Through a Glass Darkly: A Novel (77 page)

   Perryman swept majestically from the room. At times such as these, any pretense of dignity was forgotten between him and Annie. She hitched up her skirts and passed him in the great hall. He broke into a run, and the two of them reached the parlor door at the same time. They wrestled over the door handle, both jerking it open. Perryman managed to precede Annie, but was pulled up short. Annie ran into his back.

   Tim and the stableboy stood before the Duchess.

   "It is a grand black carriage with a crest on the door," the stableboy was saying. "With four black horses pulling it. Grand enough for a king."

   "Yes, that would be Roger's. Here is a coin for you, boy. John, give the boy a coin."

   "Tim, madame."

   "My cane," said the Duchess. Tim handed her her cane. Annie and Perryman stood coldly some distance away. The Duchess stopped in front of Perryman.

   "Things have come to a pretty pass," she said to the middle of his chest, "when I have to depend on a stableboy and a footman for news of my granddaughter's arrival."

   Perryman stared frostily at Tim. "Those who do not recognize the order of a household must learn. I was just coming in to inform the Duchess—"

   "It is my duty to inform the Duchess—" broke in Annie.

   "I saw him running by outside," Tim said, grinning impudently at the two of them. "I thought he might have some news. The old girl was anxious."

   "Do not call her 'the old girl,'" Annie began, but the sound of a carriage, horse's hooves against gravel, and the jingle of harness came clearly into the room. Annie and Perryman looked at each other; they might miss the arrival. They crowded back through the parlor door together. Several stableboys, a groom or two, the cook, footmen, and maidservants came running out of doors, clustering behind the Duchess like chickens behind a mother hen.

   Trembling, pawing the gravel, the horses stopped, and a groom and stableboys ran to grab the lead bridles. Perryman stepped forward to open the carriage door. Out tumbled the two pugs, their little eyes bright and bulging. They ran forward, yapping shrilly, and Dulcinea leapt from the Duchess's arms to Tim to a nearby bush, her tail straight up in fright. Hyacinthe descended and bowed before the Duchess. The stableboys, remembering again his black skin and his fine clothes from the spring's quick visit, glared at him. Thérèse stepped down daintily
,
showing pretty ankles, to the delight of watching grooms and footmen, who had discussed her frequently since their own brief glimpse of her in the spring, when she had accompanied Lady Devane and Master Harry. She curtsied to the Duchess. And finally, one hand in Perryman's, Barbara descended from the carriage.

   She is too thin, thought the Duchess. When I last saw her at least she had some flesh on her bones. This summer has hurt her. I see it in her face.

   "You! Boy!" she snapped to Hyacinthe, who bowed again and told her his name. "You find those dogs and shut them up. I cannot abide yapping, misbehaved, spoiled animals. The duke's dogs were always well–trained. You! Coachman!"

   Barbara's coachman froze.

   "You just mind where you drive those horses on the way to the stables. I will not have my lavender beds ruined by careless driving! You, footmen, get these trunks off this coach! Have you all turned to stone?"

   Galvanized, people were scurrying right and left. Only she and Barbara were unmoving, as people moved around them as water does stones in a stream.

   "You! Frenchy!"

   Smiling, Thérèse repeated her name softly, and several footmen and grooms were seen to roll it on their tongues silently.

   "You follow my Annie, and she will show you my granddaughter's chambers."

   She looks so old, thought Barbara. I had forgotten, or perhaps I never noticed. Oh, Grandmama. You can still bark. And I'm sure you can still bite. How glad I am to be home. She smiled at her grandmother.

   Impudent chit, thought the Duchess. She is the image of her grandfather at this moment. I ought to cane her. Ah, Richard, our girl is home. She opened her arms, and without a word, Barbara walked into them.

* * *

   Barbara did not eat much of the dinner prepared in her honor, though she did smile at the sight of Cook and two footmen bearing in a pie the size of a wagon wheel. But as the servants in the household gathered around for a slice, along with a cup of Tamworth punch Perryman was now importantly ladling out, she slipped away in the laughing disorder, climbing the back, uneven stairs to the attics, opening the door to her old room. But there was nothing left to remind her of herself. The bed stood bare, without its draperies and mattress. The Dutch chest was empty now. Her bird's nest and treasures were long gone. She sat a moment at her window, gazing out onto Tamworth, trying to remember the girl who had once sat here by the hour, but all she could recall was the expression on Charles's face as he stared down at her, and she told him she hated him. In the nursery, she sat for a long time on the floor, the dust motes from the sun coming through the window to dance around her. On top of low tables were stacked small wooden chairs; a cradle sat empty and forlorn in a corner, not even its gauze draperies to swathe it. The pale ghosts of her brothers and sisters floated dimly in her memory. Here all was stillness, all was time, wound down, stopped, no more.

   Bab, said dead Charlotte in her mind, do not leave. Little Anne's hand clutched the cloak of a fifteen–year–old girl off to London. I am the bride, Anne said, clomping about in her big sister's shoes, look at me. Bab, Tom and Kit said to her in her bride's finery, you are beautiful. I love you, Bab, said Charlotte, I love you. Dear, shy, difficult Charlotte. Nothing now. Worms and moldering bones. Oh, Charles, I wish we had not quarreled. In her mind, he said the hurtful, ugly truths to her again, and in her mind, she covered his lovely, firm mouth with her hand to silence him. She looked toward the empty cradle. Baby smiled a ghostly toothless smile. A spider was making a web in one corner. Jemmy lay bleeding to death on the ground. It only hurts when I laugh, said Richelieu. Roger, she thought. It hurts. It all hurts me so.

* * *

   That evening she walked with her grandmother to Tamworth church. All was soft and mellow now with dusk. In another hour it would be dark; the evening was cool and quiet, but with country sounds—the lowing of cattle in their fields, the frogs. Harry and Charlotte were around her feet, their coats covered with briars and weed seeds, as she stooped to gather gillyflowers and pimpernel that grew along the ditches of the lane. Inside Tamworth chapel, while her grandmother murmured to the eternally young marble figure of her grandfather lying across the top of his table tomb, Barbara read the memorial tablets on the walls for her uncles, her brothers and sisters, Cousin Henley. She filled the basalt vases in the corners with the wildflowers.

   The household was waiting when they returned, gathered in the great hall for evening prayers. Perryman brought the Bible box and opened it and took out the huge Tamworth Bible and laid it in the Duchess's lap. She sat tiny and wrinkled, dwarfed in the duke's massive oak chair. The hall, with its dark timbers of wood vaulting above, was almost like a church itself.

   "'Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness,'" she began to read in a quavering voice, and Barbara closed her eyes to listen, evening prayers a constant she had grown up on, and now the full sounds and cadences of King James's scholars soothed her heart because the words brought back memories of such evenings stretching back as far as she could remember. After the reading, the Duchess added her few short, personal requests, that the weather continue mild, and that one of the kitchen maids—who would go unnamed but who would know herself—not be so forward with the stableboys. Everyone bowed his head to pray silently. "Lord, have mercy upon us," the Duchess finished.

   "Christ, have mercy upon us," repeated her household. "Amen."

Tamworth's day was over.

   Barbara lay in her bed. The dogs, at her feet, were already snoring loudly, exhausted with their first day in the country, with their exploring and attempts to follow a scent, with the fruitless effort to corner and kill the kitten, Dulcinea. She had returned to her bedchamber to find Hyacinthe trying to wash an eye turning black and blue. She listened to his excited version of a fight with two stableboys, and tonight he was sleeping over the stables with them. He had fought, successfully, to make his first friends. She and Thérèse had smiled at each other above his head.

   From her bed, she could see the moon. If I were in Richmond or London or even Paris, she thought, my evening would only be beginning. I would still be dressing for the theater or a game of cards in the Frog's private chambers. There would be hours ahead of me, long hours, in which to gamble and flirt and be bored. Charles would be watching me, and I would see in his eyes that he wanted me. And I might walk with him in the gardens, letting him kiss me until my legs were weak and all I could think of was to be alone with him, naked in his arms. Or I might flirt with someone else just to see his anger. As Richelieu taught me…how well he taught me…people around me would be gossiping, drinking, becoming louder as the night wore on. And I would go to my bed in the early hours of the morning, and if I were sober, I would think, another night has passed. And my life goes on. And nothing happens. Words from her grandmother's reading this evening drifted into her mind. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Oh, Charles, there were times when I almost loved you. I did not treat you fairly. Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Roger, you smile at me with your handsome face and expect me to fall at your feet. If only I could…but I cannot.

   She climbed out of bed and opened the door to her grandmother's chambers. Her grandmother lay back against a snowy mountain of pillows, but she was not asleep. A solitary candle glimmered on the table beside the bed, and one hand moved in a rhythmic motion over a purring, white bundle of fur, the new Dulcinea, while her grandmother read from her Bible, her lips moving with the words. Barbara smiled…nothing changed, and everything did.

   The Duchess looked up as she saw her granddaughter walking toward her. Nothing changes, she thought, and everything does. Here is my Bab with me once more, but not the Bab I knew. That Bab would have come bounding into my bed, spilling over with thoughts, with her hurts and needs, heart and face an open book to me. This is a woman who approaches me, and her hurts are not open for all the world to see, but still she comes to me, as always, the ritual remembered, beloved. Thank you, my heavenly Lord, for your multitude of tender mercies. Richard, our girl is home.

   Barbara got into the bed and moved Dulcinea and lay down and without a word, the Duchess reached out and touched her hair, her hands stroking the red–gold curls. Barbara closed her eyes. There was a comfortable silence between them. The Duchess felt herself begin to doze. It was the warm familiarity, the old, beloved memory now real again, for the young Barbara had spent many a night thusly, and then it was over misbehavior also…what a mischievous, headstrong child she had been… what had she done this time…had she and that rogue Harry given the pigs her precious rose brandy to drink so that the poor creatures staggered like fat, pink, drunken barrels in their pens, while the grooms leaned against the fence, watching, crying with laughter…had she and Harry gotten into John Ashford's orangery to steal his newly formed fruit? Well, she would talk with John tomorrow.

   "You know of the duel?"

   Her words jerked the Duchess awake, and she found herself looking into her granddaughter's blue eyes.

   "Duel?" she said, parrying for time. "Has Harry been sent down from school again for dueling?'

   Barbara leaned on one elbow to stare at her. "No, Grandmama. That was long ago. I meant the duel between Charles Russel and Jemmy Landsdowne."

   "Oh…yes…that duel. Of course I know about it! I am not in my dotage yet! Your Aunt Abigail broke two pens in her haste to see I had the news." She sat up straighter and pulled forward her lace–edged cap, which had slipped during her doze. "Who was this Jemmy?"

   "An admirer…a friend…a boy. He reminded me of Kit. I flirted with him. And more. Which he died for."

   Ah, yes, thought the Duchess. I know. I know all they say of you. Abigail sees to that. A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold…as a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is fair woman which is without discretion…Oh, there were many verses she could now recite to her granddaughter…about women and their wiles and their wicked ways…but she found that not even one of them would go past her lips. She could not say them to this girl, this woman, she loved so, yet how easily she had always said them to Diana and turned away from her daughter contemptuously. If she had never said them to Diana, never judged her, would things have been different? If she could have loved Diana the way she loved Barbara…the thoughts pained her. Old, she said to herself. I am too old for regrets now. Too old to change. Softly, in a hesitant voice that was so unlike herself that Barbara stared, she said, "In this life, many things happen in which we play a shameful part. Those of us who are strong forgive ourselves and go on. The weak wallow in their shame and allow it to devour them. There is no one of us without sin, child. There ought to be some comfort in that."

   Surprised, Barbara smiled at her.

   How lovely she is, thought the Duchess, for all her thinness. No wonder a man was killed for her. But she could not read her granddaughter's heart, as once she had done so easily. Barbara closed her eyes again, and the Duchess began to stroke her hair. Roger, she thought. Does she still love him, or does she love this Charles Russel? What happened in Paris? Am I ever to know…and can I bear it if I do?

   Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities, Barbara was thinking, the words from the evening reading still in her mind. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation….Oh, Grandmama, how glad I am to be here, to be with you. I know what you will do from the moment you rise in the morning until you go to bed at night. Your world is a ritual and you are unvarying in your strength and steadfastness, and you and Tamworth will make me well again. I know it. She closed her eyes and went to sleep.