He had a glib answer for the charge of treason. “I do not deny, gentlemen, that that piece of paper is a horoscope. Neither do I deny that you got it from Dr. Heydon, who cast it. But I do deny that it was I who commissioned it or that it concerns his Majesty’s future.”
A murmur rushed round the table. What was the rascal saying? How dare he stand there and lie like that! Charles smiled, very faintly, but as the Duke shot him a hasty glance the smile vanished; his swarthy face set in stern lines again.
“Would your Grace be so good, then, as to tell us who did commission the horoscope?” asked Arlington sarcastically. “Or is that your Grace’s secret?”
“It’s no secret at all. If it will make matters more clear to you gentlemen I am glad to tell you. My sister had the horoscope cast.” This seemed to astonish everyone but the King, who merely lifted one quizzical eyebrow and continued to stroke his dog’s head.
“Your sister had the horoscope cast?” repeated Arlington, with an inflection which said plainly he considered the statement a bald lie. Then, suddenly, “Whose is it?”
Buckingham bowed, contemptuously. “That is my sister’s secret. You must ask her. She has not confided in me.”
His Grace was sent back to the Tower where he was as much visited as a new actress or the reigning courtesan. Charles pretended to examine the papers again and agreed that the signature on them was that of Mary Villiers. This brought furious and impassioned protest from both Arlington and Clarendon, neither of whom was willing to give up the fight for the Duke’s life or, at the very least, his prestige and fortune. He was caught this time, trapped like a stupid woodcock, but if he got away this once they might never have the like opportunity again.
Charles listened to both of them with his usual courteous attention. “I know very well, Chancellor,” he said one day when he had gone to visit the old man in his lodgings at Whitehall, “that I could pursue this charge of treason. But I’ve found a man’s often more use with his head on.” He was seated in a chair beside the couch on which Clarendon lay, for his gout now kept him bed-ridden much of the time.
“What use can he be to you, Sire? To run loose and hatch more plots—one of which may take, and cost your Majesty your life?”
Charles smiled. “I’m not in much awe of Buckingham’s plots. His tongue is hung too loose for him to be any great danger to anyone but himself. Before he could half get a plot under way he’d have made the fatal mistake of letting someone else into the secret. No, Chancellor. His Grace has gone to considerable pains to insinuate himself with the Commons, and there’s no doubt he has a good deal of interest with them. I think he’ll be more use to me this way—chopping off his head would only make a martyr of him.”
Clarendon was angry and worried, though he tried to conceal his feelings. He had never reconciled himself to the King’s stubborn habit of deciding, when the issue interested him, for himself.
“Your Majesty has a nature too fond and too forgiving. If you did not personally like his Grace this would never be allowed to pass.”
“Perhaps, Chancellor, it’s true as you say that I’m too forgiving—” He shrugged his shoulders and got up, gesturing with his hand for Clarendon to stay where he was. “But I don’t think so.”
For an instant Charles’s black eyes rested seriously on the Chancellor. At last he smiled faintly, gave a nod of his head and walked out of the room. Clarendon stared after him with a worried frown. As the King disappeared his eyes shifted and he sat looking at his bandaged foot. The King, he knew, was his only protection against a horde of jealous enemies, of whom Buckingham was merely one of the loudest and most spectacular. Should Charles withdraw his support Clarendon knew that he could not last a fortnight.
Perhaps I’m too forgiving—but I don’t think so.
Suddenly there began to go through the old Chancellor’s mind a parade of those things he had done which had offended Charles: Clarendon had never admitted it but many insisted and no doubt Charles believed that Parliament would have voted him a greater income at the Restoration, but for his opposition. Charles had been furious when he had prevented the passage of his act for religious toleration. There had been the arguments over Lady Castlemaine’s title, which had finally been passed through the Irish peerage because he refused to sign it. There were a hundred other instances, great and small, accumulated over the years.
Perhaps I am too forgiving—Clarendon knew what he had meant by that. Charles forgot nothing and, in the long run, he forgave nothing.
Less than three weeks from the time that Buckingham was sent to the Tower he was released and he appeared once more, arrogant as ever, in all his old haunts. At one of Castlemaine’s suppers the King allowed him to kiss his hand. He began to frequent the taverns again and in a few days he was at the theatre with Rochester and several others. They took one of the fore-boxes and hung over the edge of it, talking to the vizard-masks below and complaining noisily because Nell Gwynne had left the stage to be Lord Buckhurst’s mistress.
Harry Killigrew, who was in an adjoining box, presently began to comment audibly on the Duke’s affairs to a young man who sat beside him: “I have it on the best authority that his Grace will never be reinstated.”
Buckingham gave him a glance of displeasure and turned again to watch the stage, but Harry’s mischievous zeal was merely whetted. He took out his pocket-comb and began grooming his wig. “ ’Sdeath,” he drawled, “but I was somewhat surprised his Grace should be content to take over the cast-off whore of half the men at Court.” Some time since he had been a lover of the languid dangerous sensual Countess of Shrewsbury, and now that she was the Duke’s mistress he babbled incessantly about the affair.
Buckingham scowled angrily at him. “Govern your tongue, you young whelp. I will not hear my Lady Shrewsbury maligned —particularly I hate the sound of her name in a mouth so foul as your own!”
The vizard-masks and beaus in the pit had begun to look up at them, for in the small confines of the theatre their voices carried and it sounded like a quarrel. Ladies and gentlemen in nearby boxes craned their necks, smiling a little in anticipation, and some of the actors were paying more attention to Killigrew and the Duke than to their own business.
Feeling all eyes begin to focus upon him, Harry grew bolder. “Your Grace is strangely fastidious concerning a lady who’s turned her tail to most of your acquaintance.”
Buckingham half rose, and then sat down again. “You impertinent knave—I’ll have you soundly beaten for this!”
Killigrew was indignant. “I’ll have your Grace to understand that I’m no mean fellow to be beaten by lackeys! I’m as worthy of your Grace’s sword as the next man!” It was a fine point of honour. And so saying he left the box, summoning his friend to go with him. “Tell his Grace I’ll meet him behind Montagu House in half an hour.”
The young man refused and began hauling at Harry’s sleeve, trying to reason with him. “Don’t be a fool, Harry! His Grace has been troubling no one! You’re drunk—come on, let’s leave.”
“Pox on you, then!” declared Killigrew. “If you’re an arrant coward, I’m not!”
With that he unbuckled his sword, lifted it high and brought it smashing down, case and all, upon the Duke’s head. He turned instantly and began to run as Buckingham sprang to his feet in white-faced fury and started after him. The two men scrambled along, climbing over seats, hitting off hats, stepping on feet. Women began to scream; the actors on the stage were shouting; and above in the balconies ’prentices and bullies and harlots crowded to the railing, stamping and beating their cudgels.