Burke in the Land of Silver

by Tom Williams

  ‘But –’

  ‘I know you’ll be disappointed, Burke, but the logic is impeccable. Your analysis of the situation in Spain demands that we send an army to the Peninsula. Striking at Napoleon in Europe is more important than any American adventure. In any case, we do not recognise the French impostor to the Spanish throne. So we are officially allied with Spain against France, which makes the idea of the British invading a Spanish possession . . .’ (and here Wellesley coughed diplomatically) ‘. . . problematic. Indeed, I understand that you are to be detached from my staff and sent off to South America on your own to explain the new situation.’

  Wellesley contorted his stern features into a look that James, rightly, interpreted as an attempt to appear sympathetic.

  ‘I trust that possibility might offer you some consolation.’

  Chapter Eight

  James stood on the deck of the Rochester, enjoying the Atlantic wind in his hair. It was a beautiful day. There was no sign of the vicious weather that could make the crossing miserable at best and life-threatening more often than any sailor wished to dwell on. It was over four years since he had first stepped aboard this vessel: four years that had seen him move steadily up the social ladder. He was an adviser to foreign dignitaries, the confidante of dukes, the lover of queens. After all this, a return to South America – far from the London social scene and his useful contacts – should have been a disappointment, especially as his role was little more than that of a messenger. Yet Wellesley was right. The prospect of seeing America again was, indeed, a consolation.

  For the moment, it was enough that the sea air was washing away the stink of London. Burke had spent a fortnight there, much of it waiting around Whitehall until the great men of the day should summon him to their presence. He had worked his way up the hierarchy of under-secretaries and secretaries and permanent secretaries until the day he had stood in the presence of the foreign secretary himself, George Canning. Canning had been in office for over a year by now. Though Burke was instinctively suspicious of all politicians, he admired the way that Canning was drawing together a web of alliances designed to cut Bonaparte off from his friends and to support his enemies. He especially appreciated the foreign secretary’s understanding that the events in Spain offered an opportunity to bring South America into the war on the side of the British.

  ‘What we need, Burke,’ he had explained, ‘is a chap out there who can ensure that the dagos are sound. Officially, your job will be military liaison but, unofficially, we want you to reassure the ones that fear the French, and keep an eye on the ones who see Napoleon as a potential liberator from Spain. The Spanish ain’t steady, Burke.’ He had shaken his head at this and consoled himself with a pinch of snuff. ‘No, they ain’t steady, and their colonies are worse. We want you there to give ’em some backbone, Burke. Make sure they know which side they’re on and that they stay on it.’

  Now, as the Foreign Office’s most experienced South American hand, he was on his way back there. It was considered politic that for this mission he travel under a new identity, but he clung jealously to his rank, so it was Major Thomas James who was taking the air this fine day. William was again travelling with him. After so many years of service in so many countries, James had argued that William was overdue promotion, and it was Sergeant William Brown who had boarded the Rochester. He had learned from Helswig’s mistake, though, and it was Steven Williams who now stood beside James on the deck.

  ‘It’s a good time of year to be travelling,’ James remarked. ‘We leave England at the end of summer and arrive in Brazil in time for the best of spring.’

  ‘That’s always confused me, sir. Spending Christmas in the hot didn’t seem right.’

  James smiled.

  ‘Well, you’d better get used to it. Another hot Christmas is a definite possibility.’

  ‘Christmas in Buenos Aires then, sir?’

  ‘Christmas in Buenos Aires.’

  The two men stood silent, each with their own thoughts of that city and the women they had left behind there. Each with their own reasons to return.

  In fact, they were not to spend Christmas in Buenos Aires at all.

  *

  Admiral Smith did not like government agents. He had spent a lifetime in the navy, growing old in its service. Now, he represented the British Navy’s interests in Rio de Janeiro. It was a shore posting, for all it was an important one. With Brazil allied with Britain, the port at Rio was essential to British naval operations off the South American coast. For years, it had been from Rio that British warships had harried Spanish traders. For all that time, Admiral Smith had never felt the deck of a fighting ship move under him in the Atlantic swell. Instead, he had been forced to spend the war diplomatically ingratiating himself with one Portuguese official after another. He had done his duty and done it, he thought, damn well. And now some army major half his age was despatched from England to represent His Majesty’s Government because Admiral Smith was, apparently, not up to the task.

  ‘The situation in La Plata is too unstable to send you on there.’ Smith scarcely bothered to hide his satisfaction at the news. ‘You must bide your time a while in Rio until things are clearer.’

  ‘Admiral, when I was last in La Plata, they were in the middle of a war. Just how unstable can it be?’

  ‘They are on the verge of war now.’

  ‘The people are rising against Spain?’

  The admiral allowed himself a condescending smile.

  ‘Hardly. News of Napoleon’s usurpation of the Spanish throne has united the people behind the monarchy. No – the problem is that the Viceroy there is a chap called de Liniers. Have you heard of him?’

  James’ face was a mask.

  ‘I believe I may have.’

  ‘Well, he calls himself a Spaniard but he’s a Frog. And that means he’s not trusted – especially as the silly bugger has been talking to the French. So Monte Video has ceded from the province and Buenos Aires could be in revolt any day. My orders are to ensure your safety and I can’t do that if you’re in La Plata. So you’re staying here.’

  Life, Burke reflected, was simpler when you were just a spy. Now he was travelling, at least in part, as an envoy of the British government things could get very complicated. The foreign secretary, no less, had charged him to assure de Liniers of the security of the Anglo-Hispanic alliance and to stop exactly the sort of dalliance with France that the Viceroy was clearly suspected of. Burke enjoyed the prestige that came with being the Foreign Secretary’s man in South America but the role meant dealing with lesser representatives of British power. Unfortunately, that meant having his plans interfered with by the likes of Admiral Smith.

  Of course, Smith’s injunctions didn’t stop Burke from looking for a passage to Buenos Aires anyway but this proved harder than he had expected. It seemed that the admiral was not exaggerating the unrest in La Plata. Hardly any vessels were sailing to Buenos Aires or Monte Video and Admiral Smith had asked the authorities to ensure that no British subjects were allowed on any of those that were.

  After a night spent drinking in the port taverns, William was confident that he could get the two of them aboard a vessel leaving the next week. ‘But we’ll be travelling as crew and there’s no chance of smuggling any of the baggage aboard. So unless you want to represent His Majesty in a pair of tarred breeches and not much else, I think we’re stuck here.’

  James accepted the inevitable with good humour. He had enjoyed his stay in Rio de Janeiro before and he expected he would enjoy it now. Besides, he was here as a person of rank, and with the government to subsidise his visit. Things, he decided, could be a lot worse.

  Given that the British government was paying, William had soon arranged the lease of a grand house near the town gaol. When James heard, he was at first unamused.

  ‘Good God, William! For that sort of money, I’d expect better neighbours than the local felons.’

  ‘It’s all right, sir,’ William explained.
‘When the court moved here from Portugal, they had nowhere to put themselves so the gaol was cleared out, redecorated, and used to house them.’ James looked uncertain. ‘It’s all very swanky now, sir.’

  James agreed to take a look at their proposed new home and found the area very grand indeed. The gaol had been built next to the Viceroy’s palace, now the official residence of the prince regent, and the two buildings were connected by an elegant glass-covered colonnade, allowing courtiers to pass to and from without exposing themselves to the elements.

  James house itself was light and airy with tall rooms, which stayed relatively cool even in the heat of the Brazilian day.

  ‘It wasn’t easy to get anywhere,’ said William. ‘There’s ten thousand people came over with the court less than a year ago, and they all had to be put somewhere. Nice houses are hard to get.’

  ‘So how did you get this one?’

  ‘Saw the undertakers carrying the body out and went to the agents with a bag of sovereigns before they had a chance to advertise it.’

  ‘And the previous occupant died of . . .?’

  ‘Best you don’t know, sir. Not infectious though.’

  James checked the bedrooms, sniffing suspiciously. The place smelled clean and fresh. He decided not to enquire about the previous occupant.

  ‘We’ll need a cook,’ he said.

  ‘Already arranged, sir.’

  They moved in the next day. The place was certainly convenient for the court and James decided that he should spend some of his enforced stay in cultivating diplomatic relations with the Portuguese. At the least, he owed it to Maria Luisa to call on her daughter, the prince regent’s wife.

  When James made enquiries as to how one obtained an audience with Princess Carlota, it turned out that his house was not so well situated after all. The Princess was estranged from her husband – not for any simple domestic reason, but because the prince had taken exception to her attempting a coup against him a couple of years earlier. As a result, she did not live with the prince’s court but in her own house on the sea at Botafogo – a few miles to the south. James duly hired a sedan chair (his time in Brazil had taught him that Europeans never walked) and four sweating negroes carried him to the Princess’s residence.

  James presented his letter of introduction to a butler, who passed it to a chamberlain, who vanished into the recesses of the large and well-appointed, if rather sombre, building.

  James waited a good half an hour before being summoned to the royal presence by an usher in a livery so bedecked with gold braid and epaulettes that James worried that the poor man might collapse under the weight of his splendour. The walk from the small room where he had been required to wait to the Princess’s audience hall seemed to go on for miles, one chamber leading from another, each elaborately decorated in the latest Parisian styles, for all that Brazil was at war with France.

  When Major Thomas James eventually arrived in the presence of the Princess, he could not help but feel that it was something of an anti-climax. The figure smiling down at him from a throne mounted on a small dais was small and skinny. Although she could not have been much older than thirty, she had none of the beauty her mother must have possessed when she was young. Indeed, with her moustache and pointed nose and chin, she was straightforwardly ugly. Yet her remarkably dark eyes – so dark, they seemed almost black – sparkled with an intensity that made the rest of her features seem almost irrelevant.

  As James was presented, the Princess left her throne. She scrambled down inelegantly, like a small girl, rather than the wife of one of the most powerful rulers in Europe.

  ‘Mummy’s letter described you well and said that you seem in the habit of changing your name. You were a good friend of hers, weren’t you?’

  As she spoke, directly and informally, James found himself reminded of the Spanish Queen. Mother and daughter shared a passion for court life – its scheming, its politics and, James guessed, its opportunities to combine these with a busy personal life.

  Carlota took him unselfconsciously by the hand and led him to a side chamber where a table was laid with coffee and cakes.

  ‘You must tell me all about you and Mummy.’ For a moment, her face clouded. ‘Napoleon won’t let her go back to Spain. It seems so unfair after she favoured the French so much.’ Then, with scarcely a pause, ‘Have a croissant. They’re delicious.’

  James was there for an hour and left captivated with the lively young woman with the dark eyes. William, when he heard the story, allowed himself an audible sniff of disapproval.

  ‘You’ve seen a different side of her from most, then,’ he said. ‘The people here hate her. They say that if you don’t bow low enough when her litter passes, her guards will do you over a treat.’

  James thought of the elaborate bow that he had performed when he was presented to her Highness and thanked his private deity that he had not skimped on the courtesy. Aloud he said, ‘Well, she was perfectly civil with me.’

  William sniffed again.

  ‘Fancies you, then.’

  James cast a withering glance at his servant.

  ‘That hardly seems likely, William.’

  William shrugged.

  ‘Like mother, like daughter is what I hear. Though doubtless you’ll tell me that’s only servants’ gossip.’

  James made no reply. His years spying around the courts of Europe had shown him only too well that servants’ gossip was seldom wrong about their masters and mistresses. Burke decided that he had best make discreet enquiries around Rio.

  He soon realised that there was no need for discretion. The Princess’s voracious sexual appetites were almost as famous as her arrogance, which itself was the stuff of legend. It was said that even the British ambassador had found himself knocked to the ground by her bodyguard when he failed to turn to her sedan chair and make the requisite full bow.

  Burke found these descriptions difficult to reconcile with the woman he had met. He decided to risk accepting her invitation to another visit. This time he saw more significance in the wait in the hall and the interminable antechambers. He was certainly careful to bow in as low and fulsome a manner as he knew. Yet the Princess herself was again unpretentious and relaxed, chatting gaily about Spain and life with her mother. James did try once or twice to steer the conversation to events in Rio but, though she could be encouraged to talk about Portugal, she refused to talk about Brazil.

  ‘Ghastly, ghastly country. Full of blacks and no one of fashion at all. Look at the dresses people wear here and tell me that the ladies of Madrid were not incomparably more elegant.’

  James had to admit that people in Brazil did not reflect the height of modern fashion, although the influence of the Portuguese court was beginning to rid Rio of the worst excesses of eighteenth-century Parisian bad taste. Even so, it was still not unusual to see women wearing the high wigs that Marie Antoinette used to favour. These were often decorated not only with ribbons but also with scissors or little knives and even – on one notable occasion – with vegetables. The effect was made more ridiculous because the heat of Brazil meant that the glue that held these constructions together would often melt, trickling down the faces of the wearers, who would steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that anything out of order was occurring.

  Despite the Princess’s efforts to persuade him that she was little more than a guileless girl with strong views on clothes, James was not convinced. Her exile from the main court was because she had plotted to overthrow her husband – presumably over an issue more substantial than her dress allowance. And in between prattling prettily about Madrid fashions, she asked enough telling questions about the response to Napoleon’s takeover to show that she had an intelligent interest in Spanish politics.

  One afternoon, she suggested leaving the palace to walk on the beach. A litter was summoned and James was invited to share it as eight slaves carried the two of them towards the shore. A guard of six men walked in front of the litter with a bailiff carrying a
silver-tipped staff ahead of them. James, watching from behind the curtains, saw that it was true that all the people they passed made obeisance almost to the ground. From the looks of sullen anger on their faces, it was clear that this was not out of any feelings of respect for royalty but rather from fear of the guards. James found it difficult to reconcile this ruthless display of raw power with the ugly but charming girl who was even now snuggling kittenishly against him in the sedan chair.

  They alighted just where the grass gave way to a beach of astonishing whiteness.

  ‘I love it here,’ she said.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ agreed James. ‘I’ve never seen sand so white.’

  For a moment, the Princess’s face contorted in a spasm of fury and James thought she would strike him. Then she checked herself and smiled.

  ‘I don’t come for the beach, silly. It’s just that from here you can look out toward Europe. The sand is the only bit of Brazil that spoils the view.’

  *

  The time Burke spent with the Princess passed pleasantly enough but the prospect of an extended stay in Brazil still chafed. Having got nowhere with Admiral Smith, Burke decided to try his luck with Lord Strangford, the unfortunate British Ambassador who had been beaten by Carlota’s guards. Strangford, to Burke’s disgust, pronounced himself totally in sympathy with the admiral. After that, knowing of course that Burke was seeing a lot of the Princess, he decided to add to the Major’s discomfiture by letting him have the benefit of his opinion of the woman.

  ‘She’s completely barking mad, Burke. Hates Brazil, hates her husband, hates pretty well everything and everybody here, if you ask me. She’s obsessed with restoring the lost glory of Spain and sees herself as the last true Bourbon. You want to avoid her like the plague.’

  But avoiding her was difficult. Burke didn’t really have it in him to refuse an invitation from a princess and, by now, the invitations were coming in a steady flow.

  ‘It’s not like she’s a regular princess, sir,’ William pleaded. ‘Her husband’s the regent on account of how his mother’s mad, and Carlota doesn’t even live with him – on account of how she’s mad too, only a bit less obviously, if you get my drift. And she’s not the last Bourbon, begging your pardon. Her father’s still alive and once we defeat Napoleon, Ferdinand will be back on the throne.’