by Deryn Lake
To say that her heart was in turmoil was to understate the case. She was in an ecstasy of excitement. And also of anguish. That she had fallen in love with Charles Edward Stuart — or perhaps with the idea of Charles Edward Stuart — she had no doubt. But gnawing at her excitement was the fact that she was seventeen years older than he; that if she had married at the age when it was seemly for most girls to do so, she could have easily had a son as old.
It seemed to her that, except for when she slept, she spent the next twenty-four hours either draped before her mirror, checking again and again that she looked at least twenty years younger than her actual age, or berating her dressmaker who — poor woman — to ensure that a new gown would be ready, had sat up all night with two young sewing girls to assist her.
To add to the tension of the household, Mitchell too, was in a strange and savage mood. He strode through the house like a dark angel, assuring himself that the very stones of the floor were fit to bear the feet of Prionnsa Tearlach, but for Melior Mary he had nothing but glares and freezing looks. In the end she tired of his evil disposition and took him to task.
‘What’s the matter, damn you? I would have thought you to have been in Heaven in view of our guest, but you look sour as a virgin deserted at the bed post.’
‘Mind your tongue, Missie!’
‘And you mind yours! Why are you so sullen?’
‘Because of you and your foolishness. You’re in love with His Highness. It’s written all over your face for everyone to see.’
‘And what if I am?’
‘You are seventeen years older than he. And anyway he is of the Royal House of Stuart.’
‘Neither of those things have any bearing on the case. He does not love me and is not likely to.’
She remembered the look that Charles Edward had given her when he had sat in the Great Hall and she had turned her head away; the fatal fascination he held for women had annoyed and captivated her simultaneously.
‘But even if he should — flirt — with me...’ Her tongue played over the word. ‘...what of it? I have loved no-one for years. All warmth and affection went when Matthew Banister left. What is it to you if I know happiness once again before I die. Are you jealous, Mitchell?’
‘You know I am,’ he answered fiercely. ‘I have devoted my life to you and your welfare, Missie. Thrusting down all the powerful desires that you aroused in me and making myself feel half a man because of it. And now you expect me to sit by and watch you make a fool of yourself? And of the Prince as well. Well, I’ll no be a party to it.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I am going to leave Sutton Place this very day. Oh, don’t jump up like that. I may be old but a better bailiff, a better servant, you’ll not find for many a mile. Someone will employ me, never fear.’
‘How can you talk so foolishly? We have been together for thirty-five years! That is a lifetime to some people.’
‘Yes — and you have been my life’s work. I guided a wild girl that would have shut herself away — peeping at the world like a novice nun — into becoming the Beauty of two generations. And now she rewards me by arrant foolishness over a man whom I regard as heir to the throne.’ And with that he was gone from her room and ten minutes later strode from the mansion house carrying no more than a bundle of belongings. At any other time she would have been inconsolable, gone after him and begged him to return. But this was the wrong moment. In four hours the hero of the ’45 would be stepping over the threshold after eighteen months away.
It struck Melior Mary with sudden amazement that it was one of the manor’s fateful dates. It was on May 17, 1521 Sir Richard Weston had been granted the Manor of Sutton; on May 17 Sir Francis Weston had been executed for adultery with Anne Boleyn; and now on May 17 the Young Pretender was to come once more to Sutton Place. She wondered if it meant anything, wondered if the curse that had taken Hyacinth from her and left her to die without a child of her own, could be about to strike again. For a long moment she felt thoroughly despairing and then the fire in her rekindled and — as one hand stretched out for her powder puff — she turned once more to the contemplation of her ravishing reflection.
*
The Little Monk jerked awake as a fish tugged at his line, his battered straw hat falling down over one eye making him look for all the world like a rakish angel as it did so. He guiltily pulled it straight, cramming it down over hair that, for all its whiteness, was thick and curling. He should have been at peace, here by the mill stream, if it had not been for the fact that he had just woken from another dream. A dream of the great house, the second in as many weeks.
He did not like it very much. It disturbed the sunny world of flock and gander and gurgling brown trout and left him with a sense that something was about to happen that would leave the idyll of his life forever changed.
Not that this dream had been as sinister as the first. On the contrary there had been people in it; jolly, laughing people who had given him the time of day as he had passed wondering, perhaps, who the meek figure in the roughspun brown habit and comic pebble glasses could be.
‘Good morning,’ he had said to them.
And they had answered, ‘Good morning, Father,’ for they had probably thought that he was an abbot — more important than he truly was — and he, may his worldly pride be forgiven him, had not disillusioned them.
Two jolly girls wading in a sweet river had waved to him as he had trotted past and a big, dark man with the look of a squire about him had reined in his horse and raised his hat. Then a pretty woman gathering morning roses had smiled and bowed her head. That part had all been very pleasant. But he hadn’t liked meeting the youth at all. Not that he — the young man — was malevolent or threatening in any way. On the contrary, it was his very familiarity that had been so frightening.
The Little Monk, in his dream, had stared and stared at the nimbus of damson-coloured hair and the flower-blue eyes and wondered where he had seen them before. But nothing had come to mind so eventually he had settled for ‘Good morning,’ and a quick nod.
‘Good morning, Father.’
Even the voice had been recognizable. And then the house had loomed into view, as big and as inescapable as ever. He had turned his back on it and it had played that silly trick of being in front of him again. In his dream he had grumbled into his gums and the young man had said, ‘It is very difficult to leave Sutton Place, Father.’
And then the fish had tugged on his line and he had woken up, disconcerted by the house’s omnipresence, the young man’s look of old acquaintance. He heaved himself to his feet with a sigh. Something, somewhere was not quite right and though he once might have been able to tell what it was, now all he could do was scratch his white, woolly head as he toddled off in response to the monastery bell tolling the end of another May day.
*
‘A toast, ma’am,’ said Charles Edward Stuart raising his glass. ‘I drink to the most beautiful woman in the county of Surrey; in fact the most beautiful in England. I drink to you, Melior Mary.’
He stood up and downed the port that shone like a ruby in the firelight, then he automatically refilled the glass from the decanter that stood at his right hand. Dinner was over, the servants had been dismissed and the Prince was very slightly drunk. But, nonetheless, there was a coolness between him and the chatelaine of Sutton Place that had not been there when they had last met. He had hoped to come back straight into her arms but, instead, found himself being kept at a discernible distance.
He had changed somewhat in the eighteen months since he had last been in the manor house. Thinner, paler, there was now an air of seething discontent about his mouth, which occasionally twitched of its own volition. But those strange heavy-lidded eyes — the colour of topaz — were unaltered. Everything of his nature was in them — the adventurer, the soldier, the malcontent, the sufferer, the sensualist. A complex man, brave as steel and unhappy as a beggar. The crown of England should have been on his hea
d and then he could have developed into the bright charming King that nature had intended at his birth. But the wound of pretence was in his heart, exile was corroding his soul, hopelessness had begun to hold him in its iron fist.
And tonight he felt unusually depressed. His beautiful subject with eyes like the Parma violets he had picked as a child was, for no reason, unfriendly; the wine was making him irritable and somebody, somewhere had hatched another useless plot to kidnap George II.
‘I am not happy here,’ he said suddenly and abruptly — and drained his glass again as if to endorse the feeling.
‘I am sorry, Highness.’
‘But I would like to stay for a few days if that is acceptable to you ma’am. Gage can run my affairs. Yes, I think Sutton Place would make a very good headquarters.’
He paused, his mood veering in direction, and then said, ‘And of course it has one irresistible attraction.’ He had decided to try his luck with her again.
‘And what is that?’
‘You as my hostess.’
He leant back in his chair, one satin clad knee crossed over the other, and gave her a slow and deliberately charming smile. A smile of which he had first discovered the devastating effect amongst the bonnie Scots lassies who had thronged round him in their bright colours during the ’45. And which, after that, he had simply practised about the Courts and salons of Europe. Everybody liked his naughty grin — peasants, aristocrats, whores — everybody that is, except Miss Weston who did not seem to respond particularly, merely repeating an earlier saying.
‘My house and myself are you servants, sir.’
She was an enigmatic woman. He had desired her enormously at their first meeting and was only sorry that he had had to leave the same night for she had seemed to respond warmly to him — in fact he would have thought of her as an easy conquest. But enquiries amongst the Jacobite agents with whom he was on more intimate terms had yielded up a puzzling picture.
‘The woman’s a freak,’ young Lord Atholl had said roundly. ‘No-one is permitted her bed. I tried; my father — in his time — tried. They say even Hanover George and his son tried. She’s known as Queen of Ice, you know.’
Charles Edward had stared at him in astonishment.
‘Your father — and Hanover George! I know she stood in for my mother but how old is she for God’s sake?’
‘Some say she’s sixty — but I believe around fifty is nearer to the truth.’
‘I suppose she must be, yet she looks only half of that!’
‘I know — they also say that she has discovered the Fountain of Youth! One of her maidservants was bribed and said that she washes in and also drinks some heathenish water each day.’
‘Good God!’
‘Good God indeed! It is said, too, that the man is not born who could pull up her skirts.’
It was crude talk before a Royal Prince but Charles and Edward Atholl were not strangers to this kind of badinage.
‘Shall I try?’
‘You, my Prince?’
‘Why not. Unless she has anatomical difficulties...’
‘Neatly put.’
‘...I wager I’ll be the first man.’
Lord Atholl had laughed.
‘If it will be anyone it will be you, sir.’
But now, sitting here, with this flower-like creature looking at him down the length of the dining table, Charles Edward remembered the conversation and was vaguely uncomfortable. She was no cheap opera girl to joke about with other bucks; he sat in the presence of beauty, of something a little magic in its rarity.
‘Have you ever been in love?’ he said, with that extraordinary abruptness he had used earlier in the conversation but which was really quite foreign to him. She gave him a quizzical look and he writhed with embarrassment. He really did not know what possessed him. He began to apologize but she was already speaking.
‘I was once, Your Royal Highness.’
Was she being over-formal because she was annoyed?
‘There was a tragedy in both our lives and he went away — forever. Since then I have not been profligate in my emotions.’
‘I meant no offence, ma’am. It is just that you are an exquisite. To be honest I am quite bowled out by you.’
She laughed and Charles took a mouthful of port wishing that some of his old style with women — and his previous easy manner with her — would return. What he had said just now was true. He had totally changed his mind. He found her presence too disturbing to reduce her merely to the status of another bedroom conquest.
In a voice deliberately non-committal she changed the subject.
‘Would you care to retire to the Long Gallery? It is very fine despite the fact it stood many centuries damaged by fire. My father had it restored about twenty years ago.’
He knew that she was waiting for him to stand up but he remained where he was, leaning forward over the table so that she looked at him in some surprise.
‘Why are you so cold with me?’ he said. ‘I have no wish to upset you.’
She looked away again.
‘How could you? You are my Prince and my sovereign Lord. It is not my place to be upset.’
He jumped from his chair, his depression turning to the anger that could make him wild with rage and was now only just held in check.
‘How can you speak so? You know me — you know my deeds. Has being a Prince ever made me less the man? I care about my subjects — I care about you. I am not yet so numbed by frustrated monarchy — nor the drink that relieves the pain of it — to ride roughshod over the feelings of others. Nor, I hope, would you. Tell me why you are treating me so coldly.’
There was a long pause while she stared at her plate and finally, when she spoke, it was in a voice choked with despair.
‘Sir, when we last met we exchanged kisses. You may believe it — or you may believe it not — but there has been nothing of passion in my life since the time when my sweetheart left me. And that was over twenty years ago. But yet you aroused love in me. How dare I speak this — but truth must out? I must fight against my feelings because the fact is I am old enough to have borne you. This year I shall be fifty-one.’
She wept before him, humbled to nothing by her wretchedness. It took him only two strides to run the length of the huge table and to kneel by her side. From where he was he saw the great lashes masking the shine of her eyes, watched her hand sweep up to brush away the springing tears. His heart groaned within him that he had ever joked about possessing so delicate a creature.
‘I do not ask you as your Prince,’ he said, ‘but as a man. So the freedom of refusal is yours by right. Melior Mary, it would pleasure my soul more than anything I could name — and that includes the crown of England — to taste the ecstasy of your body. Will you yield up to me what you have refused the whole world?’
‘But I am too old for you, sir.’
‘You could be a hundred years for all I care. I am in love, Melior Mary — I am in love. Now, will you have me?’
Her wonderful smile was his answer and he bowed his head before her. He was a boy again; his spirit danced as he picked up the hem of her dress and smothered it with kisses. And then into the room came exultation — as fevered and as raw as anything that either of them had ever felt before. A frenzy was upon them — a frenzy that both recognized as heart’s wish, as journey’s end, as great love.
The mistress of Sutton Place wept with joy as the man for whom the Scottish nation had raised ten thousand swords now, most humbly and quietly as if he were the minion, led her by the arm towards the consummation of shared adoration.
And oh what fulfilment to lie naked in her bed and feel — after all the lonely years — the warmth of his arms about her, the press of his firm flesh against hers! It was spring encapturing autumn as he raised her flowing hair and pressed it to his lips; it was the regeneration of earth by rain as he covered her body with his bountiful kisses; it was the bonding together of every star in the firmament as he at last ma
de her his. Every bell in Christendom rang out its silver peal as that long-forgotten explosion of rapture took first her, and immediately him, to the feet of enchantment.
Melior Mary Weston and Charles Edward Stuart were at one. The differences of age, of birthright, of upbringing were not even considered by them. If God had let him be born merely an English aristocrat and she what she was — daughter of a country landowner — nothing could ever have parted them again. But he was heir to an ancient and accursed line of Kings and she mistress of the strange and haunted Manor of Sutton. Their paths were not destined to lie together.
19
Down the sweeping path — that had become known by tradition as Lady Weston’s Walk — wearing a gown of mulberry velvet and a hat that trailed black feathers from its brim, came Melior Mary. Half walking, half running, she laughed to herself with the simple enjoyment of a child’s game of hide-and-seek. She had left Charles Edward behind gathering wild flowers for a nosegay and it seemed a pleasurable thing to dodge behind a great oak — one that had stood in Sutton Forest even when Edward the Confessor hunted there — and watch him first smile, then frown, as he tried to find her.
She had never thought this kind of bliss possible. A glance from him, a touch from his smallest finger, was enough to make her dizzy. Joy bubbled abroad at the sound of his voice. She wondered that the human frame could withstand so much heightened feeling. And yet, somewhere deep within, was a gnawing sense of guilt. For now she realized how profoundly she must have hurt Brother Hyacinth. She had driven the poor wretch to despair for little more than a girl’s determination to have what she wanted.
She had spoken of her guilt to the Prince as they sat, side-by-side before the fire in the Long Gallery, and his reply had made him seem the wiser and the older of the two.
For he had said, ‘You should not think in that way because for everyone that one gives one’s heart to — be it only for a second — a change is made in the balance of life.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That paths are crossed, emotions are honed, nobody is quite the same again.’