Henry could not help being glad that his brother was not like his father. He personally knew little of Charles, but he had heard much of him. He had seen the smiles which came on to people’s faces when they spoke of him. He had his own picture of Charles—a brother as tall as his father had been, with always a song on his lips and a shrug of the shoulders for trouble. Henry had always thought it would be rather wonderful to be with such a brother. He did not believe he would take him on his knee and talk of solemn promises. Charles was jaunty, a sinner of some sort, yet people loved him; he might not be good, as his father and Elizabeth were good, but he would be a happy person to be with.

Elizabeth put a thin hand on his wrist. “Henry, your thoughts stray. You do not give your mind to what I am saying. Here we are in this terrible place; here, in this room, our father may have paced up and down thinking of us all … our mother and brothers and sisters—all scattered, all exiles from the land we were born to rule! Henry, I cannot live in this Castle, I cannot endure these great rooms, these stone walls and … the spirit of our father. I cannot endure it.”

“Elizabeth, perhaps we could escape.”

“I shall soon … escape, Henry. I know it. I shall not be here long. This prisoner of Cromwell will soon elude him.”

“Perhaps we could slip away from here. Perhaps there might be a boat to take us to Holland. I should have to dress as a girl, as James did….”

Elizabeth smiled. “You will do that, Henry. You will do it.”

“I should not go without you. This time you will come too.”

“I have a feeling you will go alone, Henry, for there will be no need for me to go with you.”

Then she turned her face to the wall and he knew that she was crying.

He thought: What good can come of crying? What good can come of grieving? They say Charles is always merry, that he does not let his sorrows interfere with his pleasures.

Henry longed to be with his gay brother.

Then, realizing how callous he was, he took his sister’s hand and kissed it. “I’ll never leave you, Elizabeth,” he said. “I’ll stay with you all my life.”

She smiled then. “May God bless you, Henry,” she said. “You will always remember what our father said to you, won’t you?”

“I will always remember.”

“Even when I am not here to remind you?”

“You will always be with me, for I shall never leave you.”

She shook her head as though she had some special knowledge of the future, and it seemed that she had, for a week after her arrival at Carisbrooke Castle, Elizabeth developed a fever which, mingling with her melancholy and her desire for death, robbed her of her life, and from then on there was only one young prisoner at Carisbrooke Castle. He found a way out of his loneliness in dreams, and those dreams were always of his family. He fancied that his mother came to sit by his bed each night; he could almost feel her good night kiss upon his brow.

One day, he told himself, I shall be with them all.

In reunion he would come to perfect happiness, and looking forward to that happy day he forgot he was a prisoner.

In her mother’s apartments at the Louvre, Henriette sat with her governess, Lady Morton, who was teaching her to make fine stitches on a piece of tapestry, when Queen Henrietta Maria came into the room. Anne Morton was glad it was a needlework lesson; Henrietta Maria was suspicious of all that was taught the Princess and was apt to fly into a passion if she heard the governess say anything which she might construe as “heresy.”

Lady Morton often thought of her own children in England who surely needed her; it was four years since, disguised as a servant, she had fled from England with the Princess on her back, and in those four years she had thought constantly of her own family. She knew she was fighting a losing battle against Henrietta Maria and Père Cyprien; they were determined to have this child for their Church, and they were succeeding.

But now Henrietta Maria had not come to talk of religion to her daughter and the governess. She burst in dramatically, for Henrietta Maria was dramatic by nature. Her black eyes were almost closed up with weeping; she was carelessly dressed and her tiny gesticulating hands betrayed her despair even more than the signs of grief on her face.

This was indeed La Reine Malheureuse.

She came straight to the Princess and, as little Henriette would have knelt—for the Queen was stricter in her observances of etiquette here in exile than she had ever been in her own Court of Whitehall—she lifted her in her arms and, bursting into bitter weeping, held the child’s face against her own.

Henriette remained passively unhappy, patiently waiting for her mother to release her. There was new trouble, she concluded. It seemed to her that there was always trouble. At such times she longed more passionately than ever for her brother Charles, for whatever the trouble he never mourned about it; he would more often laugh at it with a lift of the shoulders; and that was how Henriette wanted to meet trouble when it came to her.

At first she was terrified that this bad news might concern Charles. He was in Scotland, she knew; her mother railed about it at great length; she had sworn that Charles had gone to Scotland without her consent; she was angry because Charles was now a man who could make his own decisions, no longer a boy to be guided by her. “His father listened to my advice!” she had cried when he had gone to Scotland. “He never will. Your father was a man with experience of ruling a kingdom. This is a boy who has never been acknowledged King by the English; yet he flouts his mother’s advice.”

Henriette began to pray silently that the trouble did not concern Charles.

“My child,” cried Henrietta Maria, “you have lost your sister Elizabeth. News has come to me that she has died of a fever in Carisbrooke Castle.”

Henriette tried to look concerned, but as she had never seen Elizabeth she could scarcely grieve for her; moreover she was delighted that it was not Charles who was in trouble.

“My daughter … my little girl!” cried the Queen. “What will become of us all? There is my son … my little Henry, left now in that Castle where his father suffered imprisonment before his murder. When shall I see my son Henry? What evil is befalling him in that place with his enemies about him? Oh, I am the unhappiest of women! Where are my children now? Am I to lose them as I lost my husband? My son Charles pays no heed to his mother. He goes to Scotland and makes terms with the Covenanters. He fritters away his time, I hear, in dicing and women …”

“Mam,” said Henriette quickly, “what does it mean to fritter away his time with dicing and women?”

The Queen, as though suddenly aware of her daughter, gripped her so firmly that the little girl thought she would be suffocated. “My little one … my precious little one! You at least shall be saved for God.”

“But Charles and his dice … and women?”

“Ah! You hear too much. You must never repeat what you hear. Lady Morton, you stand there weeping. That is for my little Elizabeth … my little daughter…. What will become of us all, I wonder? What will become of us …?”

“Madam, I doubt not that one day King Charles will recover his kingdom. There are many in England who long to see him on the throne.”

“But he has made this pact with the Covenanters.”

“Mayhap they will help him to regain his kingdom.”

“At what cost, at what cost! And my little Elizabeth … so young to die. We made plans for her at the time of her birth … my dearest Charles and I. Oh, I am the most unhappy of women. What would I not give to hear his voice again … to have him here to share this burden with me!”

“He had too many burdens in life, madam. This would but have added to them.”

Henrietta Maria stamped her foot. “It would not have happened had he been alive. They have not only killed their King but their King’s daughter.”

“Madam, you distress yourself.”

“You speak the truth, Anne. Prepare the Princess for Chaillot. I must go there at once. Only there can I find the comfort I need, the fortitude to bear the blows which God would seem to delight in dealing me.”

The Princess turned to her mother. “Mam, may I not stay with Nan?”

“My dearest, I want you with me. You too will wish to mourn for your sister.”

“I can mourn here, Mam. Nan and I can mourn together.”

Henrietta Maria forgot her grief for a moment. She looked sharply at Lady Morton. What did she teach the little Henriette when they were alone? Père Cyprien had said that the child asked too many questions. It was perhaps time Lady Morton went home; she had her own children. A mother should not be separated from her own in the service of her Princess.

“Nay, child, you shall come with me to Chaillot. You too, shall have the comfort of those quiet walls.”

“Madam,” said Lady Morton, “if you would care to leave the Princess in my charge …”

Henrietta Maria narrowed her eyes. “I have declared she shall come with me to Chaillot,” she said firmly. “Lady Morton, you have been a good and faithful servant. I shall never forget how you brought the Princess to me here in France. The saints will bless you forever for what you did. But I fear we trespass too much on your generosity and your loyalty. I often remind my daughter that you have children of your own.”

Henriette was looking into her governess’s face. Lady Morton had flushed slightly. The Queen had touched on a problem which had long given her cause for anxiety. It was four years since she had seen her family and she longed to be with them; yet she had never asked that she should be allowed to go home. She had felt it her duty to stay in France and do battle with Père Cyprien over the religion of the Princess Henriette.