by Nina Mason
“Say you will do it,” said the king, eyes ablaze. “Say you will aid me in promoting God’s cause and the One True Faith. And, if that is not enough to persuade you, then do it to repay me the favor of saving your life.”
Robert, still undecided, chewed his lower lip. The king made a convincing case, and it was not unusual for parents to give up a child to be fostered by a better-situated family that could improve their prospects in life and marriage. His son might be king one day, for the love of God. Was it right to deny him that opportunity? Even if he did not inherit the crown, he would be well loved. Mary Beatrice would believe the boy was her own son, while the king would know the child to be his own flesh and blood—his grandson, no less.
And for all his faults, James had always been a devoted father—even to his many bastards.
Robert wanted to ask His Majesty what would happen to them all if he was forced to abdicate the throne, but did not dare. The king, sadly, was too blinded by his ego and ambitions to see the handwriting on the wall.
“I must discuss your offer with your daughter,” Robert said. “If I do not include her in the decision, she will never forgive me.”
“If you think there is any chance she will refuse my request, you must not tell her,” the king told him in the tone of a command. “Simply place the dead child in the cradle whilst she sleeps and bring me the living one.”
Robert could not imagine doing aught so underhanded to Maggie. ’Twould be better for her to know her son yet lived than to falsely believe him dead. As long as they remained in the royal household, they would see him, know him, and watch him grow up. Wee Jamie and his brother could play together. Maggie might even serve as his governess or godmother, if she desired more interaction and influence. Even if they refused the king’s request and raised the child themselves, they would see the boy but little. Wee Jamie and the other children of the court spent all but an hour a day in the care of their nursery maids, as was usual in all noble households.
Robert’s thoughts harkened back to the day he and Maggie had spent at the sacred spring in Wales and what the Madonna had said to him. The child your wife now carries is the one you will be asked to give up. You must make the sacrifice when asked to do so. If you refuse, you will lose both your sons. If you obey, they both shall live to old age.
When he’d shared St. Mary’s message with Maggie, she had been upset at first, but then had knelt before the Blessed Virgin, in capitulation, not supplication.
“She will not refuse, sire,” Robert told the king. “She will do what she must to serve God and to honor you, as her father and her king. I, nevertheless, must speak with her before making any promises, out of respect for her feelings as well as to preserve the peace in my own household.”
The king’s whole face brightened. “Then, you agree?”
“I shall consider it, sire.” Robert felt as if his internal organs had been put through a meat grinder. “Now, may I return to Whitehall and my wife? I would not wish to add to her pains by delaying my return by a worrisome length of time.”
The king dismissed him and, on the ride back to St. James’s, a devastating thought occurred to Robert. What if the rumors about the queen and Sir Edward Petre being lovers were true? What if Sir Edward, not King James, was the father of her child? If such were the case, the prince would not have carried one drop of Stuart blood in his veins. But his and Maggie’s child did.
Holy God.
What if the king had learned the truth and killed the newborn? The thought chilled Robert to the marrow. Was James hardhearted enough to murder a helpless infant? Probably, but was he rash enough to put the Catholic succession in jeopardy? That seemed less likely, for he had no way of knowing that Robert and Maggie would agree to the exchange. Had he plotted all of this, surely he would have secured their consent before killing the child he held in reserve.
By the time Robert reached the apartment, Maggie was giving birth. The child she delivered, as expected, was a healthy baby boy. After Gemma cleaned her up and took the babe to the bathing closet, Robert helped Maggie back into bed, wishing he could take her and their children away somewhere the king would never find them.
Bitter tears stung his eyes and tightened his throat. Poor Maggie. Though she looked worn out, she had survived, God be thanked. She would survive giving up the new baby, too. She was still young. She would give him more children; children they could keep and love.
Maggie had dozed off by the time Gemma brought the baby back, cleaned, diapered, and swaddled in a quilted silk blanket. Robert could not bear to hold him for fear of growing attached, so he asked her to put the child in his cradle. She gave him an odd look, but did as he asked.
He could not let Gemma in on the plan, so he insisted she take her leave. “I am perfectly capable of looking after my wife and son,” he told her, “and will send for you if you are needed again.”
She protested, but finally agreed to go. After showing her to the door, he slugged down a tall glass of whisky before returning to Maggie. She was awake now, though drowsy. “Bring me the baby,” she said as he entered the room. “I want to hold my new son.”
He did not bring her the baby. Instead, he sat beside her on the bed and clasped her nearest hand in both of his. “Maggie, I must speak to you.” He was shaking and his voice was as thin as a reed. “What the Madonna told us would happen, has come to pass.”
As he explained her father’s request, the words stuck in his throat, which was thick and tight with sorrow. When he had told all, she rolled to him and touched his face. There were tears in her eyes, too, but also a look of tranquil acceptance—the very same look Michelangelo had given the Madonna of his Pieta.
“We must, of course, do as he asks,” she said, “for we know God wills us to give up our son to replace the dead prince. And is it not better for him to be raised by them and grow up to be king than to remain with us only to die within the year?”
“Of course it is.” His heart hardened as he said the words. “Would you still like me to bring him to you?”
“No,” she said with effort. “If I have held him in my arms, ’twill only make it harder to give him up. Take him, and bring back the dead child, so that we can pass him off as ours.”
Robert stood, leaned over the bed, and kissed her cheek. “You are so strong and so selfless. And I love you more than language makes it possible to express.”
With a heavy heart and streaming tears, Robert carefully placed the sleeping infant in a satchel before ringing for his valet. When Duncan appeared, Robert sent him to hire a pair of chairmen to carry him to St. James’s. After weighing the options, he’d decided a sedan chair would be the best choice for the heart-breaking task before him.
On the journey through the streets of Westminster, he did his best to pull himself together. He must not let the king see him weeping, lest he perceive him as weak and unmanly.
He thought again about the Pieta and Mother Mary’s serene expression. He must strive to look as peaceful as she did. He must trust that the Lord knew what was best.
Closing his eyes, he silently recited the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria whilst thinking about the Blessed Virgin’s visitations in Scotland and Wales. After a similar visit from St. Michael, Joan of Arc, a modest country maid of sixteen, led the French army against England to preserve the line of succession.
Remembering St. Joan’s assignment caused Robert to question his beliefs about the Lord’s lack of interest in human affairs. Maybe James was right after all. Maybe Divine Providence did play a greater role in his sovereignty than Robert erstwhile believed.
Biting his lip, he looked out the chair’s small window, thinking: Aye, well. Whichever of us is right, it is worth remembering that, after serving her holy purpose, Joan of Arc was delivered to her enemies, tried and convicted of heresy, and burned at the stake.
Upon arriving at the smaller palace, Robert exited the chair and, making sure he was unobserved, circled around to the servant’s entra
nce and took the back stairs up to the king’s suite. Sir Edward was still there with the casket containing the dead prince. As Robert flicked a glance the Jesuit’s way, he wondered again about the child’s demise. Had the king murdered Sir Edward’s bastard with the plan of replacing him with a prince of his own bloodline? Robert would rather not know, frankly.
“You have done right, my son,” the king said, beaming at him. “By the Heavenly Father, the Holy Father, and your father-in-law. Please convey my heartfelt thanks to my daughter as well.”
“I shall, sire.”
Numb inside, Robert placed the satchel on the bed, removed the infant, and handed the child to his grandfather. Smiling like a cat just awarded a bowl of cream, the king took the new prince through the door between his bedchamber and the queen’s.
When he was gone, Sir Edward brought the casket over and transferred the tiny corpse into the satchel. Robert closed the carrier and started to leave, but turned back when the Jesuit spoke to him.
“Why did you not ask the king for a reward? I am certain he would have been more than willing to give you anything you desired to compensate your sacrifice.”
“I will have my reward in heaven,” Robert told him, “and require nothing more.”
Epilogue
To celebrate the arrival of his Catholic heir, the king ordered a general thanksgiving to include celebratory bonfires and public rejoicing. The response to this edict was tepid at best. The birth of the prince, which excited such joy amongst the miniscule Catholic population, inspired only sorrow and suspicion within the much-larger Protestant sector.
Instead of dispelling the widespread belief the queen’s pregnancy was a trick, the birth only gave rise to rumors the child was an imposter who’d been smuggled into the royal birth chamber in a warming pan. The real prince, the report claimed, had been stillborn.
How close these rumors came to the truth distressed Robert greatly. So did the broadsides posted throughout the city displaying mean-spirited caricatures of the new prince. Sometimes, the baby was shown emerging from a bed-warmer, but more often, he was in the queen’s arms, surrounded by priests, cardinals, and demons. One satirist went so far as to depict the queen being embraced by Sir Edward Petre, whilst the presumed product of their illicit union looked on from his cradle.
On June 29, the trial of the seven bishops began. When the jury found them “not guilty,” the bonfires and public rejoicing the king had ordered finally took place—though to celebrate the acquittal of the Protestant clerics, not the birth of the Catholic prince.
The next day, a small cadre of powerful noblemen (later named the Immortal Seven) delivered a letter inviting Prince William to invade England and depose King James. The letter, which claimed the newborn heir to the crown was suppositious, promised support if and when William landed his Dutch troops on British soil. Unbeknownst to King James, the Prince of Orange, his nephew and son-in-law, had been actively planning just such a dethronement for more than a year.
On July 4, Maggie and Robert attended the baptism of their second son as James Francis Edward Stuart, who was ceremoniously declared Prince of Wales upon his entre into the Romish faith. They acted as his godparents, one of two small post facto requests Robert had made to the king. The other was to allow them to reside with their son/godson in the royal household until he reached the age of majority.
The king happily granted these favors in exchange for their solemn vow never to breathe a word about the prince’s real parentage to another living soul (not even in the sanctity of the confessional).
They never did, though both often wondered what the Heavenly Father intended when He asked them to give up their son. It now seemed clear it was not to aid the Catholics or further the cause of religious freedom, as they’d originally supposed.
The belief that the prince was a fraud only became more ubiquitous. Finally, in the hopes of quelling the rumor once and for all, the Privy Council depositioned the eyewitnesses to the birth. All told the same story: a male child had been born alive of the queen on 10 June 1688.
By September, it was clear Prince William intended to invade. James, believing French involvement would prove more harmful than helpful to his cause, refused the assistance offered by his cousin and secret ally, King Louis XIV of France. When the Dutch forces landed on 5 November, King James, for unclear reasons, declined to attack the aggressors. Many of his supporters, including Colonel Churchill and Lord Mulgrave, promptly changed sides, confirming Robert’s suspicions about their flexible loyalties.
The king’s daughters, Anne and Mary, also turned their backs on their father.
On 10 December, Maggie and Robert fled London with wee Jamie and rendezvoused with Queen Mary (and their other son James), who had escaped the day before in the guise of a laundress. Two days later, the king attempted to follow them, but was captured in Kent. Prince William, having no desire to make a Catholic martyr of his father-in-law, allowed his escape. Shortly thereafter, the deposed monarch joined his relations in France, where he was soon granted a grand palace and a pension by his royal cousin.
Maggie and Robert lived happily thereafter with the erstwhile king and queen among the splendors of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a royal château on the outskirts of Paris. Maggie especially enjoyed the castle’s exquisite formal gardens, where she spent many a happy hour frolicking amongst the parterres and shrubberies with her husband and children. Yes, children. For she bore three more babies after leaving England: two daughters, Mary Elizabeth and Winefride Margaret, and a son, Charles Douglas.
Mary Elizabeth, the apple of her father’s eye, married a cousin of King Louis’s and became a duchess like her mother. Winefride Margaret, a rare beauty, was a maid of honor to Marie Antoinette and a mistress to a count before marrying a duke. Charles Douglas, who inherited Robert’s fondness for flagellation, was a notorious rogue at the court of Versailles before marrying a wealthy widowed countess with a strong whip hand. Their eldest son, James Robert (wee Jamie), took Holy Orders and joined the Roman Catholic Church. He rose to the level of a cardinal before he gave up the church for his mistress.
Robert and Maggie met Juliette again from time to time (and engaged in the occasional ménage à trois) at Versailles and maintained a correspondence with Gemma Crosse, even after she converted to Protestantism to protect her business from the new Anglican regime. After stealing the throne, William and Mary promptly restored the Test Act and all the anti-Catholic sentiments James Stuart had endeavored so heavy-handedly to quash.
In the years to come, when Prince James Frances Edward Stuart became known as “the Old Pretender,” the epithet had a different meaning for Robert, Maggie, and the exiled king than it did for the other denizens of Europe.
—The End—
Author’s Notes
Yes, I could leave you hanging, dear readers, and force those of you curious about the fates of the real historical characters in this series to do your own research, but that would be too cruel—especially when you have come all this way with me along Maggie and Robert’s journey. So, here, briefly, is what happened to the real-life characters I’ve portrayed after my series ended:
—King James made one attempt to regain his throne, which ended in defeat at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Thereafter, the ex-king remained in France, where he composed his memoirs and lived as a guest of the king. He died of a brain aneurism just shy of his sixty-eighth birthday.
—Prince James Frances Edward Stuart made two attempts to reclaim the crown for himself and the Stuart dynasty. The first was the Jacobite Rising of 1715, led by the ever-loyal Captain Claverhouse, who was killed in the rebellion’s first battle at Killiecrankie. Without its leader, the rebellion quickly fizzled out. The second attempt was in 1745, when he sent his son, Charles Edward Stuart (a.k.a. the Bonnie Prince), to Scotland to gather the Highland clans under his standard. The campaign not only ended in a slaughter, it brought the wrath of the crown down on the Highlands. Prince James died at 78, a ripe old ag
e for the times.
—John Sheffield, the Earl of Mulgrave herein, continued to climb the ladder of success under King William and Queen Mary. He rose to even greater heights under Queen Anne, who, still having a soft spot her former suitor, made him Lord President of the Council and Lord Privy Seal, two of the highest offices in the government of Great Britain. He also was made Duke of Buckingham and Normandy and built a great house in London, which was purchased by the state a century later to serve as the official home of the reigning monarch (following extensive refurbishment). Can you guess the current name of Sheffield’s former home? Yep, Lord All-Pride built what is now Buckingham Palace. Just goes to show you how far bootlicking can take you in life. Sheffield did eventually achieve his goal of marrying a woman of royal blood. After a disastrous first marriage to a wealthy young widow (who reportedly took to drink shortly afterward), he wed Lady Catherine Darnley Annesley, the daughter of King James and his notoriously sharp-tongued mistress, Catherine Sedley.
—John Churchill abandoned King James, his long-time patron, for his deposer, William of Orange, who rewarded the colonel’s lack of loyalty by making him Earl of Marlborough. Though Lord Marlborough continued to rack up military honors, persistent charges of Jacobitism led to his fall from office and temporary imprisonment in the Tower. His star rose again after Queen Anne took the throne, due largely to his wife’s intimate friendship with Her Majesty. Were Sarah and Anne really lovers? Many historians of the era believe they were—and that Lady Churchill’s friendship with Lady Fitzhardinge did indeed inspire jealousy in the queen. Oddly, Queen Anne did not seem to feel threatened by Sarah’s husband, who she made a duke and head of her government. Later, when Sarah displeased the queen by overstepping her boundaries, her cuckolded mate paid a high price for his wife’s error. Forced to resign and banned from the court, he and his wife went into self-imposed exile. Despite their fall from grace, they continued to live in style at the palace they’d built themselves: Blenheim Palace, one of the grandest houses in England, then and now.
