He lowered his face until it was but a finger’s distance above hers. “I have no doubt that as I speak our courtiers and ladies, indeed half the realm, stand huddled against the other side of the far door, ears pressed against its hardness, wondering what we do alone in here. What do you think they imagine?”
His voice was light and teasing, and as its reward, he felt her face relax slightly.
“Perhaps that we discuss great matters of state,” she said, her voice low.
“Perhaps, but no. I think not. What else might they consider?”
“Perhaps that you rebuke me for some childish wrong.”
“I hope not,” he said, his voice and face now sober, “for that would be a stain on my soul, and I am most sorry I should ever have given them the fodder to imagine such a thing.
“I think,” and he lowered his face that final distance between them and planted a soft kiss on her mouth, “that they imagine we sit in silence on our cold thrones, and stare out the windows at the stiff, formal gardens, and wish to ourselves that we were anywhere else but in each other’s presence.”
“I sincerely hope not,” she said, “for that is not what I wish right now.”
“Then perhaps they imagine that I have been so overcome by my desire for you—”
Her cheeks stained even rosier.
“—that I have begged for solitude so that I might enjoy my wife’s love.”
“My lord—”
“Perhaps even now they think I have borne you to that bench by the window—” She giggled.
“—and there avail myself,” his voice grew deeper, a little hoarser, and she could hear real admiration within it, “of your sweet, wondrous white flesh. What say you, wife? Shall I?”
“My lord! It lacks but an hour until noon. We cannot—”
“Parliament may plot to make my life a misery,” he said, “but it has not yet passed that act which forbids the nation’s monarch from making love to his much-admired wife during the daylight hours.”
“You admire me?”
“Most particularly during this beautiful hour before noon. What say you, wife. Shall we? That bench looks right inviting.”
“But…but they’ll know!”
His only answer was to kiss her neck, and lay his hand on her bosom.
“Charles…” she said, and he heard the weakness in her voice, and it encouraged him to turn tease into reality.
And so, atop a beautiful brocaded bench set into one of the great windows of the gallery at Oatlands, Charles I of England made love to his young wife while their courtiers crowded the door outside and a shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds and clothed the couple’s soft movements in gold.
Although this was not Charles and Henrietta Maria’s marriage night, it was the day on which they made their marriage, and it was also the day during which they conceived one of the greatest kings that England would ever know.
Far away in London a fair-haired, hazel-eyed boy in his mid-teens raised his face to the sky. He was tall for his age, and too thin for his height, but he held himself gracefully nonetheless, and his face already held hints of the handsomeness it would assume in maturity. He stood in one of London’s innumerable back alleys, hidden in shadow. At his side stood a solemn-faced toddling girl of some eighteen months. She was a pretty little thing, with soft brown eyes and silvery hair, but her prettiness was marred by a blank look of terror in those dark eyes, and she stood tense and fearful, as if expecting a blow at any moment.
The boy held her by the hand, and, as he lowered his face, he gave her flesh a squeeze, painfully enough that the girl gave a low gasp, her eyes filling with tears.
“Do you feel it, Jane?” said the boy. “Do you know what has happened?”
She made no reply save for two great fat tears that rolled down her cheeks.
The boy squatted so he could look directly into her eyes. “You do feel it, don’t you? Brutus is back, your lover when you were Genvissa. He’s reborn, and growing contentedly in a queen’s womb. Not a bastard, this life. Tell me, pretty Jane, do you think he’ll want you? Do you think he’ll ever stoop to love you, dirty street urchin, Asterion’s whore?”
More tears flowed, and the boy nodded slowly. “Aye. You know he’s back, and you know he’ll never touch you. So sad, pretty Jane.”
She spoke, this tiny girl, with the voice of a child much, much older. “Let me go, Weyland.”
“Never,” Weyland whispered. “You’re mine, now. You and all your talents.”
Paris, France, and St James’ Palace, London
On the 29th May in 1630 Helene Gardien went into labour at daybreak, delivering her child six hours later. Her lover, Simon Gautier, the Marquis de Lonquefort, was in residence at the Parisian townhouse where he’d installed his mistress, and visited Helene two hours after he’d been informed of the safe delivery of their child.
This was his first child, and he was curious, if somewhat apprehensive, and more than a little annoyed. All he’d wanted from Helene was sex, not responsibility.
“Well?” he said as he inched up to the bed.
“A boy,” Helene said, not looking up from the child’s face. “See, he has neither your eyes, nor mine, but those of a poet.”
Neither your eyes nor mine. Lonquefort instantly seized on her words. Could he claim the child wasn’t his? Not his responsibility?
Then he looked at the baby, and was lost. The baby’s eyes were indeed different, for while both Lonquefort and Helene had blue eyes, this infant had the deepest black eyes Lonquefort thought he’d ever seen in a face. But it wasn’t their colour that immediately captivated Lonquefort. The boy’s eyes were indeed those of a poet, Lonquefort decided, for they seemed to contain knowledge and suffering that stretched back aeons, rather than the two hours this boy had lived in this painful world.
“He will be a great man,” Lonquefort pronounced, and Helene smiled.
“I will call him Louis,” she said, then hesitated. Poet or not, the boy was a bastard, and Helene was not sure whether she should name him for his father.
But who was his father, she wondered as the awkward silence stretched out between them. Lonquefort, or that strange beast she’d envisioned riding her in the forest?
“Louis,” Lonquefort said, then he grinned. “Louis de Silva, for the forest where we made him.”
Helene laughed, her doubts gone. The forest had made him, indeed, and so he should be named.
“I shall settle a pension on him, and you,” said Lonquefort. “You shall not want.”
“Thank you,” Helene said softly, and bent her head back to her poet-son.
As Helene relaxed in relief, another woman, far distant, arched her back and cried out in the extremities of her own labour.
Henrietta Maria, Queen of England, lay writhing in the great bed draped with forest green silk within her lying-in chamber off the Colour Court of St James’ Palace. About her hovered midwives and physicians, privy councillors and lords, all there either to ensure a safe delivery or to witness the birth of an heir.
Elsewhere within the palace Charles I paced up and down, praying silently. He was riven with anxiety, more for Henrietta Maria than for concern over the arrival of a healthy heir. Over the course of the past nine months, as his wife’s body had swelled, so also had waxed Charles’ regard and love for her. Now he could not bear the thought that she might suffer in childbed.
As the palace clocks chimed noon, one of the privy councillors hurried towards Charles.
“Well?” demanded Charles.
“You have a healthy son,” the man said. “An heir!”
“And my wife?”
“She is well,” said the councillor, and Charles finally allowed himself to relax, and smile.
“A son,” he said. “He shall be named Charles.”
“Of course,” said the councillor.
Charles went to his wife, assured himself that she was indeed well, then turned to look at the child one of the midwives held.
He studied the baby curiously, then folded back his wrappings.
“By Jesus!” Charles exclaimed, and looked back at Henrietta Maria. “Are you sure you are well, my love?”
She grinned wanly. “He was an effort, my lord. But, yes, I am well. He did not injure me.”
Charles looked back to the baby. By God, look at the size of him! He was a giant, surely, with great strong limbs and a head of long, tight black curls. Charles reached down a hand and, as he did so, the baby reached up his own right hand and snatched at a golden crown embroidered on Charles’ sleeve.
“Observe!” said the midwife. “He was born a king, truly! See how he grasps for what shall be his!”
Then both the midwife and Charles cried out, for the baby’s hand tightened about the crown, and tugged at it, tearing it away from his father’s sleeve.