‘And she has not. She is magnificent, so Maurice says -simply had the baby, refused to discuss it, forced everyone to accept it by simple means of expecting them to. She has not said it is Karellie's child, not even to Maurice, but one must suppose it is, since she has called it Karelia. Well, perhaps I should do the same,' Aliena said with a dark smile. 'I shall tell the world nothing about my child. I shall disdain to explain myself. As your daughter, and your heiress, I can afford to be proud, magnificent, and silent. What the Divine Diane can do, so can Aliena the Obscure. Will you support me in it, mother?’
Annunciata smiled happily. 'You must have heard of the sad affliction known as mother-hunger, that attacks old women when their childbearing days are done? You and I will live in comfort and plenty here at Shawes, and bring up your child, and defy the world. After all -' she hesitated, and Aliena raised an enquiring eyebrow. 'After all,' Annunciata went on, realizing the time for such discretion was long gone, 'I did it before, when you were born, though with less self-confidence.'
‘We must just hope that it is a girl,' Aliena replied, with a flash of understanding that told Annunciata more than anything else whose daughter Aliena was.
*
The baby was born on t i November, Martinmas, and the birthday of Aliena's father Martin, which coincidence struck Annunciata very forcefully. Aliena was thirty, which was old to be bearing a first child, and the labour went hard with her, and when it was over, she said, 'Thank God I shall never have to bear another.' The child was a girl, a long, dark-skinned baby with a large nose and a man of black hair.
‘Unmistakably a Stuart,' Annunciata cried. 'She will be tall, like her father. What shall you call her?'
‘I think I shall call her Marie-Louise, after my poor Princess, God rest her sweet soul.'
‘Princess Marie-Louise!' Annunciata said, lifting the baby to her shoulder and carrying her round the room. 'It sounds well. A good name for a royal princess of England.’
Aliena looked at her warningly, but she was too sleepy to protest too much. She said only, 'That is between us, mother. No more of it now, please.’
The first person to arrive when Aliena was allowed to receive visitors was young Jemmy, who arrived bearing gifts and all eagerness to see the baby. He had been much at Shawes during the summer, and was evidently fascinated by Aliena, and what she had to tell, and the long silences where his longing for romance and adventure could fill in great things for what she would not tell.
Now he came to the bed, wreathed in smiles, to give her the respectful and proper kisses and congratulations, and to say, ‘Mort-dieu, I have spent such a terrible time that you would pity me if you had witnessed it. I have plagued the life out of your servants, sending them back and forth for news, and have wearied the ears of all the saints praying for your safe delivery, and worn the soles out of all my shoes pacing up and down in my anxiety, as if the bairn were my own. And now, here you are, looking as blooming and radiant as if it had all never happened. Great-grandmother, I hope you have not performed any sly trickery with warming-pans and the like?'
‘Impudent boy,' Annunciata exclaimed. Jemmy looked stern.
‘I warn you, I shall not believe this flower-like young woman can have produced a child until you shew me the evidence. Come now, where is this this floweret, this rosebud?’
Annunciata lifted the baby out of the crib and brought her across, and Jemmy stared down into the little sleeping face, and then gently took the baby into his own arms. 'I swear I would have known her anywhere,' he said. 'I feel as if I have known her all my life. Why, she is perfect! My brothers were never so perfect as this nor my - that is, the child of a person in the village I know,' he said hastily. ‘She is not crumpled and wrinkled as babies so often are, but smooth and silky like a rose petal. And such a lot of hair!' He looked up, laughing.
‘It means no more than a gentleman's periwig,' Annunciata said. 'She'll be quite bald in a day or two. But it will grow again. I expect she will be dark -'
‘Like her mother,' Jemmy said, with a liquid look in Aliena's direction. It was always difficult to keep anything secret from Jemmy, because he had such a way with servants that he heard all the gossip before anyone else. ‘Well,' he said, handing the baby back to Annunciata, 'I think I may say I am very proud of you, cousin Aliena, if I may call you so, to avoid having to work out quite what relation you are to me. And since you have proved everything to my satisfaction, I shall now bring forth the presents. Wait here.’
He darted out, to come back in with a large bag, out of which he took first of all a length of pale primrose silk. Tor the mother, to make a new dress, to celebrate her return to a normal shape,' he said, presenting it with a flourishing bow to Aliena.
She blushed a little, with pleasure and surprise, and said, 'It is beautiful! I cannot think where you could have got it, but the colour . .
‘Suits you to perfection. Hush! I am a Morland, how should I not know about cloth, even silk? And now, for the baby -' He reached into the bag again, and brought out a beautiful Italian silver cup. 'I mortgaged my soul to get it, so I hope you like it, for I should hate to have to go back on that bargain. I shall have it engraved round the inside with the baby's name - which is what by the by?'
‘Marie-Louise,' said Annunciata. Jemmy looked at Aliena and raised an eyebrow.
‘A name fit for a princess. Well, and why not? To a mother, every child is a prince or princess, is it not? And now,' he went on quickly, 'finally, a present for the grandmother.’
Tor me?' Annunciata said in surprise.
‘Assuredly. If you love Aliena one tenth as much as I do you must have gone through agonies while she was in labour, so you shall have your reward too. Here - take this.’
He reached for the last time into the bag, supported its contents with the hand inside, and with the other pulled the bag away and let it fall, revealing, held firmly by its middle, a large and sleepy brindled hound-pup. 'To replace, as far as any dog can replace another, your dear old Kithra,' he said - Kithra had died in September, quietly in his sleep, as an old hound should. Annunciata took the pup with a bemused air, and the creature, beginning to wake, started to squirm, and to lick Annunciata's face, paddling its huge, soft paws for a foothold. Jemmy watched her face, well pleased with himself. 'Every child should grow up with a dog,' he added, 'and the little princess will grow up with this one - what shall you call it, my lady Countess?'
‘Fand,' Annunciata said decisively. She liked familiar names for dogs. 'I had a Fand when you were young, Aliena - do you remember?'
‘Yes,' Aliena said. 'I like that. Marie-Louise shall have the same.'
‘Thank you, Jemmy. You are very thoughtful,' Annunciata said. 'Here, now, take the pup again, and hold him for me: the baby has woken.’
Jemmy watched as she went to the crib to pick up the baby again, and said, 'It makes me feel strangely contented, you know, to think of this little one growing up here, with the dog, in this house. I shall come and teach her to ride as soon as she is old enough - if you will let me, cousin? Shall we all ride out together, to Harewood Whin, and Wilstrop Wood and the Ten Thorns?' He sounded so wistful that Aliena laughed.
‘Did you think I would shut you out from us? Of course we shall ride together. And especially to those places, whose names have been like a song to me all my life. I hope you know how lucky you are, Jemmy, to have been brought up here? I look to you to shew me every part of your kingdom.'
‘With the greatest of pleasure,' Jemmy said, bowing.
*
In the May of 1718, Queen Mary Beatrice died at St Germain, much missed by all who had known her in the exiled Court. Annunciata sent a letter of condolence to the King at Urbino through her usual channels; she thought that Aliena probably wrote also, and suspected Aliena had written earlier to tell the King about the birth of Marie-Louise, but whether the King had replied, Annunciata did not know, and did not like to ask. Though Aliena seemed to have settled quite happily at Shawes, devoting he
r life to the upbringing of her daughter, and deriving her pleasure from simple country pursuits, and her amusement from Jemmy's antics, Annunciata could not help suspecting that the hurt she had sustained ran very deep, and there was a great deal that Aliena was reticent about.
The King, so report said, was deeply grieved at the loss of his mother, and now finding himself entirely alone in the world, had set about looking for a wife from amongst the minor princesses of Europe. Annunciata wondered, unsympathetically, whether he ever thought about Aliena and cursed himself for losing one who would have been the greatest comfort to him, the best of wives. She hoped he did, and looked every day for some sign of his repentance.
It came at last in October, just before Marie-Louise's first birthday: a packet sewn into the bottom of a sack of raisins, which, when opened, revealed an envelope sealed with the royal seal. It bore, as was usual, no direction, for fear of incrimination, and Annunciata opened it herself, thinking it more likely that it would be for her. She read it through slowly, twice, and then lay it down and stared at it, hardly knowing whether to smile or weep.
It was a patent, conferring the Earldom of Strathord, to be held in her own right, on Marie-Louise Fitzjames Stuart, the honour to devolve upon the children of her body, male or female; and it was signed by the hand of James III, King of England, Scotland, Ireland and France.
Annunciata looked again, and saw that the date on the patent was the same date as that on which the King had signed the marriage contract with the sixteen-year-old Polish princess, Maria Clementina Sobieski. Was it guilt, she wondered? Or regret? Or simply a rounding-off of things unfinished, an acknowledgement of responsibility? But she looked at the wording again, and knew that it was none of those things. Marie-Louise Fitzjames Stuart - in those names he had given the baby all he had. It was not guilt, it was love.
So baby Marie-Louise was now Countess of Strathord - vain, empty title, gift of an exiled King! Her mother would give her more, land and houses and rents, solid, worthy things. All the same, one day she might be glad to have it. Annunciata picked up the letter and smoothed the heavy paper carefully with her fingers, and went to find Aliena.
DYNASTY 1: THE FOUNDING Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
Triumphantly heralding the mighty Morland Dynasty an epic saga of one family's fortune and fate through five hundred years of history. A story as absorbing and richly diverse as the history of the English-speaking people themselves.
THE FOUNDING Power and prestige are the burning ambitions of Edward Morland, rich sheep farmer and landowner.
He arranges a marriage. A marriage that will be the first giant step in the founding of the Morland Dynasty.
A dynasty that will be forged by his son Robert, more poet than soldier. And Eleanor, ward of the powerful Beaufort family. Proud and aloof, and consumed by her secret love for Richard, Duke of York.
And so with THE FOUNDING, the Morland Dynasty begins - with a story of fierce hatred and war, love and desire, running through the turbulent years of the Wars of the Roses.
The Chevalier Page 41