Alas for Aislabie, luck did not come his way. The consequences of another acquittal following Charles Stanhope’s evasion of justice were too serious to be contemplated. Walpole said nothing in defence of Aislabie, whose explanation that he had burnt all records of his dealings in South Sea stock because they were of no importance once settled was not well received. Small wonder, since those dealings had netted him a profit of £35,000. He was convicted, expelled from the House and consigned to the Tower, there to languish until occasion could be found to anatomize his estate and decide how much of it, if not all, should be forfeit.
Celebratory bonfires were lit across London as the news spread. Public anger was appeased. ‘Sometimes,’ remarked Walpole, watching the flames light the night sky from Viscount Townshend’s Cockpit office, ‘a sacrifice there has to be.’
‘Will Aislabie be enough for them?’ asked Townshend.
‘I’d happily give them Sunderland as well. But the King’s uncommonly fond of the fellow. And the King expects me to persuade the House to spare him.’
‘Will you be able to?’
‘I think so. Just so long as no new evidence turns up.’
‘Such as the Green Book? I worry about it, Robin, I really do.’
‘So you should. If it fell into the wrong hands …’ Walpole cast his brother-in-law a meaningful look. ‘They might be lighting bonfires for us as well.’
The four English travellers who arrived in Turin the day after Aislabie’s conviction in London had a no less arduous Alpine crossing than Cloisterman to look back on. The vertiginous scramblings of their porters over the wind-scoured Mont Cenis Pass had caused Estelle de Vries no apparent alarm, however. It had therefore been necessary for her male companions to affect a similar unconcern, their true feelings concealed behind devil-may-care quips and high fur collars.
The performance of Buckthorn and Silverwood in this regard had scarcely wavered, although Buckthorn had mentioned wolves often enough to suggest a pre occupation with the subject and Silverwood had manifestly not been amused by the porters’ discontented mutterings about his weight.
Spandrel for his part had found it easy to assume an uncharacteristic jauntiness of manner. The frozen beauty of the Alps was something he had never expected to experience. Nor, for that matter, was the sexual favour of such a woman as Estelle de Vries. He had entered a new world in more ways than one and his elation left little space for fear, nor indeed for the thought that Estelle did not and could not love him. She had used the act of love to bind him to her and she had succeeded. The memory of their night together in Geneva was sometimes clearer to Spandrel than the events taking place around him. Like a white flame of refined pleasure, it burned within him. He was hers, completely. And she was his, reservedly. He was aware of the disparity, what it meant and why it existed. He knew the promises he was breaking and the dangers he was ignoring. But he also knew that what she had given him he could not resist.
The cramped accommodation available to Alpine travellers had prevented any immediate repetition of their night of passion. Buckthorn and Silverwood could be given no hint of how matters stood between them. It was one more secret for them to share – the darkest and most delicious of all. At a spacious inn of the sort the Savoyard capital might be expected to boast, however, that secret might both be kept and enjoyed.
But Estelle did not agree. ‘We must be careful,’ she counselled during a few snatched moments of privacy. ‘If Mr Buckthorn and Mr Silverwood should learn that we are lovers, they would be consumed by jealousy. They might also come to doubt that we have given them a true account of ourselves. They are not above spying at corners and listening at keyholes. We must give them nothing to spy upon.’
‘We don’t need them any more,’ Spandrel protested. ‘Let’s go on alone.’
‘It was agreed that they would accompany me to Florence. I cannot spurn them now. To Florence we must go – together.’
‘And after Florence?’
‘You’ll have me all to yourself.’
It was a promise and a lure. Florence was the better part of a week away. Until then …
‘Don’t spoil what we have, William. There’s so much more to come. Very soon.’ She kissed him. ‘Trust me.’
He did not trust her, of course. He could never do that. But he did adore her. And he was not sure that he would ever do otherwise.
‘Mr Walpole,’ the Earl of Sunderland announced in a tone of mock geniality as he stepped into the Paymaster-General’s office at the Cockpit the following morning. ‘I’m a little surprised to find you here, I must say.’
‘No more than I’m surprised to see you here,’ growled Walpole.
‘I only meant that so many posts are said to be within your grasp – more I sometimes think than are not – that it’s a touch disconcerting to realize that in truth you’re still only’ – Sunderland looked about him and smiled – ‘the Army’s wages clerk.’
‘What can I do for you, Spencer?’
‘It’s what I can do for you that brings me here, my dear fellow.’
‘Good of you to think of me when you’ve so much else on your mind.’
‘The trial, you mean? Next week’s … grand entertainment.’
‘Your trial.’
‘We all have trials. Some bear them better than others.’
‘Some have more to bear.’
‘Indeed.’ Sunderland plucked his snuff-box from his coat pocket and took a pinch, as if needing to clear his nose of some unpleasant smell. ‘I have … disappointing news for you. I’m sure you’ll … bear it well.’
‘What news?’
‘A Secret Service report, the contents of which I thought it kinder to convey to you personally than … through the normal channels.’
Soon, very soon, Walpole consoled himself, the Secret Service would be reporting to him, not Sunderland. Then he would be the one doling out their nuggets of intelligence to those he judged fit to hear them. Then he would be master. But for the moment, Sunderland still stood above him, albeit on a crumbling pedestal. ‘Kind of you, I’m sure.’
‘As to kindness, you might not think it so when you hear what I have to tell you.’
Walpole leaned back in his chair and scratched his stomach. ‘Well?’
‘Colonel Wagemaker. Your … agent.’
‘Is that what you think he is?’
‘It’s what I think he was. Until he was killed in a duel at Berne on the twenty-sixth of last month.’
Walpole summoned a grin to cover his discomposure. ‘Wagemaker? Dead?’
‘As the mission you sent him on.’
‘How’s this … said to have happened?’
‘A duel of some sort. Details are sparse. But dead he undoubtedly is. It seems you did not choose wisely. As for Townshend’s assurances to the King that you and he would soon have the Green Book under lock and key …’ Sunderland cocked his head and treated Walpole to a look of distilled condescension. ‘What are they worth now?’
‘I never put all my eggs in one basket, Spencer. Any more than you do.’
‘A hard policy to follow, when the basket is so distant.’
Walpole shrugged. ‘Hard, but prudent.’
‘Prudent, but unlikely.’ Sunderland propped himself on the corner of the desk and held Walpole’s gaze. ‘Your eggs are smashed, Mr Paymaster. Every last one.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Of course you do. Doubt’s your stock-in-trade. I’ll send you a copy of the report. That should still a few of those doubts.’
‘I’m obliged.’
‘Obliged to me. Yes. I’m glad you understand that.’ Sunderland stood up. ‘And I’d be gladder still if you remembered it.’ He moved towards the door, then stopped and looked back. ‘The King accepts that Aislabie had to go. But he wishes it to end there. He wants no more ministers led away to the Tower.’
‘No more than you do, I’m sure.’
‘If you aim to win his favour, you’d do well not to di
sappoint him.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘If you’ll take my advice …’ Sunderland’s gaze narrowed. ‘You’ll make sure you do enough.’
The gloom of a London winter seemed far away amidst the balmy pleasantries of a Tuscan spring. Relaxing in the walled garden of the British Consul’s Florentine palazzo beneath a sapphire sky, warmed by good food, fine wine and mellow sunshine, Nicholas Cloisterman felt that his journey from Amsterdam was at long last beginning to yield some rewards. His host, Percy Blain, was an intelligent cynic after Cloisterman’s own heart and his hostess, Mrs Blain, was proof that cynicism might be a sure guide to many things but not to womankind. After but two nights beneath their roof, he felt that he was among friends.
Nor was friendship the only gift the Blains had bestowed upon him. Blain, in whom he had confided all but the exact nature of the book he was so earnestly seeking on the British Government’s behalf, had suggested a precaution they might take, there in Florence, to reduce the likelihood of that book’s arrival in Rome.
The precaution depended on the co-operation of the Tuscan authorities and it was the securing of that co-operation which Cloisterman and Blain were now toasting over a glass of excellent local wine beside a plashing fountain and a table still bearing the remnants of a splendid repast.
‘How were you able to bring it off?’ Cloisterman asked, still unclear on the point. ‘The Dutch authorities would have sent me away with a flea in my ear if I’d ever put such a request to them.’
‘But the Dutch are a powerful and independent people,’ replied Blain. ‘What is the Grand Duchy of Tuscany but a pawn on the great powers’ chessboard? The Grand Duke is an old man, his son and heir a childless degenerate. The treaty with Spain our late Lord Stanhope spent so much time and effort negotiating cedes Tuscany to the Spaniards when the Medici line fails, which it surely soon will. But Stanhope is dead. New ministers mean new policies. Treaties can be re-negotiated. That is the Grand Duke’s hope. And that is why his ministers are so keen to oblige us.’
‘Every customs post will be on the look-out for Mrs de Vries?’
‘Any Englishwoman or Dutchwoman, travelling alone or in company, whatever name she gives, will be stopped and searched. Believe me, the customs men need no encouragement to perform such a task with the utmost diligence.’
‘She might not pass through Tuscany.’
‘It is a considerable diversion to go round. And from her point of view surely an unnecessary one.’
‘True,’ Cloisterman conceded. Estelle de Vries would head for Rome by the most direct route. That was certain. And that was indeed the one problem Blain could not solve for him. ‘But by the same token …’
‘She may already have passed through.’
‘Yes. She may.’
‘My enquiries suggest not. But it’s possible, of course. I can’t deny it.’
‘I shall have to press on, then.’
‘A pity. Lizzie and I have enjoyed your visit.’
‘So have I.’
‘As for what awaits you in Rome …’ Blain smiled. ‘The Pretender’s so-called court is a warren of squabbling Scots. We have one of them in our pay, of course. More than one, I dare say. Our masters in Whitehall don’t trust me with all their secrets. Colonel Lachlan Drummond is a name I can give you, though. I shouldn’t rely on him overmuch. But he’s there to be used. As for—’ Blain broke off at the sight of his wife hurrying out to them from the deep shade beneath the loggia at the rear of the palazzo. ‘What is it, my dear?’
‘A message from Chancellor Lorenzini.’ She handed him a note and smiled across at Cloisterman. ‘I thought you’d wish to see it at once, in case it had some bearing on your discussions.’
‘Let’s hope he hasn’t had second thoughts about granting your request,’ said Cloisterman.
‘Surely not.’ Blain tore the note open and looked at it, then frowned. ‘Well, I say …’
‘What is it?’
‘The Pope is dead.’ He passed the note to Cloisterman for him to read. ‘It seems you’ll find Rome in the fickle grasp of an interregnum. I was just about to tell you that His Holiness keeps the Pretender on a tight rein. But now, it seems …’ Blain shrugged. ‘The reins are off.’
If Cloisterman had known that Estelle de Vries was at that moment not in Rome, more than a hundred miles to the south, but in Genoa, more than a hundred miles to the north, he would no doubt have remained in Florence, contentedly waiting for the Tuscan authorities to seize his prey for him. But he did not know. And ignorance can sometimes be a useful ally.
The journey from Turin to Genoa along mud-clogged roads had been neither fast nor agreeable. Along the way, an idea had formed in Spandrel’s mind, an idea that had taken him down to Genoa’s bustling harbour on the very afternoon of the party’s arrival in the city. There he had chanced upon the British merchantman Wyvern, bound for Palermo by way of Orbitello and Naples. It was a two-day voyage to Orbitello, the master’s mate told him, and a day by coach from there to Rome, a much quicker route to his destination than overland all the way; and paying passengers could be readily accommodated. A deal was thereupon struck.
It was a more fortuitous deal than Spandrel knew, for Orbitello lay in the tiny Austrian enclave of the Presidio, sandwiched between Tuscany and the Papal States. By this route, he and Estelle would never set foot on Tuscan territory; Cloisterman’s trap would never be sprung.
Spandrel would no doubt have rubbed his hands in satisfaction had he been aware of this happy consequence of his negotiation of a swift coastal passage south. But he was not aware. And yet rub them he nonetheless did, as he left the Wyvern and hurried back towards the albergo where he and his companions had taken lodgings. Silverwood had complained of sea-sickness on the placid waters of Lake Geneva. The Mediterranean would surely be too much for him to contemplate. Besides, Orbitello was closer to Rome than Florence. And it was Florence that Silverwood and Buckthorn had proclaimed as their destination from the start. No, no. Only two passengers would be leaving aboard the Wyvern in the morning. Estelle had promised him he would soon have her all to himself. And now he would – even sooner than she had expected.
But Spandrel’s reckoning was awry. Giles Buckthorn had no intention of allowing his friend’s sea-sickness to separate them from Estelle.
‘The arrangement is an excellent one, Mr Spandrel. So excellent that we will come with you. I’m sure the Wyvern can accommodate two more passengers.’
‘Oh, I don’t—’
‘Leave it to me. I’ll cut down there now and hire a berth for us.’
‘But Mr Silverwood’s clearly no sailor.’
‘Nonsense. It was because Lake Geneva was a millpond that he felt it. The ocean wave is just what he needs.’
‘And this will keep you from Florence.’
‘No matter. We will simply turn our itinerary about and take Florence after Rome. Ah, la città eterna. With a veritable Venus for company. What could be better?’ Buckthorn struck a classical pose, arm outstretched, and gave Spandrel a fruity-lipped grin. ‘Nothing, I rather think.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
Whither all Roads Lead
THE TRIAL BY the House of Commons of the First Lord of the Treasury, Charles Spencer, third Earl of Sunderland, was fixed, by fateful chance, for the Ides of March. Legally, the event was without precedent, a peer of the realm being traditionally answerable only to the House of Lords. The fact that the trial was to be held in the absence of the accused, Sunderland not even deigning to watch from the gallery, added piquancy to the uniqueness of the occasion, while rumours that Walpole had been making free with bribes to save his old enemy’s neck rumbled darkly in the background.
The debate, when it came, was fast and furious. The accusation that Sunderland had received £50,000 worth of South Sea stock without paying a penny for it was stark, but by no means simple, with neither chief cashier Knight nor his infamous account book on hand to settle the issue. That r
ested instead on votes, some freely given, some expensively bought. In the end, as many had predicted, Sunderland was acquitted.
The public were outraged, but unsurprised. And, as the dust settled, the delicacy of Walpole’s judgement became apparent. Sunderland had survived, but the margin of votes by which he had done so – 233 to 172 – was too narrow for him to claim exoneration. He had escaped the Tower. But he could not remain at the Treasury. His days were numbered. His era was over. While that of Walpole was about to begin.
Unless, of course, there was something even Walpole had failed to foresee.
The following morning saw a solitary and travel-weary Englishman present himself at the Porta del Popolo, northernmost of the gates set in the ancient wall surrounding Rome. It was a hot, glaringly bright spring day that would have been considered a fine adornment to high summer in Amsterdam, let alone London. Harassed by the customs officer into administering a bribe, Nicholas Cloisterman was at length allowed to pass through into the piazza on the other side, where he paused to admire, despite his fatigue, the Egyptian obelisk standing at its centre. Beyond this haughty finger of Imperial plunder from times long gone by, three streets led off into the city like the prongs of a trident. Cloisterman was bound for the right-hand prong, the Via di Ripetta, and, some way along it, the Casa Rossa, an albergo recommended to him by Percy Blain. Anglo-Papal relations being as cool as they were, the British Government had no consular representation in the city. Cloisterman was on his own. But he did not expect that to prove a problem. Early communication with the Government’s spy at the Pretender’s court, Colonel Drummond, would establish whether or not Estelle de Vries had already reached Rome. If not, Cloisterman could safely return to Florence and let Blain and the Tuscan authorities do what needed to be done. If she had, on the other hand … But Cloisterman was too tired to confront that issue unless and until he needed to. Succumbing to the importunate blandishments of one of the many servitori di piazza, he engaged a fly and bade the driver take him directly to the Casa Rossa.
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