Charles the King (7 page)

Parliament wanted war with Catholic Spain and assistance for the Protestants in Germany and Bohemia, but they had unconsciously adopted the moneylenders' attitude and refused to make a sufficient loan without an increasing rate of interest, and the rate, as Charles saw clearly in his anger and disappointment, was growing interference in the government of the country. But Buckingham was not concerned with the larger issue; he had friends and protégés in the Commons who would speak for him, and he was ready to go down to the House and speak for himself.

“The Commons can be won over,” he said. “All they need at the moment is evidence of your good faith, Sire. They are clutching the money-bags so tightly because they're not sure what you will do if they open them.”

“My good faith?” Charles stared at him in surprise. “What the devil do you mean by that?”

“I mean that much of this atmosphere is caused by the conduct of the Queen,” Buckingham said bluntly. “It is all very well to embark on a war with Spain and talk about aiding the Protestant struggle against the Hapsburgs, when the whole of Whitehall is crawling with French priests and English converts, and the Queen sets a public example of Popery. I've seen many of the news-sheets which are circulating and they all say the same thing. The Queen is suborning you and her influence is spreading to the Council. She did not attend the Coronation, and she has never been crowned Queen according to the rites of the Established Church. She and everyone connected with her has broken the Penal Laws from the moment she arrived here and you have done nothing to stop her. The whole country is afraid of Popery and they see a positive movement towards it taking place under the protection of their King. That is the trouble Sire. They will keep you short of money because that is their only means of defence. If you stop the Queen parading her religion and deliver the English Catholics to the penalty of the law, Parliament will grant you whatever you ask. I swear it!”

For a moment Charles did not answer. He knew how much his wife had injured him in relation to his people, but he was unable to accept that she must be persecuted and with her many men and women whom he knew and whose integrity and courage he respected, in order to placate the groundless suspicions of an assembly who had done nothing to prove their own loyalty. They had no right to question him in anything relating to his Kingly function.

“The Queen is not answerable to anyone except me,” he said at last. “Come, Steenie, I've had enough of Parliament for this evening. I am going to visit my wife. I told her to expect us after dinner.”

He sometimes rebelled against Buckingham; he even pretended that his relations with Henrietta were improving, but Buckingham was not deceived. The visit would not do Charles any good; he would not find a sympathetic wife to comfort him and take his mind away from his anxieties, though he came again and again in a humiliating quest.

They heard music outside Henrietta's rooms, and when they entered Charles saw her sitting on a low chair, surrounded by three French ladies, the detested Madame de St. George at her elbow, watching a group of her women dancing to the lute. It was a warm, charming scene, filled with the colour and scent of pretty women and the sound of the gay little tune. Henrietta was smiling when he saw her, but the smile faded and the music stopped as he walked into the room towards her. She stood up, followed by her ladies, and the dancers moved away from the centre of the floor. She was not pleased to see him. There was no welcome, no warmth and relaxation for him. He stood for a moment, an intruder amongst all these foreigners, facing his wife who looked cool and irritated and never said a word.

“I have come to keep you company this evening, Madam,” he said, and he stammered helplessly in the middle of the sentence. To his embarrassment Henrietta waited, leaving him stranded and stuttering at the mercy of his impediment, and when he had finished she looked coldly towards Buckingham.

“I see that as usual the Duke comes with you. Truly, Sire, if all men have a shadow, he must be yours.”

“I may have one shadow,” Charles said suddenly and he said it very clearly this time, “but you have at least two dozen in this room. Buckingham will leave us if you send your ladies to another room. I came to see you and I would like to see only you, if you do not mind.”

“But I do mind,” Henrietta looked up at him boldly. “I like my ladies' company; I am even prepared to endure the Duke of Buckingham rather than dispense with them this evening.” They had been married for nearly two years and she had defied him and snubbed him more times than he could possibly remember. She had often refused to see him alone and wherever she went, her attendants followed her. Nothing had changed, nothing had been said or done that evening which was a greater hurt or humiliation to him than he had suffered on dozens of occasions. He suddenly saw the angular figure of Madame de St. George moving closer to her mistress and the women still crowding the room in defiance of his request. Henrietta noticed that he had become very pale. He turned his back on her and she looked at her principal lady-in-waiting and nodded in triumph. But he did not leave as she had hoped; he went to the Duke of Buckingham and she could not hear what he said.

“The time has come,” Charles spoke very quietly. “I have decided to take the first part of the advice you gave me last December. Go out and order the guard. Have every member of the Queen's household gathered together and moved out of Whitehall. If they resist, have them arrested.” He turned round and raised his voice.

“Ladies, you will obey my command and leave the room. Stay where you are, Madam.”

Henrietta had stepped forward but he moved in front of her and suddenly she stood still. He was livid with anger, his bright blue eyes were blazing as he looked first at Madame de St. George and then deliberately at all the others. One by one they went to the door, curtsied and left. When they were alone Charles walked over and turned the key in the lock.

“What are you doing? Why are you locking my door? St. George, St. George, come back!” She lost her head and began to scream.

He put the key in his pocket and said loudly, “Stop making that disgraceful noise. She is not coming back. She is leaving Whitehall and all the rest are going with her. I have given orders to take them away by force if necessary. This is the end, Madam. There will be no more insults and defiance from you. I have suffered enough because of these people you brought with you. You will never see any one of them again!”

Henrietta stood in front of him, her eyes widening in horror. She had never seen him look at her with such an expression of anger and disgust. She gave vent to a flood of tears, letting them pour down her face, and she sobbed and choked with her hands pressed against her mouth, but there was no alteration, no softening in her husband's eyes, only a cold and furious glare and a frightening gleam of triumph. Fear overcame her, fear that in spite of everything he had said and done to show that however she behaved to him he loved her still, he meant to carry out his unthinkable threat and separate her from all her friends, leaving her isolated, at his mercy and the mercy of all the enemies she had made at his Court in the past eighteen months. She forgot her wilfulness, her overblown pride, everything in fact except the need to avert the dreadful punishment he had pronounced. She threw herself on the floor and clasped her hands in abject supplication.

“I beg of you, I beseech you, Charles, don't do this to me! Don't be so cruel … You can't send my people away—they are my friends, I cannot live without them! I have no one else in the whole world!” She was weeping hysterically, and she sank down in a pathetic heap on the floor. “Don't, don't, I implore you … I will do anything, I promise, anything if you'll only let them stay.”

“If you cannot live without them that is a pity,” Charles said bitterly. “Because you will have to learn to live with me instead. Get up Madam, and compose yourself. My mind is made up and nothing will change it. You will have Englishwomen to wait on you, chosen by me and loyal to my interests. You will do as you are told from now on, please understand that. And you will begin by remembering that the Queen of England does not fall on the floor and scream like a kitchenmaid. Get up.”

She raised herself and glared at him, her face contorted with tears and a violent resurgence of temper. She spat at him like a cornered cat.

“You monster! You unspeakable beast—how dare you treat me like this I How dare you threaten a Princess of France! I hate you, I hate you … I will do nothing you tell me, now or ever!” The sound of voices, male and female came through from the courtyard below her room. There were shouts in French and English and the note of rising protest from the crowd of French attendants who were being driven out of the Palace before a guard of soldiers. The noise became a tumult of screams and yells and before he could stop her, Henrietta scrambled to her feet and flew to the window, shrieking for help. He reached her before she could open it, and caught her by the shoulders, trying to force her back. She wrenched away from him and tore at the catch to open it.

“Let me go! St. George, St. George! For God's sake don't leave me, come to me, he's locked me in!”

Charles seized her arm and pulled her and she caught the attention of the crowd under the window by driving her fist through the glass to the accompaniment of piercing screams. The gathering below became a riot of struggling, shouting men and women, shaking their fists at the Palace, pushing against the armed men surrounding them in an attempt to reach the door and re-enter the Palace, while their mistress fought with the King of England in full view. She kicked and struck out at him, and the indignity of the situation made him completely lose his temper. He had never touched a woman in anger in his life and he was unaware of his own strength. He swore at her fiercely, and wrenched her hands away from the window frame and dragged her back into the room. For a moment he held her in a grip that made her scream with pain and suddenly he shook her like a tattered doll.

“Now stop,” Charles shouted. “Stop shrieking, you little virago. Stop it, or I'll have you taken where no one can hear you …” Her hair was down over her shoulders, her face was streaked with tears and the hands tearing at his coat were bleeding from cuts caused by the broken window glass. Her dress was torn, exposing the thin, heaving bosom, and suddenly she sagged, cowering and trying to cover herself. He released her and she fell, sobbing and breathless, her strength exhausted. For a moment Charles stood looking down at her, the long months of humiliation and neglect hardening his heart. He had broken her spirit; there was no fight or defiance left in the weeping, bedraggled figure, and he knew that he would never again hesitate to assert his rights or his wishes with someone who had shown herself so irresponsible and lacking in self-control. He had not wanted to hurt her; he would never have used force of any kind against her if she had not made it impossible to deal with her by any other means. Now it was done. The façade created by ceremony and custom had been destroyed between them in a scene of degrading violence and abuse. They might hold Court, obeying the rules of etiquette which governed the public life of a King and his Queen, but they had resolved their personal struggle in a physical fight between an incensed man and an infuriated woman, and the man had established his mastery on the most basic terms of all. Whatever happened between them in the future, nothing could protect her from the consequences of her defeat.

“I shall leave you,” he said at last. “I will send someone to look after you. If you go back to the window or show yourself or make any more disturbance, I will have you removed to a suite of rooms in the inner courtyard of the Palace. If I have hurt you,” he added stiffly, “then I ask you pardon. But you have only yourself to blame.”

He unlocked the door and went out, turning the key after him. He was met by Buckingham in the corridor. The Duke was grinning and jaunty, but when he saw the marks on Charles' satin coat, he actually whistled in surprise.

“Good God, Sire—you've cut yourself.”

Charles shook his head. He felt suddenly assured and triumphant. “The Queen cut her hands on some broken glass, that's all. She needs attention. Where are Lady Essex and Lady Scrope?”

“In the green ante-room. I told them and several other ladies to wait there in case you needed them. I had begun to think you'd need help to get her away from that window before she threw herself out.”

“I managed it alone, thank you Steenie. Be a good fellow and tell the women to go and take care of the Queen. And pack her clothes and necessities; she will be sent down to Oatlands tomorrow and kept there until these people of hers have been returned to France.”

Oatlands was an old Tudor Palace some miles outside London; the red brick buildings were sprawling and mellow, surrounded by a large park which was stocked with game for hunting. It was wild and beautiful and Charles chose it as Henrietta's prison and accompanied her there himself.

He took a small suite of gentlemen and a retinue of English ladies and servants for his wife; his musicians joined them and played in the evenings and during dinner, when Charles and Henrietta dined on a raised table under a canopy and there was nothing in the atmosphere to suggest that when the King was out hunting, the Queen was locked in her room under the guardianship of the Countess of Essex whom she detested, and that she was not allowed to walk or ride out in the grounds alone. She was surrounded by every comfort and treated with such studied courtesy that it made her want to scream with tension. Nobody quarrelled with her. Once when she began to abuse Charles to Lady Scrope, the Englishwoman rose, curtsied to the ground and left the room, bolting the door behind her. That was the rule of her confinement. She must not be upset or hurt or restricted in anything except her liberty to escape or receive visitors from the outside world, and if she attacked her attendants, they were forbidden to reply. They merely walked out and left her locked up until she had recovered her temper. In this atmosphere, devoid of comfort or support, surrounded by people who actively disliked her and would have treated her outrageously if they dared, Henrietta was thrown on the mercy of the man responsible for her plight. Charles was as kind and as polite and considerate as he had been when they first married. He spent many hours of every day with her, impervious to snubs and sulks and tears and quivering silences. He could afford to ignore her when she defied him because he was able to make her position intolerable with a word to her attendants; he was even capable, as she believed, of committing her to the discretion of that hard-faced, beady-eyed Lady Sussex, and going back to London. She hated Charles, she told herself; most of all she hated his new confidence which nothing could shake. She would have to give in; when one of those horrible Englishwomen came and told her to expect the King's Majesty one evening, she would have no one to tell him she was ill, or too tired or did not want to see him. No one would carry that message; no one would even listen if she gave it. They would just stare at her with their stony eyes, and curtsy and stand aside to let him in. And he knew it; he knew that from sheer desperation and anxiety she was speaking to him and making herself agreeable, and there were moments when she felt horrified at her own weakness, particularly in respect of the rights she had refused him and for which he was quietly and fiendishly suing. She wept into her pillow at night so that her attendants would not hear, and without knowing it, she clung to him a little more every day. She capitulated after only two months, when her impassioned plea to her mother to be allowed to return to France was unsympathetically refused. She must do her duty, the answer said. Divorce was an unthinkable disgrace for a Princess of her birth. She must accept her husband and submit to his wishes. There would be no welcome for her in France if she were repudiated and sent home.