Devil Water (63 page)

“Yes,” said Evelyn. She had dropped the fan because her Presentation occurred during her secret engagement to Wilfred Lawson, who was a Groom of the Bed Chamber and she had just caught sight of Wilfred standing behind the King and smiling at her. “I remember it well,” she said. “And do
you
remember that the King asked my name, translated it as ‘Vogel,’ then made some German pun at which he roared with laughter?”

“I don’t remember that,” said Byrd stiffly, wondering why Evelyn was always deflating. He did not like puns on his name, since that lampoon of the despicable Lawson’s, though once he had been complimented at being called the “Black Swan” and had even signed various love letters as “Inamorato L’Oiseau.” Long ago, that was.

The coach stopped at the Palace gates, Negro flunkies opened the door, Byrd handed the ladies out, then drew Evelyn’s arm through his. Randolph, rushing up, offered his arm to Jenny, who accepted with a demure smile. They crossed the court, where tall cressets were burning fragrant applewood. They mounted the steps and entered the great hall, a luxurious chamber of dark gleaming woods and flashing crystals beneath the lights of a dozen wax tapers.

At once they heard the tinkle of music from the ballroom. Jenny recognized a gavotte she had learned at school, and turned impulsively to her escort. “Oh, there’ll be dancing!” she cried. “I do love it, don’t you, Captain Randolph?”

He, who didn’t know a jig from a minuet, murmured an untruthful assent, while squeezing her arm timidly and gazing at her in rapture. Others were looking at Jenny too. The hall was rapidly filling with guests, who had to wait there for their turn to mount the staircase and salute the Governor in his private parlor. The Governor’s steward explained that His Excellency had not felt well enough to come down tonight, and that he had strength for only a few visitors at a time.

Byrd, and Captain Randolph, were constantly bowing to friends and kinfolk as they all waited. There were Beverleys, Stiths, and Ludwells, Nathaniel Harrison of “Wakefield” -- uncle to Ben Harrison; Mann Page of “Rosewell,” the Carters -- a great many Carters, including the huge patriarch, “King” Robert Carter himself. Byrd proudly introduced Evelyn, who immediately presented Jenny to all these people. “My friend, Miss Radcliffe from London,” she said to each one. Jenny was so busy curtseying and murmuring the proper howdye do ma’am’s or sir’s that all the curious admiring faces were a blur. Neither she nor anyone else noticed a small man in a baggy brown tradesman’s suit who had squeezed himself near the door. He had a face like a puckered one-eyed monkey, mournful and a bit raffish because of the black patch which covered his right eye. His name was Willy Turner, and he was servant and Jack-of-all-trades to Dr. Archibald Blair, the Commissary’s brother. Dr. Blair had sent Willy Turner to the Palace with some new pills for the Governor to try, and instructed him to deliver them personally to the Governor. So Willy waited, unobtrusively, until all the grand company should have been received. Very soon his eye lit on Jenny, and grew rounder. His keen ears had no difficulty in hearing her repeated introductions as “Miss Radcliffe” and he said “Holy Blessed Saints!” under his breath. He stared after Jenny, as the summons came and she mounted the broad mahogany staircase with the Byrds and Randolph. “I’ve
got
to know,” he muttered to himself, and set his wits to working.

The interview with the Governor was brief. The old man was huddled in shawls and coughing. His skin was jaundiced. In a rasping wheeze he spoke a few gracious words, as befitted the King’s representative.

Other guests were ushered in, and the Byrd party went downstairs into the great ballroom. Here Mrs. Drysdale greeted them. She was a plain, dumpy woman under her vice-regal coronet, and she could not quite hide her fears for her husband; yet she received her guests with practiced cordiality and begged them to enjoy themselves.

Both Jenny and Evelyn obeyed this request. They burst into Williamsburg society like a couple of sparkling Catherine-wheels. To their different styles of beauty they also brought the charm of novelty and the aura of London.

The men were dazzled. “King” Carter himself, after rather ponderously likening the girls to “Rose-red” and “Rose-white,” led each one out for a dance.

The ladies were not as dazzled. A group of wallflowers on the gilt chairs beneath a portrait of King George decided that Evelyn was too tall, that the extraordinary gray dress (could that be the present fashion in London?) made her skin sallow, and that her manner was too bold. It was harder to find fault with Jenny, until someone said that a cleft chin was a sign of lewdness, and that surely the girl painted, such coloring couldn’t be real; whereupon the ladies felt better as they watched their menfolk making fools of themselves.

Evelyn had her cluster of eager beaux, Jenny had hers, though Captain Randolph, after several drinks of punch, grew jealous and so proprietorial of Jenny that one of his elder brothers, John, drew him aside and said, “Look here, Ned! You haven’t made a serious offer to that lovely little creature, have you? Not without consulting the family!”

“Yes, I have!” said the Captain angrily. “And no pack of brothers’ll stop me!”

“Now, now,” said John Randolph. “You’re a man of sense, Ned, or used to be. I’ve been talking to Colonel Byrd, who was evasive. There’s something odd about that girl -- something discreditable in her background, and she’s practically penniless, nothing but a dependent of Miss Evelyn’s. Believe me, Ned, she’s not the sort that Randolphs
marry!
I fear she’s trapped you into thinking so.”

“God damn you for a blathering fool!” shouted the Captain, and turning on his heel he stalked to the supper room, where he found Jenny with one of the Ludwells, drinking punch.

“Come for a walk in the garden, Miss Jenny!” said the Captain, glaring at Ludwell, and in a voice of distinct command which Jenny quelled by lifted eyebrows and a questioning smile. “I mean,” said the Captain, instantly humbled, “if you please, I --I wish to talk with you so much. The garden’s pretty, there’s a maze, and -- flowers.”

Jenny laughed. “Most gardens have flowers, and isn’t it rather dark for the maze? But very well, I’ll welcome a breath of air for a few minutes.”

He took her arm and they stepped out to the garden. The evening air was balmy and smelled of boxwood and lavender. There was light from the Palace windows and light from a newly risen moon. Other couples were strolling along the graveled paths. Randolph’s determination ebbed. Stung, in spite of himself, by his brother’s remarks, he had meant to question Jenny, find out something of her early life, though now that she floated along beside him, so ethereal in the moonlight, he lost courage, knowing that he was afraid to find out much, and that also she had given him no real right to question her.

Jenny was both relieved and rather bored by this unexpected silence. She longed for more dancing, more merriment, and more adulation. In the ballroom she had thought of nothing except the gaudy moment, intoxicated with pleasure -- to which some glasses of punch had materially contributed. “Well, Captain,” she began gaily, “shall we go in?” and moved aside as a little man with a black patch on his eye darted down the path towards them. She expected the man to go by, but he did not. He stopped and peered at her.

“I was hoping ye’d coom out here, miss,” he said in a rather squeaky voice. “I’ve been watchin’ for ye, if ye’ll forgive me presumption, sir,” he added to Randolph, who stiffened and said, “What do you want of the lady?”

“Your honor,” said Willy Turner meekly, “could I speak wi’ her alone -- just for a twinkling, just there--” He pointed to a spot a yard away. “I mean no harm.”

“How silly,” said Jenny, laughing and heedless. “Whatever you have to say can be said right here.” And she laughed again, for the punch and the beauty of the garden and the general excitement of her first real ball made of the funny little man a ludicrous dream shape. She put her hand on Randolph’s arm to quiet him. She could feel him chafing, and she said, “Speak out. What is it?”

Willy hesitated, and it was for her protection that he hesitated. Then he said, “I’ve no wish to be forward, miss, but ye look much like a mahn I once knew, and ye also bear his name.”

Jenny ceased smiling. She drew herself tight and wary, for now she had heard in the little man’s speech the accents of northern England.

“Where did you know this man?” she said.

“At Preston,” replied Willy with a quick nervous glance at the scowling Captain. “An’ he was the bravest, dearest man I’ve ever seen. He saved me life, though he wouldn’t admit it, in the heat o’ the skirmish. He saved me life, did Charles Radcliffe, though he was wounded himself.”

“Oh-h --” said Jenny in a strangled voice.

“What
is
this farrago!” demanded the Captain. “Who’s this little knave speaking of?”

“My father,” said Jenny, and her voice trembled.

“But what’s this about Preston?” pursued Randolph. “Wasn’t that where the vile rebels were captured in the ‘Fifteen?”

Willy shook his head, and made an involuntary motion to stop Jenny. She ignored him. “Preston,” she said each word clipped, “is where a gallant band of men made their last stand for their rightful king -- James the Third of England!”

Randolph’s jaw dropped, he gaped at Jenny in dismay, while Willy shook his head and murmured, “Lass, lass, ye shouldna’ve said it. I didn’t mean for you to say it.”

Randolph, recovering from the shock of Jenny’s treasonable speech and incapable of being angry with her, turned violently on Willy Turner. “You puny Jacobite scum -- you traitor -- aye, I see you don’t deny it! And you’ll suffer for it. I’ll tell the sheriff and we’ll see if jail’ll change your views!”

“Oh no you don’t, sir!” said Willy with a mournful chuckle. “Can’t kill a dead dog twice. I’ve served me time. I was transported ten years agone. Ask Dr. Blair -- who I work for. He knows.”

“Get out then!” shouted the Captain. “How dared you come butting in here!”

“I don’t wish him to go,” said Jenny in a firm quiet voice. “I wish to talk to him, Captain Randolph, alone.”

“You can’t!” cried the baffled and unhappy Randolph. “Miss Jenny, you mustn’t!”

“Oh, but I
can,”
she said, beckoning to Willy, and pointing to a wooden bench beneath a huge box tree. He followed, and they sat down together while Randolph paced up and down the walk, his mind in turmoil.

Jenny and Willy Turner talked at length. He came from Lancashire, from Preston itself, and had been an orphaned youth of twenty, a starveling apprentice cobbler, when the Jacobite army marched into town. At first he had hesitated to join them, even though he was a Roman Catholic.

“And are
you
one, miss?” he whispered. “If so, hide it, like I do, until I earn enough to mebbe get me to Maryland.”

“I’m not Catholic,” she said. “My father is -- go on about him, please.”

Willy nodded eagerly. It was the Radcliffes who had brought him into the Rising. The Earl of Derwentwater and his brother Charles. Not personally, but the sight of them on their horses in the market square when they proclaimed the king. He couldn’t explain how he had felt, though he made Jenny understand how gallantry and romance had seemed to flow from those two proud figures. The little Earl, “No bigger’n me, yet he
seemed
big,” said Willy. And Charles, who had looked like all the heroes Willy had ever heard of -- Robin Hood and King Arthur rolled into one. So Willy had joined the Rising. He had been fighting at the church barricade just behind Charles when the dragoons came pouring over. One of them had run at Willy, his bayonet fixed, and Charles interposed himself between the two and spitted the dragoon on his sword. “The bayonet grazed me eye,” said Willy. “That’s how I lost it, but Fd’ve had that bit o’ steel clean through me brain-pan wi’out Mr. Radcliffe’s being there. Later, I saw him just once more before the surrender, an’ I tried to thank him and he laughed; he’d the merriest laugh I ever heard, and he hugged me around the shoulders, like we was old friends. Ah, I loved the man.”

“Yes,” said Jenny. All her gaiety had gone. With every word that the little man spoke she could see Charles more clearly, and she began to feel anguished longing for him. Why had she not stayed with him as he had implored her to, why had she not ignored Lady Newburgh’s attitude? What was the demented purpose which had seized upon her when she read Evelyn’s letter in Vincennes, a purpose which had made her desert the only person who really loved her, to go on a senseless quest after a man who had doubtless forgotten her existence, or to whom she could be nothing except a miserable reminder of his ignominy and suffering.

I could go back, Jenny thought. I could go back to Papa. I don’t have to stay here. Captain Randolph was now of no importance, nor the transient considerations she had given to accepting his offer. I was fooling myself
again,
she thought wretchedly.

Willy Turner was still speaking of Charles. “It does me heart good to meet his daughter, miss. You’re the spit an’ image o’ him. I knew it when I saw ye, an’ heard ye laugh. Would ye tell me why ye aren’t wi’ him, if I don’t offend in asking?”

“Aye,” said Jenny rising, for she could bear no more. “I will, sometime -- William -- is that your name? Willy. Would you like to go back -- to see him again?”

The monkey-face looked up startled. “I can’t go back to England, miss. I was transported for life -- most of us Jacks was -- those that wasn’t hanged.”

“I know. But Mr. Radcliffe is in France. No, don’t answer now. I’m not sure of what I’m saying, yet if
I
went--” She broke off with a sharp indrawn breath, twisting her hands together. “Oh, I wish I
were
with him!”

Willy looked at her in consternation. “I didn’t mean to upset ye so, miss. And I’d do anything for ye, for his sake, not to speak o’ your being a mighty sweet lass yoursel’.”

Captain Randolph had had his fill of pacing the path and he now stalked up to them. “Miss Jenny, aren’t you finished
yet?”

“Yes,” she said. “I am.” She gave Willy Turner a distracted nod. “I’m glad you spoke to me. We’ll speak again.”