The Shadow of Tyburn Tree (66 page)

‘What you tell me, Sir, is truly terrible,' Roger murmured. ‘Do His Majesty's physicians offer any explanation as to the cause of the disease?'

‘None. 'Tis not hereditary in the family, or caused by any particular mental shock. But some of us who know him most intimately have formed the opinion that his brain has become overwrought from brooding on the conduct of his sons. The King has ever been a plain-living man with a particular horror of gambling and debauchery. It may well be that the scandalous excesses of the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York have upset the balance of their father's mind.'

Roger sighed. ‘And should His Majesty not recover, I take it there is no escaping the Prince becoming our ruler. In such a case God help us all.'

‘Now that the Cabinet has been officially informed that the King is mad, we have no alternative but to consider some form of Regency. Whatever limits Parliament may see fit to impose upon the Regents' powers 'twould hardly be feasible for them to deny him the right to choose his own Ministers.
It follows therefore that the present government will swiftly be replaced by the Princes' friends.'

‘With Mr. Fox as Prime Minister,' added Roger bitterly.

Pitt laughed, not unkindly. ‘Mayhap; but it looks as if the unlucky star that has ever dogged poor Charles in his hopes of the Premiership is still in the ascendent. He is at present touring Italy with Mrs. Armistead, and by the time he is returned all may have been settled. Sheridan has stepped into his place as the Princes' chief confidant, and now heads the cabal which would so joyfully hound me from office.'

‘Oh, God, Sir! Can naught be done?' exclaimed Roger.

‘Nay, nothing. Events must take their course. But you see how impossible it is, now that my enemies know me to hold no longer anything but the shadow of power, for me to commit Britain to a war. Tell me now briefly such other news as you may have, for I can give little time to anything except the present emergency.'

Roger had taken the letter he had stolen from Alexis Orlof from the buckram lining of his coat-collar that morning, and he now produced it.

‘I brought this out of Russia, Sir. Its meaning may at first appear obscure to you; but 'tis the written proof that the Czarina Catherine gave orders for the murder of her husband and, as such, I imagine it to be a document of considerable value.'

The Prime Minister read it through, and asked curiously: ‘How did you come by this?

‘If you are pressed for time, Sir, 'tis too long a story to tell now; as would also be my impressions of the Russian Court, and my dealings with King Gustavus and Mr. Elliot.'

‘Then I will appoint a more suitable occasion.' Pitt agreed. ‘As to this letter, pray do not think that I wish to belittle the risks you may have been put to in obtaining it. But I fear that it is more a thing of historic interest than political value. Its publication would be taken by the Empress as a deliberate attempt on our part to alienate the affection of her subjects. So we should never publish it unless our intention was to provoke a quarrel with Russia, and such a contingency is remote. May I take it that when I can find the leisure to hear a full account of your travels, a message to my Lord Amesbury's will reach you?'

Roger stood up. ‘Yes, Sir, Lord Edward Fitz-Deverel most kindly affords me hospitality in his father's house when I am in London.'

Having taken leave of the Prime Minister, Roger walked across the park to Arlington Street. He was greatly disturbed
by what he had been told of the King's madness, both on account of the disastrous effect it must have on the nation and on his own affairs. It was good news that Hugh Elliot had succeeded in prolonging the armistice between the Danes and the Swedes for a further period of a month, but what was to happen at the end of that time if no fleet was sent and Mr. Pitt were out of office? Moreover, he had counted on a squadron being despatched at once in answer to Mr. Elliot's appeal, and had intended to sail with it himself to rejoin Natalia Andreovna. It was now five weeks since he had left her and, in spite of his letters, he feared that she must be thinking very badly of him.

At Amesbury House he found Droopy Ned just going to bed. It transpired that the eccentric young nobleman had been up all night owing to an experiment with one of his eastern drugs, which had made his mind so active that he had found it impossible to sleep; but the effects were now wearing off so he had intended to sleep through the day.

Having greeted Roger with delight he changed his intention, took another dose of the drug to keep himself awake, and ordered breakfast for them both.

From Droopy, Roger had no secrets, so over the meal he gave him an account of his adventures, including a perfectly frank statement as to how he had come to marry Natalia, and his present relations with her.

When the story was done, Droopy looked considerably perturbed. ‘Egad, my poor Roger,' he exclaimed. ‘You have got yourself into a pretty pickle, to have taken such a vixen for a wife. Were I in your shoes I must confess I'd be much tempted to leave her where she is.'

‘How can I?' Roger shrugged.' 'Twas at my behest that she accompanied me out of Russia, and she dare not return there. In her strange way, I have not a doubt that she loves me; so I would think myself despicable did I abandon her for good.'

‘You are fixed in your determination to bring her to England, then?'

‘Aye. I see naught else for it. She is a handsome baggage and of a pretty wit, so her appearance in society will make quite a stir and plenty of men will envy me. Do I but treat her fairly she may make me no worse a wife than one I might have taken to the altar out of a sudden passion, or married to please my parents.'

‘I scarce imagine this Russian Madame will do the last; and did your lady-mother know the truth of how you came to marry I vow she would be monstrous upset.'

‘You are right there, Droop. But I have no intention of
disclosing aught of this to her. Hugh Elliot I told because he was intimately concerned, with my Russian mission; yourself because I count you my closest friend, and if things go ill between Natalia and myself I'll need someone to whom I can ease my mind. But to allow anyone else to suppose that I do not love her would place her in a false position; and I have vowed that I will make her happy if I can.'

‘Do your parents yet know the bare fact of your marriage?'

‘Nay. I have been so fully occupied these two months past, that I have not writ them a single line since I left Petersburg to go into Finland. I dread having to tell them, too; for I fear they will be much distressed at my having married without their knowledge, and it will be hard to explain why I did not at least write to tell them of my intention. It would be far easier if I had Natalia with me, as I could then break the news in a letter from London asking their permission to take her down and present her to them. They are too generous not to receive her kindly, and by the time we arrived maybe the excitement of meeting her would cause them to forget my inconsiderate behaviour. As things are I have no excuse to write, so must hie me to Lymington, administer this shock, and be prepared to spend some miserable days in an atmosphere of restrained displeasure.'

Droopy sat silent for a moment, a thoughtful look in his pale blue eyes, then he said: ‘I think you right, in that they would take it better if you could produce your wife within a day or two of having exploded this bombshell. You tell me that Mr. Pitt requires you to wait upon him again with full particulars of your mission. That is excuse enough for you to remain in London for the present. As soon as your business is completed you intend to set out for Denmark to fetch Mistress Brook home. Since the matter is near two months old already an extra week or two will make no difference; so why not shelve the problem of acquainting your parents with it until your return.'

Roger grinned at him. ‘You were ever a sage counsellor, Ned, and I think your advice excellent. We will let sleeping dogs lie then, until I can produce my Russian bride.'

They talked gloomily for a little about the King's illness, then Droopy began to yawn; so Roger left him and went up to the room that, since his return from France, his friend had insisted he should consider as his own.

There, he found a number of letters that had accumulated for him and, among them, two from Georgina.

The first was from Athens, where she and her father had spent the early summer. She said that the society of the city
was provincial in the extreme, but that its surrounding scenery and ancient temples made it fascinating beyond anything of which she had ever dreamed. The classic names, Parnassus, Corinth, Eleusis, Delphi tumbled over each other in her vivid descriptions of snow-capped mountains, olive-green hillsides and wine-dark seas. She had done a lot of painting; but, she declared archly, a plaguey persistent string of gallants had prevented her giving as much time to it as she would have wished. She confessed that one or two were not altogether lacking in those accomplishments and parts calculated to appeal to a poor lonely young widow; and that one in particular, a Count Zorbâs, who had eyes as black as sloes and moustachois as fierce as a pair of upturned scimitars, had regarded her with such longing for a whole week, that she had felt compelled to take pity on him.

The second letter came from Constantinople which, she said, stank to high heaven of rotting fish and was pestiferous with hordes of flea-ridden pariah dogs that were purposely retained to act as scavengers in the streets. But again, the Golden Horn, the Mosques and the Dolma Baghtche Palace were sights which it was well worth sustaining much petty inconvenience to see. Of the Grand Signior, Abdul Achmed IV, she spoke as being one of the most enlightened Princes of his era, speaking French, Italian and Spanish fluently, and quite amazingly
au courant
with the latest intrigues at the courts of Versailles, St. James, Naples and Madrid. His greatest delight lay in intimate private parties consisting almost exclusively of cultured foreigners and at which the principal guests were the English and French Ambassadors, Sir Robert Ainslie and Roger's old friend the Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier. Although the Sultan was a strict follower of the Mohammedan faith in public he treated his Christian subjects with wide tolerance and was, in private, a great connoisseur of fine wines. In fact, he had once jestingly remarked that ‘If he were to become an infidel he should assuredly embrace the Roman Catholic communion, for that all the best European wines grew in their countries; and indeed that he had never heard of a good Protestant wine.'

Georgina went on to say that she had visited several seraglios and found the females in them abysmally ignorant in all things with the single exception of the art of love; and that it was to believe in a myth to think that husbands could ensure fidelity in their wives by shutting them up in harems, for the inmates of these zenanas employed themselves in little except intriguing with the eunuchs, who were supposed to guard them, to admit personably young men in the guise of pedlars and barbers. On going abroad she had been compelled to
adopt the veil as a necessary precaution against the coarse insults of the vulgar but, she declared, with her eyes left free a woman could wreak as much or more havoc than with a bare face, had she a mind to it, and it was on these expeditions to the bazaars that the Turkish ladies acquired their gallants. Several wealthy Turks had offered her father sums of a flattering magnitude to buy her in marriage, and the elderly but gallant Capudan Pasha, who commanded the Turkish fleet in the war against the barbarous and rapacious Russians, had become so enamoured of her that, on his offer for her being refused he had, mercifully without success, attempted to have her kidnapped.

As Roger read the many pages of bold, vigorous scrawl, tears came into his eyes. He saw again as clearly as though they had parted only the day before, his dear, vital, beautiful Georgina. She was, he felt, a woman in a million, and that whatever other passions he might experience, he would never truly love any other. Yet he felt no twinge of jealousy at her relation of her amours, only a sense of gladness that she was so obviously enjoying her travels, which must be made doubly interesting from the companionship of her wise, broadminded and erudite father.

He had written to her from Copenhagen, Stockholm and during the early part of his stay in St. Petersburg; and he recalled now, with some misgiving, that he had regaled her with a humorous account of the early stages of his affair with Natalia Andreovna. A little grimly he wondered what she would have to say when she learned that he had married the young widow who had first put him on a run-away horse and then put her maid in her bed after giving him an assignation. He had an uncomfortable feeling that when they eventually met they would dislike one another intensely.

However, that evening he wrote once more to Natalia, telling her of the tempest that had kept him a prisoner in Bergen for a week, and that now he had got home he would be further delayed in returning to her, as he had been asked to carry new instructions to the British Minister in Copenhagen, and these might take ten days or so to prepare. Once again he ended with most abject apologies and protestations of his unwavering devotion.

For a week he hung about awaiting a summons from the Prime Minister. During it he got himself a new wardrobe and renewed many of the acquaintances he had made in London during the previous winter. He also frequently accompanied Droopy Ned to White's. This Tory stronghold was plunged in gloom, owing to the King's malady and the approaching fall of
Mr. Pitt's administration, but Roger and Droopy now spent much of their time there exchanging rumours and speculating on the final outcome of the crisis.

He felt that at such a time it would ill become him to pester his harrassed patron for an interview, but he was very anxious to get his report off his chest, so that he might be on his way back to Denmark. In consequence, having received no message by Monday, the 2nd of November, he went to Downing Street and, instead of sending up his name, patiently waited in the hall for nearly two hours, in order that he might put himself in the Prime Minister's way when he left for the House.