The Blue Rose

by Kate Forsyth

‘I believe all men and women are born free and equal in rights,’ she answered at once, ‘and that liberty consists in the freedom to do as I wish as long as my actions injure no-one else.’

  She met his gaze squarely.

  One side of his mouth compressed in what may have been a smile.

  ‘Vive la Nation!’ he cried.

  ‘Vive la Nation!’ Viviane echoed.

  She was led into the prison, her legs shaking so much she could only stumble along.

  As they passed a window slit, she pulled against her captors’ grip and peered out into the street.

  The frenzied mob, dancing with glee.

  Marie de Lamballe’s naked body, blackened with blood.

  Her head, hoisted high on a pike.

  Part III

  Blue Devils

  September 1792 – December 1793

  Blue Devils: A fit of the blues. A fit of spleen, low spirits … Paracelsus … asserts that blue is injurious to the health and spirits. There may, therefore, be more science in calling melancholy blue than is generally allowed.

  The Reverend Ebenezer Cobham Brewer

  Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1870)

  19

  Going to China

  26 September – 9 October 1792

  ‘Away! Aloft!’

  As the order was shouted through the lieutenant’s brass speaking-trumpet, sailors swarmed up the rigging like monkeys. The great canvas sails tumbled down, and were caught and tied. As they billowed out in the wind, the HMS Lion began to move forward and a cheer rang out from the crowd of men gathered on the main deck.

  ‘I can’t believe we’re going to China!’ young Tom Staunton cried.

  David smiled. He felt the same fizz of excitement in the pit of his stomach. For as long as he could remember, he had been fascinated by that mysterious distant land, hidden behind its misty mountains and great stone wall, populated by mandarins with long curving fingernails and exotically beautiful women with onyx eyes and tiny feet. In China were rare flowers with names like an incantation to beauty. Magnolia liliiflora, chrysanthemum sinense, prunus mume, ginkgo biloba, sophora japonica.

  And, of course, the ever-blowing rose of legend, which bloomed from the sweet rush of spring to the slow chill of frost.

  It was impossible not to think of Viviane when he thought of roses.

  David’s jaw clenched.

  He had read the news of her marriage to the Duc de Savageaux in La Gazette. At first he could not believe it. Then his incredulity turned to hurt and anger. She had not even waited a month. The banns must have been read the very day after he had fled.

  It was a bitter memory.

  Hunted like a beast through the night.

  The baying of the hounds. The rhythmic pound of galloping hooves. The eerie long-drawn-out blowing away of the horn.

  David ran till he was winded. The frozen stream a slash of black through the white. He crouched in the shadows, strapping his skates to his boots. He had seized them from their hook in the stable as he had raced past. His only chance to escape.

  His maimed hand throbbed with pain. Dark rivulets of blood dripped into the snow. He bound the wound tightly with his cravat. It hurt like hell. Then, using his teeth, he hauled on his gloves. The dogs hurtled closer, barking and yelping with excitement. Lanterns glinted through the darkness like hungry eyes.

  ‘This way!’ the marquis shouted. ‘I see his footsteps.’

  ‘He’s left a trail of bloodstains for us,’ the duke called back. ‘How very kind.’

  The thunder and steam of horses ridden hard. The tumult of the dogs. Whips cracking.

  Then David was up and racing away down the frozen stream, each stroke of his skate cutting into the ice and sending a spray of frost behind him. The hunters spurred on their horses, careering through the snowbound forest. They could not catch him. He was too swift.

  On and on he skated, till the wood was silent and dark. The only sound the scrape and swish of his skates. The clouds drifted away. Stars blazed out of a huge sky, edged with the black lace filigree of the winter forest.

  David felt as if he was the only living thing in an alien world.

  All else was dead.

  The darkness began to lift. Pallid streaks of colour smeared the sky. The stream spread out into swamp, veiled with thin translucent ice that cracked beneath his blades. White snow and black trees as far as he could see.

  Go west, David thought. So he unbuckled his skates with one stiff hand, and hung them over his shoulder, and trudged into the ashen day, the sun behind him all morning and before him all afternoon.

  Somehow, he made it to Roscoff, to a hotel called The Grey Cat, owned by a man named Yves. Days and days of stumbling along, hiding in hedges whenever he heard horses’ hooves, sleeping in ditches, begging for bread in return for a few small coins. It was all a blur.

  At first David’s only thought was of Viviane, of returning to the château and rescuing her. But he was feverish and exhausted. Yves’s wife put him to bed with a hot stone wrapped in fur. He had nightmares of being chased. Sometimes he was a man, sometimes a stag. His missing finger burned with fire.

  It took him a long time to recover. He slept for hours, and then woke up exhausted, racked with chills.

  Yves’s wife refused to bring him his clothes so he could get up. She brought him a pack of cards and a stack of newspapers instead. That was when he read about Viviane’s marriage to the Duc de Savageaux.

  At first David had not been able to believe it. Surely it was a mistake, a printing error, a lie. He had read the few cold formal lines again and again, until they were acid-etched into his brain.

  Then he was filled with horror and a sense of raging helplessness. What had they done to her? Images of Viviane being hurt and terrorised tormented him.

  Yet a small doubt or fear within him unfurled a delicate root, and found purchase.

  Could she not have found the strength to withstand her father? Was she so soft, so weak, that she would consent to a loveless marriage so fast? She had promised to wait for him, yet the banns must have been read the very Sunday after he had fled.

  Perhaps she had never loved him. Or, if she had, her love for him had been a low, feeble thing, easily ground to dust. Not like his love for her. David had been rocked to the foundations of his being.

  He felt a bitter shame, that he had been so unmanned.

  David remembered how she would not flee with him, how she had hesitated and prevaricated. Perhaps she had only been toying with him for her own amusement.

  No, no, his tortured mind insisted. Viviane had loved him. It had been real, it had been true.

  So real that she had married another within weeks.

  David could not break the repetitive circling of his thoughts, like some poor dumb creature that paces around and around a bolt at the utmost limit of its chain.

  By the time he was strong enough to leave his bed, and sail home again, his hurt had hardened into rage. Obviously becoming a duchess meant more to Viviane than waiting for a penniless gardener.

  A broad hand clapped him hard on the shoulder.

  ‘Why so glum? We’re finally setting sail on the adventure of our lives!’

  David came back to himself to find a burly young man grinning at him. John Haxton had the rosy cheeks and rough hands of a man who worked with the soil, and exuberantly curling brown hair. He was a fellow gardener in the employ of the East India Company.

  ‘I was just thinking that there’ll be little for us to do, these next few months, there being no garden on board a ship,’ David replied.

  John grinned. ‘We can play at being idle gentlemen, and smoke our pipes and play cards and gamble.’

  ‘My grandfather would be horrified at the very thought. To waste our time in such a way.’

  ‘Ah, yes, he’s a parson, isn’t he? Lucky he does not travel with us. What he does not know will not hurt him.’

  David thought of his grandfather, more white and frail than
ever. He looked as if a winter wind would snap him in two. His grandmother looked worn too, and his sisters were talking a little too cheerfully of how much fun it would be to try their hand at being governesses. David had to make a success of this expedition to China.

  ‘I say! This is something, isn’t it?’ John waved his hand around at the vast expanse of gleaming deck, the thick upright masts with their fretwork of ropes, the immense fat-bellied sails.

  ‘I’ve never been on such a big ship before,’ David replied, amazed at the courage and agility of the sailors swinging through the ropes.

  ‘Nor have I. I’ve never even left England before,’ John confided. ‘And now I’m going to China!’

  Dozens of small boats bobbed about the HMS Lion, with spectators waving hats and handkerchiefs enthusiastically. Two other ships sailed on either side, the Jackall and the Hindostan.

  The small fleet was sailing on behalf of King George III and the Honourable East India Company, in the hope of opening up trade between Great Britain and China. Many countries had tried in the years since Marco Polo had first travelled to the court of the Great Khan in the thirteenth century, but the Celestial Empire guarded its borders jealously. Foreign merchants were only permitted to trade on one small peninsula of land, on the southern bank of the Pearl River in the port of Canton, and then only during the time of the monsoon winds.

  As the summer winds began to blow from the south in June, ships would sail in from Portugal, Spain, France, Holland, Great Britain and all the other great Western kingdoms. When the monsoon changed direction in the winter, those ships would sail away again, laden with precious Chinese silks, porcelain and tea.

  Over time, Europeans had learned some of China’s secrets of making silk and porcelain, but no-one had ever discovered how to grow, harvest and process camellia sinensis, the Chinese tea shrub. David knew the drink had been introduced to the English by the Portuguese princess Catherine de Braganza, who brought a chest of tea with her as a gift to her husband-to-be, King Charles II. It did not take long before a cup of tea was the most popular drink in the country, ousting a tankard of beer. The Honourable East India Company imported hundreds of thousands of crates of tea from China every year. The problem was the Chinese did not purchase any British goods in return. This created a serious imbalance of payments, exacerbated by the heavy taxes the Chinese merchants imposed on all foreign traders.

  The Honourable East India Company – which David had learned to call by its nickname ‘John Company’ – resented these exorbitant costs and had sought help from the British government. So the king had appointed Lord Macartney as ambassador to the Celestial Empire. He and his second-in-command, Sir George Staunton, were to attempt to meet with the Chinese emperor, Kien Long, and request that he open up more ports to trade, allow a permanent British embassy in Peking, reduce the exorbitant taxes and duties, and, most importantly, increase imports from Britain to China.

  It was also hoped the British might be able to discover the secrets of growing tea, so that they could break the Chinese monopoly. David had been given strict instructions by Sir Joseph Banks, his patron at the Kew Botanical Garden, to surreptitiously gather as many tea seedlings as he could, so they could be transplanted into British-owned land in India.

  It was a dangerous mission, for the penalty for smuggling tea plants out of China was death by beheading.

  The British embassy was hoping to reach China in time for the emperor’s eighty-second birthday, so the three ships carried a treasury of priceless gifts. There were two coaches in imperial yellow, a diving-bell, a hot-air balloon, telescopes and other astronomical instruments, replicas of British warships, good sturdy woollen cloth, clocks, locks, firearms, a printing press, a huge gilded planetarium decorated with pineapples, and a wide assortment of ‘sing-songs’, the pidgin term for mechanical toys and automatons, such as a snuffbox that contained a jewelled bird that sang when the lid was opened.

  Everyone had high hopes of this mission to China. It was confidently believed Lord Macartney would return with an agreement that would open China’s tightly locked gates to trade with Great Britain.

  The morning tide was running out swiftly, and the three ships were soon well away from Portsmouth. David and John spent the day exploring the ship, as well as they could for the tightly crowded quarters. They were sharing a tiny berth with two bunks, but soon realised they were better accommodated than most of the sailors, who slept in hammocks slung one above the other.

  By dusk, the favourable east wind had shifted and ominous clouds were massing on the horizon. David and John were piped to supper at eight bells, and found themselves sharing a table with a most unusual set of characters.

  There was twelve-year-old Tom Staunton, the son of Sir George, a delicate-looking boy with floppy mouse-coloured hair and deep-set grey eyes that shone with curiosity and intelligence. He was accompanied by his German tutor, Herr Hüttner, a large red-faced man with a shining bald dome of a head and ferocious eyebrows.

  Opposite them sat two slender young Chinese men, dressed in long soutanes tied at the waist with cords. Small crosses hung about their necks.

  A stout Scottish inventor sat beside them, wearing an old-fashioned bag-wig and a snuff-brown velvet jacket that was rather worn at the elbows and cuffs. His name was Dr James Dinwiddie, and he was delighted with everything he saw.

  ‘I’m in charge of the curiosities, you know,’ he confided to David, in a soft Scottish burr. ‘I swear the emperor in Peking will never have seen the like!’

  On the far side of the table were the two doctors serving the expedition, Dr Hugh Gillan and Dr William Scott. Both doctors were dressed conservatively in dark woollen breeches, sober frock coats and grey powdered hair clubbed at the back of the neck with a narrow black ribbon, but there the resemblance ended. Dr Gillan was stern-faced and learned, with a pair of eyeglasses perched on the end of his thin nose. Dr Scott was much younger, and looked strong and lean and brown, as if he spent his spare time playing cricket and tramping in the woods.

  Opposite them, in a comic mirror image, sat the two artists employed by the expedition. Thomas Hickey was middle-aged, ruddy-cheeked and cheerful, and wore a long Indian dressing-gown in red embroidered silk over loose trousers and soft leather slippers with curling toes. William Alexander was young and slight, and wore a soft-collared shirt with a flowing scarf, and a sky-blue waistcoat embroidered lavishly with flowers under a vividly striped coat. His unpowdered hair was long and loose and artfully tousled.

  He reminded David of Pierrick.

  At the far end of the table sat Lord Macartney, stout and florid, with his grey powdered hair set in stiff rolls over his ears, and his friend and second-in-command, Sir George Staunton, a tall, lean man with grey eyes and a prominent nose. They sat with the captain of the ship, Sir Erasmus Gower, a square-faced man with wind-reddened cheeks and big capable hands. They spoke amongst themselves and paid little attention to the other men, or to the music being played by the quintet crowded in one corner of the oak-panelled room.

  The food and wine was good and plentiful, though Mr Hickey assured them that they should enjoy it now, as it would not last. He had sailed, he told them, to India and Portugal and Italy, and the worst of it was always the food.

  ‘Maggots,’ he informed them ebulliently.

  As the meal went on, the ship began to lurch up and down in a highly unpleasant manner. The lantern above swung violently, sending shadows skittering round the cabin. David felt his stomach drop, and wished he had not partaken of the steak and kidney pie with such enthusiasm.

  ‘Storm coming up,’ Mr Hickey said.

  Plates and cups hurtled across the table, but were prevented from crashing to the floor by the table’s raised edging. David caught his wineglass in his left hand as it slid past. He saw the ugly scar, the puckered hole where his smallest finger used to be, and immediately dropped his hand out of sight. Every day it reminded him of what a fool he had been.

  Tom Staunton
had seen the scar too. ‘What did you do to your hand, sir?’

  ‘An accident,’ David answered shortly.

  ‘Did you lose it in a duel?’ the boy asked eagerly. ‘With swords?’ He picked up his bread knife and pretended to feint and parry with it. ‘Were you fighting for a fair lady’s hand?’

  ‘No, not at all.’ David clenched his hands together under the table.

  ‘Did you blow it off lighting fireworks?’ Tom went on. ‘My mother is always telling me not to play with fireworks in case I blow off all my fingers.’

  David shook his head again, trying to smile.

  ‘Then how?’

  ‘He’s a gardener,’ Dr Gillan said in a bored tone. ‘He probably chopped it off while trimming a hedge.’

  ‘Oh, no, really?’ Tom was crestfallen. ‘Is that how you did it, sir?’

  ‘Something like that,’ David agreed.

  ‘Couldn’t the doctor sew it back on for you?’ Tom asked.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ David replied.

  ‘Such a thing is impossible,’ Dr Gillan said.

  ‘Well, I am not so sure,’ Dr Scott said. ‘Perhaps, with the help of a microscope, the blood vessels could be reconnected …’

  The two doctors began to argue, and attention shifted away from David and his maimed hand, much to his relief.

  As soon as he could politely excuse himself, he went up on deck to smoke his pipe and watch the storm. The ship was pitching wildly in high seas, the crew fighting to furl the sails. Spray lashed their faces and dampened their coats. It was impossible to light his pipe. Each spark was blown out instantly. David had to grip onto the railing to avoid being thrown off his feet. All he could see was black roiling water splattered with foam. The masts creaked alarmingly.

  Dr Scott, the younger of the two surgeons, climbed up the ladder to join him, his pipe in his hand. He took one look at the heaving horizon, and tucked his pipe away.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be comical if we all drowned on our very first night out of an English port?’ he asked.