A Desperate Fortune (33 page)

For as it stands, so Mr. M— remarked, the prince is left to guide the king and princess through the forest when he might have spared himself the effort, which he said in such a tone I knew he was not serious, for though we all must be indeed a weight upon him, he appears to carry it with ease, as he does everything.

I wasn’t the best at detecting emotional interplay, and I’d admittedly missed all the signs that Luc said showed MacPherson had fallen for Mary, but even I was aware of the quietly growing rapport between Mary and the Highlander. In the fortnight they’d spent stuck there waiting for Thomson to make his recovery, she’d written five times in her diary, and one of those entries was given entirely over to the day MacPherson had taken her into the city itself—to assist with translation while he bought supplies, or that at least had been Mary’s belief, though I knew as well as she did Madame Roy could have done that for him as well, and with less trouble on his part, for Mary still needed to ride the mule. But she’d had a splendid time from the sound of it, looking through the shops and stalls and admiring the ancient sights.

There is a most impressive tower and a temple and, against the southern city walls, an ancient amphitheater where the Romans set their warriors to fight with beasts and with each other, now so picturesquely run to ruins that I might have wandered all the day within it had not Mr. M— refused to let me wander. He is watchful of my ankle even though Madame Roy worked a Scottish charm upon it yestereve, tying three knots in a white linen thread that she held in her mouth while repeating a verse in her language, then winding the thread round my ankle where I am to leave it until it unravels itself. She says such a charm in the Highland tongue is called an oleless, or so it does sound to my ears, and will work without fail, and in truth I confess that already I feel an improvement, and will I feel sure be quite ready to walk on my own when we leave here a few days hence.

Summarizing all of this for Jacqui now, I said, “I haven’t gone beyond that, but I’m guessing that they’ll still be heading south.”

My cousin told me, “Yes, they’re going to Marseilles. I’ve done a bit of sleuthing myself this week.” It turned out she’d actually sent her assistant, the handsome and capable Humphrey, to Kew, to the National Archives, to search through their records for anything useful on Thomson. “Humphrey found a lot of letters flying back and forth between the government in London and the English ambassador in Paris, who had spies all over. Not the nicest people,” she pronounced them. “Keep your eyes open for any mention Mary might make in her diary of two Jacobites named Mr. Cole and Mr. Warren, in Marseilles.”

I jotted the names down. “Why?”

“Humphrey’s been reading their letters all week, and he thinks they’re both bastards. They shook Thomson’s hand and pretended to be his friend,” Jacqui said, “while they betrayed him.”

Now, like a dreadful wave afar, appeared the ship…

—Macpherson, “Fingal,” Book Three

Marseilles

March 31, 1732

“Mr. Warren.” Thomson shook the Irish banker’s hand with pleasure. “Kind of you to see us.”

“Mr.…Symonds, is it?”

Mary had expected him to be an older man, but he was somewhere between her own age and MacPherson’s, well dressed in the tidy immaculate way of most men who had dealings with money. She was glad she had taken the trouble to comb out her hair and repin it beneath the lace headdress she’d traded her spare pair of gloves for at Nîmes.

His office was in the Cours, the broad main street of Marseilles, which ran perfectly straight and was lined with twin rows of tall trees that lent shade to the benches and fountains beneath them. Mary had a clear view of the street and those trees from the chair that the banker held graciously out for her, close to the window.

He turned to his clerk. “Would you be so kind as to go call on Mr. Thomas Cole and ask him if he’s able to attend us? Thank you.”

When the clerk had gone, the banker closed the door and turned to them and smiled. “Now then, Mr. Thomson, let us have a proper introduction, sir. I’m glad to meet you.” As they shook hands for a second time he added, “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived in town. I had expected, you see, that you’d come down through Avignon, and having business myself there just lately I tarried awhile there in anticipation of your coming. But you did not come through Avignon?”

MacPherson, standing quietly behind them, gave the answer. “No.”

“I see.” The young man looked up at the Scotsman with a quick assessing eye and wisely chose not to pursue the matter. “Are there only three of you?”

“Four, actually,” said Thomson. “We’ve a maid, who’s stayed to watch our things this morning. And our dog.”

“You have a dog as well?” The Irishman raised both his eyebrows slightly as though not sure how to manage such a curious assemblage. “Never mind, I’m sure we’ll find you something suitable. You wish to go by sea, I take it?”

“If we can. It will be quicker,” Thomson said.

“Indeed. And very much safer,” the banker replied. “You’ll avoid going through any other Dominions on your way to Rome, for ’tis sure the English ministers in Genoa and Leghorn have been told to keep a watch for you.”

MacPherson said, “We did not mention Rome.”

“Well no, you didn’t, fair enough. But that is where the king lives, is it not?” asked Warren. “Also, I’ve a letter from your banker, Mr. Wogan, writ from Paris with advice that if a package comes for you after you’ve left here, I’m to send it on to Rome. So I assumed.” His smile, self-deprecating, sought to charm, and seeing it had no effect upon the Scotsman he said in a mock aside to Thomson, “Has he always been this trusting?”

Thomson laughed. “Come now,” he told MacPherson, “surely we can let our guards down among friends. We’re all of the same party, and truly I’m weary of watching my back.”

Mary privately thought he could hardly have cause to complain or be weary, when Mr. MacPherson had been the one doing the watching for all of them. But she said nothing. Her mind had been all but consumed by that single word:
Rome
.

They were going to Rome.

Where the king was. And where her brothers and father had gone. Where her father was, still.

Mary kept her face turned to the window and gazed at the street without seeing it, hearing but little of what others said. She recovered herself for a moment to nod a polite greeting to Mr. Cole—Mr. Warren’s good friend and associate—when he came in, and she noticed the clerk had been sent off again on an errand to leave them in privacy, but beyond that she retained little interest for what else went on in the room.

She was vaguely aware they were speaking about the affair of the Charitable Corporation, and Thomson’s sad part in it, although there seemed to be differences in how he told the tale this time around, and those differences gradually drew Mary’s focus away from the window and back to the men.

“…and having the management of the whole, we contrived to bring up all the stock into our own hands with the Company’s money, and in that time got the stock augmented fivefold, to £600,000.”

“And how did you manage that?” Warren had leaned forward in his chair as though he found the story fascinating.

“Why, sir, as such things are always done. By bribing several members of Parliament to pass acts allowing it,” Thomson said drily. “Yet clearly we did not bribe widely enough, for we could not keep the directors of the great companies in London, who found our traffic a prejudice to their own, from persuading Parliament to enter into an examination of our Corporation’s affairs, by which means all our schemes were defeated and I obliged to come abroad.”

“A disappointment to you,” Mr. Cole commiserated.

“Yes, indeed. For had Parliament not interfered, I should soon have had in my hands four or five hundred thousand pounds with which to assist the king.”

“And how much have you now?”

Mary waited for Thomson to answer Cole’s question, trying to reconcile what he’d just said with the tale he had told her in Lyon, confused by the details that would not be matched. Glancing over her shoulder she saw that MacPherson was still standing stone-faced beside the room’s door, and she could not tell from his expression how much he himself knew about the affair.

Thomson smiled at Warren and Cole in his charming way. “Enough,” he told them both, “to get to Rome, if you can find a ship to carry us.”

Which brought them back to business.

In this, Mr. Warren deferred to his friend, who seemed better acquainted with all of the various ships in the harbor.

“I know a man, Vilere—a very good man, comes from Avignon, who is an officer of the galleys, and could possibly arrange—”

MacPherson cut him off. “No galleys.”

“Ah. Well then. I would not send you by felucca at this time of year, their crews are not so seaworthy and often unreliable, and you have women with you…” He thought for a moment. “There’s one ship might suit you quite well, though the captain’s a bit of a rogue.” To MacPherson, he said, “Have you any objection to sailing with Spaniards?”

“None.”

“Right. Let me see, then, what I can arrange for you.”

Thomson and Warren and Cole shook hands all round and Warren in parting asked once more, as though to be sure, “So you do not need money?”

Thomson assured him he did not. “But when I return, if I have any business, sir, rest assured you’ll be the first man to know it.”

The young banker found this of interest. “And when do you plan to return?”

But his clerk, having finished his errand, chose that exact moment to enter the room. Thomson said in a jovial tone, “Very soon, I should think, for we plan but to travel a few leagues from town and return hence as soon as we can before Easter week.”

Men and their secrets, thought Mary, as she rose to follow MacPherson and Thomson out into the sunlit street. Men and their lies. And yet…

She lifted her chin and the Scotsman looked down at her as she asked bluntly, “Was this the plan from the beginning, to take us to Rome?”

He replied, “Would it matter?”

To no one, she reasoned, except very possibly her. Nicolas had said, straight out, if anybody wanted something from their father, they would have to go to Rome to ask him. And perhaps her brother had been speaking more to her than to her cousin, when he’d said that. Just perhaps, this had been Nicolas’s and her father’s own design from the beginning. Mary dared to let a tiny seed of hope begin to try its roots within her at the thought that maybe, as she’d called to Frisque that morning, so her father was now calling her. And asking her to come to him.

* * *

That seed had grown yet larger by the afternoon, when Mr. Cole sent word for them to meet him at the quayside and be ready to depart.

“A ship,” said Effie, with a note of resignation in her voice. “It would be.”

Mary, neatly wrapping up her journal, felt deep sympathy. “It was too cruel of them,” she said, “to send you on this journey when you suffer so from motion.”

“No one sent me on this journey, dear. I asked to come. Do you have your other stockings? Those ones, aye.”

“But why?” asked Mary, as she passed the stockings over to be packed.

“Because you’ll need a dry pair close to hand, once we’re aboard the ship.”

“No, why would you have asked to come?”

“I had my reasons,” said the Scotswoman, and kept them to herself, as seemed increasingly to Mary to be something of a habit of the Highlands, for MacPherson too said next to nothing as they made their way down to the quayside.

Marseilles was a pretty town, built at the edge of the land with the sun shining hard to the south on the Mediterranean Sea, and the hills ringing all round behind with their dotting of villas and country estates. The long harbor, while not large, was made safe by sheltering rocks and at this hour of day was a bustling place with the breeze bearing scents of wet wood and warm canvas and salt from the sparkling sea. Tall ships idled and creaked at their moorings, some seeming impatient to leave while still others seemed peacefully slumbering, glad of the rest, while around and amidst them bobbed smaller boats carrying produce and merchandise, sailors and passengers, men of all races and languages mingled together.

For Mary, who had only read of such sights in the pages of books and imagined them in her own mind, this bewildered and thrilled her and filled her with wonder.

It was only when they had met Cole at a table with benches set near to a hut by the water, where they were served small cups of coffee by a man who wore, Mary saw to her horror, a fetter and chain on his leg, that she started to notice the other men like him who shuffled in chains, often linked two together, the chain borne between them, and all of them wearing some form of the same sorry uniform: red coats that looked more like peasants’ frock shirts, partway open in front and designed to be pulled on without any buttons; and coarse linen shirts and brown breeches and red caps to cover their heads, which appeared to be generally shaved.

“Galley slaves,” Cole explained, when he saw her reaction. “A common sight here, I’m afraid, and one that’s most distressing to we men—and ladies—born to British freedom, though I’m told there are but half as many galleys now as there were in the old king’s day.”

Mary took no comfort from that, for as she looked round the harbor she saw far too many ships with rows of dreadful oars set on their waterlines. So many ships that she knew for each pair of men she now saw laboring beneath their chains, there must be hundreds more imprisoned in the dark and crowded decks who had not even that small scrap of liberty.

Thomson answered smoothly, “British freedom is a drink that has a different taste depending where you’re served it. I suspect that what my countrymen have tasted would to you taste much like servitude.”

Which drew a glance from Effie that might well have been approval. It was difficult to know, with Effie. She sat to the table’s end, declining coffee for her stomach’s sake, in preparation for the trial by sea that was to come.

“Just so,” said Mr. Cole. “I’m sure I did not mean offense. ’Tis only that my friend Vilere, who long has been an officer aboard the galleys, tells me that our sentiment affords these men more sympathy and pity than they do deserve, for most of them are criminals so vile that in another Christian country they’d be put to death for what they’d done.”

“This is a death,” said Mary, with her gaze still on the galleys. “Slavery is a kind of death.”

“But see now, that is sentiment,” said Cole, to prove his argument. “And not all slaves are chained below and beaten. Some have leave to work at trades, you see their huts along the quay here. And this man, this Turk”—he nodded to the man who’d brought them coffee—“he was taken in a war, and so is treated better than the others, for the French would have his people see this when they come to port, in hopes the Turks will treat their own French prisoners in like fashion. He can work, and if he works hard he perhaps can save enough to pay his ransom, and return to his own homeland. So you see, you are quite wrong to let your sentiment paint everything a single shade of black.”

MacPherson, who till now had sat in stoic silence on the bench across from Mary, said, “She has a right to think as she decides.”

Her upward glance was only meant to show him she was grateful he’d defended her, but what she saw in his eyes when she met them put her in a great confusion, for in place of their accustomed frost-like calm she glimpsed a pain so deep and dark it was as if he’d briefly torn a bandage back to show a violent wound. It vanished even as she looked, but left her troubled.

Thomson said, “Come, let us speak of less afflicting things. Which is our ship?” He turned a little in his seat to view the tall, three-masted ship that Mr. Cole was pointing to.

Cole said, “That’s it. The
Princesa
Maria
.”

“A good name,” was Thomson’s opinion. He asked Mary, “Would you not agree, my dear?” His kind voice and warm eyes sought to restore the peace, an effort he extended now to Cole. He looked around and said, “I should imagine this is yet a very pleasant place to live.”

“It is. When you return, sir, you should think to settle here or someplace nearby where you might employ yourself in trade, for I do recommend it. That is, if you can remain here, unmolested in this kingdom.”

A man was approaching them.

Middle-aged, heavily built, with a brown coat and shiny brass buttons, he held out his hand to shake Cole’s and surprised them with English. “Well met, sir. Well met. And would these be my passengers?”

Mary’s first thought was that this man looked neither a rogue nor a Spaniard, but part of the mystery was solved when, as Mr. Cole started to make introductions, the man said, “No names on the quayside, sir. Captain forbids it. I daresay he’ll get them all sorted out once they’re on board. This is all of your baggage, then? Right. Come along.”

And with no more ceremony, they were gathered up and led along the quayside to the waiting ship, though Mary noticed that MacPherson, as the others took their leave of Mr. Cole, pressed something in the Turkish war slave’s hand that left that man staring dumbfounded at his open palm for half a minute afterwards.