Royal Harlot (37 page)

“Oh, it’s right, it’s right,” Lord Fitzhardinge said heartily, his arm around the waist of some pretty maid or other. “It’s only a passing amusement, like a masque. It signifies nothing more than that.”

The others in the room agreed with him and loudly echoed his urging. What had begun as a simple gathering of Charles’s friends in the royal privy chamber was rapidly growing into something more. I’d concocted this pretty whimsy in the moment, something sure to entertain and distract the king on a chill night in late spring. A mock marriage between two ladies, with Frances as the chaste bride and I to play the gallant bridegroom: could there be anything more amusing?

“I do not know, my lady,” Frances said, more crossly this time, as if the notion taxed her brains more than her virtue. “To play such a part—”

“Please me, Miss Stuart,” Charles interrupted, his expression deceptively mild. “Do what Lady Castlemaine asks. Surely you know the peril of disappointing her.”

She turned and smiled at him, all bright sunshine for his sake, the crafty little minx. “If
you
wish it, sir.”

“I’ll play the minister to wed this happy couple,” my cousin Buckingham declared. He stepped forward, taking Frances’s hand away from me, adopting a waggish, scolding manner. “Not before you’re properly married, young blade.”

The others around us roared with laughter, so much that I had to raise my voice to be heard.

“My bride is properly garbed, yes, but I’ve no suit of wedding clothes,” I said, turning in the center of them with my arms outstretched. “Who’ll grant me their breeches, so I might tend my fair bride as she deserves?”

A half dozen gentlemen called out offers to share their clothes with me, with several at once beginning to unbutton their breeches to display their accommodating eagerness.

“I’ll share my wardrobe with you, young sir,” Charles called. “I wouldn’t want you to shame yourself before your lady. Come, I’ll lead you there myself, to best advise your choices, while we leave the bride to her handmaidens.”

That made everyone laugh anew, for in that merry group Frances was likely the only one still a maiden of any sort. As the other women gathered gaily around Frances, I let the king lead me back through his chambers to his wardrobe, the other gentlemen trooping after us. As can be imagined, the king’s closet was a vast chamber toward the end of his rooms, with a multitude of cupboards, shelves, and chests to hold his clothes, from the rich, embroidered robes, trimmed in ermine, that were reserved for ceremonial occasions such as opening Parliament, to the simple linen shirts and dark breeches he wore for bowling on the lawn or playing tennis. Such lavish excess made me recall the days when we’d first met in Brussels, when he’d but a single sad, worn suit of clothes to his name. How much our fortunes had changed since then!

With his manservants hovering anxiously, Charles himself threw open a chest.

“Here now, greenhorn, we’ll see you outfitted,” he said, tossing a shirt to me. “Large for a stripling like you, but it will suffice for now.”

I caught the shirt. “When can I ever hope to match your measure of manhood, sir?”

“Never, if I’ve anything to say about it.” The others laughed, and Charles grinned roguishly. “Now you fellows leave the poor lad here with me to dress. He’s shy enough without your catcalls to wither his courage.”

Disappointed, the gentlemen left me alone with the king.

“Here now, sir, unlace me,” I said, turning my back to him. “I know you can do that faster than any lady’s maid.”

“I can.” Deftly Charles picked apart the bowed knot at the top of my gown’s lacing and tugged it through the eyelets, then did the same for my stays.

“Experience does breed confidence, sir,” I said breathlessly as I shrugged myself free of my bodice and my stays after that. I was rather touched by his insistence that they not see me undress, considering how we both realized a good number of those same gentlemen had known me far more intimately than that. “And in our case, a good many children as well.”

He laughed as I pulled my smock over my head and stepped free of my gown and petticoats, standing before him in only my stockings, garters, and high-heeled shoes. My waist was thickening and my breasts full, for I was once again with child. This would be my fourth child, with little Henry scarce six months old. But considering how the king himself was the reason that I was more often in this condition than not, I remained confident in my beauty regardless.

“My shirt, if you please,” I said, smiling wickedly as I held out my hand.

“In a moment,” he said softly, his heavy-lidded gaze studying me with relish. “How far do you mean to take this with Frances?”

“As far as she’ll let me.” I laughed, in truth as excited by the prospect as he. “Isn’t that what most bridegrooms do?”

His eyes glittered with both desire and amusement. “Do you mean to succeed with her where I’ve failed?”

“I mean to try,” I said. “But I expect you’ll want to witness our consummation, won’t you?”

“How else will it be considered a proper union?”

I laughed again, my head tipped back. “You can’t know how weary I am of her simpering empty virtue.”

“So am I.” He reached for me, and I stepped backward, away from his hand.

“I should save myself for my bride,” I said coyly. “I wouldn’t wish to disappoint her.”

“Don’t disappoint me first.”

“Hah,” I said, backing farther away. “You, sir, should know the advantages of patience.”

“You’re a fine one to lecture me,” he said, chuckling as he followed me. “As long as I’ve known you, Barbara, you’ve never demonstrated a thimbleful of patience. I’d wager fifty guineas that if I touch you now, you’re already flowing dew.”

“I’d not take such a vulgar wager from you, sir.” I’d reached the end of my escape, bumping against the door of a tall cupboard behind me.

“And why not?” he asked, coming to stand over me. “Are you afraid you’d lose your stake?”

“No, sir,” I said, looping my arms around his shoulders to kiss him. “I’m certain of it.”

He took me then with pleasurable leisure, standing against the cupboard, or rather I took him, for it amounted to the same. I’d no doubt that the others in the privy chamber knew what we’d been about, too, for when we finally returned, they greeted us with calls and cheers that seemed even more raucous and untoward than earlier.

Now, and at last, I was dressed in a shirt, doublet, hat, and breeches that belonged to Charles, everything comically oversized and drooping around me. Somehow Frances had been persuaded to shed all but her smock as well, her golden curls unpinned to fall down her back. They’d even tied white ribbons into the lace that edged her smock, as a true bride would have.

With what I hoped was true swaggering male bravado, I took my place at her side while Buckingham solemnly opened a prayer book before us. In honor of the Roman faith that Frances and I now incongruously shared, my cousin had gotten a priest’s cassock and an oversized crucifix from somewhere, and the sight of his most Anglican face pretending to Rome was riotously blasphemous. In the gutter of the book—held upside down, I noted—he’d even placed a pair of pinchbeck rings for us to be blessed as he intoned who knew what in reverent Latin. He was an excellent mimic and could capture anyone’s voice that it pleased him to mock, and now as he imitated one of the queen’s most pompous priests, there was not a person in the room who was not laughing, tears sliding down our faces.

When he’d finished, I slipped one ring on Frances’s finger and she did the same to me. Her cheeks were flushed with far more excitement than I’d expected, and though she giggled like the foolish goose she was, when I leaned forward to kiss her, she kissed me back.

After that we were swept into the king’s own bedchamber, a place I’d visited so many times that it felt like my own. Frances’s blue eyes were round as the moon, and I wondered what manner of nonsense she’d heard did occur there—certainly much more scandalous than what was happening this night.

“Time to cut your maiden ribbons, sweetheart,” Buckingham declared, now having shed his priestly role for his more usual one as Frances’s pimp. “Best to do everything we can to ease that maidenhead of yours.”

With a pair of oversized shears, he snipped every bow and lace on her smock, even cutting the drawstring at the neckline so she was forced to clutch the linen to her breasts to keep from displaying herself to the company. I, however, had no such qualms, cheerfully doffing my doublet, hat, and breeches, my secrets boldly apparent through the fine Holland of Charles’s shirt. While the others began to sing bawdy songs, I hopped into the enormous bed beside Frances, who’d pulled the coverlet demurely up under her chin as she sat against the bolsters. Her face was so flushed, her smile so fixed, that I suspected they’d already given her strong liquor to drink for courage.

The sheets smelled familiarly of the king, and of me.

“Here’s your wedding posset,” Buckingham announced, thrusting a two-handled tankard into my hand. “Drink up, you two, and fortify yourselves.”

I drank first of the sugary sack, then passed it to my bride, who, to my amusement, gulped it down as if it were mother’s milk. If she weren’t in her cups now, she would be soon after that.

“You must toss your stocking now, pet,” I said kindly, slipping my arm around her shoulder. She was trembling, the little goose, whether from the posset, fear, or excitement, I couldn’t say. “Whoever catches it will be next to wed, you know.”

She reached under the sheets to pull off her stocking, wadding it into a ball that she hurled into the crowd. Fitzhardinge caught it, unrolling it to press the toe to his nose, then his lips, finally waving it over his head like a trophy.

“Hah, you’ll not have Elizabeth Mallet,” I called gleefully, naming a twelve-year-old heiress that I knew Fitzhardinge was clamoring to woo. “I’ve already claimed her for my cousin Rochester.”

“The devil you have, my lady!” Fitzhardinge draped the stocking round his neck. “Your cousin’s only seventeen. Mistress Mallet will need more from a husband than that.”

That earned a chorus of scornful hoots and laughter that, of course, I couldn’t help but answer.

“My cousin’s an earl, Fitzhardinge, and a gentleman, which makes him already thrice the man you are,” I crowed. “And at my special request, His Majesty has already given his approval of the match.”

“Quiet now, both of you!” the king ordered, his voice rising so strong that all others fell silent, chastised. “We’re here to see these two fairly wed, not bicker over some distant pimply children. Now kiss your bride, fair young sir.”

“I’ll kiss her once for you to view,” I vowed, “but I’ll not attempt the rest until the curtains are drawn, from fear of unmanning myself before so many virile witnesses.”

The king laughed. “Fair enough,” he said. “I’ll draw them myself, once you seal your troth with a kiss.”

I tucked my hair behind my ears so my face could plainly be seen, and gently turned Frances’s face toward mine to kiss. So it was fear she felt: I could taste it on her tongue along with the posset, and I touched my palm gently to her jaw to calm her. She slid down the pillow-bier as if she were made of wax and melting, and I pursued her, leaning half over her to kiss her, much to the delight of the others. My eyes shut, I heard the scrape of the curtain rings along the metal rod, and the howling, disappointed protests of those who’d wished for more of a show.

“We’ll leave them for now,” the king was saying, all jovial teasing. “With such youngsters, it’s best to let them fumble their way without an audience.”

“Are they gone, my lady?” Frances whispered when we’d both heard the chamber door closed. With the bed-curtains drawn around us, we were snug in the shadowy bed, as if in a second room within the larger.

“For now,” I said, my elbow cocked so I could rest my head on my hand beside her. “You’ve no reason to be frightened, you goose, not of them.”

She looked a most delectable little creature, there in the shadows with her fair hair spilled out across the pillows. I understood entirely why Charles was so beguiled with her. Yet surely I’d been born a squalling infant with more wit than she showed now at sixteen, and more sense of the world as well.

“You will not . . .
consummate
me?” she asked anxiously. “I will still be a virgin, my lady?”

Delectable, yes, but her empty-headed foolishness irritated me and had no place at this court.

“With what exactly shall I do the odious deed, Frances?” I asked. “This was a mock wedding, and I your mock bridegroom with only a very mock cock to take your very real maidenhead.”

“Then you will not harm me?”

“No,” I said, the truth, and slipped my hand beneath the sheet to find her. “I’ll only grant you the same sweet pleasures we’ve shared before.”

She smiled then, and wriggled closer beside me. “Very well, my lady. Should I please you, too?”

But though by pleasing her I pleased myself, she fell fast asleep before she could return the favor she’d promised, her breath sweet and cloying from the surfeit of sherry. Not that I cared overmuch, for I knew what else lay ahead. I tossed back the coverlet, eased the bed-curtains apart, and padded quickly across the floor in my stocking feet and billowing man’s shirt to the small door that led to the king’s infamous back stairs.

This passage was ordinarily overseen by Will Chiffinch, the Page of the Bedchamber, who used it to squire in every manner of secret visitor, from actresses to couriers from King Louis. Now I’d hoped to employ Chiffinch myself to find Charles without being seen by the others still carousing in the privy chamber.

Yet as I reached for the latch, Charles himself stepped from the shadows and caught my wrist. I gasped, my heart racing from being so surprised.

“Oh, sir, how you startled me when—”

At once he pressed his hand over my lips to silence me. Drawing me with him, he went to the bed to gaze upon the sleeping girl. Her gown was rumpled and still pulled high from our earlier play, with most of her lovely young limbs and body arranged unwittingly for our full admiration, like the most wanton of antique nymphs. She was sixteen, her body unmarked by childbirth or usage, and I could not help but compare it unhappily to my own. I would be twenty-four in the autumn, a vast age for a lady in my position, and this girl before me only served to remind me of how much I’d sadly changed.