As they walked, he said, ‘Were you liking yon church that carries my name?’
‘I am thinking you have it backwards,’ she said sharply. ‘But no, I was not liking it. It was not like our church at Glentarvie, in any way. There, all was peaceful and holy. Here there were folk running about and shouting and gossiping, the while, and the bairns playing little games about the floor. ’Twas more like yon Opera House than a church, with all that going on. And it looked much the same, with paintings on every wall and the ceiling as well.’
Antoine laughed and said he could not say, not being used to such things, but he saw nothing wrong with so cheerful a place.
‘Pagan,’ said Marsali. ‘Oh, but look yon.’
They were in the Piazza Navona, among the market women selling vegetables and cooked food under great umbrellas set up before the square spires and high bird-haunted dome of the Church of St. Agnese. Before a fountain was a man with a red-plumed hat and a sheepskin jerkin, playing a small foreign bagpipe and leading a stumbling brown bear on a rattling chain.
A crowd gathered and the man stepped aside and the bear, perhaps seeking him, swayed and danced as if to the music. There were shouts and cries of delight, and children were lifted up to see.
‘Och ’tis magic, surely,’ Marsali cried, ‘that it dances for him. How will he so win its faith?’
‘’Tis blind,’ Antoine said softly. ‘He has held a searing iron before its poor eyes when it was but small and tame, and looking upon it, it is blind forever, though you cannot see the harm. So it dances, forever in the dark, seeking the one who blinded it, for without him, it cannot live.’ The bear nuzzled against the sheepskin of its master, its wet tongue searching its reward. Marsali drew back and shook her head, not liking to see it longer.
‘Is that not a travesty of faith, little cat?’ Antoine said quietly. ‘A blind thing bound to follow its destroyer?’ Then he laughed queerly to himself and led her off to a food stall and bought cooked lamb, wrapped in cabbage leaves, for their luncheon. At another stall he bought a foglietta of wine for a coin like the one with which he’d mocked her. They sat on the edge of one of the two great fountains in the Piazza and ate, Marsali grown now immune to the perennial stench of the streets. She watched beyond, where a woman with hair netted in green silk leaned from the window of a palace to draw in her strung-out washing. Antoine washed his hands in the fountain pool and said, ‘Come, little cat, we will see now the source of another travesty.’
He led her off through the marketplace with its brown-cloaked peasants carrying wooden-caged chickens and leading goats, and butchers chopping carcasses in the streets, side by side with vendors of ices, barbers at their trade, and musicians selling the songs they sung. Antoine grew solemn and sad, and she did not understand. He barely spoke all the way to the Via del Corso.
‘Is it yon poor creature, yet on your mind?’ she asked once, but he did not answer. Then they were on the Via dei Santi Apostoli, with washing strung like nets above their heads, blowing softly in the autumn winds. At the end was the Piazza dei Santi Apostoli, and a high, square-cut building with an elaborate pillared entrance way and a flat balustraded roof set all about with statues. The stuccowork was cracked and dry and had fallen away in places from the stone. Antoine led her to it with a sure familiar step.
‘What’s this,’ she said. ‘Is it your noble Roman friend who so bored you?’ for she could see, for all the worn shabbiness of the building, that it was a palace. Antoine laughed, for a moment becoming himself again. ‘Not Roman, nor I daresay my friend, nor has he bored me of late. But noble, aye, there’s no denying.’
They were met at the door by a tall white-haired man with a sword at his side and his hand on its hilt. But he only nodded to Antoine, the slightest of stiff, elderly bows, and let them within.
It had seemed fair deserted, that tall silent palace, but once inside, Marsali saw it was crowded with all manner of folk, speaking in small clumps in varying languages, or simply sitting on the gilt French chairs, or leaning over card games on the huge marbled tables, or staring at their own selves reflected in the great Italian mirrors. There were entire families, with small dark children dashing about the marble corridors of the public apartments.
Through a tall window, Marsali could glimpse a courtyard with orange trees and even there two gentlemen were talking with great animation.
From time to time a servant in elaborate maroon livery would slip among the crowds and stop before some individual who, rising at once, disappeared down a corridor, as if summoned. There was an air on all present of waiting, for some significant event.
Antoine moved swiftly through the crowds, again with sure familiarity, until they were themselves in that corridor leading into the private depths of the palace. The servant met them, midway, but Antoine waved him aside, and he bowed shortly, and let them pass. At the end of the corridor was a doorway, tall and cream-coloured, with gilded trim and faded watercolour scenes on the panels. Antoine opened it himself, and led her through. Beyond was another corridor, and another leading to the left. But he knew his way there as well as in the Château Sainte Marie.
‘Little cat,’ he said softly, stopping before a door. ‘I will be knowing now. You’ve not your pistol, I know, for it is safe enough at the house of Maria and Paolo. But have you other, knife or dagger, or whatever in your garter?’ He was half laughing and half not.
‘Surely not,’ she said indignant. ‘Where would I carry it and yourself not see?’
He shrugged. ‘I would not know, but the garments of women are a fearful mystery. Och aye, you’ll do. Look now, I have something of yours,’ and he drew from the inner pocket of his coat something folded, and faded yellow-white. She took it uncertain, and then knew suddenly what it was, half unfolding it, and seeing the ink, in her father’s hand.
‘The word of the chiefs,’ she said. ‘What right have you to be holding this?’
‘No right, but I took it last night from your skirt hem. You’ll be wanting it now.’ Then he flung open the door without request or assent.
A man was sitting behind an elaborate writing desk, rich in the Italian style. He was writing, with a quill, and hunched over the desk, his dark head bent, the hair ruffled and untidy from the wig he had late been wearing and had cast, for comfort, to one side. One buckled shoe he had cast off as well, intent on his work. He did not look up at once and Antoine did not speak.
Then the man lay down his pen, and elaborately stretched a stiff wrist, knowing they were there, surely, but not acknowledging them, as if he was too accustomed to an eternal presence of strangers about him. He did look up then, and Marsali saw he had fine, brown eyes, intelligent and gentle. He spoke something in Italian, softly, and Antoine, replying in the same language, stepped quietly into the room, leading Marsali by the hand, and shutting the door behind him. The man did not stand up, and Antoine stepped one more step into the room, and stopped and bent his black head in a smooth, formal bow. Then he said to Marsali, in Gaelic, ‘You’d be kind enough to make a little curtsey, lassie; yon’s your father’s king.’
Then he stepped back, bowed once briefly more to the man at the desk, whirled about and left the room. The door closed behind him, and Marsali was left alone.
She stood like one bewitched, hearing the marble clock on the white mantel ticking and ticking and staring at the cast off shoe of the last of the Stuart kings. Then hurriedly remembering, she curtsied, and said hastily, in English, ‘’Tis Marsali MacKinnon I am, sir, the daughter of MacKinnon of Glentarvie, and I am bringing good word to your honoured son.’
The man stood slowly, slipping his foot back into his shoe. He smiled gently, and tapped the inky quill against the leather top of the desk and said haltingly, ‘Ah, signorina, it will be necessary that you speak a little more slowly. My English, she is not so very good. And your accent … please, more slowly.’
‘Forgive me, sir,’ she cried, ‘I was not expecting … you see, I was not knowing even ’twas your
house.’
The man paused for a long time, dreamily tapping the quill and looking her over carefully. Marsali thought sure he would think her a madwoman and in moments summon a servant and have her thrown from the palace. But he did not. He said, very slowly, ‘Yes. He would do that. You know, my Carluccio, he would too, do such a thing. Young men, young men! I know that one, signorina. He really has no manners at all.’
‘No,’ she said honestly, realizing at last he spoke of Antoine.
‘Yes,’ James said softly, ‘his father finds him a great worry.’
‘I am not surprised,’ said Marsali.
‘He has my sympathy, the poor count. Young men, young men in this day, they are very difficult.’ He paused again, as if thinking distantly of something else entirely. Then he beckoned her closer, and indicated a chair by the dead hearth. ‘Now, carina figlia,’ he said softly, ‘do not be afraid of me. I am just a gentleman, and in my youth, gentlemen learned how to behave.’ He smiled a lightly humorous smile. ‘What is it you are come to see me about?’
‘I am come from my father, James MacKinnon of Glentarvie, a loyal subject of your majesty’s.’
‘Glentarvie,’ James said softly. ‘I think now Sheridan sent word of Glentarvie, a fine house was there, which gave my son shelter?’
‘We were so honoured,’ said Marsali, with the grace bred in her by her father that made mockery of the truth.
‘I trust that you were well rewarded,’ James said formally.
‘Aye,’ she said suddenly. ‘We were indeed. King Geordie’s men burned it to the ground, yon fine house, and sent us to exile in the West.’
The man closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. He said presently, ‘That I was not told.’
‘We were not the only ones,’ Marsali said. James remained, leaning back in his chair, a gentle, aesthetic, middle-aged man. He might have been a priest, to look upon, she thought. Or a scholar. He made no answer to her, but when he spoke, began in a distant voice, recounting an old remembrance.
‘When I was young, truly young, like that handsome mannerless boy who brought you here, I had such certainties. I was born in England you know, not like Carluccio. I am really English.’ He said it with naive trust, pathetic on his Italian-accented tongue. ‘It was all so recent then, my father’s exile, the usurper but poorly thought of, and lightly rooted in my father’s ground. It was only time, only a matter of time, we were all so certain. I saw my sons enter the world, princes. Only time, only time stood between. But time, that now is a two-edged sword. How could we have known how it would, bit by bit, cut us down?
‘A year into our exile, all men knew my father as a king. Upon his death, Louis himself proclaimed me. In fifteen, a nation, your nation, fought for me.’
‘And lost,’ said Marsali.
‘Yes, and lost, but do you not see, how we saw, that that was no matter, that it was only a matter of time until we would win?’
Marsali said, ‘For no matter a good few men were dead, and the land fair ravaged.’
‘In our pride,’ James said, with a thin, self-mocking smile, ‘we thought them honoured. But time kept passing, yet, and with it, the lives of men who honoured us in their hearts. A king is a strange thing, signorina, so dependent on other’s faith. His very being has no substance of its own. It is not something that shows on a man, being king. Look how you entered here, not knowing, what did you think me?’
‘A priest, I think, sir, from your face. And a scholar from your books.’
He laughed aloud. ‘Carluccio, he would not like that. He is not so very pleased now, with priests. Ah yes, a scholar, or a priest. But not a king.’
‘But I did not know, sir, no one had told me.’
‘Signorina,’ he said, ‘when one must begin telling the thing, one is no longer a king. Nor the son of a king. I would tell that now, to Carluccio, if he would come home.’
‘Does he never?’ Marsali asked.
The man shrugged. ‘He is too busy, he says, working for my Cause. Too busy working for the king, to come to see the father.’ He smiled sadly. ‘I would he would write, only a letter now and again. He was never very good at writing. Those months in Scotland, after that awful battle, I had only to guess if he lived yet or was dead. It is terrible not knowing if you pray for the living or the dead.’
‘I am knowing that feeling,’ said Marsali. ‘He was not the only one sent fleeing from that battle.’
James was long silent and said then, ‘Carina, your little nation has paid the price of my dreaming.’
‘’Twas our own dreaming, sir, my father’s and all his kin.’
‘That is bravely said, but I wonder.’ He paused and then said slowly, ‘A man rears a son, in the fieriness of his own youth, when all is challenge and possibility. Such a proud, brave son, born for war. Then, when he is old, and wise, he would teach that son a new lesson. But it is not possible, for the lessons of his youth, by their very fire, are sweeter to the ear. I would call him back, carina, and say, enough, it is over and done, and I am no more a king, but an old man in a shabby house with fading, loyal friends. And that is truth. I am like some magic creature that is neither fish, flesh nor fowl, with cloven feet in one world and some angel head in another.’
He laughed and took her hand suddenly and led her to the window. Beyond was a courtyard, and a fountain, in which sported magic heraldic beasts; a griffin, with wings and lion’s head and long scaled tail curled round, and a unicorn with water cascading down its shimmering stone mane. ‘Always kings have surrounded themselves with the like, creatures of two worlds, or no world at all. I long since learned why. We put them on our shields and on our flags, so the people may see and say, there is something finer than a man, for even his horse has a horn upon its head. We will have faith in him, and follow him, oh, anywhere.’
He sat down, still laughing. ‘Even to a dusty palace I can no longer afford to paint. And now suddenly, I am old, and a little girl mistakes me for a priest.’ He leaned back, toying with the quill on the leather-topped desk, and looking, with a bemused smile, at the marble floor. Then he looked up and said, ‘What have you brought me, carina figlia, what message from the north?’
Marsali unfolded her worn scrap of parchment and laid it before him. ‘Ah, another plot,’ he said a little wearily. But he lifted it in his fine-tended hands and read, carefully, aloud, the names, strong names, Scottish names, harsh and alien on his southern tongue.
‘And the numbers?’
‘They are clansmen, pledged to follow Tearlach, when he comes again.’
‘Tearlach,’ he repeated after her. ‘You have called him by a different name, and he has come back from that place a different man.’
‘He is much loved in that place,’ she said honestly.
‘Do you love him?’ James said, toying with the list in his hand, his fingers slowly tracing the worn clandestine signatures.
Marsali stood alone, looking past the tired, old man, and out onto the fountain in the sun. She said very carefully, ‘My brother died for him, and so too, the man I would wed. My father would die for him tomorrow. If I do not believe in Tearlach, what can I say to my ghosts?’
James said quietly, ‘A nation cannot live on the word of its ghosts.’ He folded the parchment carefully and handed it back. ‘I can do nothing with this. I am no more a king to be leading men.’
‘Your son yet calls himself a prince, and would one day be a king.’
‘Then take it to him, carina,’ he said tiredly. ‘It is not for me. I am a king who is not a king, a beast of heraldry, with no place in this world. If my son yet desires a kingdom, he will need to find one himself, a nation that will yet believe in him.’
Marsali said boldly, ‘I have come from such a nation. Tell me where I may find him, and I will bring a kingdom to him. We have men and we have gold, all for Tearlach.’ She flourished the parchment in her hand.
James looked coolly over her and then shrugged and almost to himself, ‘Surely it c
an do no harm. He is in Ghent, carina, in a modest house. He has taken the name Douglas, the Chevalier Douglas; a good Scottish name. I believe,’ he looked away, out to the fountain, ‘there is a woman there, he calls his wife.’ He paused again, ‘Though some say she is but a Hanoverian spy. Oh such talk of spies, always. Carina, at times I wonder if we do not take ourselves o’er seriously, always expecting the world to be watching our every move. When in fact, the world has forgotten us.’ He tapped his quill against the desk, making faint ink marks on the leather. ‘Still, no matter, The Chevalier Douglas, in Ghent, carina figlia. No doubt he will not be difficult to find.’
Marsali curtsied, and said. ‘I am in your debt.’ She felt shame, like a pain inside of her.
‘No, I am in yours. Glentarvie saved my son, once. He is difficult, and careless, and bound on a hopeless course. But I set him on that course, with a father’s pride, and will no doubt pay with a father’s tears. If you find him, carina,’ he stopped and turned away, ‘tell him his father would be pleased if he might write. A small letter. It would do.’
He turned from her and she knew she was dismissed. She went out, curtsying once to the head bent over the desk once more.
‘Antoine,’ she called, in the dim hallway. But Antoine was not there. Instead there was a slim young girl in a brown day dress and modest linen cap, who spoke in the Scots tongue. She was holding a small cloth and leather case, as travellers used. She said, ‘I will be showin’ you to your room, my lady.’
‘My room.’
‘In the palace. Where you’re to stay. Until Dr. Cameron is ready to leave.’
‘Doctor Cameron?’ Marsali said. ‘I am thinking you’ve mistaken me for another. I know no Doctor Cameron, and I’m not staying in this house, surely, but with my friend in the Campo Marzio.’
‘Yer friend has gone, my lady,’ said the girl.
‘Gone?’
‘He left when you were yet with His Majesty. A servant came with these things, saying they were for you. I know he followed the gentleman’s bidding.’
The Sea-Harrower: A Scottish Highlander Historical Romance Page 25