The Pretender's Lady

by Alan Gold

  The birds, the landscape, and the vastness of the sea were stimuli to their vibrant senses, and every breath was like sipping a heady nectar. The vast horizons, the updrafts of warm air that rose in gusts over the cliffs, the gentle sound of the sea, and the scented aroma of heather were, to their tired and pained bodies, like exotic perfumes from the distant East.

  “Dear Lord, but I hadn’t realized how much that damnable rowboat across the Minch had exhausted me. Can you feel your battered body? How painful it is to move every muscle? And aren’t the gentle sun and breezes refreshing your mind and restoring your body,” he said. He realized he was making conversation for the sake of it, but he was concerned about talking in any other way in case she misconstrued his intentions. He had gone much too far in liberties with her earlier and wanted to assure her of his best and most honorable intentions.

  But all she did was nod and walk separately from him. The day wore on, and the sun sank below the Western Outer Hebrides islands toward the New World of America. They were seated on a cliff top, their legs dangling over the edge, watching the shadows of the distant sea-rocks elongate to become fingers pointing at them. She had been passively quiet throughout most of the afternoon, as though she was fighting some inner battle. And then, quiet unexpectedly she asked, “Have you ever wondered what it would be like to go and live in America?”

  “America is a British colony. It should be a part of my family’s empire. When I become king of England and Scotland, I should very much like to visit it. It’s a young land, full of opportunity and great wealth. And you, Flora? Would you like to go?”

  “One day! I have an urge to travel, to see beyond Skye and the Islands. Last year, I traveled to Edinburgh with Sir Alexander and Lady Macdonald and saw much that was truly wondrous. But I want to see beyond Scotland. I want to go to London and see the great palaces and the houses and maybe go to a theater. Yes, I want to see America, but first I really want to see London.”

  He smiled. “As do I.”

  She turned to him and laughed. The sun’s dying rays now cast a reddish glow on the landscape. Looking at him, it appeared as though the prince was bathed in an ethereal light. Again, just as earlier, she found her face flushing and her breath becoming shallow.

  Out of instinct, he put his arm around her shoulders. He realized that he shouldn’t, because he’d made a vow to respect her engagement to Alan Macdonald, but the intensity of the moment overcame his previous good intentions. Anyway, it was more a gesture of friendship than romance. They were both captured by the beauty of the scenery and the miracle of the sun’s rays coloring the world with a kaleidoscope of iridescence and luminosity. And she put her arm around his waist and drew him into her.

  As the light turned from reddish to violet, they lay back on the soft bracken and grass and looked up at the indigo sky. Slowly the stars began to emerge, and even though the sun still shone dimly before it sank into the Atlantic, more and more stars glimmered above their heads.

  Charlie kissed her gently on the lips. She didn’t resist but kissed him back. She put her arms around him and drew him into her. Their gentle kiss grew more and more passionate, until she rolled on top of him, taking control, and allowing her passions a release. She moaned as his hand lifted her skirts and he felt her inner thighs. He gasped as she, too, put her hand inside his dress and petticoats and reached for his manhood. Their mouths never left each other’s as they fondled and felt and caressed each other’s body, more and more urgently as the night drew on and darkness surrounded them in its embrace of secrecy.

  They made love beneath the canopy of the heavens. As he kissed her and entered her body, her thoughts were only of her prince, her lover, her special man. All restraint left her mind and body. She became as one with him. And as he thrust and thrust, and as she received him deeper and deeper, she opened her eyes and cried out to the deity listening, “Oh God, Charlie, oh God. I’ve been waiting for this all my life.”

  The following midday, Neil MacEachan returned, and for the first few minutes, Flora could barely look at him for fear of blurting out like a do-laddled girl what she and Charlie had done the previous night. But she restrained herself and remembered the danger they were in.

  When Neil had drunk his cool mug of water and eaten his second and then his third griddlecake, he finally was able to tell them what he’d been up to. He was so intent on telling them his intelligence that he didn’t notice the sheepish grin on Flora’s face, nor the look of studied concentration that belied a guilty secret on the face of Prince Charles Edward Stuart.

  Instead, Neil MacEachan said, “I did as I said. I went to the closest town, Locheid, a wee place, but with a good Inn and people who welcomed a fisherman caught far to sea by a horrible gale. I asked for help which they gave freely and willingly. And when I’d eaten and drunk my fill, for which the local councilman took responsibility, I asked what was happening in these parts. And they told me plainly, for I was obviously neither an English spy, nor a loyalist nor a Jacobite, but just a hero of the waters in a rowboat, blown off course, about whom tales would be told for years to come.

  “I was informed that those MacLeods who weren’t at Culloden are aware that His Highness the Prince of the Stuarts is nearby and trying to get to Skye and they’ve got patrols along the coast ten miles to the south. They’re mighty keen on earning the £30,000-bounty which King George has placed upon your head. Thank God they didn’t see us land this far north, or they’d have shot at us for certain, for the terms of the bounty are that you be caught, dead or alive. And they told me that the English are everywhere on Skye. Two and three men patrols are all along the roads, and all the towns have detachments. The large towns like Portree have regiments stationed there. We’re safe if we travel on across fields and hide in barns, but with the bounty on your head and with many of the Clan MacLeod supporting the loyalists of King George, this Island is a hive of bees intent on stinging you. And to be honest, from what I saw and heard, it’d be better if the two of you ladies were alone, and not traveling with me. Much as I hate to leave you, Flora, I think that if you two ladies were seen walking back to your home alone and not in the company of a man, you’d create far less suspicion.”

  Flora was about to disagree, but Charlie said, “I think Mr. MacEachan is correct. I’m your Irish seamstress, Betty Burke, and you are my mistress, Flora Macdonald. You might command the attention of an Englishman, but once you tell him who we are, reminding him that I speak only Gaelic and so can’t converse, they’ll allow us past without hindrance. Neil, I cannot tell you what a debt of gratitude I owe to you for your courage and selflessness.”

  Neil MacEachan stood. Flora packed his bag with sufficient food for the return sea journey to South Uist, confident that there would be no more storms for a month so that his return crossing would be calm and uneventful. This time, returning alone, he could raise a sail and make the journey both shorter and easier.

  She embraced him, as did Charles, and watched him leave the house, and stride out to the cliff, at the bottom of which was the boat they’d secreted.

  Alone again, Prince Charles and Flora knew instinctively that they had to tidy the house in deference to the owners and leave it as they had found it. Flora was intent on putting the prince into the hands of Jacobites on Skye who would take over responsibility for him and relieve her. The prince intended to travel south toward Borodale that lay on the western coast. He had told nobody, but before he’d left the mainland for the Islands to escape the Duke of Cumberland, he was informed that a French ship would be waiting for him there during the next few weeks to transport him back to Paris.

  As they packed their meager possession to leave, the prince noticed that Flora was suddenly quiet and demure. She had been excited by the return of Neil MacEachan, but when he’d left and as they were packing to leave themselves, her mood seemed as though she was suffering some sort of deflation.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Charles.

  She shrugged.
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br />   “Come Flora, what’s wrong,” he insisted.

  She walked over and enfolded herself in his arms. “It’s coming to an end. I can feel it in my blood. We’ve had one breathtaking and fantastic night and now there’s no more. You’re a man of great importance and I’m only a wee Highland Lass and you’ll be off with your dukes and duchesses and princesses and all I’ll have to remember you by is a secret night of passion and excitement and closeness. In a day or a week, you’ll be leaving and you’ll return to France and your palaces and I’ll go home to a small cottage and a farmer for a husband and I’ll never see you again.”

  He began to say something, but she put her fingers to his lips. “Hush. Don’t. Nothing you say can change our situations. I was born to live and die in a croft in Scotland, and you were born to sit upon a great throne. I know that, Charlie. I understand that. But just for a single night, just for a glorious moment in my life, one I’ll never forget, I was the Pretender’s Lady. I was Princess Flora, wife and mistress and lover and bosom friend to the Prince of the Stuarts. You’ve opened my eyes to a world I never thought in my whole life that I could become a part of, and now I have to close my eyes and my mind to what happened and get on with my life. But I’ll never be able to close my heart.”

  Tears began to well up in her eyes, and she started to sob.

  “Oh Flora, my dearest Scottish girl. How sweet and perfect you are. You understand so well why our friendship has to stay as it is. But just as you’ll never close your heart to me, I too will never close my heart to you. I want you to pick me a sprig of heather when we’re walking. I want you to kiss it for me and wear it close to your heart. And as we leave each other, as I depart on my ship back to France, I want you to take it out of your bodice and give it to me. And this I swear to you, Flora Macdonald. I will have the finest Italian jeweler fashion the heather and encase it into the most precious metal so that it becomes my golden leaf, and from that moment until the day I die, I shall wear it on a golden chain around my neck with the part your lips touched directly above my heart. The kings of France have a Fleur-de-lis, a lily, as part of their coat of arms. When I become king of England and Scotland, I will make the heather part of my heraldic coat of arms, and for all eternity, you and I will know that my flag and shield and pennant will bear the sprig of heather which my Flora has given to me. This your prince swears to you by the God of all creation.”

  She kissed him gently. Passionately. And then she said something that surprised her, and utterly stunned the prince.

  “Marry me, Prince Charles Stuart. Marry me now. Make me into your wife.”

  “What? But . . .”

  “You said to me only yesterday that being with me was as though the two of us had become one and we were Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. I am flesh of your flesh, Charlie. We have been joined as one. Now I want you to marry me.”

  “Flora, you must understand that . . .”

  She smiled and put her finger to his lips. “Not a real marriage, silly boy, not one which the world will know about. Just a ritual that you and I can share and enjoy and make sacred in our hearts. Just to let me hear the words from your lips, words for me alone, which tells me that you’re mine, and I’m yours. You’re my first lover, Charlie, and when I’m married, I want to remember you, my first true man, forever and ever, amen!

  “Right now, Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Maria, Prince of the Stuarts, I want you to marry me, not in the eyes of God or the law but just for my eyes and ears. Simply say the words that you’ll love and honor me for all your life, and I will say them too, and in our hearts, we’ll be as one.

  “Don’t fear, Charlie, for it will be neither legal nor ordained by the Lord, so in the eyes of the world, it’ll be as nothing. But I just want to hear you say ‘I will’ when I ask you to be my husband. Not for the sake of my mind, but for my heart’s sake.”

  He smiled and held her hand. They stood before the fireplace, cold now with dying embers from the previous night’s blaze, and repeated to each other the marriage vows that neither had previously spoken nor had heard said to them before.

  “And will you, Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Maria of the House of Stuart, take me, Flora Macdonald of the Clan Macdonald of the Island of Skye as your wedded wife.”

  “I will.”

  He looked at her in amusement and said softly, “And will you, Flora Macdonald of the Clan Macdonald of the Island of Skye, take me, Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Maria Stuart as your lawful and wedded husband?”

  “Oh yes, darling. Willingly and whole-heartedly.”

  They turned to each other and kissed again. “We’re wed, Charlie. We’re man and wife, and we’re the only two in the whole world who knows it. And in a day or so, I’ll divorce you, but for this night and the next morning, my darling boy, we’ll be laying together as man and wife. And then when you go off and have a proper wedding to a real princess and I marry my farmer, Alan Macdonald, then on our wedding nights, it’ll be me making love to you, and you, darling, making love to me. And that will make me very happy.”

  “And what does a man and his wife do on their wedding night?” he asked, ingenuously.

  He started to undo the buttons and bows that kept her dress tied together, as she tore at the bows and sashes on Charlie’s dress.

  “It’ll give us strength for when we begin our journey in the morning,” he whispered.

  “Oh God, yes, husband, for I have a fierce craving for you and I need to satisfy myself once again.” She burst out laughing. “Jesus and all the saints, I’m talking like a sixpenny Edinburgh whore.”

  “Sixpence? I’ll not give you a penny piece. You’re my wife now, and you’ll make love to me without thought of reward.”

  She thumped him in the stomach, and they collapsed laughing onto the straw mattress. In her hysterics, she gasped, “What kind of a whore makes love to another woman? Look at us, rutting like stags on the moors, yet both of us in dresses and petticoats. What would people say if they saw us?”

  They didn’t rise until the sun was setting. And they slept contented all night and began their journey in the morning.

  Chapter Ten

  THE GEORGE AND VULTURE PUBLIC HOUSE LOMBARD STREET, LONDON

  JULY 4, 1746

  There were twelve altogether, but five of them were barely known outside of their circles of business and had only been included by the seven famous members because of their wealth and desire to be amongst men of influence. And inquiries for membership were being received from all over London and from the most noble of all the English aristocracy. The club was even being written about in the scandal sheets and by pamphleteers, even though it had only been in existence for two months. Imagine its impact when it was mature and its activities became known in the courts of England and Europe!

  First to arrive was the founder and the club’s patriarch, Sir Francis Dashwood, orphaned by the sudden death of his mother when he was a child and by the unfortunate but timely death of his father when he was only sixteen. Now in his late-thirties, immensely wealthy and gaining a growing reputation as a rake and a rascal, Sir Francis was looking to enjoy every single moment of his life and the club that he’d founded was something of which he was fiercely proud.

  He had created the Hellfire Club a few months previously following the dissolution of his previous Dilettante’s Club, which tried to promote those aspects of Greco-Roman and European art and culture that the English were increasingly content to ignore just as they were ignoring the great works of music, theater, and writing being produced in Europe. Oh, certainly the hated Hanoverians had imported Mr. Handel with his oompahs and ponderous and overwhelming sauerkraut operas. And with his oratorios and choruses had come his massively bosomed ladies and such, standing on a stage and frightening the audience with their raucous bellowing voices.

  And because of Mr. Handel, the music of Mr. Bach and his sons and Mr. Purcell and those like him was more often ignored than
performed in the salons. And with the commanding position of Mr. Handel had come the demise of all the other English musicians whose works were rarely played these days? What great works of writing and art and music was England producing, now that the leaden and stultifying hand of George was compressing the nation into a heavy and tasteless sausage, bounded by the impenetrable skin of the German court?

  Bored beyond reason by the stifling constraints of life in London under the Hanoverian monarchs and the grave German sausages that the English nobility had become in order to feed George’s ego with the sycophancy he relished and fed up with the austerities of church worship, Sir Francis had decided to light a fuse under the backsides of all England and really give the gossips something to talk about.

  And still inspired by the wondrous boy king Pretender Charles Edward Stuart, whom he had met and loved some years earlier in Rome, he was increasingly disgusted by the asinine pomposity of German George, his hideous sons and daughters, and all the other awful members of the Hanoverians who had come over and believed they were the aristocracy of England, just because somebody had decided that his father should be king. But worse than Fat George was his murderous son the Duke of Cumberland who had made it his life mission to expose and punish every Jacobite sympathizer and to murder or deport every Scottish Highlander. What the Romans had done to Carthage and the Crusaders to Constantinople and Jerusalem, the duke was happily doing to Scotland, and barely a single English man or woman was speaking out against the carnage.

  Which was one of the reasons he’d begun the Hellfire Club—to rouse English men and women, especially the nobility, against the Germanic values imposed upon the Court of St. James’s. And even though it was a mere two months old, it looked as if his ploy was going to succeed. Other members of the Hellfire Club he’d inveigled to join were Robert Vansittart, the finest and most brilliant barrister attached to the Inner Temple, William Hogarth, the artist, and a certain Mr. Josiah Hopeful, who said that he would attend meetings whenever he was in London, which was less and less frequently now that he was so involved with the creation of an academy and college in Philadelphia.