Anne asked Lord Jermyn, the Queen’s most faithful adviser, to break the news to her. “For,” she said, “you will do it better than any of us could. You will know how to soothe her.”
He went to Henrietta Maria in her apartments. With her was the little Princess, Anne Morton and Père Cyprien de Gamaches.
Jermyn knelt before the Queen.
She said at once: “You have news from England?”
He lifted his face to hers; his lips quivered, and she knew, even before he spoke. A blank expression crept over her face; her eyes were mutely pleading with him not to speak, not to say those fateful words.
“Madame, dear Madame, on the 30th of January, the King, your husband, laid his head upon the block …”
She did not speak.
“Madame,” resumed Jermyn, his voice broken with a sob. “Madame … Long live King Charles II.”
Still she did not speak. Anne placed her hand on the shoulder of the little Princess who was looking at her with wondering eyes, and gently pushed her towards her mother. The Queen, putting out her hand, reached for her daughter and held her fast to her side; she still looked blankly before her and said not a word.
The little Princess was bewildered. She was five years old; she lived in the great Palace of the Louvre, but the vast rooms were deserted and there was war in the streets. She could not understand her mother’s sudden passionate embraces, the great floods of tears and what seemed to her the incoherent ramblings. Her mother had changed. She wore somber widow’s mourning; she was constantly in tears; she referred to herself as La Reine Malheureuse; and little Henriette would cry with her, not knowing why she cried.
“Ah, you do well to weep!” the Queen would say. “Do you know that but for you I should not be here now. I should be with the Carmelite nuns in the Convent of the Faubourg Saint-Jacques; that is where I yearn to be, to pray for strength to help me bear this burden of living. Ah, ma petite, I pray that you will never feel as I do. I pray that you will never be beset with doubts as your poor mother is this day. There are many who say I brought him to this—that good and noble man! They say that had he never attempted to arrest the Five Members seven years ago, civil war would have been averted. I urged him to do that. I did not believe that any would dare oppose the King to the extent of going to war. I believed that we could govern without a Parliament. Oh, my little Henriette, have I, who loved him, brought him to the scaffold?”
Henriette did not know what to answer; she could only take her little kerchief and wipe away her mother’s tears.
And now her mother had gone away to stay with the nuns, and she could only feel relieved because of this. She was left to the care of dear Anne Morton and Père Cyprien. But these two were beginning to cause her some anxiety; and their teachings often seemed to be contradictory. She was conscious of some vague strife between them, of triumphs enjoyed by one to the discomfiture of the other; and in some way, which she herself did not understand, she was involved in their polite warfare.
“I wish my brother would come,” she often said to herself. “All would be well if he were here.”
She thought of him constantly; he had always been kind and loving; he was so big and clever, yet not too big and clever to make a little girl feel she was of some importance to him.
And then, one day, he came to the Louvre.
He had grown up since she had last seen him; he was a young man of nineteen now. He was taller, but he still had the same luxuriant black hair and humorous eyes.
When he came into the apartment Lady Morton and Père Cyprien both fell on their knees, but Henriette ran to him and flung herself into his arms.
“My child,” said Anne reprovingly, “you forget the respect due to His Majesty.”
“But it is Charles!” cried the little girl.
“Come now. You should kneel to him. He is your King first … your brother second.”
“A poor King, my Minette,” he said, as he swung her up that her face might be on a level with his; “a King without a kingdom, but a brother rich in love. Which will you have?”
She did not understand him, but she had never had need to understand his words; she only knew that he loved her; his eyes told her that, as did his loving arms about her.
His mother, who hearing of his arrival had left the convent and returned to the Louvre, embraced him warmly. She wept afresh for his father. She was La Reine Malheureuse, she declared. “Life has nothing left to give me. I have lost not only a crown but a husband and a friend. I shall never regret enough the loss of that good man—so wise, so just, so worthy of the love of his subjects.”
The young King smiled his melancholy smile. “’Tis no use to weep, Mam,” he said. “We must look forward as he would have had us do. We’ll defeat them yet.”
“Amen, my boy, my Charles, my King.”
When the Queen-Mother of France heard that the King of England was at the Louvre, she asked the royal party to join the French Court at Saint-Germain.
“I have warned Queen Anne,” said Henrietta Maria, “that my husband lost his life because he was never allowed to know the truth, and I have implored her to listen to her advisers before it is too late … before the crown of France goes the way of that of England.”
Charles smiled ruefully. “It is difficult enough to learn through one’s own experience, Mam, let alone the experience of others.”
His mother smiled at him sadly. Even when he was a baby—an ugly, solemn little fellow—she had felt he was cleverer than she was. Now she hoped that was true. He would need to be clever. He had to fight his way back to his throne.
She had heard that there were plans afoot, that soon he would be returning to Scotland where he could hope for support which would help him make an onslaught on England.
“May God go with you then, dear son,” she said. “You will need His help.”
“That’s true, Mam,” he answered. “But ’tis better to die in such at enterprise than wear away one’s life in shameful indolence.”
“I heard rumors concerning your visit to The Hague.”
“There will always be rumors concerning our family, Mam.”
“This was concerning a young woman named Lucy Water. You know of such a one?”
“Yes, Mam. I know of such a one.”
“They say she is a foolish little thing … though beautiful.”
“I doubt not that they who say it are often foolish—and never beautiful.”
“Now, Charles, this is your mother speaking, your mother who had you beaten when you would not take your physic.”
He made a wry face. “That physic, Mam; it was no good to any. Lucy is not in the least like a dose of physic.”
“A woman of easy virtue … too ready with her smiles and caresses, I understand.”
“What should I want of one who was niggardly with the same?”
“You are no longer a boy, Charles. You are a King.”
“You speak truth, Mam. I am a King. Pray thee do not think to make of me a monk. Come! We prepare ourselves for the journey to Saint-Germain. The crowds in the streets are ugly. But never fear. I shall be there to protect you. I must tell Minette that we are going.”
“Henriette is a child. She will not understand.”
He lifted his sister in his arms. “Minette will wish to know that we are going on a journey. Minette, do you wish to go on a journey?”
“Are you going, Charles?”
“I am taking you and Mam.”
Henriette smiled. “Yes, please; Minette will go.”
“Dearest, the crowds may shout at us as we pass through the streets. You’ll not be afraid, will you, if I am there?”
She shook her head.