think it is not a question of right or wrong — but of how she loves. For those of us who love a man better than self or pride there is no choice.”
Catherine lingered by the lily-covered moat which had bounded her honeymoon, but her thoughts were of the future in Whitehall ... “You are a wise old woman, Marie Penalva,” she said.
The Countess listened for a moment or two to make sure that the Queen’s other ladies were still out of earshot. “How much do you love him, dear child?” she asked.
And suddenly, standing there in the morning sunlight, Catherine knew and accepted the implications of her answer. “With all my heart,” she mimicked softly, in her husband’s tongue.
CHAPTER VII
“SO COME kiss me, sweet-and-twenty,
Youth’s a stuff will not endure,”
sang the pretty chambermaid, puffing up the velvet cushions on the Queen’s window-seat, and quite unaware that the Queen herself had come into the room behind her.
“What is that pretty song?” asked Catherine of Braganza, startling her out of her wits.
“Oh, Madame! Just something the ’prentice boys used to whistle — out of some old play, your Majesty.” The girl was in a limp, self-effacing obeisance on the floor.
“Well, at sweet-and-twenty you sound uncommonly happy, Drusilla!”
“I crave your Majesty’s pardon —”
“In this country does one have to ask pardon for being happy?” asked the Queen, with a note of bitterness in her lovely voice.
“Oh, no , Madame, no! Not now !”
Catherine had been brought up in the belief that queens should not talk to chambermaids. But perhaps one gleaned truer information that way than sitting with obsequious courtiers. At any rate, Charles talked about race horses to Toby, his valet; and the girl, rising in obedience to an indulgent nod, looked fresh as an English rose. “Was it so very bad, then, when the Puritans were in power?” she asked.
“Madame, it was — moribund as the plague!” In her eagerness to make a foreigner understand just how moribund it had been, Drusilla let her words almost trip over each other. “The theatres all closed, and preachers in steeple hats at every street corner so that one could not sleep o’ nights for dreaming about Hell. Nothing but hymn singing all Sabbath and the neighbours spying on you if you so much as smiled at a likely lad. And now — and now — since His Majesty came —”
“You are free to huggle with whomsoever you will — any day in the week — because the gentry do!”
Half laughing and half sighing Catherine waved her away to finish her duties elsewhere ... At least it was good to know that the people were the happier for Charles’s return. ‘Like my beloved countrymen, oppression does not suit them, They must be free, and proud in their freedom’, she thought, sitting down on one of the freshly plumped up cushions to look out admiringly upon her husband’s capital.
For Queen Catherine had come home to her apartments in Whitehall — apartments overlooking the busy riven And Charles had brought her there triumphantly, by water, with a lavish pageantry which had reduced even her incensed compatriots to awed silence. But it had not been the money spent so much as the artistry which had impressed her. No Venetian festival could have been more beautiful, she thought, than the escort of a thousand flower-garlanded boats; and herself and Charles in the great State barge with a pillared canopy above their heads, and the coats of the royal watermen making scarlet splashes against the blue sky and the drapery of cloth of gold. There had been music from the smaller boats and wild cheering from either bank and, as they drew nearer, the moving welcome of innumerable church bells. All her life long she would like to look back upon the Londoners’ welcome. As smooth green meadows gave place to gabled houses people had waved from windows and even clambered precariously onto roof tops. And at the Watergate of Whitehall,
Catherine lingered by the lily-covered moat which had bounded her honeymoon, but her thoughts were of the future in Whitehall ... “You are a wise old woman, Marie Penalva,” she said.
The Countess listened for a moment or two to make sure that the Queen’s other ladies were still out of earshot. “How much do you love him, dear child?” she asked.
And suddenly, standing there in the morning sunlight, Catherine knew and accepted the implications of her answer. “With all my heart,” she mimicked softly, in her husband’s tongue.
CHAPTER VII
“SO COME kiss me, sweet-and-twenty,
Youth’s a stuff will not endure,”
sang the pretty chambermaid, puffing up the velvet cushions on the Queen’s window-seat, and quite unaware that the Queen herself had come into the room behind her.
“What is that pretty song?” asked Catherine of Braganza, startling her out of her wits.
“Oh, Madame! Just something the ’prentice boys used to whistle — out of some old play, your Majesty.” The girl was in a limp, self-effacing obeisance on the floor.
“Well, at sweet-and-twenty you sound uncommonly happy, Drusilla!”
“I crave your Majesty’s pardon —”
“In this country does one have to ask pardon for being happy?” asked the Queen, with a note of bitterness in her lovely voice.
“Oh, no , Madame, no! Not now !”
Catherine had been brought up in the belief that queens should not talk to chambermaids. But perhaps one gleaned truer information that way than sitting with obsequious courtiers. At any rate, Charles talked about race horses to Toby, his valet; and the girl, rising in obedience to an indulgent nod, looked fresh as an English rose. “Was it so very bad, then, when the Puritans were in power?” she asked.
“Madame, it was — moribund as the plague!” In her eagerness to make a foreigner understand just how moribund it had been, Drusilla let her words almost trip over each other. “The theatres all closed, and preachers in steeple hats at every street corner so that one could not sleep o’ nights for dreaming about Hell. Nothing but hymn singing all Sabbath and the neighbours spying on you if you so much as smiled at a likely lad. And now — and now — since His Majesty came —”
“You are free to huggle with whomsoever you will — any day in the week — because the gentry do!”
Half laughing and half sighing Catherine waved her away to finish her duties elsewhere ... At least it was good to know that the people were the happier for Charles’s return. ‘Like my beloved countrymen, oppression does not suit them, They must be free, and proud in their freedom’, she thought, sitting down on one of the freshly plumped up cushions to look out admiringly upon her husband’s capital.
For Queen Catherine had come home to her apartments in Whitehall — apartments overlooking the busy riven And Charles had brought her there triumphantly, by water, with a lavish pageantry which had reduced even her incensed compatriots to awed silence. But it had not been the money spent so much as the artistry which had impressed her. No Venetian festival could have been more beautiful, she thought, than the escort of a thousand flower-garlanded boats; and herself and Charles in the great State barge with a pillared canopy above their heads, and the coats of the royal watermen making scarlet splashes against the blue sky and the drapery of cloth of gold. There had been music from the smaller boats and wild cheering from either bank and, as they drew nearer, the moving welcome of innumerable church bells. All her life long she would like to look back upon the Londoners’ welcome. As smooth green meadows gave place to gabled houses people had waved from windows and even clambered precariously onto roof tops. And at the Watergate of Whitehall,
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