She must go to Court; she must seek him out. She would humbly beg his pardon, not for refusing to become his mistress—he would not expect that—but because she had run away and married against his wishes, because she had flouted him, because she had been such a fool as to prefer the drunken Duke to her passionate, but so kind and affectionate King.

She called to her women.

“Come,” she cried. “Dress me in my most becoming gown. Dress my hair in ringlets. I am going to pay a call … a very important call.”

They dressed her, and she thought of the reunion as they did so. She would throw herself onto her knees first and beg his forgiveness. She would say that she had tried to go against the tide; she had believed in virtue, but now she could see no virtue in marriage with a man such as she had married. She would ask Charles to forget the past; and perhaps they would start again.

“My lady, your hands are burning,” said one of her women. “You are too flushed. You have a fever.”

“It is the excitement because I am to pay a most important call … I will wear that blue sash with the gold embroidery.”

Her women looked at each other in astonishment. “There is no blue sash, my lady. The sash is purple, and the embroidery on it is silver.”

Frances put her hand to her head. “Dark webs seem to dance before my eyes,” she muttered.

“You should rest, my lady, before you pay that call.”

Even as they spoke she would have fallen if two of them had not managed to catch her.

“Take me to my bed,” she murmured.

They carried her thither, and in alarm they called the physician to her bedside. One of the women had recognized the alarming symptoms of the dreaded smallpox.

The Court buzzed with the news.

So Frances Stuart was suffering from the smallpox! Fate seemed determined to put an end to her sway, for only if she came unscathed from the dread disease, her beauty unimpaired, could she hope to return to the King’s favor.

Barbara was exultant. It was hardly likely that Frances would come through unmarked; so few people did, and Barbara’s spies informed her that Frances had taken the disease very badly. “Praise be to God!” cried Barbara. “Madam Frances will no longer be able to call herself the beauty of the Court. Dolt! She threw away what she might have had when she was young and fair and the King sought her; she married her drunken sot, and much good has that done her. I’ll swear she was planning to come back and regain Charles’ favor. She’ll see that the pockmarked hag she’ll become will best retire to the country and hide herself.”

The King heard the sly laughter. He heard the whispers. “They say the most beautiful of Duchesses has become the most hideous.”“Silly Frances, there’ll be no one to hand her her cards now.”“Poor Frances! Silly Frances! What had she but her beauty?”

Catherine watched the King wistfully. She saw that he was melancholy, and she asked him to tell her the reason.

He turned to her frankly and replied: “I think of poor Frances Stuart.”

“It has been the lot of other women to lose their beauty through the pox,” said Catherine. “Her case is but one of many.”

“Nay,” said the King. “Hers is unique, for the pox could never have robbed a woman of so much beauty as it could rob poor Frances!”

“Some women have to learn to do without what they cannot have.”

He smiled at Catherine. “No one visits her,” he said.

“And indeed they should not. The infection will still be upon her.”

“I think of poor Frances robbed of beauty and friends, and I find myself no longer angry with her.”

“If she recovers it will bring great comfort to her to know that she no longer must suffer your displeasure.”

“She needs comfort now,” declared the King. “If she does not have it, poor soul, she will die of melancholy.”

He was thinking of her in her little cocked hat, in her black-and-white gown with the diamonds sparkling in her hair—Frances, the most beautiful woman of his Court, and now, if she recovered, one of its most hideous. For the pox was a cruel destroyer of beauty, and Frances was suffering a severe attack.

Catherine, watching him, felt such twinges of jealousy that she could have buried her face in her hands and wept in her misery. She thought: If he could speak of me as he speaks of her, if he could care so much for me if I suffered the like affliction, I believe I would be willing to suffer as Frances has suffered. He loves her still. None of the others can mean as much to him as that simple girl, of whom it was once said: “Never had a woman so much beauty, and so little wit.”

He smiled at Catherine, but she knew he did not see her. His eyes were shining and his mouth tender; he was looking beyond her into the past when Frances Stuart had ridden beside him and he had been at his wit’s end to think of means to overcome her resistance.

He turned and hurried away, and a little later she saw him walking briskly to the river’s edge where his barge was waiting.

Catherine stood watching him, and slowly the tears began to run down her cheeks.

She knew where he was going. He was going to risk infection; he was going to do something which would set all the Court talking; for he was going to show them all that, although he had been cool towards the lovely Frances Stuart because she had flouted him in her marriage, all was forgiven the poor, stricken girl who was in danger of losing that very beauty which had so attracted him.

For love like that, thought Catherine, I would welcome the pox. For love like that I would die.

Frances lay in her bed. She had asked for a mirror, and had stared a long time at the face she saw reflected there. How cruel was fate! Why, she asked herself, should it have made her the most beautiful of women, only to turn her into one of the most hideous! If only the contrast had been less marked! It was as though she had been shown the value of beauty in those days of the Restoration, only that she might mourn its loss. Gone was the dazzling pink-and-white complexion; in its place was yellow skin covered by small pits which, not content with ravaging the skin itself, had distorted the perfect contours of her face. The lid of one eye, heavily pitted, was dragged down over the pupil so that she could see nothing through it, and the effect was to make her look grotesque.

Nothing of beauty was left to her; even her lovely slender figure was wasted and so thin that she feared the bones would pierce her skin.

Alone she lay, for none came to visit her. How was that possible, who would dare risk taking the dread disease?

And when I am recovered, she thought, still none will visit me. And any who should be so misguided as to do so will be disgusted with what they see.

She wanted to weep; in the old days she had wept so easily. Now there were no tears. She was aware only of a dumb misery. There was none to love her, none to care what became of her.

Perhaps, she pondered, I will go into a convent. How can I live all the years ahead of me, shut away from the world? I am not studious; I am not clever. How can I live my life shut away from the Court life to which I have grown accustomed?

How would it be to have old friends, who once had been eager to admire, turning away from her in disgust? There would be no one to love her; she had nothing to hope for from her husband. He had married the fair Stuart whom the King so desired because he had believed that, the King finding her so fair, she must be desirable indeed. Now … there would be none.

She could see from her bed the boulle cabinet inlaid with tortoiseshell and ivory. It was a beautiful thing and a present from the King in those days when he had eagerly besought her to become his mistress. She remembered his pleasure when he had shown her the thirty secret drawers and the silver gilt fittings. The cabinet was decorated with tortoiseshell hearts, and she remembered that he had said: “These are reminders that you possess one which is not made of tortoiseshell and beats for you alone.”

Beside her bed was the marquetry table, ebony inlaid, and decorated with pewter—another of Charles’ elaborate presents.

She would have these to remind her always that once she had been so beautiful that a King had sought her favors. Few would believe that in the days to come, for they would look at a hideous woman and laugh secretly at the very suggestion that her beauty could ever have attracted a King who worshipped beauty as did Charles.

All was over. Her life had been built on her beauty; and her beauty was in ruins.

Someone had entered the room, someone tall and dark.

She did not believe it was he. She could not. She had been thinking of him so vividly that she must have conjured him up out of her imagination.

He approached the bed.

“Oh, God!” she cried. “It is the King … the King himself.”

She brought up her hands to cover her face, but found she could not touch the loathsome thing she believed that face to be. She turned to the wall and sobbed: “Go away! Go away! Do not look at me. Do not come here to mock me!”

But he was there, kneeling by the bed; he had taken her hands.

“Frances,” he said, in a voice husky with emotion, “you must not grieve. You must not.”

“I beg of you go away and leave me in my misery,” she said. “You think of what I was. You see what I have become. You … you of all people must be laughing at me … you must be triumphant…. If you have any kindness in you … go away.”

“Nay,” he said. “I would not go just yet. I would speak with you, Frances. We have been too long bad friends.”

She did not answer. She believed the hot, scalding smart on the face she loathed meant tears.

She felt his lips on her hands. He must be mad. Did he not know that there might still be danger of contagion?

“I came because I could not endure that we should be bad friends, Frances,” he said. “You were ill and alone, so I came to see you.”

She shook her head. “Now go, I beg of you. I implore you. I know you cannot bear to look at anything so ugly as I have become. You cannot have anything but loathing for me now.”

“One does not loathe friends—if the friendship be a true one—whatever befalls them.”

“You desired me for my beauty.” Her voice broke on a cracked note. “My beauty…. I am not only no longer beautiful, I am hideous. I know how you hate everything ugly. I can appeal only to your pity.”

“I loved you, Frances,” he said. “’Od’s Fish! I did not know how much until you ran away and left me. And now I find you sick and alone, deserted by your friends. I came hither to say this to you, Frances: Here is one friend who will not desert you.”

“Nay … nay …” she said. “You will never bear to look upon me after this.”

“I shall visit you every day until you are able to leave your bed. Then you must return to Court.”

“To be jeered at!”

“None would dare jeer at my friend. Moreover, you despair too soon. There are remedies for the effects of the pox. Many have tried them. I will ask my sister to tell me what the latest French remedies are for improving the skin. Your eye will recover its sight. Frances, do not despair.”

“If I had been less beautiful,” she murmured, “it would have been easier.”

He said: “Let us talk of other matters. I will tell you of the fashions of which I hear from my sister. The French are far in advance of us and I will ask her to send French dresses for you. How would you like to come to Court in a dress from Paris?”

“With a mask over my face, mayhap I might,” said Frances bitterly.

“Frances, this is not like you. You used to laugh so gaily when the card houses of others collapsed. Do you remember?”

She nodded. Then she said sadly: “Now my house has collapsed, and I see that cards were such flimsy things … so worthless with which to build a house.”

He pressed her hands; and she turned to look into his face, hoping for what she could not possibly expect to find; the tenderness of his voice deceived her.

How could he love her—hideous as she had become? She thought of the flaming beauty of Barbara Castlemaine; she thought of the dainty gamin charm of the player with whom she had heard he was spending much time. And how could he love Frances Stuart who had had nothing but her unsurpassed beauty, of which the hideous pox had now completely robbed her?

She had caught him off his guard.

She had allowed him to see her once beautiful face hideously distorted, and he knew and she knew that, whatever remedies there were, nothing could restore its beauty; and she also knew that what had prompted him to visit her was nothing but the kindness of heart he would have for any sick animal. Thus would he have behaved for any of his little dogs or the creatures he kept in his parks.