Court of Foxes (2 page)

And a voice whispered out, exultant: ‘Violets!’ and from stalls to gallery a murmur tossed and tumbled, ‘The Marquis wins!’ And handkerchiefs signalled regrets, congratulations, promises of revenge, the fans of the ladies tapped impatiently against their palms; in the wings the artists waited, as nowadays they had learned to wait, till the tension should clear and the sibilance of whispering die down…

They might have waited for ever for all the attention they received from two, at least, of their audience that night.

The play ended, the curtain fell. From the room behind, the waiting woman appeared, picked up the bouquet of flowers from the ledge of the box and stood aside for her mistress to retire. She rose unhurriedly from the gilt chair and pale, beautiful, exquisitely tranquil as ever, stood for a moment before she turned, and looked down once more into the body of the house.

All now was noise and confusion of departure. Up in the galleries there was shoving and jostling for exit, among the gentry below the same was effected by proxy, each with his own footman making a passage for him, crying out his name, trading upon seniority of aristocracy, the henchman of an earl holding back his little party to make way for my lord duke, my lord viscount having in his turn made way for the earl. But out of the chatter and the movement, the cries of ‘Make a way, if you please!’ two men stood immobile and silent — in different parts of the house but united in total unawareness of the bustle around them, standing staring up at the box where now she stood looking down: two pairs of eyes gazing up into eyes of a clear grey-blue — a pair of brown eyes, gentle and kind, and the bright dark eyes of the stranger who, in the entrance foyer, had stood unseen and listened and held his peace.

Her glance lit for a moment only, upon the brilliance and the darkness — passed on and came to rest upon the heart-filled, spell-bound gaze of Dear Dai of Carmarthen, the Honourable David Llandovery.

Outside the theatre, the darkness was lit with a hundred flares, shifting the black shadows as the bearers pressed this way or that through the throng, guiding their masters to the waiting coaches. Of late the manager of the theatre, alarmed by the crowd that jostled in the entrances to see her more closely as she passed by, had arranged for her to use the private royal entrance — and she came out quietly, a white moth in the white cloak hung over the pure white dress; and softly as a moth proceeded towards her own carriage. But a flare caught the sheen of the lacquer-gold hair, the riot of colour that followed in her wake as her woman and two playhouse servants struggled under the huge burden of the many bouquets; and the news passed back through the mob, ‘The lady of the flowers!’ The great ladies and the courtesans swept by, their escorts following meekly enough but glancing back over their shoulders as, hurrying a little now, she followed the footmen forcing a path for her; and so at last reached her carriage. The woman waiting bustled in after, crying up to the box, ‘Very well, Samuel: drive on!’

But the crowd was dense and as the coachman struggled with the fretting horses, afraid to proceed, a man came forward, forcing his way urgently, ever courteous and yet determined, through the press of the people: and came to the open window and, wordlessly, held out a bouquet of white roses.

The torchlight glittered on the golden head, glimmered on the pale face with the great, shadowed, grey-blue eyes looking back into his. For one moment their hands touched as she took the flowers into her arms.

Dark eyes watched them. Beside the great, ornate Tregaron family coach with its splendid trappings and enormous emblazon of arms, a slender figure stood and took in the whole scene. ‘Well — so, my little brother of Llandovery, you and I are to be rivals!’ Beneath the foppish coat, the slight shoulders lifted in a shrug, half rueful, half resolute. May the best man win! that gesture seemed to say; and yet with a perfect knowledge from within, of which that best man would be.

She glanced but idly at him standing there. Silent, as the waiting woman chattered of the events of the evening, she drove home, white lids lowered over eyes suddenly warm with dreams: the Marchesa Marigelda d’Astonia with her white arms filled with white roses.

The house, as Lord Calne had said, was tiny but beautifully appointed. A maid-servant, mob-capped, white aproned, admitted them, the lady swept in, the waiting woman and two footmen with a third lackey from the coach following, their arms all laden with flowers. A boy in page’s uniform appeared with a surreptitious air from the basement area and took up his station before the railings, looking about for likely customers. In the parlour on the ground floor, candle light glowed: he raised himself with two small fists grasping the points of the railings so that he could see in. The Marchesa was standing holding her white roses, the waiting woman relieving her of her cloak, the footmen carrying biscuits and wine. She brushed aside the proffered tray. On the wall behind her hung an oil painting, sombrely framed in heavy scrolls of gold. She went and stood looking up at it, looking up into the thin, fine, aristocratic old face that seemed to gaze back at her with gentle love: but all the time she held the white roses in her hands and when the maid came to take them from her, the boy saw that she shook her head.

She was still holding them when at last she climbed the curving stair, her little retinue having gone before her; and entered the exquisite bedroom with its painted and gilded ceiling, its looped satin curtains and four-poster bed all draped with frilled white muslin; still held them while the waiting woman unhooked the billowing white gown, slipped off the satin shoes, white-rosetted, and the infinitely precious silk stockings, and wrapped her in a warm woollen gown. When the woman was gone she moved across the room, almost surreptitiously, poured water into a porphyry vase and arranged the flowers there; and stood for a long time, looking down at them.

Upstairs in the servants’ quarters of the house, the luxurious appointments gave way to a less extravagant comfort. On the landing, as the waiting woman slowly mounted to her own domain, the pretty maid-servant was busy with flowers, taking to pieces the stiff bouquets and putting the blooms head-high in tall jars of water. She said as the woman approached: ‘Have you not brought the white roses?’

The woman hauled herself up on weary legs, her hand on the banister. ‘She wants to keep them in her own room.’

‘Oh, ho!’ said the girl, laughing. ‘Madam the Marchesa it seems is consolable after all — through a pair of brown eyes.’

‘Brown eyes!’ said the woman, grumbling. She moved into a bedroom, leaving the door open, talking through it as she began to divest herself of the handsome black silk gown, emerging at last, bundled into a dressing-robe of red wool. ‘Brown Eyes, forsooth! Some poor second son — for her!’

The girl laughed again, gesturing to a second room leading off from the landing. ‘Go in and take some rest. Her ladyship’s footmen have hot chocolate brewing and your poor head must ache with the scent of all these flowers in that close little space.’

It was a big, shabby, comfortable attic room with a tiny fire lit in the grate for the sole purpose (for it was late summer) of heating up a pot of chocolate; furnished with a few well-worn comfortable old armchairs. In two of these, the footmen now lounged, divested of their plush; on the central table the two coachmen perched, side by side, swinging their legs. The woman bustled over to a sideboard and began to lay out cups and saucers and a plate of currant buns. She said over her shoulder: ‘
You
know your way about this maze of the aristocracy, Sam. Where does the Honourable David Llandovery come?’

‘I’ve looked him up. Second son of the late fifth Earl of Tregaron, only brother of the present earl. Great landowners in Wales, mostly in Carmarthenshire; and prodigiously rich. The earl himself was at the play tonight; I saw him in the entrance hall and again about to enter the family coach.’

‘David, maybe, but evidently not David and Jonathan,’ said the second coachman. ‘They came separately; and afterwards, outside, when the Hon. David — Brown Eyes, as Bess calls him — went to the carriage after offering the white roses, Lord Tregaron spoke a word to the servants and moved sharply away. Llandovery affected not to notice and drove off by himself.’

‘May this not be upon her ladyship’s account?’ said one of the footmen. ‘I observed both of them stare at her with all their eyes.’

‘Very possibly. They seem to have been friendly enough up to now, for,’ said the knowledgeable Sam, ‘they were supposed to have been going off together, very shortly, travelling the continent.’

The woman stood with one elbow on the high mantelshelf, lost in thought, a forgotten cup of chocolate in her hand. ‘Earl of Tregaron! Rich, a great landowner — now that
would
be something! But as for this nonsense of brown eyes and white roses…’ She shrugged it off with a sort of vicarious hauteur. ‘What after all is a mere honourable to the Marchesa Marigelda d’Astonia—?’

‘What indeed?’ said a voice. ‘Whatever it might have been, Mother dear, six months ago in the Cotswold country to plain Miss Marigold Brown.’ And a girl came forward, laughing, and perched herself on footman George’s knee, one casual arm about his neck; and in the flicker of the firelight her hair was the lacquer yellow of the petals of a flower.

The Marchesa Marigelda d’Astonia Subeggio — Miss Marigold Brown and her unregenerate family from the hamlet of Aston-sub-Edge in the county of Gloucestershire.

*
Llandovery:
the liquid double l in Welsh is best pronounced by breathing an h before the l. Hlanduvvery, accent on the ‘duv’.

For those wishing to trouble with the Welsh pronunciations, there is a glossary at the end of the book.

A
SMALL BOY CAME IN
, a huge apron of striped ticking tied over his page’s dress. He perched himself in turn on Marigelda’s knee, his light weight supported by two outspread feet. George gave a heave and upset the whole pyramid; sister and brother fell in a heap to the hearthrug and remained there, unperturbed. ‘But sweetheart,’ said Marigelda, ruffling the dark, cropped hair, ‘you should be in bed. Your eyes are starting out of your little head.’

‘He has to stay up, to guide your gallants to the window,’ said brother James.

‘It’s not necessary, now that we go through the act anyway, on the off-chance.’

‘But there are the bribes,’ said George: the elder by a few minutes of the two ‘footmen’, he was custodian of the family money bags.

‘None came tonight,’ said the child. ‘But, Gilda, I climbed up myself and looked through the window. The new picture is splendid; and when you stood there and looked up at it, why I nearly burst out blubbering myself, it was so affecting.’

‘Yes, the picture is a master-stroke,’ said their mother, complacently. She left her clutter of chocolate cups and came and sat down among them, ousting James from his chair with an amiable shove and pulling her daughter back to lean more restfully against her knees. (‘But be careful of your head, dearest, we must try to do without the hairdresser for the next visit, it comes so expensive.’) ‘As to the picture of your late husband, yes, he’s magnificent. A charming old man, just right. I wonder who he really is?’

‘Let’s pray no one discovers. A fine thing,’ said Gilda, giggling, ‘if any of my admirers peeps in one evening and finds me all a-swoon with widowed regrets before one of his own cast-off ancestors! How did your act in the foyer go, Rufus?’

‘Very well,’ said the second of the young men, who had (as a second part of his duties that evening) attended as lackey to the coach; sitting swinging his legs on the table next to Sam, his red hair aflame. ‘Sam and I staged a very pretty quarrel, quite a mob collected, James duly appeared with the note and the jewel; and now all the world knows, if for a moment they doubted it, that the Marchesa d’Astonia Subeggio is
not
some adventuress, open to bribery by valuables. Which reminds me — we must return the thing to the jeweller tomorrow, Sam, without fail. Gilda’s written the note.’

‘ “The Marchesa d’Astonia Subeggio,” ’ declaimed Marigelda, ‘ “returns herewith the jewel sent for her approval and regrets that it is not of the quality she is accustomed to look for.” ’ She added: ‘Where’s Bess?’ and lifted up her voice and called: ‘Hey — Bess! Leave your wretched nosegays, come and join in the evening gossip!’

Bess came into the candle-lit room, smiling, her hands pink and puckered from long immersion in the cold water; the scent of flowers drifted in with her and was closed out with the closing of the door. Mrs Brown struggled to her feet. ‘Some chocolate, my poor weary darling?’

‘Sit quiet, Mother, I’ll get it for myself.’ She in her turn ousted her brother and curled up in the second armchair, her head against his shoulder as he perched on the arm. ‘Forty-three bouquets tonight! And not more than a couple of dozen blooms new for the lot of them!’

‘Yes, but by the same token, you must be careful, Bess. I carried the Marquis’s flowers and I swear I recognised that same misshapen violet that’s been running through the reconstituted bunches for a fortnight. The Marquis is a man accustomed to sending flowers to women. He observes such details. You must assess your customers, my pet.’

‘I mixed up two lots,’ said Bess. ‘I intended that bouquet for little Crum — he’s as blind as a bat and anyway owes for the last three. And anyway, I don’t believe the Marquis was in the house himself tonight, at all. His footman bought the flowers at the stall.’

‘And brought them to the box,’ said James.

‘They’ve taken to doing that,’ said George. He frowned. ‘The wagers on the bouquets are becoming a little too important in themselves. We started the whole thing — Sam sending the marigolds and boasting afterwards about her carrying them — to draw attention to Gilda. It’s worked out splendidly, ending in this avalanche of flowers, Bess opening the stall and all the rest of it — and most profitable it is, Bess; I say nothing against that. But we don’t want the thing getting out of proportion, the whole interest shifting to the wagers, the bucks simply placing their bets in their clubs, some perhaps never even having set eyes on her; and sending their servants to the playhouse to do the rest. The important thing is that Gilda gains a selection of admirers to choose from when at last we decide on one.’