Then she would wake to the sound of wind sweeping over the meadows, or the song of the birds, and remember with bitterness that Whitehall was far away—and not only in mileage.
I shall die, she would say, if I never see Whitehall again.
Then she would weep into her pillows, or storm at her servants; hoping to find comfort from either action. But there was no comfort; there was only regret.
Each day she must live with a man who could not hide his feeling for her. He could never see her without remembering some evil deed from her past; he could never forget that he owed his downfall to her. His only happiness was to shut her from his thoughts.
For months they lived in wretchedness, dreading to be together, yet unable to avoid it; each day Robert’s loathing grew a little stronger; each day her anger against him grew more bitter.
But Robert found a way out of his despondency. Sometimes from her window, Frances would watch two figures in the paddock; a sturdy little girl and a tall, still handsome man. He was teaching her to ride. The child’s high laughter would come to her ears and sometimes Robert’s would mingle with it.
They were always together, those two.
Frances could find no such joy. She had never wanted children, only power, adulation and what she called love—but that did not include the love of a child.
She continued to fret while Robert learned to live for his daughter.
Occasionally news came from the world beyond them; it was like, thought Frances miserably, looking at a masque through a misty window; a masque in which one was barred from playing a part. This was no life; she was poised between living and dying.
Life was the Court where people jostled for power and wealth; but she was no longer of it; nor could she break through to it; she must live out the dreary years in a limbo, poised between vital life and a living death.
They were still in exile when Raleigh returned from his ill-fated journey and when, soon after, he laid his head on the block in Old Palace Yard. And when Frances heard that her father and mother had been summoned to the Star Chamber and there sentenced to a term in the Tower for embezzlement, she was not deeply moved. That life now seemed so far away.
When Queen Anne died of dropsy, no one was surprised. She was in her forty-sixth year and had been ailing for some time; a certain Dr. Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood and confirmed this by his experiments; a comet appeared in the sky to cause great consternation and speculation but even this could not interest Frances.
Sometimes Robert thought wistfully of the old days; he wondered whether there would be a Spanish marriage for Charles after all, or whether that sly Gondomar would have worked in vain. It would have been good to be there in the thick of intrigue.
He pictured himself with the King, proudly bringing forward a girl who was growing to be as beautiful as her mother, yet with a different kind of beauty.
“My daughter, Your Majesty.”
He could almost see James’s emotional smile, almost hear his tender voice: “So ye’ve a lass now, eh, Robbie. And a bonny one!”
He would have asked for favors for her. He wished he could have given her great wealth and titles. But what did she want with them? She had her horses to ride—and she was already a good horsewoman; she had her father to be her companion. She did not ask for more, so why should he?
It was not often that they spoke to each other; they avoided each other’s eyes. They both wanted to forget and they were a constant reminder to each other.
But one day she could not restrain herself. “My lord Buckingham I hear is going to Spain with the Prince.”
“Is it so then?”
“My lord Buckingham—that upstart Villiers. A Duke no less!”
Robert shrugged his shoulders. But he pictured the scene at Court so well; James, grown older now, but no less affectionate, he was sure; and at his feet the handsome man, seated on the stool once occupied by himself.
“They say there is no end to the honors that man has taken to himself.”
“It may well be.”
“You do not care?”
“I am past caring.”
“I am not then. And never shall be.”
“That is a tragedy for you.”
She turned on him angrily; his calmness maddened her, the knowledge that he had been able to build a life for himself out of these ruins, while she had failed, was more than she could bear.
“It might never have happened. You could have persuaded James. You should have been more subtle … a little more like his newest friend, my Lord Buckingham.”
“And you, Madam,” he retorted, “should never have stained your hands with the blood of my friend.”
She turned away and ran to her bedchamber where she locked herself in and wept until she believed she had no tears left. Tears of rage and frustration.
“Better would it have been if they had taken me to Tyburn,” she cried. “Better if they had hanged me by the neck as they did poor Anne Turner. Anything would have been more desirable than this life of mine.”
After that they avoided each other. It was better so.
In one of his favorite palaces—Theobald’s in the parish of Cheshunt—the King lay dying.
James had no illusions; he knew this was the end. He was in his fifty-ninth year and had been a king for almost the whole of his life: James VI of Scotland since he was little more than a baby and his mother’s enemies had insisted that she abdicate in his favor; James I of England for the last twenty-three years.
“A goodly span,” he murmured, “and when a man suffers from a tertian ague and gout it is time he said goodbye to earthly pleasures. Perhaps I have been over-fond of my wine, but it is no bad thing to be over-fond of the things life has to offer.”
It was characteristic of him that he wondered what posterity would think of him. The British Solomon! How much had his wisdom profited his country? Would they remember him as a wise ruler, or the King who had gone in terror of the assassin’s knife since the Gowrie and Gunpowder Plots? Would they remember him as the King who was excessively fond of his favorites?
Steenie had not always been a comfort. He had grown arrogant like the rest. Steenie would look after himself. He was already a friend of Charles and they had jaunted to Spain together when Charles went to woo the Infanta. And Charles was affianced now to Henrietta Maria the daughter of Henry IV of France and sister of the reigning King Louis XIII. It would be a Catholic marriage for Charles which might cause trouble; there could clearly be no more persecution of recusants with a Catholic Queen on the throne. But that was Charles’s affair—no longer his.
It was strange to think of the end. No more hunting, no more golf, no more laughter at the pranks of Steenie and the rest; no longer would he sign to a handsome young man to give him his arm to lean on.
The old life was passing.
And as he thought back over the years there was one whom he could not forget, and had never forgotten. Often during the years he had longed to recall him. Yet how could he recall a man who had been condemned for murder?
“Robbie was no murderer,” he told himself, as he had often during the hours of the night when he had awakened from some vague dream of the past, haunted by a handsome affectionate young man. “I’ll bring him back. He shall have his estates back.”
But by light of day he would say: “I canna do it. It would serve no good purpose. How could Robert take up his old place now?”
It was nearly ten years since he had seen Robert, and that was a long time for a King to remember. And for all those years Robert had remained virtually a prisoner.