The Queen's Devotion: The Story of Queen Mary II Read Online Free PDF Page B

the little bastards live on.”
    â€œAnd they say she is by no means beautiful,” said Anne Villiers.
    Elizabeth laughed. “Well, some like them that way. She has other attractions doubtless.”
    Henrietta Villiers asked: “Is it true that her legs were the great attraction?”
    â€œYes indeed,” replied Elizabeth. “She had an accident in the riding field and her legs were very much in evidence. They happened to be seen by a certain person . . . and he fell in love with them.”
    â€œWith a pair of legs!” giggled Henrietta.
    I was only half listening. I supposed this was another of the King’s amours. They included court ladies, actresses from the theaters, women of all sorts and classes. This Arabella Churchill would be one of a crowd. I always felt uneasy when they discussed the King’s morals. After all, he was my uncle. He knew that there was gossip about him but he was just amused. He was very good-tempered.
    I heard Anne Villiers saying: “She is very tall and nothing but skin and bone—not good-looking at all.”
    â€œOnly a magnificent pair of legs,” said Elizabeth, raising her eyes to the ceiling in an expression of wonder. “Yet she inspired a personage.”
    Sarah said that there was so much beauty at court that perhaps it was refreshing to find a lack of it.
    â€œThe gentleman concerned,” went on Elizabeth, glancing at her sisters, several of whom could not restrain their giggles, “is said to have an odd taste in women.”
    I was getting more perceptive. The pauses and the exchanged glances startled me. I thought suddenly, I believe they are talking about my father. I could not believe this though. This Arabella Churchill had had three children. When the first would have been born, my mother was alive. It was nonsense. But the suspicion remained.
    I said to Anne Trelawny when we were alone: “Arabella Churchill’s lover? Who is he?”
    I saw the flush in her face and she did not answer.
    I said: “Was it my father?”
    â€œIn a court like ours these things happen,” she said uneasily.
    I could not forget that, while my mother was dying, he had been in love with Arabella Churchill’s legs. I discovered that her first child had been born in 1671—the year my mother had died—and now there was this one.
    I remembered my father’s sorrow over my mother’s death. How he had wept and seemed to care so much, and all the time he was making love with Arabella Churchill. And I had believed he was heartbroken by my mother’s death. How could he have been?
    Life was full of hypocrisy. People lied. They deceived. Even my noble father.
    Elizabeth Villiers had succeeded in what she had intended to do. Nor did she leave it there.
    She had a clever way of steering the conversation round to the way she wanted it to go. In the days of my innocence I believed that it happened naturally, but now I was beginning to see it differently. She was clever; she was subtle; she was five years older than I and when one is eleven that is a great deal.
    At this time her aim was to poison the relationship between my father and me. It may have been because she thought he might yet turn me into a Catholic and so jeopardize my way to the throne and, as my attendant, she would be without the benefits accompanying such a position. Or it might have been that, disliking me as she did, she could not bear that I should know such happiness from a love the like of which I imagine could never have been hers.
    When one of the courtiers began acting strangely and it was said that he was suffering from a bout of madness, Elizabeth remarked that he reminded her of Sir John Denham.
    One of the younger girls asked who Sir John Denham was.
    It was obviously what Elizabeth had expected, and she said quickly: “It was something which happened some time ago. It was very unsavory and perhaps best forgotten, though there will