by Deryn Lake
Melior Mary gazed in astonishment. And then she saw a hand — a tough, strong hand yet with fingers that tapered to elegant and manicured nails — extend itself. A dark red ring gleamed as Mitchell raised the fingers fervently to his lips. She rose in her chair to see better who it was but the man had drawn back into the shadow. There was nothing for it but to leave the Hall and find out for herself. And as she did so she felt her knees grow suddenly weak. For no reason at all she was excited — and yet afraid. She knew that destiny was about to play a great game with the Queen of Ice.
*
The chapel in Inglewood Priory was very cold under the first snowfall of winter. In fact the little monk who knelt alone in the hour before midnight, preferring to pray rather than lie shivering in his narrow cell, felt his fingers numbing on the beads of his rosary and could see his breath frosting as he mumbled the time-worn words.
He did not know why they called him Little Monk. He wasn’t very short; in fact not short at all really. Nor was he senile or even particularly mad; just of some indeterminate age and harmless as a flower. He had forgotten how long he had been there, for one year was very much like the next. But it seemed to him that he must have knelt to pray at Christmas time on at least some thirty occasions. And, after it was done, he would, year in and year out, rise up and perform the same ritual. He would go out into the darkness and slay a dozen of the geese that formed part of his flock and then take them to the kitchen and pluck and draw them, that the Brothers might eat them on the morrow. For the two fast days were over and now they could feed on fowl without offending against the will of the Lord.
But he — the Little Monk — did not enjoy eating them very much, picking at his food and then passing it to Brother Augustus who sat on his left in the refectory. For he loved his geese very much and knew them all by name. To take the life of one of them was like killing a child to him. But though he loathed the duty he could not shirk it, for he was the goose boy — and the goat herd. And he also looked after the six dairy cows who gave the monastery its milk each day.
He had always loved animals and when he had wandered into the priory, half starved and raving, all those years ago, the thing that had brought him back to his senses had been a sore on the leg of the Abbot’s horse. Something in his memory had stirred — for he had no idea who he was or where he had come from, however much the monks would question him — and he had mixed up a paste of herbs and flowers and had daubed it on the animal. When its leg had grown strong and better they had put him in charge of the monastery livestock, for it was quite obvious by that time that, unless somebody came to claim him, he was destined to stay with them and enter holy orders. After all they couldn’t just turn him out again onto the King’s highway.
But the old Abbot had liked him and given him his own special name when he had been received into the Brotherhood. But nobody called him that now except the new Abbot, who was tall and thin and mean of spirit — a purser of the lips, a wringer of the hands. In truth a bit of an interferer with the dreamy sun-filled days of gaggle and herd. For what better than to sit where the mill stream flowed and the wheel plunged eternally into foam, gazing at the world from beneath the brim of a battered straw hat?
‘Brother! Brother! — what are you doing?’ would come the rude interruption.
And no amount of explanation that he was keeping his eye on hatching goslings would suffice. But he must up, onto his feet and back to the monastery to busy himself with milking, and sweeping the yard, and all the million and one things that occupied his harmless, meaningless days.
And even now, as he knelt to pray in his own private time, he looked anxiously over his shoulder lest someone should come to nag him, to send him about some errand or other. But all was still. The monastery snatched an hour’s sleep before the rigours of midnight prayer in the bleak harsh darkness. Yet he was right — somebody stood there even now. He turned to see properly, his thick pebble glasses dim in the candlelight.
‘Father?’
‘No, it’s Brother Augustus. What are you doing, Little Monk?’
‘Praying — and thinking.’
In the darkness the fat man chuckled.
‘Thinking, my brother? What are you thinking about?’
‘I don’t know.’ He sighed. ‘Of a time I can’t properly remember. You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Oh, wouldn’t I?’
Brother Augustus had been a Jacobite once, in those mad wild days of the 1715 Rising. He had fought like a savage, clawing the throats from his adversaries and then — when his name had gone on the wanted list — he had disappeared into this backwater, this dreamy priory in Berkshire. And there he had turned to God and to fat. Both his escapes to forgetfulness.
‘Wouldn’t I understand, my brother?’
But the Little Monk was rising to his feet, muttering to himself and to the Almighty. It was goose killing time. Brother Augustus looked at him for a moment with genuine affection. Harmless, sweet man.
‘You don’t know what it is to really kill,’ he said, just beneath his breath.
‘Oh, but I do,’ replied the Little Monk surprisingly.
‘What?’
‘It was my fault that she drowned herself in the well. Ding, dong bell — my poor girl! But I can’t remember who she was. Brother Augustus, I can’t remember who she was.’
The fat man had stared at him as the Little Monk had gone out to slay the Christmas geese.
*
Even judging by English standards it was a cold Christmas. And Joseph who was used — albeit that he leant too heavily upon his walking cane when proceeding along — to personally plucking an orange from his grove during the celebratory Twelve Days groaned a little.
‘Are you old?’ said the wide-eyed grand-daughter.
‘Of course, damme. Don’t I look it?’
‘Yes and no. You’re made exciting smart by your prinkum-prankum.’
She was everything that he could have wished had she really been his. Bright — the child of Tamsin Missett’s daughter, Sarah; for Garnet had united in marriage with one of the oldest and most famous Jacobite families of all. Beautiful — for she bore Sibella’s clearwater eyes and Mrs Missett’s dark, bountiful hair. Loyal — for she had Matthew Banister’s honest heart and Michael Missett’s fealty to his true King. Magic — for there was something in her of the old ways, of the FitzHowards, and their dark mysteries.
‘Pernel, you talk vastly. What do you know of the bad days and the great rake, Joseph Gage?’
He stroked his hand on the thick black hair as they walked along together, wanting to be remembered, wanting to recreate for her the image of himself as it had once been in the eyes of London’s fashionable society.
‘Only what they tell me — Mama and Papa. How you were the most daring trickster in Europe. How you would take any disguise. How you and Grandmother Missett both took part in the most astounding rescue of all time. The night, with the snow curling thickly upon the ground, you took from the convent the imprisoned Princess Clementina and smuggled her, as a bride, to King James.’
Her eyes were bright with the fervent tales of childhood, of deeds told a hundred times and cherished in each telling.
‘Grandfather?’
‘What, Miss Prattle Mouse?’
‘You did do all those things, did you not?’
‘Aye, and more. Did you hear tell of how I left England with not a penny to my name and how your father and Sootface and I lived on naught but bread on our journey to Spain?’
‘Yes. And how you pleased the King so greatly with your bravery — and the Queen with your courtly ways — that they gave you a silver mine and you became the richest man in Spain and a Grandee.’
Joseph smiled. What a pageant it had been. And yet he had paid dearly for it. His wife dead before she was even nineteen; Matthew Banister the father of his beloved Garnet. But Joseph had kept the secret to himself. His adopted son had never suspected for a second that he was anything other than a
true Gage. And when jokes were made in the family about his deep blue eyes and his curling hair, Joseph would simply smile and say that those looks came from the FitzHowards, from the line started by the sorcerer known as Dr Zachary. And that, after all, was the truth.
‘You’re dreaming,’ said his grand-daughter accusingly. ‘You have the look of faraway in your big pussycat eyes.’
She jumped up at him and tried to land a kiss on his cheek. She loved him more than anyone else alive; more than her parents, more than her twin brothers, younger than she and so alike that only Sarah Gage could tell them apart. More even than Sootface who dozed in the wintry sun like an old black dog.
An elegant hand bearing a blazing emerald ring flapped at her. ‘Zounds, child! You’ve ruffled me cravat. Foolish creature.’
But he didn’t really mean it for he picked her up in his arms.
‘I love you, Grandfather,’ she breathed noisily into his ear. ‘You won’t die yet, will you?’
‘Most certainly not,’ said Joseph. And kicking Sootface into wakefulness he handed her over his head to the yawning Negro.
‘I’m too old to carry children about,’ he said, pretending to be peevish. But he couldn’t keep his face straight for Pernel answered, ‘Anyway, it ain’t done for a rake-hell to be seen with sniffy children. It might spoil their grand ton.’
The laughter of the three of them rang out as they headed into the orange grove.
*
Melior Mary could not believe what she was seeing. Mitchell, on both knees, was crouched before a young man who stood, partly concealed by the dim light of the fire, in the entrance hall of Sutton Place. And as he knelt the Scot repeated over and over again in a kind of chant the words, ‘Mo Phrionnsa.’ Furthermore he sobbed as he spoke and shook from head to foot with some overwhelming emotion. The air was alive with excitement, with challenge and with a peculiar feel of ecstasy.
‘What’s to do?’ said Melior Mary abruptly.
She was afraid. She could sense danger about her. There was something in the very way the stranger stood there, so still and so calm, that set her heart beating fiercely. She felt that the time might be near — after all the frigid years she had imposed upon herself — when she could give her proud spirit once more to a man and risk, thereby, the pain and glory of it all.
‘Who are you?’
She knew that she sounded rude but was too nervous to care. And it seemed that he was not offended, for in the gloaming he chuckled. She would always remember that in the years that lay ahead of her; that the first thing she ever knew of him was laughter in the darkness.
‘Well?’
He stepped forward at that and she drew breath. It was he whom she had sworn always to serve; he who, by the very nature of his birth, could demand her loyalty to death. She sank into a curtsey and when her knees touched the floor, remained kneeling. Prince Charles Edward Stuart had come at last to Sutton Place.
He laughed again, but very gently, and said, ‘Madam, Mitchell — I beg you rise. I am here incognito. My assumed name is Sir Humphrey Morris. I would prefer that you greeted me as such.’
Despite the greatness of the moment Melior Mary’s lips twitched into a smile. The Prince’s enthusiasm for disguises and pseudonyms was lovingly joked about amongst his followers. He liked nothing better than to dress up and walk about a town, delighting himself with the fact that he passed unrecognized.
‘As Your Highness commands,’ she said and stood, though not daring as she did so to look up into his face.
Nonetheless she was aware that he was smiling as he said, ‘We had heard rumours — even in Rome — of your prodigious beauty and, do you know, my father has a painting of you? But it doesn’t do you justice, ma’am. It doesn’t do you justice.’
His reputation with women was alarming. Madame de Guémenée had taken him as her lover almost by force, and had parted company with him only after a ridiculous scene. The forty-year-old Princess de Talmond had started off by honouring him in society and had ended up being honoured in his bed. Mesdames de Vasse and de Montbazon had succumbed, along with Madamoiselle Ferrand and a score of actresses. He was the Prince of hearts — followed in the streets of Paris, cheered at the opera. He held a fatal fascination for women and played it to the full.
And when she finally looked tentatively into his face, Melior Mary saw why. It was not that he was conventionally handsome — a tall slim body, a thin face with a pointed chin, a broad strong nose — it was that he had the eyes and mouth of a sensualist. And this was so at odds with his enormous physical bravery — proved beyond a shadow of doubt during the bitter fighting of ’45 and the ghastly privations of being hunted down like a fox — that it was tantalizing. He was a contradiction within himself. He was a soldier and a philanderer. A powerful and deadly combination.
But now he seemed mild enough as he said, ‘While we are still private let me send you the good wishes of our Royal Father. He would have you know that every effort you make, every thought that you spare him, is most highly regarded in Rome.’
Melior Mary curtsied again and said, ‘While we have life and wit, sir, we shall continue to strive for the cause of King James.’
The fighter stirred in his eye.
‘And I too, ma’am, you can believe. But more of that when your guests have departed. Now be kind enough to lead me in.’ He looked a schoolboy for a second as he added, ‘As Sir Humphrey Morris.’
And with that he walked, as coolly as if he were going to play cards in the safety of his own home, into the Great Hall and sat down — nodding his head and introducing himself politely to Lord Barraclough and Lord and Lady Bath — in the place recently occupied by Melior Mary. And when she looked again he had been dealt in and was leaning back in his chair, one leg crossed over the other with a great deal of nonchalance, studying his hand and flicking at an imaginary itch on his nose with a lace-edged handkerchief.
She turned to Mitchell who was once more in control of himself.
‘Had you any idea of this?’
‘None at all.’
‘What has brought him to England, do you suppose?’ Mitchell smiled.
‘There’ll be a plot afoot, Missie. Mark my words. You’ll hear it all before the night is out. Prionnsa Tearlach will not rest till his father is restored to his birthright.’
‘Prionnsa Tearlach?’
‘It’s Gaelic for Prince Charles, Missie. That’s why he’s called Charlie. The English Jacobites misheard Tearlach.’
‘Bonnie Prince Charlie — he is, isn’t he?’
Something in her voice must have been soft for Mitchell looked up sharply and said, ‘He’s still young, Missie. You were a friend of his mother’s.’
She gave him a dark stare and just for a moment the old bad Melior Mary, who went her way and cared for no-one’s opinion, peeped out at him.
‘Hold your tongue,’ she said.
He shrugged his shoulders and walked away and her glance went again to the Hero of the ’45 — her true sovereign Prince — who sat chattering like a bird with Lord Bath, laughing and taking his ease in Sutton Place as if he had known it all his life. Conscious, perhaps, of her gaze the large heavy-lidded eyes flicked up and looked straight at her. They seemed to have the quality of a topaz about them, and an aureole of amber around his pupils. But it was the expression in them that riveted her. They held a dreamy alertness that made his thoughts quite clear. He found her beautiful and probably had no idea of her true age; it was obvious that he desired her.
For a moment she forgot who he was and turned her head as if he were any jumped-up dandy staring after her, and by the time she had recollected herself he had looked away again, giving the impression that he had not noticed the rebuff. But he was smiling to himself as he trumped Lord Barraclough’s ace. She had not disturbed the equanimity of King James’s gallant son.
The evening passed splendidly, the snow holding off long enough to allow those who lived nearby to return home in safety, and those who we
re staying in Sutton Place to contemplate the pretty sight of flakes swirling past the windows as they climbed into beds made cosy by vigorous use of warming pans. At last even Lord Bath was gone — very drunk and singing cheerfully — and Mellor Mary was alone with the man known to his enemies and supporters alike as the Young Pretender.
She found that he was contemplating her in a rather curious manner, a puzzlement about his brows. As courtesy demanded she waited for him to speak first but it was a long time before he finally said, ‘It was told by my mother that it was you who took her place when Captain Wogan led her to escape.’
‘That is true, Highness.’
‘I find it difficult to believe. Frankly, ma’am, you look too young to have been involved in such an enterprise. Were you a child at the time?’
She laughed quietly and smiled at him where he sat in a high-winged chair before the fire in her white and gold saloon.
‘I wish that I could say I was. It is true I had not then seen a great deal of life but...’
He interrupted her, the heavy-lidded eyes suddenly kind.
‘Forgive me, ma’am. I did not mean to pry. It is not my business and there’s an end to it. It is just that you are so remarkably youthful.’
The Prince who had stared at her so boldly had vanished, and in his place was the warm-hearted King’s son whose boyish enthusiasm had won the hearts of the tough and worldly Scottish Chieftains and their fighting clansmen. In his concern not to offend her he had leant forward and put his hand on her arm, not in any way flirtatiously but just as an offending dog might put out a tentative paw. She had forgotten, in all the long cold years, how the touch of Matthew Banister’s fingers could once make her blood race hot. Had thought that that sensation would forever more be denied her. Until tonight that is, when she had sensed something of the calibre of this most unusual man.
Now his touch had her mind disconcertingly spinning. She could not breathe properly as she said, ‘My Prince, I am old...it is just...that I...’