Whitehall--Season One Volume One Read online

  Whitehall Season One, Volume One Copyright © 2016 text by Serial Box Publishing, LLC.

  All Rights Reserved, including the right of reproduction, in whole or in part, in any audio, electronic, mechanical, physical, or recording format. Originally published in the United States of America: 2016.

  For additional information and permission requests, write to the publisher at 175 Varick St. 4th Fl. New York, NY 10014

  Serial Box™, Serial Box Publishing™, and Join the Plot™ are trademarks of Serial Box Publishing, LLC.

  ISBN: 978-1-68210-123-0

  This literary work is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, incidents, and events are the product of imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Written by: Liz Duffy Adams, Mary Robinette Kowal, Madeleine Robins, Barbara Samuel, Delia Sherman, Sarah Smith

  Cover Design by: Ellice Lee

  Lead Writer: Liz Duffy Adams

  Editor: Heather Lazare

  Producers: Racheline Maltese and Molly Barton

  Whitehall original concept by Liz Duffy Adams

  Episode 1: Embarkations

  by Liz Duffy Adams and Delia Sherman

  May 1662

  The Infanta Catarina of Braganza rode toward Lisbon Harbor through streets of celebration. Bells rang and pennants snapped in the spring sunshine. What looked to be the whole population of the capital lined the streets and hung from the bridges and leaned out the windows, cheering and singing and throwing bouquets of wildflowers under the wheels of the coaches to perfume her passage and bid her farewell.

  After long negotiation, the English king and his English ships stood with Portugal against the might of Spain. The people were safe from the hardships and depredations of war. And it was Catarina who had saved them, by becoming Queen of England.

  Catarina sat very straight, her back not touching the gold silk cushions, her gaze on the coachman’s liveried back, her expression (she hoped) dignified. Behind the stiff bodice of her gown, her heart beat painfully—from grief, from pride, from excitement, she hardly knew which. The shouts of her people rang in her ears: L’Inglês! L’Inglês! Viva o rei da Grã Bretanha! Viva a Infanta!

  Her brother, King Alfonso, lounged upon the seat beside her, throwing smiles at the pretty girls waving from tapestry-hung balconies. Despite his neat beard and gold-laced hat, he looked very little like a king, she thought, and very much like a boy on the edge of manhood—a mixture of uncertainty and braggadocio wrapped in watered silk and jewels. She was going to miss him. To her, he was still the wide-eyed child she’d dandled when she was six, before he was struck by the mysterious illness that had robbed him of the use of one arm and his sweet temper, leaving him prone to fits of rage. Even now, at eighteen, he was much given to brawling, to sudden extremes of passion, to fast company, to drinking and loose women and . . .

  “How your people love you, sister,” he told her now, his own teeth flashing under his narrow mustache. “See how they rejoice in your joy!”

  On the facing seat, her youngest brother, Dom Pedro, snorted. Even at thirteen, he showed signs of being as ambitious as their mother Queen Luisa, who had pushed their father to revolt against the Spanish and declare himself king of an independent Portugal. He was nearly as wild as his older brother, if more circumspect in his roistering.

  Now he said, “They’re rejoicing that the Spanish army retreated as soon as the English warships sailed into Lisbon Harbor. They haven’t seen enough of Catarina to know if they love her or not.”

  “Of course they love her,” the king said. “How could they not? She has saved Portugal.”

  He cast Catarina his charming smile. She pressed her lips tightly together and prayed silently as the nuns had taught her, until the urge to weep had passed.

  A queen does not weep, her mother had murmured as they embraced on the palace steps. A queen holds her head high and does that which God has given her to do—her duty. And so I do, Catarina thought, and so I will, with the help of Mary and the blessed saints.

  A spray of jacaranda, newly blossomed and smelling of honey and sunlight, landed in the stiff folds of her wide skirt. Did they have jacaranda in England?

  Alfonso picked it up and thrust it at her. “Wave to them!” he insisted, much agitated. “Let them see your joy! As your king, I command it!”

  Catarina took the branch. “All right, dearest. Yes, all right. I will. Watch me.”

  She took a deep breath of jacaranda-scented air. Her head was ringing with the noise, her heart swelling with love. Love for her wayward little brothers. Love for the formidable mother who had bid her farewell at the palace, straight-backed and serene, the only sign of what the parting cost her the trembling in her lips against Catarina’s forehead as she blessed her. Love for Lisbon, for Portugal, for the father she missed so painfully.

  Catarina turned from her brothers and leaned toward the window, letting the sun fall full on her face. She raised the spray of jacaranda and tossed it out to the people crowding the route, saw a woman catch it and brandish it, her round face triumphant. The crowd’s cheers swelled; her own name battered her ears. She found herself smiling at them through a blur of unqueenly tears, smiling at her people, whom she was about to leave forever.

  • • •

  The procession moved on through the streets, slow and stately as clouds across the sky. As it emerged into yet another crowded, noisy square, Dõna Maria de Portugal, Condessa de Penalva, adjusted her black silk fan to keep the sun from her eyes.

  The coach lurched and the scent of oranges filled the air. Dõna Maria clutched her rosary and prayed for patience. Though processions were a necessary part of court life, she hated them and avoided them when she could. Dõna Maria was notably shortsighted, and public processions meant shouting crowds that made her head ache and sights that went by in a brilliant blur. She preferred the shadowy rooms of court and convent, where the days unrolled in a predictable round of tasks, meals, walks in the garden, and prayers measured out by the tolling of church bells.

  Will there be bells in England? she wondered. Will there be peace?

  Beside her, her brother Dom Francisco de Mello, Conde de Ponte, ambassador extraordinary to the Court of Charles II of England, nodded and waved cheerfully.

  Francisco had always liked people and balls and entertainments and light and noise, provided they did not involve gunpowder or swords or angry shouting. He had ever been one to conciliate and bargain and flatter, more like a shopkeeper, their father had said, than a scion of a noble house. On this point, if on few others, Dõna Maria had always secretly agreed with her noble parent. Diplomats might be necessary, but they were not truly manly.

  “You might,” Dõna Maria observed acidly, “have the decency to appreciate my sentiments on this occasion.”

  The dark oval of his face turned, shaded by the cloud of plumes affixed to his stiff-brimmed hat. “Dear Maria,” he said with what sounded like genuine affection. “How like our poor mother you sound, may she rest with the saints!”

  Dõna Maria sketched a cross on her black silk bosom. “Amen, though I fear you only mean to tease.”

  “Indeed, sister, you make too much of a little thing,” Dom Francisco said. “The journey will last a fortnight only, if the seas be smooth. And if they are not, well, the Lord Admiral is a doughty sailor and has made this voyage before with no loss of life or limb. Why, I myself have endured it half a dozen times and you see I have taken no harm.”

  Except, Dona Maria thought, to acquire a vocabulary of English words you refuse to translate. She said, “But you have always sa
iled back again. I sail to return no more, leaving home and the graves of our ancestors and my husband behind me.”

  Her brother’s plump, cheerful face came into clear focus as he leaned over her wide farthingale to pat her hand. “I do know, sister. I honor you for your courage and, above all, for your devotion to our Infanta.”

  Pleased, but unwilling to show it, Dõna Maria took refuge in dignity. “I know my duty, I hope,” she said. “As does the Infanta. It is only,” she continued almost in spite of herself, “that we will be surrounded by godless Protestants, who drink ale at breakfast, I think you said, and eat roast beef on feast days.” She shook her head. “I fear for our immortal souls, living in such a barbaric land.”

  The coach rumbled forward a few yards before Dom Francisco answered her. “Not so barbaric, dear sister, except for the climate, which I grant you is unspeakable—cold and damp as the worst of winter nearly all the year. But the English are God’s children no less than we. It’s true their manners are more free than ours, to be sure. Ladies and gentlemen kiss upon greeting, which I confess I find charming. The king is mad for dancing and sport and theater—there are entertainments nearly every night.”

  Dõna Maria’s heart sank. Entertainments every night! But for little Catarina, the daughter of her heart, she could bear worse torments than glaring torches and unfamiliar faces. After all, she would have the familiar faces of the queen’s ladies, her tapestry work, and—most comforting of all—the rituals of her faith to sustain her. As would Catarina, if only she were allowed.

  Her gaunt fingers clutched her beads. “When will her highness have a moment to hear the holy office, among all these entertainments?”

  “There will be time.” Dom Francisco’s voice was firm. “It is in the marriage agreement, along with a chapel in each house where she resides, for her use and her ladies’. All will be well, sister. I swear to you.”

  Another turn brought the coach into a broad plaza full of light and heat and noise. Dõna Maria shaded her eyes with her fan and sighed deeply.

  “Take heart, Maria,” Dom Francisco said gently. “This is a moment of triumph—for the house of Braganza and for all of Portugal.”

  “And I suppose,” Dõna Maria snapped, “that you take all the credit upon yourself?”

  Teeth flashed in the sunlight as her brother grinned. “It would be no more than my due if I did. Five years I worked on this marriage, five years of sea voyages and tasteless food and delicate conversations where nothing was said and all was implied. Five years of waiting for England to come to her senses and restore Charles to his rightful throne, and once they did, persuading him that our Infanta would be a richer and more advantageous match than any Protestant princess in Europe. Yes, I labored long to bring this day to pass, and this”—his gesture encompassed the trumpets and shouting, the colors and the flowers—“pays, and more than pays, for all.”

  Dõna Maria would not be distracted from her grievance. “Such promises you made him! A dowry of five million gold crusadoes!”

  “The richest dowry ever brought by a princess to England,” her brother said happily.

  “You must know the queen regent can never pay the half of such a sum, not and keep up the army!”

  “It was she who suggested it,” said Dom Francisco.

  And now Dõna Maria came to the source of her greatest fear. “But what if King Charles should take offense at the spices and sugar we have sent him instead of gold and send the Infanta packing back again?”

  “What if the sun were to set in the east?” Dom Francisco replied. “Do not forget that we have given him the ports of Tangier and Bombay as well, which will bring him gold enough once trade is established. Charles is a fair man, Maria. His word, once given, is given forever. Let the Infanta only set foot in England, and she’s as good as wed. Why, she’s as good as wed already. Did you not see the letter, writ in his own hand, calling her his wife and queen?”

  She had, for Catarina had shown it to her, as was proper, along with a miniature portrait of a long-faced man who looked more like a Spaniard than like any Englishman the Condessa de Penalva had seen. Catarina had treated both portrait and letter with reverence, hanging the one around her neck and carrying the other next to her breast. Poor child, was she hoping to fall in love with this florid monarch, with his dark curls and his petulant mouth? Did she expect him to love her in return, as her father and mother had loved, living and ruling in harmony?

  But love, as Dõna Maria well knew, was the exception in noble families. She herself had not positively disliked her husband, and had felt great affection for her children when they were small. But her duties at court and her service to the Infanta had transformed them all to polite strangers who bowed and murmured upon meeting. Now her husband was dead, and all her devotion and her love belonged first to the Blessed Mother and Holy Church, and then to her royal mistress, the Infanta Catarina de Braganza. Whom she had brought up to be mild and obedient, and who knew nothing of men and their ways.

  • • •

  Time, that had plodded like a tired horse through the endless ceremonies of dressing and the public farewell, the high mass at the Cathedral of São Jorge, and the long, slow procession through the city, seemed to stop, then speed to a canter. The crowd fell away as the royal coach broke from the line and entered the pier the king had caused to be built for the occasion.

  They rolled briskly through a newly laid garden, and then the coach had stopped and Catherine was alighting from it, half-defeated by trumpets and cheering. A moment later she was in the royal barge, sitting between her brothers, gliding over the sparkling water toward the towering bulk of the English flagship the Royal Charles. A moment of uncertainty as the Lord Admiral himself, the Earl of Sandwich, tall and broad as a peasant, assisted her onto the swaying companionway. The shock and noise of the salute of twenty-seven guns, fired in her honor. Alfonso’s exclamations when he saw her cabin, furnished all in carved and gilded wood and draped in crimson damask and velvet. The sudden silence as he realized at last that his sister was leaving, and that it was unlikely that he would ever see her again.

  A queen may not weep, but a king may, and did.

  A knock at the door heralded Lord Sandwich, who made a reverence and said that it was time for His Majesty and Dom Pedro to return to shore. He knew no Portuguese, but his Spanish was good, if hesitant. She wondered, not for the first time, how well her husband spoke Spanish. His written language was correct, though a little stiff.

  Catarina touched her royal brother’s embroidered sleeve. “I will go up and see you off.”

  Alfonso, pale and solemn, shook his head. “You must keep to the cabin, among your ladies, sister. Mamãe would say it is not proper for you to show your face on deck.”

  “What have you ever cared for what Mamãe would say?” she asked.

  “I care now,” he said, and left, taking Dom Pedro with him.

  Catarina ran to the great gallery window to watch their departure. Realizing that the bulk of the ship blocked her view, she hurried to the door and out into the corridor, ignoring the shocked cries of her ladies.

  She gained the deck as the royal barge was drawing away from the ship. Her brothers stared up at her from the stern of the barge. Dom Pedro smiled, but the king’s face showed signs of a coming storm. “Go below at once!” he shouted. “Your king commands it!”

  “No doubt Your Majesty will wish to pray for the health of His Majesty King Alfonso and the Infante Dom Pedro.” It was Dõna Maria, slightly breathless, standing at her elbow.

  “Yes, of course,” Catarina said. But still she lingered, looking with greedy eyes upon the city of Lisbon—the welter of warehouses and boats along the quays, the church towers raising their crosses above the tumble of red tile roofs, the Castle of São Jorge on the hill, the flags flying—and the golden barge carrying her brothers out of her sight forever. Then she turned and led her duenna back to her cabin.

  A little while later, Catarina knelt beside
her confessor, Father Patrick, the polished ebony and silver beads of her rosary slipping through her fingers to the accompaniment of shouts and the heavy rattle of chain as the anchor was weighed. She clutched the ebony beads tightly, struggling to keep her countenance. Portugal depended on her. Her household depended on her. She was a queen now. She would not give way.

  The ship rocked and swayed. More shouting, more rattling. Father Patrick’s prayers grew louder and his Irish accent more pronounced.

  Lord Sandwich entered hatless, his beard and hair ruffled. “The wind has turned against us, Your Majesty. We cannot leave Lisbon Bay until it shifts again.”

  Catarina closed her eyes briefly, hardly knowing whether her sudden dizziness was relief or disappointment. “It is in the hands of God,” she said, and pressed her rosary to her lips.

  She sat by the long gallery window, filling her eyes and her soul with the sight of Lisbon Harbor, sewing, praying, listening to her ladies chatter. She was sitting down to dinner when she received a note from her mother: “Winds shift without warning. You are England’s now. We will not meet again.”

  When darkness fell, she watched the water carnival Alfonso had hastily arranged for her entertainment. Enchanted, she sat on the quarterdeck, watching rockets and squibs of white and colored fire roar across the dark heavens.

  Queens do not weep, at least not where anyone can see them. But when the red damask curtains of her great carved bed were drawn, Catarina shed quiet tears of grief and frustration.

  Next day, the winds continued contrary. That evening, the king and Dom Pedro rowed out on barges with drunken young nobles and all the court musicians to serenade her with viols and guitars. When they played songs composed in honor of her coming marriage, she could not hide her tears, and even the Condessa, stern taskmistress as she was, forbore to chide her.

  On the third morning, the winds relented. As Catarina sat in her silken pavilion, her face toward England, she felt the Royal Charles surge beneath her like a spirited horse, bearing her to her husband’s arms. She touched her breast, where she carried his letter next to her heart. My Lady and Wife, it began, and although his tone was formal enough to please even her mother’s sense of propriety, he had expressed longing to see her beloved person in his kingdoms and signed it The very faithful husband of Your Majesty, whose hand he kisses.