Exit Lady Masham Page 5

  “What do you say to our young friend as a suitor, Abbie?” he asked me one afternoon on the terrace, where we watched the return of the royal hunt. “He admires you. That is obvious to all.”

  “Oh, that’s just badinage,” I said, reddening.

  Harley pursed his lips into a small knot and raised his eyebrows. “It’s difficult for a woman to tell, isn’t it? How they go on, these fellows! But suppose he meant it?”

  I felt my mouth go dry. I need not hide from these pages that Samuel Masham’s body had already become a magnet to me. Even when I found him foolish, almost ridiculous, I was giddy in his proximity. His perfume and his male odor simply undid me. Impatiently now, I tried to shake off the image.

  “What could it come to?”

  “Why not to a marriage?”

  “To a servant? You dream, Mr. Harley.”

  “To a royal servant? To a cousin of a secretary of state? To a cousin by marriage of the Captain-General?”

  “Without a penny to her name?”

  “The Queen would give you something.”

  “It would never do.”

  “Think about it, my dear! Just think about it.”

  Needless to say, I did. In my daydreams, following this colloquy, I was already in bed with Mr. Masham. I did not for a minute believe that he loved me; I knew that he wanted only to be close to Mr. Harley and to the Queen for the purpose of promoting his own career. He meant to subjugate me, to sleep with me, if he could, certainly not to marry me. He had perfectly divined that I was attracted to him; there was an air of near-insolence now in the freedom of his flattery.

  “You have reduced me to a sorry state, Mistress Hill! I, who used to be the diversion, even the terror, of half the maids at court, now languish in corners, pouting till my sun appears. But my sun seems to shine on everyone.”

  “Or on none.”

  “Spare me a beam! One beam just for myself, enchantress! Give the rest, if you must, to the garish world.”

  “Captain, I must go to the Queen now.”

  “Could you not spare a beggar a coin?”

  “A coin?”

  “A kiss!”

  “A kiss! Really, Captain, do you think me so rich as to spare beggars gold pieces?”

  “On the cheek, merely, then.”

  “Captain, I shall be late!”

  “And I sent to the Tower. Unless…”

  “There! You took it. I did not give it.”

  This sort of nonsense was froth to him, but it was horribly upsetting to me. I was in such a constant fever now that I could hardly concentrate on my duties, and only my awareness that any loss in royal favor would be followed by the immediate loss of my lover enabled me to keep my mind in any sort of order.

  It was a second and more intimate conversation with Mr. Harley that proved my undoing. The next time that the Secretary approached me on the subject of Masham, I told him flatly that I did not propose to be used as a pawn in any man’s career.

  “His pawn? But, dear girl, you’d be his queen!”

  “I don’t care, Mr. Harley! I do not wish to be made sport of.” And then, to both our astonishments, I began to sob. “It is wretched for a woman to be told a lot of things by a man that he does not mean!”

  “What does Masham not mean?”

  “All his love and what-not. All his burning and dying and sighing. All my being the sun and moon and such trash!”

  “And what makes you think there is no passion behind his words?”

  “Because I’m ugly, Mr. Harley! A man like Masham could love only a beautiful woman.”

  Harley’s little eyes became even smaller as he puckered his face into his worldly-wise expression.

  “Let me tell you something, my dear. I think you are wise enough to take it in good spirit. You must learn that women know very little about men. You take it for granted that a handsome fellow must have a beautiful girl. That may be true of some of them. But not of all. And certainly not of Masham. Look at your dogs and cats. Do the males care about beauty? They do not even care about age. A mastiff will run after any old bitch in heat. You will forgive an elder cousin his plain language. Masham would have the same rapture with you that he would have with a beauty such as Milady Somerset.”

  I was shocked, but not angered, by his crudeness. There was something of Pandarus in the way the idea of Masham’s brutal and indiscriminate masculinity seemed to tickle him. I recalled now that he was always placing his hand on Masham’s sleeve or tapping him on the shoulder. But the effect of his words was still devastating. The notion that in submitting to my would-be lover I might be giving as well as receiving pleasure undermined the last pillar of the wobbly pier of my defenses.

  Thus it happened that Masham achieved access to my chamber and person. But the reader may still wonder, despite my preamble, why, at the age of twenty-seven, with a reputation for modesty and good character, and having viewed the antics of the great world from a privileged position, I should have succumbed quite so swiftly to the advances of so typical a seducer.

  I have stated my sexual inexperience, my plainness and my resignation to the prospect of a life in which I had no hope of enjoying the rites of love. These were elements in my undoing, but they would not in themselves have overcome my character. What did this, I am convinced, was the habit of daydreaming, of erotic fantasizing, which had occupied so many of my idle thoughts during the long hours alone in my chamber, or strolling in the royal gardens, or simply sitting by the Queen while she read or played cards or dozed. It was the fact that Masham happened to fit so neatly into these that enabled him to prevail in the game that I was at all times perfectly aware he was playing.

  And there was yet another factor. I loved plays, both tragedies and comedies, and Mr. Congreve was my particular passion. I was fascinated by his heroes, those superb, foppish peacocks, so magnificently virile despite their airs and drawls, who strutted before the hens, declaiming their “worship” with images of “flames” and “sighs” and “deaths.” Their love was like their spread tails, a dazzle of color intended to hypnotize the poor hens, who had only their bit of wit to protect them. The female of the species had two choices in the stage world of Congreve, both humiliating: to yield at the altar and become, soon enough, a betrayed spouse, or to yield without sanction of the altar and become a whore.

  It was the game of the male to entice his victim into the second alternative. Marriage, unless it was a question of dowry, was only a last resort. The peculiar fascination of the game, to my eyes, was that it was played with such brutal candor. The words of passion were intended to inflame, not to fool. Women were like the captives of ancient Rome, flung into the arena with weapons not quite equal to the fangs and claws of the beasts loosed upon them, with the choice of being killed or surviving only to be made to fight again. The gallant who took a pinch of snuff as he drawled to Amarinta that he was dying in her displeasure was really telling her that she was already a whore in heart who might as well become one in fact. And in my dreams and fantasies I would be seized by the degrading urge to give in, to become a whore, his whore, to be trampled upon, used and flung away on the trash heap, where I belonged.

  And, indeed, my triumphant lover entered into my fantasy quite as if it had been reality. He treated me as the French monarch might have treated a conquered province in Germany. He never even suggested that marriage was a possible consequence of his possession. I got my just deserts.

  6

  My cousin the Duchess used to say that there were women who conceived if a man so much as kissed their fingertips. It seemed I was one of these. After our marriage Masham kept me constantly pregnant, and the brief intimacy that preceded our lawful union proved equally fruitful. I had my first dizzy spells within days after I first succumbed to him.

  I awoke immediately from my feverish daydreams. I was not sure that I had not been mad. What was horribly clear, at any rate, was that I had placed myself on the road to certain disgrace, that I had destroyed in o
ne moment the safe and comfortable port that I had miraculously reached after a lifetime of desolation. And for what? A great love? Even at my headiest moment I had not regarded my feeling for Masham in that light. A great pleasure? Well, I have never made love with any other man, but if his performance was the equivalent of Marc Antony’s, or of any of the fabled amorists of history, the delights of the body have been sadly overrated. And I do not care if one day Masham does read these lines.

  My strongest reaction was shame, shame that I had been party to such a sham proceeding, shame of my low excitement at the prospect of my own debasement, shame at the folly with which I had turned from my beneficent mistress to give myself to the first rake that solicited me. On the morning when I first realized my condition, I turned away sharply from its odiously smiling cause. Masham had been waiting for me outside the Queen’s door.

  “Keep your hands to yourself, sir!” I hissed when he tried to put his arm around me.

  “Hey, now, Abbie, what has come over you?”

  “That I’ve been a fool once doesn’t mean I must stay one!”

  And I swept off, to leave him gaping.

  Harley, from whom nothing at court could be long concealed, deduced at once what had happened from Masham’s account of my behavior. We were now at Hampton Court, and he bade me visit him in his apartments, which were in the old Wolsey section of the palace, small dark rooms with massive chests, red hangings and linen-fold paneling. I stood by a narrow window, looking bleakly down on the courtyard while he, in his bantering tone, reproached me.

  “That you, dear coz, of all people, you, our admired ‘Mrs. Still,’ you, the very embodiment of prudence and decorum, should prove a wanton! You make me feel that I have been a sadly behind-time Laertes. I should have warned you not to open your chaste treasure to our captain’s ‘unmastered importunity.’”

  “Laertes! It is of another of Master Shakespeare’s counsellors that you put me in mind!”

  “Do you mean Cressida’s uncle, you hussy?” Harley exploded into a fit of laughs mingled with rasping coughs. “But, my dear girl, I wasn’t trying to bring you to Masham’s bed! On the contrary, I expected you to be a pinnacle of virtue! The worst you could say of me was that I was a marriage broker.”

  “Marriage! That’s something you can forget about now.”

  “What makes you say so?”

  “Because Mr. Masham will not marry a whore!”

  “Ah, my dear.” Harley’s tone was kinder now as he took in my tears. “Mr. Masham is still serious about marriage. Only his price has gone up.”

  “His price?”

  “He expects the Queen to make him a peer now.”

  “He won’t ask her that!” I cried in dismay.

  “No. But I shall.”

  “Oh, Mr. Harley, the shame of it! I can’t endure it.”

  “Tush, tush, child. The Queen’s a Stuart; never forget that. Think of her father and uncle! I have arranged more difficult matters with her. Masham will not get all he wants, but he will get something. And I shall be surprised if we do not have a royal godmother at your son’s christening! Cheer up, lass.”

  “But I don’t want to marry Mr. Masham!”

  Harley wagged a finger at me. “You should have thought of that before you let him tumble you.”

  What could I say? Of course I was going to marry Masham if there was any way it could be brought about. The alternative was to be dismissed from court and give birth to my baby in the street. Even Harley would not have given me shelter had I spurned his advice. And as for the Duchess—I knew only too well how she would treat me. She had cut her husband’s own sister for the same offense, and Arabella Churchill had had a king to sire her bastard!

  “I suggest that you mend your fences with Masham,” Harley continued in a more practical tone. “You have him much upset. A word, a smile, and all will be well. In the meanwhile I’ll speak to the Queen. The less time that we lose, the better.”

  It was agreed that I should be in the adjoining chamber when Harley spoke privately to my mistress, and that the door would be left ajar. At the appropriate moment he would call my name, and I would hurry in to fling myself on my knees before her. My heart, when the terrible time came, was beating so rapidly that I could hardly distinguish the first words of the interview. It did not make matters easier for me that when Her Majesty’s voice became at last intelligible, I recognized the note of stiffness that signalized her stubborn moods.

  “You wish to speak to me about a favor for Mrs. Hill, Mr. Harley? Is it not a household matter? Should you not address yourself to Mrs. Danvers? Or even the Duchess?”

  “Perhaps, ma’am, I have allowed my concern for my kinswoman to carry me beyond the bounds of a strict etiquette. But I venture to observe that even in the court of a sovereign as greatly beloved as yourself, the ardor of Mrs. Hill’s devotion to Your Majesty stands out.”

  “The girl is fond of me, I do believe.”

  “Ah, ma’am, she lives for you!”

  The Queen’s voice at this seemed to relent. “What is it that you seek for Hill, Mr. Harley?”

  “Something that will put her future on a more stable basis, ma’am.”

  “More stable? Can she be more secure than with my favor?” The edge had returned to my mistress’s tone. “Or do you, Mr. Harley, like those ravens in the court of the Elector of Hanover, look forward to an early demise of the crown?”

  “Heaven forbid, ma’am! May they perish while you still hold your scepter high! I was merely referring to the establishment that every maiden may wish for herself, even one so happily situated as Mrs. Hill. I mean marriage, ma’am.”

  “Is Mrs. Hill aware that you are speaking for her in this connection?”

  “She is, ma’am.”

  “Then I suppose it is Mr. Masham you have in mind.”

  “Nothing escapes Your Majesty’s eye!”

  “So this is what you call Hill’s living for me!” But the Queen’s tone was not unfriendly. “Well, I have no objection to Mr. Masham. So long as he will not take Hill away from court. She is quite indispensable to me. But as Mr. Masham is a member of the Prince’s household, I presume there will be no question of any such removal. Very well, Mr. Harley. You may tell Mr. Masham that he has my permission to offer himself to Hill.”

  The silence that ensued conveyed to me some sense of Harley’s embarrassment.

  “Mr. Masham has ventured to suggest that under the circumstances Your Majesty might deign to consider a promotion for him.”

  “Under what circumstances?”

  “My cousin, ma’am, is a dowerless maiden. Nor can she point to any great distinction in family.”

  “She can point to you, Mr. Harley. Not to mention the Duchess.”

  “That is true, ma’am. But her father was in trade. Mr. Masham, as the heir of a baronet, might look higher.”

  “What must he have to take her?”

  I knew that the pause that followed meant that Harley had dropped all idea of a peerage. “Would you consider making him a brigadier, ma’am?”

  “To wed a woman of my bedchamber? Mr. Harley, are you serious?”

  “Could you make him a colonel, then?”

  “A colonel! And I thought you were talking about a gift of a hundred pounds or the rangership of a royal park. No, Mr. Harley, your candidate holds himself far too dear. I think poor Hill must forgo any dreams of wedded bliss.”

  I saw what was coming and wanted to forestall it. Anything would have been better at that moment than the truth! But Harley pressed inexorably on.

  “I fear, ma’am, there is another aspect to the case.”

  “And what is that?”

  “I crave Your Majesty’s indulgence.”

  “Speak on, man!”

  “My cousin is an excellent and virtuous woman. But there are some ardent young couples today, ma’am, who anticipate the privileges of matrimony without awaiting publication of the banns.”

  I could picture, with a s
inking heart, the drawing-down of my mistress’s lips.

  “Are you suggesting that Hill and Masham have been such a couple?”

  “I’m afraid so, ma’am.”

  “And with the usual results? Is the girl breeding?”

  In the silence I could picture Harley’s reluctant nod of assent.

  “The strumpet!” the Queen cried in a suddenly sharp tone that brought my hands to my ears. “What will the Duchess say? How can I tell her that Hill has been debauched in my service? That she has been wantoning with this lewd fellow under my very nose?”

  Almost before I knew what I was doing, I had rushed into the chamber and thrown myself at the Queen’s feet.

  “Oh, ma’am, forgive me! Do not cast me off! Had I had the blessing of your kindness and example in my younger years, I should never have so misconducted myself. I have never loved any man as I have loved Your Majesty! I was tricked into submission, ma’am. I did not know what men were!”

  “Mistress Hill!” Harley exclaimed sharply. “You forget yourself. Leave this presence.”

  “No, Mr. Harley,” the Queen intervened in a gentler tone. “I think it is you who had better go. Leave me with Hill.”

  When I was alone with the Queen, she said nothing. She simply sat and looked down at the floor with half-closed eyes. This did not surprise me. I knew her moods. I had learned that when she went into one of her silences, it was not only futile but unwise to try to elicit the faintest response, either of voice or gesture. But I had also learned that she could listen at such times, and that if I did not pester her with questions, she might even follow my argument.

  “Your Majesty has told me of a young maid of honor who was sent without father or mother across the water to serve in a strange land. And about what happened to her when she was courted by a handsome prince who professed only honorable intentions.”

  I then had the boldness to relate to the Queen the story of her own mother. It was a daring proceeding, but I was in a desperate situation. I recited, as if I were reading from a book, how the young Anne Hyde had been sent to Holland to be a maid of honor to the Princess Royal of England, newly married to the Prince of Orange, and how she had there been wooed by the Princess’s brother, James, Duke of York, who, like her other brother, the still unrestored King Charles, had found time heavy in exile and pretty maids of honor a pleasant distraction.