Writing progress, June 2012

‘Imagine fishing while wearing this,’ he hisses, turning this way and that and irritably tweaking the flamboyant feathers that encircle his slender waist. ‘I like how Charles always manages to get out of all this ridiculous chicanery.’ This is, of course, his real complaint. My elder brothers love each other fiercely but there’s a strong seam of envy running beneath all the hugging and amusing whisperings at the dinner table. Charles envies James for not being king, for not being the focus of Mam’s worries, schemings and, ultimately, disappointments. James envies Charles everything. He’d even willingly bear the brunt of being the one who always lets Mam down if only it meant he was the eldest and most important.

‘He’s the guest of honour,’ I say lightly, although I know that once James is in this grudging, awkward mood, it’s almost impossible to cajole him out of it. ‘It’s also an honour for us to be asked to take part in the ballet.’

James snorts and shakes out his auburn hair. ‘So Mam says.’

Philippe and his friends saunter past, rolling their sooty kohl rimmed eyes contemptuously over us as they go. One of them, a tall, good looking boy with long chestnut hair smirks back over his shoulder at me. ‘What a pity Anne-Marie couldn’t be here,’ Philippe is saying in that high pitched and slightly stilted way that means he intends to be overheard. ‘She would have made a marvellous Erato.’

I don’t think it’s a pity at all. Our cousin Anne-Marie de Montpensier, who is the daughter of Mam’s youngest brother Gaston, thinks a great deal of herself and although she offers our mother a certain grudging sycophancy for having been a queen when she herself has never even been a wife, she never fails to make it clear that I am not quite worthy of her attention.
On the other hand, it amuses me that Philippe talks as though Anne-Marie is indisposed in some way when in fact everyone knows that she has been banished in disgrace to her country estates for almost two years now for her part in the Fronde uprising and might never be allowed to come back to court. Despite my dislike of my much older cousin, I couldn’t help but be thrilled when I heard that she had climbed high up onto the ancient turrets of the Bastille dressed as a soldier with scarlet plumes in her hat and with her own hands fired a cannon at Louis’ forces led by brave Marshal Turenne.

There was a dreadful fuss at the time but now most of the court just shake their heads amusedly and smile at her ridiculous folly. ‘Isn’t that just like Anne-Marie?’ they say, rolling their eyes and pouting their cerise painted mouths in little pretend moues of disapproval. ‘When will she learn to think before she acts? Louis might even have married her one day if she hadn’t tried to blow his troops up.’ Even Turenne grins bashfully and looks not a little pleased when teased about the time a princess fired a cannon at him. ‘She fired very wide,’ he says to all the ladies as they sigh and flutter around him. ‘Perhaps I should give her lessons so that next time she can actually hit her target?’

If Anne-Marie were here now she’d be everywhere at once, striding smugly about the place with her blonde head held high and her shrill voice barking orders at everyone. She’d smile at James, who is the eldest brother of a king, albeit a dispossessed one, and therefore worth noticing then slide a small nod at me, whom she regards as a pathetic rival to her eminence as the most important princess at court. ‘They are going to put you in a convent,’ she whispered to me once at one of Queen Anne’s parties at the Louvre. ‘That’s what they do to poor princesses who can’t get a husband.’

‘She’s not so bad,’ James says and I see that he has noticed my clenched fists. I can’t help it; whenever I think of Anne-Marie I just want to punch something, preferably her face. ‘Besides, if Mam has her way, she’ll be our sister in law one day so we’ll all just have to get along, won’t we?’ For as long as I can remember, our mother has been plotting to marry Charles off to Anne-Marie, while blithely ignoring the marked lack of enthusiasm on the part of both parties.

I shudder at the thought of it. ‘It will never happen,’ I say. ‘Anne-Marie doesn’t like Charles. She says that he is too poor, too dark and too Scottish to please her.’ I begin to count the points off against my fingers. ‘Also his French is too bad, the English drink too much and she wouldn’t like Mam as a mother in law…’

‘And she is too Catholic to please him,’ James murmurs, turning away. ‘He’s no fool. He knows that if he marries a Catholic bride, as our father did and look how that turned out, then England will be lost to him forever.’

‘Too right,’ a familiar voice, warm as spiced rum on a winter’s evening says behind me and I turn with a squeal and hug Charles, who has come backstage with Harry beside him. ‘I fear I am destined to remain a bachelor forever as I don’t like the Protestant princesses from cold northern countries either.’

James laughs. ‘Cold hands, warm heart,’ he says, fanning his own heart with his long fingers.
Charles pulls a face. ‘Cold hands, cold everything,’ he replies with an eloquent shiver. ‘Anyway, brother, you are close to missing your cue. Cousin Philippe and his dandies are making eyes at you to join them.’ He frowns, his generous mouth turning downwards. ‘Or maybe they are just making eyes at you.’

James blushes, gives his stupid headdress one last pat then saunters off to join the other young men. Philippe turns to greet him with an arch look and for the first time I am struck by how alike they are with the same long noses, heavily lidded dark eyes and sardonically curving red lips. I think that our redheaded Jemmy is the better looking of the two though.

‘I should go back and do my duty,’ Charles says unhappily. ‘Did you know that this ballet is four hours long?’ he whispers to me. ‘Four hours of prancing and screeching and God only knows what other horrors are still to come.’ He looks at Harry and gives a rueful little shrug. ‘Mam is in Heaven though – she keeps saying that it reminds her of the mummeries they used to perform at Whitehall when we were but twinkles in Our Sainted Father’s eye and before the damned war put a stop to such frolics.’