The French Mistress (46 page)

I was most sadly disappointed. Though the following day he wrote to congratulate me, he made no promises to return, or even offered so much as a hint of when he’d be back. I wept bitterly, wishing with all my heart that it were otherwise. Given the sorry state of the Dutch War, I knew he’d many good reasons for being kept from my side, but still his absence wounded me.

Yet when at last he did come, and held our son in his arms, I forgot all my unhappiness. Unlike many gentlemen, Charles was at ease with babes and children, and devoted a portion of his day in seeing his many offspring. Surely it was the cruelest irony that he’d sired none with his wife, but I found the sweetest pleasure in seeing him cradle the proof of our love in his arms, the babe’s long white linen gown trailing over his dark sleeves.

“You’ve done well, Fubs,” he said, I suspect as proud of himself as he was of me. Our son waved his tiny fists up in his father’s face, tangling them in the long black curls of Charles’s wig, and Charles laughed. “What a fine little lad!”

“Thank you, sir,” I said, tears of rare happiness filling my eyes. “He favors and honors you, I think.”

“That he does,” he said. “Mrs. Chiffinch assured me he was mine.”

“She did?” I asked, offended by that. “I was not aware there was any doubt in your mind, sir. You know you took my maidenhead at Euston, and I swear by all that’s holy that I’ve been with no other man since you. Only you, sir. You shouldn’t have needed anyone else to tell you that.”

“Oh, I’ve never doubted you, sweet,” he said easily, bending over to kiss me, and making our son squawk between us. “You alone have always been faithful to me.”

“Then why did you—”

“Because it’s the way of kings, Louise,” he said. “And it’s the way of all my ladies, too. Mrs. Chiffinch is a good old soul, and entirely reliable.”

I didn’t care for that mention of all his ladies, either. How was it with two quick sentences he’d managed to so thoroughly puncture my joy?

“You have called him Charles?” he said, still looking down at the babe.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “There could be no other name for him but yours.”

He chuckled as his son took his finger in his tiny grasp, seizing it as if he’d never let go. “True enough. Mark the strength he has already!”

“What of his other name, sir?” I’d hoped he would have told me by now, but he hadn’t, so I’d no choice but to ask. His children by Lady Cleveland were all called Fitzroy, an appropriate surname with “roy” signifying the king, and “fitz” their illegitimacy. I expected something similar. There was not the least stigma to these illegitimate royal children; in fact earlier in the summer, the Arlingtons had wed their precious four-year-old daughter, Isabella, to the eight-year-old Duke of Grafton, son of Charles and Lady Cleveland. “What shall he be called?”

“Oh, Charles de Keroualle sounds well enough, doesn’t it?” he said with terrible lack of concern. “More than enough for a brave tiny lad like this one.”

“But—but it’s not, sir,” I said plaintively. “With my name alone, no one will realize that he’s yours.”

He laughed softly, still occupied with the babe in his arms. “Everyone will, Louise. Everyone does. And if they don’t, they’ve only to look at the babe’s face and see me writ large across it.”

I wept, but he did not change his mind. I felt humiliated and disgraced, both for myself and our son, but Charles seemed to think nothing of it. Though others pointed out to me that he’d not immediately recognized Lady Cleveland’s children and that Mrs. Gwyn’s still had no other name than hers, I was not consoled. How could I be? I was a lady, and my son deserved better treatment.

To his credit, Charles didn’t neglect me in other ways. That autumn he bought me an emerald necklace and a new coach, lacquered in a lovely shade of pale blue picked out in gold—the colors that Louis himself preferred, to my amusement—and my income was raised to include the upkeep of our son. I was now receiving £8,600 per annum from the treasury, guaranteed to be paid for my life; an agreeable sum, particularly since it was double what Charles granted Mrs. Gwyn and £2,600 more than Lady Cleveland and all her brats received.

Now I know that I have been accused of being greedy and avaricious, a French woman taking so much English gold (which it wasn’t: for most of the moneys that came my way were from Louis’s subsidies to Charles) for my own. Perhaps it does appear that way when compared to the income of others. At this time, an English gentleman and his family were said to live quite handsomely on £300 per annum, while a common shopkeeper or tradesman kept his family on £50 or even less.

But I wasn’t a common shopkeeper or tradesman. My role in life was to please His Majesty, and keep him as happy as was possible. I was always making improvements to my lodgings, striving to maintain them as the most agreeable retreat for Charles in the entire palace. I kept an excellent table, and my chef was the best in London, perhaps in all England. Thanks to my connections, I’d the best cellar, too, with an ample selection of French wines to be had. Because of this, Charles often preferred to entertain foreign visitors and diplomats in my rooms, and what had begun with him meeting only Lord de Croissy there had soon grown to include the ambassadors of every other Court of any importance in Europe. He trusted me that everything would be arranged to perfection for his guests, and it was.

Further, I was extremely nice in my dress and appearance before Charles, always taking care that he saw me only in the finest and most becoming of gowns and jewels, and with my hair well arranged. Though he himself dressed with exceptional plainness for a gentleman, let alone a king, he had a quick eye for ladies’ finery, and it pleased him mightily to see me dressed in the newest fashions from Paris.

I was also still very much in the employ of His Most Christian Majesty. Louis was very pleased by the birth of my son, and pleased, too, by the influence I had within Whitehall. While my primary desire was to please Charles, I also strived to reflect well on France and, with a fine display of elegant taste, to show my pride in being French, as well.

As can be imagined, all this made for a costly undertaking, and the expenses of my household were very high. But long ago I’d also observed Louis’s favorite mistresses, the Marquise du Montespan and the Marquise du la Vallière, and I’d learned from them. A king’s affection can be fleeting, far more so than that of ordinary men. Though I loved Charles well and did my best to please him in all things, I wasn’t so foolish to believe that in time another lady might not catch his eye and replace me in his favor, just as I had done with Lady Cleveland.

I remembered, too, the unpleasantness of impecuniousness, and the disgrace of being the poor lady among the rich, and I’d long ago resolved never to fall into that place again. I took care to set aside some of my income against my future, and whenever I heard of an annuity falling vacant—say, an excise tax on wines—I was not above begging prettily to Charles that it might be given to me.

As can be imagined, what I saw as supporting His Majesty and being providential for myself and my son was often not viewed in the same light by my enemies. Pamphlets, broadsides, and other low papers often printed virulent attacks on my person and, worse, on the king, too, for favoring me. Though I never sought to seek these out for myself, I’d enough enemies at Court that they were often left where I could not help but see them or, worse, read aloud purposely in my hearing and passed off as “wit.” This was one such, unsigned, of course, as the slanders most often were:

Not pleasing at all, any more than were the constant gibes by Mrs. Gwyn and her associates. To provoke me and gain the sympathies of the people, she’d styled herself the “Protestant Whore,” to separate herself from me as the Catholic one. It was all very distasteful to me. I never thought of myself as a whore, but as a
maîtresse en titre
. I held my head high, and ignored their name-calling as beneath my notice.

Yet one other did call me a whore, too, and stung me to the heart. Soon after my son was born, some evil-minded persons saw fit to inform my father. Instead of rejoicing in the birth of his first grandchild, he damned me as a whore, and sent his curses to me as the final message between us. I’d not seen my family in some time, and his treatment wounded me deeply. Since the day I’d left our château years before, I’d believed I must rely upon myself and my wits for my future. With this last letter from my father, I realized now it was a certainty, and forever I put my girlhood behind me.

I sat for Master Lely again. My pose was similar to the first painting, with me sitting languidly in a dark landscape created from Master Lely’s fancy. But instead of the foolishness of the lamb and shepherdess’s crook, I was shown as myself, in pale blue undress. I held out my long hair, the richness of my dark locks always being a special pleasure to Charles, and I turned my head to one side the better to display my round cheeks and elegant eyes. My expression is beguiling, but also confident, for now I knew my place in the English Court and the world.

I was twenty-three, and not just a woman, but a lady of means, beloved by the King of England and the mother of his son.

It was, I thought, a good beginning.

 

 

As the fall of 1672 became winter, the news from Holland grew worse and worse. All hopes of a swift war were gone. It seemed preposterous that such a tiny country had managed to confound the two greatest powers in Europe, but it had, and their mortification was complete. To Charles’s chagrin, his nephew William of Orange refused to listen to his overtures for peace with any seriousness, and as the months dragged onward, it became clear that he hoped to break the alliance between France and England, and make England once again a Dutch ally unified against the French.

This was, of course, not to France’s favor, and thus not to mine, either. All that fall and winter, I listened to Charles’s complaints, of the conniving of the Dutch and the weakness of Louis’s army. This did not seem fair to me, for not once did Charles level any doubt against his faltering navy, but I tried to be as loyal to him as I could, even as again and again I gently steered him back toward Louis’s way.

One evening in January he came to me late, after he’d met long with his privy council. I was dressed in a gown edged with sable and the best of my jewels, for that night the queen was giving a grand feast and a ball in honor of Twelfth Night. One look at Charles’s expression, however, and I realized that we’d be late for Her Majesty’s feast, if we arrived at all.

“Here, sir, sit,” I urged him, leading him to the settee piled high with down-stuffed cushions and fur coverlets and sitting before the fire that snapped and crackled with dancing flames, as fine a place as any to spend a January evening. “I’ll fetch you brandy, and you may tell me what has happened.”

“There is nothing new, Louise,” he said with a sigh of discouragement as he took the glass from me. “It’s the same as always. That little rascal William has rejected the last terms presented by Arlington, and that’s an end to it for the season. We’ll all be forced to wait until spring to begin more attacks, and I haven’t the funds. My pockets are as empty as a beggar’s, Fubs, and it’s all because of my wretched nephew.”

I’d always thought both Charles and Louis had treated William too lightly, but I knew better than to speak that aloud.

“Perhaps he will come around to your view in time, sir.” I came to stand behind him, rubbing his broad shoulders with my thumbs in a way that always helped to ease his worries. “He is still a young man.”

“A young rogue, in my opinion,” Charles declared, shifting his shoulders beneath my fingers like a large cat. “Do you recall dancing with him when he came to visit two years ago? I do: the sight of you was Caliban and Arial, though you were the only lady he’d deign to partner. Ah, Fubs, you do know how to do that!”

“I do remember the prince, sir,” I said, and I did. Barely twenty, William had been short and dwarfish, with a large hook of a nose, without a hint of Stuart charm. I’d never decided why he’d danced with me, either, for the entire time he’d coughed and wheezed and complained about the English fires and the English air and English manners in general. “Who would have conceived he’d inspire so much confidence in his people?”

“It shows what fools his people are, if you ask me,” Charles grumbled. “You know what they’ve taken to calling this: the
rampjaar
, the disaster year. Arlington told me that, yet still the Dutch will follow William. I’ve half a mind to wed my niece to him. That would bring him to heel, wouldn’t it?”

“The Lady Mary, sir?” I said, unable to keep the dismay from my voice. The princess was eleven, and such an intelligent and willowy beauty that I hated to see her married off to this disagreeable little man. “Perhaps you should find a bride for her father first, sir.”

“Oh, James,” Charles said with a groan. “You’re right. We do need to have that resolved, and soon.”

“Yes, sir,” I murmured. When the hunt for a suitable bride for His Grace had begun, I’d promoted a pair of French princesses, as Louis had desired me to, but as it became clear to me that this might be one too many French ladies at Whitehall and not advantageous to me, I’d let my support fade. The latest candidate seemed to be an Italian princess, Mary of Modena; she was of course a Roman Catholic, a benefit to Louis, but not French, which made her more agreeable to me. “What a pity William was not born a woman, so that James could wed her as the Protestant princess.”

That made Charles laugh, as I’d hoped it would. “What an abominably ugly woman he would make! We’d have to put my brother in irons and drag him to the church to marry that one. But no matter. There’s only one answer to my trials now. I must recall Parliament.”