Not that a single scintilla of his frustration got past his well-constructed imperial pro-consul’s mask.
“Sorry, are you threatening to intervene directly in my colony’s affairs?” Roger Lee blurted.
“No,” De L’Isle retorted patiently. “That would only occur in the most extreme, frankly, unimaginable circumstances, as you well know, Roger. You should also know me well enough by now to know that I would never allow anybody else to interfere in Virginian, or in any other colony’s affairs without just, constitutional cause. My opposition to the improper usage of that power would be of the ‘over my dead body’ variety!”
“Oh…”
“All that is hypothetical, anyway,” the Governor went on smoothly. “You know how I hate hypotheticals.”
“The Fifteen have a number of ‘concerns’,” Lee said cautiously.
The Chairmen of several of the Colonial Legislatures were notorious gossipers and leakers, gregarious to a fault as befitted men who oversaw what were, essentially over-blown talking shops. The big in-colony decisions rested with the Governors, and the status of the legislative councils was other than in colony-specific areas, consultative rather than strictly ‘legislative’. The Legislative Assembly Acts of 1872, 1903 and 1954 had been very careful not to transfer too much power, or budgetary control, from Governors to elected politicians. The reason behind this had been that every colony in New England and Canada was already represented by at least two directly elected Members in the House of Commons, therefore the question of a so-called ‘democratic deficit’ simply did not arise.
De L’Isle raised an eyebrow.
“By all means share them with me, Roger,” he invited his guest.
“In the event of war…”
“Ah, so we are talking hypothetically after all?”
“We have a right to expect the Empire to defend our territory and our economic interests.”
“Yes.”
“In the Great War the Empire treated New England like a huge cash cow. It took us decades to recover from that.”
It took the whole Empire a generation to recover from the war of 1857-66. De L’Isle would have given the Virginian a history lesson if he had thought the man would listen to a single word he said.
“Virginia will not again be bled white to defend British interests, Governor!”
Philip De L’Isle blinked at this. Of all the colonies none would be so enriched by a major war as Virginia. The naval base at Norfolk alone was, to use Lee’s own words, a giant ‘cash cow’ for the colony.
“British interests, Roger? I am confused. In any likely scenario that I can foresee the object of imperial policy in this hemisphere would be the defence of New England…”
“The cost of which ought to be borne by the British taxpayer.”
“And presumably,” the Governor murmured angrily, and for once, inexcusably he was to reflect, losing his temper, “English blood, too?”
“I didn’t say that.”
The Governor of New England rose to his feet.
“Forgive me, I have another appointment shortly, Roger. Please give my regards to Elizabeth.”
The Virginian looked at him as if he thought he had misheard.
“Sorry, I…”
“Good day to you, sir,” De L’Isle smiled, grim-faced.
A few minutes later he went upstairs to have tea with his wife, Lady Diana, whom he found propped up in a chair in the window of her chambers. He bent his head to kiss her cheek.
“My, my, what was that for, darling?”
The husband sighed, pulled up a chair beside her. His wife was having one of her ‘better days’ and this knowledge was immensely curative. He shook his head.
“I was just unspeakable terse with Roger Lee,” he confessed. “That man is a disgrace. If I had had a gun, I would have shot him!”
“No, you wouldn’t have, darling. You don’t have it in you to shoot a defenceless man.”
Presently, the better angels of De L’Isle’s nature were not wholly in the ascendant.
“Trust me, my dear,” he grimaced. “I’d certainly have winged the bloody man!”
“I’d have understood perfectly if you’d given him a good kick up the backside, darling,” his wife commiserated. Neither of them was quite themselves. Matthew Harrison’s death◦– a brutal assassination more likely, since the car involved had sped off◦– was too fresh, too painful and they were worried all the time about Henrietta…
“Honestly, my love,” her husband groaned, “the people over here don’t know how lucky they are. They pay half the tax a citizen of the British Isles pays and get two-thirds of the bill for defending New England defrayed by the Exchequer in London. It’s hardly surprising that the average family in the First Thirteen is thirty or forty percent better off than their counterparts in the Old Country!”
“Oh, dear,” Lady Diana smiled bravely, “if you’re talking about economics you must still be really angry!”
“I’m sorry,” he guffawed. “I know I shouldn’t let little weasels like Roger Lee get under my skin. But…”
His wife patted his arm.
“You mustn’t bee too hard on Roger, darling. Wasn’t it one of his ancestors who fortified Manhattan so ineptly that our boys were able to just walk in unopposed after the Battle of Long Island?”
“Good old Light Horse, you mean?”
“Yes, dear.”
Philip De L’Isle visibly relaxed, the tension draining out of his face.
“Mind you,” he guffawed quietly, “another of his ancestors fought with no little distinction in Flanders in the early 1860s.”
“Oh, I was forgetting all about Robert Lee,” his wife conceded. “It only goes to show, I suppose. He travelled to France as the Colonel of the Virginian Brigade and at the time of his death he was in command of,” she paused, unable to recall the details.
“British Third Army during the successful advance to the Moltke Line.” The Governor of New England involuntarily ran his left forefinger across his moustache. “If he had lived, he might have gone all the way to Berlin and finished the war in 1865. Instead, the old fellow is just a footnote to history, his campaigns one of the great ‘what ifs?’ endlessly discussed and war-gamed at staff colleges around the world ever since. Yet he is still a man largely forgotten by his own countrymen back here in Virginia, like so many of his fellow ‘Imperial Virginians’ because he won his fame exclusively on foreign battlefields.”
“All historical memory is selective,” his wife sympathised. “But if I’ve learned one thing since we arrived in Philadelphia, there is no gainsaying that they can be an awfully insular lot over here.”
Chapter 24
Thursday 30th March
Monasterio de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción
‘You look terrible,’ Henrietta De L’Isle had blurted as her escorts bundled her into the small cold room high in the northern wall of the ancient monastery and she found herself face to face with Melody Danson.
Both women had been literally grabbed by gangs of sisters and hurried, at a stumbling run down gloomy corridors and up several flights of steps smoothed and partially worn away by generations of nuns’ feet since the late fifteenth century and arrived breathless, disorientated and on the verge of panic.
‘Be very quiet. Do not attempt to look out of the window…’