With All My Heart (8 page)

“Then you will be going to her party at Grosvenor House tomorrow?” asked Catherine, who was looking forward to it with pleasure.

“Yes, Madame. But I do not yet know many lads of my own age in this country, so I expect I shall feel rather out of things.” For a moment or two Jemmie knelt with lowered eyes, plucking uncertainly at the cushion cord, so that Catherine had the feeling that he wanted to tell her of something that was troubling him still more. “Besides,” he added, “I think that milord Chancellor does not much approve of me. I overheard him tell one of your other English lords that I ought never to have been brought into the country.”

Although Catherine could not imagine how it could concern them, she knew by experience just how the boy felt. “Then you must come with me in my carriage,” she invited impulsively.

Jemmie’s troubled eyes brightened. “I should like that above everything, Madame,” he declared, getting up politely as if afraid of out-staying her patience. “When shall I wait upon your Majesty?”

However poor his upbringing, he had at least been taught good manners. And he had an engaging way of quirking one eyebrow which reminded her of Charles.

On the morrow he proved an amusing escort and Catherine noticed that Henrietta Maria and even Barbara Castlemaine, who had as usual pushed her way into the gathering, went out of their way to be land to him. But soon after their arrival at the party Catherine lost sight of her young
protégé
because, much to her joy, the Queen Mother called her aside to talk in private. “Here is an interpreter whom we can both trust,” she explained, laying a friendly hand on the arm of a priest who had come to pay his respects to her.

Catherine had already noticed him walking calmly through the streets and had wondered at the sight of an unmolested tonsured head. Charles, she knew, had fought hard for religious toleration; but Anglican and Nonconformist hatred of Rome seemed to be growing rather than waning. She looked now with particular attention at this unruffled priest and found him to be a man of medium height with a smile of rare spiritual beauty.

“I had supposed that you would already have met Father Huddleston at Whitehall,” said their hostess, by way of introduction. “No one of the people would ever molest him, for he saved the King’s life.”

“He must be the priest Charles spoke of!” remembered Catherine, turning to him with a little cry of delight.

But John Huddleston laughed deprecatingly. “I was but one of many,” he said. “And in those dark days his Majesty’s life was from hour to hour in the hands of God. As, indeed, are the lives of us all.”

There was a naturalness — a glint of humour — about this erstwhile parish priest which Catherine’s Portuguese clerics had not. She felt assured that whatever frivolity or intimate thought she might utter, although translated by him, would be neither repeated nor condemned. “I pray you tell her Majesty how much I have wanted to talk to another woman, wiser than I and of the same faith, who knows the ways of this country,” she said, with eager candour. “To ask advice in the — the difficult situation in which I find myself.”

“This phase of a malicious influence will pass,” her mother-in-law assured her. “But should there be other women try not to break your heart over it, dear Catherine. I assure you it would be thought nothing of in France. And having had no home or security or steadying hand since they were adolescent, both my elder sons have always been lamentably promiscuous.”

“James too?” blurted out Catherine, amazed that Henrietta Maria should care so much for their religion and take their morals so calmly.

“James too,” sighed their mother. “Only he sees no reason to pension them or give them the crown jewels — or acknowledge his bastards. But it is better to try to condone, or at least to ignore. We foreign brides all have difficulties to put up with at the beginning.”

“But I had always supposed that you and the late King Charles —”

“Oh, I did not have that kind of difficulty!” smiled Henrietta. “My husband — God rest his soul! — was too much taken up with his friend, Villiers of Buckingham, to look at women. Not even at me! So you see that I, too, have no cause to love that family! But afterwards Caro and I were entirely happy. Except that, deeply as he loved me, no arguments or prayers of mine could ever win him to the Faith. And when he was beheaded like that — alone and unshriven —” For a moment or two agony twisted his widow’s face and choked her voice; but she was a courageous woman and took a hold upon herself. “It is because of that bitter memory that I took this opportunity to speak alone with you through someone we can trust. As time goes on, Catherine, you may be able to influence my
son
...”

“I, dear Madame? But I have no influence at all.” Although Catherine was relieved to make that humiliating confession, she knew that she could not have brought herself to do so through any official interpreter.

“More than you think, perhaps,” shrugged Henrietta. “There may be many mistresses, but there will be only one of you. They may come and go, but you will be there all the time.” She came and took her daughter-in-law by the shoulders, looking into her face with dark, compelling eyes. “It is your Christian duty, Catherine,” she said solemnly. “I, who was separated from your Charles while he was yet malleable, have tried and failed. Sometimes I think it is out of sheer obstinacy more than from any love of this new Anglican church. Yet he was more angry with me than I have ever known him about Henry —”

“
What
about Henry?” asked Catherine with breathless interest.

But Henrietta had shut her thin lips into a determined line. “No matter,” she said. “Save that the boy died — like his father — unshriven ...”

“It was one of those times when she meddled,” thought Catherine.

But Henrietta Maria had already shied away from a subject which shamed her. “I am too old now to pit myself against Charles’s obstinacy,” she was saying plaintively. “But you, Catherine — you have all your life before you and surely before my eldest son comes to die —”

Before the words were even translated Catherine shrank from them visibly as from a blow.

“You love him very much, do you not?” asked Henrietta, watching her.

Catherine nodded, feeling like a snared bird.

“As I did his father,” affirmed Henrietta complacently.

“So much more, so help me God, that I am prepared to take him as he is!” interpolated Catherine’s frenzied thoughts.

“So that you will never cease trying?”

“Madame, there is nothing — nothing — that I desire or will pray for every day of my life more devoutly than the conversion of my husband,” vowed Catherine, knowing — as sensitive John Huddleston did — that the vow was a half evasion.

But, thinking that she had gained her point, Henrietta was satisfied. She became suddenly bright and gay. “Come,
ma
fille
, I have something to show you,” she cried; and, taking Catherine’s hand, led the way, blithely as a young woman, to a smaller inner room where it would seem she wrote her interminable letters to the various members of her important family — to the Medicis, to her beloved daughter, now Duchess of Orleans, and to her august nephew, Louis the Fourteenth of France, It was a bare little room, vaguely reminiscent of a conventual cell, made splendid only by a life-size portrait hanging on the wall. “I take this masterpiece of Sir Anthony Van Dyck’s everywhere with me,” she said, standing before it. “And I would have you carry the impression of it in your heart.
Le
voila!
Charles, as God made him — before those vile Cromwellian monsters marred him!”

Catherine knew instinctively then that, although their mother might get on infinitely better with James, the belief that she loved him best was a myth. She gazed at the picture of a solemn eyed small boy dressed up in his first suit of armour, smugly proud of the pistol he held in his hand. Obviously he was aching to get out of doors and play with it, but at the same time trying to be courteously attentive to the requirements of his father’s Court painter. Probably, too, that active mind of his was wondering just how the colours got mixed on the palette. “He was a most lovable child, but Caro and I did not spoil him,” Henrietta Maria was saying dispassionately. “It was Life that did that.”

Catherine had taken grateful leave of her amazing mother-in-law, and the sturdy small boy in the picture was safely ensconced for all time in her heart when she happened to meet the original, grown to cynical manhood, just about to take his departure in the forecourt; and some of her tenderness must still have been hovering in her eyes, making her warmly lovely. “Will you not drive home with me?” invited Charles.

Catherine looked up at him in pleased surprise. “With all my heart!” was the laughing formula welling to her lips until she caught sight of Barbara Castlemaine already seated in the gilded coach. Nothing, nothing would induce her to ride with that woman, and suddenly — as a defence — she remembered young Jemmie. “I am honoured,” she said, drawing back with a face which had become a polite mask, “but I already have an escort and, by your Majesty’s leave, cannot well desert him,”

“The Queen has a gallant!” she could hear Barbara Castlemaine tittering.

“Fortunate man! May we know his name?” murmured Charles, accustomed to having his invitations accepted as commands.

Poor Catherine wished the ground would open and cover her. If only she could name Prince Rupert or her admiral milord Sandwich, or even one of the gentlemen of her household who usually accompanied her! Someone worthy of the scene, instead of a boy whose unimportance would make her look foolish. Barbara’s loud laughter would ring out in mockery, and Charles himself would have reason indeed to be insulted and angry. Glancing round apprehensively at the watching company, Catherine saw that Jemmie Crofts had, with his usual courtesy, waited for the moment of her departure and was standing near. Certainly no blame for the situation should touch him!

“A young Mr. Crofts, Sir,” she said very distinctly, stretching out a protective hand to gather him to her side against the approaching gust of ridicule.

But if there was amazement, there was no mockery. Charles saw to that. His own delighted, infectious laughter rang out across the expectant silence; his strong hand was beneath her reluctant arm bundling her firmly but affectionately into the coach. “Oddsfish, Catherine, this is pleasant!” he exclaimed. “I will not hear of you and — Mr. Crofts — returning alone. You must both ride with me. Move over, Barbara, my dear, and make room for my wife.” And before the astonished eyes of Chancellor, admirals and foreign ambassadors they drove off. “Quite a family party!” chuckled the shameless King.

Crofts, who evidently adored him, had climbed in with alacrity; and the great Castlemaine, without so much as a
moue
, was sharing his seat back to the horses. So delighted was she to have got her way at last and to be seen riding with the Queen that she forgot to be feline. And a family party it seemed, with the royal coach full of laughter. Without understanding in the least what was happening, Catherine laughed as happily as any, with Jemmie sitting as mediator in their midst. While passing along the Strand, Charles rendered the lad almost speechless with excitement by promising to take him along next time he went to the Nore to see his ships, and Catherine, watching them, could only think, “What a wonderful father he will make!” For, as everyone knew, Charles adored children. “I vow you are tormenting me, Kate, when you might be making me the happiest man alive by telling me that we are soon going to have a son like this of our own,” he declared presently, taking her hand and not troubling to lower his voice in the least.

Catherine blushed as rosily as he had intended she should. “Oh,
no
, Charles, you
lie
!” she protested, too flustered to pick her English words with care.

Whereat they all pretended to be horrified. “Do you not know, Madame, that it is high treason to say that to the King?” laughed Barbara.

“Not when it is my Queen who says it,” defended Charles.

“People who commit high treason get hanged,” insisted Jemmie, leaning forward to draw a hand across his throat with a horribly realistic grimace.

“Very well, confess and be hanged!” laughed her sovereign lord. “But at the last moment, when the Calvinists are all thirsting for your Catholic blood, I shall sign a reprieve. And send young Jemmie here riding post haste with it to Tyburn. Because your brothers might begin to make awkward enquiries and also” — the long, heavy lidded eyes, looked down at her in a way which always made her breath catch deliciously in her throat — “because I find. you. adorable.”

The happy ride was all too short. Back in her apartments Catherine did not even notice the affronted looks her own. people gave her because she had ridden in the King’s coach, through London streets, laughing, with his mistress.

“Who
is
that delightful boy?” she asked again, as they took off her grand clothes. “He must have had very delightful parents.”

No one answered. There was another of those queer, hushed silences.

“Young Jemmie, I mean,” she added, supposing that she had not made herself clear.

When she turned all her English ladies were looking at her aghast. “We s-supposed your Majesty knew,” stammered Lettice Ormonde, with the pearled brocade dress still lying stiff across her out-stretched arms.