Now Face to Face (46 page)

A woman crossed the courtyard, her hair red and gold, her face shaped like a heart. Barbara. Slane’s heart beat fast. The image was as quickly gone as it had come. Would she forgive him for taking her family’s house? To the victor belong the spoils. Did she still have girl’s eyes? He would take her, too, if she did.

S
LANE PLAYED
from one woman to the next in the front row of chairs.

“‘This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy, / This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid: / Regent of love-rimes, lord of folded arms, / The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,’” he said, but he was thinking that at a signal, the clans would rise in Scotland, and there would be a rising in the west, under Lord Arran. They needed a rising in the south, too, so George’s army might split itself in three directions—west, north, south—as Ormonde came in at the Thames River. There was no one yet designated to head a rebellion in the south, closest to London. The rising closest to London would be the most dangerous. King George’s troops would reach there first.

The chamber in Leicester House was beautiful, an elaborate painting across the ceiling, intricate cascades of molding along walls lined with velvet, portraits in heavy frames hanging from ribbons. Small armchairs, their legs and arms crusted with gilt, had been pulled into rows, a dozen or so women sitting on them: the Princess of Wales; her maids of honor; the bride-to-be, Harriet Holles; her mother; and her groom-to-be’s relatives—his mother, Lady Saylor; the Duchess of Tamworth; Lady Shrewsborough.

Slane stood before the Princess of Wales. A man who knows many sergeants, Wharton had said. Sergeants and corporals were the heart of an army. Take them and you had the men under them.

“‘See!’” said Slane, giving the Princess a passionate, languid look, “‘how she leans her cheek upon her hand: / O! that I were a glove upon that hand, / That I might touch that cheek.’”

King George and his family would have to be taken into custody. It was the Jacobites’ plan to capture the Tower of London, which would become the prison of King George and his ministers.

Slane stood at last before the slight, dark-haired bride-to-be. She had a chipped tooth, which showed when she smiled. Her family had much land, several houses. She’d have to go to one of them when he took Saylor House.

“‘I would have thee gone;’” he said to her. “‘And yet no further than a wanton’s bird, / Who lets it hop a little from her hand, / Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves, / And with a silk thread plucks it back again, / So loving-jealous of his liberty.’”

The young maids of honor sat staring at him with rapt faces, their eyes adoring. But the older women—the two mothers and the Duchess of Tamworth—were something else again. Thank God I don’t have to seduce them, he thought. Let’s end this.

He pulled Harriet up from her chair, walked her around, reciting love poetry, then went to one knee and stared up at her, as passionate as a bridegroom. “‘Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow, / That I shall say good night till it be morrow.’”

He bowed his head, closed his eyes, listened to the applause. Charles was leaving in another month to make certain of their support to the north. Slane would do the same thing to the south.

“Thank you so much,” said the young woman he knelt before. “It was beautiful, quite beautiful, a lovely New Year’s gift. Come and meet the Princess. Your Highness, I have the honor to present Laurence Slane.”

“My maids of honor have been slain by you, Slane,” said the Princess, and Slane bowed very low, thinking, Plump arms, hair frizzed by keeping it falsely blond, diamonds everywhere, eyes that do not smile.

“You were very good. You’re from Ireland, yes?”

“Ireland and other places, Your Highness. I left Ireland long ago. A man can starve there, and too many of us do.”

“What other places?”

“Any small town that has honest labor to offer.”

“You haven’t the look of a man who does much labor, honest or otherwise. It’s said of you that you’ve never acted before, yet you made all my young ladies fall in love tonight, Slane. What a light you’ve hidden under the bushel of honest labor.”

She had not fallen in love. Again, he took a moment to deliberately meet her eyes. You could read a man’s soul in his eyes. It was like going before an opponent in a duel to look into hers. A keen intelligence, he saw, made formidable by years at court. She trusts no one, thought Slane. And she is absolutely right. She’ll remember that I played before her, remember this night, when she is in the Tower. She’ll plot escape during every moment of every day that she is in the Tower. I must remember to tell Jamie that.

He smiled.

“Go and say a few words to my maids of honor,” said the Princess. “I promised them they might have you to themselves for a few moments. I am so kind.”

You are ruthless, thought Slane.

“Not too long, Slane,” the Princess said. “I want none of them seduced by your dark eyes.”

Slane stood among the young women who served the Princess as companions and surrogate daughters. They were the cream of society, the blossoms of the realm, offering large dowries and immense family connections, offering access to the court because of their service to the Princess. Tamworth does well to ally himself here, thought Slane. Of them all—he felt he was surrounded with delicious young flowers—he liked Harriet best. She seemed pleasant and bright.

The circle around him was broken up by a raucous cackle. Aunt Shrew—Louisa was how Slane thought of her—stood before him, rouge and patches vying with her wrinkles, jewels sparkling everywhere, as if she would make up in jewelry what she might have lost in youth.

“Enough, now,” she said, moving young women aside. “He’s mine for a time. Come along, Slane, meet my sister-in-law, the Duchess of Tamworth, and Lady Saylor and Lady Holles. Shoo,” she said, “go on,” waving her hand to the maids of honor as if they were dogs.

Slane stood before the Duchess of Tamworth, the great hero’s wife, once a player among those who decided the fate of this kingdom. Richard Saylor had adored her, it was said. Coming up to London several months ago, in a carriage so ancient that it was the talk of London, she’d made certain the marriage moved forward as if there’d been no duel.

She sat regally, arrogantly, in a black gown and many emeralds. There had been a time when the only way to find favor with Queen Mary, and with Queen Anne after Mary, had been to find favor first with this woman. She might have been a dowager queen, now, staring back at Slane with dark eyes. She has no higher authority than herself, thought Slane. If I take her grandson’s house, she will not forgive me. Like the Princess, she will plot against me. Where is Barbara in this tiny, arrogant woman?

“Irish, are you?” the Duchess said. “Where is your accent?”

“I lost it long ago. A man with an Irish accent finds little acceptance in England.”

“Yes, we haven’t been kind to your land, have we? My husband always said that we erred in Ireland from the beginning, and were too foolish or too proud to make amends. Are you Catholic, Slane?”

The question so surprised him that he answered honestly. “Yes.”

“What do you know of bees?”

“Bees?”

“I wish to send some to my granddaughter in Virginia, but my beemaster says they will die on the way over. He has a small mind, not able to see the forest for the trees. He’s good at what he does, mind you. My Tamworth honey is the best in the county, but he has no imagination. Tending the bee skeps, preventing swarms is enough for him. I’ve talked to Sir Christopher Wren—he built St. Paul’s Cathedral,” she said, as if Slane was a barbarian and did not know. “I’ve even spoken with Sir Isaac Newton—not that I believe white light is made up of colors, but in spite of that, Sir Isaac is a clever man. They’re all clever men, and one of them, you would think, could design a bee skep that would keep the creatures alive across the ocean. Do the Irish keep bees, Slane?”

He was saved from answering by the Princess of Wales, who was up from her chair, walking about the chamber, surrounded by her maids of honor like a cow surrounded by nymphs.

“Do you still play cards with Lady Shrewsborough?” the Princess asked him.

“Whenever I may.”

“He bests me, too, Your Highness,” said Aunt Shrew, “more times than I care to acknowledge.”

“Bring him to a card game of mine some afternoon.”

“I would be honored,” said Slane, but the Princess was turning away. He was dismissed. She and the Duchess were talking about smallpox. Someone tapped Slane on the shoulder—a lady-in-waiting with his bag of coins for payment. Forgotten except for a few lingering looks from the more bold of the maids of honor, he walked from the chamber. The Princess was telling the Duchess that she was going to give her children the new treatment for smallpox.

That was the topic in London this winter, other than the feud between Walpole and Sunderland. A cure for smallpox had been brought back from her travels by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a vivacious woman who was the daughter of a duke and Slane’s favorite Jacobite agent.

“I am going to have it done to ten men at Newgate Prison. If they survive and are only lightly poxed, then I will have it done to my children,” Slane heard the Princess say as he stepped out into the hall.

One scratched the arm lightly with a needle dipped in the active pox, then became sick, perhaps even broke into spots and fever. But the spots and the fever were not deadly, did not disfigure or kill as smallpox did. Some physicians opposed the practice, saying it was ungodly because it came from Turkey. Lady Mary’s husband had been ambassador there, and she’d seen the custom.

If Wharton’s child had had the treatment, he might not have died, thought Slane. Louis XIV had died of smallpox, and two of the Duchess of Tamworth’s sons. It was the grimmest of reapers.

“H
AVE YOU
heard from Lady Devane in Virginia?” the Princess asked.

“No.”

“Will she settle there, do you think?”

“After tomorrow,” said the Duchess, “it does not matter.”

It matters to me, thought the Princess.

O
UTSIDE, THE
moon was full. It flung light randomly over building and shadow, snow and ice. Slane stood staring up a moment at it, his mind filled with impressions of the women he’d just left, their soft arms, flowing gowns, light laughter, flirting eyes—all colors—above elaborate fans. There was a shivering, delicate lightness to it all that made him feel off balance and exhilarated. He’d go home, change out of these clothes that revealed too much of who he was, put on his plainer, simpler clothing, and go to Pontack’s tavern.

Thus the women celebrate the wedding tomorrow, he thought. And the men? Hours later, in the confusion and noise of Pontack’s, Slane pulled his chair up where the Duke of Wharton was sitting. Whores sat on various laps, trading kisses for coins, pulling down their gowns to show their breasts, if the coins were plenty enough. Two of them were already quarreling. No one would notice him.

“You’re drinking,” he said to Wharton.

“Only a little ale for me,
duenna.
”
Duenna
was the Spanish word for chaperone. “I made a promise. I have the others drink what I cannot. Look at Tamworth. He hasn’t had a drop since Masham’s death, but tonight he might be me.”

“What’s he talking about?”

“His grandfather; it’s all he’s been talking for an hour. Go and listen. It’s worth hearing. He tells the same story over and over.”

“People were talking of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu tonight.”

Wharton’s eyes, the lids hooded like a bird’s, blinked once. “What did they say?”

“They were talking about her remedy for smallpox, of how some physicians call it ungodly.”

“I’ll tell her. She will be angry. She says it is because she is a woman that her remedy is not accepted more easily.”

“I must meet her.”

Again, there was that slow blink. “Why, Slane?” Lady Mary and Wharton were lovers. Such difficult duty you give me, Slane, Lady Mary had said. She lied. She was more than half in love with Wharton.

Slane laughed. “So that I know as much as possible about you.”

He moved to sit near Tony, who was talking to no one in particular, but talking just the same.

“They said my grandfather was found wandering through his camp like a vagabond, which was likely the first sign, but everyone tried to shield him from the talk. Then it was said he wept before a meeting of the Queen’s ministers. After that, there was no holding gossip back. All the stories came out, swirled through London like the snow outside. Wart, are you listening?”

Wharton grinned evilly at Slane, made a motion of drinking.

“He’s listening,” Slane said quietly, behind Tony. He could see that Tony was so drunk he would remember little in the morning. None of these men would, with the exception, and it was an exception, of Wharton, who, as he said, was keeping his promise.

“I was just a boy when the rumors started. They said my grandfather had broken down once too often during campaign, had to be replaced, though his command was not taken from him. He was so well known, and the war was still enduring—two wars, one upon a battlefield against Louis XIV, one in the cabinet room of Queen Anne. The rumors just kept growing. I didn’t understand them, but I understood the insinuations behind them, of madness, insanity, possession. A sign of the devil, they said, a curse. Have you seen the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem? They call it Bedlam. The men and women are caged, naked, tied to the walls of their cells like animals. They howl in their own filth.”