Chapter 40
‘I have told you I was born in Martinique,’ he began.
He felt strangely detached from himself, though it seemed as if it had nothing to do with the alcohol he had consumed over the course of the day, and a great part of him could not believe that he was really going to tell her – or anyone – this.
But he was, he was committed to do so now, and he did not attempt to check the words as they rolled from him.
He’d never told a living soul any part of this most significant of secrets before, but he needed to share this with her now, or run completely mad.
‘I grew up on the island till I was almost seven, with a nurse – Celestine – to whom I had been entrusted as a newborn. I was very lucky in that respect – she loved me as if I had been her own. As I grew, I understood that my mother was a Frenchwoman of noble descent – a girl of fifteen, I later discovered – who had had a scandalous and secret affair with a man, or a boy, whose mother was a slave and father her master. That is my heritage, Allegra. Quadroon is the word for such as me. Bastard is another.’
At some point she had reached out and taken his hand again, and he clung to it like a drowning man as he went on.
‘One day Celestine and I boarded a ship and came to England, to Kent, to the people who became my adoptive parents. She died here, of the influenza. They were very good to me, though, and made me into an English gentleman, as far as they were able. I learned when I was seventeen or so – along with a great deal else – that Madame Severin, who was from Martinique like me, was my mother’s close schoolfriend and distant cousin, and took me into her home – in the first instance – to oblige her dear cousin.
This lady, my real mother, was by then married to a French viscount, prominent in the highest society under Louis XVI, and had other children with him.
Legitimate children. I’ve never met them; I don’t suppose I ever will.
The two cousins were in correspondence, all along, though that became difficult, of course, because of the upheavals and the war. ’
He could see her face, a little, in the light of the single candle in the room, and he could tell that she wanted to say that he had told her nothing yet of which he need be in the least ashamed or frightened. She had no idea.
He ploughed on before he lost his courage.
‘They had to tell me who she was, in the end, for my own protection. Who her husband was. Her second husband, I should explain – her first was executed during the Terror, and she narrowly escaped that fate. She was imprisoned, though I did not know it at the time, in the greatest privation and danger. Her fate was sealed, or so it seemed. But her situation changed greatly for the better when she was released, after Robespierre fell. She lived a precarious sort of a life for a while, and then met a man – a rising general, a young upstart, younger than her – and became his mistress, then a little while later his wife. These were terrible times, you know, such as we can scarcely imagine, and she did what she had to in order to survive. She always has.’
Allegra was still holding his hand. Perhaps he was gripping her so tightly she could not free herself even if she wanted to. He made a conscious effort to relax his clasp, and was pathetically grateful when she still did not pull away. That was something. Everything.
‘Your mother is married to one of Bonaparte’s generals?’ she asked resolutely, though he could see that she was shaken and attempting bravely to conceal it from him. ‘Well, I can see why you need to keep that hidden, in such times of war and enmity, but it is hardly…’
‘Oh, no,’ he said bleakly. ‘If it were only that.’ He couldn’t seem to bring himself to tell her everything, and yet now that he had come so far, he must. What a coward he was, when it came to it.
‘I went to meet her, three years ago, for the first time, you understand. The only time, because I don’t suppose I’ll ever see her again.
A momentous occasion, during the brief peace, but still in secret, for fear my existence, if it became known, would endanger her afresh, and her children, and me, of course.
I went to her chateau near Paris, in disguise. She gave me this ring as a keepsake…’
He dragged it out from where it lay around his neck, on the substantial golden chain he’d bought for it.
He rarely took it off, except when he was sparring – it could be damaged or lost – but now he did, and put it in her hand.
Heavy, solid, consequential. Warm from his skin.
It had a crest on it, in the form of a seal, though he knew she would not recognise it.
He could never risk using it for its original purpose, of course.
She examined it for a while, and then gave it back to him.
‘She cried, Allegra, when I met her – I daresay I did too, though I was not aware of it at the time – and told me of her forbidden love with my father, though I don’t know if that part of it was true, or just a tale she spun to protect me from some more sordid truth.
She’s very beautiful, even now – everyone says she is, and they’re right, though they criticise her teeth; you’ll have heard that too, probably.
I didn’t notice them, myself. She told me I have her eyes, and that at least is true.
The colour, you may have observed, is unusual.
I worry about that sometimes. That someone who knew her before the Revolution will see me, and wonder.
Probably that’s foolish, though, for who would ever think to link me with her, given her situation, and mine?
’ He was rambling; he couldn’t seem to stop himself, to come to the bloody point.
She put out her other hand, and wrapped his restless ones in both of hers, and held them steady.
‘Max…’ she said again, warm, reassuring, real, and at his side, at least for now.
‘Max, I am beginning to suspect something that I cannot credit unless you say it aloud in plain words I could not possibly misinterpret. Max, my dear, who is she?’
He told her.