Mistress Celia, I want no other maid, I want only you. I have dreamed of you as my wife, lo, these many years, and now it has become possible. I shall speak to thy father and persuade him to command thee to accept my offer.’
‘I think not,’ said Celia spiritedly. ‘He has never yet forced me to do that which displeases me. He may lament my refusal of you, but he will not force me.’ Something he had said struck her. He had wanted her ‘lo, these many years’, but Nan had died only six months ago…
‘No!’ she exclaimed, the colour deserting her face. ‘I hope I have misunderstood you. You wanted me when Nan…’ And she paused, as Robert threw himself on his knees before her.
‘I have wanted thee since I first saw thee as a maiden of sixteen on the day I married Nan. God forgive me, when she died I could only think that it freed me for you. It has been torture for me to see thee about my house. I had not meant thee to know, but when you refused me, my tongue betrayed me.’
He seized her hand and the words of love were pouring out at last, and now Celia knew more than ever that he—and his tainted love—was not for her. Nan’s shadow would lie forever between them.
‘Oh, accept me, I beseech thee. Do not let me burn longer. I will buy thee a silken gown, make thee a fine chain, jewels for thy fingers. Robert Renwick’s wife will be as fine as any lady of the court. You cannot turn away such love.’
Celia pulled her hand away. ‘Please stop, I beg of you, Master Renwick. To learn of this makes my mind more fixed than ever. I can never marry you. Nan was my dear friend. Her ghost would lie in our bed reproaching me.’
It was hopeless and, knowing that it was hopeless, he lost all self-control. ‘What, have you a lover, then, mistress, a secret one, that you should treat a good man so? No wench who looks as you do could truthfully prate of staying single. Was the court gallant who came here yesterday with my lord of Buckingham a man to please you more? Or is it the Duke himself you have an eye to? He hath haunted thy father’s house. Was it for thee he came?’
‘For shame.’ Celia was at the door. She had heard a hundred songs which told of the bitterness of unrequited love, but to see that bitterness exposed, to feel it lashing about her as though he had taken a whip to her was more than she could endure. ‘My nay is my nay, Master Renwick. My father did not breed me to be a weak fool. There is no other man in my life, save in thy sick imagination. I will leave you, Master Renwick. You have had your answer.’
Her small hand on the door latch was covered by his large one. ‘Why, mistress,’ he said, panting slightly, ‘never think that this is the end of the story. Robert Renwick hath always got what Robert Renwick wants, and this is no time for him to begin to lose that reputation. If I find you have lied to me, why, mistress, I make a good friend, would have made thee a good husband, but I am a bad enemy. Think on that.’
Celia wrenched her hand from under his and was through the door, sobbing slightly between fright and disgust. The calm which had ruled her life until this day was shattered quite. She had seen the face of naked lust in one whom she had thought was free of such a vulgar passion, had learned how little she knew of the true face of the world, and it had frightened her.
She fled to the sanctuary of her room.
Celia Antiquis walked with Kit Carlyon that day. She was with him when he woke with a thick head. He rarely drank heavily, and seldom gambled, having little with which to gamble. But at Whitehall on the night of the first day that he had met her he sat down to Basset and lost. The old saying went, lucky at cards, unlucky in love. He staggered to his bed, hoping that the reverse held good.
He had supposed that to win his bet he would also need to win something which he did not want—a woman’s love. He had thought that the astrologer’s daughter would be such that he could woo and win her and toss her away without a thought, as he had tossed away Dorothy Lowther.
Aye, and that was the worst of it. He saw Dorothy Lowther that morning and felt only shame at the sight of her. What! Had one walk on a pleasant afternoon among the herbs and shrubs and flowers with a sweet-faced virgin at his side unmanned him quite? He was run tearing mad. He would forget her—but he could not.
The day was fair, the sun shone, the King was not capricious. The Privy Council met in the morning. In the afternoon the court walked in the open, down an alley whose fruit trees were flowering early. The talk was of the coming war with the Dutch.
The Duke of York had left to join the fleet, Charles Berkeley with him. Berkeley was a friend of Kit’s. It might be more truthful to say that he was a friend of everyone, universally loved by all, from the King downwards. He had written a song before he had gone and early in the afternoon the King called on Kit to sing it—his reward a game of tennis with his monarch in the cool of the day.
The role of courtier fretted Kit. But what else could a landless, penniless man do, who knew no trade save war? For that reason, Latter beckoned. A home of his own, an occupation to see his small lands well-run. Like many others, the late Civil War between King and Parliament had deprived him of his inheritance. At first, to serve the King, adorn his court, had seemed some recompense but, as the years drew on, he found himself needing security, his own home—a wife, children around him.
But to gain Latter, find that home, he must betray Celia Antiquis, and Buckingham, clever devil that he was, had thought of the one way to bribe Kit to do for him what he had failed to do for himself. Being Buckingham, he could not fail—he would succeed through Kit.
Kit finished Berkeley’s merry ballad. ‘To all you ladies now on land’, and Celia Antiquis popped into his mind again. The King saw his melancholy and, being a melancholic man himself, had compassion for him. ‘Why, Kit man, what ails thee? Hast taken a fever? Is there none here to please thee, haul thee from the dumps?’ He waved a hand at the assorted beauties sitting or standing in the sun. His queen had accompanied him and held court from a bench beside an urn of unseasonally early flowers.
Kit shrugged and laid down his guitar. ‘Nothing that a game of tennis will not cure, sire.’ And that was true, he knew. Action always dissipated melancholy for, in the violent doing, the mind disappeared and the body took over.
‘Buckingham tells me that you and he hied to the astrologer, Antiquis, yesterday and that he hath invited him here, and his daughter, too. He says that the daughter practises his trade, knows his mysteries. Is that the truth, or Buckingham’s extravagance talking?’
Kit looked at the King, his master. He was wearing a royal-blue coat with a silver sash and trimmings; his petticoat breeches were of a deeper blue and a scarlet garter bound each stocking. He had a spaniel on his lap and toyed with its ears—as he was toying with Kit’s in a different sense.
‘The truth, sire? The maid is as knowledgeable as the father.’
‘And is she fair?’
Kit’s eyes were on Charles again. Was this mere idleness, or had the King the thought that a new sensation might be found in toying with the astrologer’s daughter instead of a noble beauty? Actresses had graced his bed, Nell Gwyn and Moll Davis; why not a maiden from the city streets?
‘Very fair,’ he said at last.
The King began to laugh. ‘Why, I verily believe I have found the cause of Kit Carlyon’s melancholy. And is she chaste, as well as fair, and has she refused Buckingham and looked sideways at the good self? Fie, for shame, you cannot have wooed her properly. Kit Carlyon to be bested by an unknown virgin?’
What
