Devil Water (28 page)

“What of the others, James?” she said after a moment. “How did they plead?”

James gave the harsh laugh which still shocked her. “Widdrington was even more cringing than I. He pleaded his gout, his ill health, which had unsettled his wits, he said. The Scots too ate humble pie -- except for Winton. Ah, there’s a man of courage! The only one amongst us!”

“That’s untrue!” she cried sharply. “James, it wounds me that you talk like this.”

“The Earl of Winton,” James went on as though she had not spoken, “alone amongst us pleaded
not
guilty, saying that he recognized as his king no person called George the Elector of Hanover, and. had thus committed no treason. And he sneered at Lord Cowper, the Chancellor.”

“Then Winton has signed his own death sentence!” she cried. “And is mad. They say he’s mad. ‘Tis naught to do with you. Oh, my dearest, you will be saved now for me -- for our children!”

James turned and looked at her, at the dark, frightened eyes, the soft brown curls so neatly dressed, the white ruffles at her throat, her entire little body so delicate and cleanly despite the hardships of the prison which she insisted on sharing with him. His eyes softened, he took her hand and kissed it. “Aye, my dear, I’ve done my best to save my miserable life for you, for our little John, and for the new one in your womb. What that life will be -- attainted, stripped of title and estates -- I cannot think.”

“Nor will it matter,” she said quickly. “We can live in Gloucestershire with my parents, we can go abroad -- and Jemmie,” she added, “have you forgot the word brought by Mr. Brown? Have you forgot that our King is at last in Scotland?”

“I’ve not forgot,” said James trying to smile. Let Ann rejoice if she could. James had no more illusions. If the King
had
finally landed it was the old story of too little and too late. The Battle of Sheriffmuir had proved that. The Sheriffmuir defeat in Scotland occurred on the same fateful November 13 as the surrender at Preston. No, Scotland would not rise again for the Stuarts. The hollow, gleaming bubble had been pricked for ever, and there was nothing to do but admit it, as he had this day in Westminster Hall.

“I wonder how poor Charles does at Newgate,” he said abruptly, pouring them each a glass of wine from a flagon on the table. He had frequent and unhappy thoughts of Charles. Their farewell talk at Barnet had been strained. It had not been the perfect reconciliation James hoped for. There was something still withheld in the boy’s eyes.

“Why, there’s a note from Charles!” Ann said. “ ‘Twas brought by Alec this morning. The warder sent it up after you left for Westminster.” James held out his hand and she gave him Charles’s note. It was extremely brief and formal. Charles thanked James for his letter and said he was well enough, though Ned Swinburne had jail fever. That the cost of paying the turnkeys for any comforts was excessive. That he trusted James and Ann were well, and that all the talk in Newgate was of a pardon for the impeached lords, and he hoped to soon hear of it. He signed himself, “Your dutyfull brother, Ch: Radclyffe.” There was also a postscript: “That swine Patten hath turnd king’s evidense & been freed from here.”

James sighed as he read the letter, but when he finished the postscript, he gave an exclamation and handed the note to Ann. “ ‘Tis no surprise to me,” he said. “Ever did I suspect that foxy curate, and now I understand why Lord Cowper was so well prepared with every damning detail of our Rising. Without Patten they could scarce construct a case.”

“Think not of that, love,” said Ann softly. “Will you not cease to think of trouble, and take hope? Your music --” she cried, running to open a chest which contained a guitar packed among the Earl’s belongings. “We will play and sing together -- forget where we are.”

Forget where we are, James thought as he accepted the guitar. He glanced at the barred windows, at the damp stone walls. There were names carved on those walls, carved by those who had been here before him -- Dudley, Arundel, Peverel, and many others. One of the names was “Radclyffe. 1576.” What long forgotten kin was that? Beneath this name, half concealed by an age-blackened stool were rusty iron rings for leg fetters and the stains of long spilled blood. James turned away from the wall, towards Ann. He began tuning the guitar. “What shall I play, my dear?” he asked.

Three weeks later, February 9, Charles lay on his bed in Newgate jail, dispiritedly leafing through Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock.” The book belonged to Jem Swinburne, who had loaned it to Charles while quoting from the poem with a silly titter,

“The hungry judges soon the sentence sign
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine.”

A quotation Charles found inconsistent with his hope of diversion from the poem, which had a promising title. But Jem Swinburne-had grown very odd since his brother Ned died of jail fever. Jem either sat for hours giggling to himself, or he crouched frowning-over a table while covering reams of foolscap with illegible symbols. Yesterday poor Jem had behaved so strangely that Mr. Pitts, the Keeper of the jail, had removed him to a solitary cell in the Press Yard.

Outside the prison walls, St. Sepulchre’s bell clanged six times. Another dreary day was ending, Charles thought. Soon he would be permitted to join the other prisoners for an hour in the common room.

He propped himself up on his elbow, and tried again to read by the light of his candle. Candles cost two shillings apiece from the turnkey, and few of Charles’s fellow prisoners could afford such luxury. Or the luxury of a private cell, furnished with wooden bedstead and straw mattress -- however lousy -- of a table, chair, and closestool; or the luxury of coals burning in the grate. Charles had other privileges, accorded to his rank, and purse. It was money which had procured his freedom from leg irons, and a further twenty guineas to Pitts secured Alec’s daily visits to bring in meals and wine from a tavern in Cock Lane. Charles might also exercise at times in the Press Yard near the debtors’ side of Newgate, angrily ignoring Tom Forster and Oxburgh when he did so. For the rest, Charles paced the filthy stone floor of his narrow cell, he tried to read what few books he could get, and he scratched the days off on a calendar he had made.

Charles let his book fall shut. “The Rape of the Lock” could not hold his restless thoughts tonight. It wasn’t bawdy, either. Just a foolish tale about the theft of a woman’s curl. Lord Petre was reputedly the “thief” -- and who cared? Charles had met the mincing little fop and had no interest in him. A Catholic though Petre was, as was also the author of this poetic nonsense, Alexander Pope. Charles thought of the first time he had met the poet in that Christmastide at Dr. Radcliffe’s Bloomsbury Square mansion. Six years ago in time, not two miles away from here in space, and yet those eager careless days were as distant now as the Rome of the Caesars.

Charles flung himself off the bed, and stuffed his clay pipe with tobacco from a canister. He was holding a live coal to the pipe with the tongs when he heard outside his iron door the raucous voice of Muggles, the turnkey.

Is it news? Charles thought, his heartbeat quickening. All day he had avoided thinking of James’s trial at Westminster Hall. Yet surely it was too early to hear the result. Charles had resigned himself to waiting for Alec’s appearance in the morning.

The lock grated as the huge key turned, the door hinges squealed and the turnkey’s fat pock-marked face appeared in the crack.

“Naow then, sir,” said Muggles scowling, “ ‘ere’s a lydy ter see ye -- your sister she vows.” Under pouched lids the turnkey’s bleary eyes glared at Charles suspiciously. “That’s why I let ‘er in.”

Charles, much astonished, saw a woman’s cloaked figure standing behind the turnkey. And she was masked. Sister? But Mary was sequestered in Gloucestershire under the Webbs’ anxious guardianship. Ann then? Was she released from the Tower to bring glad tidings? But Ann was not nearly so tall.

“I’m here to see you, dear Brother,” said the figure in a quick muffled voice Charles could not recognize. “To bring you word from our sorrowing old father, who prays for your repentance. I fear your wicked conduct has brought him to the grave.”

“Shocking,” said Muggles, as Charles collected his wits. “I’ve never ‘ad no traitors ‘ere before. It turns me stomick.”

Charles, though baffled, accepted his cue. “Oh, my dear Sister,” he said, “I can hardly bear to have my miseries increased, yet I’m grateful you’ve come.”

The warder glanced sharply from one to the other, then stepped aside. “In ye go,” he said to the cloaked figure. “Ye’ve ‘arf an ‘our.” He locked the door behind the woman, who then ran to Charles, throwing back her hood and snatching off her mask.

“Lady Betty . . .” whispered Charles, gaping at the glossy reddish curls, the face where the freckles had faded to a creamy tint. Her puppy plumpness had gone. At twenty-two she had become an elegant, almost beautiful woman. Charles, much intrigued, began to smile. But her sherry-colored eyes, once so gay, did not respond; they fixed on him with a painful searching look. “Yes, Charles,” she said. “ ‘Tis Betty Lee.”

“And most fervently welcome,” he said with caressing warmth, making her a bow. “But why, my dear, have you come to me? And for that matter
how?
I see you’ve not lost your talent for a masquerade!”

Betty glanced at the iron door behind which the turnkey might be listening. “My husband is a Whig,” she whispered. “He expects a Court appointment. I must not be recognized. And as to
how
I got here -- well, four guineas eased my way. At the gate with the warder, and up here with the turnkey. Four guineas and my sad story of our dying father.”

“I see,” said Charles eagerly, putting his hand on hers. “But why?”

She moved away and sat down abruptly on the bed. Her gloved fingers clenched on a fold of her amber velvet gown as she looked up at him. Charles was a full-grown man now and far more handsome than she remembered him, despite the prison pallor and a whiter scar on his right cheek. Charles still had that indefinable blend of swagger and strength, still the charming air of mockery and yet admiration in his bold gray eyes. The look which used to make her heart tremble. I’ve come, she thought, because I’ve never ceased to love you -- not even in the arms of my dear dull Frank, not even when my babe was born. But this she could not tell, and she turned her head aside. “I’m here,” she said with difficulty, “because I’m your cousin, and because I would not have you hear from strangers the -- the outcome of the trial.”

“The trial,” he repeated, his smile fading. “James’s trial?”

“Yes. The Earl of Peterborough is my friend. He was in there today with the other peers. I waited outside Westminster Hall, in my chair. He told me the result.”

“Which is?” asked Charles through stiff lips.

“Condemned,” she said staring at the floor. “All of them condemned, except Winton, who’ll be tried later.”

“But it can’t be!” Charles cried. “They threw themselves on King George’s mercy. They were promised clemency if they surrendered!”

“They are condemned to be executed on February twenty-fourth, Charles. And the only mercy to be shown them is the headsman’s axe, instead of hanging, drawing, and quartering.”

Charles sank down on the stool and put his hand to his forehead. “There will be reprieves,” he said at last. “There must be.”

“For some, perhaps,” Betty said. “Widdrington is kin to Lady Cowper, Lord Nairn has friends at Court. The Princess of Wales is said to interest herself in Carnwath. But what friends has James in London?”

Charles moistened his lips. “Our Stuart cousins,” he said groping. ”The Dukes of Richmond, Cleveland -- ”

“All suspected Jacobites,” she said, sighing. “And do you think that Stuart kinship will recommend itself to His Majesty now?”

“But then you, Betty?” he cried. “Surely you must have some plan for James -- or why are you here?”

“Hush! Speak low! I too have Stuart blood. Though ‘tis forgot by al because my husband and I are Whigs, and loyal subjects of King George.
Truly
loyal,” she repeated with emphasis. “In my home there are no secret toasts to the Pretender. Frank and I would both despair at seeing a feckless Papist on the throne of England.”

Charles started back, his face flushed darkly. He looked at her with anger. “This from you, who once promised to turn Catholic for my sake!”

She too flushed. “I was a child then, Charles. Much has happened to us since then. We mustn’t quarrel. I only wanted you to know that -- that what I do -- or try to do -- is done only for -- for --”

Betty’s voice faltered and stopped. She had no hope of trying to help Lord Derwentwater, and, except in mercy for any suffering, no real desire to save him. He had headed the Rebel Rising in the North, he had dragged Charles into it. His fate was no concern of hers. But Charles’s fate was. Alas, that a tortured and long denied yearning had brought her here today, against her principles, against all judgment.

“It’s
you”
she said, so low that he barely heard. “Don’t you know how your own trial will end -- after this?” She raised her eyes, and Charles saw them drenched with fear.

“You still love me,” Charles whispered in total disbelief. “You hate the cause for which I’d die, and yet you don’t want me hanged?”

She would not look at him. He put his hands on either side of her cheeks and raised her head. At last she met his grave questioning eyes, and her own answered him. He bent and kissed her on the mouth, first gently, then as her lips opened under his, desire swept them both. She felt her veins burn as with a honeyed fire, she weakened in his arms, and clung to him in fierce need, while a great sob rose in her throat.

Yet it was she who heard St. Sepulchre’s bell tolling outside the walls. “Dear God!” she whispered, pushing him frantically away. “Dear God -- I never meant this.”

“Nor I,” said Charles in a shaking voice. His arms dropped and he stood up. “It seems that I love you too.” How strange, he thought, in confusion. How very strange. To feel with Betty Lee, here in a stinking cell in Newgate, a storm of passion and yet restraint, a sort of tenderness which his many amours had not yielded.