Courting Her Highness_ The Story of Queen Anne - Jean Plaidy [144]
“Your Grace has mentioned it.”
“And now she seeks to direct me.”
“That, Your Grace, would be quite impossible.”
“It is impossible!” cried Sarah.
At length she forced herself into the Queen’s presence. Anne was clearly fretful, playing with her fan, her eyes on the door, wondering, thought Sarah grimly, whether she can ask me to summon Masham. Dear Masham! Kind Masham! Who coos in her ear and gets favours for her good-for-nothing brother and ninny of a husband and … Sarah could have screamed in her rage … for that sly toad, that monster, that traitor Robert Harley.
“It would seem that Mrs. Morley sets out to frustrate me,” she cried. The Queen closed her eyes and looked tired.
“Even a simple matter of rooms …”
“If Mrs. Freeman has anything to say to me she may write it,” said the Queen.
“I have much to say to Your Majesty and I have been writing to you all through the years. It seems to me that Mrs. Morley has allowed herself to be deceived by those whose greatest pleasure is in doing harm to Mrs. Freeman.”
“If you have anything to say to me you may write it,” said the Queen.
She had her parrot cry and Sarah could see that she would not be tempted from it.
A pleasant state of affairs! What could she do with a woman like that? Her coolness was apparent and there were times when Anne could remind any subject—even Sarah—that she was the Queen.
So there was nothing Sarah could do but retire.
But she would not let the matter rest there. She had been told that if she had anything to say she could write it. If she had anything to say indeed! She had much to say to that ungrateful friend.
She therefore returned to her lodgings and set to work to write a long account of her twenty-six years’ service to the Queen. She quoted passages from Jeremy Taylor on the subject of friendship. She accused the Queen of infidelity and ingratitude. She surpassed even herself in her invective.
The Queen’s response to this missive was to express her grief. It was impossible for her to recover her former friendship towards Mrs. Freeman and her chief complaint against her was her inveteracy towards Mrs. Masham. She would however always treat Sarah with the respect due to the wife of the Duke of Marlborough. She would in time, read what Sarah had sent her, and give Sarah her reply.
That was all the answer Sarah could get. She waited for an answer to her accusations. None came.
And when she saw the Queen in church Anne smiled at her vaguely as she would towards any lady with whom she had a slight acquaintance.
That was an uneasy summer. It was being said that the war was being prolonged unnecessarily by a faction with Marlborough at its head; and that the sole reason was that the Duke might continue to indulge his love of war.
His brilliant victories had reduced the French to a great desire to put an end to the carnage; Louis would consider terms, but those put forward were not acceptable. He had agreed to banish the Pretender—and his protection of James Stuart was one of the main reasons for the war—to acknowledge the Protestant succession in England, to demolish Dunkirk as a fortress and grant a protective frontier to the Dutch. There was one demand he could not accept and that was to gather an army and send it to drive his grandson from the Spanish throne.
“If it is necessary to make war,” said Louis, “I would prefer to fight my enemies than my children.”
This was a sentiment which all could understand and the war-weary English were more in sympathy with the old enemy than their own victorious Duke.
Then came the news of the victory of Malplaquet.
Marlborough had done it again. “He is invincible!” cried Sarah when she heard the news. “Now Mrs. Morley will see that she cannot ignore the wife of the greatest commander on Earth.”
But when the Queen saw the results of the battle and the tremendous slaughter of her countrymen, for the allies’ losses were 25,000 and although the French had lost the battle they had not lost nearly as many men.
“How long must this