Royal Harlot (48 page)

“Money, troops, ships.” I nodded, watching him sharply through my veils. “And in return, sir, what have you offered?”

He still looked across the water, avoiding my eye. “England’s loyalty to France, her most natural friend and cousin.”

“And?”

He let the single word hang between us, so long I knew I’d sorrowfully guessed his secret.

“And,” he said at last, so softly I could scarce hear him over the rush of the water and wind, “and I will admit to being convinced of the truth of the Catholic religion, and promise to reconcile myself to it as soon as the welfare of England will permit it.”

I said nothing more, but leaned my head against his shoulder in silent sympathy. No matter where his own conscience did lie in this— and I believed in his heart it was with the warmth of Rome, and not the chill asceticism of the Anglican church—the knowledge that for the good of his people he must betray the will of the majority of them was as harsh a burden as any sovereign should have to bear.

Within the week, the Secret Treaty of Dover, as it came to be known, was signed, with the Catholic Lords Clifford and Arlington adding their names as witnesses. No one else knew of it, and the secret was kept better than any other I’d ever shared.

The rest of our stay in Dover was thrown over to amusement and diversion, with celebration of Charles’s birthday. Madame proved to be a tiny woman whose frailty shocked me, familiar as I was with her tall, robust brothers, and yet her spirit and energy were a boundless match for Charles’s. She attended every one of the dances and plays and parties at sea and on land, suppers given and gifts exchanged.

Yet through all these merry days, it rained, hard and chill and gray, as if the skies themselves did weep and grieve to know what had happened here, and what would happen in the coming weeks.

On the last day before Madame must sail, she insisted that her brother take one of her jewels as a memento of her and of this brief joyful time together. She summoned one of her ladies to bring her casket of jewels for Charles to make his choice. The box was presented by a small, solemn girl of enormous beauty and almost doll-like perfection, no more than fifteen or sixteen years old, I should guess.

I knew at once that Charles would be enchanted by her, and he was. He chucked the girl beneath her plump chin and asked if instead of a jewel he might take this little French girl back to England as his token. All around us laughed, but both Madame and I knew he’d spoken only half in jest, and from the terrified expression on the girl’s face and how the casket of jewels trembled in her hands, I knew she believed the tall English king meant to claim her, too. But Madame was not afraid to refuse her brother, and swiftly took the girl from his reach to return her to her parents.

It was the last time any of us laughed. The next day Madame returned to France and we to London, and the tears that were shed between brother and sister rivaled the rain that still fell.

A month later, when we’d all settled back into our old lives, an exhausted French messenger came racing directly to the king with the most tragic news imaginable. Madame was dead, a painful, agonized death that had so stunned the French court that already there were whispers she’d been poisoned. Her last words had been of her brother, her only regret in dying said to be that she was leaving him.

Charles collapsed with grief, the blow of his sister’s sudden death all the more shocking for coming so soon after their reunion. For days he lay unmoving and alone on his bed, the door to the chamber locked from within. Even I, old friend that I was, could not help him through his pain.

When at last he emerged, he was changed. Others did not see it, but to me who knew him so thoroughly, the difference was great indeed. There had always been a kind of sweetness that ran as an undercurrent to his habitual charm, a gentleness that seemed so at odds with a man of his size and power: this was gone, lost forever. Whether it perished because of the treaty he’d signed or his sister’s death, or whether he believed the one had somehow been punishing retribution for the other, I never knew, nor would I dare guess.

Even among the oldest of friends, there are certain questions that must remain both unasked and unanswered.

 
In honor of my devotion to the king, as well as my reticence and support throughout this dire time in his life, in July I was made Baroness Nonsuch, Countess of Southampton, and Duchess of Cleveland, and given the great house at Nonsuch and the parkland around it. The oft-heard tale that Charles made this conditional on my giving up Harry Jermyn forever was of course the silliest of fabrications. With the king’s permission, I chose those particular titles for myself with purpose, to settle old scores. I claimed Southampton from Clarendon’s late crony, the fourth Earl of Southampton, who as treasurer had worked so hard with the chancellor always to thwart me; and Cleveland from the long-dead Earl of Cleveland, who’d borrowed money from my father before I was born and never bothered to pay it back to my widowed mother. The warrant for these titles gave as reasons my “noble descent, her father’s death in the service of the crown, and by reason of her own personal virtues.”

There were many at court and beyond who scoffed and sniggered at what exactly those personal virtues might be, just as there were others still who were sure now this was a sign of the end of my place in the king’s life. I ignored them as I always had, and looked again to the future.

 
Soon after our Madame’s death, Nell Gwyn was brought to bed of the king’s son, her first by him. She made a great improper fuss of how shamefully dark and unattractive the babe was, as if she needed to reinforce the fact that the king was his father. To be doubly sure the world knew, she named the child after him, and the godparents who stood at the christening were a telling little group as well: her old lover Lord Buckhurst, Buckingham, and his mistress Lady Shrewsbury.

After such a dark and portentous year, my exhausted soul yearned for simple diversion. If the king could find relief in the uncomplicated arms of an actress like Nell Gwyn, then I could seek such solace, too. I’d not far to look, either, for temptation lay—or rather hung like a ripened fruit—before my very eyes in the form of the ropedancer Jacob Hall.

Much like the theatre, music, and dancing, circus and acrobatic shows had been prohibited by the Puritans. With Charles’s return, the country seemed to fair erupt in acrobats and ropedancers and others who could perform rare feats of balance and contortion. Every country market had its tawdry traveling acts, pretending to be Indian or Italian or other exotics, when in fact they’d more likely hailed from Liverpool or Bristol. But the true artists of the craft were wondrous to behold and gifted in ways that few men are.

Jacob Hall was one of these. Handsome in his face and manner, he was a magnificently proportioned male creature, with legs so strong they rivaled a stallion’s. He danced and vaulted on ropes strung high in the air with more ease than most men could on the ground, and he could perform twirling somersaults as well as fly over outstretched rapiers and leap through fiery hoops. The king had named Hall his court acrobat, and had him sling his ropes across the ceiling of the Banqueting House.

The entire court had sat with upturned faces and gaping mouths as he’d leapt over our heads, and when I’d praised the brawniness of Hall’s thighs as revealed by his tumbling costume, Charles had jocularly suggested him as a suitable replacement for himself in my bed, and surely more agreeable than the stunted likes of Jermyn. I’d laughed at the time, and pondered the possibilities of a man so strong yet flexible.

Opportunity did present itself that fall. Hall had set up a booth for his performances at Charing Cross, where he’d drawn an immense crowd of onlookers. Alas, he’d likewise drawn the constable, who’d noted he’d made his erection without obtaining the necessary permissions. To the catcalls of the crowd, the constable arrested Hall and put him in prison. I soon heard of this grievous misdeed and promptly had it righted. In his gratitude, Hall proved most pleasant and agreeable, and more than willing to demonstrate his appreciation for his rescue.

Alas, with two persons so well known to the public, the merry songs and satires began, I think, whilst the man was still in my bed, and became so prevalent that even the king entered the front hall of Berkshire House one day singing a stanza or two in praise of our combined agility. Yet it was exactly as I’d hoped, a diversion and an adventure, and if it diverted Charles as well, then all the better.

For soon after this affair, the second, public version of the Treaty of Dover—a
traite simule
—was signed, the one with no mention of the Catholic church or Charles’s planned conversion. Yet even in its muted state, the treaty brought down a huge outcry on the king and his ministers, with many suspecting Arlington and Buckingham of somehow contriving to betray England to France. Dutifully it was signed by all the ministers, including Arlington and Clifford, who’d also signed the secret version. When I heard the heated words about this false treaty and the ever-rising hatred and suspicions of the Catholic faith, I shuddered to consider the response that would have greeted its original form, and the king who’d signed it.

The
traite simule
did come with an extra unexpected fillip, however. Louis had heard how Charles had admired his sister’s young maid of honor in Dover. With Madame dead, the French king had easily pried her from her family, and now young Louise de Keroualle was sent as a gift from one cousin to another, and most likely an amenable spy in the very bed of the English king.

Charles was delighted with Louis’s thoughtfulness and the girl, too, so young and shy and unsure of her English that she was no trouble to him at all. Virgins had never held much allure for him—as they had for my old lover Chesterfield—though he’d made an exception with the fair Louise. In trade for her maidenhead, he soon found her a place at court and fashioned her Duchess of Portsmouth.

Now, however, he found himself with not one but three royal mistresses, a crowd by the standards of any man. I kept my first place at his side, by my rank, beauty, and presence, but even so I’d the disagreeable sense of being only the choicest peahen in his covey, and so I told him, too.

There’d been a time when I would have happily shared his bed with such rivals, as I’d done with Frances Stuart, but that manner of sport had lost its luster to me. How could it not, when I’d be forced to present my aging—though still most beautiful—charms beside those of lithe young girls to invite unfortunate comparison?

But as ludicrous as the situation with Charles was becoming, I’d recently discovered something more pleasing on my plate. On the eve of my thirtieth birthday, I met the young officer who would not only irrevocably change the course of my life, but that of English history.

 
“Pray, Anne, who is that young gentleman?” I was sitting with the Duchess of York, all of us gathered in Whitehall’s long gallery after supper. It was a jovial group, for no purpose but amusement in our own company, and the wine and cards had already begun. Yet though people freely came and went as the night progressed, I noticed none of them until this gentleman. Now I could scarce look away.

“The young ensign?” Anne asked, her gaze following my own. She’d last month given birth to another daughter instead of the much-desired son, and perhaps because of this she still had the worn look of women directly after their lying-in. “That’s John Churchill, the newest member of the duke’s household. Isn’t he a lovely young rogue?”

“
That’s
John Churchill?” I exclaimed in disbelief. “I’d a letter from his aunt advising me of his arrival—you see, he is a second cousin of mine—but I’d no notion he’d be so—so—”

“Delicious,” Anne said, finishing for me. “Is everyone in England your cousin, Barbara?”

“Only the handsome folk,” I said, watching Churchill as he entered the room. He was tall and lean in his scarlet ensign’s uniform with the satin sash and knot across his shoulder, his skin browned and ruddy, his hair streaked with gold by the sun. He wore his own hair, not a periwig, nor did he need to, crowned with such a lion’s glory. I guessed him to be in his early twenties, no more, yet unlike most courtiers his age he moved with the confidence born of hard-won male experience, not swaggering bravado: a man, not a callow boy. “What place will he have in your household?”

“He’s a Page of Honor, as well as being an ensign in the duke’s guards,” she said. “He’s new returned from a post fighting in Tangier, which explains the brownness of his complexion.”

“Tangier,” I repeated, intrigued, letting the exotic name roll seductively off my tongue. “Land of harems and wicked heathen practices?”

“I doubt he could afford any harems,” Anne said. “He hasn’t a farthing to his name, poor lad, but he’s sure to prosper with a face like that. He will, I think, find life at court most agreeable.”

There was a slight edge to her voice, a barely discernible tightening of her fingers on the blades of her fan, and suddenly I remembered why I knew the Churchill name. It wasn’t the letter from the distant aunt, for I received so many like that, I wouldn’t recall any in particular. No, it was Arabella Churchill I recalled, an equally beautiful young woman who had swiftly moved from her place as the maid of honor to the duchess to mistress of the duke, and had borne him at least one bastard, maybe more. So the young rascal had lechery in his blood: all the better.

“Yes, yes, Barbara, I can read it in your face,” Anne said crossly. “Yes, that trollop Arabella is his sister, and I can only hope he will prove less troublesome than she has.”

“He won’t seek a place in His Grace’s bed,” I said. “At least I don’t believe so.”

She scowled. “That’s not in the least amusing, Barbara.”

“Oh, hush, if I cannot make such jests, then no one can,” I said. “Look at how his coat fits his shoulders, and tell me you’d not break a commandment for him.”