“That reminds me—I forgot to take my turpentine pills this morning.” He brought a delicate gem-studded box out of one pocket and snapped it open, extending it first to his friend who declined the offer. Then he tossed two of the large boluses into his mouth and gave a hard swallow to get them down, shaking his head mournfully. “I’m damnably peppered-off, Jack.”

At that moment there was a stir in the room. The door was flung open and Chancellor Clarendon entered. Frowning and preoccupied as usual, his right foot wrapped in a thick bandage to ease his gout, he spoke to no one, but walked straight across and through the other door which led into his Majesty’s bed-chamber.

Eyebrows went up, mouths twisted, and sly secret smiles were exchanged as the old man passed.

Clarendon was rapidly becoming the most hated man in England—not only at Court but everywhere. He had been in power too long and the people blamed him for whatever went amiss, no matter how little he might have had to do with it. He would accept no advice, allow no opposition; whatever he did was right. Even those faults might have been overlooked but that he had others which were unforgivable. He was inflexibly honest and would neither take nor give bribes, and not even his friends profited by his favour. Though he had lived most of his life at courts he was contemptuous of courtiers and scorned to become one.

And so they watched, and waited. If his hold on Parliament should once slip they would be at his throat like a pack of starving jackals.

“Have you been out Piccadilly to see the Chancellor’s new house?” asked someone, when he had gone.

“Judging by the foundations I’d say he’ll have to sell England to finish it. What he got from Dunkirk won’t build the stables.”

“How many more times does the old devil think he can sell England? Our value won’t hold up much longer at the present rate of exchange.”

The door into the King’s private chambers opened again and Buckhurst strolled out with another young man. Two or three others crossed over to speak to them.

“What’s the delay? I’ve been waiting here half-an-hour. Nothing but the hope of speaking to his Majesty about a place for my cousin could have induced me to get out of bed on a morning like this one. Now I suppose he’s gone by way of the Privy Stairs and left us all to shift for ourselves.”

“He’ll be along presently. He’s dickering with a Jesuit priest over the price of a recipe for Spirit of Human Skull. Have you got a tailor’s bill in your pocket, Tom? If it’s illegible enough sell it to Old Rowley for a universal panacea and your fortune’s made. He’s giving that mangy old Jesuit five thousand pound for his scrap of paper.”

“Five thousand! Good God! What can an old man have to spend five thousand on?”

“What do you think? On a remedy for impotence, of course.”

“The best remedy for impotence is a pretty wench—”

The voices grew temporarily quiet as the King appeared, strolling through the door with his dogs and sycophants behind him. He was freshly shaved and his smooth brown skin had a healthy glow; he gave them a smile and a nod of his head and started on out. The jostling for place began immediately as they streamed along in his wake, but Buckingham already had one elbow and Lauderdale the other.

“I suppose,” said Charles to the Duke, “that by tomorrow it will be running up the galleries and through the town I’m a confirmed Catholic.”

“I’ve heard those rumors already, Sire.”

“Well—” Charles shrugged. “If that’s the worst rumour that goes abroad about me I think it’s no great matter for concern.” Charles was not inclined to worry about what anyone said of him, and he knew his people well enough to know that grumbling was a national sport, not much more subversive than football or wrestling. He had been home almost five years now, and the honeymoon with his subjects was over.

Leaving his own apartments he crossed the Stone Gallery and started down a maze of narrow hallways which led along the Privy Garden, over the Holbein Gateway and into St. James’s Park. He walked so rapidly that the shorter men had to half run, or be left behind, and since most of them had a favour to ask they did not intend to let that happen.

“I think there’s time,” said Charles, “for a turn through the Park before Chapel. I hope the air’s cold enough to make me sleepy.”

They had reached the old stairway which led down into the Park when suddenly one of the doors up the corridor to the left burst open and Monmouth came out in a rush. The men stopped and while his father laughed heartily the Duke ran toward them; he arrived breathless, swept off his hat and made a low bow. Charles dropped an arm about the boy’s shoulders and gave him an affectionate pat.

“I overslept, Sire! I was just going to attend you to Chapel.”

“Come along, James. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

James, who was now walking between the King and Lauderdale, gave his father an apprehensive glance. “What about, Sire?”

“You must know, or you wouldn’t have such a guilty face. Everyone’s been telling me about you. Your behaviour’s a favourite subject of conversation.” James hung his head and Charles, with a smile he could not wholly conceal lurking at the corners of his mouth, went on. “They say you’ve taken to keeping a wench—at fifteen, James—that you’ve run deep into debt, that you scour about the streets at night disturbing peaceful citizens and breaking their windows. In short, son, they say you lead a very gay life.”

Monmouth looked swiftly up at his father, and his handsome face broke into an appealing smile. “If I’m gay, Sire, it’s only to help me forget my troubles.”

Several of the others burst into laughter but Charles looked at the boy solemnly, his black eyes shining. “You must have a great many troubles, James. Come along—and tell me about them.”

The morning was cold and frosty and the wind blew their periwigs about, as it did the spaniels’ ears. Charles clamped his hat firmly onto his head, but the others had to hold to their wigs—for they carried their hats beneath their arms—or lose them. The grass was hard-matted and slippery, and there was a thin sheet of ice over the canal; it had been an unusually cold dry winter, and there had been no thaw since before Christmas. The other men looked at one another sourly, annoyed that they must go walking in such weather, but the King strode along as unconcernedly as if it were a fine summer day.

Charles walked in the Park because he liked the exercise and the fresh-air. He enjoyed strolling along the canal to see how his birds, in cages hung in the trees on either side, were standing the cold weather. Some of the smaller ones he had had removed indoors until the frost should break. He wanted to know if the cold had hurt the row of new elms he had had set out the year before and whether his pet crane was learning to walk with the wooden leg he had had made for it when its own had been lost in an accident.

But he did not walk only for amusement and exercise; it was a part of the morning’s business. Charles had always preferred that his unpleasant tasks be done under pleasant conditions—and there were few duties he disliked more than hearing petitions and begging for favours. If it had been possible he would gladly have granted every request that was made him, not so much from the boundless generosity of his nature as to buy his own peace from whining voices and pleading eyes. He hated the sound and the sight of them, but it was the one thing from which there never could be escape.

Some of them wanted a place at Court for a friend or relative, and there were always a hundred askers for each place that fell vacant. However he chose he left many disgruntled and jealous and the one who got it was seldom as well pleased as he had expected to be. Another would want a grant for a Plate Lottery —royal permission to sell tickets at whatever price he could command for a lottery of some crown plate. Others were there to beg an estate: it was common practice to bear the expense of arrest and prosecution of other persons in the hope that a cash-fine or confiscated property could be begged from the King. Another man wanted to go to sea to fight the Dutch, and he wanted to go as a captain or a commander, though his sea experience had been limited to a crossing from France in one of the packet-boats.

Charles listened to them patiently, tried when he could to refer the supplicant to someone else, and when he could not usually granted the request, though well aware that it might be impossible of fulfillment. And as he walked and listened to the petitions of his courtiers he was often approached by a sick old man or woman, sometimes a young mother with her child, who begged him to touch and heal them. The courtiers resented the intrusion, but Charles did not.

He liked his people and, though he had lived so long out of the country, he understood them. They grumbled about his mistresses and the extravagance of the Court, but when he smiled and stopped to talk to them and laughed with them in his deep booming voice they loved him in spite of everything. His charm and accessibility were potent political weapons and he knew it.

They walked along the Canal that crossed the Park from one end to another and back along Pall Mall, turning down King Street into the Palace grounds. The chapel bells began to ring and Charles increased his rapid pace, relieved that soon he would be where they could pester him no longer. Monmouth was far ahead of them. All along the way he had been running and leaping, calling the spaniels to follow him until now their long ears were soggy and wet and their paws clotted with mud.