Now Face to Face

by Karleen Koen

  Barbara smiled at Pendarves, snuff-stained, grimy; he had been one of her mother’s choices for her after Roger died. How could her mother have ever thought she would look at him, never mind marry him? Coins, Barbara, she could remember her mother saying, and plenty of them; he has land, plenty of that, too. But he’s dirty, Mother, she had said. A little dirt, what’s that? Diana had retorted. He’ll die years before you do, and you can enjoy a pleasant widowhood. You won’t mind his dirt then.

  “We’ve met.”

  “Of course you have, of course. I am so amazed to see you that I have lost my wits. Tell me everything. Sit down. London has gone mad. We might all be better off in Virginia. Did you bring tobacco with you?”

  “Yes, barrels of it. They are sitting on a London quay.”

  “This is a summer for surprises, is all I can say. I had no idea you were coming home. London will go mad all over again, over you. Of course, your grandmother wrote not a word of this to me.”

  “She doesn’t know I’m here yet.”

  “Tell me, did you ever find that little page of yours? We grieved about it, for you.”

  “No.” She spoke softly. The hurt was still alive, deep.

  “His disappearance was all the gossip here for a while, you know. Well, how could you know, leaving us to go halfway across the world the way you did? There was a costume fête given not long after word about him came. I must say that Lumpy and I—”

  Lumpy? Who was Lumpy? It took Barbara a moment to realize that her aunt referred to Pendarves.

  A bubble of laughter was suddenly in her, delicious, like summer wine. They’re lovers, she thought. How amusing, how funny! Charles is a father, Tony is married, and Aunt Shrew has chosen as a lover the man my mother once thought of as a husband for me.

  Oh, Colonel Perry, I have so much to tell you already.

  “We were the hit of the fête. I came as you, Bab. I wore a wig the color of that glorious hair of yours, and Lumpy came as Hyacinthe. We were all everyone talked of all evening. Lumpy, see if that broadsheet is somewhere about. There’ve been a number of them about you, Barbara, you might as well know, but this is the one that came out after we heard about Hyacinthe. Look on my dressing table, Lumpy. ‘Let her stay here to face her demons,’ I said to your grandmother, who was never one to listen to anyone, your grandfather included. And I think you are little different from her, Barbara, when all is said and done. Coming home, like this, without a word of warning to anyone. Well, you took us all by surprise in your leaving, and I suppose we should expect you would do the same with your return. Did you find it, Lumpy? Good. Look here, Barbara.”

  The broadsheet was a rough drawing of a woman who looked like Barbara herself. She was in a forest weeping, while a plump minister looked the other way, a rope labeled “South Sea” around his neck and pulling him away. “Woe is me, the South Sea hath taken all from me.”

  So it did, thought Barbara. Did you do all you could for Roger, Robin? For his memory? For me? If you did not, I will make you pay. How odd it felt to see herself used so.

  “Is that supposed to be Walpole?”

  “Yes. Have you seen the King’s legions in Hyde Park yet? Walpole and his brother-in-law, Lord Townshend, are screeching ‘Jacobite plot, Jacobite plot!’ over and over, like two parrots.”

  “The plot is real,” said Pendarves. “I am privileged to be helping with the discovery of it. I may not say anything, but I will tell you, it is real.”

  “It was quite a day,” said Aunt Shrew, “the day the soldiers marched in and set up camp. Quite a spectacle. Lord Townshend sending a proclamation that was read at the city gates. Soldiers have been stealing from my kitchen garden, I’m sure of it. Not a fresh lettuce leaf or green pear is to be had. I told Robert Walpole that it was a pity we citizens had no protection from our own troops. I told him the Pretender’s troops might be a welcome change from the thieves and beggars he calls soldiers.”

  “That tongue of hers is going to see her arrested,” said Pendarves. “It is only a matter of time.”

  Aunt Shrew leaned over and patted Pendarves’s hand. “It is why I keep on with you. So that you will warn me in time for escape. You will, won’t you?”

  “Her slave,” Pendarves said to Barbara. “I am. I can’t help myself.”

  Slave. Barbara had a momentary vision of Sinsin and his toes, of the eyes of the slave for sale on the ship. He does not know what he talks of, to speak so of being someone’s slave.

  “I brought you something from Virginia, Aunt. A blackbird with red feathers in his tail. Is the King at St. James’s Palace?”

  “He has just gone up the river to Hampton Court. The Prince and Princess are at Richmond House. You’ll need to go and make your obediences right away. This is not time to be careless about one’s obeisances to the King. I’m glad your father is dead. He would have been up to his elbows in this, no doubt, and we’d all be imprisoned in the Tower or sitting before Walpole and his henchman for our connection to him.”

  Barbara went to the window. The sun had not set. She looked out on London’s mellow, sweet, long summer’s dusk, thinking of dusk at First Curle, the shadows the thick woods threw, the slaves gathering at the kitchen house.

  “Walpole has spread it about that the Bishop of Rochester is the head of this plot. What nonsense. He might as well be saying I am the head. Isn’t it convenient that treason should settle upon the ministers’ most vehement opponent, upon a man who says the Church has become a tool of the Whigs and the King? As it has, as everything has. What is that in your hair, Barbara? I like it.”

  Barbara turned from the window. “Beads, and these are eagle’s feathers. Only a brave Iroquois warrior may wear them. He has to have counted coup to wear them.”

  “Counted coup? What is that?”

  “Faced down a formidable enemy. Your war cry is so fierce, your bravery so profound that your enemy is somehow tricked for a moment, and you touch him, unharmed, and take his spirit, his courage, from him. You make it yours. It’s a mad game of chance the warriors play with their lives. When did the Duke of Wharton go to live in the village of Twickenham?”

  “This spring. Lord Sunderland died in the spring, and with him Wharton’s chances for a place among the Whig ministers.”

  Wart a minister? thought Barbara. A Whig? No.

  “Lord Sunderland had taken Wharton under his wing, but no one else trusts him. I don’t think he’s drawn a sober breath since May.”

  That was unchanged. “And my mother. Is she at home in London?”

  “The last I heard.”

  “There are still some hours of light; I think I’ll send Tony’s carriage back and walk over to see my mother.”

  “You do that. And go tomorrow to see the King without fail. Give me a kiss, my dear.”

  Outside, Barbara sent Tony’s coachman home and walked, her mind on the scene around her, on the invasion, on treason, on King George and King James. On Harry’s whispers eight years ago under the apple trees. Unrest back then, too, in 1714 and 1715. Father’s gone, Harry had said, slipped away to escape being imprisoned. She had cried impetuous, deep tears at that. The last time she’d seen her father was in 1714, and she, like the century, was four-and-ten. Her father had come to Tamworth to visit from London, a rare thing for him to do. She’d been excited to see him, but he had quarreled with her grandmother, from whom he had tried to borrow funds. The Queen is dying, he told her grandmother, and her wish is for the throne to go to her half brother. Barbara knew because she had been eavesdropping, standing in the hall, as close to the door as possible, to hear what was said. It was how she found out so many things about her mother and father and Tamworth, by eavesdropping.

  Then you’d best pass a law, and quickly, her grandmother had flashed, to say that the King of England may be Catholic. The law now says Protestant. You’re a fool, Kit. George of Hanover is a soldier, a king over his own territories. Do you think he will let the crown of England go from his hands without a fig
ht?

  We’ll win the fight, her father said, angry himself.

  Later, Barbara had slipped in to see him. He was drinking, her handsome, feckless father. She knelt before his chair. My lovely pet, he’d said, how you’re growing. I must marry you well, Bab. Ormonde has sons, and Oxford. Can you say, Long live the King, Bab? Say, Long live King James. She had repeated the words and then given him her coins, saved over time, and he’d stared down at her hands holding out the coins to him, and then looked at her, his eyes glistening. Tears came easily to her father.

  My Bab, he’d said, you are a treasure. But he was gone the next morning, and she did not see him again until Italy. Until he was dead.

  Italy. Barbara shook her head.

  The next thing she knew, she was sprawled on the ground; she had walked into someone, stepped out of her shoe, stumbled back, falling. Her hands were scraped; she’d scraped the palms of them cushioning her fall, and they hurt. That will teach me to woolgather about Italy, she thought.

  “Here, madam, I’m sorry, give me your hand—”

  The man whom she’d walked into was apologizing, asking her if she was hurt. She looked up at him, and for a moment she couldn’t think. She was looking into the dark eyes of Lucius, Lord Duncannon. A still-healing scar marred one of his thick brows.

  She saw in his face the surprise and shock that must be mirrored on hers. If ever she had doubted that the plot was real and King George’s throne was in danger, she knew it now. Viscount Duncannon was James’s most devoted friend.

  Before she could speak, he was gone, leaving her as she was, sprawled on the ground, in shock. He disappeared down the alley out of which he must have stepped when they collided.

  Sweet Jesus, she thought. What have I come back to? Then: I must follow him. Where is my shoe? But she couldn’t find it.

  Holding up her skirts, she ran down the alley, one shoe on, one gone; she ran to its end and out into a garden.

  The Thames River was like a sweet, broad ribbon before her, and there was a man sitting with his back to her, on a bench; but it was not Duncannon.

  In a flash, she realized he was the reason Duncannon had been in the alley. She knew it as certainly as if he had told her. The black-browed Duncannon had been spying on Robert Walpole, Lord Treasurer for King George.

  She stepped back into the alley between the two houses that shared this garden, took off the shoe left her, and ran quickly, lithely on stockinged feet back to its end. She wasn’t ready to face Robin, not yet. She walked toward the sedan chairs she could hire to take her home. There was a sudden need in her to get away. She wanted to see her mother, who was heartless, yes, cruel, yes, but her mother nonetheless. There was an invasion. She needed her family.

  She told the chairman the name of her mother’s street, but when she got there, her mother, like Wart, was not home. She’d left today, the servant said. No, she hadn’t said where she was going.

  A BRANDY was placed before Slane, and he drank it down as quickly as he’d done the first, letting the burning fill his head with fumes. “Another.”

  He touched the shoe set out on the table before him, a gray damask with beautiful beadwork all over its front.

  Barbara was in London. He did not even try to question how or why. In the last two months, life had become a series of leaps from one surprise or disaster to another. There was no question that she had recognized him. He would go to his dear Louisa. She’d know something.

  She met him on the back servants’ stair.

  “You certain she recognized you?” Aunt Shrew asked.

  “I’m certain.”

  “If Harry were alive, I’d say you were still safe, because Barbara would do anything for him. But now, I don’t know. Barbara has never spoken of politics. The talk before she left was that she was going to become the Prince of Wales’s mistress—not a good sign for us, I’d say.”

  In the dark, they reached toward each other and held hands, for strength. It was all they could do these days, and it was not enough.

  “I could weep,” she said. “But once I begin I won’t stop. How is Rochester?”

  “How do you expect? This rumor about the dog has driven him half mad. He startles if a door opens too quickly.”

  “Walpole would have moved if he had something other than guesses. Tell Rochester to hold fast, to remember 1715, when the Whigs tried this same trick of rumormongering and innuendo.”

  The King’s agents had arrested no one important. Once questioned, every man was let go. The questions asked were about Rochester, over and over again.

  Walpole’s guesses were too good. What game did he play? What did he know? All up and down the Jacobite network, talk was of whether to stay and brazen it out, trusting the matter would blow over—or to flee. “Stay,” James wrote directly to Slane. “The invasion is not canceled but only put off.”

  You haven’t mentioned the irony, Slane, said Rochester.

  What irony?

  That I should have abandoned you all the way I did, and yet my name is foremost among the plotters.

  “Do you think they will arrest Rochester, Slane?” Aunt Shrew asked. “He is old, he has gout, and he is not over the death of his wife. A year or two in the Tower, if it comes to that, could very well kill him.”

  Doubtless that was in Walpole’s mind, too. That was another reason Slane did not leave England. He must see if he could thwart Robert Walpole. It had become imperative, to thwart Walpole.

  “I thought you wished Rochester dead,” Slane said.

  “I’ve changed my mind. Where do you go now?”

  “To see Barbara.”

  “Be careful. She’s my niece, and I love her.”

  He didn’t answer; he was already halfway down the stairs.

  “And have a care about yourself,” she said to the dark stairwell. “I love you, too.”

  BARBARA SAT in bed at Saylor House, Harry snuggled near her thigh. The long windows of her bedchamber were opened full to the night, and she was thinking of Duncannon and of Devane Square and of Thérèse.

  The priest told me they make note of all who come to the church, Thérèse had said tonight, nearly crying. All Catholics. His words frightened me. I shall not go back, I shall pray at home. We leave Virginia at last to come home, and find madness here as well.

  Barbara felt angry, knowing what her church, her prayers there, meant to Thérèse, who had not complained once all those months in Virginia when there was no marble saint, no darkened altar rail at which she might kneel. It is not against the law for you to worship as you please. Act as if the priest had not spoken. You’ve done nothing wrong, Thérèse. And neither have I. We will not act as if we have, she’d said.

  Duncannon.

  He was Harry’s hero. He had rescued King James’s bride-to-be. On her way to Italy to marry James, King George had seen to it that she was taken and imprisoned—she brought James a large dowry, money which could be used toward invasion—and it had been Duncannon who had rescued her from a castle high in the Alps and brought her to Italy to marry James. It was a romantic story. He had been the hero of the hour, all the contessas sighing when he walked into a salon. Other exploits were whispered of: journeys to the court of the Czar, trips to France. He was a man of romance and action. Duncannon never spoke of these adventures, but others did, including Harry, who had admired him so. It was said he was King James’s most trusted servant. He was certainly the most famous of the goslings.

  Her dog leaped from the bed and went running to the opened windows, out to the small balconies before them. Barbara wiped at tears on her face. Devane Square. She’d known the house had been dismantled, but to see the bare land was hard, as hard as seeing the dead body of a loved one. What grief she felt at this moment. How could she ever think to remake it? The task was impossible, too large for her, with the debt and the fine also. Her plans in Virginia seemed child’s dreamings here.

  She touched her palms, which were sore and stinging, put them to the wet o
f her face. If it did not have to happen, if Devane Square had been torn down needlessly, she would never forgive Robin, never, for no matter what she achieved, she would not achieve the beauty Roger had. That had been one of his gifts, the making of rare and splendid beauty. To have torn his work down was sacrilege. She could not believe she had allowed it. I had to, she thought, but that knowledge did not lessen the pain. It was as if she experienced Roger’s death afresh, seeing Devane Square today.

  She looked up just as Slane stepped into the bedchamber, and her breath caught in her throat.

  “This dog is easily bribed.” Slane walked forward toward the bed, holding Harry. “Why do you cry? I hope I did not hurt you today.”

  He reached in his pocket, took out a handkerchief and her damask shoe, set both upon the bed, frowned at her when she didn’t answer.

  “Virginia became you.”

  Beautiful, he was thinking, you are more beautiful than any portrait could capture. And in your eyes is what so drew me in Italy, so that I followed you across a crowded drawing room, asking everyone your name, only to find that you were my friend’s sister. Essence of girl is in your eyes, strong, sweet, tender. Fierce, too. You stare at me fiercely. Has Virginia made you fierce? Or your husband’s death? She loved him, Harry said, adored him. This was a woman who loved hard when she loved, like his mother, like his dead wife. When you loved hard, you lost hard. Losses are there, like the sweetest of shadows, in the shape of your mouth.

  London does not become you, Viscount Duncannon, Barbara thought. There were terrible dark circles under his dark eyes, and that scar. London, it seemed, took its toll on heroes. Harry had admired this man tremendously.

  “I came to ask for your silence,” he said. “It must not be known who I am.”

  “Robert Walpole was in the garden. You were spying on him, weren’t you?”