Mrs. Sarah brought her a dish of tea, the merits of which beverage Barbara was beginning to appreciate.
“There! This will refresh you,” said Mrs. Sarah, and Barbara took it almost meekly. She was thinking of what she would say to Roger when she next saw him.
Mrs. Sarah watched her as she drank. “They say the King is drinking tea each day,” she commented, “and that the whole Court is getting a taste for it.”
“The King was never partial to tea,” said Barbara, absently.
Mrs. Sarah was not a very tactful woman. It seemed to her that Barbara had to become accustomed to the fact that, now the King had married, her position would no longer be of the same importance.
“They say the Queen drinks it so much that she is giving the King a taste for it.”
Barbara had a sudden vision of teatime intimacy between the foolish simpering Queen and the gallant and attentive King. She lifted the dish and flung it against the wall.
As Mrs. Sarah was staring at her in dismay, Roger and some of his friends came into the room. A nurse was carrying the child.
Barbara turned her blazing eyes upon them.
“How dare you take my child from his cradle?”
Roger said: “It was necessary that he should be baptized.”
“What right have you to make such decisions?”
“As his father, the right is solely mine.”
“His father!” cried Barbara. “You are no more his father than any of these ninnies you have there with you now. His father! Do you think I’d let you father my child?”
“You have lost your senses,” said Roger quietly.
“Nay! It is you who have lost yours.”
Roger turned to the company. I beg of you, leave us. I fear my wife is indisposed.”
When they were alone Barbara deliberately assumed the manner of an extremely angry woman but inwardly she was quite calm.
“So, Roger Palmer, my lord Castlemaine, you have dared to baptize the King’s son according to the rites of the Catholic Church. Do you realize what you have done, fool?”
“You are legally married to me, and this child is mine.”
“This child is the King’s, and all know it.”
“I demand the right to have my child baptized in my own faith.”
“You are a coward. You would not have dared to do this had I been up and able to prevent you.”
“Barbara,” said Roger, “could you be calm for a few minutes?”
She waited, and he went on: “You must face the truth. When you get up from that bed, your position at Court will no longer be the same as it has been hitherto. The King is now married, and his Queen is young and comely. He is well pleased with her. You must understand, Barbara, that your role is no longer of any importance.”
She was seething with rage but with a great effort she kept a strong control over herself. As soon as she was up she would show them whether a miserable little foreigner with prominent fangs, a little go-by-the-ground, who could not speak a word of English, should oust her from her position. But in the meantime she must keep calm.
Roger, thinking she was at last seeing reason and becoming reconciled to her fate, went on: “You must accept this new state of affairs. Perhaps we could retire to the country for a while. That might make things a little more comfortable for you.”
She was silent; and Roger went on to talk of the new life they might build together. It would be foolish to pretend he could forget her behavior ever since their marriage, but might they not live in a manner which would stop malicious tongues clacking? They would not be the only married pair in the country who shelved their differences and hid them from public view.
“I have no doubt there is something in what you say,” she said as calmly as she could. “Now leave me. I would rest.”
So she lay making plans. And when she was up and about again she sought a favorable opportunity when Roger was absent for a few days, to gather together all her valuables and jewels; and, with the best of the household’s servants, she left Roger’s house for that of her brother in Richmond, declaring she could no longer live with a husband who had dared to baptize her son according to the rites of the church of Rome.
The King was more attentive to his Queen than ever he had been. Our love is strengthened day by day, thought Catherine, and Hampton Court will always be to me the most beautiful place in the world because therein I first knew my greatest happiness.
Often she would wander through the gallery of horns and look up at those heads of stags and antelopes which adorned it; it seemed to her that the patient glass eyes looked sadly at her because they would never know—as few could—the happiness which was hers. She would finger the beautiful hangings designed by Raphael, but it was not their golden embroidery depicting the stories of Abraham and Tobit, nor the Cesarean Triumphs of Andrea Montegna, which delighted her; it was the fact that within these elaborately adorned walls she had become more than the Queen of a great country; she had found love, which she had not believed existed outside the legends of chivalry. She would look at her reflection in the mirror of beaten gold and wonder that the woman who looked back at her could really be herself grown beautiful with happiness. Her bedroom in the Palace was so rich that even the English ladies marveled at it, and the people who crowded in to see her, as was the custom, would gasp at the magnificence of the colorful hangings and the pictures on the walls as well as the cabinets of exquisite workmanship, which she had brought with her from Portugal. But most admired of all was her bed of silver embroidery and crimson velvet, which had cost £8,000 and had been a present to Charles from the States of Holland. To Catherine this bed was the most valuable of all her possessions because the King had given it to her.
Now, as the summer days passed, there seemed to he nothing he would not give her.
Tiresome state business often detained him, but on his return to her he would be more gallant, more charming than he had seemed before, if that were possible. Never, thought Catherine, did humble shepherd and shepherdess—who chose each other for love, without any political motive—lead a more idyllic existence.
She could have been perfectly happy but for her fears for her country. She had had news from her mother. The Spaniards had been frightened off by the sight of English ships in Portuguese waters, the danger to the country was less acute than it had been, now that Portugal and England were united by the marriage, but England was far away, and Spain was on the borders of Portugal.
When the King asked tenderly what was causing her apprehension, she told him.
Then greatly daring, for she knew that the request she was about to make was one which the monarch of a Protestant country would be loath to grant, she told him what was in her mind.
“It is because you are so good to me, because you are always so kind and understanding, that I dare ask.”
“Come!” said the King. “What is this you would ask of me? What do you wish? I doubt if I shall find it in my heart to deny it.”
He smiled at her tenderly. Poor little Catherine! So different from Barbara. Catherine had never yet asked for anything for herself; Barbara’s demands were never ending. He was foolish to see her so often, foolish to ride so frequently to Richmond, foolish to have acknowledged the new child as his own. But what a charming creature that small Charles was! What flashing eyes, and there was such a witty look about the little mouth already! He was undoubtedly a Stuart, for how like a Stuart to get himself—the King’s bastard—born at the time of his father’s marriage! He was more foolish still to have acted as Sponsor to the boy, with the Earl of Oxford and the Countess of Suffolk, at the time of his christening in accordance with the rites of the Church of England. And now that Barbara had declared she would never again live with Roger Palmer, and Palmer himself had left the country in his fury, there was certain to be more trouble; but if he could prevent its touching poor little Catherine, he would do so.