by Deryn Lake
And that was how it had started. Melior Mary had gone from triumph to splendour. She had been presented at Court where the King had whispered to her tenderly; in fact she had become the object of desire for all men of blood and imagination. Furthermore fashion had copied the wide-brimmed hats and trailing feathers that she wore so well and the phrase ‘a la Weston’ had been born. And, at last, Sutton Place had rung with laughter as it had not done since Sir Richard the builder had laid the great red carpet beneath the feet of Henry VIII. Naturally George II could not follow suit and grace with his presence the home of a Catholic hostess, but this did not stop him casting his heavy-lidded German eyes in her direction, and wishing that the dictates of high politics could have been otherwise.
But he — the King — must never forget that in Rome the Stuart child was growing up; that the hope of the Jacobites was now in his teens and a delightful youth by all accounts. For all their apparent acceptance, no Catholic — not even one with the charm and grace of Melior Mary — could ever quite be trusted. And, while Royal George thought these things, she obeyed her father’s wishes and gleaned information from the highest sources, passing it on to the ever present, ever watchful agents of James III, just as her uncle had done before her.
And what of Joseph? The last sight Melior Mary had ever had of him was snatching the infant Garnet into his arms and running from the Great Hall.
But then came an event guaranteed to bring every true Jacobite, old and young, rich and poor, crowding to the cause that they had secretly believed was hopeless; Prince Charles Edward begged permission to attempt to regain the throne.
In 1744 Jacobite agents everywhere — including Melior Mary Weston — had been informed that Charles was on the move. He had already gone through Italy disguised as a Neapolitan courier, changed to the guise of a Spanish officer to pass through Tuscany and was now living in terms of greatest secrecy in France, awaiting passage to Scotland. Secret meetings became the order of the day and in the excitement of dark midnights the Lady of the Manor received Lord George Murray — exiled after the uprising of 1715 — and Sir Hector Maclean, who left the mansion house for Edinburgh and was thereupon recognized and arrested.
But London was at play, choosing to ignore the growing rumours of a pending invasion. Even the King had been heard to remark ‘Phew! Don’t talk to me of that stuff!’ And, as Melior Mary had made her way to one of the little alcoved tables at Vauxhall Gardens, her mind had been full of teeming ideas. It was March 1745 and she knew that the Prince was now at Nantes. A movement from a chair on her left had, at that point, attracted her attention. Reluctantly she had glanced at the man — half hidden in shadows — who sat there and had, as quickly, looked away again. But there was something of familiarity about him. The manner in which he held his head, the fluttering of his lace kerchief as he raised his wine glass to his lips.
She turned to stare. He had bowed his head to her, a mocking smile playing about his lips, and his face had come full into the candlelight. Her hand had flown to her mouth and her eyes had grown wide. Age had added some more lines, bagged the eyes and increased the girth a little, but there could be no doubt.
‘Uncle Joseph!’ she had exclaimed.
He had risen and once again she had gasped. Clad all in claret brocade, a diamond order, set in silver upon a blue riband, sparkled on his chest.
‘My dear,’ he had said, rising and joining her table. ‘I was told that I would find you here tonight. But I can’t say that I would have known you. Age has not withered nor has time decayed. It was your hair alone that I recognized.’
‘But what of you?’ she had said. ‘The last I heard you had gone for a soldier with nothing in the world but ten guineas and now...’
The spread of her arms took in his splendid appearance. Joseph had laughed.
‘Oh, me prinkum-prankum do you mean? Well yes, I fought hard for King Philip and Queen Elizabeth Farnese...’
Melior Mary had smiled. Elizabeth of Spain and her chief minister Cardinal Alberoni were the two most ambitious people in Europe and the Cardinal was a committed Jacobite. Small wonder that Joseph Gage had found favour.
‘Yes?’
‘...rewarded me with a silver mine.’
‘A silver mine!’ Melior Mary had burst out laughing. ‘Uncle Joseph, you are incorrigible. I do vow and declare that no bitter circumstance could ever master you.’
He looked suddenly grim.
‘There was a time when I thought it would, niece. When Sibella drowned, when I discovered that Garnet was not truly mine, I wondered if my heart might stop with grief.’
‘And what of Garnet?’
His good temper restored itself.
‘Why, he is landed in Scotland, my dear. He raises troops for the Prince.’ His voice had lowered to a whisper. ‘I tell you, Melior Mary, that when he comes the clansmen will rise in their thousands.’
She had leant forward, peering earnestly into her Uncle’s face.
‘And will the Prince succeed, sir? Will he get to London?’
‘If his nerve — and that of his advisers — holds out. He must not weaken. He must march straight through and I do swear that if he does so there will be a Stuart King upon the throne of England before the year is out.’
She had put her head back and laughed for joy and Joseph had wondered at the unlined neck and small firm chin. He remembered everything about her youth so distinctly — the terrible ghost that had haunted her, the wild independence that had given his sister fits of despair, and the lion-hearted courage that had almost imprisoned her in the fortress of Innsbruck. He had loved her then, but when she had revealed the true identity of Garnet’s father he had never really forgiven her. At the back of his mind there had always been the thought that perhaps she had done it on purpose.
And now she had transformed into this. A timeless beauty who ran Sutton Place with equanimity; a society belle of fashion who had laid both London and Bath by the heels; a Jacobite agent who had King George’s ear; a shrewd business woman who had accumulated a fortune in property; a confirmed spinster. And it was this last that struck in his throat. Somehow it did not quite fit with the rest. Or did it?
Without really meaning to say what he did Joseph asked, ‘Did you ever hear again of Banister?’
Her whole manner changed. The laugh had died away and she had looked at him with a sad, distant expression. ‘No.’
‘Nothing?’
‘No. He left Sutton Place on the morning of Sibella’s funeral. I never saw him again.’ As if this reminded her of something she added, ‘Do you believe that the house is accursed? Is that why you don’t visit me there?’
A chill wind had come from nowhere and blew round the tables at Vauxhall as Joseph answered, ‘I think it is a fearful place. Full of shadows and unspoken threats. I have vowed that I will never put my foot over the threshold again.’
His niece gave him a strange, unreadable smile. ‘It has consumed me,’ she said. ‘It demands that I never leave it.’
‘Is that why you do not marry?’
‘Partly, perhaps.’
Changing the subject, but not really doing so, he had said, ‘Garnet has been a wonderful son to me. It is for him that I have worked for this.’ He tapped the order on his breast.
‘What is it?’
‘The Spanish equivalent of a knighthood. I am a first-class Grandee of Spain.’
She had leaned across the table and kissed him on the cheek.
‘I am glad that life recompensed you for all that you endured.’
‘The prize of Garnet was enough,’ he had said. ‘I pity Matthew Banister that he never knew his son’s sweetness.’
She had made no answer and they had fallen to talking to his reason for visiting England, and the funds he hoped to raise from the great Catholic and Jacobite families to support the army of Prince Charles. She wished then, as she had done so many times but particularly now, that her father was still alive. He would have been seventy — eight
years older than Joseph.
‘How my father would have enjoyed this,’ she had said as they parted.
He had kissed her hand. ‘Let us pray that the adventure ends with a crown.’
And with that he had been gone and she had never seen him from that day to this, her forty-ninth birthday. Whether he — or even Garnet — was still alive she did not know, for many good men had fallen in the rising of 1745.
And it had worked out exactly as Joseph had said. Prince Charles Edward and his Highland army had marched as far south as Derby, where Lord George Murray had advised retreat and the Duke of Perth advancement on London. It was tradition that on that December day the Prince had been in despair at the very idea of turning back. He was all for pressing forward and to victory. Melior Mary wondered if Garnet Gage had been with him and, if so, what he would have said. It was not difficult to guess.
But perhaps he had not been present for Charles Edward had turned back and lost the crown that was there for the snatching; in London King George had prepared for flight and the banks were paying out money in red hot sixpences to those preparing to leave the capital.
As she turned from the window to be dressed splendidly for her birthday rout, Melior Mary thought that if Prince Charles had made the other decision he, without doubt — as son of the ruling monarch and she as a principal supporter of the Stuart cause — would be coming to visit her today; would be pressing gifts upon her from his father James III and himself; would be mentioning his mother, Queen Clementina, who had died young — only living fifteen more years after her escape from Innsbruck.
But fate had decided otherwise. Charles Edward had crossed to France with only his life and the clothes he stood up in, after a frenzied manhunt that had lasted five months. King George’s son, the Duke of Cumberland, had without a doubt harboured a personal grudge against the son of the rival King across the water thinking, perhaps, how near he — Prince William — had been to being deposed. The Highlands had been ransacked for Charles Stuart and thirty thousand pounds had been the price on his head. But he had escaped and now busied himself with pleasure in the capitals of Europe. Or so Melior Mary had been told.
The knock on her door told her that Lucas, her personal maid, had arrived to dress her, but calling ‘Wait’, Melior Mary delayed a moment longer, as she splashed on her face and body the water from Malvern. It might well be that she was forty-nine and that no King’s son would visit her this day, but society looked on Melior Mary Weston of Sutton Place with a fervence beyond belief. Both she and her manor house must appear at their very best even though, since the day that Brother Hyacinth had left them, they now had only each other to love.
17
The sky had been grey all day with a heavy bulging look that had made Sam — John Weston’s bastard by Bridget Clopper — scratch his head and say, ‘It’ll snow, I reckon, when it gets warmer.’ Tom, uglier in both looks and temperament with the passing of time, had answered, ‘Of course it will, you stupid booger. Doesn’t it always when the Missus has her Christmas party? And don’t Oi always have to sweep the courtyard so that the horses don’t slip? And don’t you always say the same thing year in and year out. Be off with you, you lumbering idjut.’
Sam had put his fists up but had then decided against it and had ambled off towards the kitchens to see if his mother, in her sixties now but still with something of the old pertness about her, would give him something to eat. But she had merely boxed his ears and told him to get out of her way, for was it not all hands to help the cooks with Miss Melior Mary’s grand card party tonight? Grumbling to himself and looking for a moment uncannily like John, he had eventually headed for the stables where he had hidden some ale, and could sit and think of the old times when Matthew Banister had been in charge. Golden days — all gone now.
Inside Sutton Place it was the usual Christmas scene of activity as, by tradition centuries old, the Great Hall was prepared for guests. Over two hundred years before, Sir Richard Weston had headed his feast on the high table, looking to where his servants had crowded the trestles to join the family. Now his descendant, hostess of a more elegant age, oversaw the setting out of her card tables and chairs, purchased from the Chippendales — father and son — so that her guests might play whist and piquet or even the dangerous faro — at which a man might lose all he possessed in one night.
And if they should tire of that then they might wander in the Long Gallery and listen to the musicians, or if thirst and hunger called, a feast was laid out in the dining room. Melior Mary had a reputation for giving one of the finest entertainments during the Twelve Days and carriages would set out as early as morning from the more distant points, the only fear that snow might stop them getting there. And as the grey clouds loomed ominous, coachmen urged their charges on to even greater efforts in order to defy the weather.
As the first glittering flakes began to fall, Melior Mary, too, looked with some anxiety. Her estates and gardens were fast taking on the air of a treacherous paradise on this winter day of 1752. But yet she must consider that her forty-ninth birthday had gone last summer — and with the King’s grandson now Prince of Wales, following the death of Prince Frederick, youth was the order of the day. She must be seen to be as beautiful and as lively as ever.
It was with extra care that she slipped a gown of silver tissue over her hooped petticoat, and oversaw her hairdresser weaving violet ribbons into her hair, and draping great plumed ostrich feathers à la Weston over her diamond-encrusted shoulders. Only then was she ready to take her place in the small hall and greet her guests as they arrived.
Mitchell, as silver-haired as she these days, stood outside her bedroom door and offered her his arm as she came through. This love for her was tangible though he had not spoken of it since the day of John Weston’s funeral, his scarred and savage face impassive as he appraised her unchanging beauty.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘Well enough, Missie! They say you practice the black arts and have found the secret of eternal youth.’
‘Perhaps I have.’
Mitchell looked at her wryly.
‘Nothing would surprise me about you.’
She laughed.
‘You’re a miserable Scot and I’ve a mind to dismiss you.’
‘You’ve been doing that for the last thirty years. Come to your guests and stop your foolish prating.’
They went down the staircase with the silence of old acquaintance: she, blissfully unaware that she had come to depend on him for everything; he only too sure that if he were to die her mercurial spirit would disintegrate.
But what a success the party! With the fire in the Great Hall stacked half way up the chimney and the logs a-crackle; and the musicians playing their sweet sounds to lull the dullness of silence and let the conversation flow free.
The brilliant noise of laughing and chatter swelled and died again like the sea as the card players concentrated and relaxed by turn. And amongst them Melior Mary was as gleaming and as cold as a gemstone. She seemed no more than twenty-five in the warm, glowing candlelight but yet there was rumour spoken of her behind the fluttering fans and lace-heavy handkerchiefs. Why had she never married? How old was she in truth — and was it so that she was a virgin? that the most prestigious men in the land had offered to no avail? What secret lay behind those dazzling eyes? Who held the key to Melior Mary Weston?
But she heard none of it and sat down to cards as joyful as a girl, light with champagne and compliments. Opposite her was grumpy Lord Barraclough, glaring at his hand as if it had been dealt by the devil, but beside her the Marquis of Bath could scarcely concentrate for raising his quizzing glass and squinting at the curve of her sweet throat.
‘If the snow worsens we will have to stay the night,’ he said — while his wife, older than he and with the face of a hatchet, glared furiously about her.
‘Damme, I hope not,’ answered Barraclough. ‘Can’t sleep if I don’t know the bed. Got to know a bed before I get a wink.
Took my bed with me during the French wars, you know. Damnable Frogs burned it up. I never forgave ’em. Why I’d as soon share my bed with a heathen as I would a Frog.’
Lord Bath gave a hoot of laughter in reply to this and Lady Bath frowned severely, while Melior Mary giggled in a manner unknown since her youth.
Barraclough rattled on, ‘No offence to you, my dear Miss Weston. I’m sure that your bed would be most comfortable.’ Unaware of the double entendre he persisted through Bath’s shouted mirth, ‘In fact if I had to choose a bed in all this land I would probably elect for yours. But the fact remains that if the snow thickens I shall leave. So be as good as to inform me, Bath, should the weather worsen.’
How my Lord was supposed to know should this turn of events come about he did not stop to examine but played a card with a flourish, quite oblivious that the Marquis wept for laughing and his wife had swelled up like a puff adder. And it was with this scene about her — the old man shouting, ‘Play on, Bath, play on!’; the Marquis snorting wine up into his nose; the Marchioness almost ready to walk from the table — that Melior Mary saw something that made her half rise from her chair.
She was sitting near to the fire, her card table one of two dozen crowded for play, but one of the few that could see into the small hall beyond. The clanging of the bell had told her of a late arriving guest but she had done no more than glance up, knowing that two footmen and Mitchell hovered in attention near the hall door. For tonight the Middle Enter, opening direct as it did into the Great Hall, was not in use.
As she glanced she saw that Mitchell stood in the entrance archway, his dark eyes and clothes black as a raven’s, his manner watchful and slightly alert, as if he suspected ill of him who came through the darkness to the heiress’s house in the hour before midnight. And so it was, gazing at him in an abstracted way, that Melior Mary saw the extraordinary thing that happened. Without any warning at all the hero of the Nithsdale rescue dropped onto one knee and bowed his head. At one moment he had been standing ready to see off the late arrival if need be; at the next he was bent in an attitude of deepest respect.
