Now Face to Face

by Karleen Koen

  Tap went Walpole’s fingers upon the bench, once more.

  There was knowledge, there was instinct; and then there was proof.

  Could he prove Rochester guilty in a state trial that would linger in the public’s mind for years afterward? That ought to earn the King’s eternal gratitude.

  What, precisely, did “eternally grateful” mean?

  I think, said the King, that the man who crushes Jacobites once and for all must be my chief minister. For he will have the audacity and the coldness I most assuredly need.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  MAY MOVED TO ITS END. DIANA SAT AT THE WINDOW IN THE bedchamber of her townhouse. The window before her was open to catch the breeze. Clemmie, taking away a slop jar, glanced over at her mistress and then away, knowing better than to be caught doing so.

  A seller of gingerbread wandered onto the street. Dressed like a nobleman with ruffled shirt, white stockings, a cocked hat, he saw Diana and began his song: “Here’s your nice gingerbread, your spiced gingerbread, will melt in your mouth like a red-hot brickbat and be rumbling in your inside like Punch in his wheelbarrow.”

  The sweet, spicy smell came before his words, and Diana put her hand to her mouth. Clemmie brought the slop jar over at once, soaked a cloth with water and gave it, silently, small eyes blank, to Diana, who held it to her mouth.

  “I would kill for a bit of winter ice, just to allow it to melt in my mouth,” Diana said. She caught sight of herself in her dressing table mirror, staring a moment at herself.

  She threw the cloth at the mirror, then a jar of rouge out the window, missing the seller of gingerbread but making a satisfying clatter of breaking glass outside, and silencing his song.

  “What is the date?” she asked Clemmie.

  “Eight-and-twenty days into May.”

  “The King’s birthday fête tonight. I wish I did not have to go. If Ormonde weren’t coming, I wouldn’t, but we all have to be on our best behavior these days, Clemmie, or we’ll be thought Jacobite. Have I a gown I can wear?”

  “If anything, you are more thin.”

  “I won’t be for long.”

  Clemmie scuttled downstairs to her lair in the kitchen. Her mistress had insisted upon hot baths for a week and had gone horseback riding early in the morning and again at dusk. Three days ago, she had tried a purge. The only recourses left were a visit by Clemmie to certain shops for selected pills and powders, and, if those failed, a fall down the stairs.

  Let Robin Walpole try to save the nation; they had other things to deal with, here.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  IN THE LAST DAYS OF JUNE, A SHIP SAT AT ANCHOR IN THE Thames River, not yet at its destination, London. Gulls, hundreds of them, had settled themselves into the rigging, but as sailors moved among the tall masts, the gulls swooped away in a gray-white, winged cloud. It was a beautiful sight.

  “We’re moving, I believe, Thérèse. The tide must be in.”

  “Tide and a strong wind,” said a sailor. “You bring us good fortune, Lady Devane.”

  Barbara looked upward. Sails were descending, creaking and moaning in their journey. Gulls hovered above the masts, screeching and crying out and whirling away on strong wings as one by one sails opened to whipping majesty, the sailors’ calls mingling with the gulls’ cries, the sailors laughing, happy in their perilous perches in the rigging of the ship. The ship’s anchor was being pulled up.

  Her heart was beating strong enough to shake the inside of her throat. A shudder shook the ship. Slowly, like a great and clumsy swan, the ship was moving. Now the tide had it. Wind was filling the sails and they billowed out, full and splendid. The ship settled into the tide’s current more securely. Around them were other ships, and ahead of them, and behind, all using the incoming tide to reach London Bridge—merchants’ ships, yachts, dinghies, skiffs, and wherries, sails unfurled to the wind, a procession on water toward London.

  After a time, as the marsh and fens of the shore began to change to a line of houses and cottages, Barbara could see in the distance masts, the pennants and flags on them waving in the strong wind. They belonged to the ships docked at London Bridge.

  She looked up at the pennants flying on this ship, brave and whipping in the wind. Home. I’m home. She felt as if her heart would burst.

  “The Tower of London.” Thérèse, on deck beside her, pointed.

  Oh yes, there it was, one of London’s most famous landmarks, England’s most famous prison. Massive, impenetrable, looking of another age with its turrets and bulwarks and moat, Queen Elizabeth’s prison and other kings’ and queens’, and even, once upon a time—for the briefest of times—her grandfather’s. The Tower of London was a symbol of Fate’s whims, for the being who entered through Tower Gate might emerge to become queen—or England’s finest general.

  I thought I’d lost him, said her grandmother, spinning out a tale that had left her and Harry fascinated, one they played over and over again, imprisoning each other in an imaginary tower, but there is no prison made that could hold your grandfather’s spirit.

  Barbara smiled, the smile dazzling. The sun caught and tangled itself in the red-gold strands of her thick hair, pulled up and caught by pins with heads of pearl. Her face had never been more heart-shaped, more true, and her heart itself, in spite of Hyacinthe, happy. That was a gift from Virginia, to know so clearly what those here meant to her.

  She squeezed Harry so that he barked. “We are home.”

  “They’re not expecting us so soon,” said Thérèse.

  Grandmama. Tony. Jane. “No.”

  Leaning against the railing, she looked down at the water cutting away in white-green spray from the ship’s hull. Droplets touched her face, like tiny blessings. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow, she thought, the familiar verse comforting. She’d call upon His Majesty, the Prince and Princess, then go home, to Tamworth, to her grandmother.

  The ship took its place amid a crowd of ships. Lightermen rowed the small cargo boats called lighters among the anchored ships, like dozens of small insects upon the water. Barbara paced the deck, waiting for the order from the captain that would allow her to leave. There it was. Skirts bunched under one arm, she climbed down the rope ladder and into a small boat. A lighterman rowed them toward the dock, and men reached down to pull her upward. Harry, in his wicker cage, snarled and whimpered. Barbara put her foot down upon solid ground.

  “Hush, silly dog,” said Thérèse. “We are home.”

  There was the strong smell of river water and fish. There was the sight of fishwives with baskets of herring, Spanish onions, oysters, and cod to sell, calling out to one and all to buy, men unloading barrels and boxes, merchants bargaining for corn and coal and tobacco. They moved through bearers and customs men, beggars and street vendors, toward a street. There was a carriage for hire.

  At once, Thérèse walked over, haughty, imperious, in her element, ready to bargain for a good price on this carriage ride, every inch of her a great lady’s personal servant, cynical, world-weary, imperious.

  Barbara noticed soldiers standing guard on the quays. Others marched by in formation.

  “Has there been a riot?” she asked the carriage driver.

  Certain troops were always barracked in the Tower of London, while the rest were scattered about in different cities and villages. There was a continual quarrel between the King and his ministers and the Parliament concerning how much of a standing army to maintain. “Not much,” was always the vote.

  “Oh no, ma’am. There’s to be an invasion. The Duke of Ormonde is coming with twenty thousand Spanish and Irish at his back.”

  What? An invasion? “When is he coming?”

  “We thought before now, my lady. You should have seen us a month ago. There wasn’t ten people on this quay. Old Robin the Skreen is holed up at the Cockpit, like a hunting dog, following every scent. Jacobites meant to kill the King, it’s said. I have no love for the Hanover
ian, but, as I said to the wife, at least with the Hanovers, we know what we have, don’t we?”

  “Did you hear?” Barbara said to Thérèse, inside the carriage. “I cannot believe it.”

  “Come home,” Wart had written. “There is adventure happening.” Lying, duplicitous Wart. Telling the truth for once.

  The carriage began to rattle down Fish Street Hill. The sounds of the street mingled with the clatter of the iron carriage wheels. Street vendors, as numerous as beggars, were working their trades, imminent invasion or not.

  “Cabbages O! turnips!”

  “Knives to grind!”

  “A tormentor for your fleas!”

  The carriage moved closer and closer to Saylor House; soldiers were everywhere on the streets. There was no one at Saylor House. The housekeeper who came to greet them was like a pot boiling over with words instead of water.

  “Lady Devane, is it truly you come home? I could hardly believe my ears when the footman told me. The family are from town, madam. I’ll send a footman to the dock for the remainder of your trunks and boxes. I have scarcely closed my eyes at night these last two months, expecting any moment to see foreign soldiers marching down the Strand. The Duke has done nothing but travel back and forth from Lindenmas—”

  “What is Lindenmas?”

  “The new Duchess of Tamworth’s house, ma’am, belonging to her parents. He said we was to leave the house if they invaded and he was not here, said we was to go to Tamworth Hall or Lindenmas. But will there be time to leave the house? is what I ask. Do you desire to rest? Shall I have the bed made down for you? Is there a time you desire supper? Have you need of anything? Only tell me, and it shall be yours, the Pretender on his way to us or not. You’ll want to know that Lady Russel was delivered of a boy. We’re all so proud.”

  A child? Charles and Mary had had a child?

  “When?”

  “Three weeks ago, now.”

  “My grandmother?”

  “Fit, as far as I know. The Duke went to fetch her to take her to Lindenmas so that she would be safe.”

  “Tell me about the invasion.”

  But the housekeeper could tell her little more than that the Duke of Ormonde was to come. That the great Bishop of Rochester himself was said to be the head of it all—caught, so the rumor in broadsheets was, by word of a little spotted dog sent him by the Pretender himself.

  Rochester had been a friend of Roger’s.

  “Has the Bishop of Rochester been arrested?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Barbara went to a long window and looked out at the gardens. Trees hid the streets beyond, cushioned the house from the busy sprawl all around. One might have been a mile from town, in the country, and yet just beyond the entrance gates was Pall Mall with St. James’s Palace, where the King lived, and Green Park at its end. I must call upon the King, the Prince and Princess of Wales, she was thinking, as she took Harry to walk in the gardens. I must get at the lay of the land here again. But does it matter, if there is to be war?

  War.

  Dread filled her.

  Watching Harry run about, roll himself in the flower beds, bark at the weederwomen bent over, weeding, she thought, My brother always said, One day there will be an invasion and we will be in the thick of it, Bab. But by then, she no longer took what was said by Harry and the others in Italy seriously. The afternoon wine the men drank as they sat in Rome’s sunny plazas gave them bold words and bolder dreams, but on the morrow, there seemed to be only more wine and more words. She had soon grown bored with it.

  The arbor under which she sat was heavy with roses, fat, pink-white, as petaled as cabbages, all the warmth of June in them. In another day or so, it would be July. The petals of a spent rose fell gently in her lap. Barbara stared at them, tore one to bits, thinking, Charles is a father. Tony is married; will, perhaps, soon be a father himself. Ormonde is coming. What else has happened in my absence?

  “I MUST go and call on Mother and on my aunt Shrew,” she told Thérèse later. Both of them would know almost all there was to know.

  She splashed in a wonderful bath that washed the weeks aboard ship from her. She stood still for a lovely gown to be put upon herself, for powder, rouge, a patch placed roguishly by her right eye. She stood still for feathers and Indian beading woven into her hair. She looked at herself in a long mirror. Feathers and fuss, wonderful, pleasing, fun, yet strange after the simplicity of First Curle.

  She touched a patch on her face and thought of the slaves’ ritual scars, flicked at a feather and saw the Iroquois again in the Governor’s hall. We, with our patches and powder, are no different, she thought. We, too, must have our masks, our disguises, our ways to summon spirit and courage.

  “Shall I come with you?” asked Thérèse.

  “Not this time. The evening is yours, Thérèse. We are home. Never mind unpacking trunks yet, please yourself this evening.”

  She had lied to Thérèse about where she was going.

  “The Duke of Wharton’s house,” she told Tony’s coachman.

  But no one was at home. Wharton had leased the house to someone else and was living in the village of Twickenham, she was told.

  “Well, my lady?” said the coachman.

  She hesitated, then said, “Devane Square.”

  THE CHURCH was one Thérèse had gone to, often, when she was in London. It was small, wedged between narrow houses, and there was no one in it, except for one man. The man was an agent for Walpole, and he was writing down descriptions of anyone who came to worship in this church.

  But Thérèse couldn’t know that. She went at once to light a candle for Hyacinthe and another for Harry, Lord Alderley, and another for the baby that she had had taken from herself—long ago, now, it seemed. What comfort, she thought as the flames glowed in the soft dark; how I have missed this. There had been no church for her in Virginia. At once, a great peace came over her.

  She went to a pew and knelt to pray.

  Slane was looking out the slit of the curtain in the confessional. To the priest on the other side of the intricate wooden grille that separated them he said: “There is someone here, a woman. Walpole’s spy is watching her, scribbling away. Why doesn’t she know we are suspected, one and all? Do you know her, Father?” Something about her was familiar.

  The priest left the confessional; when he came back, he said to Slane, “She used to come here some years ago. I do not know her name.”

  Who is she? thought Slane. Where have I seen her?

  “Warn her,” he said to the priest. “Tell her when she comes to give confession that she is being watched.”

  BARBARA STOOD still, taking in the sight before her. She’d never seen the final destruction of Devane House; she’d left before it was done. I was wise to do so, not to see this, she thought. Standing in the lane before the place where the house had been, she thought, I couldn’t have borne it.

  Nothing was left but the fountain and the landscape pool, in which sunlight glimmered. In her mind was the magnificent house, its adjoining Temple of Arts, the acres of gardens, all of it the talk of London. Now, where the house had been, there was only this clear desolation, bits of broken brick, ground not yet healed; then, beyond, the gentle hills, shepherds herding in the sheep, and the spire of the church in Marylebone. The house might never have been.

  To the west, someone was building, someone was dredging out streets. She tried to remember. The Oxford family, yes—she remembered Roger writing in his letters of their plans for a six-acre square called Cavendish Square, near his; of the two squares rising side by side, now that the Oxfords had married into the wealth of the Cavendish family. The Duke of Chandos, challenged by Devane House, had been planning a house as part of Cavendish Square, a house to rival Roger’s.

  There was no house from Chandos yet, only what looked to be its outbuildings, kitchens or bakeries or stables. London had whispered, Look at Devane, he builds his house in the wilderness. He’s mad. Yet they flocked to se
e what he did. London will come to me, Roger had written. London does come to me.

  A coach lumbered down Tyburn Road, and she turned to watch it. There was Hyde Park. She could see the tents of the King’s soldiers, so many tents. Roger had been King George’s man, knowing and serving the family before they came to the throne. It had been part of his triumph, to anticipate that it would be George who came to the throne, and to leave England and go to Hanover to serve him personally. Was this his reward? Was this how King George treated his friends? Or was it, as her grandmother would have said, that time and chance happen to all?

  She stepped back into the carriage, thoughtful, the exultant shipboard mood completely gone now. The sight of the desolate square was unnerving. Can I do it? she thought. Am I mad to dream of rebuilding? She gave the coachman Aunt Shrew’s name.

  The area around Whitehall, where her aunt lived, was more crowded than she remembered it being on summer’s eves in the past. There were soldiers everywhere.

  Stepping out of the carriage, she had to stop a moment, because feeling was pushing up at her. Grief, real and deep grief at the destruction of Devane Square. Not now, she thought, not yet.

  The servant said her aunt was home. Barbara ran up the stairs. There was Aunt Shrew rouged and powdered, five patches on her face, jewels at her ears and neck, an elaborate wig with ribbons in it, dressed as if for a court fête, and doing nothing more than playing cards in her own drawing room. In a flash that made her laugh, Barbara had a vision of Aunt Shrew, visiting Virginia. How would Bolling react to her? Or Perry?

  Aunt Shrew stood up from her card table at the sight of Barbara, who ran forward to kiss her.

  “Barbara, my dear. I cannot believe my eyes. You could knock me over with a feather. As if there isn’t enough excitement in London today. Oh, but I am delighted you are back. Give me a hug and a kiss as well. I cannot believe it. I forgot how gorgeous you are. Where is my mind? You’ve confounded me, Barbara, I don’t know up from down. This is Sir Alexander Pendarves. He is a particular friend of mine.”