by Deryn Lake
‘I’m here,’ he called out — and very slowly, as in the way of portent, the door swung back.
The figure that stood there was bathed in silver from the moon that shone through the window on the stairway beyond. Even the face, scarcely visible beneath the silver clouding hair, was frozen in a mask of argent. It was Titania come on her dream night; it was Diana the goddess with her silver hunter’s bow; it was the earth’s oldest mystery here to take him in its inevitable embrace.
His passage to her arms was a return to his mother’s breast, the nursing of his child, the absolute union with his eternal wife. And then because, at last, he knew what she had always done, Matthew Banister dropped to the floor and — as ritual decreed he must — made obeisance before Sibella.
*
In the filthy stench of his prison cell Joseph Gage woke with a shout from a mad, bad dream and into the blackness muttered, ‘I still live, Matthew Banister. Remember I still live.’
Nobody paid him any attention except that in England — in Sutton Place — his sister Elizabeth sighed in her sleep and his niece awakened at last and, putting on a velvet cloak, left the house by the great door called the Middle Enter. And as she crossed the quadrangle — silent in the stealthy shadows — Mitchell stiffened. He had heard nothing, seen nothing, but he knew that she was at hand. Everything was ready for what must remorselessly be done.
If Hyacinth had been in his right mind he would have heard the creak of a stable wicket, the light step upon the wooden stairs. But as it was he wandered beyond the stars with his immortal woman, blending his arcing spirit with hers. He never knew, never heard, the door opening and the gasp that followed as the heiress stood framed in the same splash of cruel moonlight. Never realized, or ever could, that she fled down and out to where Sutton Place reared against an indigo sky. Nor that her headlong dash was suddenly halted by arms that gripped like a trap about her shoulders.
‘Missie, where are you going?’
‘Mitchell, damn you, let me go.’
The hard voice was like the beating of a drum.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Into Sutton Place.’ Her answer was flat, without emotion. ‘He has betrayed us both — both me and the house. He has to die for it.’
‘I’ll beat you to a pulp first. You’ll be no blood spiller, Missie.’
‘Let me go, you Scottish mountebank, or I’ll claw your eyes from your face.’
‘Mend your wilful ways, do you hear me? You have no prior claim on the man.’
His fingers were cutting her wrists and she struggled like a frantic cat.
‘I have! I have! He belongs to Sutton Place.’ She broke, in a storm of despair. ‘Oh, Mitchell, I love him. I have to have him! How could he do this terrible thing?’
‘Because it’s a magic night, Missie,’ he answered softly. ‘A night when good and evil are walking side-by-side.’
‘God help me,’ she muttered into the rough cloth of his jacket. ‘But I’ll never forgive him. He has broken my heart.’
In the stillness Mitchell laughed wryly.
‘No, he hasn’t, Missie. There’ll be others.’
His arm was round her shoulders, his hand stroking her hair, until she had cried herself silent and the first rays of midsummer sun had finally shattered the predominance of sister moon. Then — and only then — was he able to walk her back through the dew pools to Sutton Place.
*
There had never been such a triumphant sound, never a more glorious moment, than when the choir of St Peter’s in Rome soared forth with the great ‘Gloria’ that heralded the marriage of a King of the Royal House of Stuart. Beyond the highest altar in the world, beyond the vaulting ceiling and up to the very bell tower, rose the sound. And in response the joyful carillon sent the tiding from the mighty basilica to all the other churches in Rome. And they in turn burst forth so the whole world might know that, in the face of all danger and plotting, the Pope had just pronounced King James III and Princess Clementina Sobieski man and wife.
There was no-one who did not weep. Sir Charles Wogan — who had bowed the knee before His Holiness and been made a baronet — and Sir Roger Gaydon and Sir Michael Missett, knighted by King James, felt the warmth of tears on their cheeks and were not ashamed. Wogan had seen Clementina run from the convent in thick snow, minus a shoe, but had heard her laugh with joy as he had bundled her bodily onto a horse that would take her to freedom.
‘What eez the name of she ’oo ’as taken my place?’ she had asked breathlessly.
‘Melior Mary Weston, Highness. She is an Englishwoman and loyal.’
‘Then may God’s blessing be hers. If she eez ever in Rome she will be granted the freedom of the city.’
But the solemn speech had been too much for the girl — barely seventeen years old — and she had collapsed giggling with relief and shock. For a moment Wogan had wondered if she would shout hysteric but the discipline of the ancient House of Sobieski had triumphed and she had turned her attention to riding side-saddle in that desperate and wintry night.
Now she stood, delicate and tiny, beside the elegant bridegroom who bore on his shoulders the hopes and desires of every Catholic and royalist in the world. Slowly they turned from the altar and with measured tread, with the organ declaring in all-powerful voice that history was made, they walked in progress — the Holy Father before them — towards St Peter’s Square.
In the congregation Tamsin, Lady Missett — great with child — was too near her time to do much more than move her eyes but she caught the gaze of the little Princess — now Queen of England in the eyes of the Jacobite cause — and they smiled fleetingly. Tamsin had put muffs upon Clementina’s feet to combat frostbite and for reward she had been created Maid-of-Honour. Nor had King James overlooked the futures of his loyal servants forbidden, by their very daring, to set foot in Britain again. Wogan had passed down to posterity the code names of Jenny and O’Toole so that Melior Mary and Matthew Banister might be free to come and go from England as they pleased, but he and the others must bear the brand of exile for the rest of their days on earth. Yet life — and a good life at that — awaited them in Catholic Spain. Colonel Sir Charles Wogan was to be Governor of La Mancha; Colonel Sir Roger Gaydon to command the garrison of Manzanilla; Colonel Sir Michael Missett had been given Oran.
All was gaiety, all was youth and splendour, as King James walked in a shower of rose petals out of the cathedral beneath which the bones of Peter the Fisherman lay — old and magical.
*
‘You can go,’ said the gaoler.
In the dimness that was the world to which he had become used, Joseph Gage stirred himself. Rot was his daily familiar, decay his companion. He could do nothing but blink as an unfamiliar shaft of light fell across his vision.
‘Don’t gape at me, man!’ The voice was rough but not unkind. ‘I’m telling you you are free. The Emperor is tired of you. James Stuart is a married man — the cause of your argument is long since talked out. Go!’
Like an owl, yet like a mouse, Joseph blinked slowly. ‘Then will you release my chains?’
‘Yes — now — they’re undone. A chaise is waiting for you outside; it bears the Ambassador’s crest.’
But Joseph could only turn his head very slightly. ‘Then help me, if you will, into the daylight. By God, I do swear that this incarceration has spoiled my...’
‘Prinkum-prankum?’
Despite himself the gaoler smiled.
‘Yes, damme.’
The words ended in a groan as the prisoner crunched onto his knees, his legs, chained up since the beginning of May, too weak to carry him.
‘Must I crawl to freedom?’
The warder shook his head.
‘No, there’s someone in the chaise awaiting you. I shall send them in.’
‘I pray God it is not my wife. She must never see me like this.’
But the gaoler had gone. And when he returned what light there was in that terrible cel
l was suddenly blotted out. For there, filling the doorway with his huge body, dressed in riding clothes of black and silver and wearing a tricorne hat with a crimson cockade and one golden earring, was Sootface the Negro.
‘Oh, master, what have they done to you?’ was all he could say.
Joseph managed a faint smile.
‘They’ve ruined me pri...’
But his voice died away and the sudden looseness of his limbs told the blackman that Joseph was almost unconscious. Nevertheless there was one more whispered sentence.
‘Sootface, don’t let Sibella see me so wrecked. I beg you to restore me to health before you take me back to Sutton Place.’
13
A mile away from Sutton Place, in almost exactly the spot in which Sir Richard Weston and Sir Henry Norris had once stood with Master da Trevizi seeing the manor house take shape before them, John Weston sat astride his chestnut hunter with a set of plans in his hands, gazing in the same direction. It had been his intention some years before to repair the damage to his house but the stillbirth of his son had driven all such ideas from his mind. But now he felt it was time to consider doing so again. The only problem really being what action to take over the Gate House Wing.
When Henry Weston — son of Sir Francis who had died beneath the executioner’s blade — had been restored in blood by Edward VI, that he might inherit his grandfather’s great house and no longer have to suffer for his father’s attaintment, Sutton Place had been glorious. But for the hero of Calais — it was legend that Henry Weston had been one of the last half dozen men to leave the citadel, fighting Frenchmen till the moment that he leapt onto his horse and cut his way to freedom — glory had been short-lived.
He had been knighted on Coronation Eve by Queen Elizabeth — just as his father had been at the Coronation of her mother Anne Boleyn — and had, in the same year, married the sad, dark, beautiful Dorothy Arundell. Her father Thomas Arundell and Henry’s father Francis Weston had, by chance, both become Knights of the Bath at Anne’s Coronation and had both been beheaded for treason. On her mother’s side Dorothy had been a Howard — one of the Duke of Norfolk’s clan. In fact her aunt had been Catherine Howard, Henry VIII’s fifth wife — another accused of vice and adultery.
The web of blood that had joined Dorothy and Henry Weston to Elizabeth Tudor had been too unbearable to think about. In fact there were even those who said, in cruelty, that Henry and Elizabeth had had the same father. But Dorothy had worse to bear than wicked whispering. Twenty-two members of her family had either been beheaded or attainted at the whim of kings. So it had been with the wildest feelings beating in her breast that the closed, secretive face of Dorothy had looked into that of her cousin, the red-headed and clever daughter of Henry VIII as she walked for the first time into the Great Hall of Sutton Place.
The fire that broke out three days later — on the hot night of August 7, 1559 — had been a strange affair. Nobody quite knew how it started. But some said that the figure of a woman, wearing a hooded cloak, was seen creeping away from the Long Gallery half-an-hour before the alarm was raised. And there were whispers that Dorothy, Lady Weston, had decided to avenge herself on the Queen and burn down the cursed manor house all in one stroke. Yet it was Dorothy, in her nightdress, who had struggled to help her husband put out the blaze that was to ruin the far end of the Long Gallery and destroy the interior of the Gate House.
But now, looking at the exterior in the late September sun, it appeared in good order; only a small amount of falling masonry to give away the truth that it was a burned out shell, an empty façade.
‘What do you think?’ said John to Elizabeth, who sat in a small chaise beside him. Ever since her miscarriage he had refused to allow her to ride anywhere and she had grown sweetly plump, at thirty-nine, with lack of exercise.
‘How dangerous is it?’
‘Not at all. It has been well shored up.’
‘Then should we just restore the Long Gallery and leave the Gate House until a later stage?’
John contemplated, sticking out his lower lip in typical pose, as he did so. He was almost forty-five but tall and strong as ever, only the fast greying hair and the slight bulge where he had once had a flat, lean stomach showing that there had been any passage of time since the day that Elizabeth had reluctantly become his bride. Yet no-one could have guessed that there had ever been ill-feeling as the Lord of the Manor and his wife looked critically at their mansion and then back at the plans. Their unity was complete.
And it was as well, for in their household there was an illness of ease that wore at them like water on pebbles. And neither could point to the cause, for no specific thing was actually apparent. It was simply as if, since the return of Melior Mary and Matthew from Austria, a great silence had descended everywhere. No more the heiress’s quick impatient step as she hurried about her hundred and one preoccupations; no more Sibella’s light fluting voice as she teased a servant girl about reading her palm; no more Hyacinth’s laugh as he joked with Tom or brought a wayward horse under control. Everything seemed so still and sad, as if the house were listening to them all.
‘Is it because Joseph is away?’ said Elizabeth suddenly.
And because they had now become the couple they were John knew exactly what she meant and said, ‘I don’t know. It’s damnably rum. They’ve all changed so much.’
‘Perhaps you should have refused to take Matthew back. It has ruined Melior Mary’s reputation that she went careering off with him.’
John went ‘Humph’ and said, ‘Her reputation may be shredded with the Wolffes but it is as fine as ever it was in the county. Gabriel Roderick is a constant caller — though she can do better than that! She merely ran off to help her King, that is all.’
‘You don’t think it is the influence of that man Mitchell?’ Elizabeth said, as they turned towards home. And once again John read her thoughts.
‘No, it can’t be. He is a great man — he was involved in Nithsdale’s escape from the Tower, you know...’
Elizabeth nodded her head; she had heard it a hundred times.
‘...and that’s a mark of his worth. No, I think the trouble stems from Sibella. She hardly has a word to say for herself these days. The girl’s lost without Joseph.’
And as John’s mount and her one-horse chaise came into the quadrangle there was, once again, evidence of the canker that was eating at the fabric of their lives. Hyacinth came out to take the horses and Elizabeth — looking, perhaps, more penetratingly than usual — saw how changed he was. The abundant curls, the delicate nose, were still in evidence but his mouth bore a sad and anxious look. It seemed as if his love affair with life was over. He had a hopeless air as he stood before them.
And, as he led the horses away, Elizabeth knew that that was all they would see of him for the rest of the day. His way of eating with the family when invited, or calling across to visit John of an evening, was over. Now his only appearance in Sutton Place was if particularly asked.
And, as if to put all her thoughts into deeds, at that moment Melior Mary appeared on horseback returning from the direction of the forest. Without a word, without even looking at the man with whom she had once run so happily through girlhood, she slipped from her saddle, tossed the reins over the horse’s head and handed them to Matthew as if he were a lackey.
‘Good day,’ he said.
‘Good day,’ she answered, but her eyes stared straight in front of her, and without uttering again she stalked off in the direction of the house. Hyacinth smiled at Elizabeth a little apologetically, as if to say ‘Oh, it’s just one of her moods,’ but neither of them believed the other and he turned and walked away again, his back hard with misery.
But worse was to greet Elizabeth when she went indoors. Having removed her cloak and tidied herself from the excursion, she made her way to her saloon, where it was her ritual to serve a dish of tea to her daughter, her ward and any other ladies who might be visiting Sutton Place. But on ringing he
r bell and Clopper appearing she was informed that Mrs Gage was lying down unwell on her bed, and that Miss Melior Mary was not thirsty.
‘Not thirsty indeed! Tell her that I wish to see her,’ said Elizabeth, firmly put out. ‘And Clopper see that a tray is taken to Mrs Gage. Not thirsty! Whatever next?’
But when Melior Mary appeared in the doorway a few minutes later Elizabeth stopped short, the angry speech she had prepared dying away on her lips. That she — Elizabeth — beauty of the day that she had been, could have given birth to this fairy thing still brought emotion choking to her throat and the strange feeling of pain at her knees. Her daughter stood before her in the afternoon light — platinum the hair, brook violet the eyes, damask the cheeks; whilst over the slanting bones of the face dropped the dark lashes with all the delicacy of the stamens of a flower.
‘Oh Melior Mary, I shall be so happy to see you wed,’ said Elizabeth without thinking.
For answer her daughter gave a little shrug and a laugh that was not a laugh at all but a cry of pain, if her mother had been but able to interpret the sound.
‘I don’t feel I am right for wedding,’ she said. ‘I shall stay Melior Mary Weston, spinster, of Sutton Place, I think.’
‘Nonsense!’ Elizabeth spoke roundly. ‘I know that all you lack, my dear, is a season in London — and another in Bath should that fail.’
With a smile her daughter crossed to her. She was three inches taller than her mother, whose minute stature had been one of her principal attractions for Mr Alexander Pope, and she seemed — at that moment — the more adult of the two, as she put her arm about Elizabeth’s shoulders.
‘Should that fail? My dearest, attempts to marry me will, I fear. I am too undomesticated for the routine of smiling at some boring man each day and ordering his ridiculous meals with stupid cooks. And as for sharing a bed with unloved flesh...’
