Blood Royal Read online

  What it did not do was slake her hatred of Walpole…

  ‘Don’t, oh, my dear, don’t,’ said a voice from the bed. Mrs Astell was weeping.

  ‘What is it? Are you hurting?’

  ‘“O for a falconer’s voice”,’ cried Mary Astell, ‘“to lure this tassel-gentle back again.” And you were. So gentle, so gay. I beg you not to ruin your life.’

  Cecily stretched her lips to a smile. ‘I am resigned, I assure you.’

  ‘Are you? At that moment you had the look of an assassin.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Cecily said again. ‘It is you who are the patient. We must dress that wound, Lady Catherine says, and then it will be time for supper. I have buttered shrimps and some of Louis’s best meringues.’

  The wound was appalling but Dr Arbuthnot, another neighbour, said that if Mrs Astell had survived its infliction she could survive its healing. They kept her in bed by allowing her books and by promising that, if she took her medicines and ate her meals, she could resume worship at St Luke’s in three Sundays’ time.

  The difficulty was the visits of her anxious friends. Half Chelsea came to inquire after Mrs Astell’s health and, in order that she should keep it, Lady Catherine and Cecily had firmly to curtail the visits of neighbours such as Dean Swift, Bishop Atterbury, Lord and Lady Cheyne, the naughty Duchess of Mazarin and Sir Hans Sloane.

  So it was that the two men calling themselves Sir Spender Dick and Mr Arthur Maskelyne, arriving on the doorstep late one evening, found themselves bustled upstairs by a brusque and weary Cecily and told they had a quarter of an hour with Mrs Astell, no more.

  To judge by the laughter when she went to fetch them, Mary Astell had enjoyed the fifteen minutes, but as her visitors descended the stairs, she called Cecily back from the door: ‘Who were those delightful gentlemen?’

  ‘You don’t know them?’ She hurried downstairs to count the spoons. The men were waiting for her. ‘Who are you?’ Cecily demanded. In the dark hall their figures were intimidating; she subdued an impulse to call the watch. ‘Mrs Astell tells me she is not acquainted with you.’

  ‘An omission it has been charming to rectify,’ said the larger shadow, ‘but, indeed, had we been given time to explain – the fault, of course, was ours, the lateness of the hour, your most natural mistake – we should have presented our business as lying with Lady Cecily Potts, if you are she, which, to judge by a beauty that is become legendary…’

  ‘It’s about Guillaume Fraser,’ said the smaller shadow.

  She seemed to be standing dumb before them yet she could not have been because, next moment, they were facing her in the parlour.

  They were no more extraordinary than other visitors to the cottage. Sir Spender was large and florid, like his sentences, Maskelyne medium-sized and unexceptional. But she could not type them. Such adventurers as Lady Cecily knew were part of the establishment, already at ease in it and intent on flying higher. These two came from another place entirely. Gentlemen, perhaps: Sir Spender’s accent was cultured, his clothes opulent, while Maskelyne dressed to pass in the crowd. Adventurers, certainly – there was a slant to their eye – but in what she could not guess. Grub Street possibly. Their linen was not laundered but it was the fashion among high Tories to distinguish themselves from Puritan rabble by wearing their neckcloths grubby; she could forgive them that.

  She would forgive them anything if they would give her news of Guillaume. ‘Fraser?’ she inquired, attempting calm.

  Maskelyne took up a position by the window and produced a pair of dice which he kept flipping in the air and catching on the back of his hand. It was Sir Spender who answered her. ‘I cry you mercy for my friend’s abruptness, Lady Cecily. He has been immured four years in Edinburgh Castle for his beliefs and has not yet reaccustomed himself to gentle converse…’

  Cecily’s foot began to tap. Sir Spender bowed to it.

  ‘The person he has just mentioned and need not mention again…’ here Sir Spender narrowed his eyes at his companion ‘…is a young gentleman we believe you once encountered in a place it is again unnecessary to name. A brave young lord who suffered in a cause to which – do I go too far? – all in this room are sympathetic.’

  What was in the room was silence. Maskelyne’s hand closed on his dice and stayed still. It was the moment when the archer’s knuckles go white as he pulls back bowstring and arrow. Caution, screamed Cecily at herself. She said nothing.

  Sir Spender smiled and nodded as if she had. ‘Our young lord, true to his brave nature, assisted in the escape of his commanding officer, an escape which – you will understand me, Lady Cecily – reflected the nobility and courage of all concerned in it and…’

  Blackmail, she decided. ‘I am too weary to go round the mulberry bush, Sir Spender, or whatever you call yourself,’ she said. ‘If you cannot state your business you must go.’

  ‘Wait, will you.’ It came from Maskelyne at the window. She was taken aback by its sharpness.

  Sir Spender struck his forehead with the heel of his hand. ‘What fools we mortals be. Maskelyne, we are bumpkins. We have approached Lady Cecily backtofore and small wonder she suspects us.’ He delved into the breast of his coat and produced a letter which he waved in circles several times before handing it over. ‘My bona fides, madam.’

  The seal was Viscount Bolingbroke’s, instant reassurance. Her godfather, her father’s dearest friend who, even though exiled, had written to her every year on her birthday. The address was La Source, Orléans, France.

  ‘My dearest young Wake,’ it read. ‘May I introduce Sir Spender Dick? Between you and me the man is a rascal but one who has ever been faithful to me and those I love. If you can help him, do so, for my sake. If he can help you, use him, for your own.

  ‘Could I but send an enchanted boat to England, you should cross the water and sail up the Loire in a trice, to land in my park where you would find the tenderest welcome, dear goddaughter. Yet our next meeting may necessitate fewer miles for you and take place sooner than you anticipate.’

  His image streaked across her memory and was gone, leaving a brilliant comet’s tail. A flickering man: Queen Anne’s Secretary of State one day, loyal adherent of the Pretender the next, defector from the Jacobite cause the day after. Who knew what he was now? I don’t care. Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, had a pedigree nearly as long as her own. She trusted blood, not politics. He was one of Us.

  Sir Spender Dick was watching her. ‘C’est mieux, madame?’

  She nodded. ‘But what has it to do with Mr Fraser?’

  ‘You shall hear the story.’

  She sat them down. As much for herself as the men, she fetched the claret she had brought with her for medicinal purposes; she was on edge and stories told by Sir Spender seemed likely to be extended.

  What it boiled down to was that after her uncle’s departure from Edinburgh Castle, Guillaume had been returned to the common prison where the less noble Jacobite rebels were confined. There, he had encountered Maskelyne, to whom he’d confided how and with whose assistance the escape had been managed.

  ‘I don’t believe that to begin with,’ Cecily said. ‘The person to whom we refer would not bandy a lady’s name in such a place.’ She’d been given no bona fides for Maskelyne; she didn’t like him.

  His voice came from the window. ‘I know it, though, don’t I?’

  The Castle governor knew it, she thought. So did some of the warders. Guillaume, Guillaume, you would not have gossiped of me.

  ‘However it was,’ said Sir Spender, hastily, ‘Maskelyne shares your concern for this person and has instituted a search for him.’

  ‘Has he found him?’ asked Cecily casually. She was a married woman: she must not show eagerness. Every instinct was urging her to caution. But she had released a lock of hair from her cap and was twirling it round a finger – a nervousness not lost on the men.

  ‘We are on his trail, ma’am, on his trail,’ Sir Spender said, ‘though it lead us to the tee
th of hell.’

  ‘But where is he?’

  ‘We hope to have news shortly. Information, Lady Cecily. Information is what turns the wheels of this sad world. You, for instance, may have information which will return England to the dignity she has lost. Information is what will bring us to wherever the brave young man has been taken.’

  She was confused. ‘How?’

  Sir Spender leaned back, head turning as if he were regarding a painting. ‘You see, Masky? Such directness. Did I not tell you Lady Cecily would be our friend? She can have as little love for our present masters as we, did I not say so?’

  ‘Female coming up the path,’ said Maskelyne.

  In a second Sir Spender was out of his chair. ‘We must pursue our conversation at a better time and in a more convenient place, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Shall we say tomorrow night? Across the river?’ He indicated the letter in her hand. ‘Sir Henry St John kindly rents us his hunting lodge but we are careful not to, er… overly burden the old gentleman’s hospitality. May I suggest you come masked?’

  He was urging her into the hall and she noticed that he and Maskelyne stood back so that the lantern in the porch did not shine on them when she opened the door.

  Maskelyne was nearest her. ‘And come alone,’ said his voice in her ear. Then they had bowed to Lady Catherine and were gone.

  ‘More friends?’ asked Lady Catherine. ‘I hope they have not tired her.’ She went upstairs.

  They tired me, and I’m not sure whose friends they are.

  But the hook had been dangled, and taken, and the next night it pulled a masked Lady Cecily across the river towards Battersea to the ancient manor that was Viscount Bolingbroke’s family home.

  The waterman was confused: whores on their way to an assignation did not usually have so haughty an address, nor pay so well. He tried badinage but was told to keep his breath and pull, damn him.

  His confusion was as nothing to Cecily’s. Why am I going?

  She had studied the memory of the conversation in the parlour like a lawyer perusing a witness’s statement for every inference.

  Her godfather was attempting to be received back into the country, so much was obvious from his letter.

  When she was twelve Cecily had been allowed into the Visitors’ Gallery at the House of Lords to hear Bolingbroke speak. What the speech had been about neither then nor now did she have any idea, but she’d been on her feet at the end of it, cheering, along with most of the noble lords. If he’d blown the trumpet call, she’d have enlisted.

  She supposed he was calling now; she supposed she was enlisting.

  Although in exile, attainted for high treason, he was the Whigs’ terror; she’d once heard Walpole admit it. ‘Iffen he can persuade the Pretender to turn Protestant, he’ll be back in quicker’n hell will scorch my arse.’

  But Bolingbroke hadn’t persuaded the Pretender to turn Protestant, and he’d left him, as he’d left his own wife and his people and everybody else over the years. Walpole had wiped his fat face with relief. ‘Now the bastard’s dead.’

  But if any mortal can resurrect himself, you can, Cecily thought. And if I can help you to scorch Walpole’s arse, I’ll do it. And if it will release Guillaume I’ll do anything.

  Through four bitter years she had prayed to put the clock back so that she had never gone to Edinburgh, never met him. Loving him was the extra turn of the screw on the rack of her marriage. But if he, at least, can be released from his bondage… anything, I swear it.

  Will you turn Jacobite spy? That, reflection had convinced her, was the sum of what the two rogues in Mrs Astell’s parlour were asking. ‘Information,’ the large one had said. ‘Information will lead us to him. You, for instance, may have information which will return England to the dignity she has lost.’

  And what other information did she have than that which she learned as the wife of Sir Lemuel Potts, Whig MP and confidant of Sir Robert Walpole?

  The realization had come to her in the early hours and she’d cried out. They had sought her out for this. For this terrible thing. For the most intimate and blackest of betrayals.

  For the rest of the night she struggled in the sticking web. Whom would she betray? A husband who’d been forced on her?

  A husband nevertheless. Fidelity is expected.

  But by what right? Did they buy my soul as well as my body?

  You’ll betray England.

  But James Stuart is England and a skidding sight more English than George of Hanover.

  He’s a Roman Catholic.

  Who keeps Protestants in his employ, who has promised to preserve the Church of England.

  No Fitzhenry ever betrayed his anointed king.

  Who is my king? And, in any case, I can give you Sir Alfwege Fitzhenry in the Wars of the Roses and Long John Fitzhenry who went over to Cromwell and…

  But can you demean yourself by associating with the likes of Sir Spender and Maskelyne?

  Can I be more demeaned than I am as wife to Lemuel Potts? Sister-in-law to Dolly?

  On and on it went until Mary’s walking stick tapped the bedroom wall between them. ‘Are you unwell, Cecily? I hear you moaning.’

  ‘A bad dream, my dear. Go back to sleep.’

  By the morning she’d been in no firmer mind.

  Yet here she was… and her eyes were gleaming through the holes of her mask. And the clunk of the oars as they moved against the rowlocks was like the slow beat of a drum. And the smell of the sea coming up the Thames on the breeze mixed with the scent of the apple blossom she could see in pale clouds on the Battersea bank. And light from the lantern on the prow of the boat wobbled on water that had carried a thousand escapers and even more adventurers to new shores.

  For the truth was that Lady Cecily was not crossing her Rubicon solely for love of one man and hatred of another. She was twenty years old and the four of those years that she had spent as Lady Cecily Potts had not only been bitter and lonely but very, very, very dull.

  She was highly nervous: she was about to mingle in a company that, if discovered, the authorities could, and would, delight in obliterating as a gardener pouring boiling water on an ants’ nest. She expected passwords and cloaked figures huddled round a dark lantern. What she found was a house in the woods, the light and conversation within unconcealed, resembling in its activity a meeting house of one of the friendly societies beloved by the bourgeoisie.

  It was an old hunting lodge. Cecily remembered hunting the surrounding Battersea forest with her godfather, wonderful chases, flecks of sweat on Blonde’s neck, returns to the lodge and its awaiting tables set with food under the high and beautiful roof. Sir Henry, Bolingbroke’s father, too old to hunt any more, had lent it to his exiled son’s adherents.

  A lounging and, in her view, far-too-lenient sentry let her pass at the mention of Sir Spender Dick. Inside, flambeaux burned in the holders, providing light for men working at a printing press at one end of the room and women grouped together in the straw at another, needles and tongues busy over a large piece of material. The buttonless black coat of a man who sat at a table making lists reminded her that a surprising number of Quakers were Jacobites.

  A boy carrying a pile of flyers from the press dumped them on a bench. Cecily cricked her neck to look. At the top of the page was James Stuart’s depiction as a sun-god, the handsome profile casting rays of light beneath which was the caption ‘Advenit Ille Dies’ (That day is coming). Underneath, a crude cartoon showed George I and von der Schulenberg romping on a bed bowing under their combined weight. There was a verse of the ballad:

  He does not make his Country poor

  Nor spend his Substance on a Whore,

  His loving Wife he does adore,

  For he is brisk and Lordly.

  Definitely Jacobite. The contrast between the virtuous young Pretender’s home life and George’s was one exploited by James’s followers.

  Nobody questioned her. There was no sign of Sir Spender Dick nor of Maskelyne.
The heat and noise in the hall drove her through the door opposite the one she’d entered to a lawn scattered with rustic chairs and beset with lanterns hung in the trees.

  ‘’Lo, Cessy,’ said an arbour. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Cecily sighed. So much for disguise. She sat herself by Toby Ince, happy to find one of her own class. ‘How did you know it was me?’

  ‘The head, old soul. Nobody carries it like you. I’ve wondered if you’d be joining us Jacks one day.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Toby came from a long line of Lancastrian recusants but she’d not known him for an active Jacobite. He’d been a friend of Anne’s brother at Oxford and had squired her to the occasional ball.

  ‘Oh, must keep up with what’s being plotted, ye know. And the pater sent me with some funds for the Cause, though he says if the Whigs keep on taxing Catholics like they do there won’t be any more.’

  ‘Are they plotting? This looks more like an apprentices’ outing.’

  ‘Plotting, all right. Big plot. Better you don’t know.’

  She was relieved. ‘I’m glad one of you shows caution. Suppose a gamekeeper comes by? Won’t he wonder what’s going on?’

  ‘Probably think it’s an orgy. Wouldn’t be the first in St John’s grounds. Jacks have got to meet somewhere, Cessy. We’re so scattered and our communication’s hopeless. I never even knew the Fifteen was a starter until it was over.’

  ‘Good job you didn’t.’

  There was a silence. She knew what he was going to ask her and tensed herself.

  ‘Heard anything from Anne?’ The question sounded idle.

  ‘No,’ she said, gently. ‘But I heard from Sophie when she and her husband were in Paris. They met somebody who’d seen her at St-Germain.’ She took his hand. ‘Toby, she’s become a nun.’ After she’d read Sophie’s letter, she’d laid Anne in the mental compartment where she kept things to hate Walpole for. Anne, who would have, should have, married – perhaps to this most suitable Toby, who’d loved her. Anne, who’d wanted children.

  After a while he said: ‘I see.’

  ‘I don’t. How could she do such a thing? It was after her father died. I wrote to her brother asking for news but he didn’t reply.’