Court of Foxes (26 page)

Now the silence was absolute, all faces turned, first to the balcony and then back to peer towards the small, stout, black-clad figure with its glitter of jet, impregnable in rage and resentment and to the wretched group around her. On chairs and supper tables, people stood, craning their necks to see, all along the edges of the balcony the women hooked themselves over, their skirts held by their gallants, to get a better view. At the table, the wretched Lady Anne still sat holding her wrecked head in her hands, ludicrous and pitiful, Lord Crum at her side, only longing to be anywhere else. Between them, the Earl of Trove hovered, horrified and protesting. And the Lady Blanche — the Lady Blanche rose and went and stood by the old woman’s side, waiting for her to answer. And after a little while, the Countess not speaking, spoke out herself — and now was haughty and cold no longer but trembling with long pent-up, white hot rage, with outrage, with something that perhaps might be pain. ‘Very well — if no one else will name you, and publicly, then I will. I’ve seen you before, Madam, have I not? — and more than all the rest, know you for what you are. Dirt from God knows what gutter — cut-throat mate of a cut-throat footpad — thief of other women’s men, bearing their bastard children, it now seems, like the slut you’ve just been called…’ And she cried out, shrill and violent, angrily pushing aside her father’s restraining hands, ‘You won’t be called strumpet, you say: but I say you shall and by me, who know you, more than any other can, for a slut and a strumpet indeed.’ She repeated it deliberately, turning her head so that all might hear. ‘For, God help me — and him — a slut and a strumpet you are!’

For one more moment she stood there, white fingers taut on the balcony edge, grey eyes blazing down. Then she lifted her shoulders and with their movement seemed to throw off all the troubles of the world, all the months-long ennui and weariness and dullness, all anxiety and care. ‘God help you!’ she cried. ‘God help you indeed! You do well, Mistress Blanche, to pray that prayer!’

Upon the afternoon following the disaster at Ranelagh, Lady Blanche with some friends attended Mrs Salmon’s waxworks in Fleet Street — and who should be there but the Marchesa d’Astonia Subeggio, sporting a huge muff of sable — so held, however, as to materially increase the appearance of her pregnancy: who bowed most killingly and for the rest of the time stood beside the effigy of the late McLaine, famous highwayman, and laughed and chattered with her escort of two personable young men — quite evidently at the expense of the Lady Blanche. And in Artillery Lane the next morning, where the future Countess went to choose silks for the refurbishing of her new home in Hanover Square — there was Madame Strumpet again and had bought up all the very silk her ladyship had some days before almost certainly decided upon… And at Lady Stone’s rout, of all places! — how could Blanche guess at the billet delivered by hand to Sir Harry, ‘In the past you sent me flowers and twice I carried them and so earned you a fortune in wagers. Oblige me now in a little scheme of wickedness — persuade her ladyship to allow me to walk up the stairs of her house tonight and curtsey to her; after which I will immediately be gone and she may explain away my intrusion as she will…’ Lady Stone who had been jockeyed by Lord Trove out of hopes of a Tregaron match for her daughter, entered into the conspiracy with zest, only insisting that she be allowed to deny all knowledge of it. And so that evening, the Marchesa, in a white satin gown and pink sac, with a little wreath of roses perched on her white-powdered hair, walked up the great curving flight of stairs and made her curtsey — acknowledged with a curtsey likewise and a look of pretended astonishment and dawning outrage — and stood aside just long enough for all to watch the Lady Blanche upon her father’s arm, follow the Countess of Tregaron up the stairs — in an exact duplication of white dress, pink sac and wreath of roses in white-powdered hair; and if it was true that that stupid girl, Anne, actually burst into hysterical giggles, why it had to be admitted that she was in good company, for throughout the gallery every fan was raised and over each peeped eyes sparkling with the scandal and daring of it… And when, sick with mortification, Blanche demanded her carriage, it was nowhere to be found; but returned half an hour later, the coachman, crestfallen, explaining that a lady had hurried down between the links at the doorway into the darkness and had told him to drive at once to an address in South Audley Street; and not till he arrived there had he realised that the lady was not her ladyship. For after all, she had worn the same ‘head’ and the very self-same dress — if milady would pardon him…

Two days later, a white-powdered footman brought a letter to the door of the house in South Audley Street. Jake came up with it in his hand. ‘The man waits in the hall. Gilda! — the letter’s from the Earl of Trove.’

Gilda was curled up in a chair of the ‘housekeeper’s room’ happily contemplating more mischief. ‘What — capitulation already? Call Mother, quick! Mother — a note from Mistress Blanche’s papa!’ And she read it aloud. ‘Oh, Mother, listen to this!’

‘The Earl of Trove begs to inform the Marchesa d’Astonia Subeggio—’ (‘Come, come, my full title!—not a word of bawd and strumpet!’) ‘—that on the day before yesterday, the wagon carrying his daughter’s chattels to Castell Cothi, was set upon by the highwaymen of the Court of Foxes and robbed of everything. The escort was given a message to be repeated verbatim, to your ladyship. That “the goods will be returned to Lady Blanche Handley if, one week from receipt of this missive, she will from a box at the playhouse, bow to
the Earl of Tregaron’s strumpet,
who will take care to be in the box opposite; and so make public apology for an insult no less publicly delivered.” The Earl of Trove deeply regrets that the terms of the message oblige him to refer to your ladyship by the above appellation.’ ‘Well!’ said Gilda, dropping the letter into her lap, ‘who could have believed it?’

‘Is this the doing of that Devil as he calls himself?’

She thought it over, ‘I think it’s the doing of another devil: I think it’s the doing of the Fox himself.’ And for a moment her heart rose to him. ‘
He
won’t see me insulted.
He
won’t hear me called strumpet.’

‘Well, but so you are a strumpet,’ said Mrs Brown, reasonably, ‘when one comes to think about it.’

‘Not while I love only one man: not while I love him only and give myself to him only and never will to any other, even though he leave me. I was married — more’s the pity — and lived with my husband; a little only and unwillingly. Then I went to him I love. Two men in my life,’ cried Gilda, conveniently obliterating the memory of a rained chapel by a moonlit roadside. ‘Does that make a whore? No one shall call me so!’ And she scribbled on the back of the Earl’s note the one word ‘Done!’ and thrust it back into Jake’s hand. ‘Let the footman take that back to his lordship. Leave the letter open, so that the news may spread. Meanwhile…’ Unwieldy with pregnancy, but all alert now, with dancing eyes, she held out a hand to be hauled up from her chair. ‘Meanwhile, Mother — it must be the old dress, the old white dress and no jewels of course: I must be as I was in those other days.’ In the days of my purity, she thought, perhaps; but behind the thought lay ever that other, which to her was truth. ‘I love only him. I came to him pure because I never gave myself to any other man in love.’ ‘If we let out the gathers at the back, Mother, cover over all with the sac…’

And so she sat once again in her box at the play, and once again was the cynosure of all eyes — the Unattainable Lady who of late had been somewhat too easily attainable perhaps; but dressed all in white, just the same, wearing no jewels, no touch of colour save for the soft, lambent marigold light of her hair. Once again the house rumbled and stirred as, lovely as a white flower with its pollen of gold, she came forward into the front of the box, her duenna at her elbow — for all London knew by now of the words spoken at Ranelagh Gardens ten days ago; everyone knew that the walls of the bijou fortress had been stormed, all were avid to learn more of the mysteries half disclosed, that lay within; and the brothers had used old tactics to spread abroad the news of the gage that had been thrown down for tonight. The Earl had replied with a promise, had later acknowledged the return of his property: now the debt was to be paid.

A white flower, slowly settling into its place; a white flower, crowned with an aureole that shone, pale yet brilliant, a glimmer of gold against the dark crimson hangings of the box. Below and around her in the great ring of the auditorium, crimson-hung, bright with the glitter of candlelight winking in glass holders, heads turned to look at her, eyes stared, voices buzzed in gleeful anticipation of some sort of scene to come. It was whispered that Her Majesty herself was present, veiled and incognito; everyone knew for certain that Carlton House was represented; certainly half fashionable London had sent underlings ahead to fight for places and keep them warm until it should be convenient to claim them. The mob would be not so much hydra-headed, a wit was saying, as a Janus-mob, facing two ways: for all the men had been rivals for the favours of the Marchesa and all the women rivals with the Lady Blanche for those of the late Earl of Tregaron or his brother of Llandovery.

She seemed oblivious of it: sitting there, still as a flower, with her crown of pale gold, looking down, modest, cool and quiet, at her white, folded hands.

Opposite, the box remained empty.

If they don’t come! she thought; and panic rose in her suddenly, panic and a hint of her own ever-ready self-mockery. A fine fool I shall look, sitting here all dressed up, waiting to crush her with my condescension — if she doesn’t even turn up!

But the door of the box opposite opened at last, a curtain lifted and the old woman, the Countess, came through, black-faced, grim, in her feathers and jet; and at her side a vision in pale blue, ice blue, dazzling against the red and gold; brilliant with diamonds, powdered hair swept up into a snowy cone with small blue feathers and flowers — who came forward, not hesitating, to the front and centre of the box, leaving the rest of the party clustered behind her, and stood there, looking over the sea of powder and feathers, the velvets and silks, the up-turned, goggling faces, into her rival’s eyes.

She did not move from her seat; merely sat there, calmly gazing back — Miss Marigold Brown of Aston-sub-Edge-Madam Vixen of the Court of Foxes — Marigelda, Marchesa d’Astonia Subeggio: pale as a lily in her white dress, cool as a lily in her indifferent disdain, quietly sitting there, staring her rival down. White unadorned, versus shimmering pale blue silk at the height of the mode: sheen of gold hair versus shimmer of diamonds: radiance of a warm loveliness beyond perfection, matched against a flawless beauty as cold as snow. Between them the house stood staring and held its breath.

(If she doesn’t bow after all! If she doesn’t bow!)

But she bowed. Coolly, condescendingly, the tiniest sketch of a bow; and the Lady Blanche unhurriedly averted her eyes, looked round with chill indifference at the gaping crowd beneath and, in one studied, graceful movement, quietly sat down.

She had not reckoned with this: Miss Marigold Brown. Humbly born herself, she had not reckoned with the in-born, unassailable hauteur of a long tradition of lineage, wealth and culture. Before it her own eyes fell; for a moment she saw herself through the eyes of this other girl — small, cheap, shoddy, an adventuress, without truth or purity, mistaking boldness for courage, insolence for pride. Up over the white skin flooded a tide of scarlet. She knew that all about her the silent house was coming alive with rustlings and murmurings: with the dangerous beginnings of an amused contempt…

She was barely conscious that her mother came to her side, made a bob curtsey, placed something between her white hands, tightened now into fists in the lap of the white gown. Only — suddenly there was a fragrance that acted upon her half-swooning senses like a glass of champagne: half-forgotten, heavily sweet, at this moment exquisitely evocative — the scent of red roses.

And she lifted her head; and saw, standing in the open doorway of the box opposite, a small, slender figure — bright eyes laughing at her across the wide space of the auditorium, the old, teasing, half-sweet, half malicious smile. And a word was spoken and the Earl of Trove jerked to his feet and stood, mouth a-gape; and spoke in turn into his daughter’s ear. She also rose; turned her head in one brief, startled glance towards the back of the box, turned back and faced the box opposite. The house was silent again, holding its breath; and the Lady Blanche looked across once more into the eyes of her rival, and this time bent her proud, beautiful head and sank into a deep, slow curtsey that had nothing in it but abject humility; and stood erect again — waiting.

Cool, condescending, ironical — scornfully triumphant now, the golden head bowed back.

But next morning all London rang with the news: the notorious highwayman, Gareth the Fox — apprehended right here in the heart of the Metropolis and safely caged up for good and all in Newgate Gaol.

L
ITTLE JAKE CAME TO HER
, heartbroken. ‘It was my fault. It was my fault for detaining him outside the playhouse…’

Gilda sat huddled in the huge armchair, up in the attic room, her feet on the fender. ‘No, no, not your fault, dearest; they must have been watching for him.’ She held the small hard brown hand tight in her own. ‘But tell me, tell me again — everything he did, everything he said…’

‘Why, I told you, Gilda, last night. I heard they were saying in the Bag o’ Nails what she planned — that Blanche! — to humiliate you, to keep only to the letter of the bargain. So I ran to the playhouse to warn you. But they wouldn’t let me in; and just as I was arguing with them — there he was! So elegant, Gilda, dressed like a fop as he always was in those old days, you remember? — in his green brocade coat…’

‘He had it off a rich gentleman travelling by coach towards Fishguard: took it off the man’s back — to come courting the Marchesa Marigelda.’ Even now, she couldn’t help smiling. ‘Well, but go on—’