Dawnlands, page 11
“But I am yours,” she said simply. “It is a debt.”
ST. JAMES’S PALACE, LONDON, SUMMER 1685
The queen was composing a letter of congratulation to her stepdaughter Princess Anne, on her safe delivery of a healthy child. Livia was at the table, her pen poised, waiting to write. Mary Beatrice, opposite her, rested her heavily coiffed head in both hands as if the weight of the hairpieces and the jewelry was too much for her.
“Oh, write whatever it is I should say!” she exclaimed. “You’re absolutely sure it’s a girl?”
“It’s a girl. God be praised for His favor to you: she’s not had a Stuart boy.”
“But even so…”
Livia waited in case the queen would say any more, then she put the quill down and went to stand behind the younger woman, bending over her, wrapping her arms around her shoulders. Mary Beatrice leaned back, her head pillowed on Livia’s breasts, giving herself up to the gentle rocking, as if she were a hurt child.
“There would still be no reason to grieve, even if Princess Anne had a dozen boys,” Livia told her softly. “You will live long and conceive many children of your own, and they will come before any child she has. Princess Anne will be thrust down to third place, her child to fourth, and she will not matter anymore.”
Mary Beatrice turned her tragic face up to her friend. “But what if I don’t?” she demanded simply. “What if I don’t conceive a son? Then there is the Protestant heir Mary and her husband, William, and after her, there is Anne. Two Protestant queens, one after another: and I will have failed in my duty to my husband and to my God.”
“But why should you not have a son?” Livia regretted the question the moment she had asked it. She had been in court long enough to know the whispered gossip that French pox had left the king infertile and would bring him madness in his old age, and his wife would break out in chancres all over her body and die in agony from his disease.
“The king goes… elsewhere,” Mary Beatrice said quietly, her head drooping as if she were ashamed. “He always has done. And he has bastard sons, so everyone knows he can make a boy.”
“Bastards don’t count,” Livia said staunchly.
“Half of England wants to put the last king’s bastard on the throne,” Mary Beatrice argued. “He’s coming over the seas towards us right now!”
There was a bleak silence. “My son is coming today,” Livia said encouragingly. “He’ll take our bags for safekeeping, ready to load on the ship. We could set sail next week. You can disembark at Rome. You can write to your mama, tell Her Grace Duchess Laura that you are coming soon. We have a plan, we are ready, if the king loses.”
“If he loses?” the queen said flatly. “With two Protestant armies coming against him from either end of the country, how can he possibly win?”
There was a tap on the bedroom door. Livia went to answer it, opening it a crack to look out.
“A visitor for you, Lady Avery,” the lady-in-waiting said resentfully. “A young man. I did not know if I should interrupt you or no?”
Livia turned back to the room, to find Mary Beatrice drying her eyes. “There!” she said. “Did I not promise that Matteo would come?”
The queen led the way through the privy chamber, where everyone rose and curtseyed, to the small antechamber beyond. Matthew was standing nervously by the table. He bowed very low when the queen entered, and Livia raised him with a gesture and kissed both his cheeks.
“My son!” she said, proud of his youthful good looks in his smart dark suit.
“Ah! He is so like you!” The queen smiled at him. “Such a handsome boy. If I had seen you before you were at college, I should have made you my page.”
“Look! He is blushing!” Livia cooed. “We must not embarrass him. Caro figlio—is everything going well? The ship is loading? You can take our bags for safekeeping?”
“I’ll store them at the warehouse,” he said. “They’ll be safe there. If there’s anything of value, I will lock it in our cashbox.”
“And when will the ship sail?” the queen asked.
Matthew bowed again. “On an ebb tide, next week,” he told her. “When it is loaded. I will tell my… I will tell my mother, the Nobildonna, when it is ready to sail.”
Mary Beatrice gave him her hand and Matthew kissed it. “I am grateful,” she said. “I will see that you are rewarded for your service. I am grateful to your mother—who I love very dearly—and to you.”
Livia gestured to the four bags at the door. “This one has her jewels,” she said quietly. “Keep it safe, for God’s sake.”
“I will,” he said fervently. “Do I go now?”
“You go now, discreetly.” She kissed him on both cheeks, watched him load himself with the bags, and opened the door for him. She closed it behind him with a triumphant smile and came to the queen and took her hands. “Did I not say we would be safe with him?”
“Such a charming boy! So young to be so trustworthy?”
Livia shrugged. “It’s breeding, is it not?” she asked. “Well bred, and well raised. The pity is that he does not have the place in the world that his breeding and his education deserve.”
“But why not?” the queen asked. “I thought he was at Lincoln’s Inn?”
“He has no inheritance,” Livia explained glibly. “My husband’s lands are entailed away from him. My poor boy is the son of my first husband, a Venetian prince, so he inherits no English land. He is studying to be a lawyer, but how will he advance in this world without his own property? My own fortune, of course, is all in my husband’s hands.”
“He has no English lands?”
“No—as it happens. I would like him to have lands in Sussex—his foster family used to own a manor in the tidelands, near to Chichester, in Sussex.”
“Who owns it now?”
“Why, I believe they are royal lands!” Livia exclaimed in surprise. “The last lord of the manor died without an heir—Sir William Peachey—and all his lands reverted to the crown.”
“Then surely I should be able to give them to you! I will ask—” The queen broke off. “I cannot ask now. Everything is so difficult now.”
“But that’s why you should reward Matteo,” Livia pointed out. “Because he is loyal in difficult times. If the times were not dangerous, you would have no need of him.”
“That’s true. I will ask my chamberlain.”
“Oh, don’t ask him!” Livia objected. “He will ask you why, and what Matteo has done for you, and how you met him, and our secret will be out. Ask the king for the manor and the lands, as if you wanted them for yourself, and then give me the deeds? The exchequer and your chamberlain will have nothing to say about it. They won’t even know till it’s done.”
The queen hesitated for a moment.
“After all, it’s not much to ask for,” Livia remarked. “His Majesty gave Catherine Sedley that great house in St. James’s Square that overlooks your garden. And she flaunts herself in her stupid banqueting house every time you walk past.”
“Yes,” the queen said resentfully. “I will ask for it as a country house for me. He cannot deny me that.”
LYME REGIS COAST, SUMMER 1685
The evening sky was a cool pale blue, the sea colorless as a looking glass, reflecting the long tresses of gray clouds, as the waves moved the ships, rolling their deep backs under the wooden keels. Ned, like most of the men, was leaning on the rail, looking towards the dark gray-blue cliffs, the color of slate facing the sea in a forbidding wall, as the captain gave the order to drop anchor, outside the tiny fishing port.
Thomas Dare clapped Ned on the shoulder. “I’ll see you in London,” he said. “I’ll buy you a bottle of wine to drink to our victory.”
“You’re going ashore?”
“Going to call out the west country men, going to my hometown, Taunton. Andrew Fletcher’s coming with me. I’m going to requisition some horses for his cavalry regiment, see if any of these fishermen can ride! I’m proud—” He broke off and grinned at his emotion. “Proud to be the first ashore. God bless the duke and Godspeed.”
“Godspeed,” Ned replied. “And good luck, Thomas Dare!”
The sailors lowered a dinghy into the water and Thomas went down the rope ladder, followed awkwardly by Andrew Fletcher in his high leather riding boots. Rowan joined Ned at the ship’s rail and watched as the little boat pulled away and rowed steadily into the bay.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“We wait,” Ned replied. “Most of soldiering is waiting around, then being terrified, and then waiting around again.”
She smiled at him. “I’m not terrified,” she said.
“You’re not soldiering. Nor ever going to.”
She ducked her head to avoid another argument. “No.”
The dinghy reached shore; they could just see the distant figures jumping out of the boat, and a couple of fishermen approaching them. They all talked together, then Thomas Dare and Andrew Fletcher waved good-bye and turned inland, while the dinghy came back to the ship.
The boatman climbed the ladder and went straight to the bridge. Ned watched the duke’s face and saw his growing smile. Monmouth turned from the boatman and addressed his men.
“Good news,” he said. “The best news. Even the fishermen here in the west country know that we are on our way to victory. The Earl of Argyll has drawn the royal army north, they’re lost in Scotland. James is calling out the militia in every county—he has no idea where to look for us. The southwest is ready to rise for us, the fishermen are for us. We’ll go on to Lyme Regis and land there!”
* * *
The busy port of Lyme Regis was only four miles away. The Cobb—a massive seawall of tumbled stones—curved like a claw before the harbor, sheltering the trading ships from the sea. The Helderenberg sailed so close to the shore that Monmouth could see, through the captain’s spyglass, the men playing bowls on the seaside green.
There was a shout from the lookout as a fishing boat approached. “Man selling fish, Captain!”
Monmouth grinned. “Tell him yes! We’ll buy all he has!”
Slowly, the ship made way past the Cobb, behind the defensive cannon that pointed over the harbor mouth, to the beach beyond. Sailors bustled to reef the sails and tie up as the soldiers packed their kit and stood ready, divided into three regiments with their own colors—red, blue, and white. Ned, in the red jacket of Monmouth’s own division, turned to Rowan.
“You come ashore with me,” he told her. “Stay at my side.”
She grinned at him, her belongings in a little sack slung over her shoulder. “Yes, sir!”
Ned tried to scowl at her. “Then you’ll go to London,” he told her.
“Perhaps we all will!”
ST. JAMES’S PALACE, LONDON, SUMMER 1685
Mary Beatrice, the queen, was standing alone in her privy chamber, looking out of the window over the gardens, when Livia came in.
“Your Majesty?” Livia dipped a curtsey, instantly alert to the frozen figure.
“We’re lost,” Mary Beatrice said simply. Now, at the moment of defeat, she was calm. “Argyll has landed and thousands of men have flocked to his standard. He is marching on Glasgow, and once he takes that town with our stores, and recruits the castle, they think he will march south, here, to London. He will march with our men and our arms, against us.”
Livia thought briefly of her husband and his lands that lay before an army of violent highlanders, the certainty of his defending his home, the likelihood of his death. “And what about Lord Dumbarton’s army? Will he fall back and protect the north of England?”
“He hasn’t even found the rebels! We don’t know what he’s doing. This isn’t news from him but from the local lords, sending desperate messengers, demanding help. They haven’t even seen Dumbarton! He’s probably wandering around lost while Argyll knows all the roads: he built them himself on his own lands!”
“What will the king do?”
“Nothing!” she burst out furiously. “He has no plan. This is his terror. The terror of the Stuarts. It’s what the late king always said to avoid, whatever the price. Never let the people see a flag or hear a drum, they’ll just run after it like fools. He’s sent his army to Scotland and lost them. The rebels are marching south and there is no one to stop them. I’ve told the king, I told him that I dare not stay. My mama, Duchess Laura, has written that I must go to her in Rome. I told him: I want to go to my mama!”
“Will he send you?” Livia asked.
The younger woman’s hands were clenched into fists. “First, he said he would send me to Portsmouth, and he has a coach and horses ready for me to go, and a ship to take me to Mama. But now he says he doesn’t dare! Monmouth could be anywhere! He could have landed at Portsmouth. I could be going straight towards him. And if I set sail in a royal ship, I could run into him at sea! He’d recognize the royal yacht in a moment, he must have sailed on it a hundred times. What if he fired on me? What if he captured me?”
Livia took the queen’s hands in a firm clasp, hiding her own fear. “Be calm, my dear,” was all she could say. “Be calm. We’re in danger; but we’re not lost yet. If the king cannot send you to Portsmouth, if you can’t take the royal yacht, then we can take our berths on the little ship. Nobody will know you are aboard. Nobody would look for you on a little trading ship. It’s due to sail this week, it’s worked out for us perfectly… we can go.”
Mary Beatrice gripped Livia’s hands, as if she would be hauled from danger. “You will come with me?” she demanded.
“Of course.” Livia realized that she was speaking the truth. “I couldn’t bear to leave you.” She bent her head and kissed the queen’s trembling hands. “I will never leave you,” she promised. “Exile or victory, I will be at your side.”
LYME REGIS, SUMMER 1685
Ned stood behind a table in Lyme town hall registering a long queue of volunteers. The line stretched out into the street, men joining the back as fast as men were sworn in at the front. All the west country wanted to serve the Protestant Protector. The only man to speak against the duke—the town mayor—had scrambled for his horse and ridden to London when he failed to persuade the townsmen to turn the cannons on the ships and open fire. No one else had a word against the duke and his army that flew the green banner: FEAR NOTHING BUT GOD.
A clatter of hooves outside was so loud that Ned paused in his work and looked through the doorway to see a huge number of horses—glossy, fat, and well-muscled—clattering up the street and, at the head of them, on a big high-stepping warhorse, Thomas Dare, tipping his hat at the cheers as he rode in with such a prize. Monmouth himself came out of the doorway of the George Inn to see the arrival of his new horses. Dare halted before him and jumped from the saddle. “Your cavalry, sire!” he said.
“Good God be praised!” Monmouth said exultantly. “How many d’you have there, Mr. Dare?”
“Forty horses!” he crowed. “Forty! And more promised for when I go back tomorrow, and men following them on foot to join you.”
“Get them into the pound field,” Monmouth ordered the riders. He turned to Dare. “This is a triumph. Thank you, Thomas Dare. I will see you well rewarded for this.” He looked at the horse Dare was riding, a big dark bay, almost black in color, with a white star on its forehead and a single white sock. “And he is a great beauty.”
“He’s yours,” Dare said instantly. “A gift from my friend Prideaux, of Ford Abbey.”
“No, no, you keep him,” Monmouth said. “I’ve got my own horse, and you’ve got many days in the saddle ahead of you. How many men have you?”
“I’ve got a hundred recruits from Taunton and many more waiting for you there, sire. I brought these back now, so that Andrew Fletcher can set about training them. He came in ahead of me, said he’d make sure the pound was ready for the horses.”
“I haven’t seen him,” Monmouth said.
“And I’ll go out tomorrow to Bridport—they’ve taken up a subscription for you there and they’re collecting stores. It’s the same story all over. Men volunteering and people giving everything they can.”
“Any news of the king in Taunton?”
“I doubt he even knows we’re here,” Thomas Dare crowed. “His main army is lost in Scotland, all he has in the west is the militia, and nobody’s volunteering in Dorset! Same in Somerset. The road to London is wide open to you, sire, and the king doesn’t even know you’re on the march.”
Monmouth laughed out loud and slapped Dare on the back. “Get yourself dinner and drink, Dare. You’ve done a great service to me today.”
“The first of many days,” Thomas promised, and bowed as the duke went back into the inn.
“Well met,” Ned said, coming down the hill from the town hall. He patted the warm neck. “Handsome horse. Was he really a gift?”
“His owner would have ridden with us if he could. How are things here?”
Ned gestured to the queue of men waiting. “They’re coming in faster than we can sign them up. You get your horses to the pound, I’ll get the men to their regiments, and I’ll meet you here for dinner when we’ve finished.”
Andrew Fletcher lurched out of the inn door, his face flushed with drink, Venner, the veteran soldier, behind him.
“So you got here at last?” Fletcher demanded.
Dare tipped his hat. “We came as fast as we could, riding and leading.”
“No point in you having a horse like that if you never get out of a trot,” Fletcher said rudely.
“Leave it,” Venner advised him. “Come back to dinner.” He pulled at Fletcher’s arm but the drunk man shrugged him off.
Ned looked from the cavalry commander’s flushed face to the cool hostility of the Paymaster. “Now, good sires—” he started to say.
Fletcher put his hand on the reins of the horse. “I’m having him,” he said, his speech slurred. “He’s a fine horse, wasted on you. I’m commander of the cavalry, he should be mine.”
