The Chevalier Read online

  ‘But she's only eight,' Clovis said.

  ‘Going on nine,' Francomb said.

  ‘Very well, but it would still mean a long betrothal before they could wed, and I'm not in favour of long betrothals. Young Matt will need a wife and children before Frances is ready.'

  ‘Five years, that's all. We'll do it when she's fourteen, no fuss.'

  ‘Five years is too long. I'm sorry. I'd like a match, and I agree with you that the estates ought to go together, but we can't wait until Matt is twenty to wed him. Besides, Frances is his first cousin, and there's a great deal of inbreeding already among the Morlands. I worry about it quite a lot. But what do you say to a betrothal between your Frances and young Lord Rathkeale? They are much more of an age.'

  ‘What, Ballincrea's brother? But he's nothing, no money, no land, naught but a title,' Francomb objected.

  ‘I shall probably settle half my estate on him - I have no children of my own,' Clovis said. Francomb grinned.

  ‘Promises are pie-crust. When tha does it, let me know. Until then - we'll wait and see.' He shook his head to indicate the subject was closed, and said, 'Now what's this I hear about your young kinsman Maurice?’

  *

  Maurice had gone to Naples in the spring of that year, with a letter of introduction from the Electress Sofie couched in such glowing terms that he was invited to stay as a guest at the royal palace for as long as he liked. There was a great deal of music-making there, particularly opera, a form in which Maurice was not versed. He attended a performance of the opera Psiche, and afterwards was introduced to the composer, Alessandro Scarlatti, who was Maestro di Capella of the royal chapel - the equivalent to Maurice's position at Hanover.

  Scarlatti was twelve years older than Maurice, but a man of such energy and charm that Maurice felt instantly that they had been lifelong friends. They had a great deal to talk about, both being interested in exploring the new techniques of harmonic music which were replacing the polyphonic forms in which they had been trained. Scarlatti was interested primarily in opera, Maurice in developing the orchestra, and they had many ideas to exchange.

  Very soon such intimacy had grown between them that Alessandro invited Maurice to come and live with him at his home, and Maurice gladly accepted. It was a teeming, noisy, happy house, filled with Alessandro's voluble wife, and his ten lively children - Pietro, Alessandro, Apollonia, Flaminia, Cristina, Domenica, Giuseppe, Caterina, Carlo, and the baby Gian Francesco, their ages ranging from nineteen down to three. Maurice had great fun learning their names and how to distinguish one from another, for they all moved about so fast that it was some time before he was certain how many there actually were of them.

  He was treated with a flattering degree of consequence - the little children all wanted to sit on his lap, and begged him for stories; the older boys wanted to know what it was like to live at other Courts, and what Karellie's experiences of battle had been like, and the middling girls waited on him hand and foot, their eyes modestly down turned, but flashing him occasional glances of admiration. He found it very hard to concentrate on his work, and wondered how Alessandro had ever managed to produce anything at all with such delightful distractions around him.

  But at least Alessandro was not likely to be distracted in the particular way Maurice was. It was only a matter of days before his eyes began, unbidden, to seek out Apollonia from the crowd of children, and to miss her when she was not in the room. She was sixteen, the oldest of the girls, and therefore perhaps more serious and quiet, having had the responsibility of younger siblings all her life. Maurice noticed her first because of her beauty, and soon came to the conclusion that here, at last, was perfection. Her honey-coloured skin was smooth and unblemished, her jet-black hair fine as silk, her large eyes as dark as Karellie's, her figure small and dainty. She it was who brought him his cup of wine and saw to it that it was filled, and when she bent over him, her eyes on the flask, her lips pressed lightly together with concentration, he found his heart beating so hard that he could hardly find his tongue to thank her. And when she had finished, sometimes she would look up at him, a fleeting glance into his eyes, so innocent and shy that it made the bones melt in his body.

  It took only a few weeks of such delicious torture for Maurice to become convinced that he would never write another note unless he soothed the gentle fever, and so he asked his host and friend for the hand of his daughter. Scarlatti was delighted that his daughter would be marrying the brother of an English earl, who might one day be earl himself, and who, besides, was a musician and composer of no little talent. He gave his permission readily, and the wedding was planned for the first possible date. A feast there should be, as lavish as money could make it, and music - the bride's father should compose music himself! - and as for the bride, she should be dressed all in white lace, for nothing else was fine enough for such pure beauty. Maurice's gift to her was pearls, which she wore for the ceremony about her smooth golden throat. He was dressed in sapphire blue silk and black velvet and a great deal of lace, and the young couple looked so handsome together that Alessandro insisted they commission the Court painter to take their portrait. While they were still enduring the sittings, a gift arrived from the bridegroom's mother, a very handsome necklace of emeralds for the bride, and a letter full of love and congratulations not unmingled with tears. If Maurice felt guilty about anything, it was of cheating his mother of his wedding.

  But apart from that, he could not feel in the least sad. He was in love, foolishly, passionately, with this dainty Latin goddess. He wanted to bring her white flowers, and doves, and diamonds, and the seven stars of Orion, and heap them in her lap for offerings: instead he brought her what he could, the product of his mind and soul - he brought her music, and on the third day after their marriage, he began his first opera.

  CHAPTER SIX

  James Matthias was in the Lady Chapel at Morland Place, where he had taken refuge, as a dog, played-with and played-with by the much-loved children of the house, will finally creep under the table with his ears down. He leaned against the marble memorial of his ancestors, Robert and Eleanor, and idly ran his fingers over the lion that supported Robert's head. Eleanor's rested on a unicorn. The lion and the unicorn, England's symbols. Around the frieze ran the words, 'The brave heart and the pure spirit, faithful unto death. In God is death at end' - lion and unicorn again. Were they like that, he wondered, the Morland Master and Mistress of a hundred and fifty years ago? Did Robert feel like him, badgered, burdened, and above all, lonely? Or did his Eleanor hold the warm place in his heart, so that every day seemed full of good things? Matt was sixteen - his sixteenth birthday had just passed - and a man, though his legal minority would last two years more. He was, everyone said, very like his father, and like his father, would never be tall. Flora said there was nothing of his mother in him, and it saddened him a little, for it seemed to him that his mother was rejected and forgotten by everyone. Even he had no memories of her -his earliest memories were of Lady Caroline, of the rustle of her silk dress and the perfume of her skin. Of his tall red-haired mother who, Flora said, could ride any horse in the stable better than a man, he remembered nothing, and no one would ever talk of her. She had died when he was three. When pressed, they would tell him she had been killed by robbers while on a journey, and then hastily change the subject. And Matt's own treacherous features celebrated his dear father in every respect, without reference to the other parent.

  He was an orphan, and that was a lonely thing, though all his life he had had a good home and kind guardians and servants. He was well aware that Uncle Clovis was good and conscientious, Lady Caroline gentle and lady-like; that Birch in her rough-tongued, hard handed way was devoted to him, and Father St Maur had a father's care of his mind. Flora, who had nursed him at her breast, loved him in the rough, careless way that mother cats love their kittens, though she loved Clover and John more, having nursed them more recently than him. But he had no one of his own, no one to love him exclus
ively, no one to whom he could confide his thoughts and from whom to seek comfort.

  He had hoped Mavis D'Atheson would become that allin-all to him, until the rude awakening came, when he was told that his letters to her had been intercepted and read, when he was forbidden to write to her again, when they told him that she was to wed his cousin James. They had been married going on two years now, and in April there had been a child, a daughter, Mary. Mavis was far, far beyond his reach now. That had come close on the heels of losing his friend Davey. Davey had left school to tend his father's beasts and land, and now he had gone away altogether to work on a farm somewhere, in order to be able to send home his wages for the maintenance of his little half-brothers and sisters. Matt did not even know where he was: since Davey had rejected him, he had not paid any more visits to Conn's house.

  He was sixteen, and he knew burdens rested on him -not just the management of all the Morland estate, which after all was merely a task to which a man could apply himself, in which he could hire subordinates to help him. In his slight body, in his slender loins, rested the last hope of the Morland line, the legitimate succession. If his parents had been alive and there had been brothers beside him in the nursery, he might have been sent to University like Arthur, or on a Grand Tour with a tutor. There would have been years of learning and maturing and pleasure before the matter of his marriage became urgent. But there were no brothers, no parents, only him. After him, the line passed to his half-brothers, Charles Earl of Chelmsford, and Maurice, and they were both in exile - Karellie, at the last bulletin, serving in the army of the King of Poland in company with a great many other English, Scottish and Irish exiles; and Maurice in Florence, where he was Maestro di Capella at the Palace of Ferdinando di Medici, the greatest patron of music in Europe.

  So he must wed and get a son, lest the line die with him. He must breed. His loneliness was like a crystal cave; he was walled in, seeing and hearing the world around him, but unable to touch it. And today his bride was to arrive at Morland Place, he was to see her for the first time. Uncle Clovis had chosen her for him. They were to be wed here, in the chapel, in two weeks' time, and then - the breeding, he supposed, would begin. He knew about it in theory -the Morlands were horsebreeders, after all, and then there were the dogs and sheep and peacocks and all the other beasts everywhere around - but of the practical aspects of it, he knew nothing. He was aware that he was in some ways immature for his age - from what the servants said, Arthur could well have become a father many times over since he was fourteen. But Matt had always been more quiet and thoughtful than Arthur, and had led a life sheltered by the sheer volume of things he had to do and to learn. In the last eighteen months, since Christmas '98, he had not even been at school - he was taught at home by Father St Maur - and so had not had other growing boys to talk to. Most village boys, he knew, considered themselves men at fourteen. They could have told him. But it would be impossible to ask any of the stable boys or young male servants.

  All today they had been pursuing him around the house with their clacking tongues and silly demands - dear Flora trying to brush him down and tidy his hair as if he was five years old, Birch snapping at him to comport himself like a man and not shame her when the time came, the other older females of the house giving him sly looks and silly grins and telling him stupid sentimental things about love and weddings. He wished today was over. He wished it wasn't happening at all. He had no wish to meet face to face this strange girl whom he would have to - breed with. So he had taken refuge in the quiet coolness of the chapel.

  But here in the chapel, more than anywhere, his responsibilities were brought home to him - here where generation after generation of Morlands had worshipped, where the walls were decorated with marble memorials to the industrious breeding of past Morland Masters. There was no respite here. The burden was his, and he could not lay it down, for there was no one else to carry it. He pushed himself off the marble sarcophagus and went to kneel on the prie-dieu before the wooden statue of the Blessed Virgin and, looking up into her face, made a short prayer to Her for help. Her soft golden face, worn by time - she was older by far than the house - and the slender, offering hands calmed him, and he rose to his feet in a resigned frame of mind, as the door of the chapel opened and the old dog Kithra came across to him with a clicking of nails on stone, heralding the arrival of Clovis, looking for him.

  ‘She's here,' Clovis said without ceremony. 'Come on.’

  *

  India Neville was fifteen, but looked older than Matt, a fine, big, well-grown girl, only too evidently physically mature. She was handsome, straight-backed and free-moving, with a high colour in her cheeks and glossy black hair. On first seeing her, Matt thought she looked like a well-fed, well-groomed black filly led out for the race.

  Had he lived a less sheltered life, he would have seen her before, for she was well-known in the city - but Matt never went into the city, except to the Minster for special observances, and occasionally on business with Clovis. India lived with her mother in vexing poverty in two rooms in a house in Lady Peckett's Yard. Her father had been a merchant adventurer - India was named, in gratitude, after the source of his wealth, though he never vouchsafed which of the Indies was referred to - and had amassed a considerable fortune, but he had died inconsiderately and suddenly at sea, leaving all his money in trust for India, to be released when she should marry. She had been only nine at the time, and since then her mother's primary task had been to keep alive, and to keep India healthy and attractive, until the first possible moment she could be married off. Mistress Neville had had a desperate struggle, and only by letting the house on Fossgate and moving into the two rooms in the Yard could she afford to live at all. Six years of scrimping and pinching had left their mark on the mother, who was worn and shrill and nervous, but she had remained true to her faith in that never had she allowed India to suffer privation during those years, even when it meant taking in sewing to afford the kind of food which alone could produce that well-nurtured look in a girl.

  Of course, there had not been leisure or energy during those years to attend much to India's education - and, in any case, since marriage was the goal, education was only necessary insofar as it would make India more attractive as a bride. India had been taught to walk and dance gracefully by an exiled Huguenot who gave lessons in a room in Tanner Row; Mrs Neville had taught her to sew, to speak a few words of French (which she practised on the dancing-master, to his distress, for her accent was impeccably Whitehall) and to play the virginals. Otherwise, India's mind had all the unblemished bloom of ignorance of a butterfly's wing.

  Mrs Neville kept in contact with her husband's merchant friends, and by the beginning of 1700 there could have been none amongst them who did not know of the existence of India and of Mrs Neville's intentions for her. Clovis was one of the last to hear about the girl, for he spent so much time in London and elsewhere that his business in York was usually carried out by an agent, but when he heard he went straight round to investigate. The poverty of their surroundings, in comparison with the fortune locked up so inaccessibly, moved him. He saw that the girl was healthy and handsome; he verified the amount of the fortune, and that it would be released unconditionally on the girl's marriage; and he made his offer. The girl came of good family - the Nevilles were one of the most ancient and respectable families in the north - and the complete lack of living relatives other than the mother was an advantage. He must get Matt wed as soon as possible - here was a girl whose sole object in life was to wed. Clovis and Mrs Neville came to an early and amicable agreement.

  On being introduced to Matt for the first time, India's thought was 'But he's only a child' and then, 'He won't give me any trouble'. At the end of the day, when she and her mother retired to the guest chamber, and her mother asked her how she liked her future home, she said, 'It's a horrible old house, mother, so old-fashioned and small. But some of the furniture is good, and we can change everything once we're settled. And the horses are w
onderful! I do so long for a horse of my own. But can he really be sixteen?'

  ‘Master Morland assures me - my dear, he could not possibly be lying, he is very respectable,' Mrs Neville said, coming across to unlace her daughter. She had grown accustomed to the function of lady's maid, and the action triggered a thought. 'We must be sure to get a large advance from him to get you a really good lady's maid before the wedding. One who knows about hair and garniture. It makes such a difference. He will arrange for the wedding clothes, of course, but I shall need some new things. And, my dear, don't forget to mention my allowances when the subject arises.'

  ‘Yes mother, I'll see to it,' India said briskly, her mind on other things.

  When she was undressed and clad in her nightgown, her mother took the brush to brush out the long black hair and said, 'India, my dear, I think perhaps it is time we had a little talk. Such beautiful hair you have, though quite where it came from I cannot tell, for your poor dear father was bald as an egg, and before he was bald his hair was quite nondescript, a sort of mouse-brown. What was I saying? Oh yes, I must have a little talk to you about marriage - about the private side of it.' India smirked at her reflection in the mirror - a circle of polished silver, not a proper glass mirror as she would have expected. She'd order plenty of those once she was mistress of this dusty old tomb of a house. Her eyes, which were hazel and changed colour according to her mood, shone greenish like a cat's in the candlelight.

  ‘Yes, mother?'

  ‘Well, dear, you know that when a man and woman marry, they sleep together in the same bed, and, well, dear, they cohabit.' Mrs Neville met India's bright cat's gaze and looked away again hastily. 'Now, dear, your husband will want to do things to you which you may find, well, frankly, unpleasant. But it is his right to do those things, and you must allow him to, however distasteful it is to you, without complaint. My advice is, take hold of your lower lip with your teeth and bear it. It is necessary, so that you will become with child. And India dear -'