A Desperate Fortune

by Susanna Kearsley

  But in front of the king, she’d be able to be her own self.

  Effie told her, “Now mind what I telt ye, about how to pay him your honors, and how ye should speak. Let me see how ye curtsy.”

  For Mary, the long years rolled suddenly backwards and just for a moment she felt a small girl again. Show me your curtsy, a woman’s voice spoke in her mind from a great distance, followed by praise. There’s a clever wee lassie.

  She curtsied.

  It satisfied Effie, who turned to rummage in the bottom of their portmanteau, and drew out something wrapped within a handkerchief. “I’ve had this,” she remarked, “since I was your age, when I lived at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which makes it near as ancient as that fountain ye keep staring at outside. So have a care when ye first use it or the dust might make ye sneeze.”

  She took the lace fan Effie handed to her, and the voice stirred for a second time, in gentle warning: Have a care, ye’ll raise the dust and make your mother cough.

  She had to look away from Effie; fight the siren pull of shared experience. I used to live at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, she longed to say. My father served the king there as a wig maker. Perhaps you knew him…? But she’d grown too good at keeping secrets. She said nothing.

  Till she spread the fan to open it, releasing a familiar scent that made her briefly close her eyes.

  “What ails ye?”

  “Nothing.” Mary shook her head. “It’s…lavender. My mother smelled of lavender.”

  The curtains lifted on a breeze that carried to her ears the lovely dancing sound of water in the fountain at the heart of the piazza, its continual cascades forever falling to be gathered and borne upwards once again in sparkling mimicry of life.

  The older woman reached a gentle hand to rearrange a curl of hair so it trailed artfully along the line of Mary’s neck. “Your memory’s playing tricks with ye. Your mother, rest her soul, used naught but rosewater. The lavender was mine.”

  Mary stood silently a moment, not quite certain she had heard those few words properly, and then her eyes came open and she turned to meet the Highland woman’s gaze. “You were my nurse?”

  A pause, as though a final threshold waited to be crossed, and one that seemingly could not be crossed with words, because instead of saying anything in answer, Effie nodded.

  Mary’s eyes began to fill. “Oh, Effie. That is why you came? Because you…oh—” She broke off, bringing one hand quickly to her mouth in sudden pain. “And I forgot you! Effie, how could I forget you?” And uncaring of propriety, she flung herself at Effie in the same impulsive way she knew she must have done in childhood, when she had been hurt and wanted comfort.

  Effie’s own arms folded round her, sturdy and yet tender, and she stood there rocking Mary as she might have soothed a baby.

  Mary, clinging to the older woman, whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

  “Hush, now. Hush, there’s nae harm done. Of course ye’d not remember me, ye were a wee small thing. I never thought that ye’d remember me.”

  “Then why?” asked Mary. “Effie, this was such an awful journey for you. Why would you agree to it, if I could not—?”

  “Because,” said Effie, “when your brother found me—and that was no easy thing for him to do—and when he telt me he was sending ye to Paris and had need of one to watch ye, I knew well enough whose hand it was that sent him there.” She laid her hand on Mary’s hair. “God always gives us people for a reason, lass. He takes them from us too, but when He puts them in our path and gives them back to us again, we would be great fools not to realize that He means us to belong to them.”

  * * *

  She met Hugh’s eyes again across the confines of the coach and tried to smile, but could not. Partly because she had just now realized why the frost blue color of her gown had drawn her so compellingly—because it was the same shade as his eyes.

  He wore new clothes as well, and they were like no clothes she had seen a man wear. His shirt and stock and cuffs were as they’d always been, but over them in place of his usual long coat he wore a short gray one with sleeves slashed to show strips of darkly green velvet, and one sword belt slung over that, from which his fine Scottish broadsword was hanging. And in place of a gentleman’s breeches he wore the Highland garment made of checkered wool in green shot through with white and red and gold, that had been wrapped and belted so it covered him from waist to knees and wound up over his left shoulder like a folded cloak, to freely fall and swing behind. His Highland dagger in its sheath hung at the front edge of his belt, as did a hanging pocket, and his legs to just below his knees were cased in stockings of a different checkered pattern, with his feet in buckled shoes.

  If she had read those clothes described on paper she’d have thought that any man who wore them must look feminine, but Hugh MacPherson sitting with his strong legs bare looked more a man than Mr. Thomson did in proper breeches.

  There was nowhere else to safely turn her gaze but to the lace fan she held folded in her hands. She would have hoped to see the streets through which they rattled and she had so wished to have a view of the king’s palace, having overheard it being highly praised by an Irish priest at their hotel who’d been talking at breakfast last week to another guest, one of his countrymen.

  “I do confess,” so the priest had admitted, “’tis nowhere so impressive as his French palace at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, being not set apart in its own grounds or park, and the building itself is not nearly as large, but it yet has a fine situation, and shares the same Square of the Holy Apostles with the palace of that noble family of Colonna who are cousins to our king.” Moreover, so the priest had said, whatever the king’s palace here in Rome lacked in its outward beauty, it was very fine within. “There’s a grand courtyard and an even grander staircase, and the Chapel Royal where His Holiness our last pope did baptize the younger of the little princes. You should see it if you’re able,” he’d advised the other Irishman. “I’m told there are yet many people daily, even Englishmen, who come to pay their honors to the king.”

  But those, thought Mary, like herself, who had to come in secret, must come also unobserved, which meant the coach was closed, its curtains drawn so none could peer inside and see them, and this meant they neither could see out.

  She guessed when they had entered through the palace doors by how the sound of rolling wheels and clopping hooves began to echo closely, telling her they now had come into a passage. And she heard the swing and creak as heavy wooden doors were closed and barred behind them, as the coachman brought the horses to a halt.

  Suddenly nervous, she raised her head and looked again at Hugh, and in his steady gaze found reassurance.

  The coach door, when it opened, swung towards the unseen coachman who was holding it, and came to rest against the wall of the dim passage, serving as a screen of sorts to shield them from the eyes of any who might seek a view of these new visitors. And in the wall, another door now opened inward, to admit them to a secret stair. The man who held that door was evidently known to Hugh, for they shook hands in silence as they met each other. Once they were inside, the secret door was closed again, and Mary heard the coach wheels rumble onward down the passage and proceed through what was probably the courtyard.

  The man who had met them appeared to be in his midthirties and carried himself like an officer. He said nothing to begin with, only led them up the narrow stairs and into a long gallery with tall grand windows and a vaulted ceiling that was decorated beautifully in intricate designs that fooled the eye. At the end of the gallery four narrow steps took them up into a private receiving room, where the high and rounded ceiling had been painted very cleverly to seem to be the sky, viewed through a realistic garden trellis with bright vines of tiny blue flowers trailing all round it, and Cupid-like putti at play in the leaves.

  Here the man turned to face them and greeted Hugh in a more good-natured manner.
“I see the clothes reached you. Lord Marischal hoped they would.”

  “Aye. It was kind of His Lordship.”

  “And you must be Thomson.” Not waiting to be introduced, the man held out his hand. “I am Captain Hay.”

  The name appeared to register with Thomson, for he smiled in pleasure. “Not the famous Captain William Hay who once sailed in the navy of the late tsar in St. Petersburg? My brother is a merchant there. George Thomson. He speaks highly of you, Captain.”

  “Very kind of him, I’m sure.” His gaze moved on politely. “And this would be…?”

  Hugh said, “Mistress Mary Dundas. She’s the sister of Nicolas Dundas.”

  “Ah, Dundas, yes. So that’s why you asked me about the wig maker. I was able to—” But he was brought up short by footsteps in the gallery. He turned, and Mary turned as well.

  The king had come.

  Seeing him actually there in the room with them struck her at first as a thing overwhelming. It took her a moment to drop into her finest curtsy the way she had practiced, and keep her head bowed in respect until he gave them all leave to rise.

  He was tall, with a wig of pale gray and a suit of gray silk a shade darker, trimmed richly with gold braid and lace, his chest crossed with the ribbands and medallions of his varied royal orders, though she knew not what they were. She looked to match the features to the portrait she had studied at Sir Redmond Everard’s—the portrait of the king when he had been a boy, his hand upon his hip with confidence, his gaze fixed with keen interest on some distant sight. This older King James had the same stubborn chin but his dark eyes had grown more resigned. And when he smiled, it was the faintly weary smile of a man who had seen much and could not be easily drawn to react to what others might view as intriguing.

  Still, when he saw Hugh standing proudly in Highland dress, King James appeared to be moved.

  He said, “I know your face, do I not?”

  Captain Hay introduced Hugh more formally, and the king nodded. “Of course, I remember now. Mr. MacPherson. You came here to Rome years ago with the Earl Marischal and his brother on their way to Spain.”

  “I am honored, Your Majesty, that ye’d remember.”

  “I trust I shall always remember my brave and faithful Highlanders, and particularly those of a name so sincerely attached to me. Believe me, Mr. MacPherson, I know how loyally you and your clansmen are inclined, and I’m glad of the help of so many brave men, at a time when honest hearts and hands were never so much wanted.”

  Thomson, when the king’s gaze moved to him, remarked, “Your Majesty, I can assure you there are honest hearts and hands in all three of your kingdoms.”

  “Mr. Thomson. Our worthy friends in Paris have mentioned you more than once to me.”

  “Then you’ll know there is nothing I would not willingly undergo for your service. I have never failed to assist my fellow Jacobites in England financially whenever I could, and in Paris Mr. Robinson and I were pleased to be able to give some of your principal men great sums out of our joint stock. I also gave, out of my own pocket, upwards of eight hundred pounds, and there is more that can be got to help prepare for your return to England to take back your rightful throne from the usurper.”

  “A rebellion?” The king’s wise, indulgent expression put Mary in mind of her uncle’s face whenever one of her cousins said something that showed want of thought or experience. “I have myself been expecting such things all my life,” he said, “and they have never happened with success.”

  Thomson assured him this time would be different. “I promise you, Your Majesty, you have many friends right now in London. Why, some of the aldermen serve as cashiers for the money collected to support your cause, and the city is ripe for revolution.”

  “I cannot raise a revolution on the money taken from the hands of those my birth and duty binds me to protect.” The king, though only in his middle forties, looked a good deal older as he paused for thought, and finally said, “I once believed as you do, that rebellion was the only way; that violent diseases must have violent remedies. But those remedies, Mr. Thomson, cause very real suffering, most usually to others than ourselves.”

  Mary stole a glance at Hugh, whose face betrayed no measure of his thoughts, and she remembered how his eyes had looked the night Effie had sung the haunting sad lament about the warrior who wandered all alone with all his loved ones in the ground, and something told her Hugh knew well the truth of the king’s statement.

  “I am glad indeed,” the king went on, “to find you were endeavoring to aid my cause, and I suppose you took the best measures you could for that effect, but the truth is I did write some months ago to General Dillon and the rest, that I could not condescend to such proposals, that such a means of raising money was not all in keeping with my conscience, and that I had rather leave matters as they are without compromising myself, and wait till it shall please Providence to restore what does belong to me. And to my sons.”

  The small painted putti, like children themselves, gazed down from the gold scrolls of the flower-wrapped trellis adorning the lovely curved ceiling, the “sky” rendered with such a skilled imitation of light that it seemed there must truly be sunshine behind the pale clouds.

  The king said, “Prince Charles will, I hope, be one day both a great and a good man, and I would advise him and his brother as my father once advised me—nay, required me—to treat all our subjects with fairness, and never to molest them in the enjoyment of their religion, rights, liberty, and property, for a king can never be happy, lest his subjects be easy.” He leveled a decided gaze on Thomson. “And it seems I must now be unhappy, for you will not be so easy for this next while in the place where I must send you.”

  Thomson asked, “And where is that, Your Majesty?”

  “You understand that I cannot appear to be condoning this affair. And I suspect my subjects who have lost all through this misadventure would much blame me if I showed myself indifferent to their suffering. As a simple formality, it will of course be the pope who arrests you, but it will be known to be done by my orders.”

  Thomson raised his eyebrows. “You are having me arrested?”

  “Not for long. And should you want for anything while you’re confined, you may apply to Captain Hay or to my secretary, Lord Dunbar.” Turning to Hugh he said, “I shall direct you where he should be taken, and then I am sure the Lord Marischal will have new work for you.”

  Then his gaze settled on Mary. “I thank you,” he told her, “for coming to Rome. I have little these days I can offer my subjects, when even my ailments increase with my age, but I still thank God my heart is good, and that will never fail you.”

  He was turning away, but she summoned her courage and managed to speak up. “If it please Your Majesty,” she began.

  The king paused to look back at her.

  “My father, William Dundas, served Your Majesty at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and came with you to Rome, and still resides here. I’ve not seen him for some years, and I am hoping very much to see him now, if he desires it.”

  King James looked to Captain Hay, repeating, “Dundas…William Dundas… Ah, the wig maker. Of course. But he did leave us, surely?”

  Captain Hay confirmed this for Mary. “He parted from hence with your brother Charles, only last Michaelmas. I have been making inquiries but have not yet learned where they might have been bound.”

  Mary schooled her face carefully, not wanting anyone to see the great chasm that had just opened within her, exposing the sharp jagged edges of her disappointment. So then their whole journey had been done for nothing, and she had again been cast off, left behind. Mary felt all off balance and strangely deflated, as though she had opened a gift to discover it empty inside.

  The king watched her, and in his eyes Mary saw the deep kindness Effie had spoken of. “It grieves me that my friends in Paris did impose upon you, madam,
so unnecessarily, and brought you here by ways exposed to accident and danger, and that the circumstances of my court force so many brave subjects and old servants, like your father and your brother, to seek elsewhere for their bread. I hope in God that better days will come when friends and honest people will not be forced at so great a distance from one another.” His small smile was also kind. “Till then, I will neglect nothing that lies in my power,” he told her, “to see you are sent safely home.”

  Mary curtsied again as he left them, but when he had gone she looked up at the high rounded ceiling with new eyes from which the romance had been stripped, so she saw the gold trellis not as a beautiful frame but a cage, that some cruel hand had opened to trick the small painted birds into imagining they could find freedom against the wide blue of that sky. But it wasn’t a sky, after all. It was nothing but plaster, and those little birds would be beating their wings on it endlessly all of their lives without anything changing, the more fools for trying to fly in the first place.

  Chapter 38

  My father said, we do not always get the things we want.

  I had transcribed that line an hour ago, and now it resonated in my memory as I stood in Claudine’s studio upstairs and looked with interest at the photographs of Alistair. Claudine, at the table behind me, was sorting the black-and-white prints of a wedding she’d photographed into an album for one of her clients. She asked me, “And why would he be disappointed?”

  “I don’t think he’ll like the way it ends.” Assuming, I thought, he had even learned how it had started. I wasn’t convinced that my cousin had actually told him Mary hadn’t gone to Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Jacqui never lied to me but neither did she always tell me everything, especially when she thought it was better for me not to know, and having thought back over our discussion on the phone when she had promised she would tell him and I’d said I’d wait for her to ring me back and she’d replied by text to tell me to keep going, I had realized there’d been wiggle room in that exchange for her to not tell Alistair and still not tell a lie. And when she’d been here last, her talk had been all about her own excitement and plans for the book, with no mention of his. “There are things unexplained and unfinished.”