Now Face to Face (85 page)

The hand was swollen, so that the rings cut into the flesh. Barbara had a sudden memory of being a girl, of looking at the rings on her mother’s fingers and wondering why the fingers were so fat. They were only fat at certain times. Her mother would descend on Tamworth, cursing and screaming, slapping them all, then disappear again; six months later she’d return for long enough to have a baby. After a while, Barbara hadn’t minded the rages, or the slaps, because she knew they meant she’d have another brother or sister to love.

There was to be a child. She could feel the meaning of the words beginning to sink deep inside her, into a place of joy.

She began to pull off Diana’s rings, to chafe the flesh of the hands and fingers.

“Why will you wear these when they must hurt your fingers? Are you with child?”

“Do I show it already? Of course I do. I look like a cow. I hate it, hate myself, hate this child. I don’t want another, Barbara.”

But I do, thought Barbara. Sweet Jesus, dear God in heaven, all the others were mine. This one will be, too. We’re to have a child. Suddenly, words the Gypsy had said at Tamworth came into her mind: Babies be everywhere. Barbara had been sitting by herself, thinking about Hyacinthe, feeling sorrow at all that was not to be.

“Why on earth do you think I married, for the love of Penny’s snuff stains?” said her mother. “Now I will grow huge and suffer to have a bawling, red-faced urchin. I tried everything to rid myself of it, everything. And you, the world in your hands, just up and leave London in the midst of a crisis when everyone—everyone—is under suspicion, and we must all be so careful. They know Gussy Cromwell is your friend, that Charles was your lover. It doesn’t look good for you to disappear at the arrests. So you must change your gown and go to St. James’s Palace at once. And you must call at Leicester House. The Prince has been most insistent to see you. I hope you weren’t with a lover, Barbara. This is the time for discretion. Carlyle says he has an interesting proposition for you. Take care, Barbara. Position yourself while you still can, while you still have your youth and your beauty upon your side. If I die in childbed, I want him named Richard Alexander Pendarves.”

“You are not going to die in childbirth, but you very well may give birth to a girl.”

“I won’t. It’s male. It makes me quite tired, Barbara, quite feeble, in a way that none of the rest of you did.”

Barbara put her hand to her mother’s abdomen.

Miraculous, that life should be held inside this. She felt a sudden surge of love for her mother, ruthless, vain, treacherous as she was. There was to be a child, out of Diana, for Barbara. Thank you, Mother. All things are possible, said Colonel Perry, especially joy.

“I have an amusing book for you to read. I found it at Tamworth, about one Moll Flanders of Newgate. I will have Thérèse bring you the book. She will read it to you. You’ll like Moll, Mother. She has no honor of any kind.”

“You must offer Thérèse to the Princess of Wales. It won’t make her less your enemy, but it will placate her for a time, and it will give you a spy in their household. You need a spy. The Prince still desires you, Barbara. He and I talked of it only the other day. He is ready to offer you whatever you wish. To be mistress of the future King of England is no small thing.”

So: Carlyle had told her mother about Thérèse in an attempt to force her to do what he thought best. She was not to be forced. Did people not understand that?

“Are you still brooding about Robin?” said Diana, sitting up, taking Barbara’s chin in her hand, pinching it hard. “Listen to me. You mix in what can be very dangerous to you. Accept what you have already: a place in the King’s household, the fine reduced. Robin swears he will see it done.”

“I’ve heard otherwise.”

“He swore it to me, on this”—Diana touched her abdomen—”our child.”

This child is Robin’s? thought Barbara. Well, whose did I think it would be?

“He is happy you are to be in the King’s household. He counts you as an ally there. Be his ally. Rise with him, for I tell you, Barbara, he is on the rise. I can smell it. He will become one of the King’s foremost ministers if he can prosecute Rochester. Smile and be beautiful. More will be yours, much more, if you bend a little and forget much.”

Barbara lifted her chin up and away from her mother’s hand. I will do what I will do, she thought but did not say.

I
T WAS
evening, and she walked down Pall Mall. There was Saylor House. Had Jane called upon Tony there yet? Barbara bought an apple from the apple woman who stood under the statue at the center of Charing Cross and bit into it, watching children toss stones and mud at someone who had been sentenced to the pillory.

The man’s head and hands were exposed through holes cut in the pillory’s wooden frame. A common punishment, the pillory was a punishment whose severity was very much dependent upon the crowd’s mood. A man or woman might stand in the pillory and not be bothered all day. Then again, anything from rotten fruit to pieces of jagged brick might be thrown. To judge by the blood upon this one, the crowd had no liking for him.

“Barbara…”

Was someone calling her name? The sound was so harsh, so hoarse, she was not certain. She looked around, to the Royal Mews on her left, to Northumberland House across from it, toward passing sedan chairs. The apple woman pointed a crooked finger.

Barbara walked carefully, gingerly, toward the pillory. The face of the poor creature in it was covered with blood. His wig had been stolen. He could barely hold himself upright. “Sodomite,” read the crude sign hung around his neck. No wonder the crowd had been so brutal to him. Likely he’d been selling himself around the streets of Covent Garden, and the beadles had arrested him. But how did he know her name?

“Barbara,” the creature said hoarsely, “help me….”

She stepped closer.

It was Tommy Carlyle under that blood. Horror filled her.

She shouted at the children to stop throwing things, pulled the sign from his neck, tossing it away. She put her hands to his face and held it up. She would never have recognized him. One eye was swollen shut; his nose was broken.

“Help me, Barbara.”

She stamped her feet at the children, who were like little birds of prey, waiting for her to go away.

“Here.” She flung coins out of her underskirt pocket. “Throw nothing else at him, and there will be more for you.”

Find the house of the magistrate who had signed the paper for this punishment, have the man unlock him from this thing—that was what she must do. She began to ask people passing by, but they shook their heads to her question. She went to the apple woman, but the woman shrugged. What do I do? she thought. She half ran, half walked toward Saylor House.

Tony was in the hall. He avoided her whenever he could, would not agree with her about Robin. But he was still her cousin, still family.

“Tony, Tommy Carlyle is in the pillory at Charing Cross. He is bloody and broken. We have to do something. His neck will break if he faints, and I am afraid for him.”

“I’ll find the magistrate. You stay here and wait.”

Good Tony, dear Tony, like the Tony of old, there when she needed him. Already he was calling for his carriage to be readied. She slipped out in the confusion of servants coming into the hall and went back to the pillory.

Across one of Carlyle’s eyebrows was a cut open nearly to the bone. What must have been thrown at him? thought Barbara. People went into a frenzy sometimes, throwing and throwing. Some had died from the actions of the crowd.

“Don’t leave me again,” Carlyle said.

“I won’t.”

She sat against the railing of the fountain, waiting. Every now and again, she stood and stopped people from throwing things. Tony was taking a long time. She walked a little down Pall Mall, then came back to walk a little down Whitehall Street, but there was no sign of Tony. Dusk was here. Carlyle was weaker. If he passed out completely, he might slowly strangle. Where was Tony? How long had she been here? Dark was here now.

“Barbara,” Carlyle said, hoarsely, “I am going to die. I want you to know Robin did this to me. Avenge me, Barbara.”

“You’re not going to die. I’m going to fetch someone right this moment to break the locks. Wait for me half an hour. Keep your eyes open half an hour, that is all I ask. Will you do that, stay alert for half of an hour?”

Tim would do it, Tim could break the locks, and Tony would see that there was no trouble over it.

Within the promised half hour, Tim was hitting at the locks on the pillory with a iron mallet. It took only a few blows before they were mangled, half hanging from the wood. Carlyle sank to the ground, groaning, beginning to weep. It took Tim and Pendarves to put him in Pendarves’s carriage, but once they were inside, Tim drove off with rattling speed. What they were doing could have them all fined, at the least, put into a gaol at the worst.

Some time later, with a servant holding up a lantern so that he could see in the dark, Tony walked slowly around the pillory. The top of the frame, which held the head and hands, hung from the bottom half by a single hinge. Where would she go? he thought. She’d go where she felt safest. Then, he knew.

B
ARBARA BATHED
the cuts on Carlyle’s face. They were in the kitchen of one of the townhouses at Devane Square. Dear Pendarves. He’d seen her talking to Tim, wanted to know what was wrong, and on impulse she’d told him. Now he was in the thick of this.

Carlyle’s face was a mangle, the bruises on his throat dark.

“What happened?” Barbara asked.

“I was in a house, a certain kind of house…” He couldn’t talk above a whisper.

He meant a Mollie house, where men went to buy pleasure with other men.

“And bailiffs came—not the first time, mind you. A few coins, and I go my way. But this time, they were uninterested in my coins and we were taken to the house of the justice of the peace, late as it was, and it must have been past midnight. Once there—you must remember I’d had much wine—I began to realize that I was the only one, other than the Mollies. Where are the others? I thought. Am I that befuddled? I was not the only customer when the evening began. I was fined, but there was no coin in my pocket to pay. Again, strange. I had had coin when the evening began.”

“Don’t speak anymore. I can see it hurts you to talk,” said Barbara.

“No, I want to say this. I was sentenced to the pillory, led there in the night and locked in. In the morning, I watched more than one man recognize me and look away. By noon, I doubt my own mother could have known me. I might have died. All day, the crowd threw things. The sign telling my crime, someone read it to them, and once they began throwing, they did not stop. For a time, I quite lost my reason. ‘Am I not one of God’s creatures,’ I screamed, ‘the same as you?’”

Carlyle ground his teeth. “Robin has paid me back ten times over for my talk against him. I should have known he would. The justice is a particular henchman of his.”

“Surely, Walpole did not do this,” said Pendarves.

They heard the sound of another carriage. Tim had time only to walk in the kitchen door and say, “The Duke of Tamworth,” before Tony strode in. He barely glanced at Carlyle.

“Did it not occur to you to wait for me?” He spoke only to Barbara. “The magistrate was not at home. I ended by going to Chelsea and seeing Walpole. I have in my pocket his paper freeing Carlyle.”

“Who did you think ordered this in the first place?” she said to him.

“Nonsense.”

“Your own man says so. Tell him, Carlyle.”

Carlyle began to speak, but Tony cut him short.

“Walpole sends his express regards to Carlyle. He could not sign the paper to free him quickly enough; he even offered to come with me to see it done. Do not tell me he is the villain in this. Barbara, you must think about your position now. What if the watch had caught you?”

“Old men, easily outrun.”

“Don’t be flippant. Why didn’t you wait for me?”

“I didn’t think he would survive, Tony. He told me he was dying. You weren’t there.”

“You are too impetuous and headstrong.”

“Why are you so angry at me?”

“My brother-in-law is in the Tower for treason, my candidate for Tamworth has been pilloried for sodomy, and my cousin, whose reputation is shaky at best, cannot even allow me to handle the matter but must make a rescue reminiscent of a highwayman. I thought you were ill. Your mother told everyone you were ill. And yet you act as if you had the strength of ten men.”