After the summer has ended, and her friend has returned to Bologna, the Duchess, who has been in a bright enough humour for a while, sinks into a melancholy piety. The hours spent at her devotions increase again, and when she is in company her talk is all of her lost children, of the great dangers they might have run had they lived, of the comfort of knowing that there are more angels to pray for her in heaven. When her physician tries to persuade her, for the good of her health, to pray less and to ride out more, she will have none of it, but then Lady Peterborough has the good sense to wonder aloud how much Anne would like it if her step-mother could show her the country round Edinburgh – such a pity that Her Highness’s frail health will not permit this – and the Duchess decides that perhaps she could ride again – the Duke would not want her to neglect his daughter. She will do her duty: she will ride with Anne.
So she rides with Anne, and talks of her children. This afternoon, they are trotting alongside the Water of Leith, towards Balerno. There are just the two of them abreast, with their ladies following at a respectful distance, and several gentlemen some little way in front, for their protection. When the Duchess speaks, there is no-one but Anne to reply.
‘Truly, I should feel favoured,’ she says, ‘that whereas other women bear children for this world, I have given all mine to God.’
The Duke’s mistress, Catherine Sedley, has given birth to a daughter this year, quite certainly his, and clearly for this world. Anne looks down at her horse’s ears; they twitch in the silence, and some words occur to her.
‘You might well take comfort in that,’ she says.
The Duchess says. ‘I do – at least I try – but I also hope that God in his great mercy will someday comfort me by giving me a male child – a male child who will live.’
Anne lifts up her eyes to the Pentland Hills, which seem to her to be on a godly scale, to have something biblical about them: if any still, small voice were to prompt her, she would catch it murmuring from that side. What is worst in her now – that she cannot, in her heart, wish her own, kind step-mother – her own father – a healthy son, or that she must now play the hypocrite, act the seeming friend?
‘I too hope that God will comfort you,’ she says, and nothing more.
The Duchess gives her a long, a too-long, sideways look. The red, the tell-all red, goes creeping up Anne’s neck.
‘Tell me,’ says the Duchess, at long last, ‘how are you finding your rehearsals for the play – your Mithridates? You are to play the King, are you not? Is it much trouble to you, to remember so large a part?’
‘Not too much. I have, thank God, a good memory for such things.’
‘Would you then recite a little for me now? If you please.’
A speech unfolds itself in Anne’s head: a vision of Mithridates. So she begins:
‘After that heavenly Sounds had charm’d my Ears,
Methought I saw the Spirits of my Sons,
Slain by my Jealousy of their Ambition,
Who shriek’d, he’s come! our cruel Father’s come!
Arm, arm, they cry’d, thro’ all th’enamel’d Grove.
Strait had their Cries alarm’d the wounded Host
Of all those Romans, massacred in Asia:
I heard the empty Clank of their thin Arms,
And tender Voices cry, Lead Pompey, lead.
Strait they came on, with Chariots, Horse and Foot.
When I had leisure to discern their Chief,
Methought, that Pompey was my Son Ziphares;
Who cast his dreadful Pile, and pierc’d my Heart:
Then, such a Din of Death, and Swords and Javelin
Clatter’d about me, that I wak’d with Terror,
And found my self extended on the Floor.’
Anne has been speaking in the stage voice that Mrs Barry taught her so many years ago. The ladies have heard her clearly, and applaud. The Duchess does not join them, only she smiles, a little.
‘Ziphares. Is that not the name you use to write to Mrs Apsley?’
Anne blushes again: she cannot imagine how the Duchess knows this; she would rather not imagine.
‘Yes.’
‘And she is your love, your Semandra?’
‘Yes.’
‘It is a strange affectation, this pretending to be lovers. I am not at all sure I like it, but I know it has been quite the fashion at Court – but I would never have written to the Countess Davia that way – I would not even have known the kind of words to use.’
‘No.’
‘Oh Anne, there is no cause to blush so. I know what a good girl you are!’ Then she laughs, and it comes to Anne, too late, that her step-mother has been making sport of her. The Duchess’s humours are so changeable: she cannot begin to keep up with them.