“I believe you, Frances. Any young girl would have been flattered. And you’ve always been kind and generous. You never used your power as a weapon to hurt others.”
“Oh, your Majesty! I didn’t! Truly I didn’t! I’ve never meant to hurt anyone! And your Majesty—I want you to know—I know
“Of course there hasn’t, my dear.”
Frances slumped suddenly, her head dropped. “
There were tears now in Catherine’s eyes and she shook her head slowly. “Perhaps he does, Frances. Perhaps he does, more than we think.”
Frances was tired now and despondent. She pressed her lips to the back of Catherine’s hand once more and got slowly to her feet. “I must go now, your Majesty.” They stood looking at each other, real tenderness and affection on both their faces. “I may never see you again—” Quickly and impulsively she kissed Catherine on the cheek, and then swirling about she rushed from the room. Catherine stood and watched her go, smiling a little, one hand lightly touching her face; the tears spilled off onto her bosom. Three days later Frances had left Whitehall—she eloped with the Duke of Richmond.
IT WAS ON one cold rainy windy night in February that Buckingham, disguised in a black wig with his blonde eyebrows and mustache blackened, sat across the table from Dr. Heydon and watched the astrologer’s face as he consulted his charts of stars and moon, intersecting lines and geometrical figures. The room was lighted dimly by smoking tallow candles that smelt of frying fat, and the wind blew in gusts down the chimney, making their eyes burn and sending them into coughing fits.
“Pox on this damned weather!” muttered the Duke angrily, coughing and covering his nose and mouth with the long black riding-cloak he wore. And then as Heydon slowly raised his thin bony face he leaned anxiously across the table. “What is it! What do you find?”
“What I dare not speak of, your Grace.”
“Bah! What do I pay you for? Out with it!”
With an air of being forced against his better judgment, Heydon gave in to the Duke’s determination. “If your Grace insists. I find, then, that he will die very suddenly on the fifteenth day of January, two years hence—” He made a dramatic pause and then, leaning forward, hissed out his next words, while his blue eyes bored into the Duke’s. “And then, by popular demand of the people, your Grace will succeed to the throne of England for a long and glorious reign. The house of Villiers is destined to be the greatest royal house in the history of our nation!”
Buckingham stared at him, completely transfixed. “By Jesus! It’s incredible—and yet—What else do you find?” he demanded suddenly, eager to know everything.
It was as though he stood on the edge of some strange land from which it was possible to look forward into time and discover the shape of things to come. King Charles scorned such chicanery, saying that even if it were possible to see into the future it was inconvenient to know one’s fate, whether for good or ill. Well—there were other and cleverer men who knew how to turn a thing to their own ends.
“How will he—” Villiers checked himself, afraid of his own phraseology. “What will be the cause of so great a tragedy?”
Heydon glanced at his charts once more, as though for reassurance, and when he answered his voice was a mere whisper: “Unfortunately—the stars have it his Majesty will die by poison —secretly administered.”
“Poison!”
The Duke sat back, staring into the flames of the sea-coal fire, drumming his knuckles on the table-top, one eyebrow raised in contemplation. Charles Stuart to die of poison, secretly administered, and he, George Villiers, to succeed by popular demand to the throne of England. The more he thought about it the less incredible it seemed.
He was startled out of his reverie by a sudden sharp impatient rapping at the door. “What’s that! Were you expecting someone?”
“I had forgotten, your Grace,” whispered Heydon. “My Lady Castlemaine had an appointment with me at this hour.”
“Barbara! Has she been here before?”
“Only twice, your Grace. The last time three years since.” The rapping was repeated, loud and insistent, and a little angry too.
Buckingham got up quickly and went toward the door of the next room. “I’ll wait in here until she’s gone. Get rid of her as soon as possible—and as you value your nose don’t let her know I’m here.”
Heydon nodded his head and whisked the many papers and charts which concerned Charles II’s melancholy future off the table and into a drawer. As the Duke disappeared he went to answer the door. Barbara entered the room on a gust of wind; her face was entirely covered by a black-velvet vizard and there was a silver-blonde wig over her red hair.
“God’s eyeballs! What kept you so long? Have you got a wench in here?”
