Now Face to Face (18 page)

He heard the call of the watch. “Four of the clock, and all is well.”

Not true, not true, at all.

I
T WAS
as if he stood outside himself and watched. It was as if he were not a participant, a principal participant, at all.

Charles was standing by a carriage, did not see him, was startled when Tony came up and said his name. He heard himself tell Charles that he could not find his dueling pistols, and Charles produced his own in their wooden box, as if he had known Tony would not find his. Tony went to stand under the two oaks, listening to the faint sounds of night. No birds were yet awake. He thought of Slane’s finch hopping on the table.

He heard the horses’ hooves on the ground, clopping, before he saw the carriage. His opponent, Thomas Masham, climbed down from the carriage, along with his second, who turned out to be, to Tony’s surprise, the banker Sir Gideon Andreas. Andreas walked over to them. Large, beefy, older, he might have been Tony’s father.

“I came to stop this if I can. Blame the wine, the phase of the moon, anything, but ask pardon and I will speak on your behalf, Tamworth.”

“I have already spoken to Masham.” Charles interposed himself into the conversation. “Yesterday.”

“It is not yours to decide,” said Andreas.

“The Duke of Tamworth cannot draw back with honor,” said Charles.

Honor. A man must show willingness to fight at the first sign of insult, must follow through even if he died, or else he was not a man, but rather a coward. It was the standard of the times. Tony was the grandson of a mighty general. The son of a valiant warrior. The character of heroes. The stuff of legend. Richard Saylor’s grandson.

“Tony,” said Charles, “he insulted your cousin—my cousin, too, by marriage.”

“I will not draw back now,” Tony heard himself say. He was surprised he could speak at all. “I want to insist that Masham understand, that you understand, Sir Gideon, that this duel must remain an absolute secret, even if one of us is hurt. Not for the sake of what may happen to us if the duel is found out, but for the sake of the lady in question, who is innocent of any wrongdoing. I want Masham’s word, and yours, on this.”

“It is understood,” said Andreas. Again, it was the standard, the code, that duels be secret—because they were against the law, and so the participants might be arrested; and because, quite often, they were over a woman.

“Nonetheless, will you speak to him again?” Tony said.

The banker nodded.

Tony watched Andreas do so, watched Charles and Andreas inspect the pistols, begin to load them. The smell of gunpowder was harsh in his nostrils for a moment. They poured the gunpowder down the barrels, tamping it with the special metal rod, inserting the small lead balls—too small to kill a man; how could anything that small kill a man? Then they inspected the barrels again. Tony felt a coldness come over himself, a clarity. There was nothing, nothing else in this world, but this moment, and though he had dreaded that he would tremble like a woman when it finally came and so expose all his secret weaknesses, he now felt nothing but a sense of coldness. It was as if the icy winds of a storm whirled and settled in his mind, chilling it to absolute clarity. There was nothing but the now, no emotion, no memory. There was now, and afterward, there would be something else.

He was walking out into the open, toward the other men. He was bowing to Masham, he was bowing his head as Andreas said a prayer, he was taking a pistol, closing his fingers over it. It was heavy; the handle fit his hand as if made for it. He was going out into the park, where the sky overhead was just beginning to color, faint, lovely tinges on the horizon. Charles was beside him, talking to him: He must not panic; he must take aim before he fired; he must keep his mind clear and cold; Masham was no expert with a pistol. The pistol was heavy in Tony’s hand.

There were years of friendship between himself and Charles—but all Tony could see was Charles rising from his chair, saying “If you do not fight him, I will.”

Masham came forward, bowed, his face showing nothing. Tony did the same. Now he had his back to Masham, and he could feel the warmth of the man’s body, but it did not warm the ice in his mind. Someone was counting off, and he was walking forward, a loud humming in his ears, almost covering the counting. He would walk forever, until the number twenty was heard, and then there it was, sooner than he had expected. He was turning around, and all the blood in his body rushed to his head, and he raised his arm, just as Masham was doing. He squeezed his finger against the trigger. There was a boom, which hurt his ears. Smoke issued from the barrel of his gun as something went singing by him, and when the smoke cleared, he saw men running toward a fallen body, and he lowered his arm. Somewhere was the first mournful, morning cry of a dove.

Charles was bellowing like a savage, hugging him, half carrying him forward, and he thought, slowly, for the blood was draining away and he felt sick, I am not dead…. He would have fallen, if Charle shad not been there, holding him up.

“You must leave at once, before a watchman comes,” Charles was saying. In his face was a joy, a wild, manic zest, as if they had played a successful boys’ prank or stormed the Tower of London. Charles’s groom was bringing up his horse, and Tony put his foot in the stirrup. He could see from where he was that Andreas was at Masham’s body, which did not move.

“Go and see to Masham, Charles. Make certain a physician sees him. At once. I will pay for it. Just get him a physician.”

Charles glanced toward the carriage; Andreas and a servant were lifting Masham’s body and putting it inside. The horses shied and the carriage jerked forward; there was a trail of darker crimson, of blood, as Masham’s arms and legs swung back and forth loosely.

“Yes, I will. Have you a place to go?”

All must be brazened out now, everything denied. Everyone must act as if nothing had happened.

“Stay with Masham, Charles. See that he has everything he needs.”

The sun was up, in a bright, clean morning, which was cold on his face and hands. Tony trotted his mount through Green Park, past the great house and gardens of the Duchess of Buckingham, into St. James’s Park, maneuvering his horse along one of the long allées of trees. Milkmaids were herding cows toward a pond. They smiled, offering mugs of fresh milk if he would only stop and wait. He recognized the empty space of the Parade and Horse Guards building behind.

His great-aunt Shrew, or Lady Shrewsborough, as the world knew her, lived among the maze of houses and gardens that had been built on the grounds and against the remains of the burned palace of Whitehall, which had once stretched half a mile along the Thames, and—if Aunt Shrew’s word was to be trusted—possessed some two thousand rooms. He was trotting across the Parade, the sound of his horse’s hooves loud against the cobbles. He dismounted to lead his horse through an alley and across the street and then into the old privy garden of the former palace. He tied the horse to a tree and climbed over a fence, his long legs making it easy. There was the back of Aunt Shrew’s house.

He sat down against her garden wall, to rest a moment. He kept seeing Masham raise his pistol, kept seeing the smoke curl from the barrel, kept hearing the strange, fatal song of the leaded ball going past; it was his life going past. Give me a kiss and to that kiss a score, then to that twenty, add a hundred more went some bit of poetry in his mind. He’d never kissed Barbara in passion. Calf love, they said. He had wanted to teach Barbara of his love, its depth and tenderness.

To the victor belong the spoils. I came. I saw. I conquered. They never found all the pieces of his father’s body. You’re a good boy, Tony, my boy. I did it for the best; I sent Barbara away for the best, said his grandmother, weeping. Someday you will see.

Ridiculous to have thought an hour ago that he would never forgive his grandmother. He was alive and might have been dead. He forgave her everything. If Masham did not die, life would be perfect, even without Barbara, because he was alive. The very air he drew into his nostrils was sweet. Tony closed his eyes. I shall never duel again, he thought. Never. Nothing is worth it.

I
NSIDE THE
house, Tony’s great-aunt slapped a card down on the table. “After the election in the spring, there will be more Tories again in the House of Commons—”

Her lover, Sir Alexander Pendarves, shook his head no, but she ignored him, speaking to Slane. The three of them had begun to gamble late, when Slane called on them after midnight, knowing they’d be awake. None of them had yet been to bed.

“—and His Majesty will have to offer Tories places in his cabinet, Slane. He is under the dominion of rogues now, a highwayman’s band of Whig rogues who gave us the South Sea Bubble. Lumpy is the only Whig I can abide.” Lumpy was her name for Pendarves.

“Robert Walpole never supported the South Sea Company,” said Pendarves.

“Which makes him no less of a rogue. He shielded those who did, men who have impoverished half the nation with their greed and money tricks. Robert Walpole is the savior of cheats and swindlers, within the King’s cabinet and outside it, too. Of course, things have fallen to pieces anyway when the King of England does not even speak English.”

“Now, Lou, no Jacobite talk,” Pendarves said.

“‘Jacobite,’ ‘Jacobite’—you Whigs are always labeling everything you do not like Jacobite. It isn’t Jacobite to say the truth. The House of Guelph rules over us. Now, I ask you, Slane, what kind of name is ‘Guelph’? Not English, to my mind.—Aha, my trick! I’ve won the game!” She raked coins toward herself, cackling like a stage witch, a witch wearing a short, pink quilted jacket over a loose embroidered-cotton nightgown. She also wore a red wig and a lace cap; powder was caked into every crevice and wrinkle on her face, which bore three patches, as if she were two-and-twenty, instead of many times that. In her heyday, Louisa, Lady Shrewsborough, had been one of the beauties of Charles II’s court; she had retained her small-boned delicacy, which had charmed many a man who later found she had the constitution of an iron bar.

Slane shook his head at her good fortune. She was said to be the best player of cards in London, other than the Princess of Wales.

“You will have that fifteen thousand pounds out of my own pocket!” said Pendarves.

“Fifteen thousand?” Slane said.

“I lost a good quarter of my fortune when South Sea stock fell,” said Aunt Shrew. “You cannot believe the madhouse London became, as people saw the stock dropping. There was a time when if you withdrew five pounds on a goldsmith’s paper, it had dropped to three by the time you had crossed town. I had ten thousand pounds with a goldsmith. He slipped away to Brussels one dark night, taking my funds and others’ with him, and never returned. May he catch the pox from a Belgian whore. I tell you, Slane, I’ve never seen anything like it, and I grew to womanhood in the aftermath of a civil war. What I have seen in my time! Name it—unrest, riot, plotting, treason, as well as prosperity, calm, and plenty. I’ve seen five kings or queens sit upon the throne of England. I was in London when William of Orange crossed over to invade and King James II fled. But I’ve seen nothing to equal the frenzy of panic which gripped us when the stock of the South Sea Company began its fall.”

“Too true,” said Pendarves.

“Goldsmiths fled into the night with gold others had entrusted to them. Banks in Amsterdam ordered London agents to sell stock. Established companies with firm foundations—the Bank of England, the East India Company—saw the prices for their stock fall. Monies froze where they were—or worse, disappeared. One could not send twenty-five pounds from London to Dublin by bill of exchange.”

Slane, so restless he thought he might explode, had to stand up. Word had come to Italy of the South Sea trouble in England; word had come to invade, but they were caught unprepared, no plan, no coin, no troops supplied from an enemy of Hanover George’s. “Wait, then,” wrote the Bishop of Rochester, “until Parliament is dissolved and we have our election in the spring of 1722.” The letter that had come to Slane last night informed him that the plan of invasion was to arrive from Jamie in a few days.

“Another hand?” said Slane.

“You can’t afford it, man. I’ll have to loan you coin for your dinner today as it is.”

“I can’t afford another hand, either,” said Pendarves, the tassel at the top of his stiff four-cornered nightcap shaking along with his head.

“Nonsense, Lumpy. You ought to have a bath. We’ll play on that. If I win the next game, you bathe tomorrow.” She dealt the cards expertly, and she and Pendarves began to play silently, ferociously, speaking only to ask for another card or call out points to Slane. After a time, her household steward appeared in the doorway, an odd look on his face.

“His Grace, the Duke of Tamworth,” said the servant. So, thought Slane, Tamworth survived. I find I’m glad.

“Well, send him up.”

Tony often came in the early-morning hours to play cards with her and Pendarves. You ought to be in bed with your whore or at White’s with the bucks, she would tell Tony every so often, and he always answered that her company was better than any at White’s and certainly better than any whore’s, which never failed to please her.

“That’s not possible, ma’am.”

“What do you mean, ‘not possible’? My point, Lumpy.”