Georgette Heyer (27 page)

  'Consider, sir, what must be your fate if any should know you! This is a veritable stronghold of the rebels!'

  'Alas!' said the King. 'I did like this town very well, as I remember. How all is changed! It is become very fine and large. I think I may certainly find a vessel here to carry me to France.'

  'Ay, or a strong guard to carry you to London, sir!' retorted Lassels.

  'What you mean is a tumbril,' said the King.

  'No, I do not, sir,' replied Lassels, missing the laugh in the King's voice. 'They could not carry you all the way to London upon a tumbril! Besides, even rebels would not do so!'

  'Oh, then, I have nothing to fear!' said the King. 'Let us go on. I once dwelt within those walls, Jane. My cousin Rupert, too. I would give a fortune to see the Governor's face if he knew that I was even now riding round his fortress.'

  Jane laid her hand on his arm. 'Dear sir, I am afraid,' she said. 'They will haply kill me if they find you out.'

  This gentle reminder made the King say remorse fully: 'Why, what a careless knave I am! Lassels, have done with this junketing about the town, and enquire the way to Abbotsleigh!'

  This being done, and the party directed towards the Redclyffe Gate, they were soon out of the town, descending the precipitous hill to the river again, which ran through a magnificent limestone gorge. The road wound sharply up to Leigh Down upon the south side of the Avon, and by the time the travellers arrived at Abbotsleigh it was nearly dusk.

  The house, which was a large, rambling building erected in a previous age, and much added to, commanded wide views, and had before it a bowling green, upon which some men were finishing a game. A number of spectators were gathered round, greatly to Jane's discomfiture, but since there was no other way of approaching the house, she was obliged to acquiesce in the King's decision to go boldly on.

  Accordingly, they rode forward at a gentle pace. The men by the green were too much interested in the game to bestow more than a few casual glances upon them, and Jane's heart had just resumed its normal beat when the King gave a sudden exclama tion under his breath, and pulled his hat low over his brow.

  'What is it, sir?' Jane whispered.

  'Do you see that fat fellow sitting upon the rails? He is Dr Gorges, who was one of my chaplains.'

  Her hands gripped the skirts of his coat. 'Sir, what shall we do? Is it safe to disclose yourself to him? Is he honest?'

  'He may be honest, but there was never a fool that blabbed more,' said the King. 'Ride on the other side of me, Lassels, that he may not catch any glimpse of this accursed face of mine.'

  Lassels pushed forward at once, but said: 'If he is your friend, sir, surely he would not –'

  'I thank you, at this present, I had liefer come upon mine enemies than my friends!' retorted the King sardonically.

They had arrived by this time, skirting the bowling green, at the house. Lassels at once dismounted, and lifted Jane down from the pillion; and the King, without losing any time, led the horses away to the stables, where, it had been hastily concerted between himself and Jane, he would await a summons from her.

  Scarcely had he departed, when Mrs Norton, a pretty young woman, just now heavy with child, came out with her husband to welcome her guests. She clasped Jane in her arms, kissing her repeatedly, and besieging her with affectionate questions, while her husband took Lassels in charge. It was some time before any opportu nity offered of mentioning Will Jackson and his tertian ague, for Mrs Norton, besides being very chatty, was so hospitable that she set the whole household in a bustle, fetching refreshments for the travellers, removing their cloaks, and running to be sure that their rooms were in readiness for them.

  'You dear, dear thing!' she cried, clasping both Jane's hands in hers, and beaming upon her. 'The comfort it is to have you with me! How kind it was of Madam Lane to spare you! Oh, and to send me that cordial! I have been so low, you would scarcely credit it! And then that tiresome Dr Gorges – not that I mean to complain, for indeed he is perfectly amiable, but for ever talking, till my head is like to split.'

  'Dr Gorges?' Jane repeated, feeling a little chill in the pit of her stomach. 'Is he staying in the house, Nell?'

  'Oh yes! And a worthy good man, that was a cleric, only now, you understand, he dare not own to it, but has taken up the study of physic. But he leaves us tomorrow, for which I am so thankful!'

  George Norton, a sensible-looking man, as quiet as his wife was vivacious, overheard these words, and broke off in the middle of asking Lassels what route he had come by, to say with a reproving smile: 'Eleanor, for shame! You must know, Jane, that the good doctor is a distant relative of hers, and very welcome in this house.'

  'Well, and said I not he was a worthy, good man?' protested Mrs Norton. 'But while I have my dearest Jane I want no other company! I should have warned you, dear heart, that George so loves to entertain our acquaintance that the house is for ever full of visitors. Oh yes, indeed! I never have the least notion how many will sit down to dinner with us: it is quite abomi nable! While as for the buttery, you would say it was a common inn, for every poor man in the world comes into it. The broken meats that go out of this house! But George is so generous he will never turn a soul away!'

  Mr Norton, who had reddened a trifle, was spared further embarrassment by the butler's coming in with the refreshments he had been bidden to bring to the parlour. Mrs Norton at once became busy pressing canary upon Jane, and urging Lassels to tell her without hesitation if he would prefer a glass of sack. 'Pope will get it for you on the instant!' she assured him. 'If there is aught you wish for at any time you have but to tell Pope. You must please to think your self perfectly at home. Now do, do inform me of
everything
you would like!'

  'Indeed, you are very good, madam, but there is nothing, really nothing!' said Lassels, quite oppressed by her hospitality.

  Jane set down her glass of canary, and said in as natural a voice as she could: 'Oh, Nell, there is only one trifling matter which I had well-nigh forgot! The serving-man who came with me is suffering from a tertian ague, and I am very wishful to see him housed as comfortably as may be. He is a tenant of ours, an honest man whom my brother thinks very well of, and he is not quite used to sleeping in the common dormitory, besides being sickly.'

  'Poor man!' exclaimed Mrs Norton. 'Pope shall see to it that he is put into a bedchamber, and I will send my waiting woman – you remember Margaret Rider, I'll be bound, Jane! – and she will have a very good care to him, I promise you.'

  'Oh, no need for that, madam!' said Lassels hastily. 'The fellow can sleep upon a pallet in my room. Do not put yourself out, I beg of you!'

  She began to protest that he should not be put into the same room with a sick man, but Jane at once inter vened, saying with a smile: 'Dear Nell, you are quite out! My kinsman will not own it, but ill or well he must always have his servant within call. He will not thank you for putting William in a room apart.'

  'Well!' said Mrs Norton. 'It is very odd of him, but it shall be just as he pleases. Pope will see to it, and this William of yours shall have a good bed in his chamber.'

  'Yes, mistress,' said the butler. 'And will your honour take a glass of sack, or the canary?'

  'Yes – I mean, no! I'll take canary!' Lassels replied, wondering what his Royal master was doing, and what hope there was of his escaping detection in a house that seemed, by all accounts, to be teeming with casual visitors.

  Jane's cool voice recalled his wandering wits. She had drawn off his host's attention by asking him some question about his estate. Lassels forced himself to drink his wine, and to attend to Mrs Norton's rippling and inconsequent chatter; but when, after what seemed hours, it was suggested that the travellers might like to be taken to their bedchambers, the alacrity with which he jumped up from his chair was marked enough to make Jane frown upon him.

  Mrs Norton herself led the way up a flight of graceful stairs. The sight of an elderly woman in a plain stuff gown and a mob-cap, crossing the landing at the head of the stairs, made her remember her friend's serving man, and she called out: 'Margaret, Margaret, here is Mrs Jane Lane! And how is that poor man? You must have a care to him, for Mrs Jane is not to want for a groom, you know.'

  Margaret Rider, dropping curtseys, replied that 'deed she would make the poor fellow a carduus-posset, for he was feeling mighty anguish, and looking for all the world like a ghostie, so pale he was, which anyone could see, for all his tan. She pointed out Lassels's bedchamber to him, and told him that William was laid down upon his bed there, adding, as Mrs Norton conducted Jane down the passage to her own room: 'Ay, sir, and 'tis a sick man he is, and quite forespent, or I know naught of the matter. All this hard riding, and him as should ought to have been in his bed, poor overgrown lad that he is!'

  This suggestion quite alarmed Lassels, and he entered the bedchamber with such an anxious expres sion on his face that Charles, who was stretched on a cupboard-bed against the wall, with his hands linked behind his head, opened his lazy eyes at him in surprise. 'Oddsblood, what disaster has befallen us?'

  'Oh, none, sir, none!' Lassels assured him. 'But that woman said you were forespent, and it put me in mind of the hardships your Majesty has undergone, and the way I have never given a thought, but let you spend all day in the saddle, as though you were not indeed ill, as she says you are!'

  The King, who had listened to this tumbled speech with his brows lifted, broke in on it, saying in a tone of considerable amusement: 'What the devil ails you, man? I promise you, I was never better in my life! Even my feet are in a fair way to healing, so what is all this pother about?'

  'The waiting-woman said how pale your Majesty was beneath that stain, and now I see that it is very true!' Lassels said, conscience-stricken. 'Only your Majesty never complained, and I did not think –'

  The King swung his legs to the ground, and stood up. He took Lassels by the shoulders and shook him slightly. 'Peace, peace! What if someone were listening outside that door while you stand there babbling of my Majesty at every second word? What the pox has put you in such a taking?'

  Lassels gave an uncertain laugh. 'I ask your pardon, sir! But I wish we had not come to this place, for it is full of strangers, besides that Dr Gorges is a guest here, and I know not how to keep your – to keep you concealed! We have contrived that I am to lie in your chamber, but I dare not remain to guard you by day as I should, for fear of its giving rise to suspicion, yet how may I leave you alone where you are like to be discovered at any moment?'

  'But there is not the least need for all this distress, I do assure you!' said the King, still amused, but rather touched. 'I think myself reasonably safe here. I have encountered a multitude of grooms and scullions and cook-maids, and not one of them favoured me with as much as a second glance. As for the waiting-woman you spoke with, I told her I had been ill many weeks, and she has promised me a carduus-posset of her own making. If I were ten times King of this realm, she would not care a button for it. Do you know so little of women? I tell you, if a man will but declare himself to be ailing, they will think of naught else but how best to cosset and cure him. Go and tell her I am the King! She will say,
Ay, is he so? The poor lanky lad that he is,
and he with the fever still upon him! I will put a warming-pan
between his sheets this instant.'

  His mimicry was exact enough to make Lassels laugh. He could not, however, be at ease, and although he was obliged to leave the King presently to go down to supper, his mind persisted in flitting back to him, and so many horrid possibilities presented themselves to his imagination that he had several times to pull out his handkerchief and wipe the starting beads of sweat from his brow. His hostess, observing this, feared that the log-fire discommoded him, and begged him to change his place at the table.

  Jane, who was seated beside George Norton, and had Dr Gorges opposite to her, was herself a little troubled to know how to convey a good supper to the King. She guessed that in such a large, haphazard household the meats that would ordinarily be carried up to a sick serving-man would by no means suit the King's appetite, and when a bowl of broth was brought to the table, she desired the butler, in a low voice, to bring her a little dish that she might fill it for William. He did so, and she ladled some broth into it, and gave it back to him, saying: 'Please to have it carried up to William, and tell him he shall have some meat presently.'

  She had thought Dr Gorges's attention to have been fixed upon his host, but no sooner had Pope taken the dish from her than the worthy cleric turned his inquisi tive gaze upon her, and demanded: 'Is that for your servant, the same whom I am told is suffering from the tertian ague?'

  'Yes, sir,' Jane replied tranquilly.

  'Well, it is a fortunate thing you have chanced upon me, Mrs Lane!' said the doctor, with a consequent little laugh. 'You must know that I have a considerable knowledge of physic, and I shall be very happy to do what I can for your servant.'