Виктория Холт - Courting Her Highness

George I had been proclaimed King of England; the people of London were behind him. Marlborough was coming home.

Abigail sent her maid to tell Lord Masham that she wished to see him.

Samuel came at once and she went to him and put her arm through his.

“This is the end, Samuel,” she said. “There will be nothing more for us here.”

“I know,” he answered.

“So we will take the children and go away from Court.”

“It will be a different life for you, Abigail.”

“I know it is the end.”

“Or,” he said, “the beginning.”

She laughed and she was surprised by the warmth in that laughter. “It would depend on the way one looked at it.”

“Do you remember when we first met?” he asked her.

She nodded. “We were watching the Duke of Gloucester drill his boy soldiers in the Park.”

“Neither of us was very important then, Abigail.”

“We were not. And now it’s Lord and Lady Masham, with a family to keep.”

“We’ll go to the country. We’ll buy a manor there.”

“The thought of being a country squire is not distasteful to my lord?”

“I can imagine in some circumstances it would be very pleasant.”

“Yes, Samuel,” she said. “So could I!”

She wondered then whether she meant it. She thought of the joys of Court life, the intrigues and triumphs.

She would never forget the days when it had been necessary to be on good terms with Abigail Hill in order to get a hearing with the Queen. She would always remember the first time Robert Harley had leaned towards her, endearingly, affectionately and said: “We are cousins.”

She would never forget him; she would until she died ask herself with a touch of pain whether in other circumstances it might have been so different.

Revenged she had been, but there was little satisfaction in revenge. She had her sons; her daughter. They would have more children. Perhaps in them she could find the fulfilment she had failed to find in her own life.

It was over. There remained the country. There was no other choice.

The Marlboroughs landed at Dover to a salute of guns.

“Long live the great Duke of Marlborough!” went up the cry.

Sarah sniffed the air. Oh, how good it was to be back!

And there was Marl. The great Duke once more! The friend of the new King! The people were strewing flowers in their path; they were to ride through London in their glass coach.

“This is how it was after Blenheim!” cried Sarah.

And as the Marlboroughs rode into London, in search of fresh glories, Lord and Lady Masham, with their children, rode out seeking obscurity.

The Marlboroughs might be back in favour but it was not as it had once been, and Sarah continued to sigh for the old days, when those who craved royal favour knew they must first seek her help.

The new King was quite unlike the last Sovereign. George had little love for England; he made no concessions to his new people and he lacked the Stuart charm—so strong in Charles II and present even in his brother James and in his nieces Mary and Anne. George was a stolid German, who could not speak English, who had imprisoned his wife on suspected adultery and brought his German ministers and mistresses with him. That one mistress should be excessively fat and the other extremely thin was characteristic of him. He was indifferent to ridicule; he was crude and a boor. But the country was behind him for the simple reason that the alternative was a Catholic.

In his Court there was no place for Sarah. The King’s German mistresses were quite unimpressed by this blustering quarrelsome woman. Marlborough was useful, of course, but Sarah could not shut her eyes to the fact that the war had had a disastrous effect upon his health.

But when he rode through the City he was cheered; in fact it was noticed that he received a more enthusiastic welcome than the King; but that was a temporary triumph, and nothing was the same, mourned Sarah.

The new King delighted her by offering Marlborough his old post as Captain-General of the Army; and when John said that he thought it would be wise to refuse she was overcome with rage.

“Why! Why in God’s name! Are you mad, Marl?” she demanded.

“My dearest Sarah, I am not the man I was,” he explained. “I am too old for this most exacting role.”

“Too old! I never heard such nonsense. You’ll take it. Have we come back to tell the world we are too old! What have we been waiting for all this time?”

He embraced her and tried to stroke her lovely hair, which always delighted him, but she tore herself away.

“Marl, what nonsense is this that has got into you?”

“To be a success, a Captain-General must be strong … alert … capable.…”

“Oh, be silent. There are times when I could take a stick to you.”

“I am the best judge of my capabilities.…”

“So you want to rot in the country?” Her eyes were flashing; her hair had fallen loose about her shoulders. He thought how young she looked, and that her hair had lost scarcely any of the bright gold it had had in her youth.

She followed his thoughts and shook her head angrily so that the golden strands waved about her head.

“You don’t age, Sarah,” he said. “Your hair is the same as when we were first married.”

“Sentimental nonsense!” she cried. “You are offered the post of Captain-General and you talk about hair. Now, Marl, of course you will take it.”

“Listen, Sarah, I am no longer young. I am ten years older than you. I am not fit for the post.”

“You will take it,” she said.

“I will not.”

When he spoke like that he meant it. There had been occasions during their married life when she had had to bow to his wishes.

“So you have decided this?”

“I cannot take a post which I know I am not fit for. Sarah, for God’s sake, accept the truth. We are no longer young. We must adjust ourselves to this new phase of our lives. We have each other.…”

Again the golden strands were shaken. Then she turned and left him.

She shut herself in her bedroom and looked at her angry reflection. He would rather stroke her hair than command an army, would he? In a sudden fury she picked up a pair of scissors and cut off strands of her hair so that instead of falling to her waist it scarcely reached her shoulders. Then gathering it up she went with it to his study and threw it all on to his desk.

Back in her room she looked at her reflection. She seemed different—older.

Grimly she smirked. “We shall see how my lord Marlborough likes that!” she cried.

But when they next met he made no comment; and when she went into his study she could find no trace of the hair.

He told her the next day that, as she so wished it, he had decided to accept the King’s offer.

Marlborough was once more Captain-General of the Army.

It soon became clear that the new King, although he had decided to make use of Marlborough’s services, had no great liking for him; and although some court posts were allotted to the family, none came the way of Sarah.

Mary, now Duchess of Montague, became a Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess of Wales, and her husband was given a regiment. The Earl of Bridgewater, husband of Elizabeth who had died recently, was made Chamberlain to the Prince of Wales, while Henrietta’s husband, Lord Godolphin, was given the offices he had possessed before the fall of his father and the Churchill faction, and Lord Sunderland, Anne’s husband, was made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

An indication, commented Sarah, that the family was back in favour; and although Sunderland might be furious to be sent to Ireland, at least he had a little more recognition than herself.

But, she declared, they would soon find they could not do without the Marlboroughs.

Bolingbroke, realizing the danger of his position on the accession of George, had fled to France and there went into the service of James whom he had tried so hard to bring to the throne. As a result, James made an attempt to gain it in 1715; and then Marlborough as Captain-General, was called in to serve the King.

Alas, he was showing his age and it was clear even to him that he was no longer fit for the field. Although he directed operations he took no active part, and this more than anything brought home to him the fact that his days of glory were over.

When the rebellion was at an end, Sarah took him to St. Albans there to nurse him back to health.

It was at this time that a further blow struck the household. A letter came to the house addressed to the Duke and the Duchess from the Earl of Sunderland to tell them that his wife, their daughter Anne, had been taken ill with pleuritic fever and he thought it advisable if they would come to her bedside without delay.

When John read the letter he sank down on to a chair and trembled violently so that Sarah, desperately anxious for her daughter, was equally so for her husband. He was in his sixty-sixth year and his had been a life of stress and tension. The death of her daughter, Elizabeth, had shaken him severely, and had put years on him; and now it seemed that Anne, the favourite of all her children, was in danger.

“I will go to her,” she said, “and you will remain here, you are unfit to travel.”

John protested. He would go to his daughter and nothing would keep him away.

While they were arguing, there was a further letter. Anne, Lady Sunderland, was dead.

Sarah had wept until those about her thought she would lose her reason, and when Sarah wept the whole household knew it; hers was no secret grief.