Margaret the First Read Online Free Page A

called for a glass of wine, declared the chapel hot. And I, immediately struck by another summer fever, kept to my chamber the remainder of the season.

WHEN PRINCESS MARIE OF MANTUA MARRIED THE ANCIENT KING OF Poland (incontinent and crippled by gout), all Paris lined the streets to watch: mounted soldiers in Turkish jackets, their horses’ skin dyed red; footguards in yellow regalia; Polish seigneurs in a wealth of jewels, despite a lack of taste. Madame de Motteville reported that the foreigners slept in animal skins and wore no underclothes, but how she knew was what got everybody talking.
    Amid this din, Margaret Lucas became Margaret Cavendish in the ambassador’s private Parisian chapel. It was autumn. I wore gray. My hair in waves around my face and braided up at back. No other Lucas could be present, but Lady Browne fondly shed a sister’s worth of tears, and her daughter Mary carried a myrtle bouquet. Then out to the waiting carriage—horses stamping slick with rain—where William swiftly handed me up and sat down beside me, his wife.
    So began our journey, our life. But what does one say? What do? William sat in silence. I watched him warily from the edges of my sight. Had I erred? My thoughts slid over the morning as the embassy raced from view: my arrival, the vows, the giving of rings, the proclamation, the blessings. But no, I’d hardly said three words. And with another glance—his salt-and-pepper beard, his broad-brimmed hat—I clicked through stories I’d read or heard, of husbands, cruel and cold, who changed after the wooing. One who was handsome but mean. One who never listened. One who threatened to boil his lady’s pug in a pot. Then William turned to face me. He took my hands from my lap. “My circumstances in exile,” he began, “my situation, you see, is not what it is back home.” And my fingers relaxed in his. I was far more worried about causing offense than being offended myself.
    In England, as I surely knew—“Damned awkward to speak of money, and yet”—in England he could boast two noble estates. There was Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire—with its avenue of fir trees and swans upon the lake—where he was Marquess of Newcastle and I now Marchioness. And not a day’s ride to the west sat the ancient castle of Bolsover, on a gentle slope, turreted and thick with scented vines. “Once,” he said, “I spent £20,000 entertaining the king for a week. What quantities of wine we drank and game we shot!” But now, well. In France, you see. “In short,” William said, “I’m poor.” Poorish .
    Too, in certain circles, in certain courtly circles, among certain younger courtiers, “I’m thought of these days as a bit of an also-ran, a nit.” The troops he’d commanded so thoroughly routed at Marston Moor, where my brother had been captured. “Damn Scots!” William spat, and I diverted my gaze to low-hanging wooden signboards swinging over shops. It had not been any error of his. Details would emerge. History would know his worth. “To come to the matter,” he said, “our situation will improve.” There was no point at all on which I should trouble myself. Only steel my ears against gossip. This war would soon be over.
    Then a bang of thunder upset the horses and the carriage began to tip—around a corner with two wheels on the ground, water creeping in through seams—a dive! a plunge! a sag! a wreck!—but all was right in seconds, all four wheels on the ground. A current of wet Parisians passed outside the glass. “For now,” he said, replacing his fallen hat, “we will live in the rented wing of a house, yet a graceful château and just beyond the city gate.”
    As if on cue, that gate appeared, damp and gray as all Paris, my dress. A regiment of birds strutted blackly at its base. Rain, rain, as far as the eye could see. A drop fell into my lap.
    It was: the gate, those crows, some soggy lindens, a fountain, and I was home.

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