Winsor, Kathleen (105 page)

"Where's
your master?" He ignored her and would have gone on by without answering
but she grabbed him roughly by the arm, angry enough to have slapped his face.
"Answer me, you varlet! Where's your master?"

He
gave her a surprised look, without recognition, as though he had heard her for
the first time. Radclyffe had probably been working them for hours. He gave a
jerk of his head. "Upstairs, I think. In his closet."

Amber
ran up the stairs, dodging around servants and furniture, with Big John close
at her heels. But now her legs were weak and trembling. She felt her heart
begin to pound. She swallowed but her throat was dry. Nevertheless her
exhaustion was suddenly and miraculously gone. - They hurried down the gallery
to his Lordship's apartments. Two men were just coming out, each of them
bearing a tall stack of books, and as they went she signalled Big John to turn
the lock.
"Don't come till I call you," she said softly, and then walked
swiftly across the parlour toward the bedchamber.

It
was almost empty—but for the bed, too big and unwieldy to be moved—and she went
on, toward the laboratory. Her heart seemed to have filled all her chest now
and it hammered so that she expected it suddenly to burst. He was there, going
hastily through the drawers of a table and stuffing his pockets with papers.
For once his clothes were in disarray—he must have ridden horseback to have
arrived so soon—but even so he presented a strangely elegant appearance. His
back was turned to her.

"My
lord!" Amber's voice rang out like the tolling of a bell.

He
started a little and glanced around, but he did not recognize her and returned
instantly to his work. "What do you want? Go away, lad, I'm busy. Carry
some furniture down to the carts."

"My
lord!" she repeated. "Look again. You'll see I'm no lad."

For
a moment he paused and then, very slowly and cautiously, he turned. There was a
single candle burning on the table beside him, but the glare of the flames
lighted the room brilliantly. Outside the fire roared like unceasing thunder;
the constant booming of explosions rattled the windows and burnt buildings
toppled to the ground, crashing one after another.

"Is
it
you?"
he asked at last, very softly.

"Yes.
it's me. And alive—no ghost, my lord. Philip's dead— but I'm not."

The
incredulity on his face shifted at last to a kind of horror, and suddenly
Amber's fears were gone. She felt powerful and strong and filled with a
loathing that brought out everything cruel and fierce and wild in her.

With
an insolent lift of her chin she started toward him, walking slowly, and the
riding whip in her right hand flicked nervously against her leg. He stared at
her, his eyes straight and steady, but the muscles around his mouth twitched
ever so slightly. "My son's dead," he repeated slowly, fully
realizing for the first time what he had done. "He's dead—and you're
not." He looked sick and beaten and older than ever before, all confidence
gone. The murder of his son had completed the ruin of his life.

"So
you finally found out about us," taunted Amber as she stood before him,
one hand on her hip, the other still flicking the riding-crop.

He
smiled, a faint and reflective smile, cold, contemptuous, and strangely
sensual. Slowly he began to answer. "Yes. Many weeks ago I watched you
together—there in the summer-house —thirteen times in all. I watched what you
did and I listened to what you said, and I got a great deal of pleasure from
thinking how you would die—one day, when you least expected it—"

"Did
you!" snapped Amber, her voice taut and hard, and the
whip flickered
back and forth, swift as a snake. "But I didn't die—and I'm not going to
either—"

Her
eyes flared to a wild blaze. Suddenly she raised the whip and lashed it across
his face with all the force in her body. He jerked backward, one hand going up
involuntarily, but the first blow had left a thin red welt from his left temple
to the bridge of his nose. Her teeth clenched and her face contorted with
murderous fury; she struck at him again and again, so blind now with rage she
could scarcely see. Suddenly he grabbed hold of the candlestick and lunged
toward her, heaving all his weight behind it. She moved swiftly aside and as
she dodged gave a shrill scream.

The
candlestick struck her shoulder and glanced off. She saw his face loom close
and his hand seized the whip. They began to struggle and just as Amber brought
up her knee to jab him in the groin Big John's cudgel came down on his skull.
Radclyffe began to double. Amber jerked the whip out of his hand and lashed at
his face again and again, no longer fully conscious of what she was doing.

"Kill
him!" she screamed. "Kill him!" She cried it over and over again:
"Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!"

With
one hand John swept off the Earl's periwig and with the other he smashed again
at his skull. Radclyffe lay sprawled grotesquely on the floor, his naked head
streaming blood. A strong revulsion swept Amber. She felt no pity or regret but
only a violent paroxysm of satisfied rage and hatred.

All
at once she became aware that the draperies were on fire and for a horrified
moment she believed the house was burning and that they were trapped. Then she
saw that the candle he had thrown at her had fallen beside the window, the
draperies had caught, and now flames roared to the ceiling and licked along the
wooden moulding.

"John!"

He
turned, saw the flames, and both of them started out of the apartment in a
rush. At the door they glanced back, briefly, before John shut and locked it.
The last they saw of Radclyffe was a broken and bloody old man who lay dead on
the floor, with the flames already approaching him. John put the key into his
pocket and they began to run down the gallery toward the rear of the house. But
Amber had not gone ten yards when she suddenly pitched forward, unconscious as
she fell. Big John swooped her into his arms and ran on. He went clattering
noisily down the little back staircase, Amber held limp and flopping before
him, and halfway down he met two men who would have pushed past him. They wore
no livery and must have been thieves.

"Fire!"
he shouted at them. "The house is afire!"

Instantly
they turned and rushed down, the three of them making a furious noise in the
narrow echoing cavity. One stumbled and almost fell, recovered himself and
burst out into the
courtyard. Big John came close on their heels, but they had disappeared. He
glanced around once, and saw that the flames from the upstairs window already
were casting a reflection into the courtyard pool.

When
Amber returned
to
London in mid-December, three and a half months after the Fire, she found
almost all the ancient walled City gone. The ground was still a heap of rubble
and twisted iron, brick debris, molten lead now cooled, and in many cellars
fires continued to smoke and burn. Not even the torrential October rains had
been able to put them out. Most of the streets had been completely obliterated
by fallen buildings and others were blocked off because chimneys and half-walls
which still stood made them dangerous. London looked dead and ruined.

The
city was infinitely more sad and pitiful now that the cruel gorgeous spectacle
of the flames was gone. There were gloomy predictions that she would never rise
again, and on that rainy grey December day they seemed to be only inevitably
truth. Beaten down by plague and war and fire, her trade fallen off, burdened
with the greatest public debt in the history of the nation, full of unrest and
misery—men were saying everywhere that the days of England's glory had passed,
her old valour was worn out, she was a nation doomed to perish from the earth.
The future had never seemed more hopeless; men had never been more pessimistic
or more resentful.

But
in spite of everything the indomitable will and hope of the people had already
begun to conquer. A mushroom city of mean little shacks and rickety sheds had
sprung up where whole families took shelter on the sites of their former homes.
Shops were beginning to open and some new houses were a-building.

And
not all the town had burned.

For
outside the walls there was still left standing that part of the city east of
the Tower and north of Moor Fields; on the west there remained the old
barristers' college of Lincoln's Inn and still farther west Drury Lane and
Covent Garden and St. James, where the nobility was moving in steadily
increasing numbers. Nothing around the bend of the river had burned. The Strand
was still there and the great old houses with their gardens running down to the
Thames. The fashionable part of London had not been touched by the fire.

Amber
and Big John had left the city immediately, hired horses when they found their
own gone, and ridden straight to Lime Park. She told Jenny that when she had
arrived the house had been burnt and she had not been able to find his Lordship
anywhere—but nevertheless for the sake of appearances she sent a party of men
back to London to search for him. They returned after several days to say he
could not be discovered and that according to all evidence he had been trapped
in the house and burned to death. Amber, immeasurably relieved that she was
evidently not going to be caught, put on mourning—but she did not pretend to be
very sorry, for she did not consider that particular piece of hypocrisy
essential to her welfare.

But
the best news she heard was from Shadrac Newbold— who had a messenger out there
two days after she got back to inform her that not one of his depositors had
lost a shilling. She found out later that though much money had gone up in the
Fire, almost all the goldsmiths had saved what was entrusted to them. And
though there was less than half of it left now, twenty-eight thousand pounds,
even that was enough to make her one of the richest women in England.
Furthermore, it was being added to by interest and by returns on the
investments he had made for her, and later she could augment it by renting Lime
Park and selling much of the furnishings—though so far she could not bring
herself to touch Radclyffe's effects.

Certainly
there was brilliant promise in the future. But the present was a source of fear
and anxiety to her—for though Radclyffe was dead she had not been able to get
rid of him. He had come there to his home to haunt her. She met him
unexpectedly as she rounded a corner in the gallery; he stood behind her when
she ate; he accosted her in the night and she lay sweating with terror, jumping
at imaginary sounds, or she woke up with a hysterical scream. She wanted to get
away, but Nan's baby had been born just the day before she returned and she
intended to wait until Nan could travel. She was staying mostly out of
affection for Nan and gratitude for what she had done during the Plague—but
also because she had no place to go but Almsbury's, and did not want to rouse
his suspicions by rushing away pell-mell at first news of her husband's death.
She was not willing to entrust her fatal secret to anyone but Big John and Nan.

Jenny's
mother came, and as soon as the child had been born and Jenny recovered she was
going home to her own people. Amber felt a little guilty when, at the first of
October, she left for Barberry Hill—but she told herself that after all Jenny
had no reason to be afraid of staying there. She had never been his Lordship's
enemy; she had had nothing to do with Philip's death—the walls and ceilings and
very trees had nothing to say to her. But for herself—she could stand it no
longer. And she went.

At
Barberry Hill she felt more comfortable, and it did not
take her as
long to forget—Radclyffc, Philip and everything that had happened this past
year—as she had thought it would. She put it all resolutely out of her mind.
She had an uncomfortable feeling that Almsbury guessed she knew more about her
husband's death than she had told—perhaps he thought that she had hired a gang
of bullies to murder him— but he never tried to trick her into making an
inadvertent admission, and they seldom mentioned his Lordship at all.

Once
he said to her teasingly, "Well, sweetheart—who d'ye suppose you'll marry
next? They say Buckhurst has almost made up his mind to risk matrimony—"

She
shot him a sharp indignant glance. "Marry come up, Almsbury! You must
think I'm cracked! I'm rich and I've got a title now—why the devil should I
make myself miserable by marrying again! There never was such a wretched state
as matrimony! I've tried it three times and—"

"Three
times?" he asked, his voice sliding over the words with a sound of
amusement.

Amber
flushed in spite of herself, for Luke Channell was a secret she had never
shared with anyone but Nan. It was one of the few things of which she was
ashamed. "Twice, I mean! Well—what are you smirking for? Anyway, smile if
you like, but I'll never get married again—I've got better plans for myself
than that, I warrant you!" She turned, her black-silk skirts swishing
about her, and started to leave the room.

Almsbury
was lounging against the fireplace, filling his pipe. He looked after her and
grinned, but shrugged his shoulders.

"God
knows, sweetheart, it's nothing to me if you've had three husbands or thirteen.
And none of my business if you marry again or not. I was just wondering—how
d'you think you'll look in stark black by the time you're thirty-five?"