by Alan Gold
“Mr. Leicester,” said Lord Milius quickly.
“Exactly. Mr. Leicester. Indeed, m’Lord. The lady in question is currently a guest in one of the smaller cells. Mr. Leicester requests that I offer her the very best of accommodation that the Tower has to offer, as he assures me that during the time of her incarceration, he will ensure that she is visited by many influential and titled people. She is, according to Mr. Leicester, a hero of her people, and will be treated by me accordingly.”
He looked up at Lord Milius, handed back the letter and smiled, saying, “Please inform Mr. Leicester that the lady in question will be given the very best treatment and accommodation that I can offer.”
Lord Milius took out a purse of gold and gave it to the Governor, who smiled even broader and said, “It’s a pleasure doing business with Mr. Leicester. And when his father has gone to a better place and Mr. Leicester ascends to a more important position, I hope that he will remember a certain Governor of a certain Tower, who is now and has always been his devoted servant. And kindly tell Mr. Leicester that this same Governor would dearly like to support him by election to the Houses of Parliament were this certain Mr. Leicester to appoint him as a representative of some rotten borough.”
Milius smiled. There was no need to pass on the prince’s offer . . . the Governor already had his reward in mind.
When they first came to her cell, she thought it was for some dire purpose. When she’d arrived at the Tower the previous afternoon, the guards had been crude and menacing, taunting her, ridiculing her, forcing her to fetch and carry the cot and chairs from the hallway into her chamber. When they’d closed and bolted the huge wooden door, she felt utterly bereft and intimidated. In the semi-darkness, she had been forced to put her cot together and find straw to fill the filthy mattress. The room stank of urine and vomit, and even breathing the air made her retch. She rubbed her stomach, which was now beginning to show signs of straining against her skin, and sought a place to sit down that wasn’t dank and festering.
That night had been hideous, with the screams of other inmates making her fear for her sanity. She cried herself into a state of despair, and for the sake of her mind, she repeated the words to songs she had learned as a child. She found that she was curled up on the floor, arms grasping her knees to her chest, as she had slept when she was a frightened little girl.
The morning had brought some relief, but she really began to question how long she could remain like this and still stay sane. A baby should be born in the clean and fresh air of the Highlands, not in the fetid decaying squalor of the Tower of London.
During the rest of the day, Flora tried to concentrate her mind on what she would tell her torturers when her time came. How long before she could restrain herself under the pain of the torture instruments from admitting that she had aided Prince Charles? How long before they inquired about the baby in her belly? And how long before she admitted that it was of royal blood? That would mean its life would be reported to the Butcher Duke of Cumberland, and only God could foretell her fate when the news became known.
And then the door suddenly opened. In shock, realizing that she was now about to suffer the agonies of the rack and the casket and the fires of the torture chamber, she drew back in terror and stifled a scream. But the man who walked in was fat and beaming a smile and looking unctuous.
“And good afternoon to you my dear Miss Macdonald. I’m Mr. Winters, the Governor of the Tower of London, and I’ve come to offer you my most sincere and humble apologies for inadvertently placing you in this most disgusting of accommodation rooms. This was done without my knowledge, and be assured, Miss, that I shall seek out the miscreant who placed you here and deal with him very determinedly.
“You will kindly accompany me to another wing of the Tower, where a much more suitable accommodation has been arranged for your pleasure.”
He stepped aside, bowed, and pointed the way to the door.
Was this a joke, she wondered. Was this the way in which prisoners were led to the torture chamber or to the execution block, first giving them a glimmer of hope and thereby making their descent from hope into hell all the more painful? If it was, there was nothing she could do about it. The Governor had brought four Yeomen Warders with him, who were all smiling as though she were royalty.
She walked out of the cell and was accompanied along the corridor, up some stairs, down others, through vast halls full of pikestaffs and rondelles of swords, suits of Elizabethan armor and much more that flew by too quickly for her to determine. Up more steps and eventually to a corridor in which there was more light, and she could look down and see the River Thames flowing past. If this was the way to the torture chamber, she thought, then it was very different from her nightmares of dungeons and hooded figures.
One of the Yeomen Warders strode ahead of her and opened a door to a large chamber. There were four rooms. On the floor were rugs and carpets and the furniture was both elegant and comfortable. A spinet had been set up by the window, there was a harpsichord and a lute close by, and she could even see a four-poster bed in a far chamber. There were pots and pans near to an open fire, a table and chairs for dining, and tapestries on the walls.
Had she not known better, she would have thought that she was entering the private chamber of the ruler of England.
“Is this a joke?” she asked the Governor, as he entered and proudly invited her to look around the room.
“Joke? Of course not. This is your chamber as long as you are a guest of His Majesty King George II.”
“But he’s imprisoned me and calls me traitor.”
The Governor smiled and winked, saying, “He might, ma’am, but others call you heroine.”
She looked at him in amazement. “Charles?”
The Governor frowned. “Frederick!”
“Who’s Frederick?” she asked ingenuously.
The Governor burst out laughing, wished her a good afternoon, and he and the Yeomen retired. And they left the door to her cell open and unlocked.
She sat in amazement and repeated the question, “Frederick? Who’s Frederick?”
Chapter Twelve
CHTEAU DE VERSAILLES NEAR THE CITY OF PARIS, FRANCE
SEPTEMBER 25, 1746
His Royal Highness Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Maria Stuart, heir presumptive to the thrones of England and Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, son of the Pretender to a lost crown, grandson of the deposed King James II of England, Scotland and Ireland, and great grandson of James I of England and VI of Scotland who was chosen heir to Queen Elizabeth I at the moment of the great monarch’s demise, walked out of the northern Salon de la Guerre toward the Salon de la Paix at the southern end of the Great Hall of Mirrors.
Lined up along the entire room, all two hundred feet of it, were the hundreds and hundreds of people who attached themselves to the French monarchy like limpets to the bottom of a ship. Here, resplendent in their uniforms of office, were the princes and princesses, the ducs and duchesses, the marquises and marchionesses, the maréchals and the generals of the French Army, the prelates of the Holy Roman Church and their mistresses, sycophants and influence peddlers, deposed members of foreign royalty, aged courtiers of Louis the Sun King, current and past court officials, members of the Académie Royale, scientists, philosophers, artists, courtesans, past and present mistresses of the king as well as lesser family and irrelevant nobility from the provinces, all assembled at the glittering court of King Louis XV like overlooked and faded objets d’art in an storeroom.
And as the prince walked along the Hall of Mirrors in almost complete silence, King Louis sat motionless on his throne at the southern end, scrutinizing him and his every movement. The young prince walked in homage toward the great majesty and victor of the previous year’s Battle of Fontenoy, his heart pounding in anticipation of how he would be received; whether as victor, vanquished, lunatic, or savior? His heart was in his throat, but he walked as tall and proud as his tremulous legs would allow.<
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And then Louis suddenly and unexpectedly stunned everybody by standing, and beginning to applaud his advance. The entire court, whose eyes had been trained on the Young Pretender, turned and looked at their great king. As one, they began to applaud and cheer, though none but a handful understood why. When the young man was halfway down the vast auditorium, the king of France ceased clapping and sat down to receive his guest. Slowly, and then all at once, the courtiers realized that they too must desist from applause, and silence again ruled, except for the footsteps of the prince.
Coming to the edge of the plinth, Prince Charles Edward Stuart bowed low and continued his obeisance to the king of France, saying, “The heir to the throne of England and Scotland greets Louis, by the grace of God, King of France and all of its territories.”
“Rise, my dear son. Rise. You return to us a hero. All of France has followed your remarkable odyssey. We have thrilled and celebrated your early victories; we were bereft when tragedy befell you in the inhospitable fields of the north of Scotland; we marveled at your subterfuge in evading capture for all those many months, and we are delighted that our holy France has been instrumental in your rescue to return you to your home, and your mother church.”
The king addressed the court. “My lords and ladies, our son Charles left us an adventurer and has returned to us as a true soldier of the Cross, a man of valor.”
Again, there was thunderous applause. It was the sign for Prince Charles to rise from his bow and kiss the ring of the monarch.
“Are you recovered from your ordeal?” asked the king.
“Majesty, it was as nothing. A trifle. Always in my heart, the glory of France burned bright and warmed me on the cold winter evenings. I return to you and express my most sincere gratitude that the ship which you sent has born me back so that I can rest and recover under Your Majesty’s aegis,” he said.
The king nodded. He liked the young man’s words. “So tell me, Prince Charles, is it true what my ambassadors and spies at the Court of St. James’s have told me about the Duke of Cumberland? Is he really intent on emptying the entire land of the Scots and filling it with English people and with sheep? If so, it seems incredible. One would have to look to the Ottomans assault against Austria and Hungary, or the Muslim’s Prophet Mohammed as he swept out of the desert, or the ancient Egyptians of the bible to find a slaughter of innocents of such epic magnitude. Armies are paid to be killed, but to kill innocent women and children is barbarism at its very worst.”
“Majesty, I don’t know what your ambassador has reported, but it can’t possibly have conveyed the full horror of what the younger son of King George is doing to the Scottish people. Your Majesty defeated him last year at the Battle of Fontenoy. It is a tragedy that he remained alive at the end of the battle to wreak havoc and misery barely a year later against his own people. You say that we must look to the bible for such an event. Indeed, for the duke is replicating the plague of locust in Egypt by denuded his Scottish lands of its people, its clans, its government, its system of laws, and even its animals. Scotland will cease to be, unless the Butcher of Cumberland is stopped. I have returned, Majesty, to join almighty Catholic France in my great endeavor. Since the time of King Henry VIII, his daughter Elizabeth, King James, down to this present Protestant usurper from Hanover, the people of England have been cut off from the blood and the body of Christ through their severing of the bonds which tie them to the throne of St. Peter in Rome. Surely no price, Majesty, is too great to pay to bring back the people of Great Britain to the Holy Roman See?”
Charles stole a glance at the king and then looked surreptitiously at his elderly Imperial Chancellor, Henri François d’Aguesseau. If the aged treasurer, a virtuous man who was the comptroller of the king’s purse, gave a slight shake of the head, it meant that the request would cause further problems between the king and the Parliament, and then Louis would find an excuse to decline the request for help. But if he gave a small and unnoticeable nod, it indicated that the request could be funded and that the decision was the king’s. Charles’ heart fell when he saw the treasurer shake his head. The movement was so slight that it looked like the palsy of an elderly man, yet Charles instantly recognized it as the seal of death for his future campaign against the Hanoverians.
Louis said, “Indeed he must be stopped, my dear son, but it is surely the responsibility of the British people to realize what the younger son of the king is doing, and to tell him to desist. While we have promised you help in the past, France’s eyes must only be opened to the danger posed to us by our real enemies, the Austrians and the Dutch and of course the English when they dare to interfere in our lands. Our only interest, now that we control the Austrian Netherlands, is to establish our border at the River Rhine. These, dear son, are our greatest concerns. Much as we would love to make good our promise to help you restore the Catholic Stuarts to the throne, and force the Protestant Hanoverians to quit our northern neighbor and return to the land of their birth, our funds must be conserved for our own immediate and pressing enemies. My treasury is in debt to an amount of 100 million livres, and I must now increase taxes in order to pay for my armies, my palaces and more.”
He raised his voice so that the entire audience chamber in the Hall of Mirrors would hear him quite clearly, “And these taxes will fall upon the heads of the rich and powerful, the aristocrats who live in the comfort and security of our largess, nobility of my court who give no thought of their indebtedness to how they have prospered by their close association with the throne of France and its people.”
The entire Hall shuddered at the king’s words. Rumors had been circulating for a long time about the king’s discontent with the cost of keeping his court and the appallingly low contributions that his courtiers were making. There had been growing indications that all the nobility would soon be taxed for their wealth.
The king continued, “But one day, my dearest prince, I promise you that France’s eyes will again turn northward to restore your father and yourself to your rightful throne and hence restore the one true religion, and then let King George beware of our wrath.”
When the audience was over, the petitions had been dealt with, the ambassadors received and the business of the day finalized, the courtiers dispersed from the Hall of Mirrors to refresh themselves with coffee and petit fours and patisseries, to huddle in corners and connive about with whom they should meet, who would join whose hunt, who was sleeping with whom, and whether the king might take an afternoon walk in Le Nôtre’s gardens, enabling them to carefully position themselves so that they intersected his path to bid him good afternoon. Gifts and contributions about to be delivered to the royal throne were scrutinized by the courtiers in an attempt to see who was trying to purchase influence, dresses were compared for their opulence, and fierce competition was begun with the object of snaring important guests for the many dinner engagements that night in the different apartments.
Charles, on the other hand, had a number of people whom he needed to speak with and could waste no time with the nonsense and frivolities that went with courtly life. Since he’d been gone from the French Court, the king had taken up with a new mistress, a certain Madame de Pompadour. The affair had begun in February of the previous year at a ball to mark the sixteen-year-old Dauphin Louis’ marriage to his father’s first cousin, the nineteen-year-old infanta of Spain, Maria-Teresa.
Charles had seen Madame de Pompadour briefly in the court, but paid her little attention, as he believed that King Louis was still enamored of his previous mistress; but the beauty and charm and intellect of the Marquise de Pompadour had turned the king’s head and now her power was in the ascendancy. It was important that he meet with her, as, even though she was born a commoner, she had access to the king’s ear, as well as those other parts of his body that might govern his mind.
He contrived to cross her path when the king had left the audience hall and was in high council with his prelates and ministers. It was a moment in the cou
rt when the king’s eyes were turned to State business, and people could relax as they went around plotting and conniving.
Charles noticed that a group of ladies had gathered around Madame de Pompadour, who was sitting in her salon in a nearby antechamber. Outside the door was a group of men standing in silence, each awaiting permission to enter the salon in the hope of gaining the Madame’s attention as their direct route to the king’s ear.
Prepared for his onslaught, Charles walked toward the male courtiers outside the doors to the salon. As a prince and the son of a king, he held far higher status than any of the lesser nobles and courtiers who were awaiting a nod from Madame de Pompadour signaling their right to admission. So the others stood aside as the prince positioned himself immobile in the doorway, waiting for her to look up from her gaggle of ladies and see him.
When she noticed a tall young man standing in the doorway to her salon, she was suddenly taken aback by his imperiousness. Then she recognized that it was the Prince Pretender of the Stuarts, a future king of England.
She stood, and curtsied. “Your Royal Highness. You honor me with your presence.”
“No, ma’am, you honor me by your recognition. I have come to pay my respects to the king’s particular friend.”
She smiled and invited him inside. As he entered the room, he pointedly closed the doors, infuriating the men outside and adding a frisson of excitement to the life of the ladies in the salon. Rarely was a door closed as those inside had to know what was happening outside, and vice versa; but when important matters of state or great secrets were being divulged, the shutting of the door added greatly to the sudden importance of the occasion. It would guarantee an afternoon of gossip, innuendo, and intrigue.
He walked over and took her hand, kissing it. The ladies of Madame de Pompadour’s salon suppressed their gasps. For a commoner, even one who was mistress to the king of France, to be kissed by a prince of the realm, was unprecedented. It indicated an acknowledgment of her status. Madame de Pompadour understood precisely what Prince Charles’ gesture signified and beamed at him in gratitude. His regard for her would spread immediately around the court and would soon come to the favorable notice of the king.