Flora McIvor Page 8

  In representing Miss McIvor’s situation, and her claim on the attention, through your good offices of His Gracious Majesty King James, and of His Grace the Cardinal Prince Henry Stuart, I wish to acknowledge openly my own position and to correct the misrepresentations and calumnies that have been spread by my enemies and by those who have sought to belittle Prince Charles Edward in his father’s eyes.

  During the expedition led by the Prince as Regent in Britain, I attended the royal Court in Scotland and was honoured to receive the trust and favour of His Royal Highness. At that time, and in my own home country, I pledged my undying loyalty and love to the Prince. Subsequently, after the failure of the expedition, through no fault of the Regent who showed undaunted courage, I continued my service in exile in Europe. When I was summoned by His Royal Highness to accompany him in his lonely travails following his expulsion from France, I readily came to his side where I have remained since. I make no claim on the Prince’s person but continue faithful to the love I pledged, at His good pleasure.

  Miss McIvor, as you know, was also in attendance at the Regent’s Court in Scotland, and an active supporter of the Prince’s army through the participation of Clan McIvor which provided three hundred clansmen led by the Chief. He was captured at the battle of Clifton leading an action against Cumberland’s dragoons and subsequently hanged at Carlisle. The estate is forfeit though some of the clan remain living on their lands. After the cruel suppression of the Highlands of Scotland, Miss McIvor joined a group of exiles in Boulogne where she was for a time in my company along with others committed to continuing the struggle in Britain.

  The plan for a further Rising in both England and Scotland has been regarded by some as a rash undertaking, yet it was the failure of England to participate that caused the retreat of 1745. Loyal supporters in England have been untouched by the destruction in Scotland, despite which the clans were once more ready to fight for their ancient rights.

  This plan was betrayed, as is well known throughout Europe. But some have alleged, as you must be aware, that this treachery was at my instigation, due to my connection with the Court of Hanover in London through my elder sister Catherine. This a baseless lie, and I have accordingly attached a deposition begun by Miss McIvor regarding Alister Ruadh of Glengarry, now styled Chief of Glengarry, but commonly known as Young Glengarry.

  Though containing distressing matter, and showing signs of distress or fever, this is an account of grave importance which will I believe not have come to your hand by any other party. The witness made by Miss McIvor supports my own account of these matters in which we were both closely involved. I fear that Miss McIvor’s testimony has not been believed, or set aside due to its personal nature, and that Glengarry remains a danger to all those attached to our cause.

  At the time of her writing, Flora McIvor was sick and in great trouble in Boulogne. I was able to secure her temporary relief through the good offices of the Sisters of Teresa, and she has been recovering in their Convent at Paris. I give thanks that God in his mercy has spared dear Flora for the salvation of her soul, for she is as I am a faithful daughter of the Church. It is my sincere plea that His Majesty King James, and His Grace the Cardinal Prince Henry, provide some succour to their daughter in distress, mindful of her close connection with their family, and her devoted service.

  Our dear Flora has suffered both as a faithful servant and as a true Highlander. Her betrayal at the hands of Glengarry is a grievous personal wound, striking at the heart of everything she grew to value as the daughter and sister of McIvor, whose unswerving devotion to the House of Stuart has been the animating principle of their lives. I beg that you prevent that wound from becoming mortal.

  I trust that you will accept my good faith in writing in this matter, and my obligation to His Majesty King James. You will know that I have borne a child to Prince Charles Edward. She has been baptised Louisa as a daughter of the Church and of the House of Stuart. It is my concern that Louisa should be brought up in accordance with her station, and her importance in present circumstances to the continuation of the royal line.

  But, in confidence, the situation of His Royal Highness Prince Charles does not allow for his daughter’s upbringing. Living as a fugitive, in constant disguise from spies or assassins, has made Charles Edward suspicious and dark in temperament. His former generosity is cankered by mean imaginings. He seeks ever more demeaning incognitos and salves his disappointments with wines and strong spirits. Moreover he has abandoned the practice of our religion, proclaiming himself Protestant.

  I confess that I am sometimes in fear for the safety of my person and of our child. I beg that you bring these matters also to the attention of His majesty King James, and that I may continue in communication with yourself until some remedy can be found for these ills.

  I am the faithful servant of His Majesty,

  Clementina Walkinshaw

  4

  FLORA SAT NEAR the high window to make the most of what light was available. The aperture was barred on the other side of the glass, but a wan sun still warmed her hands as they moved over the texture of the cloth keeping pace with her immaculate stitching. It appeared, to her surprise, this early girlhood skill had survived her sickness. Flora felt a weakening tremor of relief wash through her. This was something at least for which she could practice gratitude.

  It was Sister Teresa who had coaxed her back to the needle, providing threads and a sample of embroidered cloth from a shop in the Rue de Théâtre. Or so she had said, amidst many other tempting descriptions of life beyond the narrow wooden bed on which Flora had lain for longer than she could remember or measure. Boulogne seemed as remote as a past life. And before that.

  Coming gradually out of her fever, Flora had been determined to accumulate papers and to write. Again the Sister had provided, laying out pen, ink and paper. But the astute nurse quickly sensed that some other distraction was necessary to her patient’s recovery. Pulling herself onto a stiff backed chair Flora would sort pages into shifting piles. Then she covered sheet after sheet with scribbled journals, day after day relapsing into exhausted dream-troubled sleep, when eased back onto the bed. Then the sorting would begin once more.

  The little room was as restricted as a cell. The barred window closed off one end and a solid door the other. Between the bed and a plain table there was just enough space for the chair. So Flora preferred now to put the chair between the table and the window with its back to the wall. Under the table was a basket piled high with papers. They were unevenly stacked but Flora knew that each one was covered with her writing. She wanted to leave them there for now and trust to the steady motion of her hands slipping in the needle, tucking the cloth and pulling through in supple sequence. It was safe and calm to sew while ignoring the scribbled journals.

  But Flora was not yet able to leave them alone. They were in her mind and on the beating of her pulse. Sometimes it had seemed as if that beat would possess her by completely overwhelming her thoughts. Perhaps she should burn the sheets page by page. There was a tiny fireplace between the table and the door. No fire had been lit in its cold grate since Flora had occupied this cell. Yet she had a candle at night, shaded by a linen cover.

  If only she had been able to sit by Fergus’s bed and light a candle. To watch with his body through the hours of darkness, before laying him in the friendly earth of McIvor. Tonight, she thought, I shall light a candle for Fergus. She could go to chapel with Sister Teresa. The immortal soul outlived the body. Did it lie in some common grave twisted, broken, unwashed?

  Her left hand had pulled a paper from the basket. The fabric she was sewing rested on her knee below the sheet which was covered in jagged letters. Poor stitching. Her eyes wandered for a moment as the marks came into focus. Read what had been written. For the first time. Flora swithered.

  ‘When I was thirteen years old I heard a voice in my father’s garden at Donremy. It came from the side where the church stood, and was followed by a bright light. A
t first I was frightened, but presently I became aware that it was the voice of an angel, who has ever since been my guide and instructor. It was St Michael. I also saw St Catherine and St Margaret, who admonished me and directed me. I could easily distinguish by the voice whether it was an angel or a saint that spoke to me. They are usually accompanied by a bright light. The voices are soft and sweet. The angels appeared to me with natural heads. I have seen them and do see them with my eyes.’

  Flora was standing reciting these words, learned by heart. Was it her mother in France long since, or Clementina in Rome? Her lesson. Her performance for special occasions. She had no need of the paper, even now. ‘Since then I have done nothing except in conformity with these voices and revelations. And now, during my trial, I speak only as they prompt me.’

  When she was eighteen, the voice had told her to go Vaucouleurs where she would find a captain to take her to the king of France. So the Maid of France became an emblem of war, mounted and armoured against the English. Till at the siege the voice foretold the capture of the city and the wounding of the Maid by an arrow penetrating six inches into her shoulder.

  All of her life Flora had prepared for the call to arms in a holy cause. She had become an orphan in the faith. And when the call came, she had repulsed the plea of Edward Waverley for domestic happiness. But unlike the Maid of Orleans she had not been allowed to fight. It was Fergus who had been captured, tried and hung. Only then had Flora tried to strike her own blow. The Maid had been burned but not dishonoured or shamed. She put the paper to one side without reading any further.

  Her hands remembered twisting white cockades on the huge rough board table in Castle McIvor. They moved gently over her lap without disturbing the present piece of work. That had been the time of hope, her emblem of war. Then the occupation of Edinburgh and victory at Prestonpans, with Fergus at the centre of the triumph. Supported by Flora, who fussed over her clansmen as family. And all had revolved like a courtly dance around Charles Edward.

  But after the army had gone south she felt discarded and useless, cooped up at Bannockburn House waiting. At least Clementina had known how to take command. Was that why she had obeyed the younger woman’s summons and gone to Boulogne? She wanted to strike her own blow, even though Scotland seemed for now without hope.

  Could such violence deliver a just return? Yet Flora had gone along with it. Extreme violence had been visited on her Highland people, on her brother by the House of Hanover. She wanted to reply in kind. Now she doubted her own self. Who had participated in that wild scheme? Was it some other Flora who had been blind to Glengarry’s double dealing, to the hopelessness of those hidden devisings?

  It was a black maze from which you could not escape whole, as had always been intended. But worse the purpose was wrong; no good could come from such moral blindness. Why had she not realised what now she saw? Already she had been sick, deluded. Beautiful treacherous Glengarry had appeared as her protector, a guardian angel amidst distress. She had fallen under his malign spell. To be resisted.

  Flora looked at the embroidery beneath her hand. The image was of Mount Carmel, which Sister Teresa had brought unfinished from a linen store to distract her patient. In the last week or two, after she had begun to get up from bed in the mornings, Flora had dressed herself in a plain smock provided by the Sisters. It hung loosely around her slight figure, but she had been able to go for meals to the Sisters’ bare refectory. Only the household nuns and other lay attendants were there, since in this Carmelite house many were secluded for solitary meditation. Silence was the mealtime rule, but there was also a reading taken from some improving work, often the writings of St Teresa the founder. It felt like some kind of progress.

  Even in her weakened state Flora’s ear was acute. She heard a difference between the Saint’s polished exhortations, her ‘Way of Perfection’, and rawer passages from St Teresa’s ‘Life’. They spoke of conflict and a never ending struggle to gain recognition, without casting off obedience to the Church. Everyone around the young Teresa was consumed by their sense of honour, and the desire to avoid shame.

  Something in this rang true. The shame which people feared arose from race, birth, sex, religious standing. No-one was free of taint, least of all a young woman who despite her family’s Jewish origins was determined to reform the Church. But Teresa repudiated honour and shame. She fought with weapons of faith and love, yet she too had been sorely wounded by her weapons, pierced like Jeanne d’Arc.

  Flora’s attention strayed back towards the basket of papers. But instead she raised the needle and began to sew. It was enough for the day. Her arm rose and fell with the soothing movement of thread, up and through like an incoming tide. She felt as if her fight was over. Perhaps dreams would leave her sleeping self in peace.

  The next morning Flora rose early after an undisturbed rest. She felt stronger. After the morning meal she took a brush to help sweep the refectory. Then the long wooden tables were washed and scrubbed. She saw Sister Teresa nodding her encouragement, while still observing the rule of silence.

  Back in her own room, Flora looked for a moment at her embroidery and then moved her chair round between the table and the bed. Next she lifted the basket of jumbled papers from under the table onto its working surface. She sat down and pushed the sewing to one side. The time had come to read and sift, to recover that time. Flora pushed back her hair that had grown long. It would need to be tied back if such a thing as a ribbon could be found in this place.

  She did not begin with the top leaf. Rather Flora pulled a page at random from the foot of the pile. It was headed, ‘my own Alister Ruadh’. She shoved it back. Another sheet was pulled out. It was prefaced as ‘Lives of Martha and Mary’. But the following page was urgently scribbled with references to ‘Rose’ and ‘Clementina’, heavily scored out and replaced with ‘Martha’, and ‘The Magdalene’ and ‘Mary, Mother of Christ’.

  When had Flora last read from the Gospels? She glanced round and noticed that her well worn Douai Bible had been placed beneath the pillow. Sister Teresa had been her guardian angel over these restless, fevered weeks. But this much scored sheet made no sense, not now at any rate. She began to glance through the pages one after another. Some sections were descriptions of things that happened in Boulogne or London. But these short passages gave way to longer incoherent passages which mixed the three friends – Flora, Clementina and Rose – with characters from history, religion or legend. It was like her girlhood library regurgitated, with every volume mixed into the next.

  Yet leaning back against the chair back, Flora could see that the overall intent was a battle with shame, like Teresa’s. There was shame in her giving way to Glengarry’s promises of marriage. There was shame in Clementina’s liaison with O’Sullivan, and her pregnancy. Shame even in Rose’s abject dependence on Waverley’s goodwill. The codes of honour had been disrupted, breached, by the strange circumstance of war and exile. Was she still bound by them, or could she leave that shame behind her?

  Her mind turned to Clementina’s first child. It had seemed imperative that Charles Edward should not know of this birth, since she was in some fashion pledged to the prince. Her condition had prevented any travel to London in the Elibank affair. The secret was even more pressing now that Clementina had gone to Charles. Would O’Sullivan blab? He had been the reluctant messenger, sent to fetch the Magdalene. But by this time the baby had been given to the nuns in Boulogne, and the whole affair cloaked in silence. Clementina was now mother to Charles’ own daughter Louisa. Was that not cause for shame? And Flora was party to it.

  But Clementina acknowledged no shame. Even as Rose had gone to Waverley in search of an honourable marriage – something retrieved from the wreckage – this friend had chosen to live beyond convention. She openly claimed her devotion to Charles. As for O’ Sullivan, he had been shrugged off as a passing convenience – for both parties. Clementina considered herself on active service, and claimed the freedoms of a man in her situation
. Who was Flora to deny that right? The conventions of Palazzo Muti had not equipped her for what followed. She could not go back to the thirteen year old Flora at Clementina Sobieski’s side. Neither innocence nor certainty could be regained.

  There was a gentle tap on the door. Flora came to herself, suddenly unsure how long she had been lost in her memories. Sister Teresa came in and sat on the bed.

  ‘You are looking well today, Flora.’

  ‘I feel much better, Sister.’

  ‘Sister Maria asked if you might be able to help her in the mornings with the bedding.’

  ‘Of course, I am sure I could do that now.’

  ‘These are not hands that were bred to laundry though.’ Teresa reached across and took one of Flora’s slender hands in her own which though fine boned were roughened by age and labour. ‘You have had a difficult time.’

  ‘Did I say much in my fevers?’ Flora glanced uneasily towards the papers beside her on the table.

  ‘Not during the night. I think you wrote it all instead, when you were calmer in the daytimes.’ Teresa took a breath. ‘Mother Abbess understands something of your history, if not everything that has taken place since the war in Britain. She wants you to consider remaining here for a longer time.’

  Flora’s question was in her look.

  ‘Yes, perhaps to seek a vocation.’

  ‘And what of those pages?’

  ‘That is between you and a confessor, Flora. War is not kind to women. They are always among the victims.’

  ‘Please thank Mother Abbess for me, Teresa. I know you have all been very kind to me.’

  ‘But?’ Teresa’s lined face seemed faded and grey as it bent towards Flora’s delicate oval face and luminous white skin. The eyes were enlightened, kind.