“Nothing but what he was bound to give me by the terms of our marriage contract. A horrid little dower house, and some rents.”
“And the new lord?”
Livia had allowed herself to dream of the new lord, in case he was rich with another estate, in case he was unmarried, in case he was attracted to her. “A very uninteresting man,” she said since none of those things had proved to be true, and he was happily married.
“But you are back with me for good?”
“Alas, my darling, I cannot afford to live at court. I am so sorry, I don’t know which way to turn.”
“I shall give you a post and a pension,” the queen ruled. “Don’t even think about it. I will see to it at once. And you must enjoy yourself here, it’s such a happy town and my good doctor has forbidden me to do anything but take the waters and amuse myself. Don’t even think about money, I shall give you everything: clothes from the royal wardrobe, jewels from the treasury, and a pension for life.”
“Oh, very well,” Livia said reluctantly. “I’ll try to be happy.”
In the morning, Livia and the queen went to the Cross Bath and prepared to enter the famous waters. In the heated stone-walled dressing room Livia stripped the younger woman naked, and draped her with a yellow cape that fastened up to her neck, for complete modesty.
“You come too!” Mary Beatrice said. “I’m not going in without you.”
Livia laughed, and as Mary Beatrice waited, she slipped off her gown, her petticoat and, standing shamelessly naked, pinned up her long dark hair. Only then, with a little glance down her curvaceous honey-colored body, did she put on the voluminous yellow cape. With an attendant on either side, they went out of the queen’s dressing room and down the stone steps into the hot sulfurous water. The capes filled with water and billowed around them, the hot water rose up their legs, over their bellies, up to their necks.
An orchestra played in the gallery, the notes echoing around the stone bath, and ladies and gentlemen looked out of the archedopenings to the bath below, where the queen and her ladies, all draped in the capes, stained yellow by the mineral waters, were walking around in the water or sitting on the pedestal of the central cross.
“Allora!It is like the moat of hell,” Livia remarked. “Why does it smell so terrible?”
Mary Beatrice giggled. “It’s the smell that shows it is good for you.”
Livia thought that a cattle stall smelled much the same, but she admired the glow in Mary Beatrice’s face. “Certainly, it suits you.”
Mary Beatrice waded around, an attendant on either side so that she should not slip as she took great strides, held up by the water. She laughed with pleasure, she lay on her back and let herself float as they supported her head on warm linen pillows. Livia bounded towards her, supported by her attendants. She could feel the hot water all over her naked body. It was deliciously sensual, especially for the two young women who never swam, and only ever bathed in a restricted tub. They held hands, they gamboled around like children, they danced to the music, their capes billowing around them, weightless in the hot water.
“Don’t splash me! Don’t splash me!” Livia begged. “I don’t want to taste it.”
“You’ll have to drink a glass of it!” Mary Beatrice explained. “It’s part of the cure.”
“No! No! I am well! I assure you I am in the best of health.”
Mary Beatrice took her by the shoulders and put a warm damp kiss on her mouth. “As anyone can see,” she said. “You are a most beautiful widow. Swear to me that you won’t remarry, I don’t want to share you with anyone.”
In the afternoon they went riding in carriages at the slow pace of a marching band preceding them playing tunes as they took in the views from the high hills of the town. In the evening the queen dined in public and received guests, playing cards and making conversation while the musicians sang harmonies, and sometimes the orchestra played for dancing.
Anyone could see that the queen was returning to health, at last. She gained a little weight, the color came back to her face. Under Livia’s steady adoration and tenderness, the applause of the citizensof Bath, and the absence of rivals, especially the hated Catherine Sedley, she transformed from an infertile neglected wife to a young woman with hopes for the future. The news that Princess Anne had lost another baby prompted a letter of condolence written by Livia, and secret renewed hope that Anne would never give England a Protestant prince.
Nor did Mary Beatrice miss her husband. James was to join her at the end of the month after a progress to the heart of the country: visiting Oxford, to threaten the Fellows of Magdalen College with his displeasure if they did not appoint a Roman Catholic president; to Chester, demanding an address of loyalty and that they convert a church into a Roman Catholic chapel. The king on progress made enemies everywhere he went.
“So, he is happy,” Livia said acidly.
Mary Beatrice smiled. “Perhaps we will both be happy,” she said, like an optimistic child.
CHRISTOPHER MONCK’S TOWNHOUSE, LONDON, AUTUMN 1687
The Royal Society were taking an interest in Barbados and the Sugar Islands as a miraculous source of what seemed like unending wealth. Was it possible that one tiny island was the only place in the whole world that could grow it? Was it possible that only the Barbados planters could farm it? Could it be true that only African slaves could make it? Was it truly an elixir of life which had to have an alchemical combination—the rich soil of Barbados, the blood of black slaves, and the expertise of white greed? The Royal Society agreed that Christopher Monck, whose only interest was making easy moneyand drinking himself into a state of complete unconsciousness, was the ideal man to survey the Sugar Islands and answer these pressing questions. No sooner appointed, Christopher Monck slid the task over to his personal physician, who suggested that he should have an assistant. Alerted by Alys, Ned applied for the post as an experienced collector of rarities.
“Can you draw specimens and describe them and so on, and so on?”
Ned stood before Christopher Monck in the handsome library, a chart of the Sugar Islands spread on a table before them.
“Yes, sir.”
“And you can identify new leaves and flowers and herbs and so on, and so on?”