by Karleen Koen
“Robin.”
He turned, eyes widening under those preposterous, thick brows. “I cannot believe my eyes.”
The next moment she was being pulled forward into a ruthless hug, Robert Walpole both laughing and wiping at the sentimental tears rolling down his cheeks as he held her out from him, looked her up and down.
“You’re safely returned. When? How? God’s blood, Barbara, it has been a continual prayer of mine to know you are safe. You are acquainted with my brother-in-law, Lord Townshend, and this is Lord Carteret. Gentlemen, I give you Lady Devane.”
“I’ve only just returned, Robin. I’ve come to present myself to His Majesty.” She felt cold as ice. Surely he could sense it. She made herself smile. Never tell another all you know.
“Give me your arm, my girl. I will take you in to see His Majesty myself. He will be as pleased as I am. Not a week goes by but that he asks after you.”
They walked down a long corridor, he smiling, expansive, talking all the while. People approached him with rolled-up petitions, but he waved them off.
“Why are the Virginia planters sending letters of complaint because our tobacco merchants have added a charge to honor bills of exchange?”
“They were never charged before, and they are afraid tobacco will sell low. Therefore they watch their pennies and want no new charges.”
“They’ll have to accept it. God’s blood, it is good to know you are back. How I have fretted about you, blamed myself for your going to Virginia. Now, I’ll tell you once and for all that your fine is going to be reduced. I swear it. I have to deal with this plot”—he laughed and corrected himself to include the other men with him—“we all do, but I can command the votes in the Commons to see the fine reduced, and I intend to do it. Ah, what a friend Roger was to me, Bab. How I have missed him, missed his counsel. He was a wise man, could always twist the Duchess of Kendall around his little finger. She doesn’t like me. If I suggest south to the King, she whispers north into his other ear.”
His sincerity, his forcefulness were immense. It was like being carried upon a wave. You’re good, thought Barbara, very, very good at this. Well, so will I be.
“You,” Walpole said to the dwarf, who was sitting in a chair. “Go and tell His Majesty that his Lord Treasurer desires an immediate interview because he has brought him a treasure from one of his colonies. At once, little man.”
And as the dwarf ran to open one of the heavy, double doors, “Did you grow tobacco while you were in Virginia, Barbara?”
“I did, and one day I intend to have the best snuff in all of England.”
Walpole threw back his head and laughed, as pleased as if she’d told him she was growing gold. “I told your mother you weren’t going to pine away over there. I told her you’d find something to keep yourself occupied, that likely the whole adventure would do you good, and so it has.”
“My servant was lost over there. Is that good?”
“The boy—what was his name?”
“Hyacinthe.”
“Hyacinthe. Yes, too bad.”
The heavy doors swung open, and there was the King of England, standing before huge windows.
“Your Majesty,” Walpole said, “look what I’ve brought you.” With a flourish he pulled Barbara forward.
The King had been solemn, but at the sight of Barbara, a smile of real pleasure broke across his face. He walked to her and pulled her up out of her curtsy and kissed her cheeks, a rare spontaneous gesture of favor not lost upon Walpole nor the other men.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I will allow myself the pleasure of an hour or two of this lady’s company, that is, unless you have some news for me that cannot wait.”
“No, of course not,” everyone was saying, bowing a good-bye, smiling at Barbara, who signaled for her servants to leave the gifts and go themselves. When the door was closed, and she was alone with the King, he said, in rapid and flawless French, “Your husband was one of my most faithful servants. I have grieved over your leaving England in a way you cannot imagine, grieved over your sufferings. But now you are back, and things will be different, that I promise you. I am so delighted to see you here”—he looked around this chamber, with its high, ornately decorated ceilings, its walls of priceless paintings, its heavy gilded furniture, its huge fireplace—“where you belong.”
“Thank you.”
“Tell me about my colony of Virginia.”
She heard herself describe the rivers, the trees, the largeness and abundance, as if she were not enraged and in shock. She described the huge bay, the dolphins that accompanied ships as they neared shore; she told him of growing tobacco, of the care and time it took, going through each step of it as if he were a tobacco planter and as interested as she.
He was interested.
She told him of the Iroquois, of their splendor and fierceness, and of Governor Spotswood’s feeling that the English must ally with them.
“I have a letter from Governor Spotswood,” she said. “May I present it?”
Spotswood was begging for his old position of governor back. You see me made governor again, he’d said, and I’ll see Bolling fined for the smuggling somehow.
The King took the letter from her, listened to her describe the mountains, the large creatures with wooly heads that were said to roam vast plains that had no end.
“I would like to see Virginia,” he said. “When I came here as king, my English ministers tried to tell me I could not visit Hanover once a year. It was quite a quarrel between us. I won, but can you imagine what they would say if I now told them I also wished to see my colonies? And yet I do. Your dress today is magnificent. Tell me about the feathers in your hair, about the waistcoat you wear.”
Barbara told him about counting coup and taking scalps, about warriors said to run lithely through woods, never breaking a twig. As she talked she brought the King a war club, a knife whose handle was a long bear claw, and a scalp, all of which pleased him, particularly the scalp, which seemed to fascinate him.
She brought out a bear’s head, the teeth long and grimacing. It had been made into a headdress, magnificent and fearsome; the fur came down over one’s shoulders, like a cloak.
“Their wise men wear this before they go to hunt for bear. They dance a certain dance and sing to the bear’s spirit.”
At once, he tried it on.
She brought out a long rattle that wise men used to cure illness, and a peace pipe; he examined the pipe’s carving and beads and feathers.
“They smoke tobacco only to show reverence for a treaty made or a friend come,” she said. “They sprinkle tobacco in the river to make safe crossings. They aren’t prodigal with it the way we are.”
She spread open a large square of beaver skins sewn together, describing the creature to His Majesty. He stroked the dark, soft fur, as she began to talk about the slaves.
There was a knock upon the door, which opened to show three girls, accompanied by the King’s mistress, the Duchess of Kendall. The girls glanced curiously at Barbara and went at once to the bear’s head, touching the long teeth, making faces to one another.
“Come and greet Lady Devane,” the King said to them.
Nine, eleven, and thirteen, they were his granddaughters. By his express command, they lived with him, rather than with their parents, the Prince and Princess of Wales. He knows it breaks the heart of the Princess, the Prince had once said to Barbara. He does it to crush my pride.
This royal family was not a peaceful one. Before Barbara had returned to England in 1719, all the talk in Rome and Venice had been of a public quarrel between the King and the Prince. There had been a rumor that King George would make James the heir, rather than his own son. Roger had been part of reconciling them. But the King did not allow the Prince’s daughters to return to their father.
“The cloak you sent me was beautiful. It is quite my favorite thing,” the Duchess of Kendall told Barbara. Queen in all but name, she was very thin, with dyed dark hair,
and dark drawn around her eyes. Talkative, full of her own opinions, she had been the King’s mistress for years.
“How handsome you look, Lady Devane,” she said now, and, bowing her head to the compliment, wordlessly, Barbara took off the waistcoat she wore. Kendall put it on at once and went to a mirror to admire herself, the girls clustering around her, touching the beading, the tail of feathers and fur.
Barbara turned back to the gifts, uncovering three small reed cages in which redbirds sat.
“These are for you. These cages were made by the slaves on First Curle. Have you ever seen birds this color?”
The girls ran to Barbara.
“An old woman among the slaves on the plantation on which I lived was said to understand the language of birds and beasts, and that of the trees and wind. She said these redbirds will bring you good fortune. There are many wonderful animals in Virginia. One of my slaves captured a raccoon, a beast with dark about its eyes, like a masked highwayman. How I wish I might have brought you the tiny, tiny birds, no bigger than my thumb”—Barbara held up a thumb to show their size—”that come in summer to feed on certain flowers in the colony. They dart about so quickly that it is almost impossible to see them. They never rest, it is said; they fly continuously.”
“I wish that we could see the tiny birds,” one of the Princesses said.
Barbara moved among the gifts and uncovered a cage in which sat a raccoon.
“Will this do instead?”
“The highwayman,” said Princess Anne, the oldest, laughing. “Oh, do look at his eyes. It is as if he wore a mask.”
“Did you bring tobacco with you?” the King asked Barbara.
“Yes.”
“I will come down to the quays myself and see the hogsheads opened in the customs house,” he said.
“And here finally are swamp laurel trees—twelve, which I thought was a good number, like the Apostles. They have a flower which makes the most beautiful perfume in the world. The blossom is the size of a woman’s face.”
Barbara walked to the windows, pointed. “You could plant the laurels in a row, there, Your Majesty, and from this window you’d see their blossoms in the spring, and be able to smell them.”
“I shall name them after the Apostles: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John,” said the King, pointing to each tree, making his granddaughters laugh. “What shall I do with the one called Judas?”
“Plant it to remind yourself there are always traitors,” said Barbara.
“May Lady Devane walk with us in the garden awhile?” asked the youngest girl, Princess Caroline. “Make her, Grandfather.”
“She will not wish to walk in the garden,” said the Duchess of Kendall, sharply.
“I would be honored to do so. His Majesty’s granddaughters remind me of my sisters.”
“Please, sir,” begged Caroline, holding on to the King’s hand. Barbara saw that he had a special softness for this child.
“If you would be so kind, Lady Devane,” the King said. “As you can see, I spoil them.”
The girls left the chamber with Barbara, prattling about the tiny birds no bigger than her thumb and the old slave who understood the talk of animals.
THE DUCHESS of Kendall, still at the mirror, turned this way and that to see herself in the waistcoat.
“Exquisite,” she said, “absolutely exquisite. Though it looks far better upon Lady Devane than it does upon me, I have no intention of giving it back.”
The King, looking down at the gardens, smiled, while the woman with him rummaged through the other gifts with the thoroughness of a street vendor, stroking the fur, touching the bear’s headdress with a frown, lifting up the knife. She picked up the scalp, and as the King explained what it was, made a face and put it down again.
“That scalp is my favorite thing. That and the Apostle trees.” Then the King said, “Roger was a good friend to me.”
“There was no one more charming. I shall have this fur made into a stole for my shoulders. I did not know Lady Devane had sisters.”
“They are dead, now. Smallpox, I believe.”
In the garden, Barbara sat upon a bench, a princess upon either side of her, while the youngest danced and fidgeted in place as she talked. It was clear Barbara was telling some long story. The King, watching them, said, “It is time the Princesses had an attendant.”
The Duchess of Kendall poked a skinny, ringed finger at the redbirds. “Aren’t they cunning? Look at the little crests on their heads. Look at the black among the crimson of their feathers.”
“They need an attendant all their own. Not these old witches of court, but someone young. Someone delightful,” the King continued.
Chapter Forty-two
THAT EVENING, THE MUSIC FROM LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU’S house rose into the night, mingling with the soft rush of the river, with the fragrance of summer roses. Her garden was filled to overflowing with people. All the world came, strolling under lanterns she’d had set in trees; walking to the rivers, where musicians sat in boats; playing violins and flutes. Later in the evening, the singers, from the opera company that had been formed in the last year, and about which everyone was excited—all London flocked to see performances—would add their voices to the music.
Lady Mary wore a turban upon her dark hair, gauze scarves and pearls around her neck, an embroidered vest over her gown: Turkish clothing from her travels, from when her husband had been an ambassador. Her dark eyes were shining as she went from one person to the next.
“She owns a pair of scandalous Turkish breeches,” Montrose said. He was standing near the garden hedge with Caesar White. They had been invited because they lived in the village, and also because Caesar was a poet.
“What do you know of Turkish breeches?”
“I’ve seen pictures of them. The harem women in Turkey wear them. They’re…” Montrose made a gesture with his hand.
“Yes?”
“The material,” whispered Montrose. “One can see through it.”
“And what does one see through it, Francis?”
“Never mind.”
Tommy Carlyle sauntered up, extravagant in a blond wig, demanding to know where Lady Devane was.
“She is at Hampton Court,” said Caesar.
“She stayed there, did she?” Carlyle waited for them to tell him more.
“The King asked her to stay,” Montrose said.
“Ah,” said Carlyle, as if everything was explained. “I am not surprised.” He strolled away.
SLANE SAT under a tree near the river. Gauze grazed his cheek.
“All the world is here.” Lady Mary was leaning over his shoulder, her mouth close to his ear. “You have only to listen to learn more than you will learn standing in a council chamber. Walpole is coming soon. Remember, there’s a boat just down the river should you need to leave us quickly.”
She moved away, lively and full of herself, all gauze and pearls and dark eyes, pleased that she had lured Walpole to her gathering, excited that Slane might have to make a quick escape.
Slane, on edge, alert, aware he might have to leave on a moment’s notice, ahead of soldiers or King’s messengers sent to arrest him, looked around. There was the frail, hunchbacked poet, Alexander Pope. There was the Earl of Peterborough, and Captain Churchill, Molly and John Hervey, Lord Lumley, Philip Stanhope, Lady Cowper, Mrs. Clayton, Mrs. Howard. All of them were attendants or frequent guests of the Prince and Princess. There were Lord Townshend and Lord Carteret, ministers to the King himself. Lady Mary was wonderful. He, and the other agents here, would learn much.
He saw the Duke and Duchess of Tamworth strolling arm in arm, on their faces the expression of two people happy in each other. Does Tamworth know yet that Barbara is back? thought Slane. He felt in himself curiosity to see the Duke’s response once he learned the news. And there was Charles with his wife. Slane liked Charles no better than he ever had. Of the two, he thought, watching Tony and Charles, I prefer the Duke, who is my enemy, over you, Charl
es, my ally.
Two men strolled to the riverbank near where Slane was sitting. One of them, a dueling scar across his face, crumbled bread and threw it into the river; swans suddenly appeared, arching their long necks greedily.
“So,” Philippe said to his companion. “You saw her.”
“Yesterday morning,” said Sir Gideon Andreas. “I had forgotten what a beautiful woman Lady Devane is. Will she be here tonight?”
“So others are asking. Divine Barbara, I thought her in Virginia forever.”
There was an edge in Philippe’s voice that made Slane sit up straighter.
“You know her, then?” asked Andreas.
Philippe smiled. “A little.”
“Slane, how do you do?” said Andreas. “I did not see you sitting there. Sir, are you acquainted with Laurence Slane? Slane, this is the Prince de Soissons.”
Slane rose and bowed to the Prince, whose eyes flicked over him and then away. He didn’t answer, or acknowledge the bow, and Slane, knowing he had been dismissed as a nobody in the French prince’s mind, sat down again in the chair.
His head was aching. In a moment, he must stand, he must walk among the crowd and hear what there was to hear. Somewhere in the distance, he heard Wharton laughing. Three parts drunk already, thought Slane. Wharton had started drinking again in May.
There was Gussy, talking with Alexander Pope. More stoop-shouldered, even quieter, Gussy had labored to keep all together; his fingers must be permanently cramped from writing letter after letter. He was, like them all, tired now, discouraged, but not quite ready to give in. He saw Slane and smiled his quiet smile.
Dear friend, thought Slane, I wanted to see you given a fine estate, a high office in the Church. You deserve that. Anger filled Slane at the people walking around him, rich in their honors from the Hanovers, when someone like Gussy had nothing. I will do anything to hurt this reign, Slane thought. A sudden, driving pain in his head made him know he must calm himself. He touched the scar on his brow, closed his eyes, sat in the chair as if sleeping.