The Winding Stair (49 page)

‘And here is the Princess.'

The farewells and thanks were almost over, and the English boat was at the side, when Teresa came running up from below. ‘Juana, you left this behind.' She handed her Vasco's diadem.

‘Oh, so I did.' Juana took it indifferently.

‘Let me see,' said the Princess. And then, ‘Meu
Deus
! Do you
not know, child, that each of these stones is a diamond of the first water?'

‘Good God,' said Gair. ‘And I thought I was marrying a penniless wife I could bully.'

‘Oh, did you?' said Juana. And she said it in English, without a trace of a stammer.

Portugal
. In Juana Brett's time it had long been known as Britain's oldest ally. An English fleet, on the Second Crusade, had paused there to help capture Lisbon from the Moors, and the Portuguese King John I married Henry IV of England's sister and so founded the Aviz dynasty. English invalids went to Lisbon for health, travellers for entertainment and merchants for profit. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there were thriving English communities at both Oporto and Lisbon, the centres of the wine trade.

Sebastian
. The last of the House of Aviz, he became King of Portugal at the age of three. Growing up mystic and ascetic, he led an unlucky expedition against the Moors in Africa, was killed and his army annihilated. Portugal's old enemy, Spain, seized the chance, and the country. Although Sebastian's death was, in fact, well authenticated, rumours that he had survived persisted, and various Pretenders appeared during the years of Spanish domination. These ended with the successful revolt led by the House of Braganza in 1640, in which the Sebastianists played an important part. They were active during the Napoleonic wars, and still in existence in the early twentieth century. Of course, the real Sebastian never married. It was a
revenant
, a kind of King Arthur figure, that the Sebastianists looked to, not a descendant.

Pombal
. By the mid-eighteenth century, Portugal and the House of Braganza had gone to seed. A brilliant, self-made man, with a grudge against the aristocracy, Pombal completed his domination of the negligible King Joseph by his vigorous action in 1755, when an earthquake destroyed half Lisbon. Virtual dictator of Portugal, Pombal seized on the so-called Tavora plot as a chance to destroy two of the aristocratic families that opposed his reforming rule. It is not known whether the Tavoras and the d'Aveiros were really involved in the attempt on the King's life, though he had tampered with women in each family. Anyway, Pombal's torturers wrung out plenty of evidence. The chief members of both families died horribly, the others stayed in
prisons or nunneries until King Joseph's death in 1777 and Pombal's consequent fall from power.

Joseph's daughter Queen Maria had the case reopened and the Tavoras at least cleared, and it was rumoured that her sense of her father's guilt helped drive her insane. In 1806, she was shut up, quite mad, at the Palace of Queluz, and her not very bright son Dom John was ruling as Prince Regent. His Spanish wife Carlota Joaquina disliked him intensely, had plotted against him and was shut up, in disgrace, in her country house (or
quinta
) of Ramalhao at Sintra. Marcus Cheke has written fascinating books about both her and Pombal, to which I am deeply indebted, and which I recommend to anyone who would like to know more about this extraordinary period of Portuguese history.

Britain and France
. In the early nineteenth century, Britain was fighting a war of survival against Napoleon Bonaparte, who had made himself Emperor of France, and conquered most of Europe. Pitt, the great leader of the Tory party, had died in January, 1806. His party fell into disarray and the Whigs came into power in a patched-up government called the Ministry of All the Talents because it could boast so few. Its outstanding member, Fox, died in September, 1806, but the ministry staggered on through the winter, to be replaced by the Tories in the spring of 1807.

In the summer of 1806, the Whigs were still hoping to make peace with Napoleon, and had sent Lord Lauderdale to Paris to negotiate. Napoleon kept him in play while preparing to attack Portugal. The Portuguese dithered; the British sent a naval squadron under Lord St. Vincent, and two generals, Rosslyn and Simcoe, to try and organise resistance. The Portuguese went on dithering, but luckily for them Napoleon had to change his plans at the eleventh hour because of a sudden threat from Russia, whose Tsar kept changing sides.

Napoleon marched East, defeated Russia and her Allies, made peace at Tilsit, and was ready, by the autumn of 1807, to have another try at Portugal. He sent a rather scratch army under Marshal Junot, who had been French Ambassador at Lisbon and had managed to create a considerable pro-French party there. It is not known whether the Portuguese ministers were actually treacherous or merely incompetent, but first they did nothing, and then they panicked. Once again, the British sent a naval squadron to their help, this time under the flamboyant Sir Sidney Smith;
but despite all he and the Ambassador, Lord Strangford, could do, the Portuguese submitted so tamely to the French demands, and showed so little sign of defending themselves, that there was a time when Britain and Portugal were almost at war. Junot's army was actually approaching Lisbon when Dom John saw a copy of the French official paper (the
Moniteur
) with the flat statement that the House of Braganza had ceased to reign in Europe. Recognising his danger at last, he agreed to flee with his court to his rich overseas domain of Brazil. He got away just in time, as described in the last chapter of the book, but not much good came of it.

The Portuguese Scene
. Many English travellers have left their impressions of Portugal in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but those of William Beckford (author of
Vathek
) are outstanding among them. His Portuguese
Letters
and
Journal
provide bad-tempered, brilliant sketches of the priest-ridden and lethargic society of the time. More recently, Rose Macaulay's
They Went to Portugal
gives a fascinating picture of the continuing relationship between Britain and Portugal.
The Sons of the Star
are as imaginary as the rest of the story.

Jane Aiken Hodge
was born in Massachusetts to Pulitzer prize-winning poet, Conrad Aiken, and his first wife, writer Jessie McDonald. Hodge was 3 years old when her family moved to Great Britain, settling in Rye, East Sussex, where her younger sister, Joan, who would become a novelist and a children's writer, was born.

From 1935, Jane Hodge read English at Somerville College, Oxford University, and in 1938 she took a second degree in English at Radcliffe College in Massachusetts. She was a civil servant, and also worked for
Time
magazine, before returning to the UK in 1947. Her works of fiction include historical novels and contemporary detective novels. In 1972 she renounced her United States citizenship and became a British subject.

Discover books by Jane Aiken Hodge published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/JaneAikenHodge

A Death in Two Parts
Greek Wedding
Leading Lady
Polonaise
Rebel Heiress
Strangers in Company
Wide Is the Water
Last Act
Red Sky at Night Lovers' Delight
The Winding Stair
Watch the Wall, My Darling
Whispering

For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been
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This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

First published in Great Britain in 1968 by Hodder and Stoughton Ltd

Copyright © 1968 Jane Aiken Hodge

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eISBN: 9781448213986

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