Tapestry (14 page)

‘Maybe that’s what you told family, but privately you believed your pilgrimage might change the outcome of Will’s situation.’

‘Yes … but this?’ She looked around her. ‘This is just madness!’

‘Hush, My Lady. There are others coming. I did warn you that magic exacts a price. The price it chooses is not up to you or me to decide. And you have called down a mighty magic for your own ends. It is no use whining that it is frightening, or too hard.’ Robyn put her mug down on the ground and shook her, and Jane felt limp in the washerwoman’s grip. ‘Listen to me, Jane, for it is vital you understand.’

Jane lifted her head to meet Robyn’s gaze. The servant gave a sad smile. ‘Magic’s favour is never given lightly. You are now Winifred, the Countess of Nithsdale. Jane is not yet born. And unless Winifred’s husband, William Maxwell, can be spared the axe of Tower Hill …’ Jane gasped, her hand flying to her chest, where she could feel her heart pounding against her fingers, ‘then the life you want to return to can never be.’ Robyn took Jane’s hands. ‘You must live as Winifred, and if you succeed in what you are about to do, then Jane Granger and Will Maxwell will meet again. The rest will be up to you.’

‘You’re sure?’ she asked breathlessly.

Robyn nodded. ‘Just worry about today. Tomorrow comes soon enough … I must go.’

‘Robyn!’ Jane gripped the woman’s fingers. ‘I can’t do this!’

Her companion smiled warmly at her this time and it gave her a glimpse of the male Robin. ‘You will surprise yourself as to how strong you are. It’s why you’re here, Jane. Take control! It’s why Winifred needed you and why Will is counting on
you — both Wills. But now people are coming. Unless you want to explain what will sound like insanity to your sister-in-law and your friend, it is best we part.’ Robyn unlocked her fingers from Jane’s grip. ‘Be brave.’

Jane let her go, a sob trapped in her throat as loneliness and fear crowded her mind. She heard voices calling for Winifred and felt her resolve harden. She was helpless in her real life but she was not helpless in Scotland, in the depths of winter, 1715.

She had a man’s life to save. She didn’t know this man, but Winifred did. Had Winifred died when Jane arrived? She wished she’d asked Robyn. Perhaps her soul remained and now both of them were one.

‘Winifred!’ Footsteps clattered across the cobbles. ‘Dearest one, there you are. I was told you were with the washerwoman. There’s no need to be doing that now.’ Jane heard Cecilia’s anxious voice, then saw her figure outlined in the doorway of the stable.

‘Yes … sorry, I was … I was thinking about Will.’

Arms encircled her. ‘I know. And you must realise that as your beloved friend, I am here to help you. Whatever must needs be done, we shall do together.’

‘Do you mean that?’

Cecilia, taller than most women, with a strong jaw and kind expression in her rich brown eyes, smiled softly at her. ‘Truly,’ she confirmed, and hugged her. ‘I will go with you to London if you wish it.’

‘Thank you.’

Her friend’s face grew serious. ‘We will need to get organised if we’re to journey from north to south in winter. Come, let’s get you inside where it’s warm. We shall take a few days to plot our journey and make a plan. I’m sure Charles and Mary will want to help. And I’m sure our friend Mrs Mills will be full of gladness to put us up in London for as long as we need.’

You can’t escape this, Jane
, she schooled herself.
So save William Maxwell. Save yourself. Save Will!

T
he news of total defeat reached the Earl of Nithsdale from the sarcastic lips of his old foe — the slightly effeminate senior officer who’d shot Pollock — as William travelled south in a carriage that he shared with three other peers, including Lord Derwentwater. They were surrounded by dragoons, who were determined not to lose their noble prizes. Other prisoners followed on foot.

‘I’ll leave you to ponder your fates, gentlemen,’ the man said, taking the four lords in with a sweeping look through their carriage window from his horse’s back. He lingered on William, though. ‘Safe travels.’ He cut away from the column.

‘Indecision brought us to this,’ William growled, thinking back over the street-to-street fighting into which their battle in Preston had degenerated. ‘I am sorry for you especially, sir,’ he said to Derwentwater, who was hailed as the jewel among the captured prizes. William was aware that he had never enjoyed more than a cursory conversation with the young peer. ‘Your good father was kind to my wife’s family at Saint-Germain-en-Laye.’

‘We didn’t meet there, did we, sir?’ the younger man asked. ‘I was born there.’

William shook his head. ‘I would remember if we had.’

‘I have no regrets,’ the younger man said without bravado. ‘I fought for king and faith.’

‘I do not fear for you, My Lord. You are young, wealthy and a vital power in the north. King George would do well to curry your favour.’

Yet William had begun to worry for his own family … and neck.

‘Have you requested help from your kin?’ Derwentwater enquired.

‘Aye. I hope my good wife Winifred has received my letter urging her to meet me in London.’

‘That is much to ask of a sweet woman, My Lord, during this cruel winter.’

William nodded. The boy was still of the romantic notion that this situation had not turned serious. But William had seen the truth in the guarded eyes of the officer who had just taunted him, and the other soldiers were licking their lips in anticipation of retribution.

He suspected that it would not be easy now to escape the King’s justice. He responded to the young man’s words. ‘My wife is the person I trust most in life, and she alone possesses the powers of persuasion to seek the right support.’

‘Will the Crown get busy punishing the men we left in gaols in the north?’ Derwentwater wondered.

‘Nay, he’ll use the nobles to promote the message of intolerance of Catholics,’ Kenmure said, joining the conversation. ‘It’s exactly what King George craves. We are the example to the rest of the Jacobites.’

At Barnet, Lord Derwentwater summoned the officer in charge of their escort. ‘Where do you take us?’

‘Marshalsea and Fleet for most; next in quality to Newgate Prison, where the highland lord and some of his sheep-fucking followers have been sent. But for you, My Lords, it’s the Tower, on the King’s orders.’

‘I’m assured we’ll be on horseback from the morrow,’ Lord Wintoun, another of their party, muttered.

The following day, William noticed their escort being changed and a beefing up of the guard surrounding them.

‘They’re taking no chances of allowing sympathisers to come to our aid,’ he remarked, feigning a casual tone. However, looking at the huge crowds that had begun to gather to watch this procession of the damned, he had no doubt that their situation was becoming more and more dire. Soon enough their hands were bound.

‘How are we supposed to hold the bridles of our horses while uncivilly trussed like chickens?’ he demanded with astonishment.

‘You won’t be holding anything, not even your broken pride,’ came the acid reply from the closest officer. ‘Just stay atop your mount, if you can,’ the man taunted.

They were tied like slaves and escorted between a party of horse grenadiers and a platoon of footguards, their progress into the capital designed to humiliate: jostled by the crowds lining the streets of London, whose odours blended into one unclean, jeering breath. Meanwhile, their escort moved in time to the irritating sound of drums beating a victory march, and pipers added a jolly tune that had the audience banging on everything metal they could carry.

William dryly noted several bedpans joining the loud clangour of instruments as Londoners chanted: ‘King George forever, no warming-pan bastard!’

He grimaced. Even now, so many years on, people believed the vicious rumour that Queen Mary Beatrice, who had struggled to become with child, had never actually given birth to her son. Protestants clung to the notion that King James, born at St James’s Palace in front of a host of onlookers, had been somehow smuggled into the Queen’s labouring bed within a warming pan.

He let go of his ire; there were more immediate worries. Despite the cold, the atmosphere was choked with the noise of the crowd and its chants for revenge.

At Tower Hamlets, William was informed that he and his fellow peers would be housed in the Lieutenant’s Lodgings and tomorrow would be brought to Westminster to begin examination.

Find me, Winifred
, he cried inwardly.
Only you can save me now
.

Traquair House was in a state of flux as Winifred prepared for her journey to London. Jane had begged off food and company that evening, desperate to have time alone to think.

Everything about her elegant bedchamber was familiar to her through Winifred … the sage-green colour scheme, the silk brocade drapes enriched with the gold thread favoured by the weavers of Lyon, the thick oriental rug that she suspected was one of her sister-in-law’s wedding gifts. The walls, panelled with wood to dado height with pretty green trefoil wallpaper above, the intricate plasterwork on the ceiling … she knew it all. And yet, though it appeared like a set for a period drama, there was nothing fake about it.

Jane could hear the creak of boards elsewhere in the house, voices drifting up from the drawing room and the dim ringing and clatter of pans from the kitchen and scullery. It was a living, breathing, working mansion of the early eighteenth century and she was still feeling tremors of shock shake through her every now and then. They made her think of her childhood fox terrier during a thunderstorm. Pixie used to shiver as if cold, her teeth even chattering in her fear, and nothing Jane did or said made a difference. Jane felt like that now. It didn’t seem to matter what amount of soothing these strangers offered, or how much she tried to remain rational … the shivering seemed to be a rote response to her shock.

Finally she gave her arm a pinch. This was it — if she had dreamed everything, including her conversation with Robyn, she would know it.

‘Wake up!’ she whispered, squeezing so hard it made her eyes water.

She watched the whitened area of her skin flood back to its normal colour and the flesh retract to its original state. She touched the area absently and could feel a protest of soft pain. At last she resigned herself to being trapped here until she could work out how to escape.

She sat at a mahogany desk near the window and watched the twilight close to dusk as the sun sank on this incredible, frightening yet somehow exhilarating day of her life … was it her life, or was it Winifred’s life, which she’d stolen?
Winifred
. The name didn’t suit her. She moved to the dressing table to study her new self in the mirror and do some digging into her host’s knowledge.

Searching her newfound memories, Jane discovered Winifred was thirty-five. The mirror told her she was slender and blonde, with a gentle face of soft, regular features, which she realised belied the Winifred whose thoughts she was getting to know. Winifred might have a fragile constitution, but she was made of stern stuff emotionally. Already Jane could feel Winifred’s passion rising; her host was worried for her husband, but she was also angry that the Catholic push was in tatters.

After concerted but gentle probing, Jane decided that her host was not dead. Winifred had simply let her in. Perhaps she had been too weak to resist her, given that she had been close to death. Maybe it was because she’d needed physical strength when she’d realised she was dying. Or possibly fate had chosen for her. Whatever had occurred, Jane understood she now had to live as Winifred in order to keep both of them alive.

‘It’s 1715,’ Jane whispered, close to the mirror, watching her breath steam upon it. Into the steam she wrote her initials, just to remind herself that somewhere out there in the fabric of the cosmos, Jane Granger existed.

She allowed the peril of her situation to distil down into one thought now. If she didn’t live as Winifred and attempt to save
William Maxwell, Fifth Earl of Nithsdale, then Will Maxwell of Florida was not only not going to make it, he wasn’t even going to be born. What was more, was if Winifred died, so would she, and no one would be any the wiser.

‘Get your act together, Winifred!’ Jane growled softly to her new reflection. ‘We have a big task ahead.’

She now understood that she was somehow going to have to make a passionate plea for William’s life. And the only way to do that was in person.

She shook her head and spoke to the hidden self behind those blue eyes of her host. ‘Come on, Jane, you have to think like an unemancipated woman of three centuries ago. You have to be Winifred; behave dutifully, act demurely and don’t swear!’

There was a gentle knock at the door. ‘Winifred, dear?’

It was Cecilia.

Jane walked across her room, feeling the drag of her long, voluminous dress and tight bodice, which had now been re-buttoned.
Why couldn’t I have fallen into 1790
, she wondered,
when dresses were cut high under the bust and flowed loosely?

She opened the door and Cecilia beamed at her with a worried smile.

‘You must have so much on your mind, dear Win. But I urge you not to worry about Anne.’

Anne hadn’t even crossed her mind beyond that first moment of anxiety bubbling up through Winifred. ‘I’m not worried about Anne and Willie,’ she said, remembering the boy’s name. ‘They are both safe and with people who love them. All I can worry about now is my lord husband,’ she said, amazed at how politely the words were flowing.

‘Did you write to Mrs Mills in London?’

Jane tried not to smile at the memory. ‘Yes, I have the letter here,’ she said, returning to the writing desk where she had laboured using a quill and dipping it in ink, grateful for that course in calligraphy all those years ago. Amazingly, though,
once she’d opened herself up to being Winifred, the skills had flooded into her consciousness, and scratching with the nib had felt relatively easy and normal. So had the polite, stilted language required for letter-writing. But the urgency was there and hopefully Mrs Mills would have rooms.

‘The rider is here. Let me take the letter from you.’

‘We might beat it to London,’ Jane wondered aloud. Winifred’s knowledge told her that mail took days, weeks even, unless a single messenger on horseback was paid to take the letter directly to the recipient, door to door, come hail or shine.

‘In this snow? I fear not, but should our luck bring us such providence, then it will matter not who reaches London first. I’m sure lodgings will be gladly provided for us, given our cause.’

Jane nodded. ‘Thank you, Cecilia. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

Her friend smiled, squeezing her hand. ‘Rest now, dear. I shall have a warm jar of posset sent up.’

‘No spice,’ Jane said, delighted that she even knew to say this.

‘Egg, treacle and no nutmeg in the milk, I promise. It will help you to sleep.’

‘When do we leave?’

‘The day after tomorrow. Charles is readying the carriage, and organising a groom to travel with us.’

‘Very good. I must thank him. Goodnight, Cecilia.’

She undressed, relieved to be rid of her gown, and buttoned herself into a sensible but exquisitely embroidered cotton nightgown. The maid came in with Jane’s posset; she had also delivered a warming pan hours before, so the chill in the bed had been beaten back. A modest fire had now burned to embers in the grate. But Jane could sense the frost clawing at the small panes of glass in the windows and it made her wonder about the journey that lay ahead. It looked as though it could be difficult to travel the entire distance by coach. The snow was becoming
very deep. Fortunately, she’d learned to ride as a child. She had always been pretty good at it too, but she was glad it would not be
all
the way to London on horseback.

As she slipped beneath the sheets, sighing at the unexpected pleasure of the feather pillow, Jane thought about Winifred’s husband. Where would he be sleeping tonight? Was he cold? Was he frightened?

As her lids began to feel heavy and she prepared to welcome the escape of unconsciousness, a sudden thought bubbled up from Winifred. Jane’s drowsy eyes blazed open with panic. There were incriminating papers at Terregles. They had to be hidden. She had to beat the government officers to the Nithsdale family house and get rid of anything that might endanger William, or indeed their family, even further. They also needed to hide some money and jewellery, and other papers that should never fall into Crown hands.

Within moments she’d banished that safe, drowsy state she craved and was running down the stairs barefoot, with no care for her unpinned hair, and only a hastily grabbed dressing gown for modesty. She began calling for her friends and all three came hurrying out of the drawing room, their expressions filled with worry. In Charles’s case, his face was also plastered with mortification at seeing his sister-in-law so under-dressed.

‘Winifred!’ Mary gasped. ‘What ails you?’

‘I crave your pardon …’ she began.

‘Are you sickening again?’ Cecilia asked, rushing to meet her on the stairs.

‘No, no. Forgive me this disturbance, but tomorrow I must leave for Terregles.’ At their looks of shock, she pressed straight on with explaining her reasons.

‘You make a good case, Winifred,’ Charles said when she had finished. He looked far more attractive, she thought, now that he was devoid of the wig and stripped down to his waistcoat and breeches, shirt unbuttoned at the collar. He had a small
sherry glass in his hand. ‘You should leave tomorrow. Waste not a moment.’