The Chevalier

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  Davey waited impassively. At length, her face smeared with tears, she said, 'What do you want? What am I to do?'

  ‘That's better. Now you are being sensible. I will tell you what you will do. You will write it all down, the whole confession, in a letter to your husband.'

  ‘No!'

  ‘Yes! I shall stand here and watch you do it. Everything, you understand?' She did not answer, shaken now by sobs, her tears falling fast like summer rain. 'And then I shall mediate for you.'

  ‘You? Why you?' She was incredulous.

  ‘Because I am best suited to do it. I am his friend.'

  ‘Why should you?' she asked, wiping the tears from her face with her fingers, a gesture so childlike that he was almost touched. Almost.

  ‘I want what is best for him,' Davey said, and it did not even sound like an answer. 'Come, get up. I have paper and ink over here for you. Come and sit here at this table, and write. Make haste. It must be done before he comes back to the house.’

  Still sobbing, she scrambled slowly out of bed, and came across to the table, pushing the strands of hair that stuck to her wet face with the back of her wrist, sniffing pitifully. She sat down, and he placed the paper before her and put the pen in her hand.

  ‘Write.' He commanded. She hesitated, and looked up at him, her drowned leaf-green eyes appealing. She was in his power now, and he felt triumphant. She wanted him to command her, her will gone. 'Write,' he said again. 'Dear husband. Dearest Matt -’

  She wrote. Slowly, with many pauses and sobs; hand shaking now and then, tears falling on to the page so that the ink ran the words together; prompted, corrected by Davey, she wrote. Docile now, tear-shaken, wet-eyed, wet nosed, obedient, a chastised child, she made her confession. He read it over her shoulder as she wrote it. She had learned to write late in life, and never used the art if she could help it, and it was like the scrawl of a five-year-old child, the spelling eccentric, the script clumsy and unpractised. 'Sign,' he said when she had finished. She signed. He allowed her to stand up, leaving the messy page on the table. She turned to him.

  ‘Can I go back to bed now?' she asked shakily. He looked down with triumph into her face. Where is your beauty now, he thought, where your bold confidence?

  ‘You can sleep now,' he said. 'Sleep as long as you like.’

  She did not understand his intent until it was too late. He held her eyes with his own, and he thought that for a moment she expected him to kiss her. Then the fear leapt to her face, but it was already too late. The pressure of his hands prevented her from making any sound but a strangled gulp. She was a big, strong woman, though debilitated by her weeping, and taken unawares; but his hands were a workman's hands, barely softened by a year in gentlemanly service. He held her at arm's length, and her thrashing limbs thudded ineffectually against him.

  He held her for a long time after she was still, to make sure, and then, in sudden disgust at what he held, he let her go. He still was not sure whether he had meant to do it from the beginning. He listened for a moment, but the house was quiet still. Matt might come back, a servant might wake, at any minute. He must work quickly.

  He opened her clothes-chest and turned over the soft, scented garments quickly, ignoring the protestation of his senses at this reminder of her living sensual appeal. He found what he wanted - a long scarf of coloured silk, that she had worn as a sash, sometimes around the waist, sometimes over one shoulder. He knotted it round her throat, and then with great difficulty hoisted her up and tied the other end to the hook of the chandelier. When he released her, she hung, turning slowly a quarter turn each way, and her toes just scraped the surface of the floor with a thin, mouselike scuff. A stool, carefully positioned, and overturned. The blotted, tearstained letter lay on the table, the last testimony, pathetic and completely convincing. Under the bed, her dog Oyster cowered in silent terror.

  He went quickly away and out of the house again, back towards the coppice, to collect the horses, and begin a search for Matt. Only when he reached the tethered horses did he find that he was wiping his hands again and again down his jacket, as if to clean them of some contamination.

  Davey searched all night without finding Matt, and returned at first light to the house, to find it in uproar. Millicent had discovered her mistress, hanging in her bedchamber, when she went to wake her. Clement had cut her down, and sent for the priest, who was nowhere to be found, and the master, who was thought still to be in Wetherby. Matt himself came in shortly after Davey, red-eyed and exhausted, ready to forgive his wife and believe the best of her. Clement told him in broken words what had happened, and led him to the room. Matt stared down at the contused face and the red ring around the throat, and had no more tears to shed. He looked up, his eyes going round the circle of faces with the numb expression of a child who has been so abused as to become almost witless, seeking no relief, only for the direction from which the next blow was to come.

  Explanations came bit by bit that day, while Matt sat in a chair where he had been put in the steward's room, neither speaking nor moving, as if bewildered by grief. Davey looked in from time to time, though he had a thousand things to do in the absence of direction from the master. When he went towards sunset he saw that Matt had fallen asleep at last, still sitting in his chair, his head slumped sideways on to the untender support of the chimney wall. Asleep he looked very young, too young to know such pain.

  I owed you a life, Davey thought, looking down at him. The debt is paid now. She won't deceive you ever again. The droop of the mouth in sleep was undefended, the dark eyelashes soft and long against the brown cheeks. Davey felt the tears rising in his throat. What would Mat do now? he wondered. When the first shock had passed, what would he begin to feel? He reached out and stroked the cheek very gently with one hand, and in his troubled sleep Matt stirred and gave a trembling sigh. Would it not have been better that he had never known, had gone on happily in his dream of perfection? I have been no friend to you, Matt, Davey thought, no friend after all. He went away, his shoulders bowed, and before Matt woke again, he had gone from the house, leaving no word of explanation.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The war had gone badly for France, and to military defeats had been added the problems of bad harvests and famine, and in April 1711 the death of the Dauphin from smallpox. His son, the Duc de Bourgogne, became the new Dauphin, and his duchess, King James's cousin Marie-Adelaide, Dauphine. Karellie and the King were still together, serving under Berwick that summer, and a certain cautious friendship had been struck up between them. There was a great difference in their ages - Karellie was approaching forty that year, while the King was just twenty-three - but the difference was not so apparent as it might be, for James was unusually grave and mature for his age, while Karellie, as sometimes happened with mercenaries, had remained very young in his ways. They were united by a love and respect for Berwick, and by their sisters back in St Germain.

  Both of them received letters from Aliena and Louise-Marie which kept them in touch with things in Paris. The new Dauphine had been very kind to them, and had invited them to a number of parties, and even, on the occasion of a grand hunt, had sent Louise-Marie a horse and a riding habit so that she could take part. King James worried a great deal about his sister, for she was nineteen, beautiful, sweet tempered and intelligent; yet because of her position she had no suitors, no dowry, no pretty clothes, and would probably never be able to marry. There seemed no more likelihood of his being able to reclaim his throne, and though he dutifully fed the slender hope, even writing a personal letter to his half-sister Queen Anne begging her to remember her duty and leave the throne to him, Karellie never felt he really believed much in the prospect. Karellie did what he could to cheer the King, and again that winter broke his promise to Diane that he would spend every Christmas with her. The King, he felt, needed him more, for the war was going so badly that King Louis was already negotiating a peace with England, and a peace treaty would almost certainly insist that Louis
repudiate James and expel him from France.

  They stopped at Lyons on the way back to Paris, and visited the silk factory there, and each of them bought a length of silk for his sister - King James chose white embroidered with gold for the Princess, and Karellie bought scarlet for his darker sister. Neither of the girls had much in the way of finery, and the silk would at least provide each of them with one new gown.

  Christmas at Versailles might have been very gloomy, but for the Dauphine, Marie Adelaide, who determined that they would at least be merry for the season, and she contrived even to make old King Louis a little more cheerful. There were hunts and feasts and balls, and at the centre of every activity was the Dauphine, dark eyes shining, chivvying and provoking the royal family into laughter. Karellie thought she looked very like King James, and when they danced together they might have been brother and sister. The King was always easily affected by those around him, and as Karellie, dancing with Aliena, watched them go up the set, he saw King James throw back his head and laugh in a quite uncharacteristic way.

  ‘That is a good sight,' he murmured. Aliena nodded. ‘What has it been like here, since the news?' he asked her. She gave a very French shrug.

  ‘Tears and misery. Que voulez-vous? The Queen grows old, the Princess has never seen any kind of life. Without the King, whom they adore, what would be the point of living? Le Grand Roi will not expel them, nor stop their pension, but for such as them it is not merely a roof over the head and enough to eat which matters. They try not to be unhappy or ungrateful, but we spend more and more time at Chailly, hiding ourselves, seeking comfort. If the King goes, the Queen I dare say will soon die, and the Princess will become a nun. Poor little creature.’

  Karellie understood her. 'She is so pretty, she ought to be the happiest girl in the world,' he said.

  ‘The beautiful Princess,' Aliena nodded. 'An irony, is it not?'

  ‘And what of you?' Karellie said shyly. 'Not a princess, but all the same -’

  Aliena smiled up at him. 'You flatter me, my brother. But I am not to be pitied. The Princess says that her lot is not so hard as her mother's, since she was born in exile, and has therefore never known any better. You could say the same of me. I know no home but St Germain. I am at home, and with my family. What more could I want?'

  ‘A husband, perhaps,' Karellie said. She gave him a strange look.

  ‘Oh no - not that. I do not feel the need of that.' She was watching the King and the Dauphine coming to the end of their walk; now she and Karellie were at the top of the set and must make the parade down the room, and he asked no more questions, though he continued to wonder from time to time what she had meant.

  The celebrations went on to the end of January, for the Dauphine, who already had two sons, announced that she was pregnant again, and she delighted in any excuse for making merry. But on 9 February she was stricken with smallpox, and the next day she was dead. It was as though a light had gone out; King Louis was grief-stricken. And then, only a few days later, her husband the Dauphin was taken by the same disease and died a week later, leaving their four-year-old elder son as Dauphin. The Court was plunged into heavy mourning, and even now there was no respite for them, for three weeks later the child also died of the same disease. King Louis had reigned for an almost incomprehensible seventy years, and his sole heir was a two-year-old child, his great-grandson.

  There was no possibility of King James leaving Court at such a time, and Karellie felt that if the King stayed, he should stay also. James wrote again to Queen Anne, urging her to name him heir, and this time the Queen replied, saying that if James would change his religion, she would do what she could for him. It was a meagre enough promise, but even so it might have made a deal of difference, for it was known that Anne did not like the Hanoverians, especially her cousin George. James could not, would not, ignore his father's last words to him, which were to honour his religion more than his throne. He wrote firmly that he was satisfied with the truth of his religion, but would never urge anyone else to change, or think the worse of them for differing from him; and that he therefore expected to be allowed the same liberty of conscience that he himself would deny to no one.

  March dragged on wearily at St Germain. The Queen and Princess were at Chaillot where their friend Soeur Angelique was ill, and Aliena was with them. Karellie found the palace gloomy, and the King was poor company, restless and moody. He longed for action, and began to consider asking for leave. When he raised the subject tentatively, the King would not hear of it, and said instead that he would ride to Chaillot and beg his mother and sister to return to St Germain.

  ‘It will be better when they are here. It is the lack of female company that makes us dull,' he said.

  The Queen and Princess came back; two days later, the King fell ill, and when a rash appeared on his face, the terrible fear descended on them. Karellie waited in an ante-room, pacing up and down. Would this be the end to all their enterprises? he wondered bitterly. He thought of Martin and Kit, dead in battle, of his own long exile, his wasted life. He was forty years old, and had nothing, nothing to shew for it.

  It was very late when Aliena slipped quietly in and stood before him.

  ‘It is smallpox,' she said, 'but the doctors say it is a very mild attack, and that the King should come through it. With careful nursing, he should not even be marked.'

  ‘Thank God,' Karellie said heartfeltly. Aliena gave a little sigh, and sat down on the nearest chair, putting her hands to her face. 'You are tired,' he said sympathetically. ‘Let me call for Mrs Nan to take you to bed.' Aliena shook her head, and a moment later took her hands from her face and looked up at him. She was flushed, and her eyes were unnaturally bright.

  ‘It isn't that, Karellie,' she said steadily. 'One thing that exiled ladies come to know about is disease - we are all expected to be tender nurses. I am not tired, I am sick.'

  ‘No - no it can't be that,' Karellie said. In that moment, he realized how much Aliena had come to mean to him, breaking through with her sweetness the barriers he had erected against her, because of her parentage.

  ‘I'm sorry, my lord,' she said. 'I think I have smallpox.’

  *

  It was an anxious time, but after a week had passed, it was plain that both the King and Aliena would recover. Karellie never left his sister, sleeping in an ante-room and sharing the attendance with Nan in a way that amazed and rather embarrassed the servants. He would not permit Aliena to be bled, which made them shake their heads, for bleeding was the first and most efficacious cure for everything. But Karellie insisted that it was bleeding that had killed the Duke of Gloucester, and that the late Dauphine had suffered an instant decline when she was bled. He remembered his mother's stories, how Prince Rupert had had the gravest doubts about the efficacy of bleeding, and had refused the treatment himself, and what was good enough for his illustrious grandfather was good enough for his sister.

  At all events, Aliena recovered, and a burst of sudden spring weather allowed the convalescents to sit out on one of the terraces. They had their chairs placed side by side, and Karellie noticed how they would sit in silence for a long time, and then exchange a glance which seemed to serve them instead of conversation. They were like an old married couple, he thought. Louise-Marie sat with them and tried to entertain them with cards or conversation, but Karellie saw how little they needed diversion, and occupied her energies himself, to leave them in peace. A few days later Louise-Marie discovered the rash on her own face, but she made light of it.

  ‘My brother and your sister have recovered so well, that I doubt not but it is the same light infection. With God's will, I shall not even have a mark.’

  She retired to bed, and the Queen, in great anxiety which she was at pains to conceal, retired with her to nurse her. Aliena and the King were not allowed near, for in their weakened state they might retake the infection, with fatal results. The Princess spent a quiet night, but on the next day the doctors bled her in the foot, and by t
he evening she was seriously ill. She grew gradually worse over the next few days, not responding to any of the treatments which she bore with great patience. When she had been ill for a week, she asked her mother to send for her confessor.

  In the ante-rooms, the King and Karellie and Aliena waited, numb and shocked.

  ‘She has had no life, no life at all,' the King said. At length the priest came out. 'How is she, Father Gaillans?' the King asked.

  ‘She is very weak in her body, sire, but her mind is quite clear. She is resigned to death. She has placed herself in the hands of God.'

  ‘Oh, I pray that God will spare her,' the King said, the tears running over his face. 'I pray God will see we need her more than He.'

  ‘You must pray for resignation, sire,' the priest said gently. 'His will be done.’

  Late that night the Queen came out. 'They have given her a sleeping powder,' she said. 'She has prayed that she might live, only to serve God and comfort me. She is so young, so young.'

  ‘You must rest, mother,' the King said, taking her arm.

  They leaned together for a moment. 'Let me get them to give you a powder too. Then you will sleep.’

  The Princess died in the early hours of the morning, before the Queen woke. She was buried beside her father in the Church of the English Benedictines in Paris, and the length of silk that the King had chosen for her at Lyons, which she had never had time to have made into a gown, was given to the nuns at Chaillot for an altar-cloth for the chapel where she had spent so many peaceful hours.

  A few days later the Queen left St Germain for Chaillot, where she hoped to be allowed to live permanently, and the Chevalier St George and the Marechal Comte de Chelmsford left Paris to rejoin the campaign. Aliena remained with the Queen, but Karellie was worried about her, for with the Princess dead she had no official place at Court, which indeed appeared to be on the point of breaking up anyway. She could go to Maurice, of course, but Maurice was retreating more and more deeply into his world of music, and had now taken to travelling round Italy with his father-in-law, producing operas in Rome, Naples, and Florence, coming back to Venice only for short visits. What life could he offer their sister? It seemed to Karellie that the only thing would be for her to go back to England to live with their mother. Whatever Karellie felt about his mother - and it was too complicated for even him to be sure - there was no doubt that she could, if she would, give Aliena the kind of life that Karellie wanted for her. So at their first halt he swallowed his doubts and wrote a letter, telling his mother of the situation and begging her to recall Aliena to England.