Catherine looked down, somewhat dismayed, at her pink-and-blue taffeta gown with its full-gathered skirt, billowing sleeves, the neckline cut more discreetly than were those of most ladies, but still quite daring, she had thought. She felt that in it she was prettier than she had ever been before in her life.
“But,” she protested softly, “I like it.”
“It doesn’t become you, my dear, as your native costume does. Go back to your farthingales, or these English will think they’ve converted you to their ways already. They’re an arrogant race, and will have scant pity or respect for whoever is easily tamed by them. And one thing more, your Majesty—
Catherine had listened to Penalva all her life, and she knew that the old lady had nothing but love and affection for her. She bowed to the wisdom of age and that night she appeared at a banquet in her bobbing, black-silk farthingale. She gave Charles a quick anxious glance, to see whether or not he disapproved of the change, but his face was inscrutable. He smiled, bowing, and offered her his arm.
The honeymoon was celebrated with endless entertainment and gaiety. There were banquets and balls and cock-fights, picnics, rides on the canal in the luxurious royal barges, plays performed by actors who came down from London. All day long the staircases, the chain of great rooms and galleries, were crowded with a brilliantly dressed throng of men and women. In plum-coloured velvet, blue satin, gold brocade, they clattered and swished from room to room, strolled down the cradle-walk of interlaced hornbeam, drifted lazily on the river. And the sound of their voices, calling to one another, laughing, chatter. ing eternally, reached Catherine whether she was with them or —more often—when she was in her own apartments at prayer or talking to her ladies and priests. She liked to hear them, for though she felt shy and lonely when she was among them, from a distance it gave her a sense of being part of their gay, debonair, heedless world.
She did not guess what they thought of her.
“She’s ugly as a bat,” they told one another, after the first glimpse, and greatly magnified her defects because she did not look like an Englishwoman.
They dissected her among themselves, the women giggling and murmuring behind their fans even when she was in the room, for they knew she could understand nothing of what they said. And if by chance the Queen’s brown eyes rested upon one of them and she smiled, they quickly composed their faces to smile back, curtsying faintly, and gave a wink and a nudge to the nearest lady.
“Gad! But she looks as demure as a dog in a halter!”
“I’ll be damned if I can bring myself to admire a woman with such a dingy skin! Why the devil doesn’t she give it a plastering of powder?”
“Oh, heavens, my lord! Her monster would never allow it! They say the old witch thinks we’re a pack of infidels and counsels her Majesty to have a care we don’t corrupt her.”
“Look! how she gives the king the sheep’s eye! Ugh! I swear it makes me queasy to see a woman who dotes so upon her husband—and in public in broad daylight!”
“I say it’s a mark of his Majesty’s good-breeding he can make such a tolerable show of seeming to endure her.”
“Well—I’ll wager he won’t make such a tolerable show much longer. Castlemaine laid-in last week. She’ll be here in another fortnight—and
“It runs through the galleries the King promised long ago he’d make her a Lady of the Bedchamber when he married—”
“And she says he will or she’ll know why!”
Much as they disliked Barbara for her insolence and airs, hot though jealousy of her flared among the other women, still she was one of them and they were united in her favour against this newcomer who outraged them with her modesty and reticence, her obstinate clinging to the fashions of her own country, her persistent devotion to her church. But it was not only the frivolous and cynical whom Catherine had offended. By seeming from the first to like Chancellor Clarendon she had unwittingly drawn upon herself the enmity of the most ambitious and able and influential men at Court.
But Catherine could know nothing of all this. And in spite of Penalva’s repeated warnings she looked at her new subjects and saw only women dressed in beautiful gowns, with glossy golden hair and a look of sleek complacency—women she envied though she knew it was wicked to do so—and men with suave easy manners bowing over her hand, sweeping off their hats as she appeared, their closed faces telling her nothing. She was still a little frightened by England, but so much in love with her husband and so eager to please him that she tried to conceal her awe and uncertainty and thought that she was succeeding very well.
