The Chevalier

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  Now tell me all that has been happening,' Diane said indulgently while Giulia was away. 'Where have you been since Christmas?'

  ‘I have spent a lot of the time with the King of England,' Karellie told her. 'You know that the Treaty of Utrecht has forced the King of France to expel King James from France, and in February he had to say goodbye to his mother and cross into Lorraine, where the duke has taken him in, of his kindness. The duke's wife is a kind of cousin of the King's - she is the daughter of Princess Liselotte of the Palatine.'

  ‘Then she must also be a cousin of yours,' Diana said eagerly. She liked to be reminded frequently that Karellie had royal blood in his veins. Karellie bowed in assent.

  ‘It was a very sad leavetaking, for it is not at all likely that they will meet again. The Queen is no longer strong, and sadness has made her old before her time. She lives with the nuns at Chaillot, and without the King -’

  But Diane did not want to know about sadness and death. She said, 'What of your sister? She was with the Queen, was she not?'

  ‘I was coming to that. I was very worried that she should be shutting herself away at the convent, when she is so young and beautiful.' He saw Diane frown at the mention of another woman's beauty, and went on quickly, 'I wrote to my mother asking that she be invited back to England, but Aliena would not go. And when the King went to Chaillot to say goodbye, he had a long interview alone with Aliena. When it was over, she came to me to say that she was going with the King to Lorraine. He had told her thathe could not endure to be parted from her, and asked if she would share his further exile.’

  Diane sighed with pleasure at the romance of it. 'He loves her, then, the King? Will he marry her, do you think; If he does, you will be brother to the Queen of England.’

  Karellie shook his head, looking a little puzzled. 'I don't think he could marry her, even if he wanted to. She is a commoner.'

  ‘He could ennoble her. As your King Henry did to Anne Boleyn. Kings have unlimited power.'

  ‘Well, perhaps he could. But I don't think he quite loves her in that way.'

  ‘You mean he loves her like a sister?' Diane said, disappointed.

  ‘I am not sure. He has grown up with her, you see, more even than with his own sister. Yet quite in what way he loves her I do not know. I think perhaps he simply wished to have someone familiar with him.’

  He knew he was not explaining it very well, but in truth he hardly understood himself what Aliena had told him. He had asked her much the same questions as Diane was asking him, and she had said, 'James does love me, but not in the way you think. He loves me as he would love a brother.' Karellie did not think he could very well tell Diane that.

  ‘But does she love him?' Diane asked now, eager to salvage some romance from the tale.

  ‘Oh yes,' Karellie said. That much had been obvious. ‘Yes,' he said sadly, 'she loves him.'

  ‘Then she is happy to be with him,' Diane said. Karellie nodded. It was a strange situation, and with anyone else other than King James, Karellie would have thought it was a plain case of a King securing the presence of his mistress. It was what any other observer would think, of course, and Aliena's curious mixture of royal blood and obscure origins made it possible for her to hold such an equivocal place in the King's household, where it would be impossible for anyone else. 'So you have been with them in Lorraine,' Diane said. 'What else?'

  ‘I visited my aunt Sofie in Hanover, and then I came here to you.'

  ‘Your aunt Sofie, who hopes to be Queen of England in the true King's place?' Diane questioned him severely, and Karellie stirred uneasily. He did not like her to think he was like those unscrupulous English politicians who kept a correspondence with both sides for insurance against any eventuality. But the fact remained that Aunt Sofie was his relative and very fond of him, and there were many sincere Jacobites whose friendship with her had not been altered by the unfortunate circumstance of her being named alternative heir to the throne.

  But he could not argue this point with Diane, who liked her stories clear, simple and romantic, and so he diverted her attention by saying, 'It was in Hanover that I got one of your gifts.'

  ‘One of them? There is more than one thing, then?' Diane said eagerly, quite diverted.

  When Giulia came back, followed by a servant carrying the bag, the presents were brought out and inspected. The first was a small golden cage, in which sat a gold bird, studded with jewels; when a clockwork mechanism was wound and the spring released, the bird threw back its head and sang. Diane was enchanted, to Karellie's pride and relief. It had cost him very dear, and had he not lived frugally as a soldier he could never have afforded it, despite his pension from England.

  The second present he gave her wrapped in a piece of black velvet. She unwrapped it with a smile of anticipation on her lips, which gradually faded when she saw what it was.

  ‘Why have you given me this?' she asked Karellie.

  He looked puzzled, and said, 'It is a miniature of my sister, Aliena. Don't you like it ? Do you not think she is beautiful? I thought you would be interested to see her face.’

  Diane jumped to her feet, and flung the miniature at him in a rage. 'I am not interested! I do not want to see her face - or yours ever again! And you can take this trumpery thing with you - toys for children! I see I have been deceived in you, my lord Earl. I thought you a gentleman worthy of my notice. Leave me now, at once! You are no longer welcome here!'

  ‘But Principessa-‘

  ‘I thought you loved me! I thought you cared for me! Instead you come here on my father's generous invitation solely to mock and humiliate me, bringing me paintings of other women you think more beautiful than I, and silly whistling birds, as if I were still a child in pinafores! Well, I see now what you think of me. If I am a child, I had better go back to my nursery. Come, Alessandra, Giulia. We will leave my lord Earl to contemplate his grandness in solitude.’

  She whirled around, knocking the bird-cage contemptuously over with her skirts, and went out, and the two little girls, with scared glances at Karellie, went after her. Her rages never lasted long, and by the evening she was ready to listen to his pleas for forgiveness and his assertions of devotion. But he had had time to think in the meanwhile, and to consider what it was about his gifts that had upset her. The duke was from home, and they dined alone in the presence only of the servants. Diane looked particularly beautiful, in a gown of a subtle grey-blue shade that made her glorious red-gold hair glow like burnished copper. When they had dined, they strolled on the balcony overlooking the lagoon, and watched the moon rising, a faint wisp in the night-pale sky.

  ‘Principessa, I have something serious I want to say to you,' Karellie said. Diane leaned against the pillar at the end of the balcony, arranging herself with a negligent air that made him know she was perfectly aware of how she looked. He stood straight before her like a soldier, and continued.

  ‘I have known you since you were a child, and I have adored you since the first time I saw you. Now you have grown from a child to a woman, and my feelings for you have grown too. I am a soldier of fortune, but I come from an ancient family of good pedigree. I have royal blood in my veins, I am an earl, though an exiled one. If my humble suit can sway you at all, may I have your permission to ask for your hand in marriage?’

  Diane watched him and listened with an expression of gratification, which made her answer the more surprising. ‘No, my lord, you may not.’

  Karellie was startled out of his self-possession. 'But - I thought - when you were so angry this morning, I thought -' He shook his head. 'I thought you loved me.’

  Diane smiled, not a smile of triumph that he would have expected if she were tormenting him, but a smile almost of pity.

  ‘I do love you, and I believe that you love me. Nevertheless, I will not marry you. You were right that I was angry because you preferred your sister's beauty to mine -'

  ‘Not preferred - never that.'

  ‘I forgive you for woundin
g me. I have loved you, too, since you first came to visit your brother, though I knew that to you I was just a child.'

  ‘But you are not a child now, and I -'

  ‘My lord, it is not that I will not marry you. It is that I will not marry. I swore long ago, in your presence, that I would never marry, but would be a great singer. I meant it. I will be the greatest singer in the world. Do you not know that signor Vivaldi has plans to write an opera with the main part especially for me? I cannot allow marriage to interfere with my plans.'

  ‘But -'

  ‘You will not change my mind. Please speak of it no more.' Karellie was silent, and she came towards him and stood close, looking up into his face, for tall as she was, he was taller, amongst the tallest men in Europe. 'You call me the Divine Diane, and that is how I want people to remember me. All the world will one day know me. But I will always love you, my lord, and I pray you will not stop loving me. I need your love.'

  ‘I will not stop loving you,' Karellie said.

  Her eyes gave permission, and he bent his head to place the first kiss upon her waiting lips. Afterwards she sighed as if something were accomplished, and then said briskly, ‘Let us go in. It grows chilly. I shall play for you until the tea is brought.’

  *

  When the Electress Sofia died suddenly in June 1714, it was clear that she had failed by only a narrow margin to succeed Anne to the throne, for the latter had been ailing since the beginning of the year, and could not be expected to survive long. Sofia had been active to the end, and had collapsed unexpectedly while taking one of her energetic walks in the gardens that Annunciata remembered so well. She was eighty-four years old.

  How things would go when Anne died was still very uncertain, for her ministry was split, and though most people seemed to dislike the idea of George Lewis coming from Hanover to take the throne, the great dread of Catholicism balanced that in people's minds; besides, it seemed likely that the matter would be decided by whichever of the principal ministers acted fastest, and plots bred like bats up and down the country. Correspondence with King James increased, and Berwick was also known to be writing to Ormonde and Bolingbroke on the subject of the restoration of his brother.

  Annunciata had been in London in the spring of that year, but was back at Morland Place by early summer. The improvement there was marked, and though Matt was still withdrawn and would see no company, he had taken over many of his old tasks, to the easing of Annunciata's lot, and had also began to enjoy at least her company. He liked to walk with her in the Italian garden, with Kithra and Oyster pattering behind them, and discuss the day's business.

  ‘I can get things clearer in my mind if I have talked them over with you,' he would say. As he came to depend on her more, his formality with her dropped away, and he ceased, when they were alone together, to call her madam or my lady or even grandmother. Annunciata found it pleasant. She was growing very fond of him, and sometimes when they walked about the garden, close but not touching, and conversing desultorily as the mood took them, she could imagine that the years had rolled back, and that she was with her lover. He looked so like Martin, that it was her joy to look at him, and she felt she could never have enough of simply sitting and staring.

  They discussed other things as well as the business of the estate. On politics his views were very different from hers, and she came to understand that it was useless to expect a man of his generation, brought up as he had been under the rule of successive usurpers, to feel the same way about the occupation of the throne. She had grown up in a world where everyone felt they knew the King personally; she had gone at the age of fifteen to Court, and had lived in close and familiar contact with King Charles and King James, identifying with their lives and interest; the personalities that were mere names, cyphers to Matt, were flesh and blood people to her.

  Besides, he had never been away from Morland Place, and with the exception of his long, blind passion for India, it was the only thing he had ever cared deeply about. His inheritance, his land - that had never let him down. It endured. What was good and right for Morland Place had first sway with him. How could distant kings and princes compete with that? Annunciata felt sadly that there were many all over the country who believed the same. Had their livelihoods been directly threatened, they might have grown passionate about the issues, but as it was they were content for the folk far away in London to worry about the succession while they got on with the shearing and the hay-harvest.

  All the same, she enjoyed arguing with him, and once or twice as the summer progressed, she even managed to turn the outermost corner of his mouth in the beginning of a smile at her vehemence.

  ‘If you were a man, what a soldier you'd make,' he said once. ‘I'd want you for my general, if I were King.’

  By August Queen Anne was evidently sinking fast. Annunciata and Matt were taking their walk one morning when a strange servant came into the garden, evidently looking for them, and Annunciata's heart jumped and her hands became clammy at the expectation that this was the long-awaited messenger. But as the man came nearer, something familiar about him made her look more closely. ‘John Wood! It is John Wood!'

  ‘Oh, my lady,' said the man, falling to his knees in front of her, the tears coming to his eyes as he took the hand she offered and put it to his forehead.

  ‘John Wood, what are you doing here?' she asked in amazement, touched by his devotion. He had been long in her service, had served her son Hugo, and gone into exile with her as Maurice's manservant. 'Where is your master?'

  ‘He is here, my lady,' John Wood said, rising to his feet. ‘Up at the house. He has come back to England, the little girls too. We arrived in London a week ago, and when we found Chelmsford House shut up, my master did not wait, but set off straight away for Yorkshire. Oh my lady, it is so good to be home. I never thought -' he swallowed. 'I did not think I would see it again.'

  ‘Nor, I, John,' Annunciata said with sympathy. She turned to Matt. 'We must go in at once and greet them. Your uncle Maurice, Matt, and his daughters. Come, come, you must welcome them.’

  Matt hesitated, for he had not yet accepted any strangers into his house. Annunciata stamped her foot in frustration, and tugged his hand, but he held back and said, 'You greet them. I will walk a little longer.’

  She made a sound of exasperation and, beckoning to John Wood, started for the house. As she left the garden, she looked back and saw that Man had already gone through the wicket on the far side, evidently bent on putting as much of the estate between himself and the newcomers as possible. He was a long way from being cured, she realized.

  She found Maurice little changed, for like many unworldly people he seemed to avoid the crushing realizations that aged the rest of the population. He was forty-two, but his hair was as black as ever, his figure as lithe and youthful, and his dark eyes made his face look younger than his years. He greeted his mother affectionately, but without great display, as if they had been only a week apart, and he had never had any doubt that they would meet again. The little girls stood nervously in the background, clutching their muffs like shields, looking to Annunciata markedly foreign and not at all worthy of being her grandchildren. They spoke no word of English, and when she addressed them in Italian they were too shy to say more than yes and no.

  ‘But what are you doing here?' she asked him. 'And where is Karellie? Is he coming home too? And Aliena? What news, I pray you!'

  ‘England is the obvious next place for me,' Maurice said unconcernedly. 'I have got everything from Italy that there is to be got for the moment. Perhaps you do not realize that great things are happening in London? I have heard from George Haendel - do you remember him? He was Kapelmeister at the Herrenhausen - that the public are very appreciative in London, especially of the opera.’

  By which she understood that Maurice meant different things from the great things she thought were going on in London. She stared at him with affectionate exasperation. Here was another man who would shrug over her
preoccupation with dynasties.

  ‘I thought I could live at Chelmsford House, if you do not mind it, but when I knew you were in the country, I thought I had better come here first.' He spoke with the unconcern of a man who had travelled up and down Italy for the past seven years.

  ‘And what news of Karellie?' Annunciata asked again, more gently.

  ‘He spends his time between Venice and Lorraine,' Maurice said, 'tugged about by his heart like a compass.'

  ‘His heart? What draws him to Venice?' Annunciata asked quickly. Was it possible her son was at last thinking of marrying and getting an heir?

  ‘Oh he has fallen in love with the daughter of the house where I lived, but she will not have him,' Maurice said with amusement. 'It is typical of Karellie that he can only fall in love where he is quite safe from reciprocation. I'm afraid you have spoiled him for love and marriage, mother - he will never get over his first and strongest passion for you.'

  ‘What nonsense you talk,' Annunciata said crossly. Maurice shook his head.

  ‘I am serious, mother. We are all quite, quite useless for ordinary people. There's Karellie, fallen in love with a goddess-like singer; and me, falling in love with perfect dark-haired, dark-eyed nuns, because they reminded me of you; and Aliena who can only be in love with her King. The only difference is that they don't understand what they are doing, and I do. That is why I have stopped marrying. I have these poor little girls on my conscience already. Now I espouse the Muse - at least a slightly less hopeless love than those of my brother and sister, though equally impossible of consummation.'

  ‘But will they come home,' Annunciata said, cutting through all this. Maurice looked at her with sympathy.

  ‘Not until and unless the King does. That is one thing on which they stand firm. They are less - shall we say adaptable - than you and I, though Karellie at least has learnt to forgive us for it.’