Burke in the Land of Silver

by Tom Williams

  ‘She is of royal blood,’ Burke argued, ‘and, more to the point, a charming young woman who has been kind enough to show me some friendship. Why should I not accept her invitations? More to the point, what bloody business is it of yours?’

  William, understanding discretion to be the better part of valour, withdrew.

  Things came to a head two months into James’ enforced sojourn in Rio. He was spending the evening with the Princess. (Her invitations were increasingly to dine with her at dusk – a meal that she seemed accustomed to take with no other guests.) After dinner, they withdrew to her private apartments where they had become accustomed to playing cards together. Tonight, though, while she shuffled the pack from hand to hand, she seemed reluctant to deal.

  ‘James.’ (She had long ago established his real name.)

  ‘Princess?’

  ‘My mother is not a young woman, is she?’

  ‘Your mother is a woman in the prime of life.’

  ‘Don’t be gallant, James. She’s over fifty and, though I love her dearly, I know she is fat and ugly.’

  James, unable to think of a diplomatic response, chose to remain silent.

  The Princess ignored his lack of reply, chattering on: ‘You were her lover, were you not?’

  ‘The Queen was generous enough to allow me a degree of intimacy.’

  ‘¡Mi Dios! You English with your delicacy. So, you were her lover.’

  James shrugged and nodded.

  ‘So, I am younger than her and prettier and I have my own teeth, yet you have not made love to me.’

  James arrived back at his house early the following afternoon to be met with an obsequiously deferential servant and no remark at all on his absence the previous night.

  After only an hour, the careful silence from William was far more irritating than any pointed comment could have been. Although he had sworn he would not mention the subject, James’ resolve was broken.

  ‘What else could a gentleman do, William?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know what you are talking about, sir.’

  ‘She’s a princess, William. And a very passionate lady. I can’t just dismiss her.’

  ‘I’m sure you can’t, sir.’

  *

  It was about a week after they first became lovers that James had the first inkling that, while Carlota certainly appreciated his body, he might hold other attractions for her as well.

  They were lying in her bed – a huge canopied affair in which the diminutive Princess could almost lose herself amongst the sheets – and Carlota asked how his plans to travel on to Buenos Aires were progressing.

  ‘Frankly, my monkey, I’m stuck. La Plata seems on the verge of civil war and His Majesty’s Government don’t want anyone going in to negotiate with the parties until they are sure who is going to win.’

  Carlota wriggled against him.

  ‘The Viceroy doesn’t seem very reliable. They say he favours the French.’

  ‘The Viceroy is a treacherous, lying bastard.’

  ‘But if he is still viceroy when you get to La Plata, you’ll have to negotiate with him.’

  James didn’t want to talk about de Liniers. In fact, as Carlota wrapped her legs around him, he didn’t want to talk about anything at all. But the Princess continued.

  ‘I’m told that Monte Video will make peace with Buenos Aires.’

  ‘It’s probable. Monte Video can’t survive on its own.’

  ‘Then de Liniers will survive as viceroy.’

  Burke reached to cup one of her buttocks in his hand. She squirmed in a delightful way, but would not be put off from her questions.

  ‘Do the English want de Liniers to survive?’

  ‘No, Carlota, they don’t. But there’s not a lot we can do about it.’

  ‘There might be something.’

  Burke rolled away from her and sat up. It occurred to him, for the first time, that Carlota was a shrewd political operator.

  ‘You have something in mind?’

  But now it was the Princess’s turn to refuse to be drawn. She reached up to James and pulled him down to her.

  ‘Later,’ she said, wrapping herself around him.

  *

  The Princess’s plan emerged slowly over the next few days, usually after they had been enjoying their now-regular intimacy. He wondered afterwards if he would have given it any consideration if it weren’t that his judgement was not, perhaps, at its best in the afterglow of passion. He even wondered, briefly, if Carlota might not have been all too aware of this, but that was a possibility he did not want to spend too long considering.

  ‘Monte Video is loyal to the Spanish throne and would like independence from Buenos Aires. It is my intention to offer myself as ruler of Monte Video. It would no longer be a province but a regency, under the direct control of the Spanish monarch.’

  Even the memory of the Princess straddling him, her breasts covered in sweat, could not blind James to a significant omission in her reasoning.

  ‘Carlota, you aren’t the queen of Spain.’

  She had dismissed his objection as barely worthy of consideration.

  ‘Charles has abdicated and is now nothing but a tool of Napoleon. Ferdinand is just a prisoner of the French, whatever they say. What Spain needs is a monarch who is free to rule.’

  It was an argument she often returned to. Even as they made love, she would stop nibbling at his chest long enough to insist that she was the last hope of the Spanish Empire. Then she would return to biting him with a passion that reminded him of the rumours that on their wedding night she had taken a chunk out of the prince regent’s ear.

  As the Princess elaborated on her scheme, James began to wonder if it might, in fact, be feasible. Monte Video had always held an anomalous position in La Plata. On the east shore of the River Plate, it commanded a strip of territory known as the Banda Orientale. Bordering Brazil, it was a perpetual source of dispute between the two Iberian powers. If it were ruled directly by the wife of the ruler of Brazil, Portugal could, presumably, be persuaded to guarantee its independence.

  ‘Not just Portugal,’ the Princess insisted, raking his back with her fingernails. ‘If you negotiate such an arrangement, you could guarantee it on behalf of the British too.’

  James doubted that he had any such authority, but, with the Princess bringing him to the point of ecstasy as she introduced this new diplomatic twist, he was not about to argue.

  Strangford, though, was not under the Princess’s spell. Burke was not so much of a fool as to let the British ambassador know that Carlota was trying to involve Britain in her schemes, but he did enquire discreetly as to what Britain’s response to a Spanish principality would be.

  ‘We’d oppose it,’ Strangford said, speaking more bluntly than a diplomat might be expected to. ‘We want the Americas kept out of the war, safely supplying the Allied treasuries. Nothing that stirs up the whole question of their status is to be encouraged by His Majesty’s Government. And besides,’ he added, ‘that Carlota woman is quite mad.’

  Mad she might be, thought James, but she was calculating, ambitious, and more politically astute than her enemies gave her credit for. And James was not sure that he didn’t want the status of the Americas to be stirred up. He remembered his nights on the pampas and the courage and conviction of the criollos. They had had a purpose and certainty in their lives that he sometimes wondered if he lacked in his own.

  He thought of the attack on the fort at Buenos Aires as civilians rose against the colonial occupiers and overwhelmed them. There was, he decided, an inevitability about the growing nationalism of the Argentines. When the war with Napoleon was won – as it must be – he could not imagine the people of Buenos Aires meekly accepting rule from Madrid. The question, to his mind, was not whether or not Argentina would gain its independence, but whether an independent Argentina would be an ally or an enemy of Britain.

  In this context, the idea of a Spanish principality began to make sense. Whilst Carl
ota would rule nominally as a Spanish queen, the government would be in Monte Video and the province would effectively have self-rule. The Banda Orientale would become like Brazil, a country where the population (though constantly grumbling about the extravagance of the court) showed no sign of rebellion because their rulers lived amongst them. True, the prince regent could be autocratic and Carlota – even the infatuated James had to admit – could be simply impossible, but James convinced himself that the Banda Orientale might be safe in their hands. Since the monarchs of Europe had seen Louis led to the guillotine, kings and queens ruled with a sensitivity to their subjects’ interests that mere colonies could never experience. A Spanish principality under British protection could become a beacon of self-rule, lighting the way for the rest of Spanish America to establish its own governance under the benign watchfulness of the European powers.

  Seduced by the Princess and captivated by visions of a free America allied to the British flag, James found himself agreeing that he would talk with the Monte Video rebels and try to negotiate the agreement Carlota was looking for.

  There was only one problem. By February, when Admiral Smith finally decided that it was safe to sail on to Buenos Aires, the Monte Video revolt was over.

  ‘Don’t worry, my love,’ the Princess said, exploring his nipples with her tongue, ‘you’ll think of something.’

  *

  Burke stood in the bows as they ran up the Plate on the tide. They passed San Pedro Telmo and he remembered the inn there and his first night with Ana. He was looking forward to seeing her again. Carlota had been fun, but her rampant sexuality was beginning to pall. Seeing Ana again would be a welcome return to a woman who had made a special place for herself in his heart.

  William stood beside ‘Major James’ and he, too, was thinking of the girl he had left behind in his first precipitous departure from La Plata. Today, travelling as an official delegation from George III’s government, he had abandoned his servant’s clothes for his redcoat uniform. Self-consciously he flicked a speck of dust from the sleeve where his three stripes stood crisp and white and he found himself wondering what Molly would make of the smart sergeant he now was.

  San Pedro Telmo slipped away aft and the towers and domes of Buenos Aires’ churches appeared on the horizon. Soon Burke could see the fort, the Spanish flag once again flying proudly above it.

  They dropped anchor near the fort, as they had on his first arrival. Looking across the waters of the Plate to the city beyond, he thought that the mud banks had grown perceptibly wider since his first visit, and that the ship was moored further out, but otherwise little seemed to have changed in the past five years.

  James made certain that William was among the first to board the boats for the shore, carrying news of the arrival of King George’s representative to the Viceroy while he remained on the deck. He watched the porters moving back and forth at the still-ramshackle quay. There was the usual mix of Spaniards, Indians, and Negroes hauling chests and barrels ashore. One tall, black figure caught his eye and he found himself recalling his meeting with the Book Man, all those years ago. For a moment, it seemed as if the Negro on the docks looked directly at him but he knew he must have imagined it. The man was too far away for him to see his features and he would scarcely have been able to make out Burke on the gently rolling ship. Yet James felt a momentary shiver and had a sudden conviction that the decisions he made in the next few days would somehow define him. He remembered the Book Man’s words: ‘You will walk with the rulers of the world and your actions will help to bring forth a nation.’ He thought of the promises he had made to Carlota and his responsibility to Strangford. If he played his cards right, he could come out of this as the man who had delivered La Plata to the British. But where, he found himself wondering, would this leave Sr Iglesias and the rebels who fought and died for their own country, subject to neither Spain nor Britain?

  He sighed. Things, he decided, were likely to get complicated.

  Just how complicated became clearer when William returned. De Liniers, he told Burke, was delighted to hear of the arrival of Major James and intended to host a reception for him at the viceregal palace that evening. And, William had learned (for the habit of listening to servants’ gossip died hard), the Viceroy’s consort would be none other than a certain Madame Perichon.

  ‘Ana!’

  ‘Yessir. She’s got her claws well into him, by all accounts.’

  There was silence while James looked across at the city, as if hoping to see Ana there.

  William watched him with an expression of concern. He seemed to start to speak, hesitated, and then said, ‘She lives on Unguero, between Alzoga and Villanueva.’

  Unconsciously, Burke’s eyes swivelled toward Villanueva – a street that met the shoreline only a couple of blocks east of the fort. He saw William frown. The trouble with Sergeant Brown was that he knew Captain Burke too well. He had seen that glance and knew exactly what it meant.

  ‘She’s the acknowledged mistress of the ruler of the place, sir. I shouldn’t have told you where she lives.’

  James turned to him with a half-smile on his lips.

  ‘Did your researches extend to where Molly lives these days?’

  William’s blush gave his answer.

  ‘Take yourself over there, William. I think we both have some catching up to do.

  *

  Molly wasn’t exactly sure how old she was but she doubted she would ever see twenty-one again. Too old, in any case, to be dancing the horizontal polka with anyone with a shilling to spare. Which was why she had invested the money that she had stored up, piece-by-piece, first under the floorboards and later, as her wealth had grown, in the strongroom of the local banker. Now she was the proud owner of a small tavern in San Pedro Telmo and, more importantly, of the four rooms above it. There, four good, honest, and, above all, athletic girls worked enthusiastically to increase the return on her capital.

  South America, she thought, had been good to her. She’d had fun; she’d grown wealthy. Her tavern was popular – and not just with those who patronised her upstairs rooms. She still had admirers and, occasionally, for old times’ sake, she would allow a gentleman to lead her to one of those rooms herself. But she’d insisted they all pay. There’d only been one man she would have let bed her without her fee, and he was long gone.

  There was a knocking at the tavern door. It was barely ten o’clock in the forenoon. What kind of idiot would disturb her now?

  The knocking continued.

  She made her way to the saloon and opened the window. There were bars set in the wall so she could not lean out, but she put her face to the metal and shouted in Spanish for her caller to stop his noise.

  ‘I’m closed,’ she said. And, in English, she added, ‘Piss off and come back in two hours.’

  The banging stopped and a red-coated soldier came and stood at the window.

  ‘Molly?’ he said.

  For a moment, she stared at the uniform and its sergeant’s stripes.

  Then she went to the door and let him in.

  *

  James had chosen to remain in civilian clothes for his call on Ana.

  The house where she was living was small, but conveniently close to the viceregal palace. The door, like most of the doors in Buenos Aires, was tall and narrow and the upstairs windows opened onto little balconies with tubs of plants adding a splash of colour to the pale frontage. The building might be smaller than the home she had shared with O’Gorman but it was clear that Ana Perichon was doing well for herself.

  A liveried servant opened the door. Though there had been plenty of servants in her old home, the appearance of gold-braided livery was more evidence that Ana’s star was in the ascendant.

  James handed over a card: ‘Major Thomas James’. On the back, he had written, ‘I would very much like to see you again. JB.’

  The footman took the card in a gloved hand and placed it on a silver tray before leaving Burke in the hallway whil
e he vanished into one of the rooms beyond.

  Moments later, he was back.

  ‘Madam will be happy to see you immediately.’

  Burke followed the footman through the hallway to the tiny internal courtyard beyond. Tall doors opened off it to the principal rooms of the house and in one of these, Ana sat waiting for him.

  The footman bowed his way out, closing the door behind him.

  Ana sat, saying nothing, but staring up at James. James, in his turn, stood speechless.

  When the silence broke, they both started talking at once, then both were silent as they simultaneously paused for the other to speak, and then both started together again.

  Ana stopped trying to talk and burst out laughing, and the tension that had been palpable in the air was broken. It was as if James had left her but a week before and was now returned to tell her that his exile at de Liniers’ hand was but a nightmare.

  Before Ana had drawn breath, James had crossed the room and taken her in his arms.

  ‘James!’

  She pushed him away from her.

  ‘Ana! Don’t tell me that you don’t want me!’

  She flushed.

  ‘Of course I want you. But Santiago will find out and he will kill you.’

  ‘I’m here as an official British envoy.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Ana picked his card from the table where it lay. “Major Thomas James”. Are the great men in London so very ashamed of you, James?’

  ‘It was considered politic to separate this mission from any of my previous activities in South America.’

  ‘Because you were a spy.’

  James shrugged.

  ‘And do the gentlemen who sent you here with this . . .’ she paused, ladling sarcasm onto the next word, ‘. . . sophisticated alias expect that Santiago de Liniers will not recognise you?’

  ‘They’re diplomats, Ana. They expect him to behave diplomatically. I am here to let him know that England and Spain are no longer at war and to offer him the hand of friendship.’