by Anya Seton
“Oh-h,” Jenny whispered. She bowed her head a moment, then lifted it and said, “Very well.”
In hesitant, broken sentences she told Mrs. Potts most of the truth. She did not mention her marriage, she said only that she’d been out of the country, and her father had sent for her.
“But, ma’am,” she cried, “they can’t prove that the man in the Tower is Charles Radcliffe, for he denies it. Do you understand me, ma’am?”
“Aye,” said Mrs. Potts after a moment. “And I want naught ter do wi’ the situation, one way or t’other. I’ve suffered enow through Radcliffes in me day, an’ Potts he hates the rebels. But I’ll help a fellow Northman this far. I’ll gi’e ye board’n lodging wi’ four shilling a week, sae lang as ye’ wark well, hours from six ‘til we shut o’ nights. Days ye may ha’ to yourself -- fur any skulduggery ye’ve a mind to. But mark ye” said Mrs. Potts sternly, “ye’ll not go about prattling o’ white roses, nor mentioning this subject ter me, or anybody agyen.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Potts,” said Jenny faintly. “I’ll remember.” Here was not the ally she had hoped for, and yet one must be grateful that the first problem of her return to London was solved.
TWENTY
Several days passed after Jenny landed in London before, on October 9, she was able to get into the Tower and see her father.
On each of those intervening days Alec reported to Jenny, though not at the King’s Head. Jenny scrupulously observed her promise to Mrs. Potts that no private business should be transacted there. In the market square adjacent, among stalls and bins of vegetables -- mostly potatoes -- and amid the twitters of singing birds for sale in cages, Jenny had no trouble meeting Alec casually. He was cautiously laying the groundwork for her introduction to the Tower.
In August, Charles had been moved from his suite in the Lieutenant’s Lodging to make room for Lord Traquair, another captured Scot. The Lieutenant-Governor of the Tower was General Adam Williamson, a small-minded and vindictive old man, who disliked all his Jacobite prisoners and treated them as badly as he dared. In fact Lord Balmerino just before his execution announced that had he not just taken the sacrament he would be glad “to knock down the Lieutenant of the Tower for his ill-usage.”
Williamson particularly detested Charles, who was a Papist, who drank King James’s health openly, and who wrote justifiable letters of complaint to the Secretary of State, the Duke of Newcastle -- thus going over Williamson’s head. On the theory that it might cause Charles the maximum mental anguish, and also induce the admission of his identity, Williamson, in August, transferred his prisoner to the Beauchamp tower, to the very chamber where James, the Earl of Derwentwater, had spent his last days. The chamber, long disused, was dank and bare, inhabited by spiders and rats. Charles disappointed Williamson by complete silence when the latter took pains to inform him who had been imprisoned there.
As it happened, said Alec, in explaining all this to Jenny, his poor lordship had had a bit of luck in the move, by acquiring new warders. There were two yeoman warders, or Beefeaters, responsible for Charles’s security. One of them, called Cox, was the Governor’s tool, sly, greedy, and insolent. However, Hobson, the other warder, was a brawny middle-aged man who happened by great good fortune to have been one of James’s guards here thirty years ago. He had conceived an admiration for the Earl, and was inclined to be sympathetic towards his brother.
“But Alec!” Jenny protested. “Nobody knows that!”
“They suspect, madam. It’s clear Hobson does, yet so far they can’t prove it unless his lordship’s trapped into admitting it. ‘Tis a legal quibble, yet may save him when he comes to trial.”
“When will that be?” she asked steadily.
“Next month, his lordship thinks. That brute Williamson won’t tell him much, and what he does -- my master don’t always remember.” Alec flushed and looked down at the miry marketplace.
Alec had been grieved by his first sight of Charles, after the valet had had his credentials reattested and been allowed the privilege of daily attendance in the Beauchamp tower. State prisoners of rank, before they came to trial, were always permitted a personal servant to come in and shave them, take away their laundry, and bring sundries to augment the prison fare. The prisoners were also allowed certain other visitors, at the discretion of the Governor, and an airing on the battlements if a warder were in charge.
Williamson constantly tried to curtail these privileges, even to excluding Charles’s lawyer, and flatly refusing to admit a priest. Charles therefore wrote angry and pleading letters to the Duke of Newcastle, scrawling them in pencil since he was not permitted pen and ink. The Duke usually ignored these pleas, if indeed he received them. And that the letters might not always be coherent Alec was now unhappily aware.
Charles had been like a trapped, snarling old badger when Alec finally saw him on the morning after the return to London. It was several moments before his master recognized him, once the warder had let Alec into the dark bare dingy cell which was only furnished with a table, chair, and rickety wooden bedstead. Wind whistled down the great, old fireplace, for which a porter furnished coals, if he were well enough paid.
“Where’ve you been, you faithless villain!” Charles cried furiously, after Alec succeeded in rousing him from a semidrunken stupor. “You’ve been skulking off to France to save your hide like all the rest of ‘em, I suppose!”
“My lord -- my lord--” said Alec. “I’ve been a journey, ‘tis true -- but ye sent me on it -- and ‘twas not to France, don’t ye remember?”
Charles’s bloodshot eyes focused slowly, some light came into them. “You went for Jenny,” he said. “I had forgot you went for Jenny. There’s been no one of my own to see me since you left, and I live with beasts in shadow. Beasts in shadow -- ” he repeated thickly. He picked up a mug from the table and took a long draught. The mug contained gin which the warders could supply much cheaper than wine.
“My lord,” said Alec, with a glance at Hobson, who stood impassively by the door, in his flat Tudor hat, his starched white ruff and embroidered flaring crimson tunic, his halberd held out at arm’s length. “My lord, I’ve brought -- uh -- the young woman you sent for. She -- she loves you dear.”
“Ah -- my Jenny,” said Charles in a dreaming voice. “Has she indeed come to me? When can I see her? She’ll fight the beasts in shadow, won’t she? Like a sunbeam is my Jenny. ‘Aupres de ma blonde, qu’il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon, Aupres de ma blonde, qu’il fait bon dormer!’ “
Charles’s chin sank forward on his chest, his breathing grew sterterous. Alec looked sadly at the warder. “Is he often like this now?”
“Often enough,” said Hobson. “Ye know I feel sorry for ‘im. Don’t ‘e ‘ave a wife, nor friends nor nobody? ‘Is brother when ‘e was ‘ere, in this very cell, I mind ‘ow ‘is poor wife used ter come often, an’ they took comfort in each other. Touching it was.”
“The Count had no brother in the Tower!” said Alec sharply.
The warder shrugged. “ ‘Ave it your way, mate! ‘Oo’s this Jenny -- some light o’ love?”
That gave Alec an idea. He explained Jenny as an actress who had been on an extended tour, and who was devoted to the prisoner. “A matter o’ many years,” said Alec with truth. He mentioned her present work as a singing barmaid in a tavern, and the heartbreak she felt at learning of her lover’s capture.
He made a moving story of that, and Hobson, who had sensibilities despite his grim job, said, “She might come Thursday at three, when I’m on duty. I’ll tell the warder below to let her in -- needn’t bother the Gov’nor abaht a visitor of no himportance, an’ I must admit ‘is Excellency’s a tough one, makes it ‘ard for the rebel lords. ‘E don’t want no escapes like there was after the ‘Fifteen. Lords Winton and Nithsdale, they both got outa ‘ere. Lax we was then, I suppose. But we ain’t now, mate!” Hobson grinned at Alec, who had not been able to hide a thoughtful widening of the eyes. “So no use getting notions in your
‘ead.”
Alec did not report much of his master’s condition to Jenny, and he devoutly hoped that it might be one of the good days when she saw him. The only hint he gave her was to suggest that Charles had aged. And when she was worrying for fear the warders might note her resemblance to her father, Alec shook his head.
“No fear, madam,” he said sighing. “Ye don’t look alike no more.”
On the Thursday at two-thirty Jenny met Alec in the market square. Beneath her cloak she was dressed in her working costume, one concocted by Mrs. Potts with an eye to business. The material was therefore of a cheerful red sprigged calico, the skirts very full, the black bodice laced, and the neck so low that it showed the rounded tops of her breasts. A fichu today, however, gave more modesty. Her white muslin cap, banded with fine green ribbon, was tied under her chin, and her hair fell in curls on her shoulders, an effect both youthful and alluring. In sort, Jenny was dressed as a barmaid, a rather theatrical one, and she pleased the King’s Head customers, as even Potts had come to agree. Her duties were to carry drinks, to encourage the consumption of punch, which was expensive, and to sing one song at each table. Mrs. Potts had a collection of songbooks from which Jenny refreshed her memory and learned new ones. She went through her duties mechanically, smiled at everyone, and took care to speak very little. She was a successful novelty, and something of a mystery to the upper-class customers, who recognized the quality of her speech and singing.
When questioned, Mrs. Potts replied that the inn’s new attraction had been a Colonial actress. This satisfied the King’s Head patrons, none of whom knew anything about the Colonies.
As Alec had foreseen, her dignity and genuine aloofness discouraged most amorous overtures, and when as last night a silk merchant had got out of hand, and started fumbling for her breasts, there was always Potts to rescue her. He kept a respectable house, and wouldn’t have hesitated to evict a duke if one should prove offensive.
Thursday was a dull, chilly day. Jenny shivered inside her old brown cloak and hood. It was about a mile from Spitalfields to the Tower. As Alec and Jenny hurried through the crowded lanes and alleys, she was struck again by the filth and noise of London, by the pallid ragged children swarming in the slums they traversed, and by the gin shops, one in every block, many sporting a sign tacked on the door: “Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for 2d.” The proofs of this claim were to be seen vomiting into the gutters, or snoring on the sidewalk where passersby stepped over, or on them, indifferently.
“How ugly London is,” Jenny said, shivering again. “I never used to think so.”
“Ye didn’t know this part,” said Alec. “And I wish ye didna have to now.” They were silent the rest of the way, as they went down the Minories, then past Tower Hill, where the scaffolds were sometimes erected. It was now an ordinary square filled with rumbling drays. They skirted the moat and crossed the first drawbridge to the Lion tower, which was named for the most popular inmates of the King’s menagerie nearby. At the Lion tower Jenny presented the pass Alec had procured for her through Hobson. They crossed the drawbridge over the stinking, slimy moat which was used for sewage. They paused at the Byward tower, where each visitor must give the password -- which changed daily, and enabled one to enter the Tower after three, and leave it again when the bell clanged for the night’s key ceremony and lockup. Alec had learned today’s password in the morning. It was “Daffodil,” which startled Jenny, and calmed her mounting panic. Such a word must be a good omen, especially as Alec said the words were picked at random from a dictionary. Fate then was perhaps sending encouragement with this reminder of spring, and the joy spring brought.
Having left the Byward tower, they entered the gloomy stone alley which was the outer yard, and walked as far as Traitor’s Watergate to the Thames. The actual entrance to the stronghold was opposite the Watergate, a narrow passage through the Bloody tower, beneath an iron portcullis where a sentry stood on guard. At last they were inside the great fortress, with its thirteen prison towers strung along the curtain wall. Ahead loomed the great whitish turreted stone keep, the original castle built by William the Conqueror. They turned left onto Tower Green, where there was some withered grass and a flock of agitated cawing ravens. Jenny did not like ravens; in the North they were considered harbingers of death. She held fast to the thought of daffodils. They reached the high semicircular Beauchamp tower, and Alec took his leave. The valet had already shaved and dressed his master in the morning, and was not permitted to see him again that day.
The downstairs warder expected Jenny and unlocked the door, staring at her curiously. She slowly mounted the winding stone stairs and found Hobson standing at the top, a burly figure in his Beefeater uniform.
“So there ye are, m’dear!” he greeted her pleasantly. “‘Is lordship’s dithering to see ye.” He unlocked the heavy barred door, and accompanied her into the chamber. Then he locked the door again and stood against it, as were his orders. Charles must see no visitor alone any more, not since his move to Beauchamp tower.
It was dim in the large vaulted stone room. The solitary window was heavily barred and set back deep in an embrasure; little of the gray October daylight penetrated. The cheap coals in the grate smoldered, a wall candle in an iron sconce flickered impotently over the damp stone walls and the dozens of inscriptions carved by other prisoners long ago.
Charles had been hunched over his table near the window. He turned when Jenny and Hobson entered. He struggled a moment, leaning heavily on the table before he could rise; it was the pains in his knees that hampered him. He was quite sober, had taken nothing but a little wine at dinner. He and Jenny confronted each other.
“Well, darling,” he said in the caressing, slightly mocking voice she so well remembered, “this is scarcely the way I expected us to meet again!”
For an instant Jenny could not move. His voice had not altered, but the rest! Alec had seen to it that he was bravely dressed in an embroidered yellow velvet suit, a gray French peruke on his head, an elegant lace handkerchief in his sleeve. Yet the suit could not disguise the bowing of his back, the paunchy thickness of his middle, nor could the lace jabot and stylish peruke conceal the down-dragging lines of his face -- like an old mastiff’s -- nor the puffiness around his eyes and the broken purplish veins in his cheeks; while his hands, which had been so slender -- like her own -- were swollen at the joints and mottled like an old man’s.
“Won’t you give me a kiss, Jenny?” he said, attempting to laugh. “Do you find me so distasteful?”
“No, no --” she whispered, and she ran to him throwing her arms around his neck as she had used to do, her heart brimming with pity. He hugged her convulsively and kissed her on the cheeks, the forehead, and the lips. “Thank God, you’ve come to me,” he murmured. “Thank God.”
At that she began to weep, as she had not wept in years.
The warder made a choked sound, and turning his back began to scrape at a fleck of rust on the padlock. True love, that’s what it was, he thought, and mighty rare in this miserable world. The prisoner, for all his woes, was lucky to have so pretty and faithful a mistress. Hobson wanted to leave them alone awhile, and he didn’t want to spy on them, but orders were orders. In thirty-two years of service at the Tower he’d never disobeyed an order.
Charles led Jenny to the bed, there was no other place where they could sit together, he pulled her head against his shoulder, while she sobbed uncontrollably, covering his yellow velvet coat with tearstains.
“Come, come, sweetheart,” Charles implored. “Do hush! You’ve no cause to weep like this!” Though his own eyes were wet.
He held her tight, he smoothed her shoulder and her hair, so silken-soft and clinging to his hand. Capello d’or e capello d’amor, he thought -- hair of gold is the hair of love. That was an Italian proverb, and when he had first heard it he had thought of her. It seemed to him now that through these many years he had always thought of her; that the dozens of other women had been phantasms
, mistlike bodies which had never touched him and in whom he never found completion.
At last she quietened. She lifted her head and, groping, took his lace handkerchief from his cuff, blew her nose, and wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry, Pa --” she began, and checked herself with a glance at the warder. “My lord,” she covered the break.
“You ‘re a silly child,” said Charles tenderly. “Once my trial’s over, I’ll be out of here, a free man. They can’t hold me.”
“I’m sure they can’t,” she said. “To be sure they can’t.”
“Let’s have a look at you,” said Charles, pulling away and examining her. “Lovely as ever, but what possessed you to dress up like a serving-wench!”
She widened her eyes in warning, indicating Hobson, knowing that Alec, while shaving Charles, had been able to whisper to his master the role in which she was to be presented here.
“I am a serving-wench,” said Jenny. “At the King’s Head in Spitalfields. ‘Tis a good situation.”
Charles gave an angry grunt. “Well, you won’t be there long. Once I’m free we’ll go abroad, to the south of France where there’s sunshine. There’s a villa near Marseilles you’d love, orange trees and jasmine and the deep blue water outside the windows, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, darling?” He spoke with buoyancy, believing it himself, yet a memory stirred, memory of a different cell in Newgate thirty years ago and of a redheaded woman to whom he had said much the same thing. Betty Lee, who had loved him, and was dead. No, of death one must never think. Not now, not with Jenny here, Jenny and the bright comfort that she brought.
“We must have some wine,” he said. “Drink a toast together! A toast to the future!” He rose from the bed and winced. “A touch of gout -- ‘tis the infernal dampness here, and then I’m not young any more.”