Travels Through The Wind (New England Book 3)

by James Philip

  The Chairman of the Virginia Colonial Legislative Council, Roger Emerson Lee III, who liked to tell anybody so foolish as to hang on his words that he was distantly related to Light Horse Lee, an obscure minor figure in the revolt of 1776, whom, in their wisdom the English had ‘graciously rehabilitated’, thus founding his most ‘loyal’ of ‘loyal families’. Basically, he was a man so full of his own importance that it never occurred to him that even his political allies regarded him as a self-serving buffoon. Nevertheless, owing to his innate ruthlessness and absolute belief in his own right to speak for ‘his people’ he had inexorably risen up the greasy pole of colonial politics to not only lead the majority faction in his own Colony’s legislature but had recently been appointed Director of the Organisation of Chairmen of the Fifteen, the mouthpiece of the East Coast crown colonies.

  Fifty-seven years old, handsome in that fleshy Virginian planter fashion and the son of perhaps, one of the five wealthiest dynasties in New England, he was vain, thin-skinned and unfussy about letting the truth, or the unimpeachable facts about a given matter get in the way of his take on reality.

  His favourite sound bite was: ‘They would say that, wouldn’t they?’

  Or: ‘I thought you were too clever to be taken in that easily!’

  Lee made Philip De L’Isle’s - for his many egregious sins in previous lives, he could think of no other rational explanation, by the Grace of God and the Great Seal of England wielded by his Majesty, King George V, Governor of the Commonwealth of New England – blood boil. Whereas, he too was a man born to extraordinary privilege, he had spent his whole adult life in the service of his Monarch, doing his duty; whereas, Lee had never stopped sucking at the teat of wealth and power, never once thinking to actually serve anybody but himself.

  Obviously, the Governor betrayed none of this as he rose to greet his visitor that morning.

  “What a pleasant surprise, Roger,” he smiled. “I trust Elizabeth and the children are well?”

  Lee’s wife was a semi-recluse on the family’s vast Arlington Estate and ‘the children’ – idle, spoiled brats aged between sixteen and thirty-four – the eldest of whom, now an independently wealthy merchant banker, had had very little to do with the patriarch of the Lee clan for years.

  “Fine, fine,” the Virginian said curtly.

  De L’Isle waved his visitor towards comfortable chairs with a view through the veranda windows of his office to the gardens beyond.

  “Always good to see you, of course,” he remarked as the men took their seats, “but your secretary did not give us any indication what you wanted to talk about, Roger?”

  As if Philip De L’Isle did not know exactly what the puffed-up overbearing oaf wanted to talk about!

  The other man parried the question.

  He was accustomed to doing things only in his own good time and that, he determined was not quite yet.

  “You must be dreadfully worried about Lady Henrietta?”

  “She’s a resourceful young woman. I am sure she will emerge, sooner or later from the imbroglio in Spain.”

  “It goes without saying that I and my colleagues in the Virginia Colonial Legislature share your hopes for her safety.”

  “Thank you. My wife and I draw great strength from the loyal support of all New Englanders in these trying times.”

  It was not as if both men knew that the other would rather be having this conversation in a boxing ring than the urbane, gentrified setting of Government House. Although, in all things involving risk to his person or dignity Roger E. Lee III usually preferred to nominate a second to do his dirty work, take the hard knocks, and if necessary, sacrifice himself to the greater good of the Lee dynasty.

  The Governor of New England, a man who had survived any number of ‘close shaves’ in his long and distinguished career as an officer in the Grenadier Guards and bore the scars to prove it, had never sent another man into harm’s way alone and had a truly heroic contempt for moral cowards like the politician sitting smugly before him.

  “As distasteful as it is at such a sad time,” Lee prefaced, with every appearance of a troubling existential angst he did not feel, shifting uneasily in his chair more on account of his piles than any qualms of his conscience, “but you will be aware that against my own wishes, the VCL has again voted in favour of the abolition of the Colonial Security Service…”

  Matthew Harrison was not even cold in the ground and the bastards were raking over his life’s legacy!

  “Yes,” the Governor of New England agreed blankly, “it is distasteful, Roger.”

  “I would have preferred to have delayed this interview until after Matthew’s interment…”

  “Why didn’t you?” Philip De L’Isle inquired, pleasantly as if he was genuinely curious to know the answer. “Defer this interview until after tomorrow’s funeral?”

  “We live in an age when decisions must be made regardless of the sensibilities…”

  “That is not my approach to colonial governance, Roger. Nor will it be while I sit in this chair.”

  Once, as a very young man De L’Isle had fought a duel against an arrogant, unprincipled charlatan like Lee. Although the blaggard had fired at him before the umpire had dropped his handkerchief, no harm had been done as each party’s seconds had handed their unknowing principals revolvers loaded with blanks. De L’Isle had not exercised his right to – notionally - gun the bounder down; a man like that was not worth the cost of a single bullet!

  “Surely, you cannot consider rejecting a vote of the VCL out of hand, Governor?”

  “The VCL speaks for Virginia, not New England, Roger.”

  “The VCL is speaking for the rest of the Fifteen…”

  The Chairmen of the other fourteen Colonial Legislatures had backed Lee to be their spokesperson not because they thought he was the best man for the job, rather because most of them realised that the job was of that particularly ruinous type whereby any applicant was best advised to drink poison before accepting it.

  “You will be aware that the position of Director of the Organisation of Chairmen of the Fifteen has no constitutional under-pinning, Roger,” the Governor reminded his guest urbanely.

  He would not normally have cut to the chase so artlessly but it was not as if Roger Lee’s motives were anything but transparent.

  “A colony’s rights are inalienable,” he went on benignly, a sympathetic smile playing on his lips, “until such time as it formally surrenders those rights and privileges in combination to a third party. So, if you want to engage me in a conversation about Virginia’s rights after the abrogation of its colonial status well, we probably ought to call in a constitutional lawyer right now.”

  The other man objected before he engaged his brain.

  “The Fifteen have a legitimate right to seek common ground and to petition the Governor’s Office in respect of its demands…”

  Roger Lee flinched the moment he had said it, knowing he had been provoked into intemperance.

  “Demands, Roger?”

  “I misspoke. Concerns. Yes, that’s the word. Concerns…”

  Philip De L’Isle eyed the other man for several long, silent seconds.

  “One is always duty-bound to listen to the ‘concerns’ of senior members of the colonial establishment with the due deference they deserve, Roger. That has always been the case. My door is always open to the Governors of His Majesty’s Colonies and the senior representatives of their peoples. In fact, I can confidently claim, that no Governor of the Commonwealth has ever been as willing to listen to the voice of the peoples of New England as I, or the officers of my administration.”

  Right from the outset of his time in Philadelphia, De L’Isle had operated under the assumption that while the Colonies had responsibilities to the Old Country, the Old Country had even more responsibilities in the New World. In his father’s day the mandarins at the Foreign and Colonial Office still talked about the ‘White Man’s Burden’, well, nowadays, across an Empi
re in which at least twice as many of its people were coloured than white, the burden was a profoundly multi-racial, mixed-culture, increasingly less-European-centric contract and he could not see for the life of him how it could be that here, in New England, so many well-educated, otherwise intelligent and hard-working people who liked to believe they were Christians, could be so bloody pig-headed!

  Not that a single scintilla of his frustration got past his well-constructed imperial pro-consul’s mask.

  “Sorry, are you threatening to intervene directly in my colony’s affairs?” Roger Lee blurted.

  “No,” De L’Isle retorted patiently. “That would only occur in the most extreme, frankly, unimaginable circumstances, as you well know, Roger. You should also know me well enough by now to know that I would never allow anybody else to interfere in Virginian, or in any other colony’s affairs without just, constitutional cause. My opposition to the improper usage of that power would be of the ‘over my dead body’ variety!”

  “Oh…”

  “All that is hypothetical, anyway,” the Governor went on smoothly. “You know how I hate hypotheticals.”

  “The Fifteen have a number of ‘concerns’,” Lee said cautiously.

  The Chairmen of several of the Colonial Legislatures were notorious gossipers and leakers, gregarious to a fault as befitted men who oversaw what were, essentially over-blown talking shops. The big in-colony decisions rested with the Governors, and the status of the legislative councils was other than in colony-specific areas, consultative rather than strictly ‘legislative’. The Legislative Assembly Acts of 1872, 1903 and 1954 had been very careful not to transfer too much power, or budgetary control, from Governors to elected politicians. The reason behind this had been that every colony in New England and Canada was already represented by at least two directly elected Members in the House of Commons, therefore the question of a so-called ‘democratic deficit’ simply did not arise.

  De L’Isle raised an eyebrow.

  “By all means share them with me, Roger,” he invited his guest.

  “In the event of war…”

  “Ah, so we are talking hypothetically after all?”

  “We have a right to expect the Empire to defend our territory and our economic interests.”

  “Yes.”

  “In the Great War the Empire treated New England like a huge cash cow. It took us decades to recover from that.”

  It took the whole Empire a generation to recover from the war of 1857-66. De L’Isle would have given the Virginian a history lesson if he had thought the man would listen to a single word he said.

  “Virginia will not again be bled white to defend British interests, Governor!”

  Philip De L’Isle blinked at this. Of all the colonies none would be so enriched by a major war as Virginia. The naval base at Norfolk alone was, to use Lee’s own words, a giant ‘cash cow’ for the colony.

  “British interests, Roger? I am confused. In any likely scenario that I can foresee the object of imperial policy in this hemisphere would be the defence of New England…”

  “The cost of which ought to be borne by the British taxpayer.”

  “And presumably,” the Governor murmured angrily, and for once, inexcusably he was to reflect, losing his temper, “English blood, too?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  The Governor of New England rose to his feet.

  “Forgive me, I have another appointment shortly, Roger. Please give my regards to Elizabeth.”

  The Virginian looked at him as if he thought he had misheard.

  “Sorry, I…”

  “Good day to you, sir,” De L’Isle smiled, grim-faced.

  A few minutes later he went upstairs to have tea with his wife, Lady Diana, whom he found propped up in a chair in the window of her chambers. He bent his head to kiss her cheek.

  “My, my, what was that for, darling?”

  The husband sighed, pulled up a chair beside her. His wife was having one of her ‘better days’ and this knowledge was immensely curative. He shook his head.

  “I was just unspeakable terse with Roger Lee,” he confessed. “That man is a disgrace. If I had had a gun, I would have shot him!”

  “No, you wouldn’t have, darling. You don’t have it in you to shoot a defenceless man.”

  Presently, the better angels of De L’Isle’s nature were not wholly in the ascendant.

  “Trust me, my dear,” he grimaced. “I’d certainly have winged the bloody man!”

  “I’d have understood perfectly if you’d given him a good kick up the backside, darling,” his wife commiserated. Neither of them was quite themselves. Matthew Harrison’s death – a brutal assassination more likely, since the car involved had sped off – was too fresh, too painful and they were worried all the time about Henrietta…

  “Honestly, my love,” her husband groaned, “the people over here don’t know how lucky they are. They pay half the tax a citizen of the British Isles pays and get two-thirds of the bill for defending New England defrayed by the Exchequer in London. It’s hardly surprising that the average family in the First Thirteen is thirty or forty percent better off than their counterparts in the Old Country!”

  “Oh, dear,” Lady Diana smiled bravely, “if you’re talking about economics you must still be really angry!”

  “I’m sorry,” he guffawed. “I know I shouldn’t let little weasels like Roger Lee get under my skin. But…”

  His wife patted his arm.

  “You mustn’t bee too hard on Roger, darling. Wasn’t it one of his ancestors who fortified Manhattan so ineptly that our boys were able to just walk in unopposed after the Battle of Long Island?”

  “Good old Light Horse, you mean?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  Philip De L’Isle visibly relaxed, the tension draining out of his face.

  “Mind you,” he guffawed quietly, “another of his ancestors fought with no little distinction in Flanders in the early 1860s.”

  “Oh, I was forgetting all about Robert Lee,” his wife conceded. “It only goes to show, I suppose. He travelled to France as the Colonel of the Virginian Brigade and at the time of his death he was in command of,” she paused, unable to recall the details.

  “British Third Army during the successful advance to the Moltke Line.” The Governor of New England involuntarily ran his left forefinger across his moustache. “If he had lived, he might have gone all the way to Berlin and finished the war in 1865. Instead, the old fellow is just a footnote to history, his campaigns one of the great ‘what ifs?’ endlessly discussed and war-gamed at staff colleges around the world ever since. Yet he is still a man largely forgotten by his own countrymen back here in Virginia, like so many of his fellow ‘Imperial Virginians’ because he won his fame exclusively on foreign battlefields.”

  “All historical memory is selective,” his wife sympathised. “But if I’ve learned one thing since we arrived in Philadelphia, there is no gainsaying that they can be an awfully insular lot over here.”

  Chapter 24

  Thursday 30th March

  Monasterio de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción

  ‘You look terrible,’ Henrietta De L’Isle had blurted as her escorts bundled her into the small cold room high in the northern wall of the ancient monastery and she found herself face to face with Melody Danson.

  Both women had been literally grabbed by gangs of sisters and hurried, at a stumbling run down gloomy corridors and up several flights of steps smoothed and partially worn away by generations of nuns’ feet since the late fifteenth century and arrived breathless, disorientated and on the verge of panic.

  ‘Be very quiet. Do not attempt to look out of the window…’

  And then they had been alone listening to the iron tenon of the heavyweight very old and rusty, lock settle into the deep mortice in the granite frame of the door.

  The women had looked at each other for a moment.

  ‘So, do you,’ Melody had returned, unable
to stop a crooked smile spreading infectiously across her face and filling her suddenly twinkling green eyes.

  In truth, they were both very nearly unrecognisable from the coiffured, expensively dressed women who, a fortnight ago, had luxuriated in the hospitality of the Hacienda de las Conquistadores, been wined and charmed by the Duke of Medina Sidonia, and wandered the streets of Chinchón like two fairy princesses.

  Most obviously, their long hair had been crudely shorn off their heads. Now their hair was raggedly cut short as if they were boys, in places the ‘cut’ had been so close to the scalp that from a distance an observer might surmise they were Alopecia sufferers. In the flight from Chinchón and since they had both lost weight although probably no more than a few pounds but in places which now gave each a much leaner look, and eyes which were suggestively, rather than actually a little hollowed out. Melody’s fair skin had started to acquire a wind-burnt tan; while Henrietta’s fading girlhood freckles seemed somehow pronounced.

  They had stared at each other for some seconds before falling into a clinging, sobbing embrace which had lasted many minutes. Eventually, they had begun to absorb their new surroundings. The grubby leaded glass of the small not quite square window situated above head height allowed in very little light and their vision slowly adjusted to the murk.

  A palliasse lay in the corner of the cell farthest from the door, on it were two folded blankets. Under the window was a small, knobbly table upon which there was a single, small candle-holder but no candle. The nuns had placed a large earthenware jug – perhaps holding as much as two pints of water – and a pewter plate with several lumps of black bread and, wrapped in a white linen rag, a wedge of very hard cheese on it. Upon inspection they discovered that somebody had, thoughtfully, scraped a little of the mould off the cheese. There was the normal crudely fired bowl-cum-chamber pot beneath the rickety table under the window.

  “Home sweet home,” Melody murmured.

  The two women had not been able to exchange a single word after that first morning at the monastery. Now they did not know what to say.