The Birth of Blue Satan Read Free Page A

flesh on his face turned a purplish hue.
    “I shall withhold your allowance,” Lord Hawkhurst blurted finally. “That should bring you to heel.”
    Despite the tension between them, Gideon nearly smiled. Every time his father was the least bit annoyed, he threatened to withhold Gideon’s allowance. The problem was that Gideon possessed a sizeable fortune of his own, derived from an estate in France, which had been bequeathed to him by his maternal grandfather. It would suffice to maintain him and a wife in a comfortable style. Given this, as well as his disinclination to waste money on vices, and Lord Hawkhurst’s threat lacked punch.
    “I hate to inform you, but you have done such an admirable job in raising me that I save much more money than I spend. It will be a very long time, I fear, before this deprivation can cause me any hardship.”
    Lord Hawkhurst’s expression had begun to relax, and his tantrum might have ended there if Gideon had not perversely added, “So, I shall have to marry Mrs. Isabella without your blessing.”
    This last statement was a leap of faith, since Gideon had not yet proposed and Isabella had not yet accepted. But Lord Hawkhurst did not know this, and his age-lined face hardened again.
    “Then . . . it is over, sir. But I warn you, St. Mars, that that Whig’s daughter shall never enter this house.”
    They parted on that hostile note. As Gideon left by way of the antechamber, James Henry, his father’s receiver-general, glanced up from his work to give him a condemning look. Enraged by this impertinence from his father’s favoured servant, Gideon strode quickly past the white-faced stares of the liveried footmen, who waited in the hall for their master’s orders and stormed out of the Abbey.
    His anger, which was normally quick to fade, remained with him throughout the long, cold journey back. Changing horses at the posting houses he had used on the way down, he pushed them each so hard over the deep Wealden roads as to cover them with mud and sweat. The last horse was his, a fine, handsome bay with a great deal of strength. When he saw how badly he had tired it, he walked it over London Bridge instead of taking the horse ferry at Lambeth.
    It was long after dark by the time he guided his exhausted horse through the shops and the traffic on the bridge, only to find that the City streets were more than usually teeming. In spite of the bitter March air, men spilled out of the coffee houses and taverns, discussing—some in shouts and some in whispers—the day’s disturbing news. Bolingbroke, Viscount St. John, had tried unsuccessfully to justify his actions before Parliament in negotiating the Treaty of Utrecht. Mr. Walpole, the paymaster general of the armed forces—and an up-and-coming force—would chair a Committee of Secrecy to investigate the former ministry and its dealings with France.
    Such an investigation, Gideon knew, was likely to turn up Bolingbroke’s communications with the Pretender, for like many careful men he had hedged his bets, publicly welcoming King George while secretly encouraging James Stuart.
    Gideon had learned this from remarks his father had let drop while bemoaning the lack of leadership in the Stuart cause. But the Jacobites must be aware of it as well, for those in London had clearly been roused.
    He passed an alehouse known to be a Jacobite haunt and heard an itinerant singing man booming out the words of an old and treasonable ditty.
     
    The Baptist and the Saint
    The Schismatick and Swearer
    Have ta’n the Covenant
    That Jemmy comes not here, sir
    Whilst all this Pious Crew do plot
    To pull Old Jemmy down . . .
     
    It was not the deposed James II, but the new Jemmy, his son—the Pretender, James Francis Stuart—who inspired them now. The working people would never tire of the rowdy verses that poked fun at the Whigs and Dissenters, the German, and the Dutch, which dated from the time when James II had been overthrown by the Dutch William of