Now Face to Face

by Karleen Koen

  “Its leg has been hurt on the journey. I’ve brought it to London with me to heal. It is sent to Rochester’s wife. Such is called, I believe, respect for another’s grief; called, also, not biting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.”

  He spoke evenly. Jamie played all sides against the middle. He would need the Bishop of Rochester to solidify loyalty within the Church of England when he was on the throne. And so he would not punish him. Yet.

  “I’m going to show you my Easter gown, Slane, once I see what Carlyle wants. I looked very handsome in it.”

  She left in a rattle of jewelry and hiss of skirts. It was the custom to wear new clothes at Easter, which had just been celebrated. Walpole had not resigned as a minister. He hung on, despite their plots. There had been a scandal over one of his men’s actions in the Treasury in February, and he’d survived it. There had been an uproar over the news about Barbara’s kidnaped servant. The Duke of Wharton had done a wonderful broadsheet, making everything Walpole’s fault. Walpole had survived that. If Walpole was tired of it all, he was not so tired that he walked away. That was the good thing about Lord Sunderland, though. He never gave up, either. He would continue to invent scandal, to harass, to maneuver until Walpole was gone. Even Wharton was impressed with Lord Sunderland’s single-mindedness.

  Slane closed his eyes, wanting to rest a moment from machination and plotting. When he opened them, she was standing before him, and her face was grim.

  “Sunderland is dead. That’s what Carlyle came to say.”

  Slane felt cold move up his back.

  “This morning,” she was saying. “It is a great surprise to everyone. The King is in great distress.”

  As are we. The Jacobites’ key to the inner workings of George of Hanover’s English ministry was gone, like the blinking of an eye. Sunderland would have betrayed the King, had betrayed him, in a dozen small ways.

  Slane stood, walked to the window, looked out to the night, the river; a few boats rode on it, lanterns to light their way.

  Every instinct in him said, Go back to Paris, now. Tell them they must invade now. If he could have willed Ormonde to appear on the next river tide, he would have done so. He touched his brow, tender, a dull ache always there, sometimes terrible pain.

  What was the saying from his childhood? Bad news came in threes. Here was the second. He was going to Paris. What was the saying about April? Some country saying of it being the cruelest month.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  APRIL. SEVERAL DAYS LATER, THE PRINCESS OF WALES SAT IN A parlor at Leicester House, where she lived when in London, pretending to read, but her mind was very much upon her husband, and upon a summons he had received to attend his father at St. James’s Palace.

  Nothing unusual in that. The King was going to Hanover in another two weeks, was pleased about the journey, for he’d not been there in two years. The South Sea Bubble had not allowed it. The Prince would be regent in his place. There were doubtless many details to discuss. She herself was looking forward to the summer, to the power that would be theirs. It was like stretching her wings in anticipation of that time when she would be Queen. Hard to fold the wings back in when the King returned, but she who has patience may compass anything, may she not?

  So.

  Little tendrils, lightest of tendrils, most delicate of tendrils, out to Robert Walpole: Was it in the best interest of the kingdom that the Devane fine even be discussed in the next Parliament?

  Might it not be better to let sleeping dogs lie just a while longer—a year, six months? Nothing more, of course; we are too fond of Lady Devane for it to be longer.

  What can we do, she asked the King, to make our dear Lady Devane’s stay in Virginia more pleasant? The Princess would retreat now that Sunderland was dead, allow the dust to settle, see who pushed closest to the King, base her further conduct on that.

  She walked out to her terrace, raised her face to the sun. What did the death of Sunderland mean? Carlyle swore that Walpole and his brother-in-law, Lord Townshend, would be the chief ministers within two years, now that there was no Sunderland as competition. She thought of some of the other ministers, shuffling them in her mind, considering what she knew of them. Possibly Carlyle was right. Sunderland had possessed a truly remarkable deviousness and longevity.

  Ah, there was her husband.

  The Princess smiled, genuinely pleased to see him, though he would soon spoil that with some rough word or some slight, which she would have to pretend to ignore but which would be added to the burden of those already borne.

  “I’ll talk a moment with the Princess.”

  He spoke rudely to the attendants who followed him, gentlemen of the bedchamber, constant companions. Foolish to offend when offense was not necessary. But he could not learn that.

  She scanned his face. Something had happened. He was breathing too heavily. His face was too red. The fingers of her hand, resting upon the balustrade of the terrace, gripped it a moment. Had he quarreled with his father? This was not the moment, when in another month they would for all purposes be upon their own. But when had the moment of something ever mattered to him? She had to guide him in everything.

  “There is to be an invasion,” he said.

  The Prince was looking out over the terrace to their gardens as he spoke to her. Fear clutched the Princess’s heart.

  “The Regent of France sent a messenger to tell us. Ormonde is in Spain, with ships at his command. We do not know how many soldiers or ships. The Pretender has asked for three thousand men from the Regent, as if there were no treaty between France and England.”

  France had helped Cousin James before, treaty or no. That was the truth of treaties. “When?”

  “We’re not certain. Soissons—”

  “Who?”

  “Philippe, the Prince de Soissons. It was he who was sent by the Regent to inform us of the invasion plan, and he says they have a date of May tenth. But no one is perfectly certain of that. The French have word from their army that the Irish in certain regiments are gone, on leaves of absences. I cannot believe it. We are on the brink of war.”

  The Princess rubbed at the suddenly cold, cold flesh on her arms. “Will there really be war?”

  “Ormonde is a fine soldier.”

  Yes. Ormonde had been Captain General of the army when Queen Anne died. He was singled out by Whigs as one who plotted to make James the Queen’s heir. Oh God, who could forget that treacherous year of 1715?

  You go into a web of terrible quarreling, the Prince’s father had been warned by his closest advisers. The two English parties, Whig and Tory, hate each other, and each will try to have you rule without the other. It was true; the hatred between the two factions had been something one could feel. There had been a time in 1715 when their throne was so uncertain, when civil war seemed so imminent, that the King made plans for them to leave England and seek refuge in Holland should the Duke of Ormonde come out in open rebellion. It had been clear the soldiers in the army would support Ormonde, their general, over the foreigner, their King. But Ormonde had fled the country. That’s what had saved them: the flight of fearful Tories.

  What had they sung in the streets, as Tory after Tory was accused of treason, of plotting to bring Cousin James to the throne? “Farewell Old Year, for thou with Broomstick Hard had drove poor Tory from St. James’s Yard. Farewell Old Year, Old Monarch, old Tory. Farewell Old England, thou hast lost thy Glory.” Awful song. Someone had had the audacity to sing it under her windows at St. James’s Palace.

  I am given no choice, the King had said then. Neither side will work with the other. I must choose one and attempt to contain the other. Seven years, and the enmity, the deceit, were not ended yet. The other would not be contained, it kept bursting out. This was the fourth invasion attempt. Perhaps they would not be safe until Cousin James died, but he had a child now, hadn’t he? So the mantle would be passed on to the child. It might never end, it might go into time endlessly, forever and forever,
amen.

  “There is to be no word, no sign, no whisper on our part yet. We are gathering what information we may; letters are being opened at the Post Office and ships stopped in the Channel,” said the Prince. “Walpole said there had been odd rumors about Cadiz from certain agents. Our ambassadors at the courts of France and Spain and Rome are instructed to find out what they may as soon as they may. All agents here and abroad have been alerted. I’ll go again to St. James’s tonight.”

  “Is it Cadiz that Ormonde will leave from?” Cadiz was on the coast of Spain.

  “It seems so.”

  She shivered. In an uncharacteristic gesture, the Prince put his hand over hers upon the balustrade.

  Is it war? she thought. And can we endure?

  Chapter Thirty-four

  THEY APPEARED AGAIN, THE ANGEL WOMEN. FOR A MOMENT, THE boy stopped his work to listen to their voices, knowing, yet not knowing, the words they spoke to him. The slave driver raised his cato’-nine-tails, a stem of rope some eighteen inches long, at one end of which were fastened nine tails of leather with three or more knots upon each line; the whip whistled its particular sound as it whirled through the air. But the boy was stronger now, nimble again, a quick pupil of survival. He leaped out of the whip’s way and ducked in and between other slaves who were bent over planting the green strips of hollow cane in a patchwork of water and dammed-up soil. Once out of the driver’s reach, he bent down, as the others were doing, to work. The driver shook his head, leaving well enough alone. The boy did not have all his wits; everyone knew it.

  The sky over the boy was blue, as blue as his memory of the color of someone’s eyes. He could make no complete sense of words yet, just as he made no complete sense of the pictures in his mind, crowded images of dogs and gilded chairs and two women, their faces pale. The other slaves around him sheltered him. They put him to work between them. They motioned for him to do as they did. When he fainted, as sometimes happened, they carried him into the shade to rest, one of them fanning him with a palm leaf. They nudged him when he stopped too long, lost in his dreams. Over and over he bent, all the day. His hands bled because the pieces of cane cut. His head ached, a perpetual ache from the sun and bending, so that by evening he could not think nor speak, could only shake with weakness. The other slaves were gentle with him, respectful of his pain, respectful of his confused visions, of the dreams he woke them with at night.

  Clear memory began with awakening in a small, bare room. He lay upon a floor, a threadbare blanket over him. There were others in the room with him. They sat crouched against the walls. Some of them were weeping. Their hands and feet were chained.

  “Madame?” he said, as from the window sounds came to his ears: a carriage passing, a cry like a street vendor’s, though the words were in another language unknown to him. He made an attempt to crawl to the window, but there was no strength in him. Some time later, a man came into the room; he was pale, plump, in the rich, sober clothing of a merchant. Exclaiming, the man spoke to him in questioning tones, but he didn’t understand. Thus was born the first truth of this new life, that he was in a world in which nothing was comprehensible. Day by day, the others in the room with him disappeared. The plump, pale man would come for them, and only he ever returned.

  That was the second understanding, that his own time to leave this room was coming. The boy ate the strong broth with chunks of meat mixed in it; he drank the wine mixed with egg the man brought; and he saw in the man’s eyes that he measured the boy’s growing strength. The boy prayed, the prayers welling up from a source he couldn’t remember; he knew in his boy’s heart that what lay ahead was nothing good. The angel women came often. They told him how much they loved him, that they would guide him and protect him, that he must be brave and ever vigilant. He wrapped their warnings, their promises, their love around his heart like a cloak.

  The day the man took him outside the room, he stood in a courtyard and blinked at the sun, at the sight of masts rising behind houses, gulls circling, their cries shrill. The man gave him a shirt to wear, nothing more, so that he felt shamed. It had been in his mind to run at the first opportunity, but the man seemed to know—Others have tried before me, the boy thought—and fastened an iron collar around the boy’s neck, connected by a small chain to the man’s wrist. The shame of near nakedness was nothing compared to the shame of that.

  “I’m not a dog,” he said in French. The man ignored him.

  When he was aboard a sloop, one of many in a harbor, the chain was undone. A sailor motioned for him to descend down a ladder into the bowels of the sloop. Something in him broke. He ran to the side of the sloop; he kicked and clawed at the sailors who wrestled him; he kicked, clawed, screamed “Madame!” over and over. When they had him pinned, the man was there, raising his hand. In that hand was a club—and the boy thought, His soul is dead, have mercy on mine, before he could think no more.

  He woke in pain and dark, unable to see, a ringing in his ears, the press and presence of another being on each side of him frightening. In that dark was a stench that could not be described, made up as it was of filth and fear, of desperate degradation. The dark was horror. Weeping, screaming, sobbing, fierce foreign chants made up a babel of sound. Something scrambled over his leg, a creature, a ship’s rat. He screamed, himself, after that, for a time, until the angel women hushed him. Pray, they told him, and he did, aloud, into the din, prayer after prayer: The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? Sometimes he sang the prayers, sometimes he cried them, sometimes he whispered. Madness was tangible, a pressing, hovering presence in the bowels of this place. It waited in the dark and took those not strong enough to withstand it.

  One after another in the darkness was ill with the bounce of the sloop on the water. The mess of it was everywhere, touching the boy’s feet, his hands, making him gag and weep amid his prayers. After a time—time had pressed back upon itself; he had no idea of its passing, of whether he had been here one hour or one day or one month—sailors appeared, their faces shadowed by a lantern, and with shouts and kicks pointed the way to a ladder, which led to light, to outside, to sun, which led to sanity, the sight of clouds, sky, sea. Ears ringing, head aching, stomach reeling, the boy clung to a mast as if it were life. He would do whatever he had to to stay in the light, but there was nothing to do. He and the others were allowed to stay atop from that point on; in the sun, laughter came, smiles, talk, as if there were no dark below; though at night, what the sailors came and did to the women was dark, and evil, and made the boy weep.

  Once land was sighted, rising green out of the sea like an emerald, he thought again about escape, but it was clear the sailors had seen many attempts at escape. Chains were made tighter. Every movement was watched. Once the sloop was anchored, he and the others were immediately herded down a gangplank and into wagons; then, for two days, they jolted along twisting roads.

  Three of the brave ones, a woman and two men, who fought back, growled and spat, tried to jump out of the wagon, were tied to a tree at the first stopping point and whipped. They were not allowed back into the wagons after that, but made to walk behind them, tied to them, until one of the men fell, and then he was dragged, mile after mile, until they stopped for the night. The sight of the deliberate, ruthless, implacable punishment was something the boy never forgot. Physical strength was not the answer. The man who lay in the dust behind the wagon, bleeding, silent, possibly dead, had been strong. Cunning and patience must be woven into this existence. You can be cunning, said the angel women. They do this to break your spirit, your power to resist them. They must cow you to nothingness. Do not resist them, or they will break you. A way will come, a time when you will see your way clear to us. Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.

  Memory of before was just there, beyond reach, ripe fruit upon
a limb, tempting but too high to yet reach. He survived. He lived for his dreams, in which the angel faces hovered low, murmuring confused blessings in his ear. “Flower,” they called him, “dear flower.” Except that he now knew his name was Hyacinthe.

  WHO KNEW what began it? Beginnings are often vague and without meaning. Slaving was an old thing, as old as war, as old as man, as old as time. The children of Israel were slaves to Egypt, the Hebrews and Egyptians, Greeks and Germans, Gauls to Rome. The Renaissance city-states of Italy grew fat on their Christian slave trade with the Sultanate of Egypt; even papal decrees did not stop it. The Ottoman Empire was based on slaves. The first Portuguese sailors, greatly daring in their small ships, meandering down the coast of what would be called Africa, saw little significance in their capture of those they called Moors. It is written that one of the captives himself owned slaves, and redeemed himself from captivity with them. Beyond, farther down the African coast, was the state of Benin, with a thriving, ancient trade in slaves and ivory and pepper with the Berbers and Arabs of the desert. The Portuguese discovered soon enough there was a Christian market for slaves.

  In 1492, in the name of the kingdom of Spain, an adventurer, explorer, and seeker of gold named Columbus searched for a quicker route to the riches of Asia, sailing blindly to the west from Spain. He found to his astonishment the West Indies, as islands of the Caribbean Sea would be called, their name reflecting the explorer’s yearning to find Asia. To the north and west and south of them were huge continents, virgin, immense, populated by native tribes who hastened their own destruction in welcoming the strangers who brought guns, horses, and disease, smallpox and measles. Guns combined with death from disease soon conquered; the southern continent of the New World belonged in a short span of years to Spain.

  There was gold and silver on that continent, gold and silver that gave Spain preeminence in Europe; but gold and silver had to be mined, and the native labor was dying too quickly to meet the demands of the market across the sea. A trickle of slaves brought to the West Indies by the Portuguese, by the Dutch, both clever traders, began to take their place. They died also. But their source was far more inexhaustible, as inexhaustible as the continent of Africa herself.