each other’s eyes. They both wanted to forget and they were a constant reminder to each other.
But one day she could not restrain herself. “My lord Buckingham I hear is going to Spain with the Prince.”
“Is it so then?”
“My lord Buckingham—that upstart Villiers. A Duke no less!”
Robert shrugged his shoulders. But he pictured the scene at Court so well; James, grown older now, but no less affectionate, he was sure; and at his feet the handsome man, seated on the stool once occupied by himself.
“They say there is no end to the honors that man has taken to himself.”
“It may well be.”
“You do not care?”
“I am past caring.”
“I am not then. And never shall be.”
“That is a tragedy for you.”
She turned on him angrily; his calmness maddened her, the knowledge that he had been able to build a life for himself out of these ruins, while she had failed, was more than she could bear.
“It might never have happened. You could have persuaded James. You should have been more subtle … a little more like his newest friend, my Lord Buckingham.”
“And you, Madam,” he retorted, “should never have stained your hands with the blood of my friend.”
She turned away and ran to her bedchamber where she locked herself in and wept until she believed she had no tears left. Tears of rage and frustration.
“Better would it have been if they had taken me to Tyburn,” she cried. “Better if they had hanged me by the neck as they did poor Anne Turner. Anything would have been more desirable than this life of mine.”
After that they avoided each other. It was better so.
James had no illusions; he knew this was the end. He was in his fifty-ninth year and had been a king for almost the whole of his life: James VI of Scotland since he was little more than a baby and his mother’s enemies had insisted that she abdicate in his favor; James I of England for the last twenty-three years.
“A goodly span,” he murmured, “and when a man suffers from a tertian ague and gout it is time he said goodbye to earthly pleasures. Perhaps I have been over-fond of my wine, but it is no bad thing to be over-fond of the things life has to offer.”
It was characteristic of him that he wondered what posterity would think of him. The British Solomon! How much had his wisdom profited his country? Would they remember him as a wise ruler, or the King who had gone in terror of the assassin’s knife since the Gowrie and Gunpowder Plots? Would they remember him as the King who was excessively fond of his favorites?
Steenie had not always been a comfort. He had grown arrogant like the rest. Steenie would look after himself. He was already a friend of Charles and they had jaunted to Spain together when Charles went to woo the Infanta. And Charles was affianced now to Henrietta Maria the daughter of Henry IV of France and sister of the reigning King Louis XIII. It would be a Catholic marriage for Charles which might cause trouble; there could clearly be no more persecution of recusants with a Catholic Queen on the throne. But that was Charles’s affair—no longer his.
It was strange to think of the end. No more hunting, no more golf, no more laughter at the pranks of Steenie and the rest; no longer would he sign to a handsome young man to give him his arm to lean on.
The old life was passing.
And as he thought back over the years there was one whom he could not forget, and had never forgotten. Often during the years he had longed to recall him. Yet how could he recall a man who had been condemned for murder?
“Robbie was no murderer,” he told himself, as he had often during the hours of the night when he had awakened from some vague dream of the past, haunted by a handsome affectionate young man. “I’ll bring him back. He shall have his estates back.”
But by light of day he would say: “I canna do it. It would serve no good purpose. How could Robert take up his old place now?”
It was nearly ten years since he had seen Robert, and that was a long time for a King to remember. And for all those years Robert had remained virtually a prisoner.
There was one thing he would do before he died. Robert should have a full pardon. His estates should be returned to him. As for the woman—she must have her freedom. He could not keep one prisoner and not the other.
It must be his first concern to pardon Robert.
The pardon was given; and the documents drawn up which would make Robert a rich man once more.
But James had not known how little time there was left to him, and he died before he could sign those documents.
But for Robert and Frances there was change at last: and that March of the year 1625 when James died in Theobald’s Palace, they were at liberty to go where they would. James’s last gift to them was freedom from each other.
