by Anya Seton
“Ha!” said the Chief, wagging his head. “Don’t fret, m’ boy. I’ll keep out of a muddle if ‘tis only to spite Will Cotesworth and his long-nosed canting Whiggish chums!”
“Aye so,” said Tom Forster, sitting up. “Damn the Whigs, damn the Dissenters, and damn poverty! I’ve had m’belly full of it!” He tilted his hat over his eyes, slumped back, and quite suddenly began to snore.
After that the leave-taking was brief. Charles found himself hustled efficiently out of the hall by his traveling companion. They both mounted, and set out for Newcastle, where they picked up the post from Edinburgh at the Queen’s Head.
During the four days which it took them to reach London, Charles’s determination to enjoy himself had no help from Thomas Errington. Thomas was twenty-five and looked older. He had done some soldiering in France, but that profession did not attract him. He was pale and earnest, his main topics were the scandalous prices charged at the coaching inns, and the doubtful success of his mission to London. Of this mission Thomas talked frequently and Charles perforce listened either in the coach -- while sleet froze on the windowpanes, or in gloomy inn parlors -- while Thomas pecked at his food and Charles longed to be out exploring the town -- of York, or Newark, or Huntingdon, wherever they happened to be.
It seemed that there was a rich merchant from the North now living in London. His name was Henry Liddell, and he came from Ravensworth in Durham. It seemed also that this wealthy man was an intimate friend of Black Will Cotesworth’s. At this Charles pricked his ears, thinking of the day when he had met the keelsmen and Meg. He said, “Oh, that scoundrel! What do you want with a friend of his?”
“Scoundrels they may all be,” said Thomas gloomily, “but that lot control Tyneside collieries and shipping. They’ve got a monopoly, and we have to do as they say.”
“Not your uncle!” said Charles. “The Chief of Beaufront doesn’t have to toady, and he hasn’t any collieries!”
“No. But he has a ship, the Hexham, an old coasting schooner, he won long ago on a wager. The Chief can’t afford to fit her, and we hope Liddell will buy her, he’s bought in a score of ships.”
“Why don’t you offer her to Cotesworth, instead of going all the way to London?” asked Charles.
Thomas flushed. “Cotesworth wouldn’t touch her. He’d never help out a Papist, besides -- well, the Hexham’s a poor risk.”
Oh, Charles thought. This Liddell was obviously as sharp a businessman as his friend was, and Charles thought the whole project a forlorn one. He was faintly sorry for Thomas and tried to treat him to extra ales or a slice of capon from the skimpy funds Sir Marmaduke had allotted for the journey. Thomas would not accept; he was as proud as he was penny-pinching. Charles was very glad when they changed horses for the last time and presently at five o’clock of a cold December evening saw on the gray horizon the smoking chimneys and myriad church spires of London.
The coach was bound for the City, but it paused to let Charles out near Bloomsbury Square, where he said goodbye to Thomas. Charles stood blankly on the pavement, holding his small cowhide trunk in his arms and staring at the big new stone houses which lined the square. One of these houses belonged to Dr. Radcliffe, and inside it would be James. Candles in house lanterns shed a flickering light on the cobblestones. From several of the great houses there came bursts of singing, the plinking of a harpsichord, though the tall windows were all darkened by shutters.
A sedan chair whisked by as Charles stood there. The chairmen, shouting “Have a care!” pushed Charles roughly off the pavement when he didn’t move. He stumbled on the slimy cobbles, then righted himself. A coach and four came thundering by and drew up before one of the mansions. A bevy of young ladies tumbled from the coach when a footman opened the door. Charles saw the jewels in their hair, heard the rustling of silks, and gay high voices sharpened by careless laughter. They swept through a door into a brilliant hall. The door closed, and still Charles stood on the curb.
Then, angered by his own timidity, he plunged up the nearest steps and pounded the knocker. A red- and silver-liveried footman opened, and seeing a youth of no apparent consequence, snapped, “Whatjerwant?”
Charles said he wanted Dr. Radcliffe’s house and the footman said, “ ‘Tis here. Go to the back door. We’ve company. His Lordship of Derwentwater’s visiting us.”
“I know,” said Charles. “And I am his brother from the North.”
He walked into the hall.
The footman stared uncertainly at the old trunk, at the shabby travel-stained young man. “Wait here then.” He did not quite dare shove Charles outside, and he disappeared down the passage to consult higher authority.
Charles put down his trunk and stood on the gleaming parquet. His heart was pounding. He had done no wrong but he felt guilt. It changed to fear as he heard the wailing of a man’s voice, which seemed to come from somewhere upstairs. It was a muffled, tormented sound. Charles could at first not make out the words, though they seemed to be of anguished protest; then the voice rose to a scream. “He’s here! ‘Tis the fiend! He’s come for me! Help me! Help!”
Charles started instinctively for the stairs, then stopped as a door to the right flew open and a girl came running out so fast she didn’t see Charles and bumped into him. “Oh la! I’m sorry,” she cried, laughing. She examined Charles by the wavering fight of the candle sconces. “Why, I know who you are! You’re Charles Radcliffe, aren’t you? They’ve been waiting for you.”
“Who makes that sound?” said Charles, pointing upstairs, and scarcely aware of the girl. The voice had now dropped to a confused sobbing and muttering.
“Why ‘tis poor old Colonel Radcliffe -- your uncle, I suppose he’d be. He had a fever in the Netherlands and has been a little mad ever since. But why do you hang about here like a stray dog, sir? Ah, to be sure -- you don’t know any of them, do you! I’d forgot. Lud, what a romp!” She clapped her hands, laughing again.
Charles stared at her. She was very young and not pretty. Both her snub-nosed face and her body -- clothed in yellow brocade -- looked round as dumplings. Moreover she had a large mouth, and freckles imperfectly concealed by a drift of powder. But there was a zest about her, a sparkle in the pile of reddish curls, and her bright sherry-brown eyes were full of mischief. “Have a peep at them, before they see you!” she cried. “ ‘Tis ever good sport to glimpse others in secret -- like a masquerade.”
“I don’t know --” began Charles, bewildered.
“Shall I announce the gentleman, your ladyship?” barked the footman, who had returned and was standing frozen-faced behind them.
“No,” said the girl. “Go away!” The footman bowed and vanished.
She clutched Charles’s sleeve and pushed him down the hall, towards a great door which she drew carefully ajar to disclose a slit of brilliance. This was the Doctor’s drawing room, wainscoted in white and lit by fifty wax tapers. Charles had a good view of the dozen or so people within. “There,” whispered the girl. “Your brother Francis in the alcove at the gaming table. The one who squints.”
There were four men sitting intently around an inlaid table where the cards were laid out for basset. But Charles had no trouble recognizing his brother; despite the squint which gave an oblique unfocused look to the heavy-lidded eyes, despite an elaborate brown periwig, and hollow cheeks pitted by smallpox, and an air of elegant languor, Charles saw that Francis was, physically at least, an older version of himself. Nor was this recognition pleasant. In that first glimpse Charles felt something secret and unhealthy in Francis.
“Yonder by the fire,” whispered his guide pressing Charles’s arm. “See the little maids prattling to Dr. Radcliffe?”
Charles saw two dark-haired children of eleven or twelve standing at the knees of a fat old gentleman in black silk who had a white peruke, and a nose purple and bulbous as a plum.
Charles grunted assent.
“The shortest one in the blue gown is your sister Mary -- the other is a friend of h
ers, Anna Webb. They’re both at the convent school in Hammersmith.”
“Indeed,” said Charles, who had almost forgotten that he had a sister, and was becoming more nervous, and impatient of this game. “But where is my brother James -- the Earl?”
“Ah --” said the girl, drawing him back from the door. “Not in there. He often leaves the company. Listen.” She moved with Charles towards another closed door farther down the hall. They both heard the plaintive chords of a guitar and a tenor voice singing softly in French.
James? thought Charles, embarrassed and astounded. James must be singing French love songs to someone, and yet the tune was sad.
“Don’t!” Charles said to stop his impetuous guide, but she had already opened the door to the music room.
There was nobody inside except the Earl, who stood by the window looking out into the garden, a guitar slung around his neck. His head with the full-bottomed wig of cascading flaxen curls was turned from them.
But this is a woman! Charles thought for a horrified second. So small was the figure in the rose-embroidered satin suit, so small the gilt leather shoe which was raised on a chair rung to support the guitar.
The Earl turned and stared at the two intruders. “Lady Betty,” he said with a blend of courtesy and coldness, “you and your gallant wish to join in making music?”
Charles gave a long sigh. It was a completely male voice which spoke, a rich pleasant voice with a slightly foreign intonation.
The girl flushed, seeing that, as so often, her pranks had bordered on rudeness. “Forgive me, my lord,” she said curtseying. “But I bring you your brother Charles.”
“My brother?” said the Earl. He put down the guitar, and walked slowly over to Charles. “Mon dieu,” he said peering up at the tall gangling lad in the shabby suit, “and I had thought of you as my little brother!” His pale grave face broke into a singularly sweet smile. “Embrace me, petit Charles,” he said. “I’m glad to see you.”
The boy bent awkwardly, and James kissed him on either cheek. “I’m glad to see you, m-my lord,” Charles stammered, trying to rearrange his ideas.
“You’ve already met Lady Elizabeth Lee, I observe,” said the Earl.
“Not precisely, my lord,” said Betty giggling. “I bumped into him in the hall when I was running away from our uncle of Richmond, who is ever trying to pinch me when Mama’s not looking. He reeks of cognac too,” she added tossing her head.
James ceased smiling. The Duke of Richmond was the relative through King Charles whom he liked the least, a libertine, adventurer, and turncoat, whose politics were as variable as were the morals of his mother, who had once been the beautiful Louise de Keroualle, sent to England by France for the express purpose of seducing King Charles. Far worse in James’s opinion was Richmond’s religious behavior. He had been born a Roman Catholic, but had long since decided that in England Protestantism was more comfortable. Which it undoubtedly was.
“Were this my house,” said James gravely, “I would not receive His Grace of Richmond. Cousin Betty, I suggest that you stay closer under your lady mother’s kindly eye, she may be worried at your absence.” He softened the dismissal with his gentle smile, and Betty immediately took the hint and disappeared.
“Is she a cousin too!” Charles cried looking after the girl “Where does she come in, my lord?”
“She is a grandchild of King Charles, as we are,” said James. “Though a Protestant, of course. I’ve been amazed myself at meeting so many new relatives since my arrival. But ‘tis not of that I wish to speak. Sit down, Charles.”
The boy obeyed, and his brother sat opposite him and spoke earnestly. “I’m sorry you should find me singing a French song when you came in. There’ll be no more of that, nor of harking to the melancholy past at Saint Germain. I am an Englishman, and will so live in every way. How is it in the North, Charles? How is it at Dilston, which will be my dear home -- as it was my forefathers’?”
Charles felt the wistfulness in the questions, and he tried to answer them, though he made a lame job of it, and ran down completely when it came to describing Sir Marmaduke and Cousin Maud.
James nodded a little and said, “I see. We’ve none of us had happy boyhoods.” He stood up and, walking again to the garden window, gazed out into the darkness. He looked back at the years in France. There had been gaiety at times, picnics and hunting parties, the companionship of other young Jacobite exiles. There had been glittering ceremonies at Versailles where Louis XIV, le roi soleil, and Madame de Maintenon shed their benevolent but patronizing rays over the rightful King of England and his sorrowing, anxious mother. Yet now as James looked back at those years he saw them all bordered in black, the black of disappointment, of humiliations, and of homesickness. Not all the exiles felt that way; certainly Francis did not. Francis had not wanted to come home. Yet wherever Francis might find a gaming table or a horse to wager on he would be as content as his sardonic nature would allow.
To James, it seemed now that every night of those years he had dreamed of home. Of London sometimes, more often of the surrounding English countryside where he had once snared rabbits, and ridden his pony, or played by the flowering hedge rows, or collected robins’ eggs in the happy years before his father died. Lately he had dreamed much of the North which he had never seen, and yet the moors and the wild mountains up there were in his blood, as they were his inheritance.
Last year all the exiles had thought they would be going home. King James -- so wickedly called the “Pretender” by his enemies -- had at last persuaded King Louis to give him French ships for the invasion of England. The attempt had failed miserably. There had been bungling of orders, and stupidities, and then the young King had got the measles in Dunkirk and been too ill for action. More heartsickness then, at St. Germain, more anguish for the widowed Queen, who retired as usual to her frenzied prayers at the Convent of Chaillot.
The whispers had begun again, whispers that there was a curse on all those of Stuart blood. That moaning ghosts were seen in the shadowy couloirs of St. Germain, that Satan was heard to laugh from under the shabby gilt chair which served as “throne” to the exiled King. Superstitions these were, of course. James had refused to listen to them; yet in the sickly atmosphere of that pathetic sham court he had himself suffered forebodings, and once thought to have seen the ghost of the old deposed King James.
These ghosts had now been left behind, James thought, staring with relief into Dr. Radcliffe’s neat new garden, where the shrubs were as yet so small they could scarcely have hidden a cat.
James sighed and, turning, said to Charles, “I shall be grateful as long as I live to Dr. Radcliffe. It was he, you know, through his great friend, the Duke of Ormond, who prevailed upon Queen Anne to give us permission to come home.”
“I didn’t know,” said Charles. He added tentatively after a moment, “Did the Pretender -- that is, the king-over-the-water -- mind your leaving?”
The Earl shook his head. “No. He is content to wait until Queen Anne dies, when he will certainly be called back here to reign peacefully. ‘Tis the wisest course and in God’s hands. We’ll say Masses of Intention for it. Charles, I trust you pray for our most wronged and Catholic majesty daily?”
Charles looked blank. “I -- I haven’t, my lord.”
“Ah well,” said James with his quick, warm smile. “You will. And don’t look so gloomy! I hope we’ll all be merrier than we have been -- now that I’m home again.”
For Charles the next fortnight was indeed merry. There were festivities of many kinds. Musicals and balls, supper parties and theaters; there was a masquerade at the Duchess of Cleveland’s. Through Dr. Radcliffe’s hospitable drawing rooms there flowed a stream of the illustrious, mostly Tories and frequently Jacobites, for such were the wealthy old Doctor’s own convictions. Since the arrival of the young Earl and his family, Roman Catholics were also invited. Dr. Radcliffe was a dedicated Anglican, but he was also a man of the world, and willing to abey his p
rejudices to please Lord Derwentwater, for he was very proud of the kinship. Besides, he was rapidly growing fond of James.
So was Charles. In all his anxious, resentful imaginings about his-elder brother, he had never suspected that he might find James admirable, that he might feel love for him. Yet so it proved. James; was kind; despite his small stature he had a strong, composed dignity,-And James was exceedingly generous.
A fashionable green velvet suit and brocaded waistcoat were made for Charles. He was given a small flaxen tie wig -- not, naturally, a long full-bottomed one like James’s, which would have been suitable neither to his age nor rank. Charles was given a sword with gilt scabbard and hilt. He was given fine linen shirts with lace ruffles, and he even took to washing himself occasionally, so delighted was he with the young gallant he now saw in the mirror.
Two women also contributed to Charles’s new interest in his appearance. One was the beautiful Duchess of Bolton and the other was Lady Betty Lee, who became a frequent companion at balls or in a theater box, or at Dr. Radcliffe’s gatherings.
Betty Lee was nearly as unused to fashionable life as Charles. She was also sixteen, and this was her first winter in London, for she had been raised quietly in the country at Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire, where her father, the Earl of Lichfield, had retired from public life after refusing to take the oaths of allegiance to William III.
“As for Mama,” said Betty one day to Charles in the Radcliffe drawing room, “she had a baby every year or so for eighteen years -- and no time for gadding. But now all the older ones are settled, so Mama’s come here to see what the London marriage mart’ll offer me!”
“How perplexing,” said Charles laughing at her. She always rattled on and it was hard to take her seriously.
This was on a snowy twilight two days before Christmas, and Dr. Radcliffe had asked several friends to drop in for a collation -- coffee or chocolate, cakes and madeira. Lady Lichfield had arrived early with Betty. She bestowed an absent-minded frown on Charles but allowed him to lead the girl to a sofa by the windows. The Countess herself drifted towards another matron, Lady Stamford. The middle-aged ladies each accepted a cup of chocolate from a footman, then settled near the fire to gossip.