Perhaps he was thinking the same for he said no more. But there was an outcome. Left alone with the ladies, Eleanor Davys talked a little more and what she said was not nearly as pleasant as that which she had told me. When I returned to my women I noticed that they looked very grave.
I said: “Did Lady Davys stay long after I left?”
“A little while,” Lucy replied, not looking at me.
“I was so annoyed to be taken away like that. I felt quite angry with the King.”
“He certainly did not like her,” said Susan.
“Did he forbid you to see her?” asked Katherine.
“He did not. And I would forbid him to forbid me. I will not be told, you must not do this and you must not do that.”
“Yet it would be awkward for her, I suppose,” suggested Susan, “for he could forbid her to come to Court, and of course there is her husband to be considered.”
“Do you think Lady Davys is a woman to be told by her husband what to do?”
“No,” said Susan. “She would probably tell him he had three days to live if he offended her.”
“That isn’t fair,” I protested. “I think her prophecies are true ones. She promised me a son.”
There was a strange and ominous silence round the table which immediately aroused my suspicions.
“What’s the matter?” I cried. “Why are you looking like that?”
They remained silent and I went to Lucy and shook her. “Tell me,” I said. “You know something. What is it?”
Lucy looked appealingly at Susan, and Katherine shook her head.
“No,” I cried stamping my foot. “You had better tell me what is wrong. Is it something Lady Davys said…eh? Was it about me?”
“She er…” began Katherine. “She…er…said nothing of importance.”
“And that is why you look as though the heavens are about to fall in? Come on…I command you…all of you…tell me.”
Susan lifted her shoulders and after a few seconds of silence Lucy nodded and said resignedly: “Well, it is just talk, you know. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“What?” I cried. “What?”
“It is better to tell the Queen,” said Lucy. “If it should come true…and I do not believe for a moment that it will…it is better for her to know.”
“Know what?” I screamed, my patience at an end; and now a certain fear was creeping into my mind.
“I think she made it up because she was angry about the King’s interruption,” said Susan.
“If you don’t tell me soon I’ll have you all arrested for…conspiracy,” I shouted.
Lucy said quietly: “She told us that you would indeed have a boy.”
“Well, go on. That’s what she told me. There is nothing new in that.”
“But that he would be born, christened and buried all in one day.”
I stared at them in horror. “It can’t be true.”
“Of course it can’t,” soothed Lucy. “It is just that she was angry. She was so annoyed that the King came in and showed he did not approve of her.”
I stared ahead of me. I was seeing a little body wrapped in a shroud.
Susan said: “Don’t tell the King what she said or that we told you.”
I shook my head. “It is such nonsense,” I cried. “She is a madwoman.”
“That is what so many people say,” said Lucy quickly. “Your son will be a beautiful child. How could he be otherwise? You and the King are both handsome.”
“My son!” I murmured. “There will be a son.”
I had so firmly believed her when she said I was to have a son but if the first prophecy was correct, why should the second not be?
Now I began to be haunted by fears.
I don’t know whether that prophecy preyed on my mind but whenever I thought of my baby, instead of seeing a laughing lively child I saw a little white one in a coffin. I could not eat much and at night my dreams were disturbed. The King was very anxious about me.
“Perhaps,” he said, “you are too young to have a child.”
Too young! I was eighteen and would be nineteen in November. That was not so young to have a child. I did not tell the King about the prophecy. He would have been very angry with Lady Davys and I am sure he would have made some complaint to her husband. I tried to disbelieve her. After all, how could she possibly know? It had been a coincidence about her first husband. Perhaps he had been very ill and she, as his wife, knew exactly how ill.
The King was most attentive to me. In fact I think he was far more interested in me and my baby than he was in state affairs and was bitterly resentful when they took him away from us.
I hoped that we should have many children. I could see us in the years ahead with them all around us—beautiful children, the boys looking like Charles and the girls like me. They would certainly be a handsome family.
We were at Somerset House. We had arrived on a Monday and I had arranged for a Te Deum to be sung in the chapel there. While I was in the chapel I began to feel very unwell. It could not be the child yet, because it was not due for another month.
I was very glad to get out of the chapel and to my chamber. I told Susan and Lucy that I was not feeling well and that I thought I should retire to bed.
“You are certain to feel tired,” they said. “You are getting close to your confinement.”
“Oh, it is a month away,” I reminded them.
But during the night I began to feel pain. I shouted and very soon people were crowding round my bed. I was in agony and I knew that my child was about to be born.
I cannot remember much of that night. I think it was rather fortunate for me that during much of it I was unconscious. In the evening of the next day my child was born…prematurely. It was weak, not having reached its full time and I heard afterward how Charles and my confessor argued together over its baptism which had to take place immediately as it was ominously clear that speed was necessary. My confessor said that as I was to have charge of my children’s religious upbringing until they were thirteen, the baby should be baptized according to the rites of the Church of Rome. Charles retorted that this was a Prince of Wales and the people of England would never allow a child who was destined to become King of England to be baptized as a Catholic.
The King, of course, had to be obeyed, and the little boy was baptized according to the Church of England and named Charles James.
Scarcely had those rites been performed when he died.
I remember waking from my sleep of exhaustion to find the King at my bedside.
“Charles,” I whispered.
He knelt by the bed and taking my hand kissed it.
“We have a son?” I asked.
He was silent for a second and then he said: “We had a son.”
I felt the desolation sweep over me; the waiting months, the discomfort…the dreams…they had all come to nothing.
“We are young yet,” said the King. “You must not despair.”
“I so wanted this child.”
“We both did.”
“Did he live at all?”
“For two hours. He was baptized and we christened him Charles James.”
“Poor little Charles James! Are you very sad, Charles?”
“I tell myself that I have you and you are going to be well soon. You are young and healthy and the doctors tell me that in spite of your ordeal you will soon be well again. That is the most important news for me.”
That was my first real experience of Charles in misfortune. He was always able to bear disappointments nobly and with few complaints. These qualities were to stand him in good stead later.
I soon recovered, though I learned that I had been very near to death. There had been one point where they could have saved the child at a cost to my life and the doctors had actually asked the King whom they should consider first…me or the child. I was told that he had answered immediately and vehemently: “Let the child die but save the Queen.”