“There is a strong smell from the bakery today,” said the practical Betje. “A sunny day too. Will you wear your golden gown?”
“Yes, and the diamonds the King gave to Jackie and me. Where do you think Anne goes on her days off? It makes me anxious. She should not go out alone in this dreadful Paris.”
“Do not fret yourself over Anne. She is older than she looks and knows how to take care of herself. And she does not go out alone. She goes out with Mr. Edward Prodgers, one of His Majesty’s gentlemen. He came one morning with a note for you from His Majesty and when he had delivered it to me he idled for a while in the shop. You know Anne helps me sometimes, with your permission, and she was there that day. Her eyes seem so grey and cold, then she looks up and they are full of fire. He bought her a pretty blue hood. It is hot again today and you will need your fan. Where do you keep it?”
“It is with my gloves,” said Lucy distractedly. “And where they are I do not know. Anne thinks me untidy and so she keeps my things in order for me. It is kind of her but I can never find what I want and I wish that His Majesty had not insisted that I have a maid. He was born to shout for his gloves and have a servant bring them, but I was born to find my own gloves underneath my own chaos and that is the way I like it. And I am afraid of Anne.” Absurdly she was near tears and Betje’s arms were round her. But in a moment she had recovered and was ashamed of herself. “It is because I am not myself yet after the baby,” she apologized to Betje.
“It takes a long time to be well again,” comforted Betje as she fastened the golden dress. But silently she wondered why Lucy took so long to recover. Had she suffered some injury? And was Lucy’s dislike of Anne an unreasonable or instinctive one? “You do not let Anne look after your private treasures do you?” she asked.
“No, no!” said Lucy. “I always wear my ring and if the diamonds are not on me they are in the secret drawer of the little writing desk that His Majesty gave me. He bought it especially because of the drawer. He told me to keep my papers and my letters from him there because it is so wonderfully secret.”
Betje searched for and found the fan and gloves, her silence so pregnant with her contempt for secret drawers that Lucy went on talking in an effort to lighten the sense of strain between them. “Anne tells me so little,” she said. “I do not even know what her life was like before she came here.”
“Bitterness and grief,” said Betje. “One day she told me of it. Then she regretted she had spoken and asked me to respect her confidence.”
“Then I will not ask you what it was that she told you,” said Lucy. “Poor Anne! Now I will not find it hard to love her. How can one not love someone who has suffered?”
“Everyone has,” said Betje drily.
“Oh, they have, they do,” cried Lucy with a warm gust of compassion. “One should love and never be afraid. One should love everyone, everything.”
“Nevertheless,” said Betje as she left the room to see if the coach had come, “prudence is a virtue.”
Lucy had understood Betje’s silence and she went to the desk that stood on the table beside her bed and opened the hidden drawer. The packet of Charles’s letters was by this time too bulky to be carried about with her but she took out her marriage certificate and pushed it down inside the bodice of her dress. It must never leave her now. If it were found the finder might talk of what he or she had read, Charles’s secret would become known and he might think that she herself had proclaimed it. Then he would think she had betrayed not only him, but the King of England and he would not love her any more.
3
Sitting in the coach beside Lord Wilmot Lucy straightened her shoulders and held her head up, as Charles had told her to do, and turned and smiled at her companion.
“You look very regal in your golden gown, Lucy,” he said. “Charles is a lucky fellow.”
And he meant what he said. When Charles had commanded him to assume responsibility for the welfare and safety of the beautiful Mrs. Barlow he had bowed and expressed himself as conscious of the honour done him, but his inward being had reverberated with profanity. But on the journey from The Hague he had found Lucy plucky and uncomplaining, friendly and amusing. And she had found him a kind and sensible young man as well as a charming one and was at ease with him.
“We are commanded to call at the embassy and pick up two more of the Queen’s guests,” he said. “One is Mr. John Evelyn who is on a visit to his father-in-law the Ambassador. He is one of these learned bookish fellows.”
“Who is the other?”
“Another bookish fellow. His Majesty’s chaplain in Paris, Dr. Cosin.”
She was glad Charles had already prepared her yet she could not speak. In ten minutes now. In fifteen minutes.
“What’s the matter, little love?” asked Lord Wilmot. “These scholars are nothing to be frightened of. Apart from astronomy or theology, or whatever useless subject they are learned about, they know nothing. Ask them to bake a loaf of bread when you are starving or apply a tourniquet when you are bleeding to death, they might as well not have been born. Here we are at the embassy. Lucy, you bold bad woman, see how good an actress you can be.”
She would have accepted the challenge with hidden laughter if it had not been for Dr. Cosin. As it was, though she did accept it, the little girl within her to whom he had given the silver piece was crying bitterly. Lord Wilmot had left the coach and was exchanging courtesies with the two gentlemen who had joined them. Mr. Evelyn, grave and gentle in a snuff-coloured coat, looked as though he would have been happy inside Mr. Gwinne’s rampart of books, and Lucy would have smiled at him if her face had not felt so stiff and frozen. Dr. Cosin, tall and gaunt, had changed. His black beard was streaked with grey and his face deeply lined.
Lord Wilmot turned round and held the coach door wide. “Gentlemen, will you enter the coach? May I have the honour of presenting you to Mrs. Barlow? She is also, by command, attending the Queen Dowager’s levee.”
He winked at Lucy and stood back. The two gentlemen had heard of Mrs. Barlow for the King’s infatuation for her and her son was the talk of the English community. They looked with alarm at the golden girl who sat facing the horses. It was a fine day and she seemed to focus the light upon herself. She was sunburnt from the picnics on the river and her blue eyes blazed in her brown face. Her diamonds caught the sunlight and a ruby burned on her thin brown hand. She inclined her head with hauteur but she did not smile; she could not lest she burst into tears. Nor could she stretch out a hand to Dr. Cosin in greeting for her hands were trembling and she had locked them tightly in her lap.
“Will you get in, gentlemen?” encouraged Lord Wilmot. “Dr. Cosin, will you sit by Mrs. Barlow?”
But Dr. Cosin, embarrassed, preferred to sit beside an equally embarrassed Mr. Evelyn with his back to the horses; a position which did not agree with him at all. Lord Wilmot stepped gaily into the coach and sat beside Lucy and the horses moved forward. The conversation was at first between the gentlemen only for Lucy felt as though she had a tight band round her throat and she could not speak. But presently courage demanded of her that she should not sit with downcast eyes and she looked attentively from one face to the other. Mr. Evelyn, the contempt in his eyes perfectly plain to her, made some courteous remark about the weather and she acknowledged with a smile that there was indeed a great improvement on yesterday.
Then she looked steadily at Dr. Cosin who sat exactly opposite her. Would he remember her? But how could he? The change in his face told her how much he had endured since she had last seen him. That chasm of trouble would have extinguished all trivial memories. Yet if his eyes were sunken now they were as piercing as ever and when he looked at her there was no contempt in his glance, only sadness and puzzlement. Then he too took refuge in the weather. The storm had cleared the air, he said, and it was cooler today. She agreed and suddenly the iron band round her throat was loosed. She alwa
ys spoke with the Welsh lilt but when she was deeply moved she would forget herself and speak almost as Nan-Nan would have done. “Like a breath of sea air it is. Yet it is far enough away we are from that.”
“You come from the sea, madam?”
“I have lately taken a sea voyage from The Hague to France.”
“Madam, I was speaking of your home.”
“I am from the sea, sir. The coast of Pembrokeshire.”
His mind groped back across that chasm to the woman of whom Lucy’s voice had instantly reminded him. His old friend Mrs. Gwinne. She had come from Pembrokeshire. Mr. Evelyn was now in animated conversation with Lord Wilmot. It was as though he were alone with this girl.
“Mrs. Barlow, what was your maiden name?”
“Lucy Walter. I am Mrs. Gwinne’s granddaughter. And once at her home at St. Giles you gave me a silver piece. But it is not possible that you can remember that now.”
“I remember,” he said gravely. “I thought of you then as a child from the sea.”
“And you gave me your blessing.”
“Yes.”
He leaned back in his corner and was silent in settled sadness. After a while tall green trees stepped past the windows of the jolting coach and the air was sweetened by them. But Lucy was in misery. She had already caused grief to her father, her grandmother and Justus and now this man who had been so kind to her as a child was in sorrow too because of what he believed she had become. Unaware of what she was doing but driven by a subconscious longing to be comforted by Charles or Jackie, or by both of them, she put her hands over the diamonds that sparkled on her low-cut golden gown. They were Charles’s gift and they were Jackie’s diamonds as well as hers. Underneath them, between her breasts, she could feel her folded marriage certificate and a glow of reassurance went through her. She had her hidden integrity that later Jackie would share with her. If only Dr. Cosin could share it too then he would not be so grieved. She pulled the bit of paper half out of her gown then pushed it back again. If only she could tell him! But she had promised Charles. Only her family and his must know. She had promised.
The great trees continued to step past and there were deer beneath them. Then they stepped back and there were flowers and lawns. The coach swept round the curve of a fountain and drew up at the foot of a flight of marble steps. They were at the Palace of Saint-Germain, and so suddenly that Lucy was taken by surprise. The mask of the bold, experienced Mrs. Barlow dropped and she could not find it. Nor could she find her fan and gloves. She jumped up like a frightened child, her face flushed and her lips trembling, and she did not know where they were. Mr. Evelyn and Lord Wilmot, nearest to the steps, got out of the coach and stood waiting to hand her out. Dr. Cosin, seeing her childish distress, was still with her to help her.
“You have lost something, Mrs. Barlow?” he enquired.
“My fan,” she whispered. “My fan and my gloves.” And she bent over distractedly to look under the seat.
“They could hardly be under the seat,” he told her gently. “Look, they are here, pushed down between the window and the cushions.”
“Oh thank you!” she cried, looking up at him gratefully and with the same little girl’s face that he remembered from Mrs. Gwinne’s parlour. “I have to meet the Queen, you see. It is the first time.”
“Keep your courage up, child,” he rallied her. “Look, have you lost something else? A letter I think.” He picked up her marriage certificate from the floor and held it out to her. It had dropped from her dress when she bent over. She looked him steadily in the eyes. “Will you please read this in privacy,” she said. “And afterwards return it to me.”
He bowed and stepped back that Lord Wilmot might hand her from the coach. It was as they went up the steps that darkness fell upon her. “The maintaining of truth is so hard.” This was the first time she had broken faith with Charles. Yet what she had done she had not meant to do.
“Your Majesty, I have the honour to present my wife to you. Mam, this is Lucy.”
Charles’s tone had dropped suddenly from that of high ceremony to one of slightly belligerent family intimacy. Let Mam be nasty to his girl and he would have her blood. His tone deepened Lucy’s misery. She had just broken her promise to him and now here he was at her side in utmost loyalty. With his hand under her elbow to help her she rose from her deep curtsey and for the first time dared to look at her mother-in-law.
Dressed in black, a black lace veil over her head, her small face ravaged by illness and grief, the Queen had aged out of all recognition, but her dark eyes were bright, and her manner when she spoke and the movements of her small hands were vivacious as ever. Sitting in a throne-like high-backed chair she looked at Lucy, and she tried to smile but she could not. There were no rainbows in this room and only one small dog yapping angrily at the stranger from his mistress’s knee, for the penurious Queen could no longer afford the monkeys and dwarfs that had once formed her retinue. The sun shone but compared with the Queen of Bohemia’s friendly room this one felt like a chamber of ice, and Lucy trembled with the cold.
“Charles,” commanded the Queen, “find Lord Jermyn and see that all is in readiness for my levee. Mrs. Barlow, please be seated. Morton, stay with me please.”
There was a note of pleading in the last sentence that steadied Lucy, for it showed that the Queen was nervous too. A little warmth crept into the room.
“Sit here, my dear,” said a kindly Scottish voice and Lucy looked up briefly into the face of the woman she had last seen weeding the flowers in the garden at Exeter. She had aged too but her face had gained in nobility. She smiled at Lucy and moved to stand beside the Queen.
“Mrs. Barlow, we can speak openly before Lady Morton,” said the Queen. “She is so close a friend that all my griefs and distresses are known to her.”
“I am afraid that I am one of them, Your Majesty,” said Lucy. Courage had returned to her and she sat composedly on the low stool where she had been placed, her eyes meeting the Queen’s with compassion. The Queen, startled, hardly knew whether to be vexed or touched.
“Mrs. Barlow, you are indeed,” she confessed with a sigh.
“Your Majesty, I beg you not to call me Mrs. Barlow. It is the name of the woman I must pretend to be and not the woman I am, and I would be grateful if I might be excused from acting a part when I am with Your Majesty. I am your son’s wife and the mother of your first grandchild. Will you not call me Lucy?”
For a moment or two the Queen was deprived of the power of speech. Then she said with some severity, “My dear, you appear to have a very high opinion of yourself.”
“No, not of myself, Your Majesty. Of myself I think nothing. But I am proud of the blood of the Welsh princes that runs in my veins. And I am proud that my husband chose me to be his wife, and I am proud of our beautiful son.”
The Scottish Lady Morton, to whom the blood of Welsh princes seemed no particular matter for congratulation, nearly fainted where she stood. She had been attracted by Lucy both at Exeter and again today when the trembling girl had sunk into her graceful curtsey, but a speech as bold as this was an outrage. Yet the Queen, astonishingly, was not angry. Leaning forward she asked eagerly, “Is he like his father? Charles, you know, favours my family. Is he a Medici?”
“No, Your Majesty,” said Lucy, “he is a Stuart. He is fair in complexion with blue-grey eyes and so we have called him James.”
“I wish I could see him,” said the Queen. Then suddenly she recollected herself and severity came back to her face. “But that cannot be at present. The fact of this marriage must not be disclosed. That I know has been impressed upon you. Lucy, you should never have allowed yourself to love my son and even less should you have allowed him to fall in love with you. In what has occurred you are entirely to blame.”
“Madame Mère, could we help it?” Lucy cried out, heartbroken. Then the door opened and Lord Jer
myn stood bowing on the threshold.
“Tour Majesty’s guests await you,” he said.
“Stay here, my dear,” Lady Morton whispered to Lucy as she prepared to attend the Queen. “I will send Lord Wilmot to fetch you in a few minutes.”
Lucy went to the open window that looked out over the palace garden to the roofs and towers of Paris in the distance and tried to fight down her fear. For she had remembered something, Herman Vingboon talking of the probable marriage of Charles to La Grande Mademoiselle and the pressure put upon him by his mother. Yet even then the Queen had known of his marriage. There would be no mercy for her, Lucy knew now. The Queen of Bohemia had spoken about the storms of love with understanding, but then Charles was not her son. His mother is a tiger for him, Lucy thought. Are all mothers tigers for their sons? Shall I be like that one day for Jackie?
The door opened again and she heard the hum of talk and laughter and the sound of music. “Ready, Lucy?” Lord Wilmot asked gaily.
She remained for a moment with her back to him. The darkness of her broken promise still filled her mind and the fear of the tiger was cold in her heart. She had a forlorn feeling of lost identity. She did not know who she was. Then the hum of distant gaiety told her who she was at this moment, Mrs. Barlow the King’s mistress, and who one is at the moment is always the determining factor in what one must do. She turned round to Lord Wilmot with a brilliant smile, warm and glowing in her golden dress. “I like you, Lucy,” he said as they left the room together. “You are an excellent trouper.”
They found the long salon already vibrating with that high-pitched ear-battering noise that is the human sound, as each individual member of the herd endeavours to assert his individuality in the face of all the others doing the same thing. What would other animals think of this noise? Lucy wondered, and she remembered the sound of horses neighing and stamping and the great roar of the lion in the Tower of London. Both sounds had been noble. I do not like the human sound, she thought, it is selfish and it could become cruel very quickly.