The Fortunes of Lal Faversham Read online

  THE FORTUNES

  OF

  LAL FAVERSHAM

  Stories by

  Rafael Sabatini

  HIDDEN KNOWLEDGE

  SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA

  2005

  Layout, markup, and formatting

  of this edition

  Copyright © Michael J. Ward

  Introduction Copyright © Jesse F. Knight

  All rights reserved

  This book is an electronic edition of a collection of short stories originally published in magazines in the early years of the 20th century and unavailable since that time. There has never been a collected version of these stories published in book form, and this Hidden Knowledge e-book is the first book edition.

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  — THE PUBLISHERS

  Published as a digital book by

  Hidden Knowledge

  1181 Martin Avenue

  San Jose, California 95126-2626

  http://www.hidden-knowledge.com

  ISBN 1595000046

  First Edition (Release 1.00)

  30 July 2005

  THE FORTUNES

  OF

  LAL FAVERSHAM

  CONTENTS

  I. Introduction

  II. Loaded Dice

  III. Of What Befel at Bailienochy

  IV. After Worcester Field

  V. The Chancellor’s Daughter

  VI. Carolus and Caroline

  VII. In the Eleventh Hour

  INTRODUCTION

  by

  Jesse F. Knight

  Rafael Sabatini wrote this set of inter-related short stories when he was about 25 years old. He had not been writing in English for very long. His parents were itinerant opera singers and music teachers, and he had lived in many European countries as a child. While fluent in several languages—Italian, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese—he had little cause to use English. Although his mother was English, only Italian was spoken in the household, in deference to his father. However, as a youngster Rafael had lived for two or three years with his grandfather in a small village outside of Liverpool, England, and the English language wasn’t entirely unknown to him. He moved to Liverpool in 1892, at the age of 17, from Switzerland, where he had attended school. Arriving on English shores, he admitted in later years—this man who would one day become one of the great stylists of the English language in the 20th century—that his English was less than fluent or flawless. Rusty might be the word we would use nowadays.

  Why Sabatini chose to write in English, although it was not his first language, reveals an important aspect of his literary philosophy. “All the best stories are written in English,” he once said. Throughout a lengthy career of more than half a century, the idea of story—of plot—was always at the center of everything he wrote—not characterization, not atmosphere, not even history, but adventure.

  Rafael Sabatini was born in 1875 in Jesi, Italy, near the Adriatic. He was early attracted to reading and became an avid follower of romanticism. He read everything from Hugo to Dumas to Scott to Rostand. After he had moved to Liverpool as a teenager, he began to think that if he loved swashbuckling tales so much, why couldn’t he write them? He did so, but only in private.

  After he had been living for a few years in England, a friend in the newspaper trade prevailed upon him to show him some of his fiction. The friend—unknown today, though we owe him a debt of gratitude—convinced the young writer that his work was good enough to appear in print. As a result Rafael seriously began to purse a career as a fiction writer.

  Those very early stories, perhaps published in newspapers, and possibly under a pseudonym, have not been uncovered yet. But by 1898, a scant six years after arriving in Liverpool, Sabatini’s fiction was appearing in national magazines. He progressed quickly up the literary ladder, and in a year or two his work was appearing in some of the best markets in England.

  It was, and for that matter still is, a risky matter trying to support yourself solely by writing. Consequently, Sabatini was reluctant to leave the dependability of an office job. He was still working full time during the day, as a translator of business correspondence, when he wrote the tales in this volume.

  These six stories, all revolving around the character of Lionel “Lal” Faversham, appeared in Ainslee’s Magazine from November 1901 until April 1902. Ainslee’s made further use of them when they reprinted all six in 1926, by which time Sabatini had achieved international fame.

  It must frankly be admitted that these stories present Sabatini during his literary apprenticeship. He would progress much further in the decades ahead, developing a more supple style. Here, at times, the sentence structure is convoluted; at times, awkward. In essence, he was still finding his way around the language.

  Furthermore, he was still trying to determine how to convey the flavor of an era that was several centuries removed. This is a peculiar difficulty of historical fiction: How does a writer at once bring to life a bygone age and yet make it understandable to a modern reader. It is a balancing act of consummate skill which few historical fiction writers ever achieve. Sabatini accomplished it, but it took several years of work for him to develop this skill.

  The setting of these particular stories makes the task even more daunting, not only because the reader is expected to know something of the time of Charles II, but also because the stories themselves are now over a hundred years old, and it is not easy for modern American readers to understand what attitudes were like during the Edwardian era when these tales were penned.

  Nonetheless, I think the Lal Faversham stories are of more than passing interest, for once you get by the Gadzooks! and the Oddsfishes, the reader will find that as always Sabatini tells a heck of a good story. If there is any regret, it is only that there weren’t more of them!

  The background of these historical stories perhaps requires some explanation. The 1600’s was an extraordinarily tumultuous period in English history. The story of Lal Faversham really begins with King Charles I. By the 1640’s, a Civil War had broken out in England between King Charles I, and the Parliament. Added to politics and power and money were issues of religion, with competing factions of Protestants (both established church, and Dissenters) and Catholics. The situation became even more complicated as Parliament quarreled with its own army, which was under the influence of Oliver Cromwell. The King was essentially kidnapped by the army, which over-awed Parliament by marching into London. After many more machinations too complex to mention here, Charles I was condemned, and beheaded outside of Whitehall on January 30, 1649.

  The King’s son Charles had already fled England. After the execution of Charles I, the son was persuaded by the Covenanting Scottish Presbyterians to come to Scotland and attempt to gain his throne. Neither of the two main groups of supporters of the King—the Catholics and royalists on the one hand, and the Presbyterians on the Kirk side—trusted the other. As these stories open, the sober Presbyterians are carefully watching the “Merrie Monarch,” as he would eventually be called, for any sign of what they viewed as immorality. The uncrowned King’s light-hearted manner was anathema
to the somber Scots. At the battle of Dunbar, which took place on September 3, 1650, Cromwell crushed the Scots; when Charles says that he is glad of this (despite the fact that the Scots were his allies), it is easy to see why the Presbyterians would be even less happy with the fun-loving monarch. Crowned King Charles II by his supporters in Scotland, Charles invaded England, only to be decisively defeated by Cromwell at Worcester (also depicted in the stories), precisely a year after Dunbar, on September 3, 1651.

  In disguise, as Lal would go in disguise, Charles had a number of hair-raising adventures while fleeing England. Perhaps one of the more famous adventures of the King, the great monarch, was when he was forced to hide from his pursuers in the branches of a tree, his would-be captors right beneath him. At last Charles reached France and safety. For nine long years Lal accompanied the King during his penniless exile on the Continent.

  After Cromwell’s death in 1658, England descended into chaos. Who was in charge? The army, Parliament? Tired of more than a decade of internal strife, the country invited Charles to return.

  He, and Lal we presume, were in Brussels at the time. Charles II landed at Dover on May 27, 1660 to great acclaim. The latter three stories of the book all take place in 1660. The entire collection can be placed in the 1650 to 1660 timeframe, with nine years taken out for the period of exile.

  It is easy to see why Sabatini was attracted to this turbulent era. It was a period of drama and adventure, with constantly shifting loyalties, where a king could be hiding in a forest, a tavern or a farmhouse. Moreover, Charles II was the kind of monarch Sabatini loved—engaging, charming, tolerant of religious differences, with a lively albeit cynical wit, and with just enough of the rogue about him to be interesting. Lal himself is the proto-typical Sabatini hero—elegant, graceful, witty, fearless, and loyal.

  Despite Sabatini’s early success, it would still be a long and hard climb for the writer before he achieved international fame. Twenty years after these stories appeared he hit the jackpot with Scaramouche, which appeared in 1921, and Captain Blood, in 1922. He was now a wealthy man; his books went into countless editions, were translated around the world, and were made into movies (with varying degrees of faithfulness to the originals). He was sought after as a speaker and was written up in magazines.

  In the 1930s, Sabatini moved to the bucolic countryside that served as a border between England and Wales. An avid fisherman, he stocked the streams on his modest estate with trout, and settled down there for the rest of his life.

  Money perhaps didn’t matter to him all that much, although certainly it was nice, for Sabatini continued to work at the same prolific pace throughout his career, until illness began to affect his output in the 1940s.

  In 1950, on a vacation in Switzerland, Rafael Sabatini died of a stomach ailment. He left behind a wealth of magnificent fiction that is still read more than a half a century after his death.

  Jesse F. Knight founded a discussion list devoted to Sabatini and began and is actively involved in the Sabatini website. He has written many articles and introductions on Sabatini and was a featured speaker at a conference in Jesi, Italy devoted to Sabatini.

  Website: http://www.rafaelsabatini.com

  LOADED DICE

  Where is the man who deems himself loyal that can ponder with heart unmoved upon the indignities whereunto my liege and master, the Second Charles, was subjected during that year of his mock-kingship in Scotland? A king in name, surrounded by the outward pomp of kings, but beset by spies, and less a king than the meanest knave of the Kirk Commission that ruled and made a vassal of him.

  How it befel that when in their purgation—as they called it—they banished from his court the noble Hamilton, Lauderdale, Callender and all those others whom they dubbed malignants, they should have left me beside him doth pass my understanding. For verily—to use another of their words—besides the malignancy, which quality those irreverent dogs assigned to the loyal party to which I had the honor to belong, they might in me have noted a malignancy of another sort—and one which I was never at any pains to dissemble—a deep-seated malignancy towards themselves and all that concerned their infernal covenant.

  Did the King play at cards on a Sabbath he was visited by a parcel of sour-faced ministers, who preached to him through their noses touching the observance of the Lord’s Day, while did they but hear of his having chucked a maid under the chin, they thundered denunciations upon his reprobate head and poured forth threats of exchanging his throne for a cutty stool.

  It is, therefore, matter for scant wonder that when on that September evening the Marquess of Argyle came to Perth Castle, his ill-favored countenance monstrous sober and dejected, to acquaint His Majesty with the Scotch disaster at Dunbar, instead of the outburst of grief which he had looked for:

  “Oddsfish!” quoth Charles, with a hard laugh. “I protest I am glad of it!”

  “Sire!” cried in reproach the dismayed M’Callum More.

  “Well, what now?” the King demanded, coldly, while his fiery black eyes flashed such a glance upon the covenanting marquess that he fell abashed and recalled, mayhap, some lingering memory of the respect he owed his King.

  For a moment Charles stood surveying him, then turning on his heel and signing to Buckingham to attend him, he passed into the adjoining chamber, where, I afterwards learned, he fell on his knees, and, for all that Cromwell was his father’s murderer and his own implacable enemy, he rendered thanks unto God for the Scotch destruction.

  A dead silence followed the King’s departure. My Lord Wilmot exchanged smiles with Sir Edward Walker; Cleveland and Wentworth looked at each other significantly, whilst the Marquis de Villaneuffe, who stood beside me, put his lips to my ear to whisper:

  “Observe milord Argyle’s countenance.”

  And truly the scowl the marquess wore was an ominous sight. Sir John Gillespie approached him at that moment and they spoke together in low tones. Presently they were joined by Mr. Wood, of the Kirk Commission, who had also heard His Majesty’s rash words, and as I gazed upon the three in conversation a feeling that was near akin to dread took possession of me—’twas, perchance, a premonition of that which was to follow, of a harvest whose seeds I make no doubt were sown in that consultation.

  A gayly dressed young man approached me, and hailed me in words more attuned to my tastes and calling.

  “Will you throw a main at hazard, Mr. Faversham?”

  I looked into the lad’s face—a smooth, girlish face it was, set in a frame of golden love locks—and for a second I hesitated. He was not rich, and in two nights he had lost a thousand crowns to me. The thing was, methought, well nigh dishonest, but he spoke of the révanche I owed him, and to that I could but answer that I was his servant.

  And so we got to table, and for an hour my Lord Goring and I played at hazard, fortune favoring me, who scorned her for once. ’Tis ever thus with fortune—a shameless jade that hath most smiles for him who flouts her.

  At the end of an hour Lord Goring proposed that we should change the game to passage, and this we did, yet the blind goddess was no kinder to him.

  One by one, those who stood about took their departure, and presently we had the chamber to ourselves, save for Sir John Gillespie, who came to stand behind Lord Goring’s chair and watch the play.

  The poor boy sat with a white face, his lips compressed and his eyes a-burning, striving to win as men strive against death, and damning every throw. As midnight struck he at last pushed back his chair.

  “I’ll play no more to-night, an’ it please you, Mr. Faversham,” said he in a voice which his breeding vainly strove to render indifferent.

  “Mr. Faversham is truly a formidable opponent,” quoth Sir John. “He hath learned much in France.”

  There was that in the voice of this covenanting creature and kinsman of Argyle that I misliked, yet left unheeded. I rose, and expressing polite regrets at his lordship’s persistent ill luck, I pocketed a hundred crowns. Five times that paltry su
m it might have been had I so willed it.

  I had hoped that Gillespie’s remark touching the much that I had learned in France might have proved an admonition to my Lord Goring, and led him to play thereafter with some opponent whose skill was on a level with his own. Not so, however; the boy was blind to the fact that I was his master, and attributed his losses to luck alone.

  In this fashion things continued for a week, until in the end naught was talked of but Lord Goring’s losses and Lionel Faversham’s winnings. Men gathered round the table to watch our play—Sir John Gillespie ever in the foremost rank—and my luck grew at length to be a proverb.

  One day, at last, His Majesty drew me aside with a smile that had some thing serious in it.

  “Lal,” quoth he, laying his hand upon my shoulder, “had I half your luck I should be King of England now. But if you love me, Lal, you’ll play no more—leastways, not at the castle. You know my position; you know the crassness of this Kirk Commission. We shall have them denouncing my court from the pulpit as a gaming house, and assigning to that cause the loss of the battle of Dunbar.”

  “My liege,” I exclaimed, “forgive me—”

  “Nay, nay,” he laughed. “’Tis I who crave forgiveness for inconveniencing you with such a request—but there is the Kirk Commission.” And His Majesty added something under his breath; perchance, it was a prayer.

  I was glad of so stout an excuse when next Lord Goring approached me with his daily invitation. But Sir John Gillespie was at hand to propose that, if we were anxious to pursue our amusement, there was the hostelry of the Rose in the High Street.

  I might have asked this Presbyterian hound what interest of his it was that made him urge us to follow a pursuit at war with his religion. But my position, as you may see, was grown somewhat delicate, and it would ill become me to evince reluctance to play with my Lord Goring.