She prayed as she lay there: “Make me witty, make me beautiful in his eyes. Make him love me, so that he will not regret giving up that woman whose name I will not mention even to myself.”

I shall walk in his parks with him and I shall love the plants and bushes and trees because he has planted them. I shall love his little dogs. I shall be their mistress as he is their master. I shall learn how to take clocks to pieces and put them back. All his interests shall be mine, and we shall love each other.

“He is the most easy-going man in the world,” they said of him. “He hates unpleasantness. He avoids scenes and looks the other way when there is trouble. Smile always, be gay … if you will have him love you. He has had too much of melancholy in his life. He looks for gaiety.”

I will love him. I will make him love me, she told herself. I am going to be the happiest Queen in the world.

There was commotion below. He had arrived. He had had news of her coming, and he had ridden with great speed from London.

She should have had time to prepare herself. She rose from her bed, called frantically to her women.

“Quickly! Quickly! Dress me in my English dress. Loosen my hair. I will wear it as the English wear it … just at first. Where are my jewels? Oh, come … come … we must not delay. He must see me at my best…. I should have been prepared.”

The Countess of Suffolk hurried into the chamber as her women bustled about her.

“Your Majesty, a visitor has come to see you.”

“Yes … yes … bring him in. I am ready.”

She half closed her eyes. She would not be able to bear to look at him. This was the most important moment in her life. Her heart was fluttering like a frightened bird.

She heard the Countess say: “This is Sir Richard Fanshawe. He has letters for you … messages from the King.”

Sir Richard Fanshawe!

She opened her eyes as Sir Richard came into the apartment.

He knelt. “Your Majesty, I bring letters from the King’s Majesty. He sends loving greetings to you. He commands me to tell you that he will be with you as soon as he can conveniently travel. At this time imperative business detains him in London.”

Imperative business! What business could it be, she wondered, to keep a man from the wife whom he had not yet seen, a King from his Queen who had undertaken a perilous journey to come to him? She wished that she could banish the name of Lady Castlemaine from her mind.

The bells were ringing in London. The people stood about in groups, as they did when great events were afoot. The Queen had arrived at Portsmouth; and now it would not be long before the ceremony of marriage took place in England; there would be more pageantry; more revelry; and it would be amusing to see what would happen when the new Queen and Lady Castlemaine came face-to-face.

The King himself had received the news of the Queen’s arrival. He had heard also of the bags of sugar and spices that she had brought with her.

He let the communication drop from his hands. So he had a wife at last; but the very reason for her coming—that half a million of money which he so badly needed—was to be denied him.

The Queen Mother of Portugal had promised the rest would follow. In what form, he wondered; fruit? More spices? He had been deceived by that wily woman, for she had known that the reason he had agreed to marry her daughter was that the dowry would help to save his country from bankruptcy.

He must see Clarendon, his Chancellor. But no. Clarendon had been against the match; Clarendon had wished him to marry a Protestant wife, and had only agreed to support the Portuguese marriage when he was overruled by the majority of the King’s ministers. And why had they agreed to this marriage? Simply because of that half a million in gold.

So, said Charles to himself, I have a wife and much sugar and spice; I have a port on the coast of Morocco which is going to cost me dearly to maintain—did the sly woman wish me to have it because she could no longer afford to keep it?—and I have the island of Bombay, which I may discover to be equally unprofitable. Oh, my marriage is a very merry one, I begin to believe!

The Queen was here. She was waiting for him at Portsmouth, and he was expected to go and greet her … her and her sugar and spice.

Barbara was plaguing him; she had never given up the idea of having her lying-in at Whitehall. Barbara might even by now have heard the story of the sugar and spices; if so, she would be laughing herself hoarse with merriment.

He strode up and down the apartment. Mayhap this Jew they had brought with them would soon set about converting the cargo into money. Mayhap the Queen of Portugal would fulfil her promises in due time!

’Tis no fault of that poor girl! he mused. ’Tis her mother who has tricked me. But a fine laughingstock I shall be when the story of the sugar and spice is bruited about.

He lifted his shoulders characteristically; and went to sup at Barbara’s house.

Barbara was delighted to receive him.

She was now very large, for her confinement would take place within the next few weeks. She embraced the King warmly, having signed to all to leave them, for it was Barbara who on such occasions gave orders like a Queen.

She had had prepared his favorite dishes. “For,” she told him, “I heard of the manner in which these foreigners had cheated you, and I was assured that you would come to me this night for comfort.”

“It would seem,” said the King with a frown, “that news of my affairs reaches you ere it comes to me.”

“Ah, all know how solicitous I am for your welfare. Your troubles are mine, my dearest.”

“And what else have you heard, apart from the description of the cargo?”

“Oh, that Her Majesty is small of stature and very brown.”

“Your informants were determined to please you.”

“Nay, I had it from those that hate me. They say that her teeth do wrong her mouth, and that her hair is dressed in a manner most comic to behold. She has a barber with her who spends many hours dressing it. I hear too that she wears a fantastic costume. It is a stiff skirt designed to preserve Portuguese ladies from the sleight of hand of English gentlemen.”

Barbara burst into loud laughter, but there was an uneasiness in it which the King did not fail to detect.

“Doubtless,” he said, “I shall soon see those wonders for myself.”

“I marvel that you are not riding with all speed to Portsmouth.”

“Had I not promised to sup with you?”

“You had. And had you not kept your word I should not have let you forget it.”

“Methinks, Barbara, you forget to whom you speak.”

“Nay, I forget not.” Her jealousy of the Queen was too strong to be subdued. “No,” she added on a louder note, “I forget not. I speak to the father of this child I carry, this poor mite who will be born in a humble dwelling unworthy of his rank. He will be born in this miserable dwelling instead of the Palace in which he belongs. But then—he is not the first!”

The King laughed. “You speak of the child as though he were holy. Od’s Fish, Barbara, you bear no resemblance to the Blessed Virgin!”

“Now you are profane. But mayhap I shall not survive this confinement, for I have suffered so much during my pregnancy. Those who should cherish me care not for me.”

“And the sufferings you have endured have been inflicted by yourself. But I do not come here to quarrel. Mayhap, as you say, I should be on my way to Portsmouth.”

“Charles … pray sit down. I implore you. I beg of you. Do you not understand why I am nervous this night? I am afraid. Yes, it is my fear that makes me so. I am afraid of this woman with her cruel teeth, and her odd hair, and her farthingale. I am afraid that she will hate me.”

“I doubt not that she would—should your paths cross.”

Barbara had turned pale. She said quietly: “I beg you eat of this pheasant. I had it specially prepared for you.”

She held out the dish to him; her blue eyes were downcast.

For the rest of the meal she did not mention the Queen; but she became gay and amusing, as she well knew how to be. She was soothing; she was the Barbara he had always hoped she would be, and her pregnancy had softened the rather hard beauty of her face; and lying on a couch, a brilliantly colored rug hid her awkwardness, and her lovely auburn hair fell loose about her bare shoulders.

After a while others came to join them, and Barbara was merry. And when they had gone, and left the King alone with her—as it was their custom to do—he stayed talking to her; and she was tenderly tearful, telling him that she was sorry for her vicious ways towards him, and that she hoped in the future—should she live—to improve her manners.

He begged her not to talk of dying, but Barbara declared she had a feeling that she might not be long for this world. The ordeal of childbirth was no light matter, and when one had suffered during the weeks of pregnancy as she had suffered, death was often the result.

“You suffered?” asked the King.

“From jealousy, I fear. Oh, I am to blame, but that did not lessen my suffering. I think of all the sins I have committed, as one does when one approaches death, and I longed for a chance to lead a better life. Yet, Charles, there is one thing I could never do. I could never give you up. Always I shall be there if you should want me. I would rather face damnation than lose you.”

The King was disturbed. Not that he entirely believed her, but he thought she must be feeling very weak to be in such a chastened mood. He comforted her; she made him swear that he would not let this marriage interfere with their relationship; she must have a post which would result in her seeing him frequently; but she knew that, if she lived, she would have it, for had he not promised her the post in his wife’s bedchamber? She would be content with that, but she could never give him up.

“No matter,” she said, “if a hundred queens came to marry you bringing millions of bags of sugar and spices, still there would be one to love you till she died—your poor Barbara.”

And to be with Barbara, meek and submissive, was an adventure too strange and exciting to be missed.

It was early morning before he left Barbara’s house; and all London took notice that the King passed the night at his mistress’s house while his Queen lay lonely at Portsmouth. Outside the big houses of the city, bonfires had been lighted in honor of the Queen’s coming; but it was seen that there was none outside the door of that house in which the King spent the night with Lady Castlemaine.

What was detaining him? Catherine wondered. Why did he not come? Imperative business? What was that? After the second day she ceased to care, for she was smitten with that fever from which Elvira had suffered during and just after the voyage. Her throat was so sore and she was so feverish that she spent the hours lying in her bed while her maids of honor brought her dishes of tea, that beverage of which she was particularly fond and which was rarely drunk in England.

She would lie in her bed thinking of him, wondering when he would come. She longed to see him, yet she did not want him to come and see her as she was now, with dark shadows under her eyes, and her hair lusterless. She was terrified that he might turn from her in disgust.

Lady Castlemaine, she supposed, would be very beautiful. The mistresses of kings were beautiful because they were chosen by the kings, whereas their wives were thrust upon them.

She knew that her maids whispered together and wondered, as she did, what detained him. Perhaps they knew. Perhaps among themselves they murmured that name which, her mother had impressed on her, must never pass her lips.

Could it be that he, in her imagination the hero of a hundred romances, could so far discard his chivalry as to neglect his wife? Was he so angry about the dowry? Each day there came for her those charming letters from his pen. He wrote like a lover; he wrote of his urgent business as though he hated it, so it surely could not be Lady Castlemaine. He longed to be with her, he declared; he was making plans for the solemnization of their nuptials; ere long he would be with her to assure her in person of his devotion. She treasured the letters. She would keep them forever. Through them lived again the romantic hero of her imagination: Yet the days passed—three … four … five—and still there was no news of the King’s coming.

The fever left her, but, said the physicians, she was to remain in bed. And on the fifth day news came to her that the King had left his capital.