When Gods Die

“Why are you still up?” she asked, coming into the room. In the white satin evening gown she’d chosen for the Prince’s fete, with the soft light of the candles golden on her skin and her hair crimped around her face, she almost looked pretty.

He dropped the necklace onto the table and reached for his glass. “I thought I’d have a brandy before going up to bed.”

Her gaze fell on the necklace beside him. “What an interesting piece,” she said, reaching to pick it up before he could stop her.

She cradled the pendant in her palm. As he watched, her expression slowly altered, her lips parting, her eyebrows twitching together.

“What?” he said more sharply than he’d intended. “What is it?”

“Nothing. It’s just…’’ She gave a shaky laugh. “It sounds ridiculous, but it’s almost as if I can feel it growing warm in my hand.” She looked up at him. “Whose is it?”

Jarvis drained his glass in one long pull and set it aside. “I believe it’s yours.”

Author’s Note

The Jacobite threat to the Hanoverian dynasty was considered quite real in Georgian England. The Catholic Relief Act of 1778 was contingent upon the swearing of an oath to disavow the Stuarts. But the death in the early nineteenth century of Henry Stuart, brother of Bonny Prince Charlie, effectively ended the Stuart dynasty. Their claim passed to the King of Savoy, who was descended from the daughter of Charles I (the Hanoverians traced their descent from a daughter of Charles I’s father, James I).

This much is history. The Prince of Wales did, indeed, hold a grand fete in June of 1811, to celebrate the beginning of his Regency. It was much as I have described it, although sticklers will note that I have moved its date back one day to accommodate my story. The Prince Regent’s obsession with all things Stuart was also very real, as was his enormous unpopularity. The song Sebastian hears the crowd singing on the night of the fete was actually part of a poem written by Charles Lamb in 1812. However, the 1811 conspiracy to replace the Hanovers with the House of Savoy is my invention, as is the existence of a daughter Anne married to a Danish prince.

The story of the Welsh mistress of James II and her necklace is based in part on the true story of a woman named Goditha Price. She bore Prince James two children, one of whom, Mary Stuart, married a Scottish laird named McBean. As a wedding present she received from her royal father her mother’s necklace. An ancient piece in the form of a silver triskelion set against a bluestone disk, the necklace is said to grow warm in the hands of the one destined to possess it. It is also said to bring long life.

Mary Stuart gave the necklace to her son, Edward McBean, when his participation in a rising against the Hanoverian dynasty on behalf of his uncle, the Old Pretender, led to his exile. McBean sailed for America, where he lived to the ripe old age of 102 and fathered a large family from which the author is descended. The necklace has not, unfortunately, descended along my branch of the family. Its most recent owner, a salty old lady I first met over the Internet, died at the age of 103.