Courting Her Highness_ The Story of Queen Anne - Jean Plaidy [163]
“Is it possible then that they have filched this from public funds?”
“Where else?” laughed Harley.
“It’s a scandal!”
“It is certainly so. Now, it is our task to see that it is not the secret scandal it has been until now. We will make it a public scandal.”
“I see,” said Swift, “the reason for your visit here tonight.”
Marlborough, white lipped, came into the bedroom he shared with Sarah, and handed her the copy of The Examiner.
“That fellow Swift,” he said. “By God, he dips his pen in poison.”
Sarah read Swift’s article and, clenching the paper in her hand, gave vent to such a spate of fury that Marlborough was afraid for her.
“Calm yourself, my love,” he begged.
“Calm myself. When this sort of thing is being written about us. You can be calm!”
The Duke might be outwardly calm but he did not like what he read at all. He thought of the comfortable fortune he and Sarah had set aside; and it was disconcerting to see in cold print such accusations.
“We are surrounded by enemies, Sarah. We are among wolves and tigers.”
“That may be so,” retaliated Sarah, “but these wolves and tigers will find they have to deal with a lion and his lioness.”
“Caution, Sarah. Caution.”
“You have been preaching caution for years.”
“And if you had listened to my sermons, my dearest, we might not have come to this pass.”
“I have had to contend with that tiresome woman until she drove me to show what I really felt for her.”
“If you had but remembered that she was the Queen.”
“Queen! That bundle of blubber! Nay, John, if you will accept these insults, I will not.”
“Sarah, where are you going?”
“I am going to do something, John Churchill. I am going to show our enemies—be they royal Queens or paid scribblers—that it is a mistake to cross swords with Sarah Churchill and attempt to taunt the victor of Blenheim.”
“Sarah … Sarah … I beg of you.”
But she flounced away from him. Sarah was listening to no one … not even John.
Sarah unlocked the drawer and took out the letters. There was a large packet of them and she selected one at random and read it through.
Oh damning letters! Letters betraying a deep and strange affection—careless letters, the kind of letters a lover would write; and the Queen had written these to Sarah Churchill in the days of the foolish fondness Mrs. Morley had felt for Mrs. Freeman.
She took another. It had been written in the days when the Princess Anne so turned against her own father that she plotted against him with her sister Mary and Mary’s husband William. Not the sort of letters which a Queen would wish her subjects to read. And here was another—showing clearly her hatred for her own sister, then Queen Mary, and that “Dutch Abortion” her husband.
Stupid Anne, fat and foolish Queen, who was so unwise as to alienate a woman who could reveal so much.
Sarah was not going to consult with John … dearest but oh so cautious John! Sarah had done with caution.
How many times, she asked herself, have I demeaned myself … waiting in ante-rooms like a Scotchwoman trying to present a petition! How many times have I been told that Her Majesty cannot see me … and she shut away with that whey-faced Abigail Masham, tittering together, laughing because they are insulting the Duchess of Marlborough!
Sarah knew what she was going to do, and she needed no advice from anybody.
She asked Sir David Hamilton, one of the Queen’s physicians, to come to her, and when he came she greeted him graciously and bade him sit down for she wished to talk to him.
He was astonished to be thus summoned, and more so as he began