A few days later Scroggs slyly gave Amber a new blue-velvet miniver-lined hood which some countess had just presented to the wardrobe. Blue was not Amber’s colour and she knew it. “Thanks a million, Scroggs,” she said. “But I think Beck should have it. It matches her gown.”

Beck, standing only a few feet away and pulling on a stocking, heard her. She glanced around in surprise. “Why should I have it? My part’s but a small one.” Killigrew persisted in his punishment, and neither of them had yet been put into the roles they had played before.

“It’s as big as mine,” insisted Amber. “And anyway I’ve got a new petticoat to wear.”

Still skeptical, Beck took it and thanked her.

In the comedy that day they played two frivolous girls, close friends, and halfway through the first act each suddenly discovered toward the other a new warmth which grew quickly into liking. At the end of the act everyone was astonished to see them coming off the stage arm in arm, laughing gaily. After that they were as good friends as most women, and Beck even flirted sometimes with Captain Morgan when he came to the tiring-room—though she knew as well as Amber that nothing would ever come of it. It was merely a gesture of good will.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHARLES II WAS married to the Infanta Catherine of Portugal two years after his Restoration.

She had been decided upon by Charles and Chancellor Hyde —now Earl of Clarendon—very shortly after his return; the delay in the wedding had been political, designed to coerce a larger dowry from desperate little Portugal, just recently free but still menaced by Spain. In the end the Portuguese paid a high price for marrying English sea-power: they gave 300,000 pounds; the right of trade with all Portuguese colonies; and two of their most prized possessions, Tangier and Bombay.

The Earl of Sandwich had been sent to Portugal with a fleet to escort the princess back to England, but Charles could not leave London until he had prorogued Parliament, and that was several days after she had arrived at Portsmouth. But once it was dismissed he set out immediately and rode through the night. He arrived there early the next afternoon and went first to his own apartments to change his clothes.

Charles sat down and his barber lathered his face, then began to swipe across it with swift clean strokes of a sharp-edged razor. There were black circles beneath his eyes but he looked happy and alert, and somewhat amused, for the room was full of courtiers and he knew that the same thought was in every head.

They were wondering what kind of husband he was going to make, how this marriage would affect the status of each of them, and whether or not he really would, as he had said, keep no mistresses once he was married. For his own part he was glad to be away from London and the melancholy Barbara, who had sulked and pouted and cried for weeks past, though she bragged to acquaintances that she was going to lie-in of her second child at Hampton Court, while the King was spending his honeymoon there.

Now Charles glanced up at Buckingham who stood beside him, stroking the head of a little brown-and-black spaniel. Buckingham had been there for some time and had already seen the Infanta.

“Well?”

“Well,” said the Duke.

Charles laughed. “I think you’re jealous, my lord.” Buckingham’s wife was a plain, plump little woman with odd, slanted eyes and a large turned-up nose. When the barber was finished the King got up and submitted to being dressed. “Well —for the honour of the nation I only hope I’m not put to the consummation tonight. I haven’t had two hours rest in the past thirty-four, and I’m afraid matters would go off somewhat sleepily.”

Dressed at last he slapped his hat onto his head and strode rapidly from the room, a pack of his spaniels running at his heels, a pack of courtiers following after them. The Infanta, he had been told, had caught a cold and been sent to bed; and that was where he found her, sitting propped against white silk pillows embroidered with the Stuart coat-of-arms, wearing a dressing-gown of pale pink satin with belled wrist-length sleeves. He paused in the doorway, bowing, and saw her eyes staring at him wide and half-frightened, her fingers twisting the counterpane nervously.

She was surrounded on all sides by her attendants, banked two or three deep about the bed as though for her protection. There were half-a-dozen long-robed priests, their tonsured heads shining, their eyes measuring and skeptical. There were the Countesses of Penalva and Ponteval, her Majesty’s chaperons, two ugly, muddy-skinned, punctilious old women. And the six maids-of-honour, young but just as dark, sallow, and hideous to the eye of an Englishman. Instead of the sweeping, graceful low-cut gowns then in fashion, they were without exception dressed in stiff-bodiced, old-fashioned farthingales which had not been worn in England for thirty years. If they had breasts they were so tightly cased as to appear perfectly flat, and their skirts jutted out from the waist on either side like shelves that swung and teetered clumsily whenever they moved.

As the King appeared in the doorway, his gentlemen crowded behind him, peering over his shoulders; the women stood motionless and waiting, a look of alarm on their faces. Portuguese etiquette was as rigid as the clothes they wore and the girls, having seldom seen men who were not members of their own families, regarded the entire sex with suspicion and distrust. They had been creating a good deal of trouble by refusing to sleep in any bed which had ever been occupied by a man, and at the sight of one of the creatures approaching had covered their faces and run off in another direction, cackling and gabbling. Now, unable to run, they stood and stared—defensive, nervous, wretchedly ill-at-ease. They would have been more so if they had guessed what the men thought of them.

Charles’s face did not change and immediately he came forward, taking her hand to kiss. “My apologies to you, madame,” he said in soft Spanish, for she knew no English. “Business kept me until late last night. I hope you’ve been made comfortable?” He straightened then and looked down at her.

Catherine was twenty-three but she looked no more than eighteen. Her hair was beautiful, a cascading mass of dark brown waves, and her eyes which were also brown were large and bright, gentle and just a little wistful as she looked up at him. They seemed to beg for kindness and to ask apology for her own shortcomings. For her skin was inclined to sallowness; her front teeth protruded a little. And he had been told that she was scarcely five feet tall.

Still—he thought—for a princess, she’s not bad.

Catherine had been bred in a convent, embroidering, praying, singing hymns, waiting for her mother to find her a husband. When she did, Catherine was already far beyond the age when most princesses married and still she knew nothing at all of men, was almost as ignorant of their natures as if they had been members of another species. She had expected to learn to love her husband because it was a woman’s duty to do so; but now as she looked up at Charles she realized that she had already fallen in love with him. Everything about him seemed wonderful to her: his swarthy good-looks, the powerful grace of his body, the deep smooth gentle tones of his voice which lapped over her like a warm tide, stilling some of her terrors, echoing in her heart.

The next morning they were married, first by a secret Catholic ceremony in her bedchamber, again in the afternoon according to the rites of the Church of England. A few days later they set out for Hampton Court. And though there was much gossip to the effect that Charles was disappointed in his marriage and ready to accept Barbara Palmer back again as soon as she had recovered from her confinement, both their Majesties seemed perfectly happy and content and as much in love as though they had not married for reasons of political expediency.

But if Catherine was satisfied, there were others in her suite who were not.

Penalva, an ailing, near-sighted old virgin, disliked England the moment she set foot upon it. It was too different from Portugal to be good. The women, she decided immediately, were wanton and bold, the men unscrupulous and dishonourable, and she undertook to warn the naive little Queen of these facts.

“The Court of England,” she said sternly, “must needs be much remodelled before it is fit for the occupancy of your Majesty.”

Catherine, who was still admiring her splendid crimson-and-silver-hung apartments, examining the massive toilet and mirror made out of pure beaten gold, looked at her in surprise, but with a happy little smile.

“Why, perhaps it should be. I’ve not heard what condition it’s in, but I don’t doubt his Majesty will be glad to make any repairs I ask—he’s so kind to me.” Her dark eyes went out the windows, looking across the stretches of green lawn, the blooming flower-plots, and something dreamy and thoughtful came into them that evidently annoyed Penalva.

“You misunderstand, your Majesty! I was not speaking of the furnishings of the Palace. Quite possibly it will be as barbarous as this—” She gestured quickly, for she did not like English taste either. “I was speaking of the manners and morals of the courtiers and ladies themselves.”

“Why,” said Catherine, “what’s wrong with them?”

“Can it be your Majesty has not noticed how these women dress? All of them go half naked from morning till night.”

“Well—” she admitted with some reluctance, for she did not want to be disloyal to her new land and husband. “They are—different—from what we’re used to seeing at home.”