Now Face to Face (103 page)

The truth was, she was ready to leave all the scheming and machination, except that she had a new love, tiny, only a month old. Her brother. Someone was waiting for her in France: one Lucius, Viscount Duncannon, who asked her to come and visit his mother.

The trial against Rochester was going on; it was all people talked of, as Rochester refuted each and every charge against himself. He’d be banished, however, that was certain.

No word yet from Jane. Lord Bolingbroke, the great traitor, had been pardoned. Ten thousand pounds made him traitor no more.

She sat in this amazing cave Pope had built in his garden along the Thames, pieces of shell and stone glittering into the twilight this grotto made, waiting to meet the one who was the new head of the Jacobites. Life unfurled like a many-petaled flower. Which path did she take?

You have to do nothing but listen, Philippe had said. He was her ally now, because of Walpole. He schemed and planned for her as if she were his daughter. Don’t leave the King’s household, he said. We need you there. Barbara tossed her head. If you go, said Philippe, I will see you made lady-in-waiting to the new Queen of France. That will serve my purpose just as well.

The new leader of the Jacobites, Philippe said, was Rochester’s chief adviser in all this, one of the original planners of the plot, a longtime ally whom King James could not do without.

She heard footsteps, bit her lip.

Her grandmother’s last words to her before leaving for Tamworth had been to keep her heart. There was a rustle of skirts, the sound of bracelets jangling, ten bracelets if there was one. Startled, Barbara looked over to Philippe.

“Never mind looking like that, Bab,” said Aunt Shrew. “You and I have talking to do. Go away now, Prince, and leave us be.”

Q
UIET, WAITING,
Blackstone squatted, listening, the way the slaves had taught him. Even so, Kano heard before he did, and touched his arm with a finger. Blackstone stood and watched the man stepping out into the clearing. He was older, heavy, his face tired, haggard; there was quite a party of people with him, back in the trees: a woman his age, a younger woman great with child, a tall, stooped man, and at least four children, all of them travel worn, with that look that came from crossing over in a ship, landing in a strange land, a fierce and forested land.

“Jacobite,” the letter this older man had brought to him yesterday said. Blackstone knew the writing at once. It was the same writing that had made him a freed man. “I send you my dearest friends…trial…escape…secrecy and care…settle them beyond the Huguenots.”

I am Sir John Ashford, the man said, and my telling you that puts my life in your hands, or it will when ships with the news of the London Jacobite trials arrive, but Lady Devane told me I could trust you. We’ve been hiding since we arrived. It has taken us days to make our way to you. My daughter is near her childbirth. We are so tired. Can you help us?

“Help them,” Lady Devane wrote.

Well, of course. That was what friends were for.

Blackstone stepped out from his hiding place, smiling, teeth bold in his wild beard.

“Well, now, Mr. John Ashford, just what is it I can do for you?”

P
URGE ME
with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.

Epilogue

T
WO
Y
EARS
L
ATER
: 1725

T
HE LINES FROM THE SLAVE SONG FLEW IN AND OUT OF
T
HÉRÈSE’S
head, with the same quickness, the same darting motion of the purple thread she drew in and through the fold of material in her hand. She was embroidering flowers, violets, dozens of them, all along a sleeve. I want violets, Thérèse, Madame had written, all along the hem and sleeve. She desired violets. She would have them. It was her wedding gown Thérèse made, with all the joy and skill her hands and mind could command.

The dead are not dead, went the slave song in her mind.

“Someone to see you.” A fellow servant stood at the door.

Carefully, Thérèse set aside the folds of material, to follow the servant to the great kitchen of Leicester House. She was a favorite now, among the servants and with the Princess. But another year, perhaps two, and there would be the coins for her own shop. Come to Paris, Madame wrote. You can have a shop as easily in Paris as you can in London.

“Outside,” said the servant. “He said he’s been sent here by the Duke of Tamworth.”

Thérèse peered out a window. A gaunt boy stood there, clothes ragged enough to belong to a beggar. It seemed to her that her heart stopped beating a moment, so that she hadn’t the strength to pull open the door. But then strength came, and joy.

T
HE
D
UCHESS
sat dozing on her terrace. Leaning against a large stone vase, Tim watched over her. She was dreaming, a wonderful dream. June, thought the Duchess in her dream. She liked the month of June. Richard’s roses bloomed like mad things. Down the avenue of limes came Sir John Ashford, in a cart, with a young woman and children beside him. The Duchess smiled. It was the only time she saw her friend now, in dreams. There’d been a letter this year, from Virginia, from a Mr. John, who sent her a hogshead of his tobacco with his compliments.

“Look, Your Grace,” said Tim, in the dream, “who is coming down the lane. It is Sir John and Mrs. Cromwell. Shall I tell Cook to put on the kettle?”

Long ago, Harry and Jane had courted in the apple orchard. They thought she did not know, she who knew everything that happened at Tamworth. They had been in love. Calf love. Coming to nothing. Harry was dead. And Jane now, too, Mr. John had written. How Barbara had grieved. They had all grieved; even Tony, colder than ever now, even Tony was touched. Did you help with the escape? he’d asked her in that month or two afterward when it was all anyone talked of, before Walpole had his trial of the Bishop, and talk shifted to that. No, she could say truthfully. Others did, she did not say, but he knew. How could he not?

Sir John and the occupants of the cart waved cheerfully to her as the cart and its horse rattled to a stop in the pebbled courtyard at the front of the house. What good things dreams were. Here, now, Jane was alive and well.

“He has brought his grandchildren,” she said to Tim. They were as she remembered them the last time she saw them, the winter of Gussy’s escape. “Have Perryman send them here. Children ought to be outside on a evening like this one.”

The soft dusk and the smell of roses would bless them. She knew what children needed. Yes, she did. Once she had had three sons. And they had grown from little boys to young men who towered over her, and now she watched over their graves the way she had once watched over their cradles, and in the fullness of time, such no longer seemed a curse, but rather a blessing. She had loved her sons. That love was in her heart still. No death could take it away. Loss made a body afraid to love again, but in the end there was nothing else but love…. “Charity,” wrote St. Paul, “beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things…. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

She had thought she would die when they had died, but she had not…. “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”…She visited the many graves of those gone and felt only tenderness and gratitude to have had them for as long as she had…. “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”…Love.

“It will do you no good to close your eyes and pretend to doze,” said John, her beloved friend. How she missed him. “I am here to visit, and you cannot ignore me.” He gave her a hearty smack on the cheek. “Amelia, Thomas, Winifred, come and show Her Grace your manners. Not that they have many.”

She smiled at what was in his voice, and as Dulcinea leaped up and away from her lap, the Duchess looked at the trio bowing and curtsying to her. Then Jane walked forward, Harry Augustus in her arms. There was another, the one she’d borne in Virginia, but they must have left it there. Jane looked all of fourteen—perhaps she
was
fourteen. After all, this was a dream. Jane leaned down to kiss her.

“Your father wrote me you’d died,” the Duchess said.

“Yes.”

“I am so very sorry. Barbara was wild when she heard it. She left the King’s service, took herself off to France. She is marrying a colonel in the French army, wants me to come to the wedding. I’m too old, but she says she will come and fetch me herself, or send Colonel Perry to do so.”

Annie grieved, too, the Duchess did not say. It was one of the only times the Duchess had seen Annie weep, the day they received the letter from Virginia.

“A wedding; how lovely,” said Jane. “Tell her I will be there, blessing her.”

Yes, of course she would. Once the Duchess would never have believed such a thing, but now she knew it was true. Those we loved were all around us, blessing us.

Perryman and Tim were bringing armchairs out to the terrace, and another footman was carrying a small dark table. Annie came forward with a huge silver tray, and there was tea and milk and lemon tartlets and warm, freshly baked bread and Tamworth butter and honey and preserves. All became children and noisy confusion as Jane settled her three oldest ones onto the terrace, and Annie spread great white napkins into their laps.

When the children were finished, mounds of crumbs and spilled milk on the terrace, Tim offered to take them onto the lawn to play in the dusk.

“Tell me all your news.” The Duchess served herself a huge lemon tartlet in spite of the look Annie gave her. You ought to have been dead years ago, Annie would say tonight, when the Duchess would suffer from wind. Bah. Annie was a stubborn old stick. Paris, said Annie. I’d like to see it. Ridiculous to think they could travel to Paris. Tony was going. Do you think I would miss Barbara’s wedding? he said, but something in his face warned the Duchess. Family. They never behaved. Tony rose in the King’s esteem. He was not a minister yet, but he would be. He allied himself with those who opposed Walpole, open in his disdain of the man.

“I farm beyond the falls, beyond the Huguenot settlement. It is good, rich land. I had my first crop of tobacco last year,” John said.

As well she knew. He’d sent her a hogshead. The tobacco was labeled “Friendship.” It was the name of his farm.

From the lawn came screams of delighted horror, and everyone turned to see. Tim had become a monster and was pursuing the three children. But he was a monster with a broken leg, and he dragged it slowly behind him, and the children screeched with pleasure and ran around him in circles, and he waved his arms at them, coming so close, trying to catch them, but always missing.

The Duchess shivered under her light shawl. In the house, Perryman was lighting candles. I must go now, thought the Duchess, loath to give up her dream, her time with John and Jane. Tonight I will lie in my bed and think of this dream and remember the smell of Richard’s roses, the bittersweetness of this moment as my friend’s grandchildren play on my lawn, and his beloved daughter sits nearby.

“Me!” screamed Amelia, daring Tim. “You cannot catch me!”

Suddenly Tim’s leg was well, and he grabbed her, and she pierced the air with her bloodcurdling shrieks as he picked her up and tossed her high before catching her again.

“They will sleep like logs tonight,” Jane said. In her arms, the baby, Harry Augustus, began to cry at the sound of his sister’s screams. Sir John stood up and held out his arms for him, and Jane gave the child to his grandfather, who walked down the wide steps of the terrace, patting the child’s back and speaking softly to him.

“I did not want you to die,” the Duchess said.

She died with us all around her, John had written. She was never alone, not a moment, in her dying, which is my only consolation. She could not get back her strength from the journey and the childbirth. She tried, but she could not. She was never strong.