The King's Mistress (42 page)

“Soon you will have a little cousin to play with!” Queen Elizabeth smiled. “Will that please you?”

“Perhaps,” Liselotte said, considering. “Can I dress it up like I do my dolls?”

“You funny girl!” Sophie laughed. “It will be a baby, not a doll. But that is better, you see, for it will be like a little brother or sister to you.”

Jane regarded Sophie with interest, recalling Princess Elizabeth’s comment that Charles had been captivated by his cousin, who was almost exactly his own age, and that he had at one time many years ago wanted to marry her. Sophie was stunning, with fair skin and luxuriant dark curls, her eyes sparkling with humour. Jane thought a little grudgingly that Sophie would likely have been a very suitable wife for Charles, and wondered why the match had not come off.

Jane noticed Nan Hyde watching Sophie intently, with an expression that was hard to read, her eyes darting to where Mary sat with her son William, now eight years old, who was boasting to little Liselotte of the horse he had received as a birthday present.
It must be very hard for Nan to keep her secret,
Jane thought.
She longs to be able to say that she is the wife of the Duke of York, instead of being thought his sister’s lady-in-waiting.
How long could the secret keep? she wondered.

I
N
D
ECEMBER
J
ANE RECEIVED A LETTER FROM
J
OHN, DELIVERED BY
Lord Ormonde.

“My dear sister,” John wrote, “I hardly know where to begin to tell you in what turmoil and confusion things are here in England. I am sure that word will have reached you of the increasing hostility between the Rump, as the recently recalled remnant of the old Parliament is known, and the army faction. Since Richard Cromwell resigned in the spring, these factions have moved and countermoved, attacked, parried, and riposted, and it seems to me—I scarce dare to hope it—that there are rumblings beneath the earth that presage great upheaval to come—earthquakes that may throw some from their places and restore others.”

Jane read the letter again, hope rising in her breast. Was it possible that events in England were finally moving in the king’s favour?

Mary removed her household to Teyling for Christmas, and the court was merrier than at any time since Jane’s arrival, for now a rush of encouraging news flowed from England, and the English exiles were at last filled with the sense that after so many years of darkness and despair, the sun was about to break through the clouds.

Mary’s court busied themselves with feasts and music and masques, and Jane sat happily with Queen Elizabeth late into the night, listening to her stories of her childhood in the exciting early days of her father’s reign as King of England, and of the first untarnished joy she and her husband had felt when he was in Prague, newly crowned as King of Bohemia, and a glittering future seemed to lie before them.

Henry Lascelles came to see Jane in Breda in late January, in high spirits.

“General Monck met with Fairfax at York,” he said. “And there are murmurs that both are now for restoration of the monarchy.”

“Truly?” Jane gasped. After so many disappointments she hardly dared to believe it might be so.

“Truly,” Henry grinned. “Moreover, His Majesty has word that Londoners do now openly speak of the king, and say that General Monck will bring him back.” He took Jane’s hand and squeezed it. “Oh, cousin. I think that our labours of so long ago are about to bear fruit.”

Jane was restless that night. She could not quiet her mind nor still the excitement that surged through her body. At last, at last, at last. The day for which she had hoped for so long might be at hand.

A week later Nan dashed into Jane’s bedchamber and grasped her hands in elation.

“Have you heard? General Monck has reached London! The apprentices are rioting against the Rump, the old army is in disarray as Monck’s men come in to replace them, and all is in Monck’s hands!”

“It’s like a house of cards,” Henry said. “It wants but a breath to make it topple.”

The breath came. In February, with the might of the army behind him, Monck demanded that the Rump Parliament be dissolved by the sixth of May and an election held to bring in a full and free Parliament.

And in early April, Charles himself arrived unannounced at Breda, spattered with the mud of the road, having ridden all night from Brussels. Jane had begun to think that she would never see him again, and to have him solidly and vibrantly present was overwhelming. Her disappointment and heartbreak of the past years melted away as he greeted her with a grin and swept her into his arms.

“My Jane, my saviour! Your sacrifice was not in vain, you see.”

Jane looked up into his eyes and for the first time in years felt that here was her Charles, the man she had known and fallen in love with on the road from Bentley to Abbots Leigh. She reached up to stroke his cheek, but stopped herself, conscious of the curious gazes of Mary’s court. Charles was suddenly the most famous man in Europe, and his every move and word were noted and commented on.

The dukes of York and Gloucester arrived, and Jane smiled at the joy in Charles’s face as he sat down to supper with his brothers and sister Mary.

“How long has it been since we’ve all been together?” he asked, looking to Mary.

“Eighteen years. When Mother took me to go to my husband.”

A shadow of sadness came over Mary’s face, and Charles took her hand.

“What grief that our sister Elizabeth did not live to join us here.” He looked at his brothers. “But soon we will all meet in England. Minette, too. And then we need never be parted again.”

O
NE MORNING IN MID
-A
PRIL
, J
ANE ENTERED HER ROOM TO FIND
N
AN
Hyde vomiting violently into a chamber pot, her face flushed and damp with sweat.

“Shall I ask for a doctor to be sent for?” she asked, hastening to Nan’s side.

“No,” Nan gasped. “I’m quite well.”

“You’re not,” Jane said. “Do you have a fever?”

She put her hand to Nan’s forehead, remembering with dread those first few hours when Kate Killigrew had been taken ill at Spa.

Don’t let it be the plague,
she prayed.

Nan’s skin was cool to the touch; at least she didn’t have a fever.

“I’m not ill,” Nan said, thrusting the chamber pot under the bed and wiping her face with a cloth. “I’m with child.”

She jutted her little chin defiantly at Jane, as if expecting Jane to argue or criticise her.

So now it had come, Jane thought. The secret marriage would not be secret for much longer.

“Does the duke know?” she asked.

“Not yet. I didn’t want to tell him until I was sure.”

O
N THE FOURTEENTH OF
M
AY
, J
ANE AND THE REST OF
M
ARY’S HOUSEHOLD
accompanied Charles from Breda to The Hague, where he would receive a delegation from Parliament. They travelled by boat, arriving at dawn, and by the rosy morning light Jane saw that the shore was thronged with thousands of people. Cannons boomed in celebration of Charles’s arrival, and their way to the palace was lined with cheering crowds.

J
ANE WAITED ANXIOUSLY WITH
M
ARY AND HER SON
W
ILLIAM, THE
dukes of York and Gloucester, and their aunt Queen Elizabeth for Charles to return from his meeting with the Parliamentary commissioners. Everyone seemed too anxious for conversation. The Duke of York paced, Queen Elizabeth absentmindedly stroked the little monkey that chattered on her hap, and Mary kept standing and then sitting down again. Jane had a piece of needlework in her lap, but found herself too nervous to sew without pricking herself, so she simply sat. She suddenly had a vivid recollection of sitting just so in the kitchen at Bentley years ago, waiting for John to return with news of the king’s whereabouts.

Jane’s heart jumped at the sound of Charles’s voice. He strode in, face alight, closely followed by Colonel O’Neill, struggling with the weight of a large portmanteau.

Queen Elizabeth stood and took a faltering step towards Charles, and when she spoke, her voice was strained with hope. “Good news?”

“The best news!” Charles crowed, going to her and kissing her. “Miraculous news! Parliament has invited me to return.”

There was a moment of silence, as if the royal family was too stunned to react.

“And look at this!” Charles cried, pulling the portmanteau from O’Neill’s hands. “Come and look!”

He dropped the bag onto the floor before him, and it landed with a heavy thud and the clink of metal within. He opened the clasp and Jane saw with astonishment that the portmanteau was full of gold coins.

“How much is there?” she breathed.

“Four thousand pounds,” Charles said. “A payment in earnest on a grant of fifty thousand pounds that Parliament has voted to me. They told me that when they left London, bells and bonfires and the report of artillery had already begun to proclaim me king and publish the joy of the nation.”

He looked around at them, his eyes brimming with tears, and when he spoke again his voice was hoarse.

“It is truly beyond belief. After all these years, to have it happen of such a sudden and without bloodshed.”

“God be praised,” Jane said.

And suddenly she knew she was going to faint, and reached for Charles as she fell. He caught her in his arms and lowered her to the floor, supporting her on his lap.

“Jane, my dear, are you ill?”

“No,” she murmured, looking up at him. “I am well. It’s only that I just realised—I can go home now.”

T
HE ROYAL FAMILY, THE
E
NGLISH EXILES, ALL OF
T
HE
H
AGUE, ALL OF
Europe, it seemed, were seized with a wild joy. The years of despair and poverty seemed forgotten in the face of the fact that in a matter of days Charles would be on his way to England, to the throne and crown that had eluded him for so long.

Jane felt as if she had woken from a nightmare. Only now, when her sentence was near its end, did she let herself feel how much she had hated the Low Countries and life at Mary’s court with its petty rivalries and disputes. Her heart had been in England all along, and soon she would be there again—and with a king on the throne that she had helped to put there!

Charles’s mother, Queen Mary; his sister Minette; and his cousin Princess Louise arrived from France. Prince Rupert, Elizabeth the Princess Palatine, and Queen Elizabeth’s son Edward flocked to The Hague and were packed into the palace to join in the celebrations. Of the siblings only Sophie was absent, as she had returned to Osnabrück in March and would shortly be brought to bed of her first child.

Jane and Mary’s other ladies were in a flurry of preparing for the many balls and feasts that would pack the coming days. For now that Charles was truly king again, everyone wanted to shower him with honour and congratulations, even those who had failed to come to his aid when he was in most dire need of it.

To Jane’s dismay, Charles was now always at the centre of a crowd. She had barely seen him, had not even had an opportunity to speak privately with him since they had returned to The Hague, and now he was surrounded by all these people. Who were they? They had come from everywhere, out of nowhere, and all at once. The English who had grimly endured the past ten years or more, living from hand to mouth in Holland and France and elsewhere now came scurrying to jostle for the king’s attention, fighting for a moment in his reflected glory. And what galled her almost more than anything was that they treated her as if she was one of them rather than an intimate of the king’s.

Never mind,
she told herself.
Tomorrow night at the ball he will dance with me and talk with me. All eyes will be on us, and then they’ll know that I hold a special place in his heart.

J
ANE STUDIED HER REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR AS THE DRESSMAKER
pinned up the hem of the new gown she would wear at the ball the next evening. It was a spectacular creation, gold satin, glowing with a sheen like honey in the sun, the skirt falling in rich folds, the sleeves and overskirt trimmed with bows in shimmering deep brown. The deep neckline, cut so low and close to her shoulders that she could scarce raise her arms, thrust her bosom into prominence.

“You will be the most beautiful lady there, mademoiselle,” the dressmaker enthused, adjusting a bow and stepping back to look at her work.

Jane smiled with satisfaction. She would dress her hair in ringlets, and wear the great tear-shaped pearl earrings that Mary had given her. Yes, she would turn heads in her new gown, and when Charles was at her side, she would feel like a queen. And in the days to come, there would be plenty of time to spend together, making up for the lost years.

T
HE GREAT HALL WHERE THE BALL WAS TO BE HELD WAS ALREADY
packed when Jane entered behind Mary. It had been a brilliant and sunny day, and the rays of sunlight, lingering into the spring evening, competed with the hundreds of candles in their wall brackets. The room buzzed with chatter and laughter. The bright rustling silks of the ladies’ dresses caught the flickering candlelight. The air was scented heavily with perfume and with the apple blossoms that weighed down the branches of the trees outside the tall open windows. The excitement and anticipation seemed tangible. Jane, Nan, Lady Stanhope, and Mary’s other ladies followed Mary to where Queen Mary sat with Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia and the Princesses Elizabeth and Louise.

“Where’s this king son of yours, then?” Queen Elizabeth asked in an undertone that carried easily around the room. “Wants to make an entrance, I expect.”

The musicians at the other end of the chamber had been playing, their music underlying the hum of conversation, but now, as if on cue, they stopped. The room went silent. A horn blazed out a fanfare, and Charles entered.

He was resplendent in a suit of black velvet trimmed with bows and knots of red ribbons, matching the heels of his black shoes, his gloves, and the fluttering ostrich plumes in the crown of his hat. The lace-edged sleeves of his shirt and his lace collar were snowy white. He had shaved clean except for a small moustache, and his dark curls tumbled over his shoulders.