Devil Water (42 page)

Betty was silent, then she shook her head. “No, you’re right. The escape was necessary. Strange -- in these nearly seven years, I had almost forgot the terrors, and the anguish of that time.” She shuddered.

“And others have quite forgot,” said Charles. “That’s why I dare come back as Mr. Jones, a lace merchant who makes frequent trips to Belgium. His papers, which I bear, are all in order. Nor shall I stay in London long, I do assure you.”

“No?” she said hiding dismay. “Where
are
you staying here?”

“A lodging on Pall-Mall with Alec. Do you remember Alec?”

“Of course. Still you’ve not answered my question, Charles. You’d not keep secret from me your reason for risking this journey!”

“I’ve no secrets from you,” he answered with a certain embarrassment. “Though I think I must first explain something of my life since we last met. Shall I confine myself to snuff, or may I smoke?”

She nodded, and silently handed him the flint and tinderbox. She sat down again and waited. The smoke wreathed round them and floated out of the window as Charles began to speak.

He told her of his escape that December night on a smuggler’s vessel to Boulogne, and of his wanderings until he found King James at Avignon and kneeling kissed his hand and swore allegiance. The King had wept, and raising Charles kissed him on both cheeks, greeted him as cousin and given him a jeweled crucifix in memory of James -- the martyred Earl of Derwentwater. “For
him”
the King had said, “I mourned as I have not for any of all those whose blood is shed for me, and yet such are my continuing misfortunes that I can offer nothing to his family but my love and prayers.” As Charles solemnly quoted the King he touched the jeweled crucifix which was hidden beneath his waistcoat.

“What sort of man is he?” asked Betty after a moment.

“Grave and silent, bowed by his troubles, yet every inch a king! And if he has faults, what man has not? ‘Tis not for me to judge him -- he is my sovereign by divine right.”

Betty inclined her head and said no more, half envying this certainty and dedication, much as she disapproved it.

Then Charles, on a lighter note, told her of his adventures after leaving Avignon, when the King had been moved on by a nervous France to Rome, where he found asylum under the Pope’s protection. There Charles had met again the young Irish captain, Charles Wogan, who had escaped from Newgate with Brigadier Mackintosh. The two young men had renewed their friendship, and enjoyed many an escapade together. Charles had even helped Wogan plan the romantic abduction of the Polish Princess, Clementina Sobieska, from Innsbruck, so that she might become King James’s bride. The elopement succeeded. Clementina, pretty, devout and self-willed, became James’s Queen, and in 1720 the mother of his son Charles Edward. The Jacobites exulted, they now had a true Prince of Wales and the succession was assured.

“Ah, you may believe, Betty, how we rejoiced in Rome,” said Charles. “On the night the Prince was born I heard the King laugh outright! A sound so startling that we all cheered, and Lord Winton and I -- yes, he was there too -- were so high-flown with joy and wine we rushed from the Palazzo Muti and raced to the Tiber, wherein we plunged and swam, for all it was December!”

“And did you stay in Rome?” asked Betty smiling.

Charles shook his head, his reminiscent mirth died away. It was soon after the Prince’s birth that Charles received a letter from Sir John Webb, Ann Derwentwater’s father, summoning him to Brussels. Lady Derwentwater and her two children were there already, wrote Sir John. And it was proper that Charles should join them, as protector to his poor brother’s widow. It was also financially advisable, added the practical old Baronet, who had been paying Charles an intermittent pittance from his own pocket.

So Charles went to Brussels, and was welcomed by little Ann. She was greatly changed from the girl he had last seen at Dilston on the fatal morning he and James rode out along the burn to meet Tom Forster and his men at Greenriggs. This Ann was shrunken, she stooped like an old woman. She was listless and abstracted, seldom rousing to respond even to her ten-year-old John, or the posthumous baby, Anna Maria. They were cared for by a nurse, while Ann spent most of her days praying for James’s soul in her private chapel. Once a week, as her only outing, she visited their Radcliffe aunts, who were Augustinian nuns at Louvain. It was not a gay life for Charles, though of course he found some distractions in the Belgian capital, particularly after Ann was able to increase his allowance, which was paid now as from little John, the titular Earl.

After years of bitter fighting on Sir John Webb’s part, and violent opposition from the Commissioners for Forfeited Estates, the Court of Delegates had decided that in view of the entail, the “infant John Radcliffe” had a legal right to inherit some of the property despite his father’s attainder. This was a great victory and relief to Sir John, who had paid over a thousand pounds to lawyers. But extracting the Derwentwater funds from the Exchequer was a tortuous business, and Walpole, loath to lose for the Crown so juicy a plum, had in the House of Commons promptly proposed a different approach. A special crippling tax on all Catholics, and revival of a voided statute under William the Third which rendered Catholics incapable of inheriting land at all.

“Well, it didn’t pass the House, as I expect you know,” said Charles angrily. “But, aside from my loyalties, you can see how little reason I have to love your precious Whigs.”

“Yes,” said Betty. “Is it then for business reasons you have come here, Charles?”

“Partly,” said Charles. “I wish to see Tom Errington and Dilston. Ann appointed him her agent in the North, soon after he was released from Newgate in the General Pardon.”

“He’s not administering the estates well?” she asked, wondering very much where all this was leading. Throughout Charles’s recital she had had a feeling that he was hesitating, that something was kept back.

“Well enough, in Tom’s plodding careful way -- ‘tis not that. I had a letter from him a fortnight ago . . .” Charles put down his pipe, turned around and looking hard at Betty, said in a quick, harsh voice, “Meg is dead. Errington says so but I want to get legal confirmation.”

Betty exhaled sharply, while fiery pinwheels whirled in her head. She got up and walking to the window began to twist at the velvet curtain pull. She looked out towards the blurred brightness of the garden as she said carefully over her shoulder, “So Meg Snowdon is dead, and you are free.”

“Yes,” said Charles frowning at her stiff back. “I cannot pretend it’s anything but a piece of marvelous good fortune, at this time.”

“At this time,” she repeated in a cold flat tone. “You have some woman in mind you wish to marry?”

Charles made a sound in his throat and, jumping up, seized her by the shoulders, “Betty, turn around! Don’t act like that! We’ve had love for each other, we always will have -- but --”

“But?” she said. “There is more ‘but’ than the tenuous life of my poor Frank, isn’t there!”

Charles’s eyelids nickered, his hands dropped from her shoulders. “What are you implying, Betty? That I wait around until your husband’s death?”

She started, her head moved in a feeble, helpless gesture, then she sank down on the chair and covered her face. “You might at least let me think so,” she whispered. “For a moment let me think you wanted me -- as you once did.”

Charles stared down at her. He walked to the empty fireplace, knocked his pipe out against the grate, then came back, and touched her cheek. “Would you live a life of exile and poverty?” he said. “Would you subject your children to it? Would you incur the odium of all your friends and embrace the Jacobites? Do you think, Betty, that for romantic love the world, and all else in it, is well lost?”

She did not answer, her head dropped lower, and she held her handkerchief pressed against her eyes. Charles tightened his lips and said, “I did not know your husband was so very ill, Betty.”

And as he spoke her seething single-minded anguish died down a little. Decency returned, bringing a picture of Frank’s pleading face as he had looked at her upstairs. “He isn’t,” she said. “Sir Hans has told me Frank may live for years -- he may even almost recover.”

“Well, then,” said Charles, and there was no mistaking the relief in his voice. “Darling, I
do
love you, how can you doubt it? Yet I think heaven has never meant us to be together. And we are friends, Betty, that we can always be. Isn’t that better than lovers whose passions always fade?”

“Yours
do,” she said.

She dabbed her eyes and gave him a thin, bitter smile. “Charles, you have indeed altered, have become so logical and so prudent, and so right. I will endeavor to be likewise. Who is this woman you want to marry? Let me see if -- as a friend -- I approve your choice.”

Charles reddened. This was a Betty he had never seen, and he resented her tone while knowing that he had no right to. Women -- he thought, unreasonable, jealous, demanding, even such a one as Betty, to whom he owed so embarrassingly much.

“The lady,” he said curtly, “is the Countess of Newburgh in her own right. A Scottish title. She is the widow of a Thomas Clifford. She’s about my age.”

“I see,” said Betty. “Eminently suitable, and she has fortune I presume?”

“She has a comfortable jointure,” he snapped.

“Splendid,” said Betty, “and where did you meet this paragon?”

“At a ball in Brussels. She lives in Louvain, not being sympathetic to the regime in this fair land.”

“Hah!” said Betty. “Her ladyship is a Jacobite? How very fortunate.”

“It is,” Charles shouted. “And far more than that. She is a Roman Catholic!”

Betty flinched. Her miserable, cutting pride gave way. “I see,” she repeated but in a different tone. “And I’m glad for you, Charles. Very glad. Is she pretty?” she added despite herself.

Charles responded to the softening of her face and answered with a gleam of humor, “No, Charlotte is not pretty -- not near so handsome as you are, Betty. She’s dark-skinned and rather large -- her black hair is oily like a Spaniard’s.”

“Thank you for that crumb,” said Betty, with a more natural smile. “And now I need not ask if you love her very much.”

“Enough,” he said. “I believe we’ll be compatible. That is, if she’ll have me. She has indicated that she will.”

“Oh, she’ll have you all right, I’d wager any sum you like on that.”

“That’s just it!” said Charles. “I have no sums to wager, nor have you. Don’t you see what this marriage will mean? Independence for me. No more living off my nephew’s bounty, or begging the reluctant Sir John for a loan. If I marry Lady Newburgh I can pay back all I owe you, and I can support Jenny.”

Betty was silent, while she fought off the final clutches of jealousy. This marriage apparently was indeed for Charles a tremendous piece of luck, and even were she free there was nothing she could offer him that was commensurate. And because she truly loved him, she was presently able to put her hand on his knee and say sincerely, “I wish you well, and I’ll pray it comes to pass.”

“Thank you,” he said touched. He covered her hand with his and they sat thus for a moment. Then she began to question him further.

The Countess, it seemed, had two small daughters by the defunct Clifford. Charles made light of this, saying they were agreeable children and he would try to be a good stepfather. It occurred to Betty that a countess in her own right, and a widowed heiress to boot, might not be as amenable in regard to
Charles’s
daughter, especially such a one as Jenny, and that she might keep a tight hold on her money; but Betty did not disturb Charles’s happy plans. She only said gently, “I shall be very sorry to lose Jenny. She has grown into all our hearts.”

“Ah--” said Charles, his whole face lighting. “How could she help it!”

Yes, I wonder very much, Betty thought, if the Countess will like the expression of his eyes, the change in his voice when he speaks of his child. Will she see, as I begin to, that no woman on earth will ever hold him close for long -- except, perhaps, Jenny.

“You won’t lose her yet a while,” said Charles sighing. “At least after I’ve taken her to Northumberland and Essex, I must beg of you to care for her again, until after my marriage.”

“Northumberland and Essex! Why so?” said Betty amazed.

“I want her with me every minute that I can. I must make the trip north as you know, and as for Essex, my sister Mary Tudor has married one of the Petres and is living there.”

“Charles, it’s so dangerous! Have you forgot that you must keep in hiding? And Jenny’s none so easy to hide.”

“Not Essex then--” he said reluctantly after a moment. “But I’ll take her north. I want her to see Dilston. I want her to see the homeland of her Radcliffe ancestors -- to see --” He stopped, while Betty waited, noting with pain the sudden anguish of his face, “I want Jenny to understand why her father is an exile,” Charles continued vehemently, “why he thirsts for revenge, and will never rest till he gets it. I want her to see James’s grave.”

ELEVEN

The fifth of September, high on the lonely, rugged Durham fells, Jenny at last approached Northumberland, the county of her birth. Charles rode ahead, Jenny in the middle, and Alec, cheerily whistling “Up in the North Countree,” came last. It was late afternoon of a warm cloudy day in which bursts of sunlight alternated with sharp showers. Jenny was happy as she had never been before. She took blissful gulps of the wind-swept moorland air, while her dreaming gaze roved from her father’s elegant back out over the limitless brown moors and their great drifts of pinkish-purple heather.

She was exhilarated by a sense of freedom and well-being. She had no desire in the world except the wish to find some white heather. The rare white heather meant good luck.

They that pluck the heather white
The de’il himself canna smite.

Someone had told her this long ago in Coquetdale. And she had searched then without success. Now as they trudged along the rough stony track which would at last lead them across the Derwent River into the Northumbrian village of Blanchland, Jenny watched for a patch of white among the purple. Once she thought she saw it, but it was only a stray ewe which lumbered to its feet and ran off, bleating angrily. A memory of London flitted through Jenny’s mind and she wondered what had happened to Evelyn’s love affair, though London seemed as far off as America, and equally unimportant. Ten days of travel by coach and horseback had supervened since she left London and she forgot it again when a golden plover fluttered past them, singing its liquid
Too-ee, too-ee.