winds had turned wickedly cold and the snow lay thick upon the ground. The fires in the palace weren’t banked for the night, but kept tended and burning until dawn, and even so the vast rooms never shed their chill. Spoken words froze in the air, and even the most fashionable gave up their silk and cotton thread stockings for the warmth of wool. Gentlemen and ladies alike slung enormous fur muffs around their necks to warm their hands while conversing. The water in the washstand pitcher froze solid each night, and I was forced to keep my ink on the chimney piece to keep it from freezing, too.

The Thames froze thick enough to hold a Frost Fair, with peddlers selling hot chestnuts and chocolate and toys and trinkets to those who wished the novelty of strolling across the river and beneath the arches of the bridges. The gallants had their horses shod with studded shoes and raced one another across the ice, their cloaks billowing after them, while the less adventurous bundled themselves in rich furs from New England and rode along the river in open sleighs strung with tiny brass bells. Each morning beggars were found dead in doorways or on church steps, frozen where they’d tried to sleep.

However fierce, no mere cold could keep Charles from his daily walks through St. James’s Park. Though fewer courtiers chose to join him, preferring to stay within beside their fires, I refused to be left behind. I needed half a shopkeeper’s stores to fortify myself: a fur-lined cloak, stout leather lady’s boots, a quilted petticoat interlaid with sheep’s wool, a muff, gloves, gossamer-fine scarves, and a black velvet hood lined in thick beaver on my head.

“There’s nothing like a fair winter morning to clear the head,” Charles declared, his face ruddy in the icy air beneath the wide brim of his black beaver hat. The walk itself was easy, for servants had come out from the palace before dawn to shovel and sweep the paths clear of new snow for the king’s walk. Only a half dozen or so other gentlemen had joined us, and they kept respectfully at a distance behind us. “I don’t know why you’re the only lady to brave it.”

I grinned. “Why should that surprise you, sir? Am I not often the only lady who’ll dare things in your company?”

He laughed. “That is true. Outdoors, indoors, in beds and in carriages, under trees and in ponds, by day and by night, against walls and on floors and—”

“I don’t much care for the floors,” I said, wrinkling my nose at the hard memory. “I know it was the convenience of the moment, but it’s difficult being on the bottom.”

“I wonder what it would be like in the snow?” he asked with a philosopher’s thoughtfulness. “Have you ever tried that, Barbara?”

I shook my head. “Perhaps if one were well protected with furs or coverlets, then—”

“No, I meant in the snow itself,” he said with relish. “Hot flesh smoking in the snow.”

“Hot flesh becoming very cold as the snow melted around it, and a catarrh and a putrid throat to follow,” I scoffed. “I’m not so adventurous as that, sir.”

The truth was that while I still felt as strong an attachment to the king as ever, and I knew he loved me more than any other woman, time had in fact worn and softened the excitement of our passion. At least it had for me, though I’d never be so foolish as to confess it.

Oh, most times between us were just as exuberant, just as pleasure-bound, as they’d been those first nights in Brussels, or maybe even more so. Yet there were others where I’d catch myself with closed eyes, imagining a man other than the king to be swiving me, or tasting and tickling another man’s cock for the sake of variety. It was not that I loved Charles the less. Only that even the most succulent dish devoured at every repast loses its power over time to delight, and I longed for a fresh sprinkle of spice to restore the tempting quality.

“Ah, well, perhaps not dallying in the snow,” he agreed, amused. “But surely that must be the first suggestion I’ve made to you in that vein that you’ve refused.”

“Wisdom does on occasion prevail,” I said coyly, “even with us.”

He chuckled, the warmth making a cloudy puff in the chill air. “Not often, my dear Barbara,” he said, “and thanks to the heavens it doesn’t.”

He smiled with such fondness and fervor that I felt shamed by my discontent. But then as king he’d never had to make do with a single dish, not when the entire groaning board of womanhood lay spread for his enjoyment. I knew that even after a dutiful bout with the queen was followed by a delicious night with me, he’d still in the earliest hours engage in a quick ramble with an actress or brothel favorite.

These encounters meant nothing more to him than a fast spend in a willing cunt, and as such I felt no jealousy toward these faceless women. How could I, when I’d dabbled in this way myself, a quick tumble with a handsome footman or stable boy, another with an actor in a darkened theatre when we’d both too much to drink, even once, in the heady days of Philip, with a swarthy sailor who’d caught my letch, my petticoats rucked up in the shadows of London Bridge?

But I
was
envious of the opportunities Charles had that I didn’t, of more enticing adventures than a lady at court—particularly a lady who regularly shared the bed of the king—would ever so easily find. It was considered scandalous enough that I had at once an absent husband and a king for a lover, more men by one than most ladies could claim in their lifetimes. A gentleman who’d dare explore many partners was a libertine, but a lady was damned as a greedy whore.

I say that it was unfair, yes, but I must also admit that at this time I’d begun a dalliance with Harry Jermyn, one of my friends from the gatherings at my King Street house, and a boon companion of Charles’s as well. With his turnip-shaped nose, Harry had always made me laugh, being the sort of man who, being unfavored by nature in regards to his face and form, was never too proud to turn his droll wit toward himself as well as toward others. He was a smallish gentleman, given overmuch to dueling like my first love, Philip, but as I’d soon discovered, he compensated for his slight stature by being most excellently skilled in the French manner of love, with the most cunningly adept tongue. I enjoyed his attentions, much as he enjoyed knowing that he was going where the king had preceded him, but neither of us were so foolish as to mistake our occasional meetings together for anything more than they were.

Of course I kept these assignations with Harry to myself, as I did so many other things, locked tight within me where they belonged. Now I only smiled at Charles’s words, as if in perfect agreement, and turned back to the snowy landscape of the park before us.

“Oh, sir, look,” I exclaimed. “See all the skaters and sliders this morning.”

Last summer Charles had ordered a long canal dug and filled across the lawn that ran between St. James’s Palace and Whitehall. It was supposed to provide the same watery imagery as the canals of Venice, a cool respite in the heat of summer, but Charles had discovered that once the water froze, the canal proved the ideal spot for the Dutch sport of ice-skating. He’d imported a small troop of the most accomplished from the Hague to demonstrate and teach their skills and to provide a pretty scene on the canal.

“They’re almost like acrobats, balancing on their blades like that,” Charles marveled as we paused to watch. “Mark how they fly across the ice.”

I stood close before him, sharing our warmth. “Should you like to try?”

He slipped his arms around me and drew me closer, tucking his hands inside my muff. “I’d like to try, yes, or rather I should have liked to have tried,” he said with regret. “But I fear that’s too fast a sport to try afresh at my age.”

“Your age,” I scoffed. “You’re not so old and bent as that, sir. Thirty-two is not old, not by anyone’s lights. You might recall that you still ride and swim and hunt and bowl and play tennis, thrashing gentlemen ten years your junior.”

“I do at that,” he said cheerfully. “But I still believe it’s best to leave this ice-skating to younger men and put aside the spectacle of an aging monarch tumbling on his ass on an ice-covered canal.”

“You’ve scarce aged at all,” I protested, twisting around to look up at him. It was unthinking flattery, I know, the kind all women must pay to men, and I gladly offered it up to him. But the truth was otherwise: the trials of his earlier life had done much to age him beyond his mortal years. Oh, Charles remained virile and strong as ever, his body muscled and lean, but there was so much gray in his hair now that he kept threatening to crop it short and wear a periwig instead. The long lines that ran from beneath his nose to the corners of his mouth were carved more deeply now, and the shadows seemed to linger more often beneath his dark eyes. “You’re still the very image of a gentleman in his prime.”

“You’re kindness itself, Barbara,” he said wryly, though still pleased I’d spoken in his defense. “You can be the wickedest and most lascivious of fair creatures, but the world never sees the other side of you that I do.”

I laughed softly, but without humor. “What, the side that the world is certain is shrewish and cold and avaricious?” I said, thinking of all the slander that was both written and said of me. “The side that damns me as Lady Barbary for introducing you to pleasures that no sturdy English monarch should ever wish to explore? Or perhaps the side of me that seeks to wrest control of the very country away from you, and corrupt you with my charms?”

“Oh, sweet,” he said sadly. “Pray don’t pay any heed to that rubbish.”

“I don’t,” I said, because I didn’t.

“I do only so far as to remember the speaker’s name,” he said firmly. “Any enemy of yours, Barbara, becomes an enemy of mine as well.”

Pleased, I wriggled more closely against him, though as thickly dressed as we were, such motions were affectionate symbols and little else. “Now which of us is kindness itself?”

“I am serious, Barbara,” he said with far more solemnity that I’d expected from him so early in the day. “No one else but I seems to understand how tender your dear heart can be.”

“Pray don’t tell the world, sir,” I said blithely, “else the world will cease paying me any particular regard.”

He grunted with displeasure, as close to an oath as he ever went. “The world can go hang itself for all I care.”

“It most likely will,” I said, “whether I am a saint before God or a whore in your bed. But lah, how did we lapse into this grim philosophizing?”

“Lah, indeed,” he said. “All I meant to do was ask a favor of you for tonight.”

“Tonight, sir?” I turned in his arms to look up at him mischievously beneath my lashes. “Why wait until tonight?”