Now Face to Face (27 page)

“Queen Catherine screamed, ‘Forgive me, hear me, my lord!’” the Prince was saying. “But the guards dragged her back to her rooms. Her husband, Henry VIII, in the Chapel Royal, must have heard her, but there was no forgiveness in him. Off came her head—” The Prince made an abrupt, chopping motion with his hand, and several ladies squealed and clutched the arm of the man nearest them.

The Princess thought: She ought to have learned the lesson of her predecessor Anne Boleyn. Anne’s badges and initials could be seen in the carvings of the vast great hall of Hampton.

“The moral:”—the Prince held up a pedantic finger—“Put not your trust in princes.” Then he burst into one of his maniacal brays of laughter.

Everyone laughed with him, even those who had heard the tale before. Even those who had not heard the tale but had been listening to the music.

On the shore, people stopped to watch the royal barge, stately as a swan in its progress through the river. The men doffed their hats. The women curtsied, the white of their aprons bright against the sun. But there were no cheers. Not anymore. Once there had been—for the Princess if not for the Prince or his father. But now no faces were wreathed in smiles and goodwill. The names of those gone, disgraced, or dead this last year rolled through the Princess’s mind: Aislabie; Craggs; Stanhope; Knight; Devane, her oh-so-charming Roger.

All of the royal family was tainted with the smudge of scandal: the Prince, as a former governor of the South Sea Company; the King, as governor of the company; the King’s mistress, the Duchess of Kendall; and his ministers for bribes and special favors. “If we manage through the winter and spring,” Robert Walpole had said to them—how they all hung on his words at St. James’s Palace—”your house will survive.”

Walpole was a large, clumsy, hearty caricature of an English squire, with a ridiculous moon face and dark, overgrown eyebrows and a big belly. He had bluffed and cajoled and threatened and compromised, and somehow—by talk, by intricate parliamentary procedure, by knowing when to give and when to stand fast—kept the Commons, that dangerous English breeding ground of trouble, from outright rebellion. There had been talk of rebellion everywhere this last year. The kingdom was trembling and spent, angry at the wrong it considered the South Sea Bubble, and blaming those who ruled, partly because they were foreign. Rebellion. The Princess shivered.

The English, the King said, shaking his head. They cut off Charles I’s head. They asked his son, Charles II, to return from exile to rule them, but disliked his brother, James, so they invited William of Orange to invade, to rid themselves of James when his policies frightened them. The English are capable of great treachery.

Walpole will not last six months as minister to my father, he is that despised by the people of England, the Prince had told her just the other day. The Prince despised Walpole, too. My father will dismiss him to make the people happy. Put not your trust in princes, even when you save them.

The barge had landed. Two gentlemen of the Princess’s household leaped out as it bumped into the bank near the small stone banqueting house that had been William of Orange’s baroque addition to Hampton Court. The musicians continued to play as everyone rose from their benches and chairs. The Prince helped Diana to her feet, as his official mistress, Mrs. Howard—not to mention his wife—sat just yards away.

John Hervey was offering his hand to the Princess. She smiled at him and allowed him to escort her into the summerhouse, where she sat down upon a gilded, embroidered armchair. Everything was noise and bustle as the Prince’s equerry called out orders, and servants rushed forward, and ladies and bedchamber women and gentlemen of the household hurried off to see all was ready to receive them.

The walls and ceiling of the banqueting house had been painted by Verrio in an enticing, lush series of scenes of the arts and of the god Jupiter and his lovers. The Princess stared at naked arms and legs, flowers and clouds, swans and bulls, mounds of bellies and breasts, thin, trailing scarves and gowns that left more uncovered than covered. She stared at one of Jupiter’s loves, a blonde who looked as she herself had looked not so many years ago, pretty and pink and plump. The Princess was still pink and plump; the prettiness had waned a bit, as prettiness was wont to do, but her cleverness had not. That had stayed, and was made sharper by this coming to England, to rule a people who hated, mocked, slandered, who were divisive and quarrelsome.

Someone was bringing her a glass of wine. Her dear Mary, sister to the Duke of Tamworth and married now to that handsome rogue Charles, Lord Russel. Mary wore a sack gown—the latest French style, which Barbara, Lady Devane, had made fashionable. The gown’s front had no waist, but merely dropped from the bodice to the floor. Mary’s hairstyle, a soft, curling around her face, was French, too, after the figures in Watteau’s paintings. Roger, Lord Devane, patron of all that was beautiful, had introduced the art of the Frenchman Watteau to England. The pictures had hung for all to admire in his Temple of Arts, built beside Devane House. Magnificent Devane House, gone now—Devane House and Roger and the Temple of Arts, all gone, the buildings dismantled—a crime in itself—and lumber, marble, paving bricks sold to pay Lord Devane’s fine. The South Sea, ruining so much, so many; and ruining the calm they had thought they’d finally achieved, after six years on the throne.

“Where is Lady Alderley?” the Princess asked.

“The Prince is walking with her in the gardens,” Mary said.

“Yes, well…. Tell Mrs. Clayton that I want to play basset.” She would not fret about Diana, the clever huntress who continued to prowl in the royal garden, still hoping to bag a royal prince for her daughter. Why fret when the daughter was not here? Anyone who played basset, or any game, with the Princess must be willing to risk high stakes; it was a sign of her character that many overlooked.

L
AURENCE
S
LANE
walked down a narrow street, one of several that made a small pocket of ugliness and poverty, with leaning tumbledown houses and muddy yards in the large and grand shadow of the church of Westminster Abbey. He was on the westernmost edge of the city; houses ended here, at a great marsh called Tothill Fields. In the distance, beyond the marsh, were farms, fields, orchards, a path that led to the village of Chelsea.

Slane unlocked a door set into the brick wall of one of the private yards of the Abbey and walked quickly through to let himself into the buildings in which the Abbey’s dean and clergy lived or worked. Walking down a corridor, he saw a man coming forward, and his mind went whirling. He put his hand to a door, but the door was locked; he was trapped. Brazen it out, he thought; the man is likely a servant, and will not remember seeing me, unless I do something to make him remember.

But it was Gussy—Augustus Cromwell, clerk to the Bishop of Rochester. And a Jacobite. Gussy copied the letters Rochester sent abroad, so that Rochester’s handwriting might not be recognized if the letters should be intercepted. Slane and Gussy, among others, had been up all the other night composing the broadsheet about the Duke of Tamworth. Gussy was passing him by without a word, as if he hadn’t seen him. Good man, thought Slane.

“Make sure these doors are unlocked,” Slane said as Gussy, tall and thin, like a drooping angel, moved by him, “so that I may hide in these chambers should I need to.” And then, to tease: “There is ink on your chin.”

“And yours.”

It wasn’t like Gussy to jest. He was a serious man, kind and gentle. Gussy must be particularly pleased with the broadsheet. It was out, on the streets at last.

“Red rover, red rover, let Jamie come over….” Slane whispered a Jacobite rhyme, then smiled at the upset that registered on Gussy’s face. Though there was no one in the corridor, there were rules, weren’t there, that men like Gussy, hundreds of them, priests and carpenters, lords and merchants, kept; rules of secrecy, of never acknowledging true thoughts, so that one day, Jamie could indeed come over.

Safe inside a plainly furnished chamber in the upper floors, Slane crossed himself before the figure of the bleeding Christ on a handsome ivory crucifix fixed on the wall, then lit a candle and put it in the third of the arching windows along one wall. This done he walked behind the room screen that was at one end of the chamber.

Here was yet another window—his escape route if need be, yet a perilous one, a climb down a drain into the courtyard below, into which the sun never shone; but escape nonetheless. Signals, signs, secret words, avenues of escape, lies to cover deeds or where one had been, continual vigilance—these things made up the code by which he lived.

How do you even know who you are anymore? his mother asked. As he made certain the window pushed out easily, silently, as it was supposed to do, Slane allowed himself to think of his mother, seeing her vivid, expressive face, the vigor with which she moved and lived. She wanted him to leave Jamie’s service. You have given enough, she said. Come to me and let me help you make a real life. He stretched out on the cot. Though he had sent word for Rochester to meet him at a certain time, he might have to wait a number of hours.

A French Jesuit had taught him a series of prayers that quieted the mind to watchful dozing, and made waiting endurable; and waiting was much of what he did. Letters had to be written, usually by a third party, so that an important man’s handwriting could not be used against him should the letters be discovered. That took time. Then, the Blackbird’s most trusted advisers were in Paris, so the letters had to be routed there, but the Blackbird himself was in Italy, so that news and orders must travel several places before they finally reached England. Slane was fortunate that he had been born with the gift of patience.

Yet he found that today he could not still his mind so easily. It took all his discipline, which was considerable, not to leave the secrecy the screen provided and pace up and down. The news he brought was too exciting.

After a time, there was the sound of the door opening, the sound of slow, shuffling movement, of someone who moved himself with crutches: the Bishop of Rochester.

“Sing aloud unto God our strength: make a joyful noise unto the God of Jacob,” said Rochester.

“Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn feast day.”

Slane moved from around the screen as he answered, to face the ailing, irascible, brilliant Bishop of Rochester, dean of this church and considered the most able leader of the Tory party.

The younger man helped him to a chair and placed the crutches against a wall; Rochester suffered from gout in his legs and could not walk easily. “Well, Slane,” he said, “is our broadsheet printed? I’m pleased with it, very pleased. It will prick old George in his tender places, like a thorn. He cannot control even his most illustrious families. We must keep discontent stirred. And I think we do that. I’ve met this morning with some good men, good Tories, some of them our friends, some not—Walpole tries to make the Hanoverian believe that all Tories are Jacobites, but they’re not. If they were, King James would already be wearing his crown. We held a meeting this morning to discuss Tory policy for the rest of the time Parliament meets. There was even a Whig or two among us, Slane. Walpole and the other ministers have made many enemies, and we all agree that we will do everything in our power to thwart every bill King George and his ministers desire this last session. We will move all our energies toward reminding people what this last seven years of Whig power has cost. Gussy read me bits and pieces of the broadsheet about Tamworth this morning as I dressed. Young Wharton is a clever rogue, isn’t he? I understand he wrote most of it. My only regret is that Lady Devane’s name had to be made so obvious.”

One did not state the name, but printed the initial, Duke of T—for the Duke of Tamworth—or Lady D—for Lady Devane—giving enough description to make it clear who was intended.

Mine, too, thought Slane. He and Wharton had argued over this. Find a way not to indicate who the lady is, Slane had said.

Barbara would want us to, Wharton had replied.

Is she Jacobite? Slane had asked, startled, intrigued.

No, but if she were, she’d be among the best.

Then let us not describe the lady so vividly, Slane had said.

No, said Wharton. She moved in the highest circles; her husband was a South Sea director; the Prince of Wales desired her; her mother is Walpole’s whore. She is what we need. She can be for us a symbol of this reign, of all that is wrong with it—its immorality and its greed.

Do you consider her immoral? Slane was curious, despite himself, as to Wharton’s opinion. Wharton was a strange man, among the most brilliant Slane had ever met, and the most unstable. And he hated women, yet he did not love men in the way that Tommy Carlyle did.

I love Barbara, said Wharton, surprising Slane. She is like a sister to me.

Would you slander your sister?

For the cause, yes, as would you. Bab will forgive us, particularly if we win. If we win, we’ll abolish the debt on her estate and marry her to a Tory duke and publish our apologies for taking her name in vain in every district. Will that satisfy you?

“The plan of invasion is here,” Slane told the Bishop.

Rochester’s face, a beefy square of wrinkles and set brows, changed color, became almost boyish.

“I must arrange a safe meeting between the messenger who brings it and those few you trust most completely,” Slane continued.