Now Face to Face (61 page)

In 1492, in the name of the kingdom of Spain, an adventurer, explorer, and seeker of gold named Columbus searched for a quicker route to the riches of Asia, sailing blindly to the west from Spain. He found to his astonishment the West Indies, as islands of the Caribbean Sea would be called, their name reflecting the explorer’s yearning to find Asia. To the north and west and south of them were huge continents, virgin, immense, populated by native tribes who hastened their own destruction in welcoming the strangers who brought guns, horses, and disease, smallpox and measles. Guns combined with death from disease soon conquered; the southern continent of the New World belonged in a short span of years to Spain.

There was gold and silver on that continent, gold and silver that gave Spain preeminence in Europe; but gold and silver had to be mined, and the native labor was dying too quickly to meet the demands of the market across the sea. A trickle of slaves brought to the West Indies by the Portuguese, by the Dutch, both clever traders, began to take their place. They died also. But their source was far more inexhaustible, as inexhaustible as the continent of Africa herself.

Other kingdoms—the French, the English, the Austrian Empire—looked at Spain, saw immense, amazing wealth, and wanted a share. They sent their adventurers to explore the continents for more sources of gold and silver, to found colonies so that they might stake their own claims. They sent their buccaneers to plunder and steal from the Spanish. These kingdoms followed the lead of Portugal and began trade along the African coast with the kingdoms of the Ashante and Oyo, Fon and Yoruba, Dahomey and Mandingo, and Hausa; all sold slaves.

Another event merged into the search, often futile, for gold: the growth of a crop in the New World that sold well in the old. Sugar grown in the West Indies went to Spain, which found Europe’s appetite for that sweet, whitish substance inexhaustible. Growing sugar required the labor of many in the fields. A base grew into being for a triangular trade, with gain in three places: goods to Africa for slaves, slaves to the West Indies for raw sugar, raw sugar to Europe for refining and sale. With the crop of sugar, the trade of slaves to the Americas became so lucrative that the Spanish government institutionalized it into a license, called an assiento. The slave assiento was a gold mine without the gold.

In time, through war, which was continual somewhere in Europe throughout the century, Spain sank back into the shadows as other kingdoms—the French, the Dutch, the English—moved forward. In 1701 the French obtained the slave assiento; in 1713, the English took it from the French as spoils of war. Men and women from Africa were being poured into the New World by the early 1700s, as another crop, tobacco, required much field labor, as would rice when it came to be grown in the new colonies of the Carolinas, and later, cotton.

Exploration to find fabled riches, but, instead, vast new lands found…planting when new lands did not possess enough silver and gold to meet the cost of exploration…a market for the crop of that planting, a gain when the crop was sold, more of a gain if there were slaves to plant and harvest…a market, therefore, for slaves, sold by native kingdoms of Africa for goods and gain themselves…such was the beginning, vague and without clear meaning, as beginnings so often are…though evil has, ultimately and always, both its meaning and its price, if not paid today, then come due tomorrow.

Summer

…but then shall I know even as also I am known

Chapter Thirty-five

M
AY
…T
HE MILKMAIDS IN
L
ONDON DECKED THEMSELVES
with all the silver plate they could borrow to make a pyramid of plate, flowers, and ribbons upon their heads. With a fiddler to fiddle the way, they danced from door to door to celebrate the first of May. Young women crept out at dawn to gather the dew from the hawthorn, called the May, budding but not yet open to full blossom, to wash their faces in it, for it was said the maid who washed her face in dew from the hawthorn tree would ever after handsome be.

In London, King George and his ministers read the copies of certain letters intercepted at the Post Office, read special dispatches from ambassadors, spies, and agents, and knew themselves as gravely threatened as ever they’d been. Ten thousand English troops marched through London and into Hyde Park at the city’s western edge on the seventh day of May.

T
ONY, HIS
mother, and Philippe watched atop the flat portion of one of the roofs of Saylor House the startling spectacle of thousands of soldiers marching in formation and pomp. Drums thumped like a pulse heard aloud. Fifes sang out their shrill, merry tattoo. Feet stamped in rhythm. Bayonets were fixed to flintlocks, as flags and regimental banners waved atop poles, as rough voices called out commands and horses of the cavalry neighed and pranced. Officers rode by, proud in splendid uniforms of gold and braid and crimson and blue, the hooves of their horses clattering on cobblestones.

“Extraordinary,” said Philippe.

“I cannot believe it.” Abigail moved closer to her son, put her arm through his.

“It was madness once we got to the edge of London today,” Tony said. “Our coach could scarcely make its way upon the road toward London Bridge, jammed as it was with other coaches, with wagons, with carts, with people walking, their children upon their shoulders, leaving the city. You must be the only Catholic allowed in London tonight, sir.”

“Myself and the French ambassador,” Philippe said. The announcement of a plot to put the Pretender upon the throne had been read by the King’s herald at all city gates, and Catholics had been ordered to leave the city by the morrow.

“Is it true the King was to be killed?” asked Abigail. “Such things I’ve heard—London to be set to fire, burned to nothing, the Prince and Princess kidnapped, arms for Jacobites at secret places all over London.”

“I’m told the hall of the Bank of England was mobbed this morning,” said Philippe, “people rushing to take out their coins and go and hide them. Catholics were not allowed to claim theirs.”

“I’ve heard Lord Sunderland’s papers were searched,” said Tony. “Walpole and Lord Townshend were looking for evidence of knowledge of the invasion.”

Abigail sat down on one of the elaborate chairs brought up to make their view of the troops more comfortable. London stretched out verdant, peaceful, green before them, church spires lovely marks to the May sky, the sound of drums reverberating up to them again and again.

“I do not believe you. Lord Sunderland was not a Jacobite. I am afraid. Ought we to stay? What if they come, Tony, what if they take this house? What if there should be a war?”

War, thought Tony. Yesterday I was walking in the gardens at Lindenmas with Harriet, with no thought of this, only the thought of how good my world was, and today that world has tipped to one side, is changing even as I stand here. Now, the time at the lovely country house belonging to Harriet’s parents seemed a dream.

“You will come, of course, to France if there is war, my dear,” Philippe kissed Abigail’s hand. “Stay with me in Paris for as long as need be, while your son raises a regiment here and repeats the exploits of his famous grandfather.”

“What a mercy Diana’s husband, Kit, is dead.” Abigail dabbed at her eyes. She had been crying on and off since she and Tony had crossed London Bridge. “He would be in this, part and parcel, and not upon our side. Oh, I feel as if I have stepped into a nightmare. Look there!” she said, and Tony and Philippe saw, in the distance, over the rooftops of the houses on St. James’s Street, the first lights from campfires as the soldiers made camp in Hyde Park.

Dusk, thought Tony, the end to an extraordinary day.

As more and more fires appeared, hundreds of them, it was as if portions of the stars had fallen to ground and burned.

“A stirring sight,” said Philippe.

“There you are,” said Charles. He had not come with the rest of the family to Lindenmas, but had stayed in London. There are things I must do, he had said. “All of London is a place fit only for madmen, today.”

Charles kissed Abigail’s cheek.

“Or soldiers,” said Philippe.

“Oh, it is too dreadful. How glad I am Mary is not here. What if she had the child in the midst of this,” said Abigail.

“Yes.” Charles spoke slowly, almost as if he were drunk; Tony, watching, thought, He is not drunk, but something is wrong. “It is best that she be gone.”

“You look ill.”

Charles shrugged off his mother-in-law’s words and went to stand near Tony. “Will there be an invasion, as they claim?”

“If there is, it looks as though we are prepared.”

“So it does. I am restless, I cannot be still. I feel as if the drums the soldiers beat are inside in my head. Tony, walk with me to Hyde Park.”

Abigail started to protest, but Philippe put his hand upon her shoulder, and she was silent. After they were gone, he said, “You must leave them be. They are young, and this is a night when the blood in young men’s veins rampages with the thought of war and valor, honor and country. I will amuse you with my version of the Duchess of Kendall weeping about her precious king, worried for which jewels she should take with her if your Pretender comes.”

Charles and Tony walked through streets that were strangely quiet. In windows of houses, draperies were already drawn, as if people wished to shut out the world. They walked past fields and farms, and Tony thought of Sir Gideon Andreas, buying land or building leases all over this part of London, easy enough to do now, since the South Sea Bubble. Tommy Carlyle said Andreas now held two of the largest notes of debt Barbara owed. Why? Tony had asked, and then: Will he sell them, do you think? Carlyle had shrugged his shoulders. Tony was thinking of that as he walked past lanes that would one day be streets, if building should ever start again, the way it had before the Bubble. When building did begin again, this part of London would belong to Andreas and, interestingly enough, to Barbara. Roger had bought much here, too.

They were at Hyde Park. It seemed as if a thousand, two thousand tents were there. It was a stirring sight, a clear symbol of England’s might and King George’s will. Challenged by guards, Tony gave his name, and they were allowed to walk in.

“The Duke of Marlborough or your grandfather would be more than welcome, now,” Charles said.

The Duke of Marlborough was dying. Tony had thought of visiting the old general, to hear some last word, some tale of his grandfather, but somehow the days at Lindenmas with Harriet fell one into the other, and he did nothing but enjoy his wife. Marlborough and his grandfather had soldiered together, had won the wars of King William and Queen Anne, had been uncrowned kings of Europe, admired and fêted everywhere, for a time. Before the intrigues began. They always begin, said Carlyle. Envy, like a snake, must rear its head and bite that which it at first admires.

“The servant who answered your door had a pistol in his belt,” said Charles.

“My mother is afraid.”

“Any wise man is afraid this night. Will the King call in extra troops from the Dutch, as he did in 1715?”

“I have no idea, Charles.”

“I may come back to Lindenmas with you.”

“My sister would be glad.”

“I’d like to stay the night at Saylor House. Have you any objection?”

“Of course not.”

They walked along silently for a while, the ease that once had been theirs gone, and they were both awkward, too aware of what was no more.

In Tony’s mind was a picture of the old days, when he had admired Charles, accepting without question that Barbara should love Charles rather than himself, because in his eyes Charles was better in all things. Like a boy, he had not envied Charles for being better, but loved him the more for it.

Stopping where he was, Charles spoke abruptly.

“Men make errors in their lives, Tony. It is my understanding that only God may judge. Let us go back. I think I can sleep now.” He did not look at Tony as he spoke, but at some point in the darkness, his words, his expression, fierce.

Do I judge? thought Tony. Then: Yes, I judge you to be a poor friend, when all is said and done. You could have stopped the duel. You know you could have. And I know it, too. “I’m going to walk awhile longer.”