by Davies, J. D
Cornelia scowled. ‘The woman is insane, husband –’
‘Insane, Cornelia?’ snarled Lady Louise. ‘Ah well, there we shall have to agree to differ. For is it insane to bring out the truth? That is what I am about, you see. The truth that your family has hidden for nearly forty years.’ She moved across the gallery toward me. I rested a hand on the hilt of my sword. ‘Your weapon can stay sheathed, Matthew. The castle is filled with my men. Several are just beyond that door, in the antechamber. And I have no doubt that you are curious. It would be such a shame to strike me down before you learn what your mother and brother have concealed from you throughout your life, would it not?’ Her tone was almost playful, taunting me; for she knew that her words struck home. I looked at Charles and at my mother in turn. The earl’s eyes were blank; my mother’s were tearful, and tears from the Dowager Countess were nearly unknown. ‘And with you and your dear Cornelia to witness the depositions that they will shortly sign, all will be legal and indisputable, you see? Proof that will stand in any court of law, and proof that demands to be trumpeted to the world. Proof positive of the great lie that the House of Quinton has inflicted upon England.’
She was close to me now: I could easily have drawn my sword and struck her down. But I did not doubt the truth of her words about the men in the antechamber, and could not bring down their inevitable vengeance upon my family.
‘What are you about, madam? What is it that you want?’ I demanded angrily.
The countess stared at me quizzically, and for just one fleeting moment, I thought I saw an unspoken answer in her eyes: that what she wanted was the man standing before her. As it was, her answer was provided by my wife.
‘Power, husband,’ said Cornelia, ‘power and money. All that has ever mattered to this murderous whore. She hoped that allowing the king to father an heir to Ravensden upon her would elevate her into His Majesty’s principal mistress, ousting Lady Castlemaine.’
‘But even His Majesty proved more discriminating,’ said my mother, harshly. Tears and criticism of the Lord’s anointed: this was indeed a day of unexpected glimpses of a very different Anne Quinton to the one I had known all my life.
‘And as our king’s fleeting interest in her vanished, so her use to the French king diminished in turn, and with it the pension that allows her to maintain all of this,’ said Cornelia. ‘So she had to find a new way to make herself indispensible to King Louis.’
‘Crudely put, Cornelia,’ said the Countess Louise, ‘but not entirely wide of the mark.’ Her eyes were very strange now: ablaze with emotions that might have been exultation, or scorn, or fear, or a little of all of them. ‘What could be more valuable to France than proof of a dark secret of state, of knowledge that can be used against Charles Stuart if he strays from policies favoured by King Louis? Can be used, indeed, to force him to abandon his present policy that so offends the Most Christian? Do you not think that the agent who uncovered such knowledge would have proved herself worthy of France’s continuing gratitude and beneficence?’
I went to Cornelia and stood alongside her chair. She placed her hand in mine and gripped it tightly.
‘You speak in riddles, madam,’ I said. ‘What policy? What secret? Be direct, in God’s name.’
‘The policy you know, Matthew. You were at the reception of the ambassadors. I seek merely to further their purpose, although by rather different means.’
I recalled the night of the great state reception in the Banqueting House of Whitehall: of the grand entry of the Duc de Verneuil, and of my sight of the Countess Louise’s agitated conversation with Monsieur Courtin.
‘France wishes England to withdraw from this war with the Dutch,’ I said slowly, piecing together the implications in my head. ‘If we do not, King Louis’ treaty obligations to them will force him to enter the war on their side. And that does not suit the purpose of the Most Christian, who wishes England and Holland neutered so he can pursue his ambition to conquer Flanders.’ I looked at her and nodded with what might even have been a hint of respect. ‘The embassy failed to achieve its end, but perhaps you yet may, Madam, if whatever secret knowledge you think you hold against the king is so truly heinous that it compels him to change his policy and end the war.’
‘Bravo, Matthew!’ cried Louise admiringly. ‘You should become a statesman, methinks. And the knowledge is heinous indeed – a secret able to halt a war or topple a king. Very well, then.’ She turned and faced my mother directly. ‘Time to tell your son the truth that you have hidden from him and the world, My Lady.’
My mother seemed incapable of speech. Her eyes were focused on the unlit fireplace, not blinking, seemingly lost in a far distant place and time. Charles shifted uncomfortably in his chair and said, ‘I will say it, to spare our mother.’ His voice was thin and broken, bearing the weight of illness and of the ages. ‘It is – it is possible that my father was not James Quinton, Earl of Ravensden.’
Not James Quinton. Not our father – my father.
As I struggled to take in the enormity of the impossible words that Charles had uttered, I thought back to the conversation I once had upon a Scottish moor with a great general, a man with barely days to live, and to my subsequent interview with his lover Henrietta Maria, Queen Mother of England. Now, at last, the pieces all fell into place.
‘It was the king,’ I said, staring at my mother. ‘You were King Charles’ lover.’
Charles Stuart, the First of that name. A man revered as a saint and martyr, a man whose spotless private life was held up as an example and indictment to his son. My mother’s guilty eyes spoke the truth of the assertion. I recalled all the candles she lit every thirtieth day of every January, the anniversary of the king’s execution. I remembered the fanatically devoted way in which she venerated the dead king’s memory. At last, it was all clear to me: the Dowager Countess was mourning her lost lover.
In that same moment, I realised one of the two chief consequences of this terrible new truth. Proof that the royal martyr had betrayed his queen and fathered a bastard would be utterly devastating for the cavaliers, who had built an entire religion upon his memory and a potent romantic myth around the loving, doomed marriage of a king and a queen. It would be a mighty weapon in the hands of the malcontents who sought once more to bring down the entire edifice of monarchy, restored so very recently and still so fragile; as, indeed, the whole business over the twenty captains had so recently proved to me. England was a powder keg, and it would take only one small spark to blow it all to kingdom come. Moreover, possession of the House of Quinton’s fateful knowledge – categorical, legally proven knowledge, not the ordinary tittle-tattle of rumour and slander that ever swirled about the court and the streets of London – and the threat of trumpeting it to the world, would have given King Louis an almost irresistibly powerful hold upon his English cousin. Perhaps even a hold powerful enough to compel Charles Stuart to withdraw from the war and to be in thrall to King Louis ever after; such had to be the calculation made by Courtin and executed on his behalf by the Countess Louise with this desperate throw of the dice, detaining us all in this grim ruin until she achieved her purpose. It would matter not a jot that the depositions she wished my mother and brother to sign were made under duress, for upon such evidence ever rests a large part of English law.
In any case, how could my brother and mother deny testimony that was essentially true?
With the words spoken, a great weight seemed to lift from the dowager countess. She looked at me directly, and said, ‘I loved him, and I loved your father. Equally, for those few heady months in the year twenty-seven, when the world was new and all seemed possible. Buckingham loved the Queen of France, Campbell of Glenrannoch loved the Queen of England, so why could I not love a king?’ For the briefest of moments I caught a glimpse of the bold, lively young woman that my mother must once have been. ‘Your father came back from campaign, and he was different. Changed. Distant. I loved him still, and we lived conjugally, as man and wife ought
– but the king was kind, attentive and understanding. He craved a woman’s company, a woman who could show him the way to make his wife love him.’ Her eyes seemed lost in that long-dead past, at once desperately happy and yet so utterly painful to recall. ‘So I cannot be certain, Matthew. I cannot say who fathered your brother.’
‘Perhaps that is so, madam,’ said the Countess Louise. ‘I sympathise, as one’s king’s whore to another.’ I bridled at that and even reached for my sword, but Cornelia restrained me. Strangely, though, the remark seemed not to offend my mother in the least. ‘But that is not what you will depone before the lawyer waiting in the antechamber,’ the countess continued. ‘You will testify that you were the mistress of the first King Charles, and that the man who calls himself Charles, Earl of Ravensden, is in truth the bastard son of that king.’
Then the second terrible consequence of this revelation struck me. If Charles was not the son of James Quinton, then he could not be the Earl of Ravensden. I was. I had been since the age of five.
There was a strange silence. None moved. My mother still seemed far away, lost in the memories of her dream-time; my brother stared feebly out of the window toward the green acres of Lyndbury. The Countess Louise stood in the centre of the great gallery, seemingly revelling in her triumph. My heart pounded, and my thoughts raced.
Strangely, Cornelia seemed impassive. Indeed, after a few moments she did the strangest thing. She smiled. At first, I thought this must be her reaction to the realisation that she might now be the rightful Countess of Ravensden; in contrast to the ambivalence I had always felt toward the prospect of succession, she positively relished it. Swiftly, though, I realised that her reaction betokened something else. I was tense and perspiring, yet Cornelia seemed strangely relaxed. She no longer seemed to be a prisoner; she had the confident air of a gaoler.
‘Well, husband,’ she said, ‘now you have heard. This Jezebel has condemned herself from her own mouth, and you can testify to it.’
For the first time, the Countess Louise seemed nonplussed. ‘The only testimony given here will be that which I dictate, Cornelia!’
‘Oh, I rather think not,’ said a new but familiar voice. ‘The game has altered, My Lady.’
The door to the gallery opened. Framed within it was the wizened form of my uncle, Doctor Tristram Quinton. He entered the room, thus enabling Phineas Musk to make his own entrance behind him. But Musk was not alone. At his side was a young woman of eighteen or so. Her hair was as raven-black as that of the Countess Louise, but she was perhaps half a foot shorter. Her face was pinched and her complexion pallid; the girl had not lived well, I thought. I did not know then that her face looked remarkably well, considering how recently she had recovered from the plague.
Her eyes fixed upon the countess.
‘Hello, mother,’ said Madeleine Lugg, alias De Vaux.
Be not too proud, imperious Dame,
Your charms are transitory things,
May melt, while you at Heaven aim,
Like Icarus’s waxen wings;
And you a part in his misfortune bear,
Drown’d in a briny ocean of despair.
~ Thomas Flatman, The Defiance (published 1686)
Lady Louise stared in stupefaction upon her daughter. She did not greet her; she did not embrace her. Instead, she suddenly looked away, toward the door of the antechamber, and screamed, ‘Sleep! Hughton! Baines!’
Tristram shook his head. ‘All below, My Lady, along with all your other men. It is as well that this place was built with most commodious cellars. If you look out of the window, you will see that we have secured it all around with a troop of Wiltshire militia.’
She went to the window, satisfied herself of the truth of Tris’s words, then turned back at last to face us.
‘You have no authority here,’ said the countess, still seemingly serenely confident. ‘You cannot give orders to the militia! You do no man’s bidding but your own, Tristram Quinton!’
‘Not so,’ said Charles mildly. He was still seated in his chair near the window, still the very image of a man at death’s door. ‘All that has been done here, and will be done, is at my bidding.’
She turned on him furiously, but could only stare incredulously at him. ‘Your bidding, husband?’ She nearly spat the words at him. ‘Not even your own body obeys your bidding, Charles.’
He smiled; and a smile from Charles Quinton was as rare as snow in summer. ‘My dear Louise,’ he said, ‘you should never have essayed the part of a spy. You are too gullible, for you trust appearances and letters recounting the movements of a sickly husband rather too readily, madam.’
Then Charles did something unexpected. He lifted himself from his chair and drew himself up to his full height, an action that always pained him. He turned to my uncle, and his face was suddenly as hard as gunmetal. When he spoke next, his voice was deeper and stranger; the voice of an actor. Or of a man who had learned the art of actors.
He said, ‘Do you know me, Tristram Quinton?’
My uncle smiled complicitly as he recited the ancient passwords. ‘Yes, My Lord, I know you now.’
‘By what name do you know me?’
‘You are Lord Percival.’
I felt a shock in my heart, and knew at once that it was not the single shock of my brother’s revelation: for I stared at Cornelia, and saw plainly that for her, this was merely prior knowledge.
Lord Percival. To my surprise, I found myself grinning in belated realisation. For I recalled at once how my brother was always much taken with an old book by Chretien de Troyes, the Percivale. The tale of a valiant, pure knight who grew up not knowing that he was the son of a king.
Lady Louise stared open-mouthed at her husband: at Lord Percival. ‘You? But I first heard that name months ago from – from an agent of the Most Christian –’
‘As the man who was intent on bringing you down, and obstructing all the machinations of France in this land. Intent upon exposing you for what you are, Louise. And now you have done so quite thoroughly, by your own admission before us all – a French spy, a traitor who seeks to blackmail the king, and so much more besides. As we shall shortly hear.’
She looked desperately around the room, as frantic as a cornered animal. At last her eyes settled upon Phineas Musk. ‘You lied to me, Musk!’ she cried. ‘You told me that Percival was an alias of Mordaunt’s! You showed me Mordaunt, garbed as Percival, at the conventicle in Barking! You swore upon oath that Earl Matthew told you he knew his grandson was spurious! And you swore never to betray me to one named Quinton –’
‘Many better people than you have come to grief by actually believing what Phin Musk told them, My Lady,’ he growled. ‘If the late earl knew anything of My Lord’s paternity, he certainly never revealed it to me – truth to tell, our discourse rarely extended beyond “Musk, you poxed fustilarian, where the hell are my boots?” But otherwise I kept my word, in a sense, and never betrayed you to one named Quinton. By your own logic, My Lord’s real name is Stuart, is it not?’
Louise stared at him open-mouthed; that a mere servant might have been better versed than she in the principles of Machiavelli seemed genuinely shocking to her.
‘And as for My Lord Mordaunt,’ said Charles, ‘let us say that he was perfectly happy to play the part I assigned to him, as he did so often in the past. He relished the opportunity to play the man of action again, rather than the role which he usually plays in public these days – the disillusioned and idle bore. Yes, a good man, Johnny Mordaunt. My man.’ Charles was relentless now, moving toward his wife and circling her without the trace of a limp. ‘It took many months to assemble the evidence against you, Louise. Almost as many months as it took Matthew, Cornelia and Tris to convince my mother and I that you were indeed the harpy that they took you to be from the first. You covered your tracks well, but not well enough.’ He nodded toward the impassive figure of Madeleine De Vaux, who had not taken her eyes off her mother. ‘As in the case of your daughter, he
re. Sent to a convent in France, I believe you said? I think not.’
‘Convent, My Lord? Aye, some convent,’ said Madeleine. Her voice was harsh, a cynical, world-weary London accent. ‘A whorehouse, more like, when I was but six. At least the old bitch Anderson had the grace not to put me with the customers for a few years afterwards. Not that it would have mattered to you whether she did or not, would it, mother? But I remembered you, the proud Lady De Vaux. And I remembered what you screamed at me, that day you left me behind.’ The girl’s eyes welled with tears. ‘That my being born had done for your womb – that you could never bear children again, and it was my fault…’
Lady Louise moved toward her, hand raised, but Charles reached out and grasped her wrist. ‘You have committed enough violence, madam,’ he said.
‘These are lies!’ screamed the Countess of Ravensden. She released herself from Charles and backed toward the window. ‘You have bought this girl’s testimony – I have never seen her before –’
‘We have evidence,’ said Cornelia. ‘The ledger of Goodwife Anderson, for instance. Which names you, My Lady, as the – the depositor, let us say, of this child with her.’
‘Of course,’ said Charles, ‘it would have been mightily inconvenient for you to admit to the king or I that you could not bear children – not when your first scheme depended on you being able to convince both he and I that you could provide an heir to the earldom. His Majesty does not take kindly to being lied to, madam.’
Aye, I thought, a strange paradox, that: for Charles Stuart had no compunction in lying to men’s faces if so doing ensured his survival upon the throne.
‘Nor does this family take kindly to your lies,’ said Tris. ‘Your assumed interest in the earlier generations of Quinton history – that was but a ploy to conceal your real target, the evidence of Her Dowager Ladyship’s liaison with the late king, was it not?’ Louise stared at him, her eyes a curious meld of fury and fear. There was something about Tristram’s words, something about Tristram himself, that unsettled her more than the condemnation of her own husband. ‘And then there is the question of your origins. Oh, you must have thought that tearing from the parish register the page recording the entry of your marriage to Sir Bernard de Vaux – an entry giving your place of birth – would keep that information safe from all mankind. It took some considerable time to locate the Reverend Tobias Moon, the man who conducted your marriage. He had been deprived of his parish at the Restoration and forced to seek a living in the New World, chiefly because of your evident and relentless persecution of him – is that not so?’ She made no reply. ‘But finally we located him, in some foul and distant fastness within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as that remote place terms itself, and he sent us the piece of information that you had sought to conceal. Tell me, My Lady,’ said Tristram, ‘what do you know of a place called Chaldon Worgret, in the county of Dorset?’
