by Deryn Lake
She was still moaning, ‘I hate you,’ when they carried her back to the house and laid her on her bed.
‘Get a doctor for the love of God,’ said the old woman that Bridget Clopper had turned into. ‘She’s taken an hysteric that’s like to kill her.’
But Tom — Melior Mary’s childhood companion — said, ‘There’s one who’ll do her more good than a doctor. I’ll go and fetch him. He’s never been far away from her.’
‘And who might that be?’
‘Mitchell, of course.’
‘Mitchell! Yes, he’ll know how to deal with her.’
*
Joseph said, ‘So you’re back. Damme, boy, you had me worried. I thought some ill must have befallen you.’
It was July and Castile languished beneath a heatwave but in the courtyard of the villa that belonged to the Grandee Gage fountains trickled coolly and a vine — old, gnarled and as greatly respected as its owner — cast a lush purple shadow over the place where Joseph sat at his ease, fanning himself with ostrich feathers. At his feet Sootface lay like a curled dog and, as Garnet approached, Joseph pushed the Negro affectionately with his shoe.
‘Damnable fellow can do nothing but sleep these days. Step over him, Garnet, will you. Sit here. Tell me what news of the Prince.’
‘None at all. I didn’t see him. I was taken ill on my way to Bristol. That’s what delayed me.’
A hand that shook a little, but still thin and elegant for all that, stretched out and poured some wine from a cooler.
‘Drink some of this. I think you’ll like it. I laid it down when we first came to Spain all those years ago.’
His love for Garnet was painful in its intensity. He would have given his life instantly and without question for him. He adored him as he had adored his mother. Yet Joseph’s face held its languid expression and the green cat eyes did little more than flicker as he said, ‘What happened exactly?’
‘Apparently it was the Sweating Sickness, contracted in London. I was taken ill on the journey and would be dead I think, if it had not been for the charity of an order of monks.’
‘Whereabouts was this?’
‘Inglewood Priory. It’s in Berkshire — near Kintbury.’
Joseph shook his head. He had left England so long ago that if he had ever heard of the place he had forgotten it.
‘But the story has a sad end, I’m afraid. The Brother who nursed me caught the illness — and died.’
Joseph sipped his wine.
Was he an old man?’
‘It’s rather difficult to say. He had an oldish air but was probably not yet sixty. But he was gentle, so good. A little maddish. The monks had found him years before, apparently, wandering with his memory lost.’
Joseph made a ‘tch, tch’ sound.
‘He wouldn’t have harmed a fly — but I killed him.’
‘Oh come, come Garnet. You cannot hold yourself responsible for nature’s progression.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If it was meant to happen — if it was the time when he was destined to go — it would have taken place regardless of you.’
‘Do you really believe that? Did you think that when my mother died in childbirth?’
Joseph hesitated and in his sleep Sootface sighed and scratched.
‘Yes and no. She went before her allotted span but perhaps there was no other road open to her.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘No.’
The word was final, a trifle crisp. In the great vine’s shadow nothing stirred but the tinkling silver of the fountains.
‘He was a kind man,’ said Garnet quietly.
‘If he nursed you back to health I am eternally in his debt. What was his name?’
‘No-one knew — he couldn’t remember it himself. But he had a name in the Brotherhood.’
‘And what was that?’
Everything was very quiet as fate hesitated. Should Joseph Gage who had put so much into life, who had been ruined in so many ways and who had fought back and so nobly won, be the victim of further pain? And Garnet, who had none of the old great gift of both his parents and of the family that had sprung from Dr Zachary, shifted a little in his chair as something of the weight of the moment rubbed off on him.
‘Little Monk,’ he said slowly. ‘They called him the Little Monk.’
‘God rest his soul,’ answered Joseph — and there was no sound in the courtyard but for the bubble of the wine, the splash of the fountains and the snores of the Negro, Sootface.
*
‘Get out of your bed,’ said Mitchell. ‘Get out and draw back these curtains. You must, Missie. For everybody’s sake.’
She had been like it for a month; lying in the shadows, staring at the wall and eating nothing but a piece of bread a day. Nor had she bothered to drink her water from Malvern and consequently age had caught her up apace. There were wrinkles round her eyes and on her cheeks; the glorious silver hair had lost its lustre and hung in tatters about her shoulders.
She turned to look at him and the great violet eyes were dull and hollow.
‘What do you want with me?’ she said in a voice he could not recognize.
‘I want you to come back to life, Melior Mary. For you may as well be dead, lying there like that. And dead you certainly will be if you don’t stand up soon.’
But he was old now and lacked the power he had once had over her. Only the livid scar and the brilliant eyes were left to show the ferocious man who had once dwelled within.
‘Go away,’ she said.
‘I can’t do that. I can’t leave you to rot. I love you, Missie. I want you to live again.’
‘That I can never do.’
‘No, perhaps not. Not as the great Beauty. But you can get up and lead your daily life as Lady of the Manor. Sutton Place needs your care and attention.’
She gave a wicked laugh.
‘Does it? Good! Then it shall not have it. It has ruined my life with its demands. Now it can suffer in its turn.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘It blinded me with its old heritage for a while. I thought that it mattered more than love. But it doesn’t — nothing does. And the hesitation was long enough for me to lose Charles Edward. Now there is nothing for me but to rot into old age.’
She turned her head away from him and wept bitterly into her pillow.
‘Oh don’t, Missie — don’t. It breaks my heart to hear you. Those are such tragic words.’
He felt broken, defeated. He could think of no way to bear up her spirit. Down the hardened cheeks his own tears trickled in anguish.
‘Mitchell, stop!’ she had looked up and seen him cry. ‘Please!’
But he could not answer her. He felt that his fighting days were over.
‘Mitchell.’ Her voice had a softer note. ‘Will it please you if I get up today?’
‘Yes.’ His answer was muffled. ‘Yes, if you will promise to act out your life properly.’
‘Never in society.’
‘That’s probably to the good.’ He looked at the ravaged face before him. ‘But here, Missie. You may hate Sutton Place now but you will learn to love it again in time.’
She turned a hard look upon him.
‘We shall see,’ she said.
*
It was December and it was snowing in Castile. Pernel Gage and her brothers — the twins James and Jacob — had never seen such a thing before, and they rushed out of their grandfather’s house and into the vined courtyard. Big white flakes fell out of the sky towards them and they laughed and tried to catch them in their mouths.
‘Are they cakes?’ said James, and his brother, who was so like him that even Pernel was sometimes deceived, echoed, ‘Yes, are they cakes?’
‘Yes,’ answered Pernel. ‘They are snow cakes — though Mama called them snowflakes. I shall catch you both one.’ But her attention was attracted by something else and she said, ‘Look at the fountain. It’s a little froz
en palace.’
They hurried to where the courtyard’s big central cascade hung in tiers of glass-like pendants.
‘Why, it’s lovely,’ said James, and then he added, ‘What’s that?’
In the largest sheet of ice a reflection was forming that was visible to all of them.
‘It’s Sootface!’ Pernel exclaimed. ‘What’s he doing in there? Look, he’s waving.’
They all turned to stare at each other — the identical boys and their dark-haired sister. They were magic children. Full of the ancient lore that had by-passed their father and come straight to them.
‘He’s saying goodbye, isn’t he?’ said James.
‘Yes,’ answered Pernel. ‘Don’t go back into the house yet. Grandfather’s crying.’
‘Leave him in peace. We shall kiss him better later.’
And, sure enough, in his seat by the fire Joseph sat in tears. At his feet Sootface lay curled up in the soundest sleep of all.
‘Oh damme, damme,’ said Joseph. ‘I loved him so. My faithful brother dog.’
Garnet said, ‘He died how he would have chosen — in his sleep, by a roaring fire and at your side.’
He gently removed the Negro’s turban and beneath it the white woolly hair sprung up like fleece.
‘He was quite old,’ he said wonderingly. ‘I never thought of him as that somehow.’
Through his tears Joseph said, ‘We’re all getting old, Garnet. Time passes you know. Time passes.’
*
In that same bleak winter Melior Mary sat before the fire in the Great Hall and grumbled aloud.
‘I’m very cold,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why we sit here Mitchell. Is it just for the look of it? The mistress of Sutton Place in residence. Is it for that?’
‘I don’t know, Missie,’ he answered. ‘It was your instruction.’
‘Well it wasn’t a very good one. I’m frozen to the bone.’ She pulled her shawl more tightly round her shoulders and added, ‘And I do wish you wouldn’t close your eyes when I’m speaking to you.’
‘I can’t help it, Missie — I’m greatly tired.’
‘Well you’re boring company, boring and old. I think I shall walk round this wretched house of mine. Try not to be asleep when I come back.’
She lit a solitary candle from those that burned in a candelabra at her side and set off slowly towards the west wing. Night after night she did this, walking round from room to room — her only light the small flickering flame. But she always ended her solitary perambulation in the same place — by the windows of the Long Gallery. There she would stand for an hour or more, gazing out into the darkness, her candle a beacon on the windowsill.
As Mitchell watched her departing figure his heart bled for her. He knew, without her ever having said a word to him, that the sole purpose of the vigil in the gallery was to look for the Young Pretender. To see if the lights of a carriage or the moonlit figure of a horseman might be piercing the blackness which fell like a pall over Sutton Place at night. Poor tragic woman! She had turned — in the six months since Charles Edward had gone — from a great glowing Beauty to a thin wispy-haired old woman. Whatever secret she had found to preserve her youth — and she had never confided in Mitchell what it might be — she no longer cared to exercise its art. The wonderful gift, the fire maiden for whom he had transformed his entire life, was gone.
And now as he sat in the shadows of the Great Hall, alone by the fire, he felt again the pain in his chest which was so familiar to him and which, with his ferocious strength, he had fought off so many times before. He knew that it was the Grim Reaper whistling in the dark for him, that the time was coming when he must answer the tune. But how could he forsake Melior Mary? She had nothing left but his devotion. Everything had been taken from her but Sutton Place — and against that she had developed a loathing which seemed to grow with each day. He sometimes felt that only he stood supporting the thin wall that divided her unruly personality between stability and madness.
Yet now the pain was growing more intense — it sat on his heart like an iron crab. Mitchell closed his eyes. It seemed to him then that he was back in the Jacobite uprising of 1715. He heard the sound of grapeshot; the roar of the Highlanders at Braemar as Jamie the Rover — James III — was proclaimed King by the Earl of Mar; stood by his master, the Earl of Nithsdale, as they fought barehanded with the English troops; felt once more the wicked thrust of the dagger that had ripped half his face open, leaving him scarred for life.
In his death dream Mitchell saw once more the famous Nithsdale rescue. Saw Lady Nithsdale and two of her friends pass in and out of the Earl’s room in the Tower until, in the end, the guards were so bemused with the comings and goings of the three veiled weeping women that the Earl — dressed in female clothes — had walked straight past them and out to where Mitchell waited with the carnage below. Then to Rome and to freedom and to a life of enjoyable exile — had it not been for Melior Mary! Everything changed; nothing the same any more.
He had loved her as only a hard man could. With the intensity that was part of his iron soul. For her he had been humbled, made a shadow before boys like Matthew Banister and the Prince himself. And now he could feel nothing but an overwhelming misery that he was not to die in her arms, that even at this vast and final hour he was not to be allowed one moment when his love for her should reign paramount above all the others.
‘Melior Mary,’ he called out — but his voice was a cobweb in the Great Hall’s loftiness. ‘Pray for me — as I shall for you. Love your house, Missie, for in a few moments there’ll be nothing else left for you.’
But she did not hear him and it was an hour before she quitted the Long Gallery and descended the stairs to where the fire burned low in the dimness.
‘You’ve let it get even colder,’ she said to the slumbering form in the chair. ‘Why didn’t you throw on a log?’
But Mitchell did not answer and she saw that his head had slumped forward onto his chest.
‘Mitchell?’ she said sharply, ‘are you not well?’
She reached over to shake his shoulder and as she did so he fell sideways against the chair’s arm with no more life in him than a cloth dolly.
‘Oh no!’ Her cry was a shout direct to God’s face. ‘Not that! Not Mitchell!’
She pulled him against her, kneeling down by his side so that she could hold him closer.
‘There’s too much death about,’ she said. ‘Too much separation and pain. I can’t bear it, for he was my rock and my anchor. How could you do this to me?’
And then as she wept into the dead man’s hand, which she held against her cheek as if it were the petal of a flower, a look of fear crossed her face.
‘So that’s to be the way of it, is it?’ she said. ‘That is how the curse unfolds. Not only childless and the last of the line but now to be immured here alone. Was ever a house so wretched, was ever a dwelling so cursed as you, my inheritance, my torment — Sutton Place?’
21
Riding before George III in procession, the King’s champion, armed cap-à-pie and mounted on a magnificent charger, flung down the gauntlet in accordance with ancient tradition — and just for a minute the huge crowd at the coronation of this honourable young man were totally silent, the only sound the jubilant carillon from Westminster Abbey. For this would be the moment, if moment there were to be at all, when the Jacobite sympathizers — quiet for years now as their King James III slipped into senility and their Prince became a hopeless drunkard — might make some last, brave, desperate demonstration of their loyalty to the Stuarts. Nobody really expected it, but the Jacobites were an unpredictable set. Was the gauntlet to lie where it had been thrown?
The girl, when she stepped forward, was the greatest shock of all. An old dour Highlander perhaps, but not this dark-haired creature with eyes like clear water and probably no more than fifteen years old. She gave the champion a mysterious smile — a magic smile almost — and then the gauntlet was in her hand and sh
e had vanished into the crowd so quickly that it was obvious that her accomplices were dotted everywhere. There was an audible gasp and the young King turned his honest German face to his equerry and called through the carriage window, ‘Who was that?’
‘A Jacobite loyalist, sir. A fanatic. She will be arrested immediately.’
‘If you can catch her,’ answered the King.
And he was right — there was no sign of the girl anywhere. But now something else caught George’s eye. A hooded abbot standing amongst the spectators had moved slightly forward and was gazing to where the newly-crowned King rode in his golden coronation coach. The hood fell back and a bitter face out of which stared eyes like molten amber looked at the monarch. George III drew in a breath. Surely not! But yet in that ravaged countenance there was more than just a passing resemblance to Charles Edward Stuart.
And as he gazed at the man who should, by true blood, have stood in his place at Westminster Abbey today, George saw Charles Edward’s lips move into a grim smile.
‘I envy you the least of any man alive,’ the Pretender said — and then he added something else beneath his breath.
George felt a shiver go through him and he stared over his shoulder to where — his coach having now gone past — the sinister figure had stood. But it too had vanished into the crowd.
‘I think that man was Charles Edward Stuart,’ said the King. ‘And I think he cursed me. Dear God!’
‘Oh no, Sir,’ the equerry answered soothingly. ‘The Young Pretender lies a drink-sodden hulk in the Duchy of Bouillon. He will never set foot on these shores again.’
But the simple stubborn George was not convinced. He wondered if the curse on the House of Stuart — which he had often heard discussed — could, with the putting on of their crown, have been transferred to him. He wondered if his reign would be a glorious one — or if it would be fraught with tragedy.
Fortunately for him his stalwart character knew nothing of premonition or destiny. He had no idea that that very crown would weigh so heavily upon him that for twenty years he would know recurring fits of madness that would cause him to wander the solitary galleries of Windsor crying out aloud with pain and despair. He had no glimpse that his eldest son would turn against him; that he would go blind; that he would be the King remembered throughout history as he who lost the American Colonies.
