Perhaps I started to love him then. There was something so good about him; and if there was a vulnerability, a certain weakness, that only endeared him to me the more. Young, frivolous and impetuous as I was, there was a certain maternal feeling in my emotions regarding him. Perhaps it was born at that time.
As I lay in bed I remembered the prophecy. What had she said? I should have a son and he would be born, baptized and die all in a day.
The prophecy had come true.
It is amazing how news like that is circulated. Everywhere people were talking about Lady Davys’s prophecy. She was indeed a seer. The King was very angry, particularly when it was suggested that the prophecy had so upset me that it was due to it that I had given birth prematurely.
It was nonsense. I was sure that Lady Davys really had the powers of prophecy.
Charles wanted her to be dismissed from Court.
“You can’t do that,” I said. “You are being like a petulant King who punishes the messengers for the message.”
He did see that. “But I want no more of these prophecies. They are evil.”
“She promises good things sometimes.”
“First her husband. Then our child.”
“It was ordained that they should die. She just had preknowledge of it.”
“I want her out of the way.”
“You would never get a woman like that out of the way. You could burn her at the stake for a witch but she would curse you or prophesy something evil on the very scaffold.”
Charles was a little superstitious. I think that was why he was so angry.
He did not dismiss her from Court, but he did send for her husband Sir John Davys and asked him to put an end to his wife’s prophecies. But Sir John explained to the King that his wife was a forceful woman and could not be forbidden to do anything. “She believes she has a mission, Your Majesty. She says she will fulfill it no matter what humiliations and punishments the ignorant press upon her.”
Charles was a very understanding man. He knew what Sir John meant and he thought he was very brave to have married Eleanor Davys after what had happened to her first husband. Sir John, however, did burn some of her papers for she had been a collector of ancient manuscripts.
I was against this and argued with Charles about it. I said that if anything was going wrong it was better to know about it. I was sure that having heard the prophecy about my son I was more able to face the bitter disappointment because it was not entirely a surprise to me.
We argued and came near to quarreling as we used to in the old days, but I remembered his tenderness toward me at the bedside and he thought of all I had gone through so we did not actually use harsh words against each other.
He looked at me pleadingly and said: “It would please me if you did not see this woman again.”
I hesitated. I wanted to say: But it pleases me to see her. I want to know. I don’t want to live in ignorance.
But we both compromised.
He said he was sending Mr. Kirke—one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber—with a message to Lady Davys. He was to tell her that the Queen did not wish to see her again.
“It would be more truthful to say the King does not wish the Queen to see her again,” I said with a flash of my old temper.
He kissed me lightly on the forehead.
“My dearest,” he said, “everything I ever do is with your good in mind.”
I knew that was true and I relented. I took an opportunity of waylaying Mr. Kirke before he left with the message. One of the attendants brought him to my chamber.
I said to him: “Mr. Kirke, you are going with a message to Lady Davys?”
“That is so, Your Majesty,” he replied.
“When you hand it to her give her the Queen’s compliments and ask her if my next child will be a boy and will he live.”
Mr. Kirke bowed and went off.
I could scarcely wait for his return.
I set someone to wait at the gates for him and when he arrived back to bring him straight to me. When he came he was smiling happily so I knew that it was good news.
I said: “Did you ask Lady Davys my question?”
He replied that he had done so. “She said, my lady, that your next child would be a lusty son who will live, and that you will have a happy life for sixteen years.”
“Sixteen years! How strange! But a son, you said…a son who will live.”
“Those were her words, my lady.”
“Thank you, Mr. Kirke,” I said.
And he went away to the King to report that he had carried out his mission.
Sixteen years, I thought. That would take us up to 1644 or thereabouts. Sixteen years…that was a long way into the future; and in the meantime I was to have my son and my happy years.
I went to the King. Mr. Kirke had left him and I was sure he thought the matter was satisfactorily settled.
I embraced him and said: “Our next son will be lusty and live.”
He looked at me in astonishment.
“You are with child?” he asked.
“Not yet. But Lady Davys says that my next son will live and be strong.”
I saw the joy in his face. He held me close to him and I laughed exultantly.
It was illogical of him. He was not supposed to believe in prophecy.
But he believed in this one though.
I said: “It is not such a bad thing to believe in prophecies when they are good. It is only when they are bad that one does not want to know.”
Then he laughed and we were very happy. We were both thinking about the strong and lusty sons we would have.
THE HAPPIEST OF QUEENS
It was nearly two years later before the promised boy was born. They had been two happy years, with the affection between my husband and myself growing with every passing week. It seemed so strange that out of those stormy beginnings this deep and glowing love had come. Charles seemed to have grown more handsome than when I first saw him. He smiled now more frequently. He had completely forgotten his obsession with Buckingham and I had been quite content with the letters Mamie and I exchanged. She was married now and had become Madame St. George. Her husband was of the noble house of Clermont-Amboise so it was a very worthy match. I knew she was happy and had found consolation for our parting and I was glad of that. She had become governess to my brother Gaston’s daughter, who was known as Mademoiselle de Montpensier, and I believe she was quite a handful. Mamie wrote often of her enduring love for me and assured me that she would never forget those happy years when as Mademoiselle de Montglat she had been my governess and friend. But we both realized now that it was no use grieving and my letters, I know, were just as much a joy to her as hers were to me.
I was happy. I had learned to speak English now, and although I should never be exactly fluent in the language I could converse adequately. It pleased Charles so much and I was always happy pleasing him.
We rarely ever quarreled nowadays. Occasionally my temper would burst out and he would shake his finger at me but there would always be a smile and I would cry out: “Oh, you can’t expect me to change all at once. My temper has been with me from the cradle. I doubt it will ever leave me altogether.”
He said that he really liked me the way I was, which was very comforting and true lovers’ talk.
The only trouble between us was, of course, my religion. I often thought that if I could convert Charles to the Catholic Faith and with him the whole of England, I should be completely happy.
But that was asking too much, and even I was wise enough to realize that I had a great deal.
And now…my child was to be born.