Through a Glass Darkly: A Novel (91 page)

   "It is only a book—" begin Diana.

   "It is not a book!" flashed the Duchess from Tim's arms. "It is an adventure!"

* * *

   Plow Monday passed, the first farming feast after Twelfth Night. Young plowmen blacked their faces and turned their coats inside out and dressed their plows with ribbons and danced from house to house demanding largess, which they would spend to drink and eat supper at a tavern. Tamworth gave its largess.

   St. Agnes's Eve came. Barbara cried at the memory of her wedding, and Tony walked with her through the fresh snow to the chapel so that she could pray near Roger. Now and again, letters came through, welcomed and read aloud before the fire. London was aflame, wrote Abigail. In the night, the cashier of the South Sea Company, after hours of grueling testimony before each house, had packed up the company books and fled across the sea. The ports were closed. A reward was offered. There was a riot in front of Westminster. The bill, fining directors, curtailing their actions, flew through both houses and was approved. Several directors were arrested. One, who was a minister to the king, chancellor of the exchequer, resigned. Those who were members of the House of Commons were expelled.

   She does not know it, thought the Duchess, watching Barbara's face as she read the letter, but she is fortunate not to have to witness such disgrace happening to Roger. But then, Roger might have calmed the waters, might have handled the nervousness of the directors. He had a way about him. It might never have gotten this far. She sighed. In another month, Barbara would leave for London. Montrose wrote her. The solicitors. She must come to London. She worked feverishly on the memorial service, and the Duchess was glad to see her mind thus occupied. Idle hands were the Devil's plaything. Less time for brooding. She would do the brooding. As she watched Tony watch Barbara, she would do the brooding.

* * *

   Philippe sat before the fire in the green–and–gold salon of his Paris town house, reading English poetry. It was a habit he could not seem to shake.

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow.

   He stopped and shivered and leaned forward to stoke the fire. John Donne, as Roger had so often pointed out, was a remarkable man, but not so remarkable that he should make him feel, as the peasants put it, as if someone had walked over his grave.

   His footman entered, the small silver tray he carried piled with letters and notes and invitations. Philippe put aside the book and sifted through them, stopping with a frown at Abigail's letter, ripping past the seal, thinking as he did so that this was unexpected, he had thought Abigail far too well bred to write him.

   "My dear Philippe, it is with deep regret that I write to inform you that Roger has died at Tamworth from the attack he suffered at Devane House in November—" He stopped.

   He reread those lines, feeling shock course through his body at the words "has died." Carlyle had written of an attack, and he had written that letter to the Duchess of Tamworth and heard nothing in reply. Roger will be well again, he had reasoned, angry at the silence, the lack of news. His luck will cover him. He slammed his fist into a nearby table and a bowl of camellias tipped over, as well as a candlestick. The water from the camellias dripped over the book, and the candle smoked as it burned itself out against the floor, but he made no movement. He sat still. Pain filling him, swelling in him, as completely as the pain from the splinters of the cannonball that had maimed him or the sword that had cut his face open to the dawn. But Roger had been there then, to hold his bleeding face together. Roger. He crumpled Abigail's letter into a ball and threw it, and it landed in a corner of the room. Waiting for him to retrieve it, and smooth it out and reread it. Death be not proud; on the contrary, he thought, be proud, for you have taken the finest of men, the handsomest man I ever saw. And he remembered, through pain, the first time he had ever seen Roger, walking beside the great Duke of Tamworth, in love with him, but not yet knowing, innocent still, a young soldier whose face glowed with the joy and laughter of love. Who lay now in the arms of that lover whose embrace would suck the flesh from his bones and leave only dust. Death. Roger. He put his hands to his eyes to blot out the sight.

* * *

   Candlemas, the second day of February, the day to take down Tamworth Christmas greenery, brown and dry, crumbling in one's hands. Yesterday the yule log had been lit once more, to burn until sunset, when what remained was quenched and cooled to be put away to light next year's log. The season of Lent was just ahead. Repenting. Meditation. Prayer. Fasting.

   "'But all these things, with an Account how three–hundred Caribbees came and invaded them, and ruin'd their Plantations, and how they fought with that Number twice,'" read Hyacinthe to those gathered about him in the great hall, "'and were at first defeated, and three of them kill'd but at last a Storm destroying their Enemies Canoes, they famish'd or destroy'd almost all the rest, and renew'd and recover'd the Possession of their Plantation, and still liv'd upon the Island.

   "'All these things, with some very surprizing Incidents in some new Adventures of my own, for ten Years more, I may perhaps give a farther Account of hereafter.'" Hyacinthe looked up at all the pairs of eyes regarding him.

   "'Finis,'" he read and closed the book. Thérèse looked up from her mending; Perryman sighed; two or three of the grooms blinked their eyes; Annie sniffed.

   "Brandy!" said the Duchess, striking her cane against the floor. "The finish calls for a drop of brandy—a drop, Perryman—to each and every one here."

   Lambing. Wet. Snow. Chill. A few snowdrops unfurling their green heads tipped with white between patches of snow. The news from London. The Earl of Stanhope dead after a heated exchange with the Duke of Wharton in the House of Lords, over South Sea. A letter from Montrose. He must send an inventory of the estate to Parliament. Barbara must come to London. Wind and rain. A crocus found among the brown flower beds. And there a hyacinth. Hyacinthe laughing over his valentine. Blackbirds sighted, a robin singing.

* * *

The Duchess received a large folded packet from London. My legs, she moaned to her household, and then she lay in bed for three days, seeing only Annie, reading through the maps and letters and pages copied from books that Caesar White had sent to her.

   "Alexander Spotswood, who served under your husband, is the current governor of Virginia, but the gossip in the coffeehouses frequented by colonials is that he will soon be replaced. He has built a handsome governor's mansion in the town of Williamsburg.

   "Not many works exist on the colony. Three which I was able to locate are: Captain John Smith's
General Historie of Virginia,
Robert Beverley's
The History and Present State of Virginia,
in four parts, and Robert Sherrod's
The Royal Dominion of Virginia
,
a True and Vivid Accounting
. I have copied certain pages from all three works as well as included a map so that you may see where it is located.

   "The plantation is small, all by itself off the James River, a large river which goes far inland. It was owned by a distant cousin of one Robert Carter, called 'King,' who owns many plantations there. His son studies at the Inns of Court in London.

   "The main crop grown is tobacco, which tires land easily, which is why the most prosperous planters have several plantations and large holdings. The fields are worked by negro slaves captured from the coasts of Africa.

   "I have done as you asked me and told no one of your commission to me, and I thank you for the generous money you included in your letter. I will be sending more to you, including the books mentioned when I find them. I burn with curiosity to know why you have a sudden interest in a colony so far from these shores."

* * *

   Barbara dreamed she lay against Roger, naked. She kissed his throat, and he made a sound and leaned back against the pillows, pulling her with him, his hands caressing her bare back, her buttocks, the tops of her thighs. She pulled his head to her breast and shivered as his hands touched her, as his mouth sought her.

   "I want your child," she said, and his tongue flicked against her breast before he raised his head, and then he put his mouth on hers, and their tongues twined and she desired him, aching, and his hands were in her hair and around her neck and across her breasts and sides, and she murmured his name over and over.

   Barbara woke, hearing the strong, pulsing rhythm of her heart, her quickened breathing. The only sounds in the silence.

   "A dream," she said out loud.

   She sat up in the darkness and touched her breasts. The tips were hard. She put her hands to her face. He was dead. He would never hold her in his arms again.

* * *

   Primrose time, that time in late February when yellow primroses grew beside the lanes and hedges and promised spring, and sometimes there was warmth amid the cold, and roads and ditches began to thaw, to turn to mud. The coltsfoot weed bloomed in the meadows; the new lambs sheltered from the wind beside their mothers; on the bare branches of trees were tiny green dots, the beginnings of a leaf, a bud, a blossom.

   Face and hands red with cold, Barbara carried an armful of primroses into Tamworth chapel and put them into the basalt vases. Carefully, she laid some across the reclining marble statue of her grandfather.

   "From Grandmama," she said, "who will come when the weather is warmer."

   Just as carefully she laid some on the floor, above where Harry and Roger lay in the vault. She sat down on the marble bench and rubbed her hands together, putting them inside her cloak to warm them.

   "I am going to London," she said. "I will give you a fine service there, Roger. I promise."

* * *

   In London, Barbara said good–bye to her mother outside Diana's townhouse on Haymarket Street, leaning out the window of her carriage, watching as her mother and Clemmie climbed up the steps; Diana climbed, Clemmie waddled.

   Tony leaned down from his horse. "Shall I come on with you?"

   She shook her head no. He straightened and turned his horse away. He must go to Saylor House and she must go to Devane House. Inside the carriage, they were all silent, she and Thérèse and Hyacinthe and Justin; even the dogs were quiet. Homecoming, thought Barbara, only there is no longer a master of that home.

   Daffodils were blooming in the garden of Devane Square, their yellow trumpets open to the cold air. There was an abandoned, neglected look to the square and garden and houses. The wooden frames of houses never finished stood bare, weathered now, open to the sky. The carriage lumbered past Wren's church, its doors and windows boarded over, its grounds raw and muddy, never landscaped. There was no gatekeeper at the gates, and Hyacinthe jumped down to open them. The coach lumbered past the fountain, empty, lichen and moss growing upon the stone body of the nymph; they drove through the gardens, which were full of coltsfoot and wild field flowers, creeping in slowly to claim their territory once more. They went around the curving driveway to the house, massive and unfinished. Like my life with Roger, thought Barbara, as she stepped down from the carriage, the dogs leaping around her, and Cradock came running down the steps to shake her hand, tears in his eyes, as if she were his master.

   "Lady Devane," he said over and over, following her up the great sweep of steps into the huge, cold hall. Montrose and White waited there for her. Both bowed over her hands; there were tears in Montrose's eyes. I represent him, she thought. To them, I represent Roger. She pulled off her long gloves and walked through the rooms to the gallery, the furniture covered in dust sheets, the rooms filled with that sleepy, neglected air rooms possess when no one lives in them. Montrose followed her, talking all the while.

   "The solicitors want to see you at your earliest convenience to read the will. I have reserved St. James's Church as you requested. There are three dates you may choose from. The bust has arrived—"

   Indeed it had. It stood on a table near the windows, and she walked to it. Roger. His shoulders and head rising up abruptly out of nothing. She touched the marble cheeks. So cold. The marble could not capture the blue of his eyes, the warm color of his skin, only angles and planes. Not the man. Not the man at all.

   "—and I must tell you that this first report to the Commons from the committee of secrecy has been a bad one. London has talked of nothing else. Roger has been named among many others for wrongdoing. There is a resolution now in the Commons to sequester the estate."

   "Sequester?"

   "Hold it as security against debt."

   "Meaning?"

   "It will no longer be yours. It will be theirs."

   "Ah…"

   "The second report is going to be presented tomorrow." Montrose coughed. Barbara knew that cough. She turned to face him.

   He tugged on his cravat. "Have you considered a more select service? Quieter. They are trying Aislabee now for corrupt practices. The rumor is they will try Charles Stanhope."

   "And do you think my holding a memorial service will make them try Roger? He is dead."

   "They could…ah…try him in absentia."

   "He died alone, Montrose. I want him remembered. When can I order the invitations?"

   There was a short silence. "The engraver will wait on you tomorrow."

   The list of names in her trunk had been carefully selected over these last months at Tamworth. She had planned the music, the flowers, written to ask Walpole to give the eulogy. All her time and care had gone into this service so that, at last, he could be properly mourned. No one would take this from her. No one. She would not allow it. Everything else was gone. She wanted this.