The Marquis of Westmarch (26 page)

With dignity, Blandy opened the new leather case and held it out to Grindal, who went through the ritual of examining each gun and then returning it, all under the principals’ eyes.

“Very well,” he said.

The two silver-mounted pistols lay face to face on crushed blue velvet, cold and heavy, glinting a little in their deep box’s shade. Meriel put one hand forward, and roughly lifted the nearest out of the case. Auriol noticed how damp her long fingers were, pink with cold and scratched by wheat-stalks; but they were perfectly steady as they grasped the butt. He raised his eyes to her face, and saw her warm breath in the air. He thought that she was looking more sternly handsome than ever before, with her red hair lit up by the sun behind her, bright as the poppies all round them in the corn. Her eyes were looking
straight into his. She could be so very passionate; at that moment, he almost believed that she was already capable of ordinary tenderness, as she would be one day.

He hesitated for a moment, long enough to distress Philander Grindal, then quickly he took the case from Blandy, and picked up the remaining gun, and cocked it.

*

In the lamplit porters’ lodge at Castle West, a mentally deficient boy was trying to sweep the floor: he was pushing a little pile of dirt round and round in front of him, leaving the filthy sides of the room untouched, as though he could not see them. The younger of the two men who had been guarding Auriol’s door found it an infuriating sight, but he said nothing, for it was no business of his, and he was trying to think. His companion was asleep on the table with his livery coat unbuttoned and a glass in his hand, and besides him there was no one else in the room but a Castle-town prostitute, also asleep. The new day was too far advanced for revellers, and too little so for men beginning their morning’s duties with coffee in the lodge.

When a fat brisk woman came in and boxed the idiot boy’s ears, the young footman put down his tankard and left, for it occurred to him that he might well be questioned by anyone else who came in. He was known to have been posted on early duty outside Knight Auriol Wychwood’s door. Quitting the lodge, he went to stand against the back wall of one of the nearby stables, and looked up at the dawn, in peace.

He still did not know whether the Marquis’s conduct was any more his business than the idiot’s way of using a broom, and indeed, he blushed at his own monstrous presumption in thinking it might be. Yet there had been something very odd about the Marquis’s sending him and his fellow away three-quarters of an hour ago. Certainly Westmarch owed no one any explanations, but he could not imagine why such an action had been necessary.

Meriel was only indirectly his employer: because he did not work in her own apartments, but on whichever lodging-staircase the Steward thought fit, he was answerable to Juxon. Why, he thought, had the Steward sent no message, telling the pair of them to absent themselves when the Marquis arrived with two gentlemen friends? He knew that Knight Auriol was in theory
detained by Juxon, not Westmarch, and Juxon was punctilious to a fault. The Steward had a great deal of influence over the Marquis, though people said less than formerly, but it was inconceivable that he would make Westmarch carry his messages. The young footman giggled at this.

Finally, he decided to go back to Medlar Court and see what he could. He guessed that he would see only a stout locked door, of which the Marquis now had the key; and knew from experience that it was impossible to hear more than a buzz of voices through those two doors, even when the voices were raised. Words were never distinguishable.

The young footman pulled himself upright, then saw that he was being steadily regarded by one of the grooms, whom he did not know.

“I see his lordship’s big friend’s been let out,” said the man. “Happen you’ll know all about that?”

“No.”

“Rode out of the gate not half an hour ago with his lordship and two others, so I see — young Mr Grindal I think it was and a rabbity-faced one, regular twiddle-poop. Driving a nice pair of tits though, proper good ’uns.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Ay. Well, wasn’t you told — you’re in Steward’s livery?”

“Not in so many words, as you might say.”

The groom grinned, shrugged, and went into the nearest loose-box.

The young footman felt a kind of panic at what he had just learned, and found himself wishing that he might only have remained in ignorance, and seen and stood before that closed door in Medlar Court. But frightened instinct told him that it was his absolute duty to see the Steward, that if he failed in it he would lose his job. He did not pause to consider quite what an unthinkable impertinence it was for him to throw himself upon the Steward and question him about the Marquis’s movements, implying that there was something he, Juxon, did not know.

It was now half-past five. Auriol and Blandy had just joined Meriel and Philander by the fence in the fields.

*

Ten minutes later, the young footman was on his feet in Juxon’s
closet, trembling at the sight of the Steward’s face. To his own surprise, Juxon’s shrewd valet had admitted him at once, without a sign of outrage, when he knocked on the door; yet now he was being made to feel more like a criminal than like a good servant and important emissary.

Unpainted at this hour, Juxon’s face was like a warty paper mask. Gone, he thought. Eloped. I’ll fetch them back. He said, “You let them go? You let them go? And waited
an
hour
before coming to me?”

“But Sir Steward, I thought — I thought — well, I was only trying to do what’s right, I couldn’t deny his lordship sir,
I
didn’t know!” cried the young footman, suddenly defiant.

“You thought! How dare you think, do you think I am interested in what you thought? You will suffer for this, fellow. And for your insolence.”

“His lordship said I shouldn’t, sir!”

“
What
?” The pause was horrible. “Take a month’s wages, you are dismissed!”

“It’s unjust!” shouted the footman. “And so you know it!”

“Unjust? And what of the injustice done to
me
?” Juxon flung open the closet door and pushed the other out.

For a moment, he stood, a little bent, over the handle of the door. Then he straightened himself, and stared into the room. The blood was thumping in his head but he did not think, seeing his reflection in the mirror opposite, that he was going to faint.

Meriel and Auriol were gone, and though he had vowed otherwise when he was first told what they had done, he realised he could never bring them back. Juxon wasted no time in asking himself why the eloping couple had thought it necessary to have an escort of two men: for the first time in his life, he was presuming that Meriel knew her own business best. He had his own future to think of now and could not trouble himself over her.

She would become Wychwood’s wife, confess to Hugo, cause an uproar, be exiled in Southmarch for a few years, and then be re-admitted to society. Now his life with her was finally over, Juxon could perceive the likely future as prophesied by Auriol Wychwood without needing to deceive himself. He regretted the loss of all his fantasies, but could no longer afford to believe in
them. Not till he was out of Castle West would he indulge in angry regrets, sorrow and self-blame.

Yes, he thought, going over to his desk, gone forever!

Coldly he made his preparations, knowing that he would have to hide for some time in a large town where he was unknown, for Meriel would certainly have taken no measures for his protection, and if anyone were punished for her twelve-year charade it would be him, Juxon the upstart. Not the new Lady Merelinda Longmaster Wychwood. No doubt when she was safely in petticoats she would enjoy reading accounts of his trial and sentence — though quite what offence he could be tried for he did not know; his action had been unique.

He rang for his valet and ordered him to pack a small trunk, sent a footman out into Castle-town to hire a postchaise, and counted his supply of money. He had some nine thousand crowns in bills, secreted behind one of the bookcases in his closet. It was a modest sum that he had been saving honestly, bit by bit, since Marchioness Saccharissa first summoned him to Castle West. Taking out the rolled-up bills for the first time in years, he noticed how long ago were some of their dates: always, he thought, he had distrusted investments, because he had known with his infallible instinct that he would one day need to carry off large sums of cash. He had always known that when catastrophe came, it came swiftly. His instinct had never failed him, except of course when he applied it to Meriel.

All the while he was being so very efficient, unformed thoughts were simmering in his head, preparing to come into the open later. Chief among them was the realisation that he had been the stupidest of blind, besotted fools, seeing nothing, never fully understanding that Meriel was first of all a woman in love and had been rich with love ever since Month of Showers. Women in love were too slavish ever to hurt their lovers. And they were cunning, as Meriel had been in allowing him to believe that she was not as other women, and would indeed one day take advantage of his scheme allowing her to kill her lover.

Deep down beneath these reflections there was guilt at what he, Juxon, had done to her, what he had made her suffer. Perhaps, he thought composedly, packing up his money, he would kill himself.

At that moment his valet came in and said:

“Sir, for how long will you be gone? Will you perhaps require the new worked muslin jaconet evening tunic?” His eyes widened at the sight of the bills, but Juxon, full of courage, pretended not to see.

“Evening tunic?” he said casually, and looking at his servant, briefly felt the romance of exile, where evening tunics were unknown. “Why, no. The fact is that I do not know for just how long I shall be gone, Silbrook. However, the case is that I am obliged to go immediately — as you see — into the Westmarch Quarter — and so I will require a number of country suits.”

“Yes, sir.”

Juxon had spoken in a moment of inspiration, saying that he meant to go north to the Westmarch Quarter when it came to him in a flash that his hired postchaise must take him as far south as Marsh Lynn. From there he would go to King Clairmond’s Town in Eastmarch by public barge, because the public barge route from Marsh Lynn to King Clairmond’s Town was so obscure, slow and complicated that no one would expect a fugitive to take it.

Under a second inspiration, Juxon took out a piece of paper from his bureau drawer as soon as the valet was gone. He was about to perform a magnanimous, though perhaps unnecessary action. He wrote, in a far larger hand than his usual one:

‘I, Florimond Juxon, formerly Steward of Castle West and First Secretary to Meriel Longmaster, Marquis of Westmarch’ — he hesitated over that designation, but decided that it would be sweetly ironic to leave it in — ‘do hereby declare that Knight Auriol Wychwood is entirely innocent of that charge upon which I most shamefully, falsely and feloniously confined him, for my own ends. May he forgive me, and may all who love him live prosperously to the end of their days!’

He sealed the note, and wrote on the outside TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN. In this way, he would leave a puzzle behind him at Castle West, while vanishing like a magician in a cloud of dust.

*

They faced each other at a distance of twenty-five paces, carefully measured. Between them ran a flattened channel of corn and frail poppies, brushed down by their solemn legs. The sky was
golden-white now, and the sun a disc pale enough to be looked on, but the seconds had made sure it was in neither of their eyes. Each was to have a perfectly fair chance of killing the other.

Philander Grindal was standing between them, exactly twelve paces away from each principal. He took a few steps backward, out of the line of fire. Some way behind him, the doctor stood with his back turned. Far to Auriol’s left there was Fabian Blandy, trying to control the hay-fever which made his eyes itch intolerably and would ruin his view of the proceedings.

Philander, remembering how three weeks ago he had given the signal to start Meriel’s race against her cousin, lifted a handkerchief and let it flutter in the wind. He prayed that nothing might happen, and saw that both principals were watching him intently from the corners of their eyes. Their heads were resolutely turned to face each other.

Their hearts were beating very quickly, their stomachs were grinding, and both found it hard to keep perfectly still. Meriel hoped to God she looked dignified, and reminded herself both that Auriol might use that barely visible gun to make an end to her life, now, and that she must not think about it. Auriol wished to God he had thought to tie back his hair as Meriel tied hers: it had grown down to his shoulders during his imprisonment, and was now blowing all over his face. Yet it was not necessary for him to see in order to make his aim.

“Fire!” said Philander, and dropped the handkerchief.

Auriol raised his arm over the world and his pistol cracked upwards, into the air. Meriel realised that she was alive, and saw the bitter blue smoke from his pistol hanging for a moment up above his head. The wind blew it away. Her legs began to feel hopelessly weak. She had been unable to distinguish his features before he fired; now she thought she could see a smile of indescribable tenderness on his lips.

Philander Grindal, thankful that Auriol had done as he promised and deloped, saw Meriel’s pistol still poised, and wondered why she did not fire and get it over with. He moved his lips. Meriel was too busy looking at her lover to notice.

Auriol’s voice called out across the field as he lowered his gun.

“I’ve done as I ought,” he shouted, “and now I’m going to say something about the truth.”

No one else could speak.

Auriol said, “It was peculiarly bad in me to have struck Westmarch as I did.”

Meriel’s violent little hand was still stuck to her pistol, but it began to quiver visibly as Auriol went on, and started to move.