Courting Her Highness_ The Story of Queen Anne - Jean Plaidy [138]
“I have had nothing but kindness and consideration from Masham. She has served me with greater care than any … yes any ever did before.”
“Since Mrs. Morley is so enamoured of this dirty chambermaid …”
The carriage had stopped at St. Paul’s and the door was being opened for the Queen and the Duchess to alight.
The Queen walked painfully towards the Cathedral, Sarah beside her.
“God Save the Queen!” shouted the crowd. Anne smiled her shortsighted but most appealing smile and lifted one of her hands to wave to them.
“A dirty chambermaid!” continued Sarah. “She has come into your bedchamber and poisoned your mind against all your best friends! It is a marvellous thing, and none would have thought you could be so duped. But it has happened!”
“I do not want to hear such things,” said Anne.
“But hear them you shall!” cried Sarah. “I was ever one to speak my mind. In the past you always said that you preferred my frankness to the subterfuge of others. You knew that when I said something I meant it. But it seems that has changed. You prefer a mealy-mouthed chambermaid who has nothing to say but ‘Yes, Madam,’ ‘No, Madam’—whatever you wish to hear. And all she asks in return is your permission to bring her dear friend Harley into the bedchamber to pour his lies into your willing ears. And Marlborough, the Commander-in-Chief of your armies, is nothing to you.”
They had reached the top of the Cathedral steps. The Queen was exhausted by the effort. She cried in a loud and agitated voice: “It is not true. It is not true.”
Several people looked startled and the Duchess being aware of this said in a voice which was heard by many standing close by: “Be silent. Don’t answer me now.”
There was a titter of astonishment as the Queen and the Duchess passed into the Cathedral.
Had they heard correctly? Had a subject actually given the Queen such a peremptory order and in public?
Surely not. But it was so. Many had heard it. It would have been incredible if the subject had not been the Duchess of Marlborough.
After the ceremony, Anne was exhausted; yet she could not shut out of her mind the peremptory voice of the Duchess of Marlborough telling her to be silent.
“This is too much,” she told herself. “This really is too much. I should be happy never to see her again.”
Masham tended her and helped her to bed. She did not speak of the matter, even to Masham, who was so discreet though she must have heard of it, for all London would be talking of it.
Sarah had not come to St. James’s. Perhaps she too understood that she had gone too far.
Sarah did in fact realize that she had been somewhat outspoken; also that many people must have heard the manner in which she addressed the Queen on the steps of the Cathedral. But it was true, she excused herself. And I will have truth.
She had received a letter from the Duke, for he always wrote to her in detail as soon as was possible after one of his battles, in which he said that he was sorry that the Queen no longer favoured the Duchess and himself and was fonder of Mrs. Masham than ever. He did not believe that there could be any happiness or quietness while this was so. It was not good for the country.
“There!” said Sarah to herself. “Is that not exactly what I have repeatedly told her.”
She immediately took up her pen and wrote to the Queen:
“I cannot help sending Your Majesty this letter, to show how exactly Lord Marlborough agrees with me in my opinion that he has now no interest with you, though when I said so in the church on Thursday you were pleased to say it was untrue!
“And yet I think he will be surprised to hear that when I had taken so much pains to put your jewels in a way that I thought you would like, Mrs. Masham could make you refuse to wear them in so unkind a manner, because that was a power she had not thought fit to exercise before.
“I will make no reflections on it, only that I must needs observe that Your Majesty chose