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Lady Helen’s joining it made the mad scheme possible. The Duke fulminated in Sarum House, his young bride went about town looking as if the devil was after her, and the gossip columns were full of hint and innuendo. Martha was too busy to care, but she made time to go to Mrs. Billington’s benefit performance in Algonah at Drury Lane, since some of the music was by her friend Michael Kelly. Calling on her next day to be congratulated, he told her that the opera had had to be largely revised because it was no longer possible to find a male soprano to take the part of the hero. ‘My good friend Storace wrote the opera for a castrato, of course. A barbarous practice but we miss those extraordinary voices. I’d been thinking about that …’ He took her arm and drew her away from her other guests into a window alcove. ‘Had you considered how this will affect your brilliant friend’s future? When I was young, we all wrote our operas for castrato heroes. Now there aren’t any, and not many women who can take breeches parts either. Mrs. Jordan still gets away with them, but it’s a miracle … Even Mozart had to rewrite his Idomeneo for tenor when they performed it at Munich. And Lady Cristabel started her career as Orpheus. The managers will be wild for her when she is ready.’
‘Thank you. You’re a good friend, Mr. Kelly. From time to time I get frightened; think our plan quite mad.’
‘Oh, no,’ he told her. ‘It’s enough to make a man want to live for ever. To see Lady Cristabel’s career … You’ll spend some time in Paris, I hope, on your way to Venice? I’m sure Lady Cristabel should see the opera there. I rather hope to go there myself, now the way is open at last.’
‘Yes, we certainly hope to spend some time there.’ But when he had left, she sat for a long time, hands in her lap, brooding. For the first time in her life, she was having trouble about money. Helpful Mr. Jonas had not sufficiently understood the intricacies of European banking, and cautious Mr. Coutts was proving gently unhelpful in the matter of the letters of credit and large advances she needed. He treated her like a child and pooh-poohed her insistence that, in paying for Cristabel’s training, she would in fact be making a highly promising investment. She had come away from their last interview angry to the point of furiously-resisted tears at his bland, obstructive patronage. Little girls, he implied, should go away and play with the young men.
What could she do? Where could she turn? Borrow? Every instinct revolted at the idea. But she had promised Cristabel, and Lady Helen …
A knock at the door. Deborah. ‘There’s a very strange young man asking for you.’
‘Strange?’
‘Jewish, I think. Quite young. Very sure of himself. Says it’s to your advantage. His name’s Rothschild. Nathan Rothschild.’
‘Rothschild.’ Thoughtfully. She was remembering something her father had said after his last visit to Europe the year he died. He had gone to Frankfurt on business and been introduced to an amazing old man called Mayer Rothschild. ‘He sits in a tumbledown house in the Frankfurt ghetto and holds the web of European finance in his hands. I never saw anything like it.’ Not a common name. A son? ‘Send him in,’ she said.
Impeccable dark business clothes, dark red hair above the plump, round face, dark eyes that contradicted something obsequious in his manner. ‘Mr. Rothschild,’ she held out her hand. ‘I believe my father knew yours.’
‘Yes.’ His hand in hers was moist. ‘It’s good you know that.’ His English was heavily accented. ‘I have a proposition to make to you, Miss Peabody.’ He came direct to the point.
‘Yes?’
‘Mr. Coutts is being difficult.’ Seeing her surprise, he threw out a hand in a curiously eastern gesture. ‘Miss Peabody, we financiers must know everything about everything, or fail. I am come to offer you the funds Mr. Coutts has refused.’
‘At a price?’
‘Of a kind. I am glad to see you’re enough your father’s daughter to recognise there would have to be a price.’
‘For my own money.’
‘For making it easily available.’
‘Unlike Mr. Coutts. So – what is your price, Mr. Rothschild?’
‘Not money. A small favour. You plan to go to Paris, I believe, and then Venice.’
‘You are well-informed.’
‘I make a point of it. All I ask, Miss Peabody, is that you deliver a letter for me to an associate in Paris. I do not wish it to go through the usual channels. It is impossible, these days, to keep finance and politics separate. I am sure, as your father’s daughter, you will understand that.’
‘Oh, yes, but I think I need to know what kind of politics I would be involving myself in. It must be an important letter if it is worth an interest-free loan to you.’
‘It is important, yes, but I can promise you – on the Torah, if you like – that you would entirely approve of its contents. Not that you would understand them. It would be written in code, of course, seem like a totally harmless bit of family correspondence. A letter to my brother James, that’s all, introducing you and asking him to care for your interests in Paris. And, then, when you move on to Venice, he will charge you with another one, to our brother Salomon, introducing you once again.’
‘And that’s all?’
‘Absolutely all, and they will be at your service as I am.’
‘It’s very tempting,’ she said. ‘It will make Mr. Coutts very angry.’
‘Would you mind that?’
‘I should enjoy it.’
‘Then shall we consider it settled? I’ll have your letters of credit drawn up today. The one thing I do ask is that you leave as soon as you possibly can.’
‘The first letter is urgent? Well, that would suit me. I’ll be out of the way of Mr. Coutts and his daughters when the talk begins.’ She held out her hand. ‘A bargain, Mr. Rothschild. And I thank you.’
Afterwards, she wondered what magic he had used to make her agree so easily. But the letters of credit duly arrived, and Lady Helen, coming to London for the King’s Birthday was amazed to find her preparations so well-advanced.
‘My brother has washed his hands of us, I’m glad to say.’ She had terrified Martha’s other callers into flight. ‘It’s the best we could hope for. Better than I feared. I begin to think he is really enamoured of that new bride of his; glad to shrug off his daughter. My going with you makes it possible for him. I hope it does not appal you.’
‘Nothing of the kind.’ Martha was grateful for this plain speaking. ‘I agree with you; your coming makes it all possible.’ She laughed. ‘It hardly needed the sight of my wooers in flight before you today to make me sure of that. I can’t tell you how glad I was to see them go.’
‘They will be back tomorrow.’
‘And more of them. You have quite changed my position in Society by coming to me like this.’
‘As I intended. Ridiculous, is it not? But one might as well make the most of it. This is what Cristabel does not understand yet. She does not recognise, I think, quite what a stir she is going to cause. A duke’s daughter. On the stage. In breeches parts.’
‘You had worked that out?’ Now Martha was impressed indeed.
‘I’m past my prime, Miss Peabody, but I’m not stupid. Yes, I had worked that out. Cristabel has not. That is what I am come to discuss with you. You two are of an age, more or less, but do you, I wonder, realise how much younger than you she is?’
‘She thinks only of her career. It’s formidable …’
‘Yes. And what she does not understand is that there is more to a stage career than being able to sing like an angel, and hold an audience. That, we know she can do. But what about life off stage? I found you here, Miss Peabody, entertaining a group of agreeable young fortune-hunters with only that maid of yours for chaperone. You had them entirely in line. Cristabel could not do that. She has never had the chance to appear in Society, learn its ways. Would you think it wildly extravagant of me if I were to suggest that we spend some time in Paris on our way to Venice? Everyone seems to be planning to go there, except, I am glad
to say, my brother, who vowed never to set foot in France again when they murdered their king. He may regret it now, but he’s a man of his word; he won’t go. I confess I quite long to! And Cristabel could make a kind of unofficial début there, under my wing, and learn a little of your social sense.’
‘Why, thank you.’ Martha never blushed for a man’s compliment, but she did now. ‘Lady Helen, you have taken the words out of my mouth. I long to see Paris, and Mr. Kelly was advising just the other day that we spend some time there so that Lady Cristabel can go to the opera. Better there than here in London, don’t you think?’
‘Very much better.’ With emphasis. ‘I think she had best stay in the country until we are ready to leave. Life at Sarum House could hardly be called a bed-of-roses just now. My brother has not actually sworn at me, but he has hardly spoken to me either. It makes for an uncomfortable sort of household.’
‘I should just about think so! Lady Helen, I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am!’
‘Then pray don’t try. Nothing to be grateful about. This is probably the most selfish thing I have ever done in my life, and I am beginning seriously to wish that I had started on an enlightened career of self-interest much earlier.’ She pulled on her gloves, and rose. ‘How soon do you think we can start?’
After neat England, France was untidy. Sheets were damp and postilions familiar. Martha rather liked being called citoyenne, but even she was surprised when their new post boy peered into the chaise and said, ‘Well, they’re pretty enough anyway.’ But the combination of her money, and Lady Helen’s idiomatic French and air of quiet command, got them good service all the way to Paris, where Signor Arioso had reserved them rooms in the Hôtel de l’Empire, formerly the home of a rich banker.
‘I wonder what happened to him in the Revolution?’ Cristabel had been admiring the silk-covered furniture and ormolu clocks that must have belonged to the previous owner.
‘Best not ask, I think.’ Lady Helen looked up from the note she was writing, the last of many. ‘There, that should launch us. I don’t know which is the stranger, to find so many old friends still here, or to remember those one will never see again. I was presented to the poor Queen in eighty-nine,’ she told them; ‘just before the trouble started. Who would have thought …? And I believe there is talk that now he is on the way to being First Consul for life, Bonaparte begins to dream royal dreams.’
‘Only dreams, I do hope.’ Martha had written some notes of her own, to Michael Kelly who was already installed in an hotel on the Rue Neuve St. Marc, and to her father’s old friend M. de La Fayette, back in Paris after his long incarceration as prisoner of war in Prussian and Austrian fortresses. He was the first to call on her and shook his head when she told him their plans.
‘I do beg you to be careful how you go on in Venice,’ he said. ‘I owe Bonaparte a great deal for insisting on my liberation under the Peace of Campo Formio, but what he did to the Venetian Republic in that agreement was a wicked thing. They surrendered to his army in good faith only to be handed over lock, stock, and barrel to the Austrians, in exchange for concessions in the Rhineland! A crying scandal. But what hope of honour, of principle in a parvenu like the Corsican? I must warn you to be aware, always, in Venice, of the ears of the Austrian secret police.’
She smiled at him. ‘You don’t fear the French secret police here?’
He threw out a hand, laughing. ‘Touché! But I am afraid the answer has to be, “Not yet”. Besides, you would never betray me! I don’t suppose you remember, but when I visited your new United States years ago you sat on my knee and did the most dreadful things to my epaulettes!’
Shortly after he left, the smiling servant announced M. de Rothschild and Martha greeted another short, stout, pale-faced young man and handed him his brother’s letter. ‘Thank you.’ He did not open it, but asked how he could serve her and when they planned to leave for Venice. And, when she promised to let him know shortly before they left, uttered a warning not unlike M. de La Fayette’s. ‘You will need to be careful how you go on there, Miss Peabody.’
Michael Kelly, calling next day, had his own view of Venice. He had been appalled at the sight of the Lions of St. Mark, looted from Venice by Bonaparte’s troops, and installed in the Place de la Carrousel. ‘And gilded, Miss Peabody! As if their Venetian bronze was not good enough for these French robbers. What else can one call them? I hope you do not find tempers too high in Venice, but they are a happy-go-lucky, pleasure-loving set of people.’ He sighed. ‘How I wish I could come with you! But I am forgetting my errand, which is to urge you to get tickets for the Théâtre Français tonight. Talma is to act Orestes in The Distressed Mother and I am reliably informed that Bonaparte himself will be there. And Mr. Fox too. It should be interesting to see how they are both received.’
‘Yes, I look forward to it,’ she told him. ‘Lady Helen’s old friend M. Talleyrand has arranged seats for us in his box.’
‘I should have known! You’re lucky in your chaperone, Miss Peabody!’
‘I should just about think I am.’
Since Charles James Fox actually got a heartier round of applause than the First Consul at the theatre that night, it was hardly surprising that Bonaparte was not in the best of tempers at his grande levée at the Tuileries next day. Lord Whitworth, the British Ambassador, had arranged for Lady Cristabel to be presented, and the three of them were near enough to young Lord Guilford in the reception line to hear the First Consul refer insultingly to his father, Lord North, as, ‘the man who lost America for England’.
‘Hardly the words of a statesman,’ said Lady Helen afterwards.
‘What a rude little man,’ said Cristabel. ‘He asked me where I got my dress! I told him the Pantheon Bazaar, but of course he was not listening.’
‘And would not have understood anyway,’ said Martha regretfully. ‘What a cheap sort of place it is, I mean. A pity. He has no conduct, that man.’
‘You could say that he does not need it,’ said Lady Helen.
They saw Bonaparte again a few days later, when they went to see Paisiello’s opera Nina at the Italian Opera House. ‘He’s very attentive to his wife,’ Martha noticed. ‘It puts him in a more attractive light.’
‘She looks charming,’ said Cristabel. ‘Hard to believe the stories …’
‘And best not to refer to them,’ interrupted Lady Helen. ‘Did you know that Bonaparte brought Paisiello here from Naples and established him in apartments in the Tuileries?’
‘Setting up as a patron,’ said Martha. ‘Odd to think that Paisiello spent all that time at the court of Catherine the Great of Russia. I wonder what differences he finds here.’
‘I long to meet him,’ said Cristabel. ‘Could we, Aunt? Signor Arioso told me that they put on his opera, The Barber of Seville, at Malmaison the other night, with Hortense de Beauharnais as Rosina.’
‘Josephine’s daughter?’ said Lady Helen thoughtfully. ‘In that case I see no reason why we should not invite Paisiello to call on us.’
‘He goes everywhere.’ Martha already had her little court of fortune-hunters and was glad of the French lessons her father had had her given by an emigre viscount.
The Italian composer called a few days later accompanied by a blond, heavily bearded young man, whom he introduced as his pupil, Franz Wengel. ‘You will not mind my bringing my young friend, Signora? He is to be the next Gluck, I think. A formidable talent. I found him working as a copyist, and starving a little, here in Paris. He has heard of your voice,’ turning to Cristabel. ‘And begged to meet you. He might write something worth your singing one day.’
‘I should dearly like to.’ The young man bowed over Cristabel’s hand. ‘I’m from Lissenberg, ma’am. They still talk, there, of the girl-Orpheus who held an audience in the palm of her hand and caused a small diplomatic incident.’
‘You know about that!’ Eagerly. ‘Then can you tell me what happened afterwards? In Lissenberg? All these years, I have never known ho
w much harm I did my friend Prince Maximilian. My father took me away. No one would tell me. Do you know, sir?’
‘What everyone knows. He was in terrible disgrace for a while. Then that poor girl his stepmother failed to produce an heir. His star rose again. His father brought him back from the University, made him give up his musical studies and take what he called his “proper place” in the army. And then, just two years ago, the Princess Amelia had a son. Lord, what a to-do! Fountains running wine all through the country. Bankruptcy a step nearer. You’d have thought there had been no heir before. Well, Prince Gustav has absolute right of appointment, and Prince Max never would toady to him.’
‘I remember,’ Cristabel said. ‘He wanted to write opera, poor Max, just like you. Does he still, do you know?’
‘Everyone knows. That’s part of the trouble. Prince Gustav looks on musicians as hired servants. To be bullied like his other underlings.’
‘I remember. He frightens me.’
‘He frightens everyone. Even his wife, poor lady. Nobody dares question the money he spends. They say Prince Max did, when he was summoned home and found the country groaning under more and more stringent taxes, the currency debased, the civil service corrupt… He spoke up, they say. His father had him locked up in the cells under the Palace. Cold as death. Bread and water. He was afraid for his voice. Made his submission, poor boy.’
‘Boy? He must be about your age, surely?’
‘In years, maybe. Not in experience.’
‘You think not? Have you seen him ever? Heard him sing?’
‘Good God, no. He doesn’t get the chance to do that much. I told you. Prince Gustav thinks singers just a little better than the scullions in his kitchens. And as to seeing Prince Max, I come from the wrong end of Lissenberg, Brundt, the poor end, where the mines are. Prince Max did come once, when he was still heir, but I didn’t see him. He went down the mines; no one could stop him. He was the heir. He was horrified by what he found. Said something must be done about conditions there. Meant it, I think. His half brother was born not long afterwards. So much for Prince Maximilian.’
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